SCARLET LETTERS

When authors sink to speaking tours and find themselves destitute of topics they invariably seize upon the subject of censorship. And when censorship is mentioned Boston automatically becomes the center of the discussion. Walter Prichard Eaton, appearing before the Western Massachusetts Library Club, is the latest to take up the cudgels.

The saddest commentary on these proceedings is that there can be little room for denial. Boston is, as Mr. Eaton remarks, "the laughing stock of the country because of its censorship of literature." That it should merit that distinction is rather surprising when its educational institutions are considered. Usually those portions of the country best equipped with colleges and universities are those betraying the most liberal tendencies. In the more provincial areas a certain prudishness about intellectual matters is expected. But in the Commonwealth, whose hoast is its great opportunities for higher education, the opposite is true.

The sole possible explanation for this reversal of the laws of man and nature is that Boston's antecedents are too puritanical in the unfavorable sense, to permit even the abundance of professorships to counteract its influence. The blue laws are as yet of too deep a hue to be dissolved by any pigment, whether it be red or merely a rosy pink. So until New England has forgotten the strain of her ancestors, the persecutors of Hester Prynne, she will continue to confuse issues and to forget, the phrase on the cacutcheon--"Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense."