On Wednesday of next week the CRIMSON will open its fifth quadrennial poll of the Presidential leanings of the University. College, graduate schools, and faculty will be included in as comprehensive a survey as can be made.

Such a poll derives both interest and value from the circumstances of Election Day voting which completely effaces the separate identity of the University vote. To students themselves a tabulation of the political preferences of their associates cannot but be interesting.

To the outside world the trend of opinion in a large academic community should have a peculiar merit. Nowhere is sound information on political questions more readily obtainable, nowhere does freedom of thought meet more encouragement, nowhere are limited interests less active than in a university like Harvard.

Whether or not the colleges harbor the cream of the country's youthful intelligence, it is undeniable that they furnish a matchless environment for the formation of intelligent and disinterested political opinion. This factor, if no other, gives the results of a university poll, such as is now projected for Harvard, a distinct and unrivalled value.