College Drinking and Its Destruction
KATE UPSON CLARKE, in the Independent, tells us that "in every college class there is a considerable percentage who leave their alma mater confirmed inebriates. A much larger percentage have developed a marked tendency that way. Her influence should have been for all that is austerely pure and lofty; but for bread she has given them stones and worse." And she also refers to "the nightly—not occasional, but nightly—screams of boys frenzied with drink, which make the streets of New Haven and Cambridge and other college towns ring. They ring the knells of the breaking hearts of mothers and the destruction of souls." She closes thus: "And these words are not a plea for Puritanism. They are not even a plea for religion or Christianity. They are a simple plea in the interest of civilization."