What would American life be without the questionnaire? It testifies at once to the intellectual curiosity of the inquirer, to his industry and to the imputed zeal of the public. It is made to be answered. Presumably it is answered or the stream of questions would not flow around every subject under Heaven. The good obey meekly each request to deliver their minds and never grumble about the postage. There should be a questionnaire on "Who invented the questionnaire?" If detected, his birthday should be a national holiday. He has given us a precious "institution." It is sad to see an inferior member of the hierarchy of knowledge, a mere college, disobedient to high command. Dean Doyle of the George Washington University has sent to some four hundred universities and colleges a questionnaire of great pith and moment on "Collegiatism"--a marvelous word that surprises by itself. What are the habits of the undergraduate?...

Possibly the dress and the behavior of professors and instructors should have been examined also. There used to be professors who went about crumpled and ungartered. There were even professors known to drink whiskey at $2 a gallon. Will it be believed that the Dean of Harvard College dissociates it and himself from this great survey? He says it has no meaning and that he won't have anything to do with it. The Dean of George Washington is a graduate of Harvard. The ungenial mother snubs her own son. What is infinitely worse, she kicks against an irresistible and "thoroughly American" custom that almost has the force of law.

The elective system is a Jeffersonian principle, but there are salutary limitations. One of the chief pleasures of college dons is to concoct examination papers. They are the last persons to refuse such tests. This aloofness, this excessive individualism, is confined, there is good ground for hoping, to the malignants of the Charles.... Tabulation will reveal the clothes philosophy of our young barbarians, the outward expression of their minds. Doubtless undergraduates of the college now proving itself so unworthy of them will rebuke its want of comity, its rebellion against one of the noblest forms of sociological effort and the spirit of uplift. In the language of its own discipline, it deserves a "public admonition." Answering of questionnaires should be made compulsory, at least to college professors, perhaps the largest producers. --New York Times.