Lord Rector

The ermine and broadcloth of a British University's lord-rectorship are one thing. The dignitary who is elected adds considerably to his reputation at the trifling cost of an address on youth's enviable estate, whole duty and glorious opportunities for service. Sometimes the occasion brings forth a notable pronouncement, as that of Sir James Barrie on Courage, delivered when he assumed the lord-rectorship of St. Andrews University in 1922.

But the election of a lord rector by the students is quite another thing. The qualifications of the candidates are too well known to necessitate campaign oratory and tubthumping. Solemnity is banished and the vote is one of hearty sentiment, not unmixed with good British horseplay and ribaldry.

Glasgow University last week elected a lord chancellor. As the first voters approached the polls, they were greeted by a sally of thoroughly putrefied eggs. Pease meal followed, a light shower, and a few handfuls of soot. More voters appeared and the campaign arguments thickened--clouds of eggs, bursting with fabulous stench; here a rich asortment of cod heads raining down; there a herring, another, a shoal of flying herrings long since removed from the sea. Fogs of soot darkened the scene and a blizzard of meal. Scraping fish omelet from their eyes, the partisans closed in ardent wrestling bouts, the object being to keep your opponent from getting to the polling booth--if necessary, to cripple him. Four students were carried to the hospital.

For some time the women voters remained ladies, tripping prim and proper to and from the balloting. But the spirit of the thing came upon them and a score reverted to the fishwife, yanking hair, screeching epithets, tearing skirts and blouses in a wrangle on the turf. Spectators guffawed, applauded.

At evening it was announced that Glasgow's new lord chancellor was suave, bemonocled Austen Chamberlain, winner by 300 votes over gusty, rotund Gilbert K. Chesterton, and by 1,000 over lean, intellectual Sidney Webb.