"BRAVE NEW WORLD"

Alston Chase discusses with force and courage creative scholarship as a criterion for the selection of professors and tutors in the current issue of the Critic. Considered as whole, the article is important in that it takes up many problems whose solutions should be forged on the anvil of debate. The question of a tutor's qualifications, however, is one which deserves particular consideration.

There have been outstanding instances of the sabotage of Department heads in fulfilling the tutorial personnel. Whether this is the only reason for the large group of young and inexperienced men on the staff is beside the point. For that group does exist. There is also a group of older men, who may be experienced, but who have buried themselves beneath gigantic volumes of minute investigations.

What are the qualifications for a tutor? They are different from that of a professor for he must personally guide a student through his field. While a professor with a skilled knowledge of his field may make up for his lack of teaching ability, the tutor cannot do this. He must possess breadth of character which will permit him to pass on something more than facts. He must know that life exists outside of Cambridge if he is to give a man an education which will be of use to him. In short, a thesis or research work cannot serve as the sole criterion for his position. True, he must possess a basis of knowledge but more important than this is his ability to present that knowledge! Certainly in order to achieve this purpose, more thought must be given to a candidate's qualifications along this latter line.

To have brought such questions into the limelight is greatly to the credit of Mr. Chase. It is valuable and refreshing to hear such frank criticism of the University, which possesses so many elements of truth. Cortainly, Mr. Conant and his advisors will do well to consider them carefully.