WHO KNOWS?

Dr. J. Laurence Laughlin's article on "Roosevelt at Harvard" in the current Review of Reviews is of peculiar interest in view of the bubbling of the political pot at the University. The nimble-tongued speakers and scornful undergraduate writers who have issued challenge and counter-challege, formed club and counter-club in an effort to popularize Coolidge. Davis or La Follette might well look to Roosevelt as a model of conduct for the politically minded gentlemen at Harvard. In fact, however, he would give them slight inspiration.

It is true that the future President took a course in political economy while an undergraduate, but Dr. Laughlin looks in vain for suggestions of those qualities which later made him famed beyond his classmates. "The case for academic training as a preparation for politics," he concludes, "is not a strong one, except so far as the university may possibly work for character rather than for scholarship." There is certainly no hint in this biography that Roosevelt, who seven years after graduation was Republican candidate for Mayor of New York, ever participated in what political activity was then known about the Yard.

The case which condemns undergraduate dabbling in politics, as quite inconsequential on the grounds of history and the law of probabilities is, however, not quite convincing. While there is perhaps not one chance in ten thousand that any of the supporters of the various student political clubs will achieve the office of President, all of them will assume the duties of citizenship. To know something of the nature and method of political organization is doubtless of value to the voter, even if acquired in a mock manner. It is to the political genious alone, as Roosevelt's career seems to testify, that participation or non-participation in student activities is a matter of complete indifference.