conviction was already deeply implanted in his mind long before he was chosen to rule over Princeton.

The new President's first assault was on the

mechanism of the instructional system. As a beginning the level of scholarship had to be raised. Almost immediately on taking office, therefore, Dr. Wilson appointed a committee to consider the enforcement of what had become merely nominal standards of attainment. A scheme was formulated under which men had to pass their examinations or go. Some of them went. The others learned to work. There was a short-lived outcry, particularly among the aristocrats. Then the storm died down and Princeton settled quietly into its new stride.

That, however, was no more than a preliminary move. The next reform, more fundamental but less calculated to provoke hostility, was a recasting of the academic curriculum. By the beginning of the twentieth century the revolt against the old cast-iron régime of dead languages and mathematics had opened the door to a freedom of choice that was in grave danger of being carried to excess. Three boys out of ten may be competent on entering college at nineteen to map out their own course of study for the next four years; but that estimate is probably too high, and, in any case, the remaining seven will not be competent. The right compromise is clearly that the university should impose a certain groundwork of general education, and encourage its men from that starting-point to launch out on the particular study of their choice.

Dr. Wilson was one of the first of American educationists to emphasize that salutary doctrine. In his inaugural address at Princeton in 1902 he had laid it down that out of the host of studies "we must make choice, and suffer the pupil himself to make choice. But the choice we make must be the chief choice, the choice that the pupil makes the subordinate choice. We must supply the synthesis and must see to it that, whatever group of studies the student selects, it shall at least represent the round whole, contain all the elements of modern knowledge, and be itself a complete circle of general subjects." Practically applied, as Dr. Wilson forthwith applied it, that doctrine meant that for their freshman and sophomore years men followed a prescribed course of study, while as juniors and seniors they were allowed wide, though not unfettered, liberty of choice. The "department system," or system of group electives" (so

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called because the student's choice must fall within a group of studies so formulated as to give unity and sequence to his whole college course), is now generally accepted throughout American universities, its wide adoption being due, not wholly indeed, but in considerable measure, to Dr. Wilson's pioneer work at Princeton.

The ground thus cleared, the road lay open for the greatest of Dr. Wilson's educational reforms. At the time when he was set in authority at Princeton the provision made by the typical American university for the actual imparting of instruction was gravely inadequate. The old

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recitation," or catechetical, method was being abandoned in favour of set lectures; and outside the two or three hours a day spent in the lectureroom the student was left to his own almost undirected reading. There was a total lack of tutorial guidance, and, what what was hardly less serious, the contact of adolescent with maturer minds was practically confined to the few hours a week given to attending lectures, and the value of these varied directly with the lecturer's capacity and the student's attention.

Dr. Wilson met the situation with a bold and constructive reform. He realized the inadequacy of mere classroom teaching and the necessity of somehow providing for the personal touch, the play of mind on mind, that is the condition of true education as opposed to mere instruction. That provision was found in the preceptorial systemthe creation of small groups of students associated with a tutor or professor, whose teaching was conducted through the medium of informal conferences, closely resembling the German seminar. The idea of such a system shaped itself early in the President's mind. In addressing a meeting of Princeton alumni at New York three months after his inauguration in 1902 he had sketched the outline of his scheme, pointing to the need for qualified instructors to act as companions and coaches and guides of the undergraduates' reading. "If we could get a body of such tutors at Princeton," he predicted, we could transform the place from a place where there are youngsters doing tasks to a place where there are men doing

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thinking, men who are conversing about the things of thought, men who are eager and interested in the things of thought."

To a large extent that transformation has been effected. To secure the full benefit that might be derived from it, all the students should, as President Wilson realized, be domiciled, with the tutors, in the hostels or dormitories (residential halls), instead of living independently in lodgings in the neighbourhood. That further change he was able to effect in part. For freshmen and sophomores the hostel system became general. In the case of third and fourth year men the attempt to introduce it broke down under circumstances presently to be described. But the essence of the preceptorial system was the subordination of the formal lecture to the conversational conference or discussion. As regards that part of his scheme Dr. Wilson's success was unqualified. Educationally it raised the existing standards to a new level, while its contribution to the social life of the university in establishing new contacts and breaking down old barriers had a different, but hardly inferior, value.

The successes that marked the first half of Dr. Wilson's presidency at Princeton are not more to his credit than the failures that marked the second. He knew well at the outset that to reform Princeton education would be less formidable an undertaking than to democratize Princeton society. But he had no thought of shrinking from either task. At the end of his fifth year as President he laid before the trustees

of the university a scheme intimately affecting the future of the students' clubs. The Princeton clubs were a characteristic feature of the life of the university. The fraternities, college societies usually denominated by two or three Greek letters (such, for example, as the SKE), familiar throughout American universities, were forbidden at Princeton, and their absence had stimulated the tendency of the wealthier students, of whom there were many, to associate in luxurious residential club-houses. There were twelve of these in the close vicinity of the campus, accommodating in all between three and four hundred men.

While there was nothing to criticize in the conduct of the clubs, their existence was a standing repudiation of every ideal Dr. Wilson aimed at establishing at Princeton. They perpetuated a spirit of exclusiveness and privilege, and along two distinct lines worked consistently for separation and division in the university. On the one hand, they drove a wedge between the rich man and the poor man, for the clubs were a luxury of the well-to-do ; on the other, they erected a permanent barrier between undergraduates of the first two and the last two years, since neither freshmen nor sophomores were eligible for membership. At the same time they were so firmly established in the life of the society that on many men the hope of election to a particular club exerted a much more effective influence than the hope of academic distinction.

Nothing could be more alien to Dr. Wilson's idea of what a university should be, and no one