GATEWAY TO WASHINGTON

The announcement of the Loewenstein Fellowship marks the first practical step toward the easing of the path which connects college with the public service. The American political system, based upon party pyramids, has made it necessary for the college graduate to waste his most valuable years in routine party boot-licking, a task sufficiently unpleasant to drive any thoughts of a public career from the minds of many talented young men. This new fellowship proposes to bridge the gap between study and political activity by enabling the student to gain practical experience and the all-important contacts while he is still in graduate school. It is most certainly a beneficial move, but it can affect only a very small number and it leaves the majority of embryo statesmen in their present unsatisfactory position.

The most practical permanent solution of the problem would be achieved by the establishment of a school of Public Service as a graduate unit of the University. With the background of a general undergraduate education, the student in such a school would rapidly adapt his theoretical knowledge to the practical problems of American government. The chief value of the school would arise from its ability to secure temporary positions for its undergraduates and to give its graduates a firm start toward a public career.

In England the colleges feed the government with a steady stream of young talent which is absorbed through the lower appointive positions. In America no such entrance to politics is at present available and can be supplied only by a group of Public Service Colleges in the larger universities, colleges which would supplant the local party club as the origin of American statesmen.