YALE'S DILEMMA

When one reads today of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is very difficult to make real the issues which were involved and which, in themselves, indicate the greatest difference between the spirit of that age and this. Likewise, when one reads of the conflict now going on at Yale for the abolition of compulsory attendance at chapel, it taxes the imagination to understand how such a thing can be possible in a community which everybody believes is more enlightened than that, say, of Dayton, Tennessee.

On successive days two dispatches have come from New Haven which throw some light on the nature of Yale's antediluvian problem. The first records a statement by Dean Brown of the Theological School, to the effect that compulsory chapel has justified itself by its results. He says that a careful survey of all the preachers listed in Who's Who reveals that most of them attended college where chapel attendance was compulsory.

Perhaps no Yale faculty member is so well known at Harvard as Dean Brown, and certainly none so universally honored and beloved. But respect for him cannot blind one to the novelty of this defense of an antiquated system. Does Dean Brown mean to assert that the first business of a college is to produce preachers? If he does, the CRIMSON can only say that it disagrees with him. And aside from this implication, is it not probable that incipient persons deliberately choose a college where compulsory religion is the fashion? If so, compulsion itself hardly seems the cause of their following in the way which the Dean thinks they should go.

The second dispatch is more to the point. The Yale News has conducted a ballot on the issue, and returns from more than eighty per cent of the students show that for every man who favors compulsory chapel, more than seven oppose it. Even if some mysterious benefits do follow from forced attendance, it is now certain that seven-eighths of the recipients of such benefits do not appreciate them and prefer to go without them.

Absurd as it may seem, this controversy is a very real one at Yale, and, though it may take a Thirty Years War to end it, there is scarcely any doubt as to the ultimate result. It may appear unholy rash to say it, but we venture to predict that Yale--even Yale--will abandon its attempt to effect virtue by compulsion.