Some years ago a man, not altogether averse to prominence at the Lake Mohonk peace conferences, offered $100 to the student in any American college who would write the best essay on the peace cause. With a great flourish of trumpets, the donor himself making a magnificent speech, the $100 was finally awarded. Statistics showed that if the prize had been divided equally among the contestants each would have received 82 cents for his labors. Of course, the contest may have been an aid to forceful writing, but the chances are that the same results could have been accomplished through methods of academic instruction far less laborious than this literary get-rich-quick enterprise.

A month or more ago Mr. Truxton Beale, formerly minister to Persia, offered $10,000 in cash prizes to young Republicans who could furnish the best platform suggestions for the coming campaign. Naturally the opposition press, under the leadership of the New York World, ridiculed a party so bereft of principles that it had to call on the college boys of the country to supply the deficiency, and the ridicule undoubtedly offset any benefits which might have been derived from the contest.

The Dartmouth College catalogue, now at hand, announces that Mr. John Barrett, president of the Pan-American union, has given $1000 for a John Barrett prize to be awarded annually. Thousands of graduates of Dartmouth have given larger sums with no fractional part of the personal publicity resulting.

The schools and colleges are always the target at which such enterprises aim. It is high time that the faculties consider what the average participant gets out of his efforts.  THE BOSTON HERAID