"THIS FREEDOM"

Word comes that Princeton students have performed the impossible. When a professor of international law failed to arrive within the traditional seven minutes, the class,--instead of pouring out in conscientious jubilation,--remained and "carried on".

So remarkable an event was this that the press of the nation has been stirred to applaud. And since it "is heralded on the Princeton Campus as the forerunner of the system of self-education which starts next fall", its success seems assured. One writer suggests invidiously that the episode was a mere object lesson engineered by the university press agent, but such suspicion is unbecoming. He should recognize in this the growing desire for student self-expression.

Educators have long dreamed of a Utopian circle of earnest, well-meaning students, an ideal working unit, with no professors to hamper free intellectual development by the imposition of mechanical exercises and bootless reports. Discussion in this happy family would replace lectures; and idea-killing assignments would be unknown. The difficulty, of course, has been in finding the earnest students. But now, university education appears to be returning to its sources, and the mediaevalist recalls the scenes in Bologna when the students at the University drove their unpopular instructors from the gates of the town.

The bright picture of the present holds many attractions for purists, and undoubtedly, the exemplary conduct of the Princeton class reinforces their position. But regardless of the improbabilities of such an ideal institution, the disciples of indifference who flee from possible instruction at "seven minutes after" may well look to those purposeful students for inspiration. The spectacle of a Harvard class functioning without its professor would split the hands on Memorial Hall clock.