THE
MESSENGER
13
~bitorial The meaning of tolerance should by no means be obscure to a college student. In fact , the very keynote of a college education is a knowledge of the rationality of that term. And yet there are many of us who do not appreciate the finer application of the word. As we have been told every since we were Freshmen, a college training is merely instruction in the ability to think. Now reason should, without effort, disclose the glaring irrationality at the heart of intolerance. Unfortunately, the negative usage has become fixed in our minds as ref erring to religion and politics. Intolerance in government and ecclesiastical beliefs has been a sustained tone in the symphony of history, and we have come to associate it with these two fields alone. In this age of self-assertion, it is not unthinkable that all individual endeavor should tend toward intolerance, especially when intense competition and specialization are universally existent. But self-assertion is a decadent concept of the morally approved character and cannot find successful exercise in college circles. There are those who feel free in denouncing THE MESSENGER, in toto; and who call their diatribes criticism . A blindness to the object of this magazine in its attempt to provide a workshop for those who are trying to improve their literary expression , alone can justify such wholesale disapprobation. If their criticism is founded on belief in themselves as more successful dealers in written words than present contributors, then we heartily invite material of higher literary value. But if these bitter critics can only mouthe denunciation for the satisfaction of display, then we must label such remarks as out of order, as undeserving and intolerant. The student who cannot judge his fellow's work without condemning it in the event it does not equal his own or his possible own, is not worthy of the confidence which accompanies him as a college man. Criticism is, of course, valuable, but when it becomes merely denunciation, we can deal with it only as a nmsance.