HARVARD AND PROVINCIALSM

Undergraduates of a university which prides itself above all upon breadth of outlook; can find much food for reflection in Dr. Angell's speech at the Union last night when he warned against provincialism.

It used to be the belieef of every Harvard undergraduate that Yale and Princeton were worthless as educational centers. The feeling of rivalry was as misguided as to become foolish. All this has for the most part gone. Today we have a keen rivalry but it is within the bounds of common sense.

But what of our feeling towards the great state universities and the colleges of the west? Are we not affected with a projudice that we have nothing in common with them, that they do not understand us and we do not need to understand them? Do we not as a result of this prejudice utterly fail to appreciate the significance and importance of the role the state universities are playing in this democracy?

It is true that there are two more or less distinct purposes of higher education-the one to produce scholars and leaders, the other to disseminate learning among greater numbers of citizens. But we fallaciously assume that these two ideals must necessarily be in opposition. We stand for the first conception of education; the state universities for otheer, and so, we say, we have nothing in common and must each go our separate way.

Harvard must always maintain the highest possiblt standard of liberal education; but it is crass provincialism for us to ignore the existence of other conceptions of a university's function. We fall in the quality upon which we base our pride in Harvard if we continue to think so lightly and remain in such profound ignorance as wt do now of the universities of the West. Unless we try to understand their efforts and problems we will fall equally in the service which we owe to the nation.