KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

One of the delegates at the Princeton Disarmament Conference addressed the meeting as follows: "I don't know much about this disarmament question and I guess most of you delegates have probably come here without any definite ideas. It seems to me then that we ought to look at the Washington Conference just as if it were a football game;--all we students want to do is to cheer for the right side". When one learns that this was pretty generally the sentiment of the meeting, one is inclined to be a little sceptical of the talk about college men as leaders. If college men feel that they are taking an active part in the great task of the day merely by supporting any expression of belief in limitation of armaments--somewhere, sometime--they had best leave the conferees at Washington strictly alone.

There is no reason, however, why they can not do more than this; the opportunity to lead is waiting for them. If they, the youth of the nation who must pay for whatever the delegates at Washington do, can say definitely what they want done, their words will not pass unheeded: True, they are not in a position to give final advice to the Conference on the technical questions involved. But they have an undeniable right to set the minimum which they will accept in the way of results. The possibility of their embarrassing the conferees is offset by the fact that a certain amount of such embarrassment will serve to check whatever tendency there may be to maintain the status quo.

All of which leads to this: if college men are to exercise this undeniable right they must substitute for their present commendable, but not highly profitable, sentiments some definite knowledge concerning the problem of limiting armaments. For which reason, we take this opportunity of calling attention to the series of meetings which the Liberal Club is holding for this purpose. Whatever may be our opinion of the Liberal Club, as judged by its activities in the past, we can scarcely have anything but approval for their disarmament program. Unless Harvard undergraduates, too, regard the Washington Conference as a football game at which they are to cheer on the right side the meetings at the Liberal Club and those later at the Union will be well attended.