After the main features of the Memorial Hall situation have been seen, the question comes: What is to be done? We believe that, when two opposing bodies meet both of which have the force of indisputable truths with them, both must be moved from their purposed courses. It is plain that, unless the University is to be removed from men who have not large means, the Corporation must do something; it is equally plain that unless the Corporation can have assurance that a second dining-hall will settle matters for a considerable term of years, this second dining-hall will never be built by them. If the arrangement of one man to a seat is insisted upon, then the second hall would not settle matters, and this is to say that the second hall would not be built. The rational solution of the difficulty seems to us to be this: Let students consent to some arrangement at Memorial which shall not materially lower the present number there accommodated and which shall be clearly understood by both parties to be permanent if it works satisfactorily; let the Corporation overcome their disinclination, caused by the press of other business, to the erection of a second hall and publicly announce that, in case a satisfactory permanent arrangement is found, as soon as funds can be made available they will erect a second dininghall.

Exactly what form the permanent arrangement would take we do not know. The chief thing asked by the students would be that the social life be not seriously disturbed. If the arrangement were to be permanent, we should think it unjust to keep general tables. All should be made the same. To have club tables with one man to one seat is the ideal arrangement which we wish might be kept but which we are convinced cannot be. When different men suggest seventeen, eighteen, nineteen or twenty-two men at tables of fourteen seats, they simply express the limit, to go beyond which they believe would seriously endanger the social life. For ourselves, we think that it would be unwise even to exceed the proportion of twenty men to fourteen seats.

Suppose that such an arrangement were put into effect. Memorial would then accommodate about one thousand and seventy men, and another hall, on the same principle, would make the total number of men accommodated about twenty-one hundred and forty. With the membership in the University at three thousand, thirteen hundred men wish Memorial board. The two halls together would, if the same ratio were preserved, be ample for the University with a membership of forty-nine hundred. When the University has attained such a growth, it will have largely to increase all its facilities and be changed in many ways. Any solution of the matter which looks so far forward is all that can with good reason be asked by the members of the Corporation.