NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

From the point of view of Harvard's new ambition to become a truly national institution, the ideal Prize Scholar, after four years in college filled with high scholarship, intellectual training, and also various, broadening, contact-giving outside activities, would return to his home state, become a great man, and be a standing example to Western youth of what that strange and foreign University of the East could provide to them.

Of course, even if none of these secondary effects were produced, the mere fact of having a regular Western contingent in college, and a very select group at that, helps against too great provincialism. Also, in spite of the probably correct opinion of the scholars that Harvard is not yet a National Institution, they agree that they "get a lot out of it", and enjoy it besides. These goods are directly and immediately produced by the new scholarship policy. But without the indirect effects of advertisement, the good to Harvard as an institution ends with the influence on twenty scholars per year, and that, considering the expense, is small utility.

It seems, without any reflection on the present group of scholars, that in the future they should be selected more frankly and deliberately according to the indirect ends they are to serve. Any scholar who stays in the East after his college course, any scholar who has no ambition, any scholar who does not see and accept his responsibility to his state and to Harvard in receiving the scholarship, serves the final end of the new policy not a whit. Letters, interviews, recommendations, prep school grades, and examinations all should continue to be used in choosing the candidates, but the end must be always and frankly in view.

One vital question should be asked in making a judgment of any candidate: will this man, after four years of a Harvard education, go back to his home state, become a leader in thought, politics, education, business, or journalism, and thus spread the influence and expand the service of the University throughout the country?