STORM IN THE BERKSHIRES

If the benign efforts of the Boston American and Record to bring Williamstown under the maternal wing of Mr. Hearst do not meet with overwhelming applause, it is because the students of Williams College do not know what is good for them sufficiently well to accept protection against the ill winds blowing over from Moscow. The success of the Williams Record in forcing the manager of the local movie theater to remove from the screen the Hearst Metrotone News reached across the state with a thunder the residents of the cloistered college town are not accustomed to hear.

Seeing harrowing clouds of smoke wafted from the Berkshires, the evervigilant Boston American and Record flew to the resume of that Americanism in such appalling danger of being snuffed out forever on the lawns of Williamstown. The ludicrous antics of these self-appointed missionaries, who ran the gamut of fanaticism from an appeal to the local American Legion Post to whispered impeachments of President Tyler Dennett, brought an inevitable clash with a usually unconcerned student body.

The hot agitation, the boycott, the philippies and counter philippies, all smack much more of Washington Square than Williamstown. With its lavish Colonial fraternity houses, its large quota of good cars, and its time-honored indifference, which runs even that of Harvard a close race, Williams can hardly be called a hotbed of radicalism. If the crusade against the Hearst newsreel was successful it is because an increasingly large number of American undergraduates are becoming disgusted with the philosophy of San Simeon. At Williams, as at other universities, they make their wishes felt in the face of a good-naturedly indifferent majority.

With rare exceptions all the current red scares in the universities, which have been getting much undeserved publicity on the front pages of the country, have as much fact behind them as the present comic-opera skirmish at Williamstown. Rebuffed by a deplorable lack of hospitality on the part of the Williams student body, the embassy of good will from Boston's over-lighted watch-towers will make a hasty return to the genial city where its efforts to save America from looming chaos receive the appreciation they deserve.