THAT CERTAIN PARTY

The first appearance of the newspaper brought out by the Harvard Socialist Club should at least serve to bring this branch of activities to the public eye. It remains to be seen whether a sufficient demand for the paper or its own journalistic merits warrant its existence but its mere appearance shows that Socialism is the only branch of politics in which any active undergraduate interest is now being shown at Harvard. This does not verify the inherent goodness or evil of the Marxian doctrines, but it does indicate the Republican and Democratic platforms no longer contain anything worth disputing.

With both parties successfully evading positive stand on any really controversial issue by the familiar "red herring" method, party loyalty and convictions are reduced to mere habits of voting. Perhaps if the, voters were able to force the issue on a burning question such as Prohibition there would be less cant and hypocrisy in the party in power, and elections would be something more than personal mud-slinging contests. The present American party system is the most ingenious yet devised to obscure any question of vital interest to the voter. It is no wonder that politics as a vocation is rather unpopular among American college graduates. If only for the reason of some definite set of principles to uphold and fight for, the radical and progressive minorities offer much stronger attractions to the politically minded than do those amorphous conglomerations labelled Democratic and Republican.