AN ETHIOPIAN IN THE WOODPILE

The large vote polled on the Prohibition referendum last Thursday showed clearly enough that Harvard students had ideas to express on public questions, and were interested enough to express them by means of the ballot. The Bok Peace Plan referendum, which will begin Thursday and extend over a week, will provide another opportunity for a popular demonstration of opinion.

The Plan itself, with its mere repetition of well-known ideas and proposals has been a disappointment to many who expected something inspiring, something really constructive, especially in view of the huge prize offered. Its opponents have not been slow to label the whole contest as "one of the most skilful advertising dodges since the days of Barnum, and one of the cleverest pieces of political propaganda in the history of the United States." They point the finger of derision at the "impartial" jury who selected the winning plan--six of whom, out of the seven, were members of the League of Nations Non-Partisan Association. And everyone who reads the prize winning plan must see that divested of some timid reservations and a great deal of camouflage it means neither more nor less than entrance in the League itself.

Now this is not sufficient grounds for indignation, or for accusations of fraud or trickery. The important point is that everyone who votes Yes or No on the plan must know that he really is voting Yes or No on the League of Nations. And by design or accident, the summary which appears on the ballots gives the impression that the League has practically nothing to do with the Bok Prize Plan by displaying the Court of International Justice in altogether undue prominence, and relegating the League to the second paragraph, with misleading phraseology and even without capital letters.

If, however, the voters inform themselves by personal investigations, of the proposals of the Plan, in their true proportions, the referendum becomes a vote on the League of Nations, and as such peculiarly significant. The League has never been submitted to the nation on its own merits, stripped of party sponsorship and political personalities. In 1920, there was a choice of Mr. Cox and his League, or Mr. Harding and any other foreign policy, and the personalities had the utmost importance in the final decision. Ever since the League was visualized by Mr. Wilson, it has labored under the disadvantage of Democratic ownership. But here is the Bok Plan, unattached politically or personally; actually the League on its own at last.

Expressed opinion on the League has hitherto been almost equally divided into two parts. One faction reveres the League Covenant as the Word of God revealed to Mr. Wilson; the other extreme regards the whole thing as an iniquitous, damnable "foreign entanglement." Obviously, with such intolerance, nothing can be accomplished. The general public lies between these antipodes, but the general public is practically inarticulate. This referendum therefore offers the first opportunity for the public to decide on the League per se; always providing that the public reads and digests the Plan itself, and does not swallow the misleading summary kindly printed on the ballots.