It is Germany's less, and the world's, that there are no branches of Harvard's Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Club in Germany. We do not know the life history of the estimable Michael, but we suspect him of having combined the best qualities of a bellicose pacifist with those of a "parfit gentil knight." Hence his devotees, with equal catholicity, carried to the pacifist students' meeting in the Harvard Yard last week banners bearing the slogans: "Down with war!" and "Down with peace!" To every attack on Harvard's R.O.T.C. a bugler of the Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Club blew a shrill blast on his trumpet. When the pacifist speaker called for a cheer for peace a member of the Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Club called for a cheer for war. The student body enjoyed the show hugely.

Harvard thus disposed of its anti-war meeting more sensibly than did other collegiate bodies in this country. The movement was absured to begin with, because it was predicated on the assumption that the people of this country are pro-war. Never was any country less militaristic. Never was any student body more generally eager for peace. But this keenness for peace does not imply that America should be defenseless. It does not mean that we can dispense with even the meagre framework of an army of which the student R.O.T.C.'s are a small part. Such casual training of volunteers holds no possible militaristic threat. The R.O.T.C. members are simply wise enough to know that peace cannot be obtained by weakening our already utterly inadequate army.

The danger of war lies in a totally different type of mass training. It lies, for example, in the regimentation of the entire youth of Germany now taking place, in the passion for parades, military organizations, uniforms and display in the youth of all ages in that country. Stories on Sunday spoke of demonstrations in Berlin of boys under fourteen years of age. Throughout the entire Reich the spirit of militarism is being systematically inculcated--a spirit which has war as its purpose and goal, and which seeks to induce in the youth of the land an eagerness to go out and fight.

In the bitter seriousness of these young people lies their chief menace to the world. Never much given to the sort of sane nonsense that so often appears among American undergraduates, they are deprived of the counterbalancing influence of such pranks as that of the Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Club. If any German student were to appear on a university campus with a sign reading "Down with war!" he would be mobbed and probably arrested. And yet this sort of tactics at Harvard made a farce of what would, if taken seriously, have been an exhibition of sophomoric folly. So long as our students see the dangers and absurdities alike in parades for peace and in the forceful militarization of the youth of a nation we need have little fear in this country of "revolution" or of "Fascism." Long life to the Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Club! --New York Herald-Tribune.