CONFERMENT OF HONORARY DEGREES.
This is the week of college commencements in America; when five hundred odd colleges and Universities confer degrees upon probably one hundred thousand students. Numerous honorary degrees are also conferred, among other recipients of such distinctions this week being Mr. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. Owen Young, both of whom were made Doctors of Laws. The same degree is being also awarded to Mrs. Coolidge and Mrs. Hoover respectively by different institutions. The degree of Doctor of Laws is the nearest American substitute for an appointment to the Legion of Honour in France, or for the honour of knighthood in England. Some colleges confer these honours upon wealthy contributors; but the older institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; are extremely careful in selecting those whom they shall honour, and their choices for such distinction are always the outstanding Americans of the year. The most important educational characteristic of the college year now closing has been the intensive development in many institutions of the idea, as President Lowell of Harvard expresses it, " of making the undergraduate more largely educate himself, and to
provoke in him an interest in so doing."
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