HARVARD'S INTERNATIONALISM

The letter which Professor Taussig sent to Vossische Zeitung in answer to Professor Eduard Meyer's letter entitled "The Spirit of Harvard," which is printed in the last issue of the Alumni Bulletin probably expresses the conviction of all Harvard men that "the bonds of intellectual co-operation between nations will not prove to have been severed when this tragic struggle comes to an end." Perhaps no institutions of learning in the world can claim such cosmopolitan origins and affiliations as American universities, and of these none comes into closer relations with scholars of all nations than does Harvard.

Yet the University's critics frequently cry loudly that Harvard has forgotten its inclusive character and gone into one camp or another. Several years ago a book appeared by one John Corbin, in which one chapter bore the ominous title, "Harvard, a Germanized University." And periodically the idea crops out that by some metamorphosis our older universities have been transformed from "good old English" institutions to narrow "single-aim" laboratories for academic research. The fact is that Harvard, as President Lowell pointed out at a meeting of graduate students last year, owes something to the educational systems of all the leading nations. The College, although it has followed its own evolution, is English in origin; the Graduate Schools, especially in their ideals of higher scholarship and their methods of research, draw mainly from Germany; while the Engineering School is modelled on that of Paris. The Law School alone has developed a completely American method.

Having thus taken the best of the systems of these three great nations. Harvard can never forget its international character--a character to which the presence of students of all races testifies further. It is unfortunate that, in the heat of the war some men are attempting to destroy the free association of scholars of all nations in the service of truth, to "carry strife into the hallowed peace of the academic world." Such efforts cannot have effect in the long run.