THE PRESIDENT'S REPORT.

President Lowell's annual report, which the CRIMSON prints this morning, will repay the study of every member of the University. The report shows that the University in the past year has grown in many ways, and that the device carved on one of its gates, "Enter to Grow in Wisdom" is not an idle one, for increased opportunities for such growth are always being added. But President Lowell does not make his report merely a series of verbal boquets. He points out several matters which stand in need of change and improvement.

His remarks on the proper age for entering college are worth reproducing for the benefit of boys in preparatory schools and for the parents of all boys who expect to go to college. President Lowell does not ask for an increase in the number of infant prodigies. He does not level criticism at the man who must work until he is twenty or more before entering college, to earn the money to pay his college bills. But he does criticise, the man who dawdles along in preparatory school and who enters college at an age when he should be graduating, entering a professional school, or taking up the business of life.

Of course, when a man enters college at twenty, the college cannot be expected to graduate him in one year so that he may start in his work in the world outside of college at the same time as the man who enters at seventeen. The problem of getting men to enter college when they are seventeen, the age suggested by President Lowell, cannot be solved by any University. It can be suggested, as President Lowell has done in his report, but there must be country-wide education in the matter before there will be any perceptible increase in the number of men who enter at this age. The argument that the difficulty of the entrance examinations makes long preparation for college necessary is shown to carry little weight by the fact that the younger members of the present Freshman class, as a rule, did better work than the older ones.

The report brings out well the success to date of the Freshman dormitories, although, as President Lowell says, no certain verdict can be arrived at until 1918 is graduated, and the effects on more than one Freshman class studied. The dormitories, without being "mollycoddle factories" as some sub-Freshmen liked to lable them before they saw them in operation, constitute a better environment for younger boys, than the old live-where-you-please system offered. Parents, who have hesitated to send boys to live "around," although such hesitancy was due largely to a distorted idea of the pitfalls of college life, will have no such fears in sending their sons to the Freshman dormitories. The President's appeal for a new dormitory is, therefore, deserving of immediate attention, and should even come before such needed improvements as a new gymnasium and a Harvard theatre.

It is unfortunate that President Lowell is compelled to touch upon the question of neglect in the matter of loan funds. The lack of conscience displayed by so many in neglecting to pay back the money the college has lent them is hard to understand. The fact that such loans are "debts of honor" should be enough to insure their speedy repayment. The men who do not pay back this money are doubly culpable. Not only do they take an unfair advantage of the University, but they prevent other men from enjoying the help they enjoyed.

The report touches on many other points worthy of comment--the need of new chemistry buildings, the raising of the tuition fee, the union with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, etc. For this reason it should be read with care by all who are interested in the work of the University.