South's Shortage

President Edwin Rogers Embree of the Julius Rosenwald Fund has never left anyone in doubt of his low esteem for Southern educational standards. But President Embree is an exceedingly genial man and last spring when he passed through Baton Rouge he allowed newshawks to quote him as saying that Louisiana State University had "every right to come to be included in the first twelve or 15 universities" of the U. S. Month ago James Monroe Smith, president of L. S. U., quoted Mr. Embree as predicting the imminent inclusion of his institution among the first dozen U. S. universities. When Mr. Embree denied having predicted any such thing, Senator Huey Pierce Long set up a loud cry that he had "swallowed his words."

Last week Yaleman Embree retaliated with a blunt statement that no university in the South can claim inclusion in the first twelve. Thereupon he listed his choices for the first twelve in the order of educational excellence: Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Yale, California, Minnesota, Cornell, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Princeton, Johns Hopkins. Said he: "More than half of the country's great universities are in the Middle West and Far West. This came about through John D. Rockefeller's building the University of Chicago and maintaining it as a standard for educational institutions. The great South has no such school. If there were one, the competition would probably transform the intellectual history of that section as it has in the Middle West."

As for Louisiana State University, Mr. Embree concluded, it is not even among the best Southern institutions: Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Duke, Emory.

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