STRANGERS AT THE GATES

Above all other American universities Harvard has consistently been accorded both the opportunity and the honor of entertaining foreign students. During the three years existence of the British Commonwealth Fund, sixty-three Fellows have been sent to this country to study, ten of whom have elected to take up their academic pursuits in Cambridge. Next year four out of the twenty newly appointed Fellows will be in residence at the University for a period of two years.

Harvard offers much to the visiting student which is strictly scholastic in nature. These opportunities are of primary importance to the English scholars, but other elements of a more social nature must of necessity enter into the equation, if the visitors are to be accorded a full measure of welcome. Situated as it is in a great metropolitan center, the University too often relies on the undoubtedly amusing but nevertheless inhospitable attractions of the city to those who have come not only to enjoy Harvard's academic distinctions but also at least to peer into that illusory thing known as Harvard life. When they depart it is with kindly feelings toward Boston, and towards the scholastic facilities of the University but with a total ignorance of Harvard students as friends and companions.

It is not any lack of common interests which separates these visitors from their unofficial hosts. It is the absence of mutual meeting places where each can exchange views and opinions. Without instituting any network of formalisms, it might be possible to rearrange the situation so as to permit the guests to mingle with the members of the University on social terms. The advantages for both parties would certainly compensate for any labor necessary for such an innovation.