(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

On the wall of a small and much used room in Rothenburg there is written the probable original of the oft Anglicized proverb about fools' names, "Die Namen der Toren u. s. w."

But what of the fool anonymous, the fool rampant, the fool who writes the asinine comments on page margins of books in the Widener Library?

How is one to attain "that willing suspension of disbelief which is the essence of poetic faith" if, upon opening a book, one finds flung in his face marginal comment after marginal comment, like so many name plates at a zoo?

It is lamentable if the study of English at Harvard should lead a man to denature the books of Chesterton, Huneker, Dunsany, Birmingham, and Anatole France with half-baked and supercilious criticisms. Especially so when he disfigures them by writing with a No. 2 pencil which smears.

He uses all the marks of punctuation, learnt in some English course, no doubt, where, however, he can have learnt little else, for he puts a question mark opposite the word "objective" as used in criticism.

He knows punctuation but he can never have heard of good manners or of common decency, although he is careful to put an exclamation point alongside every sentence in which there is any hint that human beings are not ordinarily produced by parthogenesis.

His most characteristic expression is the line down the side of a passage. Next comes "What does he mean?" in connection with a paragraph of such simplicity that one-tenth the reasoning power of a negro prizefighter could fathom it.

Why do they do it? Is it a sort of "will to live" which urges these men on? Have they so few opportunities to express themselves that they do so in this fashion?

It must be obvious to the least informed student of Psychology that here is one of the outcrops of a Freudian repression. The mentality of these marginal annotators, to judge from their manuscript, is somewhat lower than that of the higher Simiidae, and on a level with that of an usher in the movies, an amen-snorter in a Cumberland plateau camp-meeting, or a Dr. Frank Crane. Therefore, in any gathering of civilized men, they are compelled to remain silent, and this for two reasons: first, because they cannot understand the conversation; and second, because their remarks cause rude mirth. Hence their innate longing to criticise, deprived of its normal outlet, finds this vent, to the dismay, disgust, and despair of intelligent readers. E. M. WESTON 1G.   E. R. DUNN 1G.