"A REGRETTABLE OCCURRANCE"

The reception recently afforded members of the Landon-Knox club by certain occupants of Dudley Hall arouses a faint feeling of disgust so soon after a tercentenary marked by pledges of continued freedom and liberality. Small-minded bigotry evinced by tearing up campaign literature and hindering members of the Landon-Knox committee from distributing their material only results in the pitying suspicion that certain commuters are as yet not sufficiently mature to enjoy the new-found freedom of Dudley Hall. Perhaps a nursery in the Union would serve their purposes as well.

As has been ideally illustrated during the past few months, there is a certain class in the country which President Theodore Roosevelt once referred to as the "lunatic fringe". These slightly unbalanced citizens are not in themselves dangerous, but when gathered behind the standard of such crack-pots as Representative William Lemke, or under the control of vicious demagogues such as Coughlin, Hearst or the late Huey Long, they constitute a serious menace to both law and order and decent government in the United States.

It is enough that there is such a class at large without fostering it or swelling its ranks from within Harvard's walls. Intolerance of any sort is unwanted here, especially political intolerance at a time when men and women everywhere are taking greater and greater interest in this vital question. If our democratic principles are to continue, then freedom of thought, discussion, and organization must have its first hold in the universities. Otherwise such as has marred Dudley Hall's reputation, puerile as they are and indicative of only a small percentage of the commuting body, have no proper function here and serve only to bring contempt and scorn on the instigators.