The primary qualification for a college professor, it is to be assumed, is teaching ability. The failure of the University to appoint Assistant Professor John Potter to a permanent position means that it will lose one of its most competent and inspiring teachers in History and History and Literature.

Professor Potter is one of those rare teachers who are able to ignite the intellectual spark of the ordinary student. Since he first entered the service of the University, be has shown especial interest in the possibilities of the tutorial system, the most distinctive and potentially significant branch of Harvard education. He has been willing to experiment with the system in an effort to raise the standards of education in the University. His outstanding achievement is the cross area conference, in which students of dissociated areas meet with a joint tutor to discuss a problem common to all their fields.

The stringent financial limits imposed by the present system of tenure have not often forced the University to lose as good a man as Professor Potter. It is with deep regret that the many students who have come in contact with him will learn that he is not to be teaching at Harvard next year.