insulate the real students from one another, and so prevent the emergence of a mental current. Hence, to get rid of one student who is mentally inert may be of more avail in this matter than to acquire three who are mentally awake. It is at first a question not so much of size and range as of continuity. If a number of old friends look forward to an evening of congenial reminiscence round the fire, it may be more important that all the strangers go than that all the friends remain. The one false note mars the whole melody. The one chilly and unresponsive guest dissipates the spirit of festivity.

THE INCUBUS OF THE IDLE STUDENT

LOOKED at in this light, we see how specious are the arguments which have led us to tolerate the college idler so long. Clinging to the remote hope of his regeneration, we have permitted him to contaminate hundreds with the virus of intellectual listlessness. The time for tolerance is past. War measures are now necessary. The first and crying need of the American college to-day is the ejection, the ruthless ejection, of the man with the idle mind. He is the leper of college society.

Later, when conditions are less desperate, we may be able to treat him more leniently. But, then, the chances are that he will either be converted or will eliminate himself, for college will have become a place where a man with an idle mind will feel as uncomfortable as a churl in fine society. In bringing this condition about, however, we must not lose our sense of distinction. Greater vigilance over the intellectual life of the college must not be interpreted to mean that the poorly prepared student shall never be admitted, or that the man who gets low marks shall be instantly dismissed, or that the girl who is ruining her health over her books shall be tacitly applauded. am not speaking of mental endowment or of mental results. I am speaking of mental hunger, a very different thing. The curve of mental hunger cannot be plotted from statistics in the registrar's office.

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But all this is not enough. This is only the preparation of the soil. Next there must be the seed, an entire student body open-minded and alert is the indispensa

ble condition; but, as in that little debating-society, above them and around them and within them must be the unifying force of a central intellectual interest. A dozen words and phrases come to the tip of my pen to indicate what this interest might be, but I will not let myself put them down. All are inadequate, and each is bound to arouse the antagonism of some one who has another name for the same idea. But whatever we call this focusing power, who can doubt that a step of prime importance toward its attainment is the complete abolition of the compartment type of modern college- the college, I mean, made up of intellectually water-tight departments? In other words, we must wage unrelenting war on the spirit of narrow specialization. It was probably necessary, while our universities were being placed on a firm basis, for our colleges to pass through a period of the domination of this spirit. But that necessity is past. Hereafter specialization

should be left to the universities and vocational schools; and it should stand out more and more clearly as the duty of the college teacher to humanize his subject, to bring it home to the lives and experience of his students, to relate it to other subjects the study of which they are pursuing. And to this end we must exorcise a superstition that looms in the paththe obnoxious doctrine that largeness of outlook means lack of thoroughness and accuracy; that the presence of imagination means lack of respect for facts. It ought to mean, and it can mean, just the opposite. No one whose mind is healthy. loses interest in the towns and cities because he has seen a map of the whole country.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE TEACHER TOWARD HIS SUBJECT

IN this condemnation of the water-tight department I do not mean to include the system of major subjects, or the value of intensive study along some definite line. I refer, rather, to a distinct and easily recognizable attitude on the part of the teacher. Every one who has been through college has undoubtedly had the misfortune to fall into the clutches of at least one extreme example of the type-the man who teaches even the most elementary course in his subject as if all the stu

try from war; and while every one vehemently asserts that the whole of Mexico is n't worth the life of a single American soldier, many of these same people in the same breath condemn Mr. Wilson for having no policy. Any time in the last year it would have been easier to have brought on war than it has been to avert it.

The Mexican complications have afforded Mr. Wilson an opportunity to reaffirm in a broad and emphatic manner the Monroe Doctrine. As an Englishman, I am naturally not particularly enamoured of a doctrine which, no matter how essential it was to the safety and well-being of the United States in the past, is to-day, in my opinion, as injurious to Latin America as it is unnecessary to the United States, and detrimental to the progress of all the rest of the world; but that is a controversial subject not properly belonging here. As an American, as President of the United States, Mr. Wilson holds to the national polity, and permits no weakening of the Monroe Doctrine while in his keeping. In the early days of his Presidency, when relations with Mexico began to assume a threatening aspect, and some of the great European powers were showing signs of nervousness about the safety of their subjects and their investments in Mexico, suggestions were thrown out that Mexico was an international, and not purely an American, question, and certain newspapers urged the President to call a conference or in other ways invite the coöperation of Europe. That would not have been unpopular in some quarters, even although it might not unlikely have brought down on the President criticism for ignoring the Monroe

Doctrine; but at least it would have made Mr. Wilson's task easier. He not only refused to listen to the suggestion, but without offending European sensibilities he made it known that the United States would not consent to European interference in an American question, which Mexico is, and rather than the Monroe Doctrine being relaxed, it would be strengthened, if necessary. There is now no doubt in any European foreign office what President Wilson's attitude is on the Monroe Doctrine, and what his course would be should any European power challenge it. Whether for good or evil, the Monroe Doctrine exists as long as Woodrow Wilson remains in the White House. rest of the world "allows" the United States a free hand in dealing with Mexico because it has no alternative.

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Mr. Wilson has been his own foreign minister, as he has been his own cabinet. The Mexican policy is his policy. He cannot shift responsibility. He must accept blame for whatever happens, and to him will be accorded the credit if he brings about peace without having forced his own country into war. He has put his impress upon the state department, as he has upon all the other departments of the Government. He controls Congress. He dominates Washington. He is the most masterful figure American politics has known, as determined as Jackson, but with the persuasion and tact that were foreign to Jackson's nature. He has done things. Among the men to whom the White House is a background there is no more interesting study, none with nature more perplexing, none whose future defies prediction. Time will deliver the verdict.

ESPITE the fact that he played the flute and ranked Rossini above Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some. notable things about music. "Art is ever on the quest," is a wise observation of his, "a quest, and a divine adventure"; though this restless search for the new often ends in plain reaction, progress may be crabwise and still be progress. I fear that "progress" as usually understood is at glittering "general idea" that blinds us to the truth. Reform in art is not like reform in politics; you can't reform the St. Matthew Passion or the Fifth Symphony. Is "Parsifal" a reformation of Gluck? This talk of reform is only confusing the historical with the esthetic. Art is a tricksy quantity and, like quicksilver, is ever mobile. As in all genuine revolutions the personal equation counts the heaviest, so in dealing with the conditions of music at the present time one must study the temperament of our musicmakers and let prophecy sulk in its tent as it may.

If Ruskin had written music-criticism, he might have amplified the meaning of his once-famous phrase, the "pathetic fallacy," for I consider it a pathetic fallacy -though not in the Ruskinian sense-in criticism to be overshadowed by the fear that, because some of our critical predecessors misjudged Wagner or Manet or Ibsen, we should be too merciful in criticizing our contemporaries. This is the "pathos of distance" run to sentimental seed. The music of to-day may be the music of to-morrow, but if it is not, what then? It may satisfy the emotional needs of the moment, yet to-morrow be a stale formula. But what does that prove? Because Bach and Beethoven built their work on the bases of eternity (employing this tremendous term in its limited sense), one may nevertheless enjoy the men whose music is of slighter texture and “modern.” Nor is this a plea for mediocrity. Mediocrity we shall always have with us:

mediocrity is mankind in the normal, and normal man demands of art what he can read without running. Every century produces artists who are forgotten in a few generations, though they fill the eye and the ear for the time being with their clever production. This has led to another general idea, that of transition, of intermediate types. After critical perspective has been attained, it is seen that the majority of composers fall into this category, not a consoling notion, but an unavoidable. Richard Wagner has his epigones; the same was the case with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Mendelssohn was a delightful feminine variation on Bach, and after Schumann came Brahms.

The Wagner-Liszt tradition of musicdrama, so-called, and the symphonic poem have been continued with personal modifications by Richard Strauss; Max Reger has pinned his faith to Brahms and absolute music, though not without a marked individual variation. In considering his 'Sinfonietta," the "Serenade," the "Hiller Variations," the "Prologue to a Tragedy," the "Lustspiel Overture," the two concertos respectively for piano-forte and violin, we are struck not so much by the easy handling of old forms, but by the stark emotional content of these compositions. Reger began as a Brahmsianer, but he has thus far not succeeded in fusing form and theme so wonderfully as did his master. There is a Dionysian strain in his music that too often is in jarring discord with the intellectual plan of his work. But there is no denying that Max Reger is the one man in Germany to-day who is looked upon as the inevitable rival of Richard Strauss. Their disparate tendencies bring to the lips the old query, Under which king? Some think that Arnold Schoenberg may be a possible antagonist in the future, but for the present it's Reger and Strauss, and no third in opposition.

The Strauss problem is a serious one.