Men create institutions to do those things together which they cannot do satisfactorily alone. This of course is why there are learned societies. It must be a matter of particular pride to President Nicolson that the Modern Language Association of America, from its beginnings in a group of forty scholars on the Columbia campus more than eighty years ago, has grown to approximately 15,000 members. In its growth, it has performed a service for scholarship and education in foreign languages and in English which leaves the Nation in its debt.