The American College of the Twentieth Century.

Professor Clement L. Smith contributes an article to the Atlantic Monthly for February on "The American College in the Twentieth Century." He discusses a variety of the problems which the colleges of the present century will be obliged to settle. The first is the question as to which is the better college for women, the type of Radcliffe and Barnard which is attached to a university, or the independent type like Vassar and Smith. We can answer the question better when we see what the college can do for women, especially women destined for the higher positions of social life.

Dean Smith then discusses the question of the shorter college course, and he is of the opinion that life is not long enough to justify an expenditure of time that prevents a man from being fitted for his life work until he is twenty-six. The college must be a place of freedom with responsibility. It invokes danger, but manhood and character cannot be developed without the element of danger, and it is, therefore, not a fit place for everybody. But to counteract this danger, the strongest influences are provided.

In conclusion, Dean Smith asserts that the classics will be necessary in the college of the future since it is a question not of need, but of excellence, and education is not complete without a knowledge first hand of the life and thought of two peoples from whom our own thought has sprung.