freedom, as often misrepresented by its friends as endangered by its enemies. Even British universities asking for Parliamentary support are disturbed by what that support may involve, and poor though they may be, they esteem their spiritual freedom as greater riches than such coercive treasures as Ministries of Education might bestow. As for the United States, it is a habit with a school of writers to lament the degradation into which American universities have fallen through subservience to rich graduates and millionaire trustees, or to deplore their capitulation to political control. Probably enough facts are easily producible to make such complaints plausible. It has just been remarked, for example, that there are two sides to the story of graduate support, and within the last few years there have been instances of harsh and crude interference by politicians in state universities. The public, incompetent to judge, has been stimulated to demand of the professors in its service its own economic, political or religious orthodoxy. But the picture is distorted if such aberrations are magnified. The great private and the older state universities now have firm traditions of academic freedom, and if in some of the newer states there is still ground to be won, that simply means that the process of securing liberty is always slow. Such a large personal element enters in each case into the determination of the essence of academic freedom

that generalization as to the homage that is really paid to it may be misleading; but the impartial observer who knows American universities must admit that the prevailing atmosphere is favourable to the advancement of truth by discussion. That toleration, one of the rarest and finest of human qualities, is silently wielding a stronger influence to-day than formerly in the leading universities of this continent, must be evident to anyone who reads biography and the records of the controversies of the nineteenth century.

On Canada American influence in this respect has been negligible. Such suggestions of the infringement of academic freedom as there have been, and they are very few, are traceable to universal human frailties. As yet the provincial universities have not suffered from political partizanship, their boards of governors having been allowed the full privileges of their trusteeship. Private universities and colleges that depend for support upon their own constituencies have so far been given little more than enough to meet their necessities, and as the rich have not yet undertaken to supply luxuries neither have they attempted to dictate policies.

The two outstanding features in the higher education of America are the creation of the state university and the magnificent endowments that have been made for the cause of education. Con

sidering their range, it is a remarkable fact that so little attempt has been made to control the intellectual direction of the institutions in which these vast sums have been expended. Of all endowments the two outstanding are those created by Mr Carnegie and Mr Rockefeller. These gentlemen committed their money in trust to corporations. The trustees of the Carnegie Corporation and Foundation have undertaken the support of educational and research institutions, have spent large amounts on scientific investigation, established pensions and annuity funds for university teachers in the United States and Canada, and conducted enquiries, some of which have introduced new eras in professional education. The trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation have aimed at the promotion of education on a wide and varied scale, and on the development of public health in the United States. But with unprecedented generosity they have gone beyond their borders and have conducted investigations into disease at its source and have endeavoured to clear up unhealthy areas throughout the world from which disease spreads. They have also selected a few medical schools in Britain and in Canada to which they have made large grants for the development of scientific medicine, and in Canada at least they have at the same time refrained from qualifying the gift with advice as to its disposal. The work of these two

foundations is even already a remarkable tribute to the imagination and the humanity of both founders and trustees. If America has been self-centered in her trade policy and has put a wall around herself against the outside world, Mr Carnegie and Mr Rockefeller have, in the design and the execution of their purposes, displayed an intelligent altruism that has done much to redress their country's commercialism.

The most serious task that lies before the universities of the continent is the cultivation of those who are to become the intellectual leaders of the people. Democracy as it exists in America is willing to educate the masses but is careless of the few who must be carried to a high degree of proficiency. The maintenance of the humanities is especially difficult, as also of the abstract disciplines of pure science, the processes of history and speculative thought. A tradition must be established for their transmission and a large society of receptive minds be created for their comprehension. It was to be expected that hitherto literature, the pure sciences and the fine arts should have flourished in the old eastern centres, and still the eastern professor, with the precedence he assumes as incident to his academic tradition, is inclined to despair of the humanities in the state universities and to assign to them the professions and things vocational, or, as it has been expressed, "the western

university will look after the body and the eastern college will look after the soul1."

But Professor Sherman is right in repudiating the idea that liberal culture will continue to be localized in the East. From the vigorous and vital newer districts come and will come much of the best material for the post-graduate schools. Indifference to things intellectual is not determined by longitude; the moral earnestness which will in time issue in high quality of mind will not fail the descendants of the best American stock, wherever they happen to be. And it is, therefore, impossible to estimate the value of the state university to districts in which material wellbeing so easily outruns the slower and steadier gifts of the spirit and exhausts itself in banality. Soon the handful will become many thousands; and in the meantime once again the few will save a city. Moreover, even by reason of the very mass production which at present endangers quality, the democracy will in due course acquire a more widely diffused education; higher grades will come into existence; a better environment will call forth the latent genius, and a more refined native culture will appear.

It will be observed by those who know both countries that the influence of the Americans upon the Canadians is greater among the average folk who meet one another in business and read ordinary news1 S. P. Sherman, The Genius of America, pp. 159 f.