The first thing that is likely to impress the undergraduate is the observation that college society is much less democratic than it used to be. It is to be expected, of course, that it will be simply an epitome of the society round about it. But the point is, that whereas the college of the past was probably more democratic than the society about it, the present-day college is very much less democratic. Democracy does not require uniformity, but it does require a certain homogeneity, and the college to-day is less homogeneous than that of our fathers. For the growing preponderance of the cities has meant that an ever-increasing proportion of city-bred men go to college, in contrast to the past, when the men were drawn chiefly from the small towns and country districts. Since social distinctions are very much more sharply marked in the city than in the country, this trend has been a potent influence in undemocratizing the college. In ordinary city life these distinctions are not yet, at least, insistent enough to cause any particular class feeling, but in the ideal world of college life they become aggravated, and sufficiently acute to cause much misunderstanding and ill-feeling. With increasing fashionableness, the small college, until recently the stronghold of democracy, is beginning to succumb, and to acquire all those delicately devised, subtle forms of snobbery which have hitherto characterized the life of the large college. If this tendency continues, the large college will have a decided advantage as a preparation for life, for as a rule it is situated in a large city, where the environment more nearly approximates the environment of after life than does the artificial and sheltered life of the small college. The presence of aliens in large numbers in the big colleges, and increasingly in the smaller colleges, is an additional factor in complicating the social situation. It ought not to be ignored, for it has important results in making the college considerably less democratic even than would otherwise be the case. It puts the American representatives on the defensive, so that they draw still more closely together for self-defense, and pull more tightly their lines of vested interest and social and political privilege. The prejudice of race can always be successfully appealed to in undergraduate matters, even to the extent of beguiling many men with naturally democratic consciences into doing things which they would murmur at if called on to do as individuals, and not as the protectors of the social prestige of the college. The fraternities are of course the centre of this vast political system which fills the athletic managerships, selects members of the societies, officers of classes and clubs, editors and assistants of publications, and performs generally all that indispensable public service of excluding the aliens, the unpresentable, and the generally unemployable from activity.