As the class of 1918 today launches into actual use the Freshman dormitories, the following criticism from the New York Post is interesting to show the attitude which a large section of the general public takes toward the new institution:

To our mind, no more interesting experiment has been undertaken in any Eastern university in recent years than the establishment of the Freshman dormitories which go into service at Harvard when the College opens next week. It is, as our readers are aware, an effort to democratize Harvard, to mix more thoroughly the diverse elements which once a year are cast into that academic melting-pot. More than that, it introduces certain features of British undergraduate life into our college world, and will tend to emphasize the difference between Harvard College and Harvard University. It is by all odds President Lowell's most important undertaking, and, if successful, is certain to be imitated elsewhere. Already this group of noble buildings has set Harvard men to asking why the upper classmen should not have similarly attractive quarters instead of the rundown and in part hideously ugly dormitories that detract from the historic buildings in the Yard at Cambridge.

During the later years of Mr. Eliot's presidency Harvard was singularly indifferent to the housing of her students. A couple of modern but prison-like dormitories were built in an unfortunate location, but for years the College neither modernized its old dormitories nor attempted to regulate the investments of private capital. It was held to be the affair of the capitalists if they put up more and more luxurious buildings on what soon became known as the "Gold Coast." The result was that Harvard not only got the name of being a costly college to attend, but of encouraging luxury and pandering to the sons of the ideal rich. If this was wholly unjust, it is undeniable that these expensive private dormitories gravely emphasized the cleavage in the undergraduate body between those favored by the gods as to worldly possessions and social position and those who were not; and thus did grave injury to the College. The administration of Mr. Lowell, deeply impressed with the lack of a cohesive class-spirit, the continual breaking up of classes into cliques and groups, which hardly knew each other, and were about in the frame of mind to regard each other as enemies, found that it was not necessary for the College to sit by helpless and do nothing to counteract the evil tendency. Hence came the decision to put the entire Freshman class on an equality as to living accommodations, and to see to it that groups from the big preparatory schools and large cities did not flock by themselves.

The group of five buildings which is to house the Freshmen is situated on the banks of the Charles River, near the bridge to Soldiers Field. They are singularly successful architecturally, being the handsomest structures that have gone up in Harvard within the memory of man, and are an adaptation of the early Colonial style, from which Harvard, like Yale and others, should never have departed. The credit for their planning belongs to Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, the Boston architects. There are three groups, Standish and Gore Halls and the Smith Halls, each consisting of three buildings, in the centre one of which are the commons and living room. There is one great kitchen, from which the three commons are served, and the occupants are required to take their meals there; the board will be about $5 a week. What this departure alone will mean to thousands of men it would be hard to exaggerate; but there are multitudes of Harvard men who will recall with a shudder their plunge into College life by way of Memorial Hall, or unfriendly boarding places, and the hopeless loneliness of the early days, without friends or ties, and a bedroom in some cheap frame boarding house. After these new buildings are initiated it will no longer be possible to tell the old story of the Harvard professor who accosted a wistful Freshman and asked if he were looking for some one. "Not I," was the apocryphal response; "I don't know anybody this side of the Rockies."

Still another interesting feature of the dormitories is that each suite, however cheap, has its bathroom--something long frowned on by Harvard as an effeminate luxury--and that all the rooms are furnished by the College. Rents range from $35 to $225, which will materially bring down the cost of the average freshman's bill of expense. The furnishing is uniform, but in excellent, simple taste, and the whole effect is such that most graduates who visit these halls will, we are sure, wish they might go to College all over again, not only because of the quiet of these groups, which ought speedily to have a genuine academic atmosphere, with their fine lawns, their flower-beds, and their new-planted ivy; but because of the opportunity to meet and know all sorts and conditions of men from all quarters of the United States, and daily to break bread with them.

Of course, so unusual an experiment has had its critics. For instance, some think the accommodations too uniform; some complain that it will be a hardship on the very poor boys, who will no longer be able to shrink into remote quarters and hide their poverty. The answer to this is that the poor boy may learn in the cheerful air of comradeship, which should prevail here, that poverty implies no disgrace and is nothing to apologize for. To us the criticisms are hardly worth considering in comparison with the high aim, the democratic results, certain to be achieved, and the scholastic benefits to accrue. The only real objection we have heard is that the Freshman class is going to overflow the new buildings at once, and that some unfortunates will have to go elsewhere. Defects and disappointments may develop, but today President Lowell and Harvard are heartily to be congratulated on the new departure; every one who hopes for real democracy in our colleges must join in wishing for its complete success.