Straight Jacket for the College Press?

The first winds of college censorship blew across the campus of Northwestern University a couple of weeks ago. By the time the storm had blown over--with all too little publicity--American colleges had been given an unsavory foretaste of what reactionary elements are capable of doing to make sure that the war is run the way they want it run.

Northwestern's troubles began when its student newspaper, "The Daily Northwestern," printed a satirical article on Winston Churchill, with a couple of follow-ups in the same vein. Ironically enough, these articles were published in a column called "Off sides," which is devoted to an expression of opinion in opposition to that of the paper's editorial board. But that made no difference to a number of women's civic groups in Evanston; to them, the article represented subversive forces gnawing away at the University's roots, and they didn't hesitate to tell everybody--including Hoover's G-men--what they thought about it.

Conferences between the F.B.I. and Northwestern's President Snyder and other University officials resulted in a virtual ultimatum to the Daily to refrain from making any comment whatever in regard to the War; as an alternative it offered a faculty censor to blue-pencil every item slated to appear. The off-shoot was a farcical situation in which the Daily began living in a vacuum, apparently oblivious of such things as Defense Stamps, War Production Boards, Panzer Divisions, and Japanese.

By now "The Daily Northwestern" has resumed its normal coverage; student indignation over an absurd policy which made their newspaper about as current as a 1920 Sears-Roebuck catalogue forced the University and the Board of Publications to retract their ruling. But bad taste and mutual distrust have remained.

Only if the public at large, as well as the nation's other colleges, pay some attention in order to prevent a repetition of this sort of thing will the incident have served some purpose. Only if we realize that the freedom of both our press and our colleges can and have been threatened will we gain a full realization of what we have to fight here at home.