THE COLOR LINE

The current issue of the Nation contains an article by William Pickens in which he commends recent attempts by the students at various universities to assist in bringing a trifle nearer solution that problem which has faced this country for so many years under the caption, "color-line." Many books and much discussion have effected little. And in a time when the youth of the nation is shouldering so many of the difficulties which their very vigor and intrepidly enable them to carry it is interesting to realize that some of the student youth of the country dare to tread upon such hallowed ground.

For pride and prejudice have forced this, together with a large amount of real fear, into the darkness and away from the light of common interest and community research. And the very fact that this has so long held true must-remind many that this is not a question which can be settled in any easy or immediate manner.

The best way to attempt to clear the American air of the odor of unfairness and smallness in racial questions is to bring those questions out where they can be best studied. But that the present time is one for the practice of unstudied attempts to go too directly toward a dimly conceived objective is certainly incredible.

The Nation has a policy of commending the novel and the hold. And the present case seems in some ways an excellent one to commend. For these students who are attempting by intelligent fraterization to remedy inferiority complexes and fueds of the recila variety to do away with fear and folly are on the right track. Yet they must not be too sure how well they can travel that track until they have studied the situation and realized most keenly that others before them have in fearing to attempt this been less cowardly than discrete. If they can do this then they may effect some good. At least it is encouraging to see in this one more evidence of the college undergraduate of today in assisting to make the bugabears of the past and present forgotten chimeras in an immediate tomorrow.