Institute Offers Two Months' Study Of Federal Government at Capital

Backed by Eugene Meyer, Republican ex-governor of the Federal Reserve Board, and by Democratic ex-governor William E. Sweet of Colorado, a National Institution of Public Affairs will pick students this fall from colleges and universities all over the country and take them to Washington for two months' "internship" in 1935. Non-partisan, privately financed, and self-governing, the Institution will have the cooperation of the federal government for its course in practical government. Conferences with high officials and tutorial study groups for individual contacts will from the preparation for a thesis every student will write on a particular administrative problem.

Negotiations are now being carried on to permit Harvard students to leave Cambridge during February and March to attend the Washington School. A faculty selection committee, yet to be named, would nominate Harvard's quota. Most of the appointments provide the instruction free, and there are a limited number of scholarships available for transportation, board, and room. Professors from various universities will also be in attendance for the two months.

In line with suggestions by Will Durant for a "West Point for Public Servants" and by Robert W. Kelso '04 in "A College of Public Welfare" (an article appearing in tomorrow's Harvard Alumni Bulletin), the Institution marks an attempt to "catch them young" and train an efficient American civil service. Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who was forced to call experts to New York from all over the United States to aid in Gotham's administrative reorganization, has already requested the Institution to set up a "laboratory training" school to provide better municipal employees.

Leading business men and educators have promised the Institute active support. Sample backers are Edward A. Filene of Boston, Mayor John S. Cohen, Atlanta publisher, Dr. Mary E. Woolley of Mt. Holyoke, Governor John G. Winant of New Hampshire, former St. Paul's instructor, Dr. Harold W. Dodds, former head of Princeton's School of Public Affairs, Dr. Arnold B. Hall, director of the Brookings Institute, Dean Walter J. Shepard '02, of Ohio State, president of the American Political Science Association, Dean Charles E. Clark of the Yale Law School, and James H. Rand, Jr. '08. Raymond Dennett '36 is on the student advisory committee.

President Roosevelt himself has appointed a Commission of Inquiry to lay plans for a New Deal in public-service personnel. Its research director is Dr. Luther H. Gulick of Columbia, an advisor of the Institute.