Yesterday the Boston vox populi exercised its quadrennial function and spoke out in favor of Mr. Curley for Mayor. Not entirely encouraging, this declaration; the believer in democracy may well question the practicability of government by the people.

But the cause for lamentation lies not so much in the actual outcome of the election as in the fact that in all probability the result will not have even the slightly beneficial effect of teaching the slothful voter a well-deserved lesson. We might have expected, for example, that with the New York election as an immediate precedent, the Hub voter who would ordinarily have supported the Good Government Association would have realized this time that he could not afford to neglect going to the polls. But as that warning had no effect and as election after election in Boston has resulted in the same way, there seems to be little ground for hoping that four years hence, when the newspapers again fill their columns with exposures of the Curley regime, the public, or at least that part of it which was kept in doors by the storm, will be any the wiser.

The Baxter vote, of course, relieves the stay-at-home of some of the blame. Had it not been for Baxter, the election would in all probability have gone to Murphy. But this ruse against a coalition party is not a new one. Again we have no reason for believing that the voters will not be equally fooled by the same trick in the future.

All this, it might be objected, is a pessimistic view of the matter; we can hardly be expected, however, to rejoice, Pollyanna-wise, that Curley did not win by a larger majority. We might as well admit that there is something rotten in a state nearer than Denmark.

Unfortunately the majority of those who share the disappointment over the election will come to this admission and go no farther. If we want to clean up politics we can do so--and we speak now for the college man in general. But not by merely expressing our abhorrence of this uncleanliness. We must take an active part in the cleansing process. Politics will be dirty as long as the dirty minded are allowed to monopolize them. The only way by which the high-minded citizen can remedy the evils he bewails is to wade into the mire and fight for the community. The college man who has the courage to take such a step will not be a pioneer. He will have as an example the greatest of Harvard graduates--Theodore Roosevelt.