Debt Revision

Few seriously doubt the learning of university faculties. But when professors attempt to apply their learning to vital matters, Mr. Babbitt becomes nervous and his newspaper howls. So it was last week. A large part of the faculty of Princeton University followed a large part of the faculty of Columbia University in advocating reconsideration of the Allied debts to the U. S. in a more altruistic light. President John Grier Hibben and 115 professors signed the Princeton petition. The Chicago Tribune was howl-leader. In an editorial headed "Piffle Patriots at Princeton" it said: "The reasoning of the Columbia professors was not good in either morals or economics. The signers were obviously groggy with emotionalism and Mr. Hibben indicates that there is the same fluttering of wings in the Princeton cloister." The professorial urge for debt revision "begins with the idea that the United States was a sluggard in its own War, that it was mean in remaining out of the League of Nations, selfish in kicking itself out of the World Court and can be made respectable only by paying cash for the good opinion of the world, a boss prostitute taking its only chance for redemption. . . . We'd rather Princeton played dirty football under Roper than shamefaced internationalism under Hibben."