The writer in the last Advocate, who urges the need of a course in college devoted to subjects of current interest, both political and moral, has touched on a matter of no little importance. What he says about the tendency of college men to neglect the affairs of the present day, is in a degree, true. There must always be in a college to a greater or less extent, the danger of monasticism, of seclusion from the outside world to live the life of the little university community. The cry against the impractical side of a college education has its ground largely in this: that whereas a college man knows the theories on which the world should be run, and knows how men have run it in the past, when he comes in contact with the world of the present day, he finds himself out of touch with it and ignorant of what it really is.

Any steps which the university could take to anticipate, so to speak, the education which such a college man would have to get for himself in his first contact with the outside world, would be very profitable. Such education, however, would have to come chiefly from outside men. If the student is to be told just what the outside world of the present is, he should learn it from men straight from the world itself, and from many men from the many aspects of the world.

The writer in the Advocate goes a little far in implying the opportunities at Harvard for instruction of this sort, are absent. They are present in a large measure, if we only knew where to look for them. In the English 6 debates, matters of current interest are discussed, and, although the authority of men fresh from the battle field is wanting, yet the discussions reveal points which are distinctly instructive in just the line the Advocate lays down. The same is true, in a degree, of the debates of the Harvard Union. But the important source of information concerning the outside world, and information, moreover, from the lips of those in a position to speak authoritatively, is the College Conferences.

Of course the conferences do not pretend to provide a comprehensive course in all the current topics of discussion, but they do take, to a large extent, the place of the course proposed in the Advocate. The aim of the conferences is to bring the students into contact with men qualified by their experience to speak on the questions, political and moral, which are agitating the world today. The conferences do not limit themselves to college instruction, in fact they look for speakers mostly in the outside world. In this way they afford a capital opportunity for the college to keep in touch in an interesting way with the events and thoughts of the world.