There is a sentiment, wide-spread among both past and present members of the University, that the existing system of awarding scholarships is not satisfactory. An effort will be made next year to inquire more diligently into the needs of applicants, and this reform is plainly right. Far more important reforms are, however, needed. The system, as it is established, is on the whole well executed; sober complaint is made not against the execution of the system but rather against the system itself.

The scholarships which Harvard has were given by men and women who believed that money, expended in making advanced education possible to young men, was well expended. The money given is ordinarily not reserved for specified individuals; it is given freely to persons with whom the donors have no previous connection. In a word, scholarships are a result of an interest in the general welfare. They are investments of the community,-the sacrifice of one generation for the sake of a future generation.

Given in this spirit, the money becomes a trust to be treated with the closest consideration of the purposes for which it was given. The money is meant not as prizes for good college work, but as aids to the education of college men. To make the allotment of the money depedent so largely as it now is upon the rank of students in college work is to mistake means for end. The college career is not to be considered except in so far as it foreshadows future usefulness. Plainly college work is not ultimate, but only preparatory; and the men whom the community wishes to aid are not those who take high standing in regular college work, but men who will do good service in the world after graduation.

The present system of scholarships can therefore be justified only if the men who take high standing in regular college work are the most likely to do good service afterwards. In the large majority of cases, we believe that they are not. The competition among students here is so keen that it excites the participants to more than normal exertion. They not only have to devote themselves so thoroughly to one kind of activity as to make rounded development out of the question, but they so drain themselves of energy that, the four years over, they need to recover from past work, and are, at best, only half fit to undertake new work. About this fact, no full testimony can be given, and yet we believe that it is a general conviction, rooted in wide experience, that the men who take the highest rank in college are not, as a rule, the most powerful in after life.

The present system of awarding scholarships rests on an assumption largely erroneus. The fact ought to receive careful attention from every person interested in the University.