If ours is a young man's world, it is also a woman's world. Some of us who are fortunate to have women among our graduate students and as young colleagues are extraordinarily impressed by the high level of their work. Indeed, we often wonder if criticism will not make substantial strides forward, blending the cognitive and the affective values, taste and a rational approach, the logic of the intellect and that of the heart, only when women take over a large share of it, as they are now out-numbering men as teachers of English and of languages in many schools. This country witnessed a bold feminist movement several decades ago. The second sex then conquered all the rights and courageously accepted corresponding duties. College presidents in women's colleges were in many cases women. In anthropology, archeology, psychology several American women have been outstanding. So have they been in journalism. Why not to the same extent today in philology, medieval studies, literary history, criticism? Are men to blame, wary of these potential rivals, preferring to utilize women's generosity and their capacity for devoted attachment by keeping them as secretaries and obedient confidents of their profound male cogitations? Have women put so much energy in once winning equality and security that they are now content to enjoy these rights, and to look upon maternity and procreation without tears and without anesthesia as their sole vocation? Men in any case have the duty to make room for them, to incite them to express themselves more boldly, to elect them to more positions of power in this Association and in others, to ask them for the healthy challenge which our duller brains need to receive from their keener perceptiveness in matters of art and literature.