different matter; they could say anything they pleased about his style, but they could not legitimately and fairly take exception to his facts.

To many it will seem that there is a touch of burlesque in the exposition of this young man's point of view. Unhappily, it is merely a sober presentation of the attitude adopted by the majority of college students. It is difficult to blame them. They study biology and receive no suggestion of its influence upon history; they obtain their knowledge of economics from textbooks and correlate it neither with the lectures they hear on politics nor with what they may read in financial publications; Darwin, Tennyson, Karl Marx, and Mazzini are treated in separate courses and as isolated phenomena. Few institutions have taken even the obvious step of teaching their students to read the daily press intelligently.

To a great extent this is because we are still under the dominion of the fact tradition. Many centuries have contributed to the idea that facts in themselves possess some mystic power and are valuable irrespective of whether we understand their proper relationship or their application. But a revolt is well under way. In history, for example, much less attention is now paid to dates and names; in their stead our students are learning to examine causes and conditions, to study not the conqueror but the influences which produced him. In other fields as well this movement is gaining headway. It remains only to recognize its validity and to extend it to our whole scheme of education. When this is done our endeavor will be not to fill the student's brain with as many facts as possible, but rather to assist him to comprehend and judge the forces which have created our present society and which are directing its development. With this as a background facts obtain some relevancy.

From this point of view we see that the problem which confronts President Lowell and every other educator would be comparatively easy to solve-were the students of a college numbered by the tens instead of by the hundreds or thousands. Society today pays little respect to the man upon whose diploma has been engraved summa cum laude, and it fails to do so because of the feeling, not expressed in exactly these terms, that he is

the product of a scholastic system as far removed from reality as that of the Chinese. But it would be a different matter if President Lowell could introduce a graduate to the world in a manner somewhat like the following:

“I know Samuel Henderson intimately. Except for the periods of our academic recesses he has spent half an hour with me every morning during the past four years. At such times we have discussed politics and religion, sociology, the natural sciences, psychology, literature, history and economics. We have not confined ourselves to a theoretical consideration of these subjects; we have followed the course of labor disputes in the daily newspapers, we have had the benefit of advice upon political issues from candidates for public office, we have talked to manufacturers, trade unionists, retailers and housewives on the subject of tariff legislation. During one summer vacation I had the pleasure of Mr. Henderson's company upon a trip to Ireland, where we studied at first hand the forces of nationalism at work.

“In my conversations with my young friend I have drawn extensively on my knowledge of the past and of the literatures of many nations. These references have almost invariably been linked with present occurrences of importance. In that way they not only have acquired an unusual interest for him, but have stimulated him to undertake a broad course of reading and, furthermore, have provided him with a background which has enabled him to assimilate what he has read.

"I have been impressed by the toughness and resiliency of Mr. Henderson's mind, by the clarity of his vision, by his lack of bias. During the four years I have known him he has achieved a remarkable mental growth and an enviable power both to perceive objects in their proper relations and to reduce to their primary factors complicated situations. I do not mean that Mr. Henderson and I see eye to eye upon the immigration problem nor upon the question of the League of Nations, but I have a very hearty respect for his opinions upon both these subjects. In social relations I have found Mr. Henderson courteous, agreeable, forbearing.

"It would be absurd for me to say that this young man is an expert in the field of economics or biology or in any field whatso

ever. However, he is now admirably equipped for specialized study in any of those departments or for work in the commercial world where broadness of vision and sound judgment are essential.

"Gentlemen, in my opinion Mr. Henderson has fairly won the right to be termed educated."

Impractical? Yes, because President Lowell's day is not long enough to permit him to give half an hour to every student at Harvard. But it is highly practical in the sense that society would recognize the value of such training. And it seems certain that the closer our educational system comes to this method, the more respect will be accorded to those upon whom it confers honors.

A great deal has already been done in this direction. At President Lowell's own institution the general examination at the end of the senior year requires the student to correlate his knowledge, to review his past work, to take a survey of his own mind and his relation to society. At Columbia students may elect to study for honors; this means more intensive and intelligent application, the adoption of a broader point of view, frequent and intimate consultations with members of the faculty. Courses are being offered there and at other institutions that attempt to coördinate the work of various departments; recognition is being given to the idea that there is some relation between economics and politics, between politics and sociology.

In the changes that have been made in the entrance requirements for colleges an even greater amount of progress has been made. The classic tongues no longer monopolize attentionoften not even Latin is required-though the study of mathematics is apparently held in as high esteem as ever. The striking point, however, is that some institutions have had the courage practically to abolish their entrance examinations and to substitute for them psychological tests which show not how many unrelated facts a student has been able to remember, but his or her ability and possibilities. For everywhere the question which the world puts to the college man is being sensed not as "What do you know?" but as "What can you learn to do?"

JAMES HENLE.

SOME OF MR. GALSWORTHY'S HEROINES

BY LACY LOCKERT

THE novels of Mr. Galsworthy customarily find favor with reviewers. In the chorus of praise that greets each new book from his pen, dissent would be unheard. Beyond question he has restraint, a sense of form, command of language, capacity to analyze and depict familiar human types. Yet the frequent serial publication of his stories in a magazine whose other "star" contributors were Robert W. Chambers and Ella Wheeler Wilcox is suggestive that his vaunted art has something of the meretricious in it, and that his moral philosophy is an immoral philosophy. For clearer discrimination, let us go back two or three years to some novel over which "the tumult and the shouting" has diedlet us take, say, his Saint's Progress, which was lauded like the rest, and examine it in detail.

Saint's Progress deals with the misfit existence, the experiences, and the spiritual trials of a vicar, Edward Pierson, in war-time England. It aims to portray him, I think, as a lonely survivor of the Age of Faith, in painful clash with the modern spirit and point of view, especially typified in his daughters. The elder of these, Gratian, shares the unbelief of her husband, a young doctor; eighteen-year-old Noel falls in love with twentytwo-year-old Lieutenant Cyril Moreland, whom she has known just three weeks. He is going to the Front, and she wants to marry him. Pierson not unnaturally tells her she cannot; so on her last night with Cyril, Noel takes matters into her own hands, without benefit of clergy.

She says afterwards that she did this "to make sure of him.” Again, more fully: "I did it so that we should belong to each other. Nothing could have taken him from me."" There have no doubt been girls who have erred from precisely that wrong-headed notion that thus they could form a quasi marriage tie. Anybody who knew anything about the human male

would know that, so far from binding a man, that would be a good way to lose him; the whole idea becomes absurd when one considers how a man might thus be "bound" to a dozen or so at once. But in the present instance we cannot accept Noel's statement-after-the-fact. It is natural to sentimentalize and justify one's misdeed with ambiguous words. Mr. Galsworthy has earlier told us explicitly and from Noel's own lips the impulses that urged her.

"We can't afford to wait. He might never come back, you see, and then I should have missed him.””

"Missed him"! She could not miss his love; she had it-knew she had it. That love was mutually confessed; and the sweetness of its avowal and its realization, the being together while they shared that realization-these things were theirs already, and no act or ceremony could make them more real, and no stroke of fate could wipe them out. There was only one thing which immediate marriage could guarantee her against missing; which, therefore, it is plain she was mightily concerned not to miss; and which she was going at all costs to make sure of, by marriage or without marriage. In other words, her declaration, being interpreted, will be found to parallel closely that of Mall Barnes, in the old Elizabethan comedy, Two Angry Women of Abington: "O Lord," said I,

"Shall it be so? Must I unmarryed dye?"
And being angry, father, farther said,

"Now, by Saint Anne, I will not dye a maide!"

"No coarser minded girl in Elizabethan comedy"-"no dramatic portrayal of the animal more observantly conceived or more faithfully executed": thus Mr. Gailey characterizes Mall. Yet there is no essential difference between her position and Noel's. What difference there is, is in her favor. Noel's longing is focused and particularized-and importunate:

I want to make sure of Cyril, auntie; I want everything I can have with him while there's a chance. I don't think it's much to ask, when perhaps I'll never have any more of him again. Oh, auntie, I want him so badly!

As Hashimura Togo said after seeing the American Drama of Sex, I would rather drink my beer in some saloon where thoughts are more pure.