MODEL LEAGUE

Delegates from virtually every New England college will be in Cambridge for the next three days to attend the sessions of the Model League of Nations. Harvard is pleased to welcome them and to hope that the meeting will be as successful as its sponsors expect.

Since the withdrawal of the League of Nations as a force in world politics, the criticism has frequently been heard that if the real League is no longer of importance, the Model League can scarcely serve any useful purpose. The criticism misses its point. As a school in the particular kind of parliamentary procedure used at Geneva, the Model League was never of any more consequence than a travelling menagerie. The real function of the League was in stirring up student interest in world affairs at a time when the American undergraduate was peculiarly apathetic on that score.

The question may be asked, however, whether this function is any longer of much importance. Any student whose apathy to world problems has resisted all the arresting events of the last year will scarcely be stimulated by any amount of empty pageantry. And the Model League could never do much more than arouse interest. In applying this interest, once aroused, there are too many channels more effective than the Model League.