THE BEST IS YET TO BE

There is a decided tint of Pan drawn by Gilbert K. Chesterton in an interview which the visiting lecturer granted the Yale News. Mr. Chesterton feels that the youth of America matures too quickly. He bemoans the fact that when an undergraduate is about to leave college he has experienced almost everything. In contrast the closer ties between the authorities and the students, the "domestic college life", of English universities Hends to keep the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge young.

That this condition is unreservedly favorable is a moot question. Even that it is wholly true is open to discussion. If the four years spent at a college are to be considered as a training and preparation for life, it would seem that the more conversant a young man becomes with the different elements of the existence that he will have to lead, the more able he will be to cope with it. There is the added factor that many American universities are either in or near large cities, and urban life has never been conducive to fostering youthful fancies. The question seems to depend upon whether it is more advantageous to experience life while young and have ample opportunity to rectify unavoidable mistakes, or to make those inevitable errors at a more advanced stage when their gravity is apt to be magnified.