PRESIDENT LOWELL'S ANNUAL REPORT

TO THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS:--

The President of the University has the honor to submit the following report for the year 1914-15:--

In the last annual report it was stated that the class entering college in September, 1914, was eighty-four larger than the year before. This autumn the number has remained very nearly the same, the new Freshmen being in fact seventeen less than last year. Curiously enough the increase in the number of men who enter is less regular than that in the number of applicants for admission. The applicants, those admitted, and those who entered for the past ten years, are given in a table at the top of the next page.

In these figures, several things may be observed. Of the applicants admitted a good many do not come. Some of them are thought by their parents too young--in most cases a grievous error. Others, for financial reasons, give up college and go to work. Others, again, especially those who have taken the examinations of the College Entrance Examination Board, are entitled to enter more than one college and go else-where; while some probably never intend to enter, but try the examination merely as a test. Another fact to be observed is that for the last eight years the number of applicants has increased almost steadily while the number admitted has not, the percentage of rejections having varied from 23.2 in the first of these years to 31.1 in the last. The natural inference is that the standard of marking varies from year to year. No doubt-this is to some extent true, and with the necessary changes in the examiners it is in part unavoidable. The fact that our old-plan examinations are now wholly conducted by the College Entrance Examination Board, and that the papers for the new plan are to be prepared in common for Harvard. Yale, and Princeton, will reduce this difficulty to be minimum; or at least subject us only to irregularities common to all colleges. But a variation in standard is not the only explanation, for the examiners declare that the average proficiency of candidate in certain subjects varies at times quite rapidly with a change in methods of teaching in the schools. Much that is of interest about the two methods of examination and the subsequent standing in college of men admitted through each of them, will be found in the report of the Chairman of the Committee on Admission.

Not Yet Time to Judge Freshman Halls

The most notable change in the College during the past year was the opening of the Freshman Halls. The time for discussing the effect these halls are expected to produce has passed; the time for weighing the final results achieved has not yet come, nor will it come until more than one class has lived in them and passed through the rest of its college course. As is often the case, the by-products may prove more far reaching than the direct effects. Moreover, one of the chief objects in view; the breaking up of groups with a similar origin, the provision of an opportunity for friendship among men from different environments, is in its nature intangible, or at least incapable, of exact measurement. The impressions of any single individual are likely to be partial and misleading, while the total result cannot be reduced to statistics. Those who have come into close contact with the life in the halls have not been disappointed in their hopes. The only serious difficulty has lain in turning so many boys into men at once. In view of the fear entertained by the boys before coming that they would be subjected to the discipline of a boarding school, the supervision of order was not first so close as it has since become; and a few of the Freshmen, to show their age, were youthful in conduct, played roughly and broke panes of glass. Probably there was no more of this than in past years, and certainly it can be avoided in the future.

The general conduct of the Freshmen in the halls was good, and the remarks of the Dean on this point are interesting. He shows also that the record in scholarship was somewhat better than in the preceding year. The percentage of men eliminated for low record was slightly less, the percentage of high and of satisfactory grades was slightly larger, and the number of men with a clear record of A's increased from three to seven. If all this does not prove that the Freshman Halls had a distinctly good effect on scholarship, it certainly shows that assembling the men in large dormitories has not lessened their attention to study.

The age at entrance of the seven men who achieved a clear A record is notable. Two were eighteen, four were seventeen, and one was fifteen; the oldest was eighteen years and three months, while the average age of the class was about eighteen years and six months. This is one more illustration of the truth that the younger men are the better scholars.

The Freshman Halls are not an isolated project, an attempt to treat the newcomers by a method peculiar and distinct. They are a part of a general tendency to be seen in all American colleges, the object of which is to bring the strongest possible influences for good to bear upon the student, instead of merely offering opportunities to be seized or neglected as the may please. The unlimited elective system presented to the student the broadest and most diversified opportunities, placing upon him the responsibility of making a wise use of them. The attention of the college authorities was naturally directed to the list of courses given, in an effort to make the offering as rich, as varied, as comprehensive as possible; and the conscientious instructor strove to make his own course as valuable as he could. Save in the case of candidates for distinction in a special field, or men who proposed to carry their studies in one subject far, it was not the duty of an instructor to inquire what courses other than his own a student might be taking, or might thereafter elect. Nor was it the business of anyone but the student himself. The single course inevitably became the unit in college education, and the degree was conferred upon the accumulation of a fixed number of those units. They might be well or badly selected; they might form a consistent whole, or be disconnected fragments of knowledge, according to the earnestness and wisdom of the student. If he selected well, he obtained an excellent education, not because he had to his credit so many units, but because he had so chosen them that together they gave him the development he required.

Students More Important Than Courses

But in fact, the single course is not, and cannot be, the true unit in education. The real unit is the student. He is the only thing in education that is an end in itself. To send him forth as nearly a perfected product as possible is the aim of instruction, and anything else, the single course, the curriculum, the discipline, the influences surrounding him, are merely means to the end, which are to be judged by the way they contributed and fit into the ultimate purpose. To treat the single course as a self-sufficient unit, complete in itself, is to run a danger of losing sight of the end in the means thereto. In no other part of the University, in the requirements for no other degree, is the course, as a unit, complete in itself. In the Law, School, where the freedom of election is the greatest, many courses are required, and the-rest all aim at a definite and narrowly circumscribed object, preparation for practice at the bar. In the Medical and Divinity Schools general examinations on specific fields of knowledge have been established -- of which more will be said later. The same thing has always been true of the doctorate of philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and for the Master of Arts, which was formerly attained by a sufficiently high grade in any four courses, it has now been the rule for many years that the courses must form a consistent whole, approved by some department of the Faculty.

In the College the problem of making the student, instead of the course, the unit in education is more difficult than in the other parts of the University, because general education is more intangible, more vague, less capable of precise analysis and definition, than training for a profession. Nevertheless, in the College, some significant steps have been taken which tend in this direction. The first was the requirement that every student must concentrate six of his seventeen courses in some definite field, must distribute six more among the other subjects of knowledge, and must do so after consulting an instructor appointed to advise him. The exact prescriptions may not be perfect, nor in their final form. Experience may well lead to changes, but the intent is good, to develop and expand the mind of the student as an individual, as in himself the object of education. So far as the rule affects the care with which the student selects his courses, there has certainly been a gain, for there is no doubt that the requirement has made his choice more thoughtful and serious than before. The Committee on the Choice of Electives makes exceptions freely in the case of earnest students, and it is a significant fact that although the members of the Committee hold very divergent views upon the principles involved, they are almost invariably unanimous on the question of allowing an exception in any particular case.

The rule of concentration, coupled with the provision that not more than two of the six courses shall be of any elementary character, is intended to compel every man to study some subject with thoroughness, and acquire a systematic knowledge thereof. Certain departments have so arranged their sequence of courses that this result is fairly well attained: but in others where the offering is large, and the nature of the subject is not (as it is in Mathematics, for example, or the physical sciences) such that a mastery of one thing is indispensable for the study of another, it is still possible for a student to elect six courses in the outlying parts of the field which have little connection with one another and do not form a systematic whole. This possibility is attractive to undergraduates seeking easy courses, whose object is not so much to obtain as to evade an education. Of late years, indeed, many easy courses have been made more serious, whereby the minimum work which shirkers must do for a degree has been sensibly raised, to the great benefit of the college as an educational institution, and incidentally with the result of increasing the respect for high achievement in college scholarship. As the requirements in various subjects are stiffened it is interesting to observe the flocking of students from one department to another.

New Requirement for Graduation

The second step in treating the student, instead of the course, as the unit in education, was taken by the Division of History, Government, and Economics, when, and with the approval of the Faculty, it set up the requirement of a general examination at graduation for students concentrating in that division. The examination, which is entrusted to a committee representing the three departments within the division, is to be distinct from that in the courses elected, and is to include not only the ground covered in them, but also the general field with which they have dealt, and the knowledge needed to connect them. This is a marked departure from the plan of earning a degree by scoring courses; and it will take time to adjust men's conceptions of education to a basis new to the American college, though familiar in every European university. To assist the students in preparing themselves for the general examination each of them at the beginning of his Sophomore year is assigned to the charge of a tutor who confers with him about his work and guides his reading outside of that required in the courses. As the plan could be applied only to men entering after it was established, the first examinations will be held next spring, and then only for men who graduate in three years. In the Divinity School, where the course for the Masters and Doctors degrees is shorter, a general examination has already been put into operation with gratifying results.

A third step has been taken this autumn by a vote of the Faculty providing that the courses elected by a student for concentration in History and Literature must be approved by the Committee on Degrees with Distinction in that field. This has always been true of candidates for distinction under this committee, and in fact the field is one that would present little unity if the courses chosen were unrelated. But that the combination of courses by other students should require approval is an innovation which shows that in a subject where the liberty of choice is peculiarly liable to abuse, the Faculty is prepared to require a consistent programme of study, with a view to giving students an education rational as a whole. Moreover, departments and committees, which do not wish to limit the choice of the students concentrating in their field to combinations of courses approved by them before-hand, sometimes take charge of his work in the subject and really oversee it at every stage. They do in fact act as his advisers, and can often do so better than the instructor specially appointed to advise him. The adviser so appointed frequently takes a very careful interest in the development of a man's work throughout his college course, and whenever a man shows on entering college any strong special interest. Professor Parker always tries to appoint for him as adviser who will sympathize with that interest. Nevertheless, the departments and committees which pay close attention to the choice of courses by each man concentrating in their field add much to the thoroughness of his education, and have adopted a principle that might with profit be more widely extended. It would be well if every department insisted on having a list, not merely of candidates for distinction, but of all students concentrating in its special field. APPLICANTS FOR ADMISSION TO FRESHMAN CLASS, APPLICANTS ADMITTED, AND NUMBER WHO ENTERED, 1906 TO 1915   Final Candidates  Admitted  Entered  % of Candidates Admitted  % of Candidates Entered 1906  808  576  559  71.2  69.1 1907  798  594  562  74.4  70.4 1908  688  529  486  76.8  70.6 1909  770  573  539  74.4  70.0 1910  786  565  528  744  67.1 1911  885  640  610  73.4  68.9 1912  869  645  599  74.2  68.9 1913  885  614  580  69.3  65.5 1914  936  685  664  73.1  70.9 1915  982  677  647  68.9  65.8

Orals Aid Real Education

Another departure from the practice of counting by courses is the requirement that every student shall be able to read ordinary French or German at sight, and show it by doing so orally. This has proved to be a very different thing from taking and passing a course. It is a test of capacity acquired, not of tasks performed. It is in this one subject a measure of the man and of his education, not a unit of credit accumulated. Not less important is the Committee on the Use of English by Students, appointed in consequence of a request from the Board of Overseers. The investigation by that body showed that students who had done their required English composition often could not or would not express themselves creditably in their later written work. A man who cannot write his mother tongue grammatically, lucidly, and with a reasonably fair style, or who does not think it worth while to do so, is not an educated man, no matter how many courses he may have scored, or how proficient he may be in a special field. In this connection it may be noted that the supervision of the use of English applies to the Graduate School as well as to the College.

All these changes are in a direction away from the mechanical view of education which is the bane of the American system. We see that view displayed every-where, prominently at the present day in efforts to raise the standard of pre-medical training. This is commonly expressed in terms of courses taken and credits obtained, not of knowledge acquired. If a young man has passed a course and learned little or nothing, or forgotten all he knew, he fulfills the requirement; but if he has mastered the subject in any other way, and can prove it by examination, it avails him nothing. Counting the credits scored in courses is, no doubt, the easiest way to apply a requirement, but it is not a sound system of education. What a man is, what knowledge he possesses, and what use he can make of it, is the real measure of his education. All persons who desire to improve the American system from the common school upward ought to strive not to lose sight of the end in the means, not to let the machinery divert attention from the product.

College Men Best Reserve Officers.

One cannot leave the subject of the College without considering a matter prominent in men's minds at the present day -- that of military training. Our colleges are obviously not military schools and cannot properly make themselves such. But it does not follow that they ought to treat preparation for national defense as a student activity with which they have no concern. The experience of the present war seems to have shown that in a country that has not universal compulsory service of some kind one of the most pressing needs in case of war is an ample supply of trained officers, and there is no better material for this purpose than the students in our colleges. Moreover, the aim of a country which desires to remain at peace, but must be ready to defend itself, should be to train a large body of junior officers who an look forward to no career in the army, and can have no wish for war, yet who will be able to take their places in the field when needed. The best way of reaching such a result, and the one least wasteful to the tax-payer and to the men themselves, is to give a sufficient training to college students who will thereafter be engaged in civil professions and business. If this is the duty of the state the colleges ought to promote it so far as they properly can.

Military authorities are of opinion that training enough to fit a man for a lieutenant's commission in case of war can be given in a portion of the summer vacations, supplemented by military instruction in term time. The summer vacations are now too often wasted, and one of the problems confronting American colleges is how that time can be better spent by students who are not obliged to use it to earn their way through college. In no other period of adult life does a man, who is not a drone, expect to spend between three and four months in recreation. Nothing has yet appeared so valuable for the student, or of greater service to the community, than five weeks at the summer military camps held for the last three years. Carried on as yet with very little expense to the government, they have been insufficient in equipment in the different arms and services with the use of which an officer should be familiar; but within their limited means they have been admirably conducted, and the progress of the students has been eminently satisfactory to the officers in charge.

Instruction in Term Time Wise

The question of military instruction in term time is more difficult. A popular impression still survives that drill, comprising the manual of arms and evolutions in small bodies, is the main point in military training. It is, of course, essential, but it forms a very minute part of the education of an officer; and it is quickly learned, as anyone who has visited the students' camps must have observed. Moreover, it had much better be taught under military conditions like those in a camp or in the militia, rather than in student organizations at a college which is not primarily a military school. Constant drill in a hall or on an athletic field is artificial, monotonous and wearisome, tending to produce an aversion for military training instead of an interest in the real problems with which an officer must deal. It would be wise, therefore, for our civilian colleges to leave drill entirely to the summer camps and the militia, and confine such military instruction as may be given in term time to those elements of an officer's duty which are appropriate to a college curriculum. There are many of these which are quite is well adapted for intellectual study as other subjects taught in college. Such are: military history, including the changes in tactics caused by the increased range and precision of weapons; the functions of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and aircraft modern war; the taking advantage of terrain in war, and the use of topographical maps; the construction of field defenses and the methods of attacking them; the mechanism of moving large begins of troops; mobilization, with the collection and distribution of supplies. All these things can be taught like other college subjects, by lectures, reading, discussion and laboratory work, the last, including problems with maps and, as in the case of Geology, field work in the neighboring country. A couple of courses on these subjects following a couple of summers at the camps should be enough to qualify a man of ordinary capacity to be enrolled as a subaltern in the reserve.

A plan of this kind requires cooperation between the colleges and the national military authorities. The government must maintain the camps on the necessity scale; supply the officers for instruction there, as well as for teachers -- though by no means the only teachers in the college courses. It must also frame a comprehensive plan of training which will be elastic enough to be adapted to the curriculum of the college; and it must give a recognition in the form of a list of reserve officers to men who have finished the training satisfactorily.

Summer Camps Essential

The colleges, on their part, must recognize the training in some way; for the courses of instruction in term time must clearly be under the supervision of the college authorities, and if they are to be of real value they must be treated as seriously as other courses. Whatever may be possible in those institutions which received under the Morrill Act grants of land on condition of maintaining military training, other colleges cannot now make such training compulsory for their students; nor, so long as military service in the country is voluntary, is it desirable that they should do so. But if military instruction is not required, the only academic recognition that can be given to it consists in treating it as a part of the elective work that may be taken for a degree. This involves a serious question, and one that may well provoke a difference of opinion. Courses in military science and the art of war, offered in term time and comprising no drill or physical training of any kind, are obviously fit to be included in the list of regular electives. If not, it is because they fail in their object of serious instruction in a subject requiring study and thought. But the camps are also a necessary part of the officer's training; and yet there are distinct objections to treating the work there, in large part physical in character, as equivalent to academic study. The fact that it involves effort, persistence and discipline is beside the mark. So do foot-ball, rowing, hunting, and many other kinds of sport, to say nothing of work which poor students do to support themselves both in term time and vacation, but these do not contribute directly to the education for which a degree is conferred. To treat drill in any form or to any extent as an elective substitute for Literature. History, Science, or Mathematics would seem to be proceeding on a false principle and introducing a dangerous precedent. We have always refused to entertain proposals that physical exercise should be treated in any way as an elective course; and one would hardly suggest it in the case of military drill were that not a service to the state which we are anxious to cultivate. But if we allow it to count on this ground, why should we not count also service in the united, in teaching school, in public charities of many kinds. In practice it will be found very hard to draw the line.

Army Men to Give Course

On the other hand the training received in the camps' or elsewhere is an essential basis for the courses in military defense which supplement it. If it must not of necessity precede them in time, it had better do so, and may well be treated as a needful preparation for those courses. Acting upon this principle, the Faculty has recently voted that a course in military science to be given by officers of the army during the second half of the current near may be counted for a degree, but only by students who have attended one of the five-week summer camps, or had sufficient training in the militia. The effect of this in encouraging undergraduates to attend the camps is much the same is it would be if the camp, coupled with academic instruction in term time, were created as the equivalent of a college course. The difference is merely one of form and yet the form is not unimportant. The precedent of counting anything involving a considerable amount of physical training is avoided; and with it possible difficulties in the future when the demand for military preparedness is less insistent and a demand for encouraging something else has arisen. In treating the camps as a required preliminary for profiting by the courses in military science, we are acting on a safe principle that involves no danger of being extended beyond the case to which it is applied.

A further development of courses in military science must depend very much upon the attitude of the War Department and also of the Navy, for the fleet in this respect is not less capable than the army of receiving valuable recruits from the student body. A modern battleship is a vast machine-shop, and electrical or mechanical engineers who have for a couple of summers spend five weeks a float in naval study and practice, could in case of war be made useful at once as junior officers, and relieve regular officers who will be badly needed for work elsewhere. Formerly, naval officers could be drawn in large numbers from the mercantile marine, but now there is no such source of supply, and it would seem wise to train a large number of reserve officers among our students, especially among those who are devoting themselves to engineering. There are, indeed, many special aptitudes that ought to be utilized in case of war, and could be used with little additional training if the plans were carefully prepared. Chemists, for example, could without much effort learn what would be needed to fit them for work in a government factory of ammunition if war broke out. A sudden mobilization would call for special qualifications of all kinds on a far larger scale than the regular army could furnish; men to assist in transportation of troops by land and sea; men to collect supplies, to forward them and to distribute them; surgeons and nurses to man hospitals; and so on through the whole range of military action. To recruit and organize such men in a hurry would be an almost impossible task, and would certainly entail perilous confusion. Officers for all these purposes ought to be enlisted beforehand, and receive so much instruction as is needed to fit them for that duties peculiar to military operations. They ought to be recruited young, and in this, as well as in giving the instruction required, the colleges and universities could be of very great assistance to the nation. Even when the present enthusiasm for preparedness has spent its force, it is probable that, without compulsion, many students will be ready to undertaken the training if adequate recognition is given by the military authorities and by the colleges. At Harvard we have long had a large number of undergraduates in the militia. This number ought not to be diminished. It ought to be possible, and during the last year it has been made less difficult, to combine service in the militia with attendance at the many camps.

Widner Library Facilitates Study

The most notable change in the aspect of the University within the year has been wrought by the completion of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library; but the contribution thereby made to its working power as a seat of learning has not been less significant. During the summer, with rare administrative skill, the books were transferred to the new building and rearranged upon the shelves, the catalogue improved, and the whole library put into working order. The far greater case and comfort in using the collections was reflected at once, both by the larger number of books used in the Reading Room, and by the large number taken from the building. And yet the principal advance made in the new university library has been due to the facilities for using the books in the stack itself by members of the instructing staff and advanced students. There are about sixty private rooms for the professors in immediate contact with the stacks; and the open stalls in the stacks, with windows and places for table and chair, number nearly three hundred. Such an ample provision for work among the books exists in no other library in the world; and the relief from the intolerable conditions in Gore Hall cannot be without effect on the productiveness of our scholars. In the old conditions scholarly work was done under grave difficulties; but the professors' rooms in the new building, so apportioned as to be as near as possible to the collections a man will chiefly use, furnish all that a scholar could desire. The instructing staff look forward to, and the friends of the University expect, an era of productiveness greater than was possible when our scholars were hampered by the res Angusta domi.

But it is not only among the instructing staff that we ought to foster productive scholarship. The habit of writing ought to begin young; younger than is usually the case in America. Contrary to the common impression, writing becomes more difficult the longer it is put off. As a man grows older he becomes more fastidious, more self-distrustful, less ready to grapple with a large theme, less ready to put pen to paper until he knows all about a subject, which no one can ever do. A certain crudity of youth is inseparable from early and great productiveness, and ought not got be too much repressed. It would seem that American can Graduate Schools do sometimes, quite unintentionally, repress it too much, by prolonging the period of study too long. Real capacity for truly productive work is no doubt rare even among learned scholars, but where it exists it might perhaps be more encouraged, and encouraged younger, than it is to-day. Perhaps fellowships, like those in the English universities, or like those in the Foundation Thiers in Paris, might be created with good results. The holders of such fellowships ought not to be members of any school, because the atmosphere of a school is essentially that of study, and the atmosphere of study is not the same as that of production. The fellows would, of course, be in close contact with the professors, and go to them for criticism and advice; but that is not the same thing as studying under them, or working up under their direction a thesis for a degree. It assumes that the period of study under tutelage has passed, and the period of independent work has begun; and this means a subtle but real change of attitude. It may be too early to devise any plan of this kind, but it seems to be worth consideration.

Divinity School-Has Progressed

The Divinity School has within the year progressed farther on its new path. In the last report the agreement with the Episcopal Theological School for better cooperation, and for the opening of all courses without charge to each other's students, was set forth. It was pointed out that the three affiliated Schools, without in the least surrendering their distinctive aims in training young men for the ministry, were all gainers by the agreement. During the past year the Theological School of Boston University suggested an agreement similar to that made with the Episcopal Theological School. The proposal was welcomed by the Faculty of Divinity, which necessarily gave it, however, a somewhat different form. The Divinity Schools of Harvard and Andover charge their students a tuition fee of one hundred and fifty dollars, and in making the new agreement the Episcopal Theological School raised its tuition fee to the same point. But the School of Boston University does not in practice charge such a fee, and therefore it would be manifestly unjust to allow its students to take gratuitously courses for which the students in the other three Schools are obliged to pay. On the other hand, it was felt that it would not be unfair to admit without charge students whose grade of scholarship is such that if they applied for admission to our Divinity School they would be awarded scholarships covering the tuition. A grade of eighty-five per cent in the work of two years in the School of Boston University was taken by mutual consent as a rough measure of such standing and the agreement was drawn accordingly. The agreement in full will be found in the report of Dean Fenn, in this volume.

The agreements open to the students of the different schools all the courses under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as those under the Faculty of Divinity; and no doubt many of the courses taken will not be primarily designed for divinity students, but they will be on subjects, philosophic, social, economic and historical, with which the younger generation of elergymen feel a need of being familiar. This is as it should be, and it is one of the main attractions of a connection with a great university to the separate divinity schools in its neighborhood. Together with the quality of our own divinity staff, it has enabled our School to take a position as the nucleus for a system of scholarly instruction of a high grade, conducted with the aid of a group of denominational institutions. This position is the highest to which a Faculty of Divinity can aspire, and in our case it can be achieved without giving up the older function of training young men for ordinary parish work. The prospect has given a decided impulse to the energy of the School.

An important part of the plan is the administration of the higher degree of Master of Divinity and Doctor of Theology. The qualification for these, as indeed is now the case for Bachelors of Theology, is not the completion of a fixed number of courses, but a general examination upon a field of knowledge approved in advance by the Faculty, courses of instruction being a means thereto, not an end in themselves. The general examination has proved a satisfactory test of capacity and attainment, and the degrees so conferred have already won a notable standing. Two of the three men who obtained the doctor's degree last June, and one of the two on whom the master's degree was conferred, have already been appointed to full professorships in this country or in Canada.

Law Faculty Much too Small

Apart from the grievous loss sustained by the death of Dean Thayer, there has been little change in the prosperity of the Law School. The only serious difficulty under which it labors is the small size of the instructing staff compared with the large number of students. The ratio of professors to students is less than it was twenty or thirty years ago. In 1883, the School had five professors and 165 students, or one instructor to 29 students: in 1894-95, eight professors (with three lecturers giving special courses) and 353 students, or one full-time instructor to 44 students. Last year it had ten professors (with five lecturers giving special courses) and 730 students, or one full time instructor to every 73 students, and that with a variety of courses that has been much enlarged. One does not, of course, expect to increase the instructing staff in proportion to the growth in students; but when we remember that the professors in the Law School have no assistants, and do the whole work of their courses, reading all the examination books themselves, it is not surprising that with so large a number of students they are very hard worked. The fact is that the School has a comparatively small endowment, more than two-thirds of its revenue coming from tuition fees. It is hoped that before long a larger endowment may be raised.

For the work of the Medical School during the past year the reader is referred to the report of the Dean. There is no doubt that the reputation of the School and of its staff has been growing steadily throughout the country. In its body of instructors and its connections within and outside of the University it has elements of strength for new fields of medicine that could, with greater resources, be developed more fully than anywhere else on this continent.

Medical School Sent Surgical Units

To the general public the most interesting event during the past year has been the work in military hospitals in Europe. Thanks to a gift by Mr. William Lindsay, it was enabled to take its turn among the leading medical schools of the United States in providing for three months, from April 1 to July 1, the surgical staff of the University service in the American Ambulance (Hospital) at Neuilly-sur-Seine. This first Harvard Unit, as it was called, went under the charge of Dr. Harvey Cushing as Surgeon, and Dr. Robert B. Greenough as Surgeon and Executive Officer, and comprised four operating-room nurses.

Dr. Richard P. Strong, well known for his work on tropical diseases in the Philippines and in South America, and for his study of Pneumonic Plague in China, accompanied the Unit as Bacteriologist; but he had hardly arrived in Paris when he was called away to take the position of Director of the American Red Cross Sanitary Commission to suppress the epidemic of typhus fever in Serbia. In an astonishingly short time the confidence of the Serbian authorities was won, the work organized, and, in spite of an almost total lack at the outset of the ordinary medical equipment for combatting an epidemic, the disease was in a few months almost wholly suppressed.

While the first Unit was in France a request came from the British Army Medical Service to a number of American universities for surgical units on a much larger scale -- no less than thirty-two surgeons and seventy-five nurses apiece -- to take charge for six months of field hospitals of one thousand beds. The University of Chicago sent a unit without delay. Representatives of Harvard, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins met, and being already somewhat depleted by surgical services in Europe, agreed to maintain between them a Unit for six months. Harvard offered to take the first three months, and Dr. Edward H. Nichols undertook to recruit and lead the Unit, with Mr. Herbert H. White as the Business Manager in charge of the preparations. These were, of course, difficult and exacting. In a very short time an efficient staff and nurses had to be enrolled: passports, transportation, instruments and supplies procured, and money raised -- for although the English Government furnished transportation and uniforms, with maintenance and daily pay at the usual army rates, several thousand dollars were needed for the instruments, for equipment and for the transportation of surgeons and their substitutes who could not remain the whole three months. The complete Unit sailed on June 25, and was sent to a hospital in France under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Allan Perry.

At the close of the three months if be came evident to the British Government that such a period was too short to justify the expense of transportation from America, and, therefore, the contingents from Columbia and Johns Hopkins did not go. But some members of the Harvard staff, with about half of the nurses, volunteered to stay on, and there arose a strong desire to renew the Unit if needed. The money required was in part given, in part derived from the proceeds of a collection at the Harvard-Yale game; and a third Harvard Unit was recruited, this time for six months. It sailed on November 14, with thirty new members of the staff and thirty-six more nurses, under the lead of Dr. David Cheever.

The devotion of the surgeons and nurses, their willingness to do any work that fell to their lot, and their skill in treatment, has done us honor. It is gratifying to observe how few deaths, and how few amputations, occurred in either of the hospitals. By using to the fullest extent the resources of antiseptic surgery, almost all lives and limbs were saved. Above all, the work of our dentists -- Dr. Potter at Neuilly, Dr. Kazanjian at the British hospital, and their colleagues -- were a source of admiration. Their ingenuity in restoring jaws and teeth apparently wholly destroyed excited surprise and wonder abroad. Were it not that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, it would be incomprehensible that the benevolent public here should leave with so little support a Dental School which is doing such excellent work with wholly insufficient means.

Business School Shows Increase

To return to the regular labors of the University. The School of Business Administration has increased in numbers and in usefulness. A second chair, that of Transportation, has been endowed by friends of Mr. James J. Hill and worthily named after him. To increase the value of the School in this field he has himself given one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars since the opening of the current academic year. Thus by three generous gifts the School is beginning to acquire the endowment it needs for permanent maintenance. Its methods of instruction are being followed in other institutions, and its forms of accounting adopted by industrial concerns -- good evidence that it is on the right road for the application of economic science to actual business.

In the last report it was stated that the work in Forestry had been divided, instruction in Lumbering being placed in the School for Business Administration, while research in Forestry is conducted in connection with the Bussey. This last Institution, whose work consists wholly of research and the instruction of a few advanced students in branches of zoology and botany that touch agriculture, has been organized with a separate Faculty. That was essential both on account of its distance from Cambridge, and because the nature of the subject requires one of the two active terms to be held in the summer. With the creation of this Faculty the reorganization of the departments formerly under the Faculty of Applied Science is completed; provided of course, the authority of the University to make the agreement with the Institute of Technology is sustained by the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. A bill for instructions to this effect has been filed by the Corporation and it is hoped that the case will soon be ready for argument.

Alongside of the regular work of a university, conducted within its walls, there has been fit in all the larger institutions of this country a duty to instruct the public by courses offered to persons who can give only a small part of their time to study, but who desire to improve themselves in general culture or in vocational lines. This is done at Harvard under the direct charge of a Dean and Administrative Board, and the reader who would understand in detail what has been accomplished is referred to the report of the Dean, printed herewith. The work is divided into that of the Summer School, and that of the extension courses given in term time. The experiment of lodging and boarding members of the Summer School in the Freshman Halls was tried during the past summer and proved successful. The Freshmen are obliged in the nature of things to leave at the end of the year, and as the furniture in their rooms is supplied by the College, it is possible to use these halls, with their large dining and common rooms, for other purposes during the summer. To live in these halls is a great convenience to the summer students, and, what is more important, it gives them a feeling of academic community life which they cannot get in any other way and which they value highly.

Extension Courses Benefit Public

Not less interesting is the question of extension courses in term time. For a number of years, these have been conducted by a committee representing all the institutions of higher learning in and about Boston, with Dean Ropes as Chairman. The committee has not only tried to discover what instruction the public may want and furnish it, but has held itself ready to give a course on any subject of college grade that any thirty persons in the metropolitan area, capable of following it, will agree to take. This seems as liberal as use for the public benefit of the resources of our institutions of learning as it is possible to make. No state institution could carry university extension further by direct teaching, and there can be no question that direct teaching in the class-room where it is possible -- as it is in the metropolitan area -- is far superior to any method of instruction by correspondence. In many cities where extension work is carried on, the number of persons registered in the courses is large, while the proportion who obtain a certificate by completing the work in the course and taking the examinations is very small. It is notable in the report of the Dean that the percentage of certificates here is relatively large, and it is chiefly by these that the substantial popular education given by the courses is to be measured.

By means of this committee, representing the various institutions of higher learning in this neighborhood, extension work appears to be satisfactorily done for the metropolitan area. But it ought to be extended so far as possible over the whole State, and for that purpose during the past year the University Council of Massachusetts was formed of representatives from all the colleges of the State, acting in concert with the Board of Education of the Commonwealth. The problem of the rural districts is more difficult than that of the large cities because people are more scattered; nevertheless, the endowed colleges of Massachusetts ought to be able to give her people as much instruction as a state university can in the West -- and more, because Massachusetts has become largely a group of cities. Much has already been done by Williams College at North Adams, by other colleges in other places; and there is good reason to believe that popular education will be as well promoted by the University Council acting in concert with the State Board, as by any state university in the country. The endowed institutions realize fully that their obligations to the public are none the less because they are not managed by the State.

Besides the Widener Library, the Craft High Tension Laboratory has been completed, and the Music Building has been occupied. Music, indeed, forms, as it ought, an increasingly important part of the work of the University. A few more buildings are still needed, such as a fourth Fresh-man dormitory, a better place to house the University Press, and, above all, more chemical laboratories. Chemistry is of increasing importance in this country, and the war has shown us the need of independence of German chemists.

University Needs Endowment

But apart from these things, the greatest need of the University is endowment rather than buildings. In the last report it was pointed out that the only resource for avoiding the deficits that had been chronic in the College, University and Library accounts is an increase in the tuition fee. The Faculty referred this matter to a committee which, with the utmost reluctance, reported that the increase was a necessity. The report was adopted by the Faculty and was acted upon by the Governing Boards, so that hereafter the tuition fee in Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Business Administration, the Schools of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the Bussey Institution will be $200. At the same time the special fee for the Stillman Infirmary, and all laboratory and graduation fees will cease to be charged to students paying the full fee. In the Medical School the fee is already $200; in the Engineering School, under the agreement with Technology, it is $250. The Divinity School felt compelled to retain the fee of $150, because by the recent agreements with Andover Theological Seminary and the Episcopal Theological School, their fees had been raised to that point. The Faculty of the Law School was reluctant to raise its fee at present. In order to avoid any question of the possible injustice to students who had already entered, or even committed themselves by their preparation to enter, Harvard, the increased fee is to take effect only for students entering these various departments in the academic year 1916-17; and in order not to make more difficult the path of the students with very limited means, it has been arranged also that the scholarships awarded for excellence in University work should be increased by $50 each.

Largest Money Gifts of Past Year

The largest single gifts of money received during the year have been as follows:--

James J. Hill Professorship of Transportation, $125,000.00.

The Class of 1800 Fund, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Fund, $80,000.00.

The Matchett Fund, the Estate of Sarah A. Matchett, $50,000.00.

Morrill Wyman Estate, $50,533.32.

John B. and Buckminster Brown Professorship of Orthopedic Surgery, Buckminster Brown Estate, $25,645.92.

From the Trustees under the will of Philip C. Lockwood, for the Cancer Commission, $50,000.00.

Francis Skinner (Sr.) Estate, Residuary bequest, $43,148.94.

Morrill Wyman Medical Research Fund, $25,000.00.

George R. Agassiz, Museum of Comparative Zoology, $25,000.00.

Mrs. Adolphus Busch, for the completion of the Germanic Museum, $56,600.00.

Professors Lost by Death

During the past year the University has suffered a grievous loss in the death of Ezra Ripley Thayer, Dane Professor of Law and Dean of the Law School. In middle life, he abandoned, in 1910, a large practice at the bar to become head of the School, and to continue his service here he declined a place on the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth which had been the ambition of his life. Colleagues and students trusted him as a leader, were stimulated by his presence, and feel his death as a personal bereavement of no common kind. The Medical School lost Dr. Charles Sedgwick Minot, James Stillman Professor of Comparative Anatomy, who died almost at the opening of the academic year. His eminence was one of the glories of the School. Murray Anthony Potter, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages, died in May, cut off in the middle of his second term as assistant professor. He had been an honored member of the staff in the department for fourteen years. Four professors emoriti have also died, -- John Caripman Gray, the last of the great figure that made the reputation of the Law School in the last forty years; Frederick Wald Putnam, to whose exertions we owe the growth of the Peabody Museum and who, a Director Emeritus, virtually guided it until his death; Francis Humphreys Storer, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Dean of the Bussey Institution for over a quarter of a century until 1907, died in July, 1914; John Hildreth McCollom, Professor of Contagious Diseases, died in June, 1915, only two years after completing a service of seventeen years in the Medical School.

The only losses of full professors by resignation have been those of Eugene Joseph Armand Duquesne, Professor of Architectural Design, who was summoned to France as a reservist, but resigned permanently, intending after the war to teach and practice architecture in Paris; Dr. Charles Montraville Green, Professor of Obstetries and Gynaecology, who retired after a long and faithful service in teaching the subject without a break since 1886; and Dr. Theobald Smith, who left to take charge of the new Rockefeller Institute of Comparative Pathology. Deeply as we regret his departure no one has a right to lament his taking a place with opportunities for research far greater than any medical school could provide.

Eight assistant professors have been appointed to professors' chairs: Gregory Paul Baxter became Professor of Chemistry; Austin Wakeman Scott, Professor of Law; John Lovett Morse, Professor of Pediatrics; Charles Henry White, Professor of Mining and Metallurgy; Edward Vermilye Huntington, Associate Professor of Mathematics; John Warren, Associate Professor of Anatomy; Frederic Thomas Lewis, Associate Professor of Embryology; and John Lewis Bremer, Associate Professor of Histology.

By the desire of the Prussian government the exchange of professors with Berlin has been discontinued during the war; but the exchange with France has been, and will be, maintained. We sent there Professor William Allan Neilson of the Department of English, and received in return Henri Liehtenberger, Professor of German Language and Literature at the Sorbonne. To the five Western exchange colleges we sent Lawrence Joseph Henderson, Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry; while there came to Cambridge, from Knox College, William Edward Simonds, Professor of English, and from Colorado College, James Williams Park, Assistant Professor of Education. We were fortunate in having Professor Anesaki of the University of Tokyo remain another year as the Professor of Japanese Literature and Life.

The destruction of their city cast many of the distinguished professors of The University of Louvain adrift, two of whom we were able to bring to Harvard for the second half-year. They were Professor Leon Dupriez, who gave courses on the Civil Law and Parliamentary Government and Charles Jean de la Vallee Hussin Professor of Mathematics.

In this report it has been possible only to touch briefly upon some of the topics of more general interest, and to the reports of the various Deans and Directors the friends of the University are referred. Many of them will find it encouraging to read the remarks of Professor Fisher about the condition of the trees in the College Yard.

Orals Aid Real Education

Another departure from the practice of counting by courses is the requirement that every student shall be able to read ordinary French or German at sight, and show it by doing so orally. This has proved to be a very different thing from taking and passing a course. It is a test of capacity acquired, not of tasks performed. It is in this one subject a measure of the man and of his education, not a unit of credit accumulated. Not less important is the Committee on the Use of English by Students, appointed in consequence of a request from the Board of Overseers. The investigation by that body showed that students who had done their required English composition often could not or would not express themselves creditably in their later written work. A man who cannot write his mother tongue grammatically, lucidly, and with a reasonably fair style, or who does not think it worth while to do so, is not an educated man, no matter how many courses he may have scored, or how proficient he may be in a special field. In this connection it may be noted that the supervision of the use of English applies to the Graduate School as well as to the College.

All these changes are in a direction away from the mechanical view of education which is the bane of the American system. We see that view displayed every-where, prominently at the present day in efforts to raise the standard of pre-medical training. This is commonly expressed in terms of courses taken and credits obtained, not of knowledge acquired. If a young man has passed a course and learned little or nothing, or forgotten all he knew, he fulfills the requirement; but if he has mastered the subject in any other way, and can prove it by examination, it avails him nothing. Counting the credits scored in courses is, no doubt, the easiest way to apply a requirement, but it is not a sound system of education. What a man is, what knowledge he possesses, and what use he can make of it, is the real measure of his education. All persons who desire to improve the American system from the common school upward ought to strive not to lose sight of the end in the means, not to let the machinery divert attention from the product.

College Men Best Reserve Officers.

One cannot leave the subject of the College without considering a matter prominent in men's minds at the present day -- that of military training. Our colleges are obviously not military schools and cannot properly make themselves such. But it does not follow that they ought to treat preparation for national defense as a student activity with which they have no concern. The experience of the present war seems to have shown that in a country that has not universal compulsory service of some kind one of the most pressing needs in case of war is an ample supply of trained officers, and there is no better material for this purpose than the students in our colleges. Moreover, the aim of a country which desires to remain at peace, but must be ready to defend itself, should be to train a large body of junior officers who an look forward to no career in the army, and can have no wish for war, yet who will be able to take their places in the field when needed. The best way of reaching such a result, and the one least wasteful to the tax-payer and to the men themselves, is to give a sufficient training to college students who will thereafter be engaged in civil professions and business. If this is the duty of the state the colleges ought to promote it so far as they properly can.

Military authorities are of opinion that training enough to fit a man for a lieutenant's commission in case of war can be given in a portion of the summer vacations, supplemented by military instruction in term time. The summer vacations are now too often wasted, and one of the problems confronting American colleges is how that time can be better spent by students who are not obliged to use it to earn their way through college. In no other period of adult life does a man, who is not a drone, expect to spend between three and four months in recreation. Nothing has yet appeared so valuable for the student, or of greater service to the community, than five weeks at the summer military camps held for the last three years. Carried on as yet with very little expense to the government, they have been insufficient in equipment in the different arms and services with the use of which an officer should be familiar; but within their limited means they have been admirably conducted, and the progress of the students has been eminently satisfactory to the officers in charge.

Instruction in Term Time Wise

The question of military instruction in term time is more difficult. A popular impression still survives that drill, comprising the manual of arms and evolutions in small bodies, is the main point in military training. It is, of course, essential, but it forms a very minute part of the education of an officer; and it is quickly learned, as anyone who has visited the students' camps must have observed. Moreover, it had much better be taught under military conditions like those in a camp or in the militia, rather than in student organizations at a college which is not primarily a military school. Constant drill in a hall or on an athletic field is artificial, monotonous and wearisome, tending to produce an aversion for military training instead of an interest in the real problems with which an officer must deal. It would be wise, therefore, for our civilian colleges to leave drill entirely to the summer camps and the militia, and confine such military instruction as may be given in term time to those elements of an officer's duty which are appropriate to a college curriculum. There are many of these which are quite is well adapted for intellectual study as other subjects taught in college. Such are: military history, including the changes in tactics caused by the increased range and precision of weapons; the functions of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and aircraft modern war; the taking advantage of terrain in war, and the use of topographical maps; the construction of field defenses and the methods of attacking them; the mechanism of moving large begins of troops; mobilization, with the collection and distribution of supplies. All these things can be taught like other college subjects, by lectures, reading, discussion and laboratory work, the last, including problems with maps and, as in the case of Geology, field work in the neighboring country. A couple of courses on these subjects following a couple of summers at the camps should be enough to qualify a man of ordinary capacity to be enrolled as a subaltern in the reserve.

A plan of this kind requires cooperation between the colleges and the national military authorities. The government must maintain the camps on the necessity scale; supply the officers for instruction there, as well as for teachers -- though by no means the only teachers in the college courses. It must also frame a comprehensive plan of training which will be elastic enough to be adapted to the curriculum of the college; and it must give a recognition in the form of a list of reserve officers to men who have finished the training satisfactorily.

Summer Camps Essential

The colleges, on their part, must recognize the training in some way; for the courses of instruction in term time must clearly be under the supervision of the college authorities, and if they are to be of real value they must be treated as seriously as other courses. Whatever may be possible in those institutions which received under the Morrill Act grants of land on condition of maintaining military training, other colleges cannot now make such training compulsory for their students; nor, so long as military service in the country is voluntary, is it desirable that they should do so. But if military instruction is not required, the only academic recognition that can be given to it consists in treating it as a part of the elective work that may be taken for a degree. This involves a serious question, and one that may well provoke a difference of opinion. Courses in military science and the art of war, offered in term time and comprising no drill or physical training of any kind, are obviously fit to be included in the list of regular electives. If not, it is because they fail in their object of serious instruction in a subject requiring study and thought. But the camps are also a necessary part of the officer's training; and yet there are distinct objections to treating the work there, in large part physical in character, as equivalent to academic study. The fact that it involves effort, persistence and discipline is beside the mark. So do foot-ball, rowing, hunting, and many other kinds of sport, to say nothing of work which poor students do to support themselves both in term time and vacation, but these do not contribute directly to the education for which a degree is conferred. To treat drill in any form or to any extent as an elective substitute for Literature. History, Science, or Mathematics would seem to be proceeding on a false principle and introducing a dangerous precedent. We have always refused to entertain proposals that physical exercise should be treated in any way as an elective course; and one would hardly suggest it in the case of military drill were that not a service to the state which we are anxious to cultivate. But if we allow it to count on this ground, why should we not count also service in the united, in teaching school, in public charities of many kinds. In practice it will be found very hard to draw the line.

Army Men to Give Course

On the other hand the training received in the camps' or elsewhere is an essential basis for the courses in military defense which supplement it. If it must not of necessity precede them in time, it had better do so, and may well be treated as a needful preparation for those courses. Acting upon this principle, the Faculty has recently voted that a course in military science to be given by officers of the army during the second half of the current near may be counted for a degree, but only by students who have attended one of the five-week summer camps, or had sufficient training in the militia. The effect of this in encouraging undergraduates to attend the camps is much the same is it would be if the camp, coupled with academic instruction in term time, were created as the equivalent of a college course. The difference is merely one of form and yet the form is not unimportant. The precedent of counting anything involving a considerable amount of physical training is avoided; and with it possible difficulties in the future when the demand for military preparedness is less insistent and a demand for encouraging something else has arisen. In treating the camps as a required preliminary for profiting by the courses in military science, we are acting on a safe principle that involves no danger of being extended beyond the case to which it is applied.

A further development of courses in military science must depend very much upon the attitude of the War Department and also of the Navy, for the fleet in this respect is not less capable than the army of receiving valuable recruits from the student body. A modern battleship is a vast machine-shop, and electrical or mechanical engineers who have for a couple of summers spend five weeks a float in naval study and practice, could in case of war be made useful at once as junior officers, and relieve regular officers who will be badly needed for work elsewhere. Formerly, naval officers could be drawn in large numbers from the mercantile marine, but now there is no such source of supply, and it would seem wise to train a large number of reserve officers among our students, especially among those who are devoting themselves to engineering. There are, indeed, many special aptitudes that ought to be utilized in case of war, and could be used with little additional training if the plans were carefully prepared. Chemists, for example, could without much effort learn what would be needed to fit them for work in a government factory of ammunition if war broke out. A sudden mobilization would call for special qualifications of all kinds on a far larger scale than the regular army could furnish; men to assist in transportation of troops by land and sea; men to collect supplies, to forward them and to distribute them; surgeons and nurses to man hospitals; and so on through the whole range of military action. To recruit and organize such men in a hurry would be an almost impossible task, and would certainly entail perilous confusion. Officers for all these purposes ought to be enlisted beforehand, and receive so much instruction as is needed to fit them for that duties peculiar to military operations. They ought to be recruited young, and in this, as well as in giving the instruction required, the colleges and universities could be of very great assistance to the nation. Even when the present enthusiasm for preparedness has spent its force, it is probable that, without compulsion, many students will be ready to undertaken the training if adequate recognition is given by the military authorities and by the colleges. At Harvard we have long had a large number of undergraduates in the militia. This number ought not to be diminished. It ought to be possible, and during the last year it has been made less difficult, to combine service in the militia with attendance at the many camps.

Widner Library Facilitates Study

The most notable change in the aspect of the University within the year has been wrought by the completion of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library; but the contribution thereby made to its working power as a seat of learning has not been less significant. During the summer, with rare administrative skill, the books were transferred to the new building and rearranged upon the shelves, the catalogue improved, and the whole library put into working order. The far greater case and comfort in using the collections was reflected at once, both by the larger number of books used in the Reading Room, and by the large number taken from the building. And yet the principal advance made in the new university library has been due to the facilities for using the books in the stack itself by members of the instructing staff and advanced students. There are about sixty private rooms for the professors in immediate contact with the stacks; and the open stalls in the stacks, with windows and places for table and chair, number nearly three hundred. Such an ample provision for work among the books exists in no other library in the world; and the relief from the intolerable conditions in Gore Hall cannot be without effect on the productiveness of our scholars. In the old conditions scholarly work was done under grave difficulties; but the professors' rooms in the new building, so apportioned as to be as near as possible to the collections a man will chiefly use, furnish all that a scholar could desire. The instructing staff look forward to, and the friends of the University expect, an era of productiveness greater than was possible when our scholars were hampered by the res Angusta domi.

But it is not only among the instructing staff that we ought to foster productive scholarship. The habit of writing ought to begin young; younger than is usually the case in America. Contrary to the common impression, writing becomes more difficult the longer it is put off. As a man grows older he becomes more fastidious, more self-distrustful, less ready to grapple with a large theme, less ready to put pen to paper until he knows all about a subject, which no one can ever do. A certain crudity of youth is inseparable from early and great productiveness, and ought not got be too much repressed. It would seem that American can Graduate Schools do sometimes, quite unintentionally, repress it too much, by prolonging the period of study too long. Real capacity for truly productive work is no doubt rare even among learned scholars, but where it exists it might perhaps be more encouraged, and encouraged younger, than it is to-day. Perhaps fellowships, like those in the English universities, or like those in the Foundation Thiers in Paris, might be created with good results. The holders of such fellowships ought not to be members of any school, because the atmosphere of a school is essentially that of study, and the atmosphere of study is not the same as that of production. The fellows would, of course, be in close contact with the professors, and go to them for criticism and advice; but that is not the same thing as studying under them, or working up under their direction a thesis for a degree. It assumes that the period of study under tutelage has passed, and the period of independent work has begun; and this means a subtle but real change of attitude. It may be too early to devise any plan of this kind, but it seems to be worth consideration.

Divinity School-Has Progressed

The Divinity School has within the year progressed farther on its new path. In the last report the agreement with the Episcopal Theological School for better cooperation, and for the opening of all courses without charge to each other's students, was set forth. It was pointed out that the three affiliated Schools, without in the least surrendering their distinctive aims in training young men for the ministry, were all gainers by the agreement. During the past year the Theological School of Boston University suggested an agreement similar to that made with the Episcopal Theological School. The proposal was welcomed by the Faculty of Divinity, which necessarily gave it, however, a somewhat different form. The Divinity Schools of Harvard and Andover charge their students a tuition fee of one hundred and fifty dollars, and in making the new agreement the Episcopal Theological School raised its tuition fee to the same point. But the School of Boston University does not in practice charge such a fee, and therefore it would be manifestly unjust to allow its students to take gratuitously courses for which the students in the other three Schools are obliged to pay. On the other hand, it was felt that it would not be unfair to admit without charge students whose grade of scholarship is such that if they applied for admission to our Divinity School they would be awarded scholarships covering the tuition. A grade of eighty-five per cent in the work of two years in the School of Boston University was taken by mutual consent as a rough measure of such standing and the agreement was drawn accordingly. The agreement in full will be found in the report of Dean Fenn, in this volume.

The agreements open to the students of the different schools all the courses under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as those under the Faculty of Divinity; and no doubt many of the courses taken will not be primarily designed for divinity students, but they will be on subjects, philosophic, social, economic and historical, with which the younger generation of elergymen feel a need of being familiar. This is as it should be, and it is one of the main attractions of a connection with a great university to the separate divinity schools in its neighborhood. Together with the quality of our own divinity staff, it has enabled our School to take a position as the nucleus for a system of scholarly instruction of a high grade, conducted with the aid of a group of denominational institutions. This position is the highest to which a Faculty of Divinity can aspire, and in our case it can be achieved without giving up the older function of training young men for ordinary parish work. The prospect has given a decided impulse to the energy of the School.

An important part of the plan is the administration of the higher degree of Master of Divinity and Doctor of Theology. The qualification for these, as indeed is now the case for Bachelors of Theology, is not the completion of a fixed number of courses, but a general examination upon a field of knowledge approved in advance by the Faculty, courses of instruction being a means thereto, not an end in themselves. The general examination has proved a satisfactory test of capacity and attainment, and the degrees so conferred have already won a notable standing. Two of the three men who obtained the doctor's degree last June, and one of the two on whom the master's degree was conferred, have already been appointed to full professorships in this country or in Canada.

Law Faculty Much too Small

Apart from the grievous loss sustained by the death of Dean Thayer, there has been little change in the prosperity of the Law School. The only serious difficulty under which it labors is the small size of the instructing staff compared with the large number of students. The ratio of professors to students is less than it was twenty or thirty years ago. In 1883, the School had five professors and 165 students, or one instructor to 29 students: in 1894-95, eight professors (with three lecturers giving special courses) and 353 students, or one full-time instructor to 44 students. Last year it had ten professors (with five lecturers giving special courses) and 730 students, or one full time instructor to every 73 students, and that with a variety of courses that has been much enlarged. One does not, of course, expect to increase the instructing staff in proportion to the growth in students; but when we remember that the professors in the Law School have no assistants, and do the whole work of their courses, reading all the examination books themselves, it is not surprising that with so large a number of students they are very hard worked. The fact is that the School has a comparatively small endowment, more than two-thirds of its revenue coming from tuition fees. It is hoped that before long a larger endowment may be raised.

For the work of the Medical School during the past year the reader is referred to the report of the Dean. There is no doubt that the reputation of the School and of its staff has been growing steadily throughout the country. In its body of instructors and its connections within and outside of the University it has elements of strength for new fields of medicine that could, with greater resources, be developed more fully than anywhere else on this continent.

Medical School Sent Surgical Units

To the general public the most interesting event during the past year has been the work in military hospitals in Europe. Thanks to a gift by Mr. William Lindsay, it was enabled to take its turn among the leading medical schools of the United States in providing for three months, from April 1 to July 1, the surgical staff of the University service in the American Ambulance (Hospital) at Neuilly-sur-Seine. This first Harvard Unit, as it was called, went under the charge of Dr. Harvey Cushing as Surgeon, and Dr. Robert B. Greenough as Surgeon and Executive Officer, and comprised four operating-room nurses.

Dr. Richard P. Strong, well known for his work on tropical diseases in the Philippines and in South America, and for his study of Pneumonic Plague in China, accompanied the Unit as Bacteriologist; but he had hardly arrived in Paris when he was called away to take the position of Director of the American Red Cross Sanitary Commission to suppress the epidemic of typhus fever in Serbia. In an astonishingly short time the confidence of the Serbian authorities was won, the work organized, and, in spite of an almost total lack at the outset of the ordinary medical equipment for combatting an epidemic, the disease was in a few months almost wholly suppressed.

While the first Unit was in France a request came from the British Army Medical Service to a number of American universities for surgical units on a much larger scale -- no less than thirty-two surgeons and seventy-five nurses apiece -- to take charge for six months of field hospitals of one thousand beds. The University of Chicago sent a unit without delay. Representatives of Harvard, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins met, and being already somewhat depleted by surgical services in Europe, agreed to maintain between them a Unit for six months. Harvard offered to take the first three months, and Dr. Edward H. Nichols undertook to recruit and lead the Unit, with Mr. Herbert H. White as the Business Manager in charge of the preparations. These were, of course, difficult and exacting. In a very short time an efficient staff and nurses had to be enrolled: passports, transportation, instruments and supplies procured, and money raised -- for although the English Government furnished transportation and uniforms, with maintenance and daily pay at the usual army rates, several thousand dollars were needed for the instruments, for equipment and for the transportation of surgeons and their substitutes who could not remain the whole three months. The complete Unit sailed on June 25, and was sent to a hospital in France under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Allan Perry.

At the close of the three months if be came evident to the British Government that such a period was too short to justify the expense of transportation from America, and, therefore, the contingents from Columbia and Johns Hopkins did not go. But some members of the Harvard staff, with about half of the nurses, volunteered to stay on, and there arose a strong desire to renew the Unit if needed. The money required was in part given, in part derived from the proceeds of a collection at the Harvard-Yale game; and a third Harvard Unit was recruited, this time for six months. It sailed on November 14, with thirty new members of the staff and thirty-six more nurses, under the lead of Dr. David Cheever.

The devotion of the surgeons and nurses, their willingness to do any work that fell to their lot, and their skill in treatment, has done us honor. It is gratifying to observe how few deaths, and how few amputations, occurred in either of the hospitals. By using to the fullest extent the resources of antiseptic surgery, almost all lives and limbs were saved. Above all, the work of our dentists -- Dr. Potter at Neuilly, Dr. Kazanjian at the British hospital, and their colleagues -- were a source of admiration. Their ingenuity in restoring jaws and teeth apparently wholly destroyed excited surprise and wonder abroad. Were it not that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, it would be incomprehensible that the benevolent public here should leave with so little support a Dental School which is doing such excellent work with wholly insufficient means.

Business School Shows Increase

To return to the regular labors of the University. The School of Business Administration has increased in numbers and in usefulness. A second chair, that of Transportation, has been endowed by friends of Mr. James J. Hill and worthily named after him. To increase the value of the School in this field he has himself given one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars since the opening of the current academic year. Thus by three generous gifts the School is beginning to acquire the endowment it needs for permanent maintenance. Its methods of instruction are being followed in other institutions, and its forms of accounting adopted by industrial concerns -- good evidence that it is on the right road for the application of economic science to actual business.

In the last report it was stated that the work in Forestry had been divided, instruction in Lumbering being placed in the School for Business Administration, while research in Forestry is conducted in connection with the Bussey. This last Institution, whose work consists wholly of research and the instruction of a few advanced students in branches of zoology and botany that touch agriculture, has been organized with a separate Faculty. That was essential both on account of its distance from Cambridge, and because the nature of the subject requires one of the two active terms to be held in the summer. With the creation of this Faculty the reorganization of the departments formerly under the Faculty of Applied Science is completed; provided of course, the authority of the University to make the agreement with the Institute of Technology is sustained by the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. A bill for instructions to this effect has been filed by the Corporation and it is hoped that the case will soon be ready for argument.

Alongside of the regular work of a university, conducted within its walls, there has been fit in all the larger institutions of this country a duty to instruct the public by courses offered to persons who can give only a small part of their time to study, but who desire to improve themselves in general culture or in vocational lines. This is done at Harvard under the direct charge of a Dean and Administrative Board, and the reader who would understand in detail what has been accomplished is referred to the report of the Dean, printed herewith. The work is divided into that of the Summer School, and that of the extension courses given in term time. The experiment of lodging and boarding members of the Summer School in the Freshman Halls was tried during the past summer and proved successful. The Freshmen are obliged in the nature of things to leave at the end of the year, and as the furniture in their rooms is supplied by the College, it is possible to use these halls, with their large dining and common rooms, for other purposes during the summer. To live in these halls is a great convenience to the summer students, and, what is more important, it gives them a feeling of academic community life which they cannot get in any other way and which they value highly.

Extension Courses Benefit Public

Not less interesting is the question of extension courses in term time. For a number of years, these have been conducted by a committee representing all the institutions of higher learning in and about Boston, with Dean Ropes as Chairman. The committee has not only tried to discover what instruction the public may want and furnish it, but has held itself ready to give a course on any subject of college grade that any thirty persons in the metropolitan area, capable of following it, will agree to take. This seems as liberal as use for the public benefit of the resources of our institutions of learning as it is possible to make. No state institution could carry university extension further by direct teaching, and there can be no question that direct teaching in the class-room where it is possible -- as it is in the metropolitan area -- is far superior to any method of instruction by correspondence. In many cities where extension work is carried on, the number of persons registered in the courses is large, while the proportion who obtain a certificate by completing the work in the course and taking the examinations is very small. It is notable in the report of the Dean that the percentage of certificates here is relatively large, and it is chiefly by these that the substantial popular education given by the courses is to be measured.

By means of this committee, representing the various institutions of higher learning in this neighborhood, extension work appears to be satisfactorily done for the metropolitan area. But it ought to be extended so far as possible over the whole State, and for that purpose during the past year the University Council of Massachusetts was formed of representatives from all the colleges of the State, acting in concert with the Board of Education of the Commonwealth. The problem of the rural districts is more difficult than that of the large cities because people are more scattered; nevertheless, the endowed colleges of Massachusetts ought to be able to give her people as much instruction as a state university can in the West -- and more, because Massachusetts has become largely a group of cities. Much has already been done by Williams College at North Adams, by other colleges in other places; and there is good reason to believe that popular education will be as well promoted by the University Council acting in concert with the State Board, as by any state university in the country. The endowed institutions realize fully that their obligations to the public are none the less because they are not managed by the State.

Besides the Widener Library, the Craft High Tension Laboratory has been completed, and the Music Building has been occupied. Music, indeed, forms, as it ought, an increasingly important part of the work of the University. A few more buildings are still needed, such as a fourth Fresh-man dormitory, a better place to house the University Press, and, above all, more chemical laboratories. Chemistry is of increasing importance in this country, and the war has shown us the need of independence of German chemists.

University Needs Endowment

But apart from these things, the greatest need of the University is endowment rather than buildings. In the last report it was pointed out that the only resource for avoiding the deficits that had been chronic in the College, University and Library accounts is an increase in the tuition fee. The Faculty referred this matter to a committee which, with the utmost reluctance, reported that the increase was a necessity. The report was adopted by the Faculty and was acted upon by the Governing Boards, so that hereafter the tuition fee in Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Business Administration, the Schools of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the Bussey Institution will be $200. At the same time the special fee for the Stillman Infirmary, and all laboratory and graduation fees will cease to be charged to students paying the full fee. In the Medical School the fee is already $200; in the Engineering School, under the agreement with Technology, it is $250. The Divinity School felt compelled to retain the fee of $150, because by the recent agreements with Andover Theological Seminary and the Episcopal Theological School, their fees had been raised to that point. The Faculty of the Law School was reluctant to raise its fee at present. In order to avoid any question of the possible injustice to students who had already entered, or even committed themselves by their preparation to enter, Harvard, the increased fee is to take effect only for students entering these various departments in the academic year 1916-17; and in order not to make more difficult the path of the students with very limited means, it has been arranged also that the scholarships awarded for excellence in University work should be increased by $50 each.

Largest Money Gifts of Past Year

The largest single gifts of money received during the year have been as follows:--

James J. Hill Professorship of Transportation, $125,000.00.

The Class of 1800 Fund, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Fund, $80,000.00.

The Matchett Fund, the Estate of Sarah A. Matchett, $50,000.00.

Morrill Wyman Estate, $50,533.32.

John B. and Buckminster Brown Professorship of Orthopedic Surgery, Buckminster Brown Estate, $25,645.92.

From the Trustees under the will of Philip C. Lockwood, for the Cancer Commission, $50,000.00.

Francis Skinner (Sr.) Estate, Residuary bequest, $43,148.94.

Morrill Wyman Medical Research Fund, $25,000.00.

George R. Agassiz, Museum of Comparative Zoology, $25,000.00.

Mrs. Adolphus Busch, for the completion of the Germanic Museum, $56,600.00.

Professors Lost by Death

During the past year the University has suffered a grievous loss in the death of Ezra Ripley Thayer, Dane Professor of Law and Dean of the Law School. In middle life, he abandoned, in 1910, a large practice at the bar to become head of the School, and to continue his service here he declined a place on the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth which had been the ambition of his life. Colleagues and students trusted him as a leader, were stimulated by his presence, and feel his death as a personal bereavement of no common kind. The Medical School lost Dr. Charles Sedgwick Minot, James Stillman Professor of Comparative Anatomy, who died almost at the opening of the academic year. His eminence was one of the glories of the School. Murray Anthony Potter, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages, died in May, cut off in the middle of his second term as assistant professor. He had been an honored member of the staff in the department for fourteen years. Four professors emoriti have also died, -- John Caripman Gray, the last of the great figure that made the reputation of the Law School in the last forty years; Frederick Wald Putnam, to whose exertions we owe the growth of the Peabody Museum and who, a Director Emeritus, virtually guided it until his death; Francis Humphreys Storer, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Dean of the Bussey Institution for over a quarter of a century until 1907, died in July, 1914; John Hildreth McCollom, Professor of Contagious Diseases, died in June, 1915, only two years after completing a service of seventeen years in the Medical School.

The only losses of full professors by resignation have been those of Eugene Joseph Armand Duquesne, Professor of Architectural Design, who was summoned to France as a reservist, but resigned permanently, intending after the war to teach and practice architecture in Paris; Dr. Charles Montraville Green, Professor of Obstetries and Gynaecology, who retired after a long and faithful service in teaching the subject without a break since 1886; and Dr. Theobald Smith, who left to take charge of the new Rockefeller Institute of Comparative Pathology. Deeply as we regret his departure no one has a right to lament his taking a place with opportunities for research far greater than any medical school could provide.

Eight assistant professors have been appointed to professors' chairs: Gregory Paul Baxter became Professor of Chemistry; Austin Wakeman Scott, Professor of Law; John Lovett Morse, Professor of Pediatrics; Charles Henry White, Professor of Mining and Metallurgy; Edward Vermilye Huntington, Associate Professor of Mathematics; John Warren, Associate Professor of Anatomy; Frederic Thomas Lewis, Associate Professor of Embryology; and John Lewis Bremer, Associate Professor of Histology.

By the desire of the Prussian government the exchange of professors with Berlin has been discontinued during the war; but the exchange with France has been, and will be, maintained. We sent there Professor William Allan Neilson of the Department of English, and received in return Henri Liehtenberger, Professor of German Language and Literature at the Sorbonne. To the five Western exchange colleges we sent Lawrence Joseph Henderson, Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry; while there came to Cambridge, from Knox College, William Edward Simonds, Professor of English, and from Colorado College, James Williams Park, Assistant Professor of Education. We were fortunate in having Professor Anesaki of the University of Tokyo remain another year as the Professor of Japanese Literature and Life.

The destruction of their city cast many of the distinguished professors of The University of Louvain adrift, two of whom we were able to bring to Harvard for the second half-year. They were Professor Leon Dupriez, who gave courses on the Civil Law and Parliamentary Government and Charles Jean de la Vallee Hussin Professor of Mathematics.

In this report it has been possible only to touch briefly upon some of the topics of more general interest, and to the reports of the various Deans and Directors the friends of the University are referred. Many of them will find it encouraging to read the remarks of Professor Fisher about the condition of the trees in the College Yard.