The Oxford and Cambridge Rugby Football Match on Tuesday was
no doubt unusually exciting, but that was no reason for emulating the match far into the night. " Rags " in the theatres and streets of London after the Rugby Match and the Boat Race have become a tradition, and it would be silly to object to them as such. The behaviour of the police, and in a secondary degree of the public, in the presence of ragging is a periodic exercise in restraint, tact, sympathy or good humour, which has its value. But on Tuesday in two theatres there was Bacchanalian egotism. It is probably useless for the higher authorities, either in London or the Universities, to make an appeal, for it is precisely against higher authority that a rag is directed.. A nominally lower, but actually more powerful, authority should make the appeal. If the Presidents of the Football and Boat Clubs at Oxford and Cambridge said what they thought, the wholesome social intimidation which woad be put in train would ensure a different method next year.
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