Members of this year's Freshman class are the first to have received at their homes before the opening of College a pamphlet containing advice from "the editors of the CRIMSON" as to the choices of courses in College. In previous years this advice has been limited to the pages of the CRIMSON itself; this year it appears with a "foreword" by Dolmar Leighton, '19, Dean of Freshmen. Just why the term "confidential" is retained is not clear. Nor is it clear that such a pamphlet, published under such auspices, can be regarded as "unofficial," in spite of its disclaimer to that effect. Of the 45 courses described and judged, about fifteen are commended under the caption "Go." while the other thirty are condemned in varying degrees of severity under the captions "Caution" and "Stop." The comment refers to the instructors freely by name, and it is suggested that these hard-working and well-meaning individuals may, like the Freshmen, derive profit from its perusal.

The anonymous critics show a notable and significant poverty of adjectives. There are, in fact, only two categories into which Harvard courses appear to be divisible, the "interesting" and "enthusiastic" on the one hand, and the "dull", "uninteresting," or "boring" on the other. There is an inescapable impression that the writers are asking much of the instructor and little of themselves. It is not, apparently, so much a question "What can I learn?", as "How can I be kept awake?" It seems to be implied that the college teacher should be a sort of pastry-cook providing well-seasoned morsels for jaded palates, or a showman furnishing entertainment to relaxed and well-fed auditors. One would like, furthermore, to know just who it was that found this or that course uninteresting. The critic is not only anonymous, but we have Dean Leighton's word for it that he is usually not more than "one or two CRIMSON editors.' On what ground is he selected? So long as that question remains unanswered it may always be to the course's credit that the critic should have found it uninteresting.

Although such a suggestion has in these days a quaint Victorian ring, there is possibly a question of courtesy as well as of competence. Professors do not as a rule refer publicly to CRIMSON editors or other students by name as slovenly and illiterate, whatever their opinion. Their restraint in such matters is inherent in the code of equality and polite intercourse that has superseded the older pedagogical autocracy. If undergraduates appreciate this newer spirit of fraternity and informality there is an obligation to reciprocate. But perhaps they would find such a course dull and uninteresting. --Harvard Alumni Bulletin.