The need for a non-commercial printing press in the United States is widely felt and acknowledged. Many valuable writings by the most eminent scholars can not be made accessible to others, because of the fact that the commercial publisher can not afford to publish them. In England the presses of Oxford and Cambridge supply this need, and are splendidly equipped with all the necessary type that higher scholarship requires in such fields as Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and mathematics--a fact which often forces American writers to go to England to have such books printed.

Harvard should have a press such as these. Yale and Columbia have publication endowments which enable them to publish books of much value in scholarship, but they have no press. Princeton has a press but its purpose is narrower. Even the University of Chicago, although it has a press of its own, does not even attempt to take the scholarly position of such as the Clarendon press of Cambridge. Harvard not only has an opportunity to be the first to establish such an institution, but it is in a position to make it successful. Its thought has long been forcing a way into publication by various channels. Separate endowments enable books in the various branches of scholarship to be published by commercial houses. The University itself, however, can not handle what rightly belongs to it, and with its equipment cannot aspire higher than to the publication of registers and catalogues. To establish a press that would publish all that expression of the University which now seeks other channels, and to publish also the many other theses, reports and books that deserve publication, calls for a press that would cost $100,000. Another $100,000 would be needed as an endowment to help out the running expenses. When we think, however, how much this press can do to unify the expression of Harvard, to stimulate it, and to diffuse knowledge through the whole country, we realize that it is a cheap price for such a great return. It is an opportunity.