"Our antagonist is our helper" is a phrase which Matthew Arnold has taken from the mouth of Burke and is fond of quoting. Harvard does not lack such helpers. Even her own sons have done her this service, not to mention such critics as Benjamin F. Butler and the redoubtable Dennis Kearney. The words of Phillips and Emerson in their Phi Beta Kappa orations were memorable and satutary in their way. Ex-Gov. Long, also one of her sons, has been recently indulging in criticism of the college. At the annual dinner of the Harvard alumni in Washington a few weeks since, it is reported that Mr. Long said that "it was one of the charges against the university that it did not teach Greek. His complaint was that it did not really teach anything; meaning thereby that it gave no sound instruction to a student who did not care to study." But one might ask what college ever did undertake to give "sound" instruction to such a student? Ex-Gov. Long's charge, we take it, is a variation on the old argument against the elective system.