If it is true, as stated in some of the
newspapers, that an undergraduate at Worcester College has been sent down by the Vice-Chancellor for editing a magazine called Free Oxford, in which, apparently, extreme Bolshevik views were expressed, we cannot help thinking that a great mistake has been made. We have not seen the paper in question, and it may be that there was matter in it of a kind likely to cause public disturbances or corrupt public morals, in which case there may have been verbal justification for the painless extinction of the magazine and its editor so far as the University was concerned. But, even in that case, we should regard this act of academia execution as a great pity. " The awful example " is a very useful exhibit to keep on hand, and we feel quite sure that the undergraduate editor was much more likely to prove such an example than a Machiavellian corrupter of youth. There is nothing that young men are more eager for, and rightly eager for, than a free expression of their own and other people's opinions. The moment a door is shut and bolted they want, most properly, to see what is on the other side. How can men learn but through curiosity ? Leninism is a thing to be exposed, not hidden ; and the best possible exposure is by its own friends. They cannot be accused of injustice. Judgment given on defendant's admission is the very best way of winning a case.
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