A NECESSARY HALT

Mr. Charles Blount Jr. '18 writing from Lyon, France, to the Alumni Bulletin makes use of the familiar "reductio ad absurdum" argument to demolish the case of those who contend that no one should "deny to any young man the opportunities of a Harvard education." And he indulges in some caustic irony at the expense of those who, on the grounds of democracy and liberalism, would throw open the gates to every eager young man.

Mr. Blount objects to the ever-increasing size of Harvard classes on the very reasonable grounds that the physical capacity of the College is strained to the utmost. There can be few, who have given the subject any thought, who will not agree with him. If Harvard is to maintain its standards, if a Harvard education is to stand for what it has always stood for in the past, the physical limit of expansion has, for the moment at least, been reached. The existing physical plant is no longer adequate even for the present classes. The existing faculty can cope with further numbers only by indulging in the methods of mass production and specialized training which have become so characteristic of the mammoth state universities of the country. It is time to call a halt if only in order to formulate plans for a further advance.

It is easier to enunciate an ideal than to propose a method of realizing it. But some suggestions seem almost self-evident. It is too early to have anything but general impressions of the success of the scheme permitting high rank men from qualified schools to enter Harvard on certificate; but those general impressions would indicate that the defects of the plan overbalanced its virtues. To turn to a different proposal, it is something of a question, in view of the apparent necessity for English F, why the College has not yet seen fit to adopt its committee's recommendation that all men who cannot write acceptable English should be excluded. Finally there is still room arbitrarily to raise standards both for admission and after admission.

At any rate a halt is necessary--a halt during which it will be possible to determine whether a further advance is merely a problem of increased physical equipment, or whether there is something more subtle which limits Harvard's effectiveness to a certain size, or whether, finally, there is some entirely new factor which will solve the clouded situation.