(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

The gentleman who wrote the review of Dean Clark's "Discipline and the Derelict" for the Crimson of Friday, May 20, betrays, both directly and by implication, that he is in a sad condition of ignorance concerning a university in which Harvard has a very special interest.

In the third sentence of the review the author speaks of Dean Clark's book as dealing with "all the aspects of undergraduate life in a small Middle Western College". Now the University of Illinois happens to be, in point of numbers as well as in many other respects, one of the leading universities of the country. I have not at hand recent statistics, but there certainly has been a time when Illinois had more students than Harvard, and it would not be surprising if it had today. Nothing could be more ridiculous than to apply to such an institution the term "a small Middle Western College".

The reviewer, however, is not satisfied to give his readers this single impression that Dean Clark writes out of a rather limited experience. Later in his article he implies that it is possible that the Dean is mistaken in his assertion that the college undergraduate does not differ widely in characteristics whether we meet him in California or Massachusetts; in Michigan or Mississippi. Now Dean Clark has had rather a wide experience with young men; he graduated from Illinois in 1890, and studied as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, in 1894, and at Harvard in 1898-99. He has been Dean of Men at Illinois for twelve, years, and is Secretary of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Not many men have had op- portunities such as his to observe the characteristics of college undergraduates himself, and to discuss them with other trained observers. The Crimson reviewer gave scant recognition to Dean Clark's standing in the world of disciplinary administration.  FREDERICK WINSOR '93.

May 21, 1921.

The review in question appeared in the Bookshelf in the issue of May 20, 1921.--Ed