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The present day is one of economy, and many students who are eager to travel abroad and to study at summer schools of an international character find such ambitions financially quite out of reach. What is more, due to fall in incomes of those who formerly contributed to scholarship funds, many of the institutions furthering international exchange of students have been forced to make drastic cuts in the number of awards made. Harvard has a definite substitute to offer for those who fail to cross the Atlantic to centers of international politics.

In the University this year are enrolled over 300 students from countries outside the United States. These men represent about 45 different nationalities. And yet the average undergraduate seldom comes in contact with them. For one reason, most of these visiting students are studying in the Graduate Schools; the fact that few graduate students are admitted into the houses shuts out much more intercourse that might be made possible. And the high prices of rooms in the Houses makes it still more unlikely that a foreign student is housed with the undergraduates.

If, then, the foreign student at Harvard is not naturally brought into the same circle with the Americans who study here, other methods must be devised to bring the nationalities together. It is an interesting fact that of the great number of American students who travel, few if any between summer trips take advantage of the opportunities latent in the foreign students studying here every year.

Meetings of the International Council at Phillips Brooks House draw forth few American students. And yet the difference between the round tables conducted here, and those held in a school of international studies, as at Geneva, for example, is very slight. The same fundamental languages, of English, French, and German, are spoken as freely at Brooks House, as in the Place de Musique. A Genevan School might well draw up its entire enrollment from the lists of students representing national groups at Harvard, and yet maintain high standards of work.

As a matter of capitalistic exploitation, it can be seen, the group of foreign students at Harvard represents a field that has hardly been opened. And what is more, crossing the Yard presents far fewer difficulties of physical or financial nature than does transoceanic travel.