New-York tribune., 1919-09-17
These Different Humans

is the fight for democracy. You wr;te
the ldea into Declaration of Inde-
pendence, and a hundred years later
everybody is still faint and pursuing. a
long distance behind the ideal. You
scatter education broadcast, and it de-
ve!ops fraternities and clioues and
crowds" before anybody can take de-
gree. Harvard, that has been fighting
merrily for democracy a good while now
has Just announced a new assault upon
the trenches Of eXclusiveness. The Har-
ward Union is to be reorganized into a
club for ALL" dues cut to SIS, every un-
dergraduate admissible Freshman dor
mltorles, into which all the new arrivals
whether they were endowed with a Rolls
Royce or a scholarship and came from
Groton or Middle Western high school,
were completely scrambled, constituted
an earlier attack Concededly much
ground remains to be won. So flows
the tide Of battle on campus which on
the whole is probably as democratic as
any large Eastern college.
he truth (sad or satisfactory as Won
view it) is, Of course, that the instinct TO
form groups is all but universal on
camruses ana off. 1t rests upon no item
OF inequality, OF richer or poorer. of
better or worse, but upon the simple age
old truism that human beings are differ
ent. Would VIC have them alike? A dull
world would be the result The pleasure
OF the gang is unthinkable unless there
are infinite shades Of resemblance and
unllkeness. In the more intimate con-
Germs Of life these differences grow more
and more subtle and more and more inn.
portant That is why groups and gangs
and classes are chiefly social in their
origin. Almost all men may be brothers
1or certain purposes-for a political
party tor lnstance--but they are GER
lalny not all brothers when the oues
tlon is OF eating or bathing or dav bv
day living under one roof. Men NAV
disagree over the way to est peas or use
soap or pronounce "lilm," and vet pre-
sent united front in behalf of Rcpubli-
canism or Democracy with a capital D.
They will make hopeless housemates.
none the less.
SO 1T is not the gang instinct root and
branch, that we are fighting if we ore
wise. 1t is rather the tendency of ganps
finally to become so set and powerful
that they can perpetuate their control of
general affairs after virtue and ability
have gone out of their individual NOM
bers. Then you get snobs and class com
trol based not on present capacity, but
past tradition. AS it happens, most such
groups have been in the past aristocratic
in their origin, based chiefly on inheri-
tance of blood or economic power. But
that is largely accident. Group control
in Bolshevist Russia, as in most revo
lutionary periods, was born of daring
dictatorship and is perpetuated by force.
Perfect snobs are these Bolsheviki who
Will let no one vote unless his hands are
suitably horny.
Inc Harvard notion seems to be to
STIR her citizens up as frequently as
possible, rub them together whenever
practicable and thus maintain certain
sense of fundamental democracy what
ever groupings otherwise develop. Just
how much good such artificial stirrinos
as freshman dormitories and a common
club can do remains to be seen. The
ann is sound, at any rate. You cannot
prohibit groups and gangs and fraterni
ties and cliques. You can set up counter
habits of general friendliness that will
tend to keep gang spirit in it's proper
place. And that is the true goal of
democracy in nations, we submit. There
cannot be either complete equality or
complete similarity. There will neces-
sarlly be groups. But there should be
enough freedom of grouping and re-
grouping SO that individual ability can
always find its own level promptly and
act effectively; which is to saw. in an
other form, that groups should never
become so crystallized or powerful
(whether through tradition or the in
heritance of money or the use of AFRO
giant force) as to keep down ability or
uphold mediocrity. The perfect system
is still located somewhere west of the
millennium, but at that, nearer America
than any other spot yet developed upon
this lazy, gregarious, habit-lovinp uni
verse.