For the past several months, the Woodrow Wilson Center has been engaged in a struggle for survival. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives voted to cut federal support for the Center from the current $5.8 million to $1 million, in effect the amount needed to close down. The Senate has voted to continue funding at the current level. By the time these words are published, the issue of feder- a1 support for fiscal year 1998 may well be decided. It amounts to a choice between extinction and, after several years of budgetary stringencies, difficult leanness. During these months of debate, a gratifying number of supporters Center Congress did not intend to cre- ate yet one more "think tank" in a city already generously supplied with such institutions. First-rate scholarship not only is valuable in itself but has a vital, though often indirect and deferred, role in contributing to the solution of issues in public policy. Saving the Center's appropriation at the cost of destroying the very quality that has made it so valu- able would be an empty triumph.