YES, I SAID 10c

Since life tends to degenerate into a simple automatism, in which one makes no question why, and allows habit to answer for when and allows habit to answer for when and where and how, consure of minor mannerism should not be caustic; all men put the shoe upon the same foot first year in and year out. It is for this reason if for no other that the sceptical soul feels little amazement on hearing that the Model League of Nations is making plans for another Jamboree to take place in January. The Model League has been treated in these columns before; it was remarked that the organization filled definite and justifiable functions. It does not, though many might aver that it did titillate the undergraduate's fancy for international logrolling, and make a diplomatic expert of him. Coldly scrutinized, it seems with a few notable exceptions to leave him unruffled and even indifferent.

The exceptions, however, are important, for they are the people for whom the functions of the League are justifiable. That it occupies itself and its members with mimicking that real League over which the world is now saying the count of nine, that it imitates the real League falsely and badly, that the real League is of no import, these considerations do not matter. For those who are interested in it the League fulfills the praiseworthy object of being an interest. Through it they escape the reproach of being indifferent, the rigours of participation in a live, unhypothetical movement, and they gain not only honour and glory but a pleasant pastime as well. Parcuis and deans smile benignantly on them, for the occupation is warranted harmless and money refunded if it leads to being arrested while picketing a strike.

For these reasons one may well wish that the habit be continued, even though its paragon pass into limbo. It may be charged with having an anaesthetic tendency; a Marxist might even call it an opiate of the upper classes. But from this comes its virtue of being harmless, its saving grace; deans, parents, all thinking people can say of it, as they say of the abolition of religion, what can take its place to keep people out of mischief? How right they are!