these men have been college graduates; but all of them have been poor servants of the people, useless where they were harmful. All the credit for the good thus accomplished in the public life of this decade belongs to those who have done affirmative work in such matters as those I have enumerated above, and not to those who, with more or less futility, have sought to hamper and obstruct the work that has thus been done. In short, you college men, he doers. rather than critics of the deeds that others do. He can take the lead only if, in a spirit of thoroughgoing democracy, he takes his place among his fellows, not standing aloof from them, but mixing with them, so that he may know, may feel, may sympathize with their hopes, their ambitions, their principles and even their prejudices-as an American among Americans, as a man among men. EDUCATIONAL NEWS IN BRIEF The George Washington University, Washington, has decided to add a teacher's course to its curriculum and a number of lecturers have been engaged already. This technical course, together with the advantages Washington offers for scientific and historical research, will no doubt make it a very favorable place for learning the art of teaching. * * * One of Boston's most important educational etsablishments, the Lowell Institute, has just ended its sixty-eighth year of quiet usefulness. Without flourish of trumpets, with no class day, commencement, or any other of the public exercises usual on such occasions, its doors have been closed for the long vacation. The only indication at the last lecture on Friday evening that the year was over was a blackboard notice that the programme for the next season would be ready for distribution on Oct. 1. From this year's various courses several books will be made-Professor Lowell's is already out and others are in press. Nowhere but in the Lowell Institute are lectures of this high and original character offered year after year, free of charge. Gratitude is due alike to the founder, John Lowell, Jr., who more than seventy years ago provided the place and the means, and his trustee, Professor A. Lawrence Lowell, who today so ably executes his will. * * * Under the direction of the Coilege of Agriculture of Ohio State University, a special train was recently run through several parts of the State bearing certain exhibits of interest to agriculturists. Brief addresses were made at the various towns passed through by instructors from Ohio State University. *** The Minnesota senate passed the bill prohibiting the formation of secret societies in high schools. This bill was introduced in the house by C. L. Sawyer of Minneapolis and included both secret and not secret societies. The "not secret" clause was stricken out by the senate and the bill passed. Crazy Mountains will be the field of work. The Crazy Mountains offer peculiar examples of intrusive igneous rocks, and the Bridger Mountains are of ordinary stratified sorts. This course is usually given in alternate years; the last excursion, in 1905, went to the Gallatin Range of mountains, and in 1903 the Black Hills were studied. According to present plans about eight men will be taken on the trip, which counts as a regular course in the university toward a degree. The annual field course in mining, which has, however, no connection with the geological excursion, will be given as usual. The places to be visited are not definitely decided on yet, but will be announced next month. Last year a party of about twelve men made investigations in the copper mines of the Lake Superior region; and in 1905 the mining regions of the South were studied. This course usually has a larger registration than the field course in geology, the average being from ten to fifteen. Professor Smyth of the mining school is in charge of arrangements for the trip. * State Forester F. W. Rane of Massachusetts, has sent out to every school superintendent in the State a circular letter setting forth the desirability of further educating common school children. in forestry, and stating that seedlings and seed of white pine, white ash, red spruce, beech, chestnut and acorn trees will be sent to any school desiring them, upon payment of the actual expense of digging and express charges. * "No student of the Meriden, Conn., High School may hereafter become a member of any high school secret fraternity or society, so-called, without immediately forfeiting his membership in said school." This resolution was adopted by the board of education on recommendation of a committee appointed several months ago to investigate the good and evil of secret societies in the public schools. The rule does not affect present members, but is applicable to all who may in the future become members. The adoption of the plan, it is believed, marks the beginning of the end of fraternities in the schools. * * * The fifty-eighth annual register of the College of the City of New York for the collegiate year 1906-1907 has just been published. It shows a roster of 843 students in the city college classes, with an instructing corps of 183, including 12 professors, 16 associates, 10 assistants, 48 instructors and 97 tutors. * * * The school teachers of France, or rather the radical among them, have been carrying on an agitation for some time to secure the right of organizing themselves into a trade union. Hitherto the Government has given them no encouragement in their ambition. Recently they demanded and had an interview with M. Clemenceau, who left them in no doubt as to his position. He declared that it was impossible to permit members of their profession to join a political organization. whose object was not only to upset the Government but to overturn the existing social order. "You will not easily find a ministry," he said, "which will consent to hand over the Government to a trade union bureaucracy." The whole subject is likely to be threshed out in the chamber before long. * H. C. Bunn, curator of Princeton University, has a scheme which, he says, will make Princeton one of the most beautiful towns in the world. Boxes are being built by a carpenter that will fit every front window in every house and store that faces Nassau street. These will be furnished to occupants at cost, and Mr. Bunn will supply enough geraniums to fill them. When the plants are in bloom Nassau street will present an unusual sight. The Princeton Council has purchased many shade and ornamental trees, which are given to residents of the borough for fifty cents. This plan was adopted to shade the streets. A novel departure has just been made. in the cookery departments of the Bir mingham (England) elementary schools. Once a week the pupils, whose ages range from 11 upward, are taken out by the cooking mistress on a marketing expedition. Various shops are visited, and the girls instructed (in front of the windows) which articles to buy and which. to avoid, and those most adaptable to certain dishes. A professor at Lehigh University has made a calculation to show that if a tiny vessel of one cu. cm. (0.061 cu. in.) capacity is filled with hydrogen corpuscles there can be placed therein, in round numbers, five hundred and twenty-five octillions 525,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000—of them. If these corpuscles are allowed to run out of the vessel at the rate of one thousand per second it will require seventeen quintillions -17,000,000,000,000,000,000-of years to empty it. We leave it to our readers to calculate how long the filling process. will require. The use of the flag to mark a schoolhouse which has become so common in this country is to be adopted in England in the Edmonton union schools, but with a difference. The plan is to hoist the Union Jack a quarter of a hour before school time, thus incidentally warning laggards that it is time to quicken their steps. English schools, by the way, are showing themselves eager to reciprocate in the matter of hospitality. The Dover town council, among others, has voted to ask for a share of the American and Canadian teachers expected on a tour of investigation in the autumn. A movement is on foot to consolidate two noted London institutions. King's College and the London University. The chief difficulty thus far encountered is a basis of union, the university having been secular from its foundation, while King's College remains a church institution, although it abolished ecclesiastical tests on account of the opposition in Parliament to the grants for which it had asked. The project cannot be carried through without an act of Parliament, and some hostility from both sides is looked for, yet there are obvious advantages in a consolidation which would strengthen both institutions at weak points. The elements of agriculture, with especial reference to the teaching of this subject in the public schools of the State, and library practice for teachers, clergy men and others who have libraries under their supervision, are two new, important subjects to be given at the University of Wisconsin in the coming summer session. Both courses are designed to assist teachers who desire to prepare themselves during the vacation for more effective work in their profession. The general introduction of agriculture into the elementary and secondary schools of the State makes it necessary for many teachers to prepare themselves to present the subject to their pupils. The growth of school libraries and the work of catalogueing these, which usually falls to the lot of the teacher, has resulted in requests for a practical course in library practice. The two new courses to be given at the State University in the 1907 summer session are designed to supply these needs. "The prosperity of Harvard would be better promoted if Harvard absolutely withdrew from all intercollegiate athletics. The reason for this is the confidence in the American parents who have the best interests of the sons' training in mind." The speaker deprecated the dishonorable and immoral practices in presentday college athletics and argued strongly for the abolishment of the professional coaching system and the limiting of the number of intercollegiate contests. He decried the great expense of intercollegiate sports as carried on at the present time and the increasing tendency to limit rather than to increase the number of students interested in sport for sport's sake. In tracing the development of competitive sport the speaker said in part: Out "The whole business of competitive sport has grown up within my knowledge, slowly at first, but more rapidly within the past twenty-five years. of great good has come great evil, and it is our duty to combat that evil. The evil is the exaggeration of athletics. It is the exaggeration, of a good thing, and this evil should be combated. "The exaggeration of time given to it, not by the members of the teams alone, but by the students as a whole, in the time they give to reading the sporting news and the conversation on sports, is an evil. "What we want to train at our colleges is men of mental power and mental interest, and not mere physical beings. "Another exaggeration is the effect of athletic success on the institution itself. Harvard has not been pre-eminently successful in athletics in the past twenty-five years, but no other institution has had so much growth or such trust and respect of those who know how to choose the place for the training of their sons." Continuing, the speaker found another exaggeration in the successive changing of the rules of every game so that it becomes more violent and less fitted to the average man's powers, and becomes fitted only for the few trained athletes as against the great body of students. He said: "The games most useful at college are not the ones that a person can pursue in after life. Football, baseball, basketball and hockey as played cannot be carried on in later life by the ordinary person. These games are so exaggerated that they cannot be used except by college athletes. They should be brought back into form, like cricket, rowing and tennis. No game is fit for playing where one has to wear padding, masks and other defensive articles to prevent serious injury. Another exaggeration that those who administer institutions of learning find is the great provisions for athletic interests. "Still another evil is the carrying of the sport into dishonorable and immoral practices. We in America have abandoned the methods of our brothers, the English. Then the remedy should be sought in altering the spirit of the game so as to make dishonorable and immoral practices impossible." Dr. Eliot held the first remedy to be the reduction of the number of intercollegiate competitions, saying: "It may be necessary to abolish all of them, but at least the experiment ought to be made. English experience proves that all the interest may be maintained by the smallest number of competitions. Another remedy should be the reduction of the enormous expenditures of money on these intercollegiate competitions. There should be an abandonment what is called professionalism in sports, for the influence of a professional coach on young men is bad. There should be adopted a plan of graduate coaching by trained college men. The difficulty, however, is the inability to get the graduates to leave lucrative positions to come back to alma mater to give up valuable time. of "Further, there should be a habitual enforcement of the principles of honorable sports. This has been neglected and some of the worst tricks have been brought into the universities by the undergraduates themselves in paying money to have unsportsmanlike tricks taught. But on the whole the immense good done by athletics cannot be overlooked; yet we must see the evil clearly and devise the most effective means of rooting it out." ence we should ask, I think," President Butler said, "chiefly two things, and if either of them should be given us a long step forward would be taken. We should ask that the permanent Hague court be transformed from a semidiplomatic into a truly judicial tribunal, and we should ask that The Hague conference, now assembling for the second time at the call of a monarch, be made to assemble automatically hereafter at regular intervals, say once in four or five years. In the stated reassembling of The Hague conference lies the germ of the international parliament which will one day come into being. "There is another aspect of international relations in time of war which has not attracted the attention it deserves. The suggestion that neutrality should extend to financial assistance has not been brought forward by impracticable men. "One other matter concerns Americans alone. Each time an important international conference occurs, the appointing power searches the country over for the most competent and effective representatives of American interests and of American opinion. Why should we not constitute a body of permanent representatives at such international conference out of the distinguished men who, as president of the United States or secretary of state, have directed for a time the foreign policy of the nation?" A Greater for Alabama. * * * The laying of the cornerstone of the first building of the Greater University at Tuskaloosa last month was a notable event to the people of Alabama, and especially those who appreciate the value of higher education in the development of the state and its people. Governor Comer dedicated the building which is to be the first of the number to be constructed under the appropriation from the legislature of $500,000 for this purpose. It was especially appropriate that Governor Comer should have been chosen to do this in view of his influence and activity in the interests of improved educational facilities for Alabama. It was largely through his efforts that the present law-making |