AN INTERESTING DOVE

Apparently the United States Senate is rather more concerned over the Bok Peace Plan than is Harvard. Of course the Plan mentions the League of Nations and is being referred to as wide a body of public opinion, as is possible. Doubtless there are reasons enough--to the Senate--for being certain that the jury was packed with inveterate Leaguers.

Yet the Senate should have little to worry over. The referendum per se should receive as fair a trial of its value in a large University as under any other conceivable conditions. Therefore when the Peace Plan referendum at Harvard has proved so little, one may be sure that the Nation-wide referendum on the same subject will not be any more conclusive.

In the first place when less than one quarter of the electorate sees fit to go to the polls, then less than one quarter of the public's opinion is expressed. And this small minority of the whole University is far from a cross section of its opinion. All that the vote shows is that there is in the University as elsewhere a determined group--a fairly sizable group--of active pro-Leaguers who found in the Plan a real step toward eventual League membership and voted "Yes" en Masse, and a much smaller group, just as determined that no steps leading anywhere near the League shall be taken, which voted "No." Pretty certainly some undefinite number of those who found the Plan not strong enough and of those who found it a little too strong did not vote at all. But the bulk of nonvoters were those who simply have no interest in the discussion.

This, more than anything else, the plan proves (in strong comparison with the Prohibition referendum). The majority of the members of the University and even more of the citizens of the nation are not interested particularly in foreign relations. It is Mr. Mellon and Mr. Volstead who come to everyone's home while the foreigners are far, far away. If the Bok Peace Plan does no more than to awaken people to the fact that the foreigners are not far, far away; that the United States is almost in Europe and it must decide what it is going to do about it, the game will have been well worth the candle. But perhaps even that is asking too much.