Thick-Skins and Onion-Skins

(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

So much has been written about mutilating and writing in library books, that the subject has no more news value than the war or flappers. However, so many of the protests against the practice have come from official or editorial sources, that a voice from the undergraduate body might enliven the doleful chorus.

I was reading a reserved book in the Library today, a really beautiful volume done on vellum-like paper, and probably worth well over five dollars. At the end of the assigned portion of the contents some weary soul had poured forth his ennui--not in song, but in some weavy chirographs which may have been Arabic or Greeg Shorthand. The same pen had engraved at the top of the page, "Mich, dich, sich, Teufel", and at the margin a sketch which bore some resemblance to the professor in the course for which the book was prescribed.

It is difficult to comprehend the type of student who has neither regard for property rights nor the code of honour among users of the University Library. Even more does the lack of any sense of value displayed by these Vandals challenge explanation. At its best, this sort of thing is reminiscent of the penciled moustache on the High School statue of Apollo; at its worst it approaches the mentality of the urchin who chalks his meagre store of profanity on fences and telegraph poles.

In the end, however, to remonstrate with those who have no respect for the virgin white margin of a new book, is to moralize with Don Juan. My suggestion is that the Library provide at the desk slips of gummed onion-skin paper such as are used by Law students, which can be attached to the page in peril, covered with critical and artistic scum which floats to the surface of the defiler's mind, and later removed when their appropriateness is past. GLENN C. BRAMBLE '23

April 5, 1923.