A SHORT WALK ON THE CAMPUS

Messers. Aitken and Beloff toured America as representatives of the Oxford debating team in 1964 and, as one might suspect, they're not only fast on their feet. Their cheeky, critical (not overly harsh) commentary touches on everything they saw, and they were wideawake all of the time. From Montreal to New York, during the last election they were charmed by Bobby Kennedy -- (a ""juvenile lead playing the part of an Old Testament prophet""), they then went on to Eastern (""aesthetic scruffiness"" at Harvard) and midwestern (nothing more startling than a tee shirt) colleges. They're particularly sharp on American education (""a lot of little learning""); fraternities (""incubators for immaturity""); sex, all the way from pantie raids to other rituals (""not the legacy of the ...Pilgrim Fathers""); race--they went down to Mississippi; and the American student in general, anti-intellectual, anti-political, not wanting ""to change the world but to fit into it."" ....Michael and Jonathan were told Americans didn't like criticism because they're still too insecure--but they should like this. These home thoughts from abroad go down very easily. They're the liveliest delegation since the Beatles.