Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/91

 usually a false one, and even if it were not, it would in no sense excuse his persuading a student to break his pledge.

"We couldn't see a good man join a fraternity like that," a fraternity officer suggested in an attempt to justify his action in lifting a pledge.

"Why?" I asked.

"They have no standing," was his reply.

But the facts were they were cleaner fellows, better students, more active in the college community, and better respected than the organization which was guilty of the lifting.

There is the reason alleged, also, that the man concerned will be happier with one group than with another, and that any means are justifiable which will rescue him from an environment that in the end will mean to him misery and maladjustment. I am reminded in this instance of a friend of mine who made an usually happy marriage and who has lived a life of rare contentment.

"I was a lucky man in getting Mary," he admitted to me, "but I can't quite see how one is going to be sure about the outcome of such a union until he tries it." And so I say about the fraternity; the organization that is willing to descend to a disreputable act in order to save a man from unhappiness has no convincing evidence that the man so rescued would have been unhappy, and, besides,