For many days we have been in receipt of communications relative to the proposed university club. We have abstained from commenting on the matter in the hope that the discussion would explain itself. But now that little has been said to the point, do there not remain many questions to be asked and much information to be gained? What is it intended that this so-called university club shall be? If a custom of exclusion is to be practiced the result is that the club, however bright its promise, cannot succeed in meeting such a need as is said to exist. If the club on the other hand is to be simply a meeting place little less general than the yard, and every man who cares to do so can spend an hour at the club house with the hope of meeting the men whom he meets every day in the yard, and with the same probability of a more intimate acquaintance, the club will prove but little else than a covered highway, offering the same opportunities and no more than the corridor of many of the city hotels. This plan it is said will obviate the present tendency to the formation of cliques. This is far from assured. These so-called cliques are no more or less groups of men formed by commonality of taste or social distinction. To attempt by the formation of a common meeting place for the whole university to break down such relations simply argues a want of insight into the causes of these relations. There now exist many societies which, we venture to say, cover almost every need of Harvard social life as it is now constituted. In founding a university club an attempt is made to add a new element to the social life, the element more strictly democratic. It is not strange that a very great proportion of the letters which we have received have been written by non-society men, men who feel that in the proposed plan lies the germ of the destruction of Harvard's social ties, a destruction which will render the student relations more democratic, more common and less exclusive. If such destruction is the germ of the plan under agitation, the plan cannot but fail. For it is absurd in a high degree to imagine that men will substitute for ties which are formed through interests absolutely fundamental in life, one great bond which overlooks distinctions of personality, and must therefore fall far short of attracting individual men with distinct and very often antagonistic tastes. Thus then, there will exist by the side of the club proposed all the social interests now existing. It requires no argument to show which of the two will fall. To attempt by the formation of a common relation, which can claim no higher legitimacy than the interest formed by mere residence at our university, to do away with distinctions brought here from life, must be futile. A club house will attract in the degree in which it is attractive. For a time such a club might prove successful, but as the interest in it became no longer such as that taken for a while in everything new under the sun, the patronage of the club would cease to be such as is desired. That is, the university club would not remain a university club, but the club of men who had no stronger ties to draw them elsewhere; ties which would exist to every man who was not a non-society man, or who was even ordinarily busy. Our argument, which occurs to every one, is of course that at the outset the club threatens to be too large for success. The success in the limitation of membership of any club is seen in the conduct of every well-known society which commands a "waiting list." But it is just such limitation which would kill the university club at the outset. What then is left? On each side an almost utter impossiblity of success. This plan is not new, for it has been tried, and that unsuccessfully, in the largest college society; and a new plan must seek further and deeper than the plan now proposed promises to do to secure a lasting success. If such a plan can be promulgated we will extend it our heartiest support.