(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 Editor of the CRIMSON:

On the streets and in the cars even yet, at the hour of midnight, reeling, liquor-addicted Harvard students attract notoriety to the college which defeated the Blue on the 26th. Shall such doings be suffered to continue in this character-building institution, this "fair Harvard"? Obtaining synthetic gin is no longer so difficult and clever a feat that those who accomplish it need show to the outside world how enlivening an effect gin has. No longer is it a truly remarkable achievement to get enough wine for boisterous merriment. Drunkard ness among students, while pitiable, is not a condition which is altered by weeping or preaching. As long as the attitude of the student body is one of making merry over sometimes truly funny antics of the tipsy ones, and as long as strong drink is upheld because of its very evident innate qualities of making celebration easy, the one-time innocent Freshmen will make fools of themselves and disgrace John Harvard.

The unsophisticated Freshman likes to take a drink and be suddenly transported into the realms of the rah-rah college man. It must be because he is young and foolish that he and many another student has marred the family pride in imbibing spirituous toasts after the victory over Eli. Of course it is fun to Scheck the pious elders, and to make the name Harvard obnoxious to the good people who chanced to be in the riotous vicinity. In thus abandoning themselves to drunken joy have the celebrants been fulfilling a traditional rite? If so, such tradition should be stopped in the name of the law if not of morality. For those future leaders in the republic thus to be wanton law-breakers is bad practice. They have shown that they are able to do it, and are; therefore, as smart as the folks who dispense their home brew. Freshmen have more than done justice to themselves in that respect. But the burning question--the terrible question that confronts the scores who have taken their first taste of intemperate joy is: are they resigned to enslave themselves to the degrading life of a liquor taster; with its inevitable, base sensuality'?

Unfortunately those who have tasted cannot easily be deterred from this unworthy calling. Sermons on the terrors of a Drunkard's Damnation, pleadings of father and older brother, even censure from the College office will have small influence. More effectual will be the attitude of those their fellow-students who did not go out of the straight and narrow path for the festivities of one occasion, however great it was. Over the wretched ones who have had their first drunken debauch we can no longer be mirthful; we must show them that such is not the stuff of which true life is made. We must remind the erring that folly in a Freshman leads to shame in a grown man, and looseness among its students brings a great, noble university into ill repute. FESSENDEN A. NICHOLS '25

November 26, 1921.

(We recommend to those who entertain sentiments similar to these an article in a recently published book by Heywood Brown on "Alcoholic Liquors". The name of the book is "Seeing Things at Night".--Ed.)