Life — January 20, 1898 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there io Life there's Hope.” VOL. XXXI. JAN. 20, 1898, No. 788. 19 West Tairty-Finst Srreer, New Yors. Published every Thursday. $5. Postage to forcign. countties in the Postal Union, $1.04 year extra. Single copies, 10 cents. Rejected contributions will be destroyed un- Jess accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. The illustrations in Lie are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without Special arrangement with the publishers. HE Voice, Pro- hibition or- gan, insists that the students of Yale are suffering from over - stimulation. It sent a statistician to New Haven, who reported that there were sixty-six saloons within two blocks of the Yale campus. It has declared that not less than / a thousand Yale students in- toxicated themselves as an immediate consequence of the Yale- Princeton football match, and it men tions, with proper horror, that New Haven grocers have been known to advertise ‘‘ Beer delivered to students in their rooms.” The Voice is firmly per- suaded that the effect of intoxicants on college students is very baleful, and believes that rum and Yale students should be kept firmly and continuously apart. It does not go so far as to advo- cate a daily search of every Yale man’s inside with a stomach-pump, but. it wants something done; something effica- cious and prompt. By way of a begin- ning it would undoubtedly like to have a no-license law passed in New Haven, and to have the presence of alcohol in a student or in his room punished by the separation of the student from Yale College. Oa Or Aeon 6) HE Voice is a very earnest and per- sistent paper. Some persons hold that it is unscrupulous and unveracious We 7 “LIFE: in its warfare, but then it lives, presum- ably by fighting rum, and doubtless the hotter its fight the better its living, so we ought not to blame it overmuch if, now and then, it surges over the verge of mere impetuosity into sensationalism. Really, though, the Voice seems to have been oversanguine in estimating that a thousand Yale students were tipsy as the result of the Princeton football game. If that estimate were true, it would prove not only that Yale was very much out of the habit of beating Princeton, but also very much out of the habit of using exhilarants. Where students are used to drink much rum, or even much beer, you could never find a thousand of them tipsy in one evening. Such an astonish- ing feat as that can only be achieved by the sudden introduction of alcohol into unaccustomed stomachs. Ifa thousand Yale students got tipsy after that foot- ball game it implies that, ordinarily, Yale must be anabstemious college. It seems unlikely that she is as abstemious as all that. What appears more credible is that some Yale men were tipsy that night and that a great many more were in full sympathy with them, and were very noisy and uproarious. ye is probably a good deal like: other colleges. The average Amer- ican college student is a parsimonious drinker, who doesn’t take wine with his meals, and is not an habitual consumer of even beer. That is as it should be, but in every big college there are some men who drink a great deal too much and do themselves damage. To shut off the grog of these persons would do no harm and might do some good, but it would be of doubtful expediency, even if it were possible, to shut off the grog of a whole university on their account. Some time or other every man has to settle the drink question for himself. Young men in college ought to be old enough to manage their own drinking. If they are not, they ought to be sent home. One thing that young men are sent to college for is to gain experience of life. But experience of life with all alcoholic opportunities eliminated is in- complete. It is suitable for boys at schools, but not so suitable for older lads at college. To know what to drink and when is of some little importance; to know what not to drink and when is of very great importance. When drink is shut out altogether you don’t learn either. VCE would be glad to see the man- ufacture, sale and consumption of every sort of intoxicant made a criminal offense, and absolutely stopped. That is the ultimate goal to which its face is turned. It prefers that men who drink at all should be compelled to skulk and dissemble. Rum, to the Voice, is the accursed thing with which there should be no compromise. It is pitch that defiles. Moderation in the use of it is worse than excess, as being less dis- graceful and teaching no lesson. Voice does not preach righteousness, but fanaticism. But let it go! There is so much amiss on the other side, so enormous an abuse of drink, such vast evils that appear to be immediately due to it, that it would be a marvel if such excesses did not beget analogous ex- cesses in their turn. sh ENERAL GOBIN, Commander-in- Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, has taken notice of the outcry about pension frauds, and declares that, though he does not believe the case is as bad as stated, he intends to find out for himself the actual condition of affairs. He declares that if he finds fraud he will lay the matter before the Executive Committee of the G. A. R., and that the organization will take emphatic action. That is good talk. Letus hope there is really action behind it. The Grand Army, according to General Gobin, would not object to the publication of pension rolls. It ‘believes that no one should receive a pension who is not suf- fering from actual disability.” All that the public asks is to purge the pension rolls of fraud. No one objects to liberal pensions for men who have earned them and need them. No organization is so much concerned in making the pension list. a roll of honor as the Grand Army. If it would do what General Gobin promises, and help on the pension inquest instead of hindering it, it would do a highly important public service, useful to its own self-respect, and adapted to raise it memorably in the public esteem.