It is a rare day now when one can pick up a paper without reading an interview or a speech in which there is a warning against college radicals. Only yesterday in addressing the graduating class at Columbia, President Butler animadverted upon the tendency among college men to revolt against authority or precedent. It is amusing for the most part, this fear, so frequently expressed, that the universities are becoming. Those who are of the college know how exaggerated the danger is; the student who cannot think of five real radicals out of the hundred or more men he know is not likely to be alarmed. And here at Cambridge those acquainted with Harvard's history can reflect that ever always been some in revolt.
Amusing as all this excitement may be with it frantic appeals to the "Loyal students" (one might think we were in the midst of civil war!) there is a possibility that in one respect it may be actually harmful.. For is it not likely that it gives the "radicals" a somewhat exaggerated sense of their won importance? The student who is engaged in overturning the government will not in all probability be much deterred from his purpose by being made the cynosure of all eyes; somewhat radicals seem to function at their best under such circumstances.
If it were not for the fact that as long as young men are collected together to acquire knowledge they will be railed at for being inclined to question the judgment of their elders, we would join in the hue and cry which is now being raised. We believe, however, that the best curb to the present tendencies in our college would be the sudden acquisition by certain much worried individuals of a sense of humor.
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BORDER WARFARE