BROAD-MINDED COMPARISONS

In the stream of visitors who come to spend a few brief-hours in the vicinity of Harvard Yard, and then pass on their critical way leaving burning comment behind them, it is unusual to find a man with the geniality of the Reverend Vivian T. Pomeroy, who was this week's speaker at Appleton Chapel. Mr. Pomeroy fears that he is not fully equipped to comment on University affairs, which places him at once among the immortal few who, like Socrates, know their own limitations.

After several comparisons of the difference in the religious attitude of students at Harvard and Oxford, Mr. Pomeroy remarked that argumentative discussion and original journalism are not as much in evidence in America as in England. That the first part of this conclusion is justified has been obvious recently at Oxford-Harvard debates; the American is formal where the Englishman is personal. The present critic is correct, also, in his analysis. With the departure of the toddy-bowl and the clay pipe has gone the American student's tendency to foregather of evenings, and talk endlessly of shoes and ships and sealing-wax. And the pace is possibly faster in the American University than at Oxford or Cambridge.

Mr. Pomeroy has mentioned the comment of an American who said that the main difference between the United States and England was that in this country a "dummy" was preferred to a "freak". If in this case a "dummy" means one of a not too intelligent, standardized group, and a "freak" means an individual who rises above the mass because of his peculiar talents, the indictment must stand unanswered. The encouragement of individual genius at the expense of quantity production, particularly in the American university, is not one of the nation's virtues. In fact it may fairly he said that here the eccentric is more than ignored: he is actively avoided; which may explain why the country's Hall of Fame so far lacks a Beothoven, a Milton, or a Leonardo.