MAMMON DEFENDED 99.44 PER CENT PURE

Far be it from liberal undergraduate opinion to take issue with Zona Gale upon the faults and fallacies of education by examination. At this period of the year the evils of examinations seem hugely disproportionate to the good, and the mob impulse lurking even in indifferent Harvard breasts surges forth to cry "Down with 'em!" at the first sign of a leader.

But alas for disillusioned hope! Zona Gale might have been acclaimed the new liberal leader, had it not been for her speech at the Old South Forum. Her views on censorship are broad enough; it isn't that. She called censorship "un-American", and that was too much. Even liberals, though they turn their backs on the past, have not entirely forgotten the rudiments of American history.

She might have said that censorship is "vicious", or "subversive of truth". It would even have been better to say that George Washington picks the all-American football squad, and that Walter Camp was the first President of the United States: that Cleopatra was a saint, and that Joan of Arc a naughty, naughty girl; but never that censorship is un-American. Anything but that!

Censorship is daughter of Intolerance, and member of a large family of Thou-shalt-nots who thrive and grow fat throughout the land. Who shall deny them their birthright? Shall the Salem witches have died in vain? Shall the ghost of Roger Williams be mute? Shall the eighteenth amendment be robbed at last of its point and meaning? Cotton, Mather rattles his shroud in horror at the mere suspicion that censorship is un-American. The Ziegfeld Follies may be a "National Institution', but one must never forget that censorship was in the field first. Censorship came over in the Mayflower, and can claim blue blood equal to the bluest of the blue.