(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:

In an article in yesterday's CRIMSON, Professor E. C. Moore declared that he was "inclined to be amused" at the statement that other Christian Associations pray for Harvard. To me, the fact that we have the reputation of being "godless", is not a subject for amusement, and I cannot understand the attitude of any Christian Harvard man to whom it is amusing. Prayer, regardless of all other theories, is at least an attitude of deep thought. For us to be amused that we are the object of serious thought of intelligent men, is not only to insult their intelligence, but to assume for ourselves a position of obvious self-satisfaction.

Furthermore, I do not believe that it is because we do not have compulsory chapel, that we have the reputation of being "godless". Perhaps other college Christian associations are interested not that we don't compel men to go to chapel, but that our men do not go to chapel. Questions of our voluntary chapel, of our individual thinking, and of our "rational religion" may not be so dominant in their minds as the question of our actual religious life. Not what our rules are, but how we carry them out, determines the way in which other colleges regard us.

Whether other Christian associations pray for us because we do not have compulsory chapel or because our religious life does not appear to them to be what it should be, I do not believe that we should respond in an attitude of amused disdain. And if thirteen colleges got down on their knees to pray for us at Indianapolis, I do not believe that we should jump at the conclusion that it was merely the result of our chapel system. Are we so satisfied with the religious life of the University as a whole, that we can smile at their prayers? A. D. PHILLIPS '26