No phase of the development of the University is of greater promise for the increase of breadth and influence than its growing cosmopolitanism. Not many years ago it was considered almost essential to the rounding out of a specialist in not a few departments that he complete his education abroad. In particular, training in the universities of Germany was thought indispensable. The new world was still going to school to the old.

Of recent years, however, there has been some flow in the opposite direction. Not only have many Oriental students come to American universities, especially for technical education, but European students have also visited our shores in greater numbers. One important effect of the war is expected to be the freeling of America from the intellectual domination of European scholarship. Another result should be an increased number of students in the universities of a land unhampered by the hardships of a reconstruction. All this means a wider influence for American thought; it should also mean a broader view for the American student toward the ideas of other races.

Unfortunately, however, the American student himself offers a great obstacle by his attitude toward every man who speaks English with the semblance of an accent. With one exception, notably in connection with the Cosmopolitan Club, undergraduates adopt a supercilious or at best thoughtless attitude of aloofness toward foreigners. They often do not realize that men who cross the seas to study in a strange country are usually more filled with enthusiasms, ideas, and ideals than many of the uninteresting and uninterested men who attend college because it is the thing to do.

And there also is too often on the part of the foreign student, somewhat as a result of this attitude, an unapproach ableness which does not invite advances. Both would benefit by a more frank interest in each other. The native student would gain a broadened view; he would also be in the not unprofitable and certainly very agreeable position after graduation of having acquaintanceships with men, some of whom will rise to prominence, in foreign lands. This is a selfish reason. A consideration of the situation the American would be in if he were studying in Berlin may suggest unselfish ones. The foreigner himself would, of course, gain a better knowledge of Americans, and he would return to Europe a true friend of the University.