SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES

America has been spared the embarrassment of student political gestures. There are no bonfires, no smoking revolvers, no Latin mottoes to curb the tides of party government. The undergraduate has confined his activities chiefly within his academic walls. There are several reasons why this should be. The land is too comfortable to warrant dramatic causes. Citizens are not unduly oppressed by enthroned monarchs. Dukes carriages, bowling along the high-ways, do not crush flaxen haired blue eyed girls. The issues which are presented are too prosaic to merit the opposition or support of armed force. There is something inadequate about a secret society founded to oppose the censoring of Joyce's "Ulysses."

Precluded by the nature of democracy from brilliant gestures of defiance American students have devised another method for the outlet of their political emotions. There are model Leagues of Nations, model Congresses, model Conferences. There are huge peace delegations, there are yearly hegiras to Geneva, there are pamphlets urging the Christian precepts of peace. Students discuss, suggest, construct methods for a cleanly local government, an omniscient national government, an everlasting, international peace. These are doubtless all very pleasing intellectual exercises and they may produce some excellent suggestions, but students labor under a difficulty which is well nigh insurmountable. Most undergraduates are visionary for they have spent their years in study without the leavening influence of practical experience. They are able to see the beauty of a world without strife, but they cannot bring forth the remedies which will ensure it. The Peace Treaty of President Wilson shows the danger of entrusting the political fortunes of the world to an academician.

This Christmas vacation at Buffalo there was such a congress of students. There was much talk of "Lack of vision," and the hope was expressed that the Kellogg pact might become a reality. It is this sort of idealism which stunts the political influence of the undergraduate when he becomes a citizen and blinds him to the difficulties of government which even vision cannot pierce. The Conference also voted that Mr. Hoover be petitioned to appoint a student to the Geneva disarmament conference, an appointment with which it is difficult to cavil. The delegate will probably do little good to the conference for it is impossible for him to possess the facts which might make him effective. But he will learn the difficulties with which foreign negotiations are fraught and he will, if appointed, lend concrete proof to the fact that American youth is, at least, interested in the peace of the world.