AND ANOTHER THING

A great deal has been said about the place of the Harvard man, graduate and undergraduate, in the fellowship of educated men. His is not exactly an enviable position in an ever increasing body of university and college members. And it is both his fault and not his deliberate goal. He has been accused and convicted of a colossal mannerism, which can best be described as a superiority complex. And be it said, that proud and vain glorious animal that he is, he has sometimes secretly reveled in the condemnation--a statement applicable almost exclusively to the undergraduate.

The attitude of the Harvard man is as difficult to make clear as it is to excuse. His place on the collegiate ladder either approximates the top or the bottom. There is a clear alignment in this difference of rating. On one side are Harvard people, on the other a majority of the rest of the world, hardly a satisfactory division of opinion. But the fact remains that while he is theoretically inclined to view with disfavor such a position, he is quite as likely to practice not a little pride in it. The paradox is easily understandable and as closely as is possible approaches an explanation of a manner of thinking which has brought such a shower of just criticism from outsiders.

There are two possible remedies to a situation which viewed in its broad aspects, and discrediting any petty sense of smug satisfaction, is certainly unfortunate. Either Harvard men through a tolerant and intelligent contact with men of other institutions, must come to the conviction that all good things are not centered in Cambridge, or they must sooner or later school themselves to an open minded acceptance of manners and methods strange, perhaps, but measured by a different standard quite as good.