Despite the high quality of liberal thought which has come out of Harvard in recent years there has nevertheless been a strong reactionary sentiment there. The spirit which, with stupidity and self-satisfied arrogance assailed the brilliant Harold Laski with "no holds barred," still persists at the pace which is in many ways representative of the best in the American tradition of scholarship and learning. It is not the lackadaisical conservatism which so often shows itself at Princeton; it is active, intolerant, and reactionary. It manifested itself in the Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Club, which turned an Anti-War demonstration into a flasco. It has lately manifested itself in the "civil war" which the R. O. T. C. and other reactionary spirits have conducted against the activities of the National Student League, culminating in the break-up by Boston police of a demonstration which the N. S. L. had scheduled against the presence of the German cruiser "Karlsruhe" in Boston Harbor. An N. S. L. member was kidnapped by R. O. T. C. men in order to prevent him from addressing the meeting, and several Harvard students were arrested by police for inciting to riot.

Now the National Student League is far from a paragon of temperate action and clearheadedness; its actions have often been calculated to prejudice its cause in the minds of moderate people. But it has a right to meet, to express its opinions freely and to advocate what-ever it pleases, at Harvard or any where else where even the pretense of free speech and personal liberty is preserved. Its action in conducting such a demonstration may have been ill-timed; but the action of its opponents was not only highly stupid, but highly dangerous. It indicated a resurgence of intolerance and bigotry which is already too prevalent in centers of ignorance without spreading to centers of learning. It indicated the presence of a spirit of reactionary violence on the Harvard Campus which is reminiscent of the shameful crusade against Laski as well as of the incipient stages of German Hitlerism. It would be ironic indeed if Harvard, claiming spiritual descent from the Revolutionary fathers, should turn out to be the intellectual sent of American fascism. --Daily Princetonian.