EXPERIENCE THE BITTER TEACHER

Homo is the sailor home from the sea, and with him he has brought decided opinions concerning education, coeducation and floating colleges. Prematurely back in the United States, some weeks before the Ryndam which is bearing four hundred young men and sixty young women on a world cruise dedicated to the advancement of learning former Governor Allen of Kansas has much to say on the subject of his voyage. It was not be avers, an entirely unhappy voyage but it was a stormy one. He is still an upholder of the aquatic university, but he maintains that it needs practical revision. One change above all others he demands and that is the segregation of the sexes into two units, one boat for men and one for women.

No one knows better whereof he speaks than Mr. Allen. He has sailed and, he intimates, he has suffered. But one might have foreseen the difficulties which were to beset him and his fellow mentors on the Ryndam. In the first place a floating college is an innovation in education and as such it demanded the must careful regulation. It would not have been entirely pessimistic if, for this initial venture, the prime movers of the project had limited themselves and had sacrificed the more elusive attempt of bringing men and women together on such a oruise to the welfare of the original idea--which was to conduct a practical experiment in tenching. Coeducation is in itself a delicate proposition; to introduce it into a world tour of college students does not aid matters. Both the general idea of a floating college and the principle of coeducation suffer. Governor Allen is correct--but he should have realized the theoretical danger of the situation even before it reached a reality.