18 MAY 1929, Page 13

A UNIVERSITY EXCITEMENT.

The reverberations of the disturbances at Des Moines Uni- versity, the Iowa Baptist Fundamentalist institution, should not be interpreted seriously. While the steps taken by students in bombarding the administration building with eggs and stones as a protest against the ousting by the Uni- versity Board of the entire .Faculty and the closing down of the institution were perhaps unnecessarily exuberant. the action of the Board itself finds very little sympathy either in the Press or elsewhere. Like the famous Dayton, Tennessee, trial incident, it illustrates a spasmodic outburst in American life of the old heresy-hunting, witch-burning spirit. The present controversy .arises less as a result of the Fundamentalist-Modernist dispute than from strong personal objections to the President of the Board of Trustees and his secretary and treasurer.