A precedent of long standing was rudely overturned when Mr. Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor-elect of New York, announced to newspaper men that henceforth local banquets must carry on without the mayoral presence. There will, it seems, be no more of the screaming police escorts, secret exits, and hasty fitting from table to table which has characterized other administrations. The mayor has work to do.

In thus avoiding the gastronomic promiscuity of his predecessors, however, Mr. La Guardia gains many advantages not directly beneficial to the state. For him the five banquets an evening usually attended by the gleaming Walker in his prime might prove too enlarging an experience. The art of toying delicately with the fifth consecutive rice compote, affecting delight where none exists, is not a virtue granted to all. And then, there is the matter of dinner clothes and neat white ties, a problem which, as in the case of ex-Mayor O'Brien, may baffle the best of mayors.

But aside from all possible ulterior motives, Mr. La Guardia's desertion of the toastmaster's pedestal is admirably in accord with the times. It represents the banishment to triviality of a function which his forerunners have allowed to assume undue proportion. Having withdrawn as a public entertainer, Mayor-elect La Guardia may perhaps conduct a regime noted for something more substantial than the well-fitting tuxedo and elegant bon mots of its leader.