This afternoon, on the one bit of "Old Yale," Sophomores and Freshmen will gather together for the solemn occasion of the handing on of the Yale Fence. In these days of tradition-killing transition it behooves Sophomores and Freshmen not only to enjoy the ceremony, but to look beyond it to the more weighty significance of the Fence Orations.

In 1894, when Fence Orations could appear in print, Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., speaking for the Sophomores, finally left his banter and said, "Gentlemen, may your class always meet here as a unit, forgetting all social divisions. May there never be a distinction between rich man and poor man in this corner of the campus, but let the Fence-bond of friendship for your class be based simply upon 'Yale and '97'. . . Every man knows what the institution of these few rails has meant for the friendship of this College. Guard them from mutilation. Protect them from misuse."

This message was probably lost upon the listeners of the class of '97, who were more interested in the scathing libel which preceded it. Today the appeal his a cruel significance. The Fence-bond has not survived the forty years since this appeal was made.

The word "snobbery" has an unpleasant ring, and when it is pronounced, hearers want to sneak off and ask themselves if they are guilty. The two score years have passed since '97 was warned to guard a binding force. Those years have seen that and other forces of cohesion broken and the disintegration of Yale classes into small, more or less snobbish groups has resulted. The change has not been entirely within Yale, although the enormous increase in size and the more recent splitting up into colleges have furthered the disintegrating tendency.

Yale snobbishness is not necessarily an attitude of rankling superiority. It is the snobbishness of indifference. Members of small and congenial groups, whether they be actually superior or inferior, are satisfied to stay within those groups. Any effort to break those bounds by forced congeniality to outsiders is dubbed "Joe College."

We would not urge the breaking down of these indifferent circles. More often than not the bond is one of a healthy mutuality of intellectual interests. Nor do we urge forced congeniality. We would but remind these who attend the Fence Orations today that if we are to live as social beings, we must cultivate the ability to bend our interests on occasion, so as to reach out of our narrow circles and stand on common ground with these who, despite all the snobberies in the world, are our follow men. Yale News.