MISGUIDED CRUSADERS.

In the wave of intolerance that is sweeping the country, many of the measures proposed to extirpate Red propaganda are so extreme as to be ridiculous. On the heels of the expulsion of the lawfully constituted Socialist party from the New York Assembly comes the notice in yesterday's "Times" that "a movement to bar Socialists from the law schools of New York State and to withhold diplomas from those Socialists now students in the schools was begun yesterday at the annual meeting of the New York State Association of Legal Instructors, consisting of teachers from the nine law schools of the state."

Those who advocated such action on the grounds that Socialists admitted to the bar are "doubly dangerous for being learned in the law" apparently overlook the fact that the law, in its emphasis on constitutionality and precedent, tends above all to make its students more conservative than when they entered upon their legal course. But whether law makes its followers radical or reactionary is beside the point. The very idea of introducing a measure so repressive as that proposed by the New York law teachers is more un-American than any act countenanced by the Socialist party. The motives of the modern crusaders of "Americanism" are unquestionably commendable in their patriotism, but their judgement, if the results were not likely to prove so dangerous, could be nothing short of ludicrous.