THE PRESS

To begin with and to be quite frank we are a bit disappointed. Did the mob surge into sacred dormitory corridors causing shrieks and terror as it passed? Not exactly. Stray delegations wandered about on the first floor, and even a trifle abashed walked out; only the noble contingent which had penetrated Bertram swept off with the dinner gong and the keys. Did they get invited to have some ice cream and did they yelp in answer "we want beer." Not quite, except that the inspiring slogan actually did rend the night air. From the safe vantage point of upstairs windows someone did hazard that it must be Browne and Nichols and someone else threw out an empty cartoon of ice cream, in self defense one must surmise and thereby rose the tale. And that about the lurid detail of swinging red lanterns? We believe someone saw one. Having learned to rely on New England conservatism on almost all occasions we had trusted glowing headlines and expected worse.

Spring apart, we do not approve of riots. Mob psychology and all, we can find no justification for rocking private automobiles, and derailing street cars, burning theatre gates and showering with eggs the exponents of the law. It looks childish to us, to say the least, and although the sentiments of the old lady appalled at the nature of American youth when "of such are Chicago gangsters"--is perhaps far fetched in the light of a very sudden spring day, still American youth must be in dire need of action or excitement or occupation or something if it can rouse itself to nothing better than an undisciplined orgy of useless pranks.

Let it not be said however that we have missed the one significant gesture in the whole procedure. We are acutely aware of the fact that the cruise up Shepard street and the planting of the red lantern--later much multiplied by permission or poetic license--must have been somewhat in the nature of discovery number two, and that the state of the mob's psychology in the middle of the quadrangle must have been much akin to that of the CRIMSON reporter who found himself crossing the Radcliffe Yard not long ago and emerged on the other side with gratifying editorial comments on the subject of how times do change. But we trust that, as the dinner gong and the clapper, like the cat and the fiddle, saunter down the long halls of unwritten history together, the former will present to the latter a distinctly cold shoulder, after all as any discerning dinner gong should. Radcliffe Daily.