We like the facts and we like the name of the new "National Scholarships" with which Harvard University is planning to celebrate its 300th birthday next autumn. Here is an institution which, though wholly free of governmental control, is truly national in the American use of the word. Its rededication to the country, under the vigorous leadership of the distinguished scholar who has become its president, is a fine and welcome gesture.

The announcement of the plan couples with the scholarships a new group of professorships, designed to provide for research in the borderlands of knowledge lying between recognized departmental fields. Here, likewise, is an imaginative conception which has sound, practical bearings. Both ideas are refreshing in that they ignore the bricks and mortar to which so much of recent educational funds in America has been devoted and regard only human beings, The group of especially gifted students, representing all the states, is counted upon to stimulate the minds alike of student body and faculty. The "university professors," answerable directly to the president, seem certain to attract scholars of ability and to test the intellectual standards of the university with a new vigor.

Harvard is twice as old as the United States of America. President Conant has a right to speak with candor of the nation's problems. The announcement of the scholarships is supported by an eloquent warning against sectionalism. Another passage deserves the widest reading. While appreciating the importance of state and municipal universities, the opinion is expressed that "during the years to come it is possible that universities which have a maximum degree of independence from governmental support will fulfill a role of special significance in the maintenance of intellectual freedom."

It will be recalled that Harvard is one of the universities which has rejected Federal aid for fear of the limitation of liberty which might result. Nothing could be clearer than that the New Deal, which has successfully muzzled the radio and which sought to hamper the freedom of the press, is reaching out its tentacles toward education. It is good to know that in the fight to maintain intellectual freedom this first of American universities is standing guard. New York Herald Tribune. Nov. 26, 1935.