(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest, but assume no responsibility for sentiments expressed under this head.) To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The communication in Wednesday's CRIMSON urging that students of the University petition the legislature to permit them to vote for President in Massachusetts, if qualified elsewhere, should not pass without an obvious criticism. This matter of disqualification for voting by absence from one's normal voting place is a very serious matter, for not only students, but hundreds of thousands of men who earn their living by travelling, lose a vote enlightened by wider observation of conditions than is possible to their stay-at-home neighbors. But the solution does not lie in permitting them to vote wherever they may happen to be, even for President. The voters of Cambridge will on next Tuesday cast a ballot not for the Presidential nominee, but for an elector pledged to vote for a certain Presidential nominee, and for electors at large from the state. The elector chosen for the district in which the University is situated will cast one ballot next February for the Presidential choice of the majority in this district. That is, the object of the election on November 7 is not to ascertain the popular choice for President without regard to its geographical distribution. A vote for Hughes in Maine is not the same thing as a vote for Hughes in Alabama. Now the vote of Harvard students who are qualified voters of other states would normally be distributed all over the country, and only a few of their votes would count in any one choice of an elector. Supposing then that we are really foreigners in Massachusetts, how can we claim the right to concentrate our vote for Presidential electors here in this one spot and possibly alter the result in this district, thus making it appear that Cambridge has chosen an elector pledged to support a candidate whom the majority of her citizens do not favor?

It can't be done. We must go back a step. In your columns I have noticed that discussions of student voting generally assume that the student from a distant state has no interest in the local affairs of Cambridge and Massachusetts. Why so? On the slightest consideration it will appear that this is not true. Many of us are here for seven years or more; a great many more for four years, a period as long as millions of citizens spend in one town, because of the varying demands of the labor market and shifting business conditions. Men of Cambridge, we are interested in your local affairs. We are in business here, in the business of training ourselves to take a more responsible part in the life of the country. Our interest in Harvard University extends to its environment. What are our qualifications? We can read and write the English language with reasonable facility; we are somewhat familiar with the Constitution and political system of the United States and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; we have been brought up amidst New England traditions which are apparently better preserved and more revered in the West than in Greater Boston; we think of Massachusetts political questions in the light of Massachusetts history and of the great part which this Commonwealth has played and still ought to play in the affairs of the country. And we are self-supporting. We are not paupers; we do not call on state or city for our support or education. In fact we do not call on the hard-worked soil of Massachusetts for our subsistence; we bring into the state money which enables many voters of Cambridge to be technically "self-supporting." Why inquire the source of our income any more than that of the politicians who are maintained out of the public treasury, or those whose ancestors amassed the fortunes on which their descendants live? How would we vote in Cambridge? We would vote for a city government calculated to give a sound administration of the city's business. Is Cambridge afraid we would vote for extravagant expenditures on public works? Thousands of day laborers who pay no more than a poll tax would vote for them too, in order to get a chance to work on them. And the public improvements are needed too. We do not want to be so-journeys in a strange land. We want to help solve the political problems of Massachusetts. Though the time of our departure be in a measure fixed, while we are here, we are part of the body politic of this community by virtue of our substantial interest in learning all that Cambridge and Massachusetts, as well as Harvard, have to teach us. We are native Americans, mostly of New England ancestry, easily adjusted to the conditions about us; surely we can with justice plead for recognition as qualified to take part in the civic life of this our city. And we might have picked up an occasional idea about street lighting, sidewalks, paving, city managers, budgets, etc., in some Missouri town, which could be of service here. Not as inhabitants and qualified voters of Arizona and Florida would we take part in politics in Cambridge, but as workers in one of the great industries of Cambridge.  EMMET RUSSELL 2L