HOMESPUN

Bearing the title, "Collegiate", the lone editorial in the current "Ladies' Home Journal" debates the question of indecency in college journalism. The editorial takes the form of a dialogue between Mr. Liberal Broad Esq. and The Retired Humorist, so that one cannot positively ascribe the views of either to the policy of the magazine. Mr. Liberal Broad puts up the trite defences used whenever the younger generation is attacked. The Retired Humorist replies a little more elaborately "the frequent actions of postal officials in forbidding these publications entry into the mails" and advocating "some wholesale expulsions" from the colleges.

"It is noteworthy that this debate proceeds upon a rather exaggerated assumption of the seriousness of the situation For the fictious opponent of the Retired Humorist, namely, Mr. Liberal Broad, does not, in this set debate, attempt to repute the allegation that college comics have "but two sources of inspiration, bootleg liquor and an unbridled sex motive". Nor does he object to the pernicious use on the adjective "freuent," applied to suppression by postal officials. He does not even suggest that postal officials are poor judges. Evidently Mr. Liberal Broad, does no., is a man of straw, capable only of trite generalization upon the questionable premise assumed by his adversary, that college comics and literary productions are rendolent with the risque.

There are few who will uphold indecency per se, whether in humor or pretended art. But if it be hardly a foregone conclusion that this is the major, inspiration of literary youth, how much further from proof is it that the method of curing the possible evil is suppression. And a manufactured discussion, proceeding on a careless premise and conducted by assertion, does little but call attention to the subject, and that not fairly.