Letters from France recently received in Boston lay much emphasis on an American agency that is doing a far-reaching work for good among our boys overseas--the American University Union, which has taken possession of the Royal Palace Hotel in Paris. And it should be made plain that there are no unhappy class distinctions in the work in question, for the headquarters and bureau are maintained "for the friends" of our college boys in France, as well as for the boys themselves. The work was inevitable from the first, in view of the thousands of young American collegians, alumni and undergraduates, who hurried to France even before this country entered the war.

Six of the ten colleges and universities that started the movement for the union were New England institutions and fully a score of our New England institutions are now identified with it. First, there is a home for college men passing through Paris or on furlough there; second, a headquarters for the bureaus of the individual colleges, many of which have representatives on the ground; third, it is a clearing house for information as to casualties, etc. On the first night that the Union opened in October the representatives of 30 colleges took rooms there. In the first three weeks men had registered from 83 institutions, from Maine to Texas. It is a club in the best sense, and maintained by the colleges and by college men here so that the expense on the boys themselves can be in no instance prohibitive.

Already the Union has a branch in London and plans to have others in parts of France. It plans to keep up a complete directory of college men in France, so that information may be available on the shortest notice. It is a clearing house for mail, a reading room with all leading American newspapers and magazines, and a purchasing and forwarding agent for members in any part of France. The work and the worth of the Union, performing so valuable a service for thousands of Americans in France, will be the rallying cry of the all-college rally that will be held in Boston this winter in place of the usual routine of expensive alumni banquets. --Boston Herald.