To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It might be a valid answer to those who talk of Harvard "indifference" to read them the recent letters in the CRIMSON, revealing that peculiar self-consciousness with which so many Harvard men face the world, listening anxiously to the "other fellow's opinion about us. But if we are to criticise Harvard fairly, it might be wiser to search for the underlying philosophy of this University, rather than to measure its fallings by standards created to suit the ideals of other colleges. It has become the fashion, in education, in literature, to attack the "genteel" tradition of New England, to compare it--unfavorably, of course,--with the breezy lack of tradition of the West. And the hostility, the suspicion with which Harvard is regarded, is simply a part of that general contempt of the New America for an ancient--and eternal--ideal that stubbornly refuses to die in spite of the threats of democratic dogma.

For Harvard persists in its spirit of academic reserve, of stalwart refusal to admit that the "vox populi" is always the "vox Dei". It has at all times been a leader in American education because it has sought the Truth, and not because it has followed popular clamor. It has insisted on its right to set its own standards, no matter how defective they may have been; and in its students it has recognized the creative power of the individual and the small group as against the control of the crowd. The West may stand for that vague thing we call Democracy; Harvard stands for Aristocracy in the true Greek sense; it believes in catering to the best; and it is attempting concretely to set its standards by the ablest men, rather than by the mediocre. It is true that American schools are inclusive: Harvard is frankly exclusive and selective, though not always happily so. Perhaps that is why we sometimes get the "snob" instead of the man we want; the true aristocrat. It is a word we shudder at these days; and yet, did not the Cambridge group of poets and thinkers form a genuinely creative aristocracy, functioning at a time when the rest of America was quite barren of thought."

Selection is a principle that works both ways: if the University chooses, the prospective student, too, has the privilege of seeing Harvard as it is. If he believes it worth while, it may be desirable for him to show himself just a bit better than average: because it is for the student's sake that Harvard discriminates. Harvard does not throw its gates wide open for anybody; neither does it put a lock upon them. It is here for men to seek. It admits openly the principle which governs it; but it is precisely that principle which has preserved Harvard as the alma mater of leaders among men. To be a Harvard man does not mean that one has gone through that fraternizing period of sham democracy in which cane rushes and greased poles have stimulated the spirit of brother-hood; but it does mean a respect for scholarship, for the right of the individual to assert himself in his own way; a feeling for that continuity of achievement, free of "isms", which passes over into progress.

Harvard is, in short, a place of tradition. Indeed, it is a sign of the confusion in American thought to note the disrepute into which the word "tradition" has fallen. It is just because Harvard is traditional in its point of view that it is misunderstood, and often deliberately so, by Americans. Tradition to many is a synonym for Reaction; and yet the tradition of Harvard has always been liberal. From the days of the bitter church controversies in the early nineteenth century, through the recent war, Harvard has stood for Liberalism in a much more truthful way than many of the great or small colleges that profess to be open to "all the people." When one recalls that the first active collegiate Socialist society was founded at Harvard some ten or twelve years ago--(when Socialism was decidedly unfashionable)--it is amusing to find that in certain quarters liberalism at Harvard is just being discovered. To some, tolerance means the privilege of making the other fellow abandon his own ideas for somebody else's. At Harvard, tolerance means the privilege of minding one's own business. That explains why we do not duck a man in the Charles for not attending a mass-meeting, or for playing chess on the afternoon of the Yale game. It explains also why we do not "baby" Freshmen. We do not promise a man a better time here than else-where--as one of our correspondents seems to desire. Harvard is in this respect, a reproduction of the world outside: the competition is as keen (and much fairer); the victory is as sweet, the defeat is as bitter. And so also is it a preparation for the world.

Do we want an ideal that will unite all Harvard men? Yes, of course we want it; but we need not seek it in those places where standards are just emerging from the chaos of educational invention. We have it here in that subtle influence of tradition that no man can escape, no matter how callous; we have it in the common belief that as Harvard men we can contribute to American culture the particular qualities of the University and its environment. Perhaps this is a sort of provincialism; but I prefer a vital provincialism to an emasculated nationalism, if we are concerned with the development of intellectual diversity. It is an obvious paradox that at institutions professing to reflect the American spirit in all its variety, democracy has invested the campus with a drab sameness. Cosmopolitanism, too, has its defects; and not the least of these is superficiality.

We want college loyalty: but we do not want it in that naive unity that comes from having played mandolins together on soft spring nights. That is desirable: but it is not sufficient. It may be a unity that penetrates every man, but it is a wholly ineffective sort of loyalty. Here we allow a man to work out his own salvation: let every man find for himself some social group, some intellectual niche where he fits in, some ideal that Yuspires him. Yet, wherever he is finally placed he cannot help being impregnated with the mellow reality that New England represents; nor can he help seeing in the serenity of Harvard a good deal more than mere smugness.

For it his most concrete loyalty here is to the group smaller than the University it is nevertheless a group colored in us thought by the centuries-old tradition of the University. And that, at least, is one factor of permanency. And if he feels that as a Harvard man he is some what out of the rushing current of modern American life, then it is his duty to utilize the perspective which he thereby gains. For finally he will hurl himself into that very current; it is the last sensation one can make against Harvard graduates that they have stood sloop from the world of action. But let us frankly avow the debt of Harvard to the particular state of mind that we call New England; let us accept it as our respected province to infuse something of its own dignity into American life, no merits where we come from.  HARRY STARR '21