SPARE THAT TREE

To the suggestion that the property of Yale University be taxed, President Angell has replied in a speech forecasting financial ruin for the institution if the demands of the municipal politicians are satisfied. To the natural question, why, in times like these, a university with an endowment of a hundred million should refuse to pay taxes, President Angell virtually answered that Yale untaxed is "a great historical spiritual force whose cultural benefits cannot be measured by any merely monetary standards." In the event of taxation, he predicted further, Yale may decline to the place of "a third-rate, purely local college."

It is very probable that the large expenditure which the proposed taxes entail would place a heavy burden on the building's aged back. But that its effects would be so disastrous as the President rather plaintively forecasts is a questionable assumption. All the important universities have been forced to make up heavy deficits in the last few years: while the effort has caused them considerable discomfort, none have fallen. Yale, firmly entrenched behind her endowment, doss not cut an impressive figure in violently crying, "Wolf," in the abashed faces of the New Haven tax collectors.

The danger of the tax measure, however, and its justification, are not to be disposed of in the same words. The city officials may not be jeopardizing Yale, but they are certainly making demands on it without a full measure of reflection. For instance, in the $3,500,000 spent annually by the students, Yale is providing the city of New Haven with more than the total of the proposed taxes. Any reduction in the University's outlay necessitated by increased taxation would discourage further endowment and the enlargement of facilities, and might well lessen the amount of money spent in the city. In fine, the municipality would be dealing itself a telling blow. The proper solution undoubtedly lies in some such arrangement as that in Cambridge, where the faculty has contributed directly to unemployment relief.