PARLIAMENTARY PUGILISM

Three fist fights in three days in congress and a near riot in the Massachusetts State House--such is this week's legislative record to date. These may merely be symptoms of red-blooded American conviction; if so, we could wish there were more blue blood in politics. Professional baseball and hockey players are fined or ejected from the game for such an exhibition as Senators Glass and Wheeler put on last Saturday. But both senators hold their seats unmolested.

Walter Lippman in the current "Atlantic Monthly" analyses the causes of American political indifference. He finds that they are based on the facts that the United States is prosperous, therefore uncritical, that the parties do not represent popular interest, that fundamental issues are avoided in politics. He need not have gone so deeply into the question. The spectacle of men who are supposed to represent the interests of a nation acting in a manner which on the street would make them liable to arrest is not edifying. Nor is it surprising that a well-fed public does not pay much attention to them except as objects of amusement. The great danger is that the majesty of the law will suffer from the melee of the legislature.