HARVARD AND STAGE CENSORSHIP.

Mayor Fitzgerald's recent suppression of "The Easiest Way" brought into prominence the mayor's power of censorship. Leaving out of consideration the wisdom of this particular prohibition, there can be no doubt that there have appeared, unchallenged, numerous dramatic productions calculated to feed on human weaknesses. Such plays as the "Follies" which excite the baser passions of mankind by their sensuous dances and flippant jests in regard to breaches of the Seventh Commandment and to drunkenness have been allowed to vulgarize and debase their audiences.

Especially harmful are such plays to the undergraduates of higher educational institutions. College men are in an impressionable and formative state, and are very apt to be attracted to and injured by salacious dramatic offerings.

Harvard, as the largest and predominant educational institution in Greater Boston, might well and should use the weight of its influence to call attention to and protest against such vicious performances. The University has the best organized and most effective dramatic department in the country. The CRIMSON believes that a plan could be adopted whereby this department might report semi-officially to the mayor in case a play is found morally objectionable. Such recommendations would at least have to be considered, and would probably be of great service to the mayor in the exercise of his difficult and perplexing power of stage censorship.