The great lack in our national life of the present day is that of educated men who are willing to go into politics. This arises of course in large part from the fact that our public service has been almost entirely monopolized by men of exceedingly low principles, who have made it, in the language of the day, "too dirty a business for a gentleman to touch." But the original cause is that our young men while in the midst of their education are too much taken up by other things to give any attention to public affairs, and thus, at the very time when their attention and their interest would be of most service, both to themselves and to the nation, they acquire a distaste or an utter indifference for all matters of this nature. Nowhere is this tendency more seen than at Harvard. Here, beyond some courses in the abstract principles of public policy and or two debates in the Union on political subjects, the university affords no opportunity for activity in thought or action on public matters. A few years ago we did have a lecture on Civil Service Reform and the students turned out well to hear it. Now why can this not be followed up? There are surely enough men who would become interested to form a good Civil Service Reform Club; and their influence, especially those of the two upper classes, who are so soon to go out into the various parts of the country, would be of great value just now, when the fate of the reform for the next years is so doubtfully balanced. If even thirty men in each class become really interested in the matter, so that they would take some trouble to set forth their views in the different sections of the country to which they might go after graduation, we should soon hear from it. They would become the leaver which would leaver the whole loaf.

Surely when President Eliot's name is seen so often in the reports of the Civil Service Reform meetings and dinners, and not his only, but many of the overseers and of some of the faculty, it would seem that these gentlemen would be interested in doing something at home; and that if they really cared for the matter they would exercise some of their private influence, if not their public, where it might do so much good.