vided. Almost every country maintains a considerable number of fellowships for foreign study, to say nothing of the large number of young men who go abroad for study on their own account.

This dependence upon foreign countries for advanced studies and also for ideals in art, science, literature and social progress has its disadvantages for Latin America. Native ideas are often mistrusted and as a consequence initiative in the higher things of life is discouraged. Strong characters, who would work reforms social and economic, are looked upon as dreamers; the weaker men become pessimistic in the face of the greater local difficulties. A recent work of South American fiction portrays such a returned scholar who finds conditions at home so difficult as compared with what he has seen abroad, that he loses his patriotism and declines to help the fatherland whose pensioner he has been for years. I am certain that such a person is not an empty imagination of the author. The situation is a perplexing one. Latin America needs graduate study for its leaders in science, but the traveling fellow often loses on one side as much as he gains on the other. Sympathy with his own people and with home conditions is as necessary for the public man as knowledge of the sciences themselves.

Real graduate study cannot progress in Latin America until university teaching becomes a distinct profession. The teacher who gives three hours per week of his time to the class and the rest to non-academic pursuits may be a good teacher for a professional school, but he can never become the scholar that the graduate school demands. The best prospect for the development of this grade of instruction (at least in some lines) is at the University of La Plata. This institution is of very recent foundation and takes pride in being different from its neighbors. It has tried to break away from the professional tradition and to stimulate research and an academic atmosphere.

Aside from this institution, however, the tendency in Latin-American universities today is to accentuate the professional and the practical. In the University of Buenos Aires, the largest in Latin America, the department of phi

losophy and letters is the only department that is not growing. Elsewhere it either does not exist or is stagnant. The emphasis is all laid on professional schools, particularly on the colleges of engineering and agriculture. However the enrollment is not the largest here. Young men still enroll in excessive numbers for the professions of law and medicine, although the authorities, both university and political, are urging students toward the more commercial vocations of engineering and agriculture. These schools receive large appropriations and are fostered in every conceivable way. It is not easy, however, to thwart a tradition. The so-called learned professions still receive the larger quota of the university population. It is only where commercial life has become intense that the predilection for the time-honored law course has begun to lessen.

THE UNIVERSITIES AND AMERICAN INTERNA

TIONAL RELATIONS

By George W. Nasmyth, Ph.D., President of the Eighth International Congress of Students. Director of the

International Bureau of Students

In the permanent work for the real object of the Clark University Conference on Latin America, to promote closer relations, mutual understanding and friendship between the United States and Latin America, the Universities of PanAmerica have a position of great importance. We have seen the importance of the universities as a part of American foreign policy in the awakening of China-the beginnings of the Chinese Republic can be traced in large part to the influence of Chinese students returning from their study in American universities. We are just commencing to realize the influence which the German universities have had in the shaping of American education, and to make conscious use of the exchange of professors and students to establish closer German-American relations. But the opportunities for the universities in improving American international relations is greater still on account of the dominant position of the Universities of Latin America in shaping public opinion. If the students of the United States and Latin America can be brought into closer contact, we shall not have the next generation of Latin America interpreting the utterances of our Jingoistic press as the true expression of our public opinion, and we shall not have the widespread ignorance in the United States of Latin-American civilization and of the achievements of many of the Latin-American countries in all departments of human life.

Definite steps have been taken to enlist the universities more completely in the continuance of the work of the conference. It is encouraging to review the beginnings

which have already been made. The increasing importance attached to the study of the Spanish language in the universities of the United States and its almost universal recognition in the entrance requirements in recent years has been a factor of far-reaching influence. This has been followed by the establishment of professorships in Latin-American history and civilization in a constantly increasing number of universities. The courses offered last year in the following universities may be cited as examples of this important tendency:

Columbia University, Prof. William R. Shepherd, course on "Latin America."

Clark University, Prof. George H. Blakeslee, "Latin America. Dickenson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Prof. Leon C. Prince, "Spanish America."

University of Illinois, Prof. William S. Robertson, "History of Latin America."

University of Nebraska, Prof. Clark E. Persinger, "Spanish America."

University of Nebraska, Prof. Guernsey Jones, "Asiatic and South American History."

University of Pennsylvania, Prof. Leo S. Rowe, "Latin America." University of Southern California, Prof. David P. Barrows, "South America."

University of Wisconsin, the work of Prof. Paul S. Reinsch in "Latin-American Political Institutions" is being given by Prof. B. S. Moore and Prof. Stanley K. Hornbeck.

Yale University, Prof. Hiram Bingham, "Latin-American History."

Another factor of increasing importance has been the coming of students from the Latin-American countries to the Universities of the United States. The tide has been turning from Europe to North America in recent years so that at the present time the United States has more than four times as many as France. The total number of students from Latin America in the year 1912-13 studying in American colleges was 436.

The geographical distribution of the Latin-American students in thirty-four universities, colleges and technical institutions was as follows:

Total

88 63 90 33 34 53 7 12 8 5 14 1 3137436

The largest number of Latin-American students is claimed by Cornell University, with 88, then comes Pennsylvania, with 81, and then at a long distance, Michigan with 35, Syracuse 27, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 24, Columbia 22, Illinois 21, California and Pennsylvania State 20 each, etc., making a total of 436 Latin-American students in these 30 institutions. The total number of Latin-American students in all the French universities was 100 in 1910, 120 in 1911, 128 in 1912 and 123 in 1913.