The Test

How stands the legend of undergraduate indifference to current issues, in the light of the vote taken by the Intercollegiate Disarmament Council in seventy colleges on questions regarding war and peace? A high percentage of the students cast ballots--84 per cent of the entire student body at Amherst, 78 per cent at Yale, and 70 per cent at Mt. Holyoke. That the returns are representative is indicated by the participation of large and small institutions, of various types, in widely separated sections of the country. Among the colleges were, for example, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Rollins, Kansas, and Southern Methodist.

In the long vista of warrantable gloom, this is indeed a cause of cheer. For not only have 92 per cent of the 24,345 students voting declared, in general terms, for reduction of armament; no fewer than 63 per cent have urged independent disarmament by the United States without waiting for other countries.

What effect this veritable cry for peace will have on the faculties of our colleges and universities remains to be seen. Official boards, trustees, and presidents, though usually in favor of peace, often have a way of disregarding the wishes of their students when these depart from tradition or run counter to the ambition of vested military interests to use youth for their own purposes. But we are hopeful that this poll may stimulate teachers, especially, to keep on courageously with their task of freeing their institutions from the clutches of war ideology.

While student interest is still keen, however, there are certain further queries we should like to pose. Is disarmament enough? Are the undergraduates who have clearly registered their unwillingness to follow the drums along the avenue of preparedness for war equally ready to enlist, definitely and unequivocally, in the world-wide campaign of war registers already organized among the young men and women of twenty-two countries? Will they soon be counted among the active workers in the War Resister's League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, or similar expanding agencies eager to enrol young persons in the crusade to drive war off our planet? Are they sharing in the struggle to create a social order which will make peace possible? In the long run the answers to such questions will determine the effectiveness of these awakened undergraduates. --The Nation