THE RADCLIFFE FARM UNIT

In spite of the Susan B, Anthony Amendment there are few men who will admit that women are as yet superior in initiative and originality. Man has long regarded woman as the great source of inspiration for his accomplishments, but he has fondly thought the creative ability his and his alone. The service of our women in the present war has gone far toward destroying completely such an assumption, and a few years may find it thoroughly obsolete.

One recent action of Radcliffe College gives this selfish masculine theory a further push toward refutation. The young women of that institution have organized a farm unit which will spend this summer raising food, not as dilettantes of backyard gardens, but as farmers of the real school. With food ranking equal to bullets as far as war necessities are concerned, the Radcliffe plan is true patriotism. We do not need Battalions of Death or Squadrons of Amazons, but the more Maud Mullers we have during this war summer, the greater our strength against Kaiserdom.

It may be hinted that this bucolic or georgic activity of Radcliffe should cause some uneasiness around Harvard Square, for we have seen no farm unit coming into being here. It may be that hundreds of University students are going back to the soil individually. If so, they deserve unstinted praise. If not, a movement in the direction of a farm unit might be the means of preventing these hundreds from inhabiting the seashore and of adding a considerable amount of produce to the nation's supply.