USEFUL VACATIONS

The Christmas vacation meant little to the University. It was a period, a brief one, during which business was disrupted, and everything that represents Harvard, with the single exception of the Glee Club, ceased to exist; in fact there was no Harvard for ten days. Since there is o gain in this the vacation is looked upon simply as a necessary evil.

Not so at Princeton and Yale. College organizations carried these names all over the country. Instead of suspending business, these institutions profited by the holidays, Princeton sent a debating team to California, a dramatic organization--the Triangle Club--to eleven cities, and two athletic teams on extensive tours. The "Daily Princetonian" remarks: "All in all Princeton will be well represented this vacation," Such a thought as representing Harvard during vacation does not seem to have occurred in Cambridge.

Yale more than equalled Princeton's efforts. Not only did several athletic teams and other non-athletic undergraduate organizations represent the university on their trips, but three official speakers were sent out to cover the country from one coast to the other. They were to attend meetings of the many alumni clubs to answer questions about Yale, especially about the Freshman class, to outline plans for co-operation between the university and its graduates, and to suggest improvements in the work carried on in the different loyalties by the clubs.

There can be no doubt that a college gains by judicious advertising, just as any business gains. Yale and Princeton seized the opportunity of doing the best possible advertising through their under graduates and graduates during the Christmas vacation, and one must credit them with a profit on the balance-sheet. Harvard gained nothing by liberating. The University does not wish to conduct an advertising campaign in a commercial manner, but it should not refuse to extend its influence where it can. It is conservatism carried to a harmful degree to imagine that a good name and fame are spread without any effort from within. Harvard, like Yale and Princeton, should support whole-heatedly any plan leading to a greater scope of usefulness and action.