COMMENTS ON UNIVERSITY PRESS.

That the foundation of the Harvard University Press is to exert an influence of the highest order in the field of learning and will be a strong factor in the advance of scholarship is recognized generally by the public press. We are quoting below an editorial from the Springfield Republican which illustrates very forcibly the attitude of the outside press toward the importance of the new University foundation. The editorial, printed in full, follows:

"The foundation of the Harvard press calls attention to the considerable and increasing place in the field of publishing which is being taken by the universities. Fashions spread so fast that it will perhaps not be long before a printing press will seem as indispensable to an ambitious university as a gymnasium, and the literary "output" will become as important as the number of students in attendance. The trade publishers will not suffer, for universities are not given to producing "best sellers," and most of their books a publisher could not well afford to bandle. Yet in addition to publishing records of research, of interest mainly to specialists, the universities might well consider how far they can supply books of permanent value the demand for which is too small to warrant a general publisher in undertaking them. The Loeb classical library is an excellent example of what a university might have done if a banker had not anticipated. But there are plenty of enterprises of the same general nature, and by co-operating to avoid wasteful duplication the great American universities might do much to strengthen our literature on a side where it is now weak. There are many valuable books, the publication of which would almost repay the cost, but not quite. An endowment could hardly be used more advantageously than in meeting this deficit and thus enriching literature. For the importance of a book is not at all to be measured by its numerical circulation; the essential thing is to have it come to the people who need it."