One is tempted oftentimes to ask, after hearing "the Harvard spirit" of sincerity and honor extolled, whether this spirit can be said to be really distinctive of Harvard, - whether it is not, after all, a fiction for which the college seal is largely responsible. Such doubts are suggested less by occasional violations of honor in the college life than by the difficulty of believing that there is anything about a constantly changing community like ours, which should really put a higher premium upon sincerity than is done in the world at large.

Closer thought, however, leads one inevitably to the conclusion that there is something in the atmosphere of Harvard which is at least a strong encouragement to sincerity and honest dealing and which, it would appear, furthermore, is especially marked at Harvard. We are strengthened in this conclusion by articles that appear from time to time in the student publications of other colleges, especially of those in the West. Editorials are written in which the student body is soberly reminded that "cribbing" is cheating and should be desisted from accordingly. In one college a mass meeting was held to condemn the same offence, and in another, in the East, the custom has recently been in-introduced of making a student sign a declaration at the end of his examination book to the effect that he has not given or received help, as if otherwise he could not be put on his honor.

Is not the explanation of the higher standard of honor at Harvard found in the very thing which seems to be lacking under the conditions described above: namely, a thorough understanding between fellow-students and between instructors and students, that each man is to stand on his own merits and to be taken absolutely at his word? Such an understanding entirely disarms the simple-minded person who considers the college course as a warfare between teachers and taught in which "all is fair" that wins the day.