ANOTHER SECESSION?

A well circumstanced rumor has it that Dean Pound of the Law School is to be offered the presidency of Wisconsin University. The suggestion is flattering, but the offer itself may be ominous. The rumor alone must make the University anxious to tie closer a man whose reputation as a scholar does honor to Harvard and whose efforts as an administrator have placed the Law School among the foremost in the world.

Dean Pound's contributions to the work of penetrating and analyzing the law are known to every student of jurisprudence. His well-rounded erudition, his thorough and complete understanding mark the Supreme Court as the ultimate bound of his deserts. But with this scholarship there is a rare mingling of humanness and strength which has won for Dean Pound a preeminent position among academic administrators and for the Law School a prestige scarcely rivaled. The dean took hold of this department at a time when the earlier generation of juris-consults, including Langdell, Ames, and Thayer, had died, leaving the Law School in danger of a slump into mediocrity. He has raised it to new heights.

The argument of incompatibility, which has weighed heavily in previous instances, is nothing in this case, for Dean Pound is thoroughly in accord with the temper of the administration. His work has received strong support. He has deserved well, and, for once, has not been slighted. But much remains to be done; the Law School is not halfway in its career, and it would be a serious misfortune for the driver to let drop the reins. While the presidency of a university is not a chair to be spurned lightly, the work which the dean has so effectively carried on is not completed, and the University deeply hopes that Dean Pound will remain to lay the foundation for new and more brilliant achievements.