SECRET SOCIETIES IN COLLEGES.

The formal renunciation of anti-secret society principles by the Delta Upsilon fraternity at the convention with the chapter at Brown University, the more recent unconditional repeal of the anti-fraternity laws by the authorities of Vanderbilt University, and the radical change in policy announced in the last number of the Occident, of the University of California, until now a rabid anti-fraternity organ, are significant indications of the general breaking up of the hostile spirit that prevailed against college secret societies in many quarters some ten years ago. The reasons for this gratifying change of opinion are, in part, the almost total disappearance of those organizations that in the early days of college fraternities mistook the true purposes of those societies to be such as must lower the intellectual and moral tone of their members, the careful maintenance of a high standard of membership by the influential fraternities, the better understanding of the fraternity system by its honest opponents, and finally the sheer exhaustion of those that heretofore have maintained a vigorous tilt at the windmill for exercise's sake, on finding that the windmill stands the attack much better than they. [Ex.