Edward Everett Hale has long been known as the most steadfast and uncompromising champion of compulsory chapel among the overseers of the college. He as much as any one else, it should also be said, has been foremost in devising and suggesting new plans whereby the services might be rendered more impressive and less irksome. At the close of the service Wednesday, Dr. Hale took occasion to comment upon some features of the exercises and to suggest improvements in some minor details, especially urging upon the students as a matter of mutual courtesy, punctuality in attendance and greater decorum in abstaining from hastening away directly after the benediction. The chapel services at Harvard, he remarked, in point of decorum and impressiveness were not surpassed by any other similar service in the world so far as he was aware; not even in any of the university chapels or cathedrals of England where so much attention is paid to matters of ritual.

This if true is certainly as much a matter of pride to the college in general as to Dr. Hale and his coadjutors on the board of overseers, and the appeal for the correction of certain minor defects in the matter need not be made in vain. Yet every advance made by the college in the improvement of these exercises but emphasizes more strongly the essentially false character under which they are held. A college, which in other matters distinctly disowns the paternal theory of college government makes but and ill showing in insisting upon preserving the anomaly of compulsory religious services. Almost nowhere else in the civilized world are men forced, to conform to a religious ritual despite their own wishes or the wishes of their parents or guardians. To believe that any improvement in the character of the service is bound to reconcile the college to its involuntary bondage and to remove the anomalous character of the proceeding is absurd. In everything else the college refuses to stand in loco parentis. In this matter it insists upon so standing. And yet here, even it fails in really occupying the position of parent in relation to the students. The custom (and possibly the wishes) of a large majority of the parents of the students is opposed to morning prayers, especially if they be compulsory. This the faculty have shown by statistics which it has gathered. But in spite of these facts the college clings to compulsory prayers. This is an old discussion, but it is one that will not cease until the abuse which prompts it has been put to an end.