CUTTING OUT THE VANDAL

In every age vandalism has been regarded with contempt by the overwhelming majority of civilized society. The seriousness of the offence varies from the sack of a city to the mischievousness of a gang of small boys. Obviously, to hang an urchin for smashing a street lamp is as out of proportion as to give half a dozen lashes to a soldier who has burnt down a house and murdered the owners.

In college vandalism takes its usual form in the wholesale massacre of library books, marking them up, defacing them, or doing away with them entirely. The offence is easy because it is anonymous and the chance of detection is small.

But the most recent out-cropping of this kind was detected and the offender caught. He had been cutting plates out of books to take home for his own use, making the copies entirely useless for other students in the course, and in most cases destroying the plates when he got through with them. As soon as the facts were known, he was dismissed from the University. There was no intention to make an example of his case. The authorities took action, and rightly, in the interests of the orderly majority as authorities down through history have always done whenever they have been brought face to face with open and unblushing vandalism.