The Taboo Method.

To the editors of the CRIMSON:

To a newcomer, who with other outsiders has shared some of the current misapprehensions of the spirit of this university, it is especially gratifying to find here a general attitude of tolerance and fair play both inside the classroom and outside. To be more explicit, liberalism, as a philosophy, appears to he thriving here; and, more important even than that, there is evidently a genuine and very healthy interest in the social and political problems of the day. The visit of Mr. Plumb, for instance, and especially the enthusiasm with which his audience stayed on to question him, are encouraging symptoms. The editorials of the CRIMSON, too, deserve a wider audience than they achieve; while naturally enough they are pretty uneven from day to day, they are frequently more distinguished for sanity and common sense than the corresponding pages for the same day of any of the Boston papers.

It is quite in accord with your disposition to give every man his day in court that you printed the letter which appeared yesterday objecting to Mr. Humphries' talk on Russia. While recognizing the sincerity of its authors, it seems to me that one cannot hope too earnestly that their views may not prevail. Their letter's intolerant demand for the suppression of facts about Russia ought not to prevail in an institution dedicated to to Truth, and is as dangerous to the accomplishment of the university's contribution to national life as the current journalistic claptrap which inspired it is to the orderly development of our democratic system.

People who want to deal with Russia and Bolshevism by the taboo method imply one or the other of two things: either their secret fear that the Russians are working out a superior system, or their conviction that the American people can't be trusted to tell right from wrong. The first of these ideas belittles democracy; the second denies it. HAZELTON SPENCEE 1G.