The announcement that two of Yale's social fraternities have withdrawn from their national organizations and have become eating clubs is of significance to fraternities in other universities. It is likely that the action at Yale is a local matter, resulting from the new plan of eight college organizations within the university.

The significance, however, lies in the fact that if the Yale plan of a few large living groups proves successful it may spread to other colleges. Therefore, just what the effect will be on Yale's fraternities is of more than passing interest.

The Yale literary magazine, believing that the move will result in the inevitable discontinuance of all Yale's fraternities, says, "The old lady (literary magazine) bids farewell to a group of institutions which she has known over a long period as fraternities. She dons black for the first time in her history only long enough to celebrate an inevitable release."

On the other side of the question, however, Yale's president, Dr. James Rowland Angell, expressed the belief that merely readjustment and not extinction would be the ultimate fate of the fraternities.

There is no doubt but what the cheaper, more democratic hall system, carrying with it all the comforts and conveniences that any house could offer, furnishes real competition with the fraternity system.

A more constricted form of the hall club system has existed for a number of years at Stanford without having any particular effect on the fraternities. Yale's more radical and more expensive plunge into the hall plan may have different results.

Stanford's Hall-Row arrangement has proven very satisfactory to date, and in the clubs, fraternities, and dormitories, each man finds his preferred surroundings. Yet, even on the Farm, the Yale developments will be watched with interest, as we watch for the reaction at other institutions. --The Stanford News.