No prescribed course, perhaps, receives less thought or work from students than English C. The freedom of the course, the voluntary attendance at lectures and the few forensics called for makes it easy to neglect it. Five forensics, at intervals of six or eight weeks, are a small number and is easy to do the work in a slurring manner; still further the subjects for forensics are often such that, unfortunately, the work done is not always original. Yet the course, if undertaken seriously as it should be, has more than the little value students generally attribute to it. Few undergraduates can successfully prepare a brief, arrange its parts systematically and forcibly, and write an argument and refutation on that basis. To those students who do the work carefully and conscientiously the course is beneficial; it calls for a certain amount of research, of careful and systematic thought, and of effective presentation of arguments. It trains the mind, even if it be but a little, in logical reasoning.

That English C has become of such minor importance to students is partly due to the insufficient attention generally given it by the English department. For years the course has been regarded as one which "must be" but which is not sufficiently important to demand much thought and attention. Indeed, not a few instructors have freely stated that the course was a bore and they took little interest in it. If the effort were made to make the course at least more interesting, to improve many of the details and - since it seems necessary - to enforce regulations to compel students to work better the course would be more effective. We do not criticise the work of any one year; some instructors have given good forensic subjects while others have given poor; some have enforced the rules rigidly while others have not; but with them all there has appeared a disposition, often frankly admitted, to treat English C indifferently. It has been suggested at times to reduce the number of required +++ to four, - an ill-advised suggestion, for it would only weaken the course more and be a step toward discontinuing it. While the discussion of English in colleges and schools is so general as it is at present, it is for us to improve every course we have in college, and here is one, apt to be neglected and slighted, which, if properly treated by all, would be beneficial.