On the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, a year or so ago, "The Yale Daily News" issued a special number in which eminent graduates of Yale were invited to express their views respecting the higher education of today. Among them, very naturally, was the Hon. William Howard Taft, who responded to the invitation with a critical piece that set a thousand tongues aquiver. In an interview with Frazier Hunt in the current "Cosmopolitan" the Chief Justice returns to his theme. "The emphasis in college life is wrong", he insists. And he proceeds to expatiate on the submergence of scholarship in extra-curricula activities and especially athletics. "The stadium," he says, "overshadows the classroom--athletics have a dollar sign in front of them."

Few students of the subject will quarrel with his description of the disease. Predominant in every American college and university at present are the social activities of student life, and of these the most important, from the point of view of the public, are the athletic. Membership in the varsity football team represents the peak of undergraduate attainment, and from that the scale of values grades down through the lesser sports, through the glee and mandolin clubs, the dramatic society and the comic weekly to the bottom of scholastic excellence. Education, the nominal object of every college student, plays second fiddle in the popular estimate to the development of those attributes that make the "mixer."

We have used the words "public" and "popular" to designate this assortment of values for the simple reason that it does not faithfully reflect the undergraduate judgement. The undergraduate, in notable instances at least, is in open rebellion against it. He is kept in subjection only by the weight of alumni opinion.

Which brings us to the real cause of the condition about which Mr. Taft is so bitter. In the last quarter of a century, long after Mr. Taft was weaned from his alma mater, the great bulk of college graduates have found their livelihood not in the so-called learned professions, but in business. At the same time they have been under an ever increasing pressure to identify themselves with the institutions that set them adrift in the world. The American genius for organization has been nowhere more potent that in its regimentation of college alumni, with the result that the alumni have come to dictate the ideals of the college. These ideals are naturally those of the "mixer," since in nine cases out of ten it is the good "mixer" that succeeds in business.

Yale of late years (her example, besides being typical, is most pertinent to the present discussion) has collected from her faithful sons an enormous endowment fund. Who were its most conspicuous donors? Were they prize scholars grown affluent as a result of the intellectual nutriment they derived from her, or merely run-of-the-mill graduates with an aptitude for trade? The latter undoubtedly. And what do they look for as a sign that their university is maintaining its prestige in the academic realm? A winning football eleven.

To gratify them under the circumstances becomes a recognized obligation. This does not mean, of course, that Yale is not a stickler for all the amateur rules governing intercollegiate sport. She is, Technically no taint of professionalism touches her skirts. But that is hardly the point that Mr. Taft has in mind. He sees the source of the pressure to elevate muscle over mind and the enormous investment in equipment and coaches that is dedicated to this end.

But how to cure the malady, how to loosen the grip of the alumni on college policy and vest it again in the little company of scholars who are supposed to lead the undergraduate toward the light? On this point the Chief Justice makes no suggestions. But possibly the remedy lies in a reaction among the alumni themselves. We note, for instance, in "The Harvard Alumni Bulletin," a strong protest against a proposed enlargement of the Harvard Stadium to meet the demand for seats at her major athletic spectacles. This and the more or less widespread movement to get rid of the professional coach are excellent omens. --New York Herald Tribune.