THE UNDERGRADUATE'S TURN

The award of traveling fellowships to graduate students to study abroad, in the venerable Universities of England or the equally alluring institutions of the continent, is a long established tradition among American Universities. Here at Harvard the keen competition for Rhodes Scholarships attests to the value placed on this sort of thing.

There are several grounds, common-place enough in the talk of the day, why these fellowships are so highly prized and why not only educators but publicists also praise them so highly. They illustrate the vision that the brotherhood of letters and community of culture knows no boundaries which restrict intercourse. Differences there are between nations in all things. But it is established among civilized peoples that these differences are meant to delight and inspire rather than to repel the scholar or the scientist. From foreign contacts, moreover, native students bring back new notions applicable, usually, to the educational system of their own country, sometimes to other features of its life also. The current ideas afloat in our colleges, the tutorial system, the division into college units, and freedom from minor restrictions common in early American institutions--are fruits of such contact. Although many of the mental sprigs brought home from abroad would certainly wreak havoc if grafted on the American educational tree, a little instinct for selection can make the foreign contacts all profit and no loss.

Such are the implied enconiums heaped upon the system of travelling fellowships for graduates, also on instances of exchange professorships, and the like. It is hard to see why the same reasoning does not apply, and with equal force, to travelling scholarships for undergraduate. It is an outworn doctrine that the American undergraduate is a schoolboy needing constant discipline lest the desire for learning die entirely within his breast. He is being now, rather, subjected to contacts that are in themselves educational. Such is discussion with a competent tutor. Such, also, might well be study, for one year out of the four, at a foreign university.

For reasons which can only be conjectured, this has not before been done at Harvard. It has been left for the Circulo Italiano to finance the first such enterprise and pave the way for imitation. The announcement of the name of the recipient of the scholarship to all intents and purposes consummates the project. The terms are liberal. The recipient chooses his own institution--can change within a time of several months if it prove unsatisfactory. The scholarship is for a year. The whole move is thoroughly commendable and to it must accrue benefits as to a part of the movement for international comity and a comradeship of learning.