ALMS FOR THE LEARNED

The announcement that the University has granted a considerable sum to 18 of her professors for the advancement of the "Humanities" may well cause a glow of satisfaction and a sign of relief among the Harvard-minded. Incidentally, it may also serve to obliterate the picture of the Administration in the role of a penny-pinching miser which has recently been conjured up by virtue of a previous financial decision.

The action in itself is not a startling one, but when the indefinite term "Humanities" is more clearly defined in the detailed account of the several grants as the ordinary cultural arts, it is plain that the University is on the right track, and that the policy which is indicated is one of far-reaching significance. The endowment and subsidizing of research in the field of science is familiar enough, but in the arts it is not quite as usual. And yet this is the next logical step in the emancipation of the college professor from the drudgery of the daily dollar, and the consequent reestablishment of the university in its rightful place of a seat of learning in the sense of a center of investigation by learned men as well as of instruction. The continued pursuance and enlargement of such a policy will serve the additional purpose of attracting the highest type of man to the field of education in general, and in particular to those institutions whose liberality is well recognized.

This latest move raises the hope that perhaps in the near future Harvard may increase the salaries of her Faculty as well, and that eventually those men who perform one of the highest functions of society may be justly rewarded for their efforts.