Who owes the college teacher "a square deal"? Thus far in the several "drives" for endowment funds the alumni of each institution have collectively assumed the debt, thereby declaring a gratitude for professorial admonitions which they scarcely felt in their undergraduate days. A correspondent yesterday gave evidence that the mellowing fingers of time have touched others equally. Though he went into business without a college course, and prospered, he is not one of those who glory in being "self-made," but has always regretted his loss.

Equally to be admired are the fine generosity of his thought and the hardihood with which he exposes his bank account to the zeal of competing "drive" teams. One casual sentence, moreover, discloses an underlying wisdom. "Almost without exception self-made men educate their own children." With only a single step further in the enlightenment of self-interest, we arrive at the conclusion that, as the ultimate beneficiary of advanced education is the community as a whole, the community as a whole should be reckoned the professor's ultimate debtor.

A more hard-hearted but equally cogent suggestion is made by Julius H. Barnes, speaking for the Institute for Public Service. The college tuition fee does not represent more than a small part of what each student costs the institution, being kept at a merely nominal figure so that a liberal education may be within the means of poor, and even of self-supporting, students. As a result, sons of the moderately well-to-do, and even of the rich, receive what, in effect, is a gratuity. That is one of the many anomalies of democratic institutions. Mr. Barnes suggests that in making their canvass the "drive" teams confront every manifestly solvent graduate with a demand for unpaid arrears of tuition, and then proceed to the more abstract obligations of college loyalty, pupilliary gratitude, and enlightened self-interest.

If a vein of paradox is glimpsed beneath these suggestions, it should not blind us to their essential wisdom and justice. In one sense the cause of any individual college, or even of a group of colleges, is undoubtedly an individual or a group interest. But these are perilous days, in which little is apparent in the public prints beyond brute passions and rampant selfishness. The World may well linger over every manifestation of the more human forces in civilization. --New York Times.