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To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Just a week ago in the Harvard Stadium Princeton's savage Tigers took the measure of a very limp Harvard football team, 34 to 0. "Fair Harvard was only fair," derided a New York football correspondent. Other New York papers were no kinder; the Boston journals sorry, but callously truthful. It was the most complete rout that Harvard has suffered since the '90's. Those who sat in the crowded Stadium saw a bewildered Crimson eleven, first wondering what under the sun Princeton was about; discovering that Princeton was there for business, and finally, allowing Princeton to go right ahead about that business, for all they cared.

Harvard rooters, horrified, uttered "regular Harvard cheers" at the half-hearted bidding of half-hearted cheer leaders, and sang occasional lines of the songs that were written for Harvard to sing against Yale. The Harvard band never had a chance on earth after the Princeton band got started. Most emphatically it was a shameful Harvard day.

Every Harvard man was ashamed of the team's showing, and every Harvard graduate was disgusted with the way the team was supported. Only a comparative handful had been to the Football Mass Meeting, and but few had marched with the band to the Stadium to cheer the beam the Thursday before the biggest home game of the year.

Now athletics are far from being all of college life, and the 34 to 0 defeat of Harvard by Princeton is not a terrible calamity to the University. But the utter spinelessness, the total lack of spirit in the student body, are straws that very clearly illustrate the way the Harvard wind is blowing.

"Harvard indifference" is what men have been pleased to call this lack of unity, and Harvard men have been proud of it, or have feigned their pride therein. They have rejoiced in the lack of "rah-rah stuff," in the lack of small-town collegiate performances such as prevail at the more isolated of the well-known universities. They have been superior to any sort of excitement. Nothing has ruffled them. They have not bothered to care.

Let us not throw mud at Harvard; she is the most internationally respected of American universities, the University with perhaps the finest academic standards in the United States today. We admire and love her--but we must be jealous of her spirit. And it is flagging now.

The indifference of Harvard is as strong toward the academic work as toward other elements of college life. Few men attain the honors of Groups I or II, or even Ed; most are content with enough C's to quality; many there are who brag aloud of their consistent; achievements in bluffing, or of sleeping or card-playing through class hours. The chance for contact between student and instructor is so slight that any communication between them is of a cold, telegraphic variety. When a student does take the trouble to try to know his instructor better, he is generally regarded as a "sucker."

In the plain living a: Harvard there is no getting together, no unity or bond of any sort, save the select and over-rated clubs, whose membership is often composed of the "don't-cares" rather than of really big men. Of the latter there are plenty at Harvard, too; they come prepared to give their best, and, finding it often unwanted, draw within their shells and seek to protect themselves with the same indifference which they despise. Averse to the charge of "sour grapes," they say nothing, and so remain a silent, unorganized, unhappy element in Harvard life.

There is no friendly hand held out as yet by Harvard to the man who would work for the privilege of his education--the finest kind of student a university can have. Is it not deplorable when there are not more than some thirty positions, offered to the whole undergraduate body, to help men to help themselves? There is a bitter scramble for these jobs every year. At the same time an article has just recently appeared in the Yale Daily News, telling of over 200 students helped by Yale University during the past College year. Is it any wonder that the poor and earnest student turns his face oward New Haven?

Harvard is thus becoming a vast and highly-organized business proposition, mechanically nearly perfect, and consequently without the soul that was the inspiration for its founding. Men come to college examined uniformly by the College Entrance Examination Board; they complete the required number of courses; take their language tests, their divisionals, and pass out of Harvard cheated--cheated out of the companionship, the enthusiasms, and the tremendous inspiration that a great University like this should give.

"Princeton 34; Harvard 0." This little upset in the Harvard athletic world is not, as has been said, a University calamity. It is just a straw; just the first of a series of vivid eye-openers, which will summon the vast and loving army of Harvard graduates to the colors, for the desperately-needed battle against indifference. Fair Harvard must be more than "only fair"!

(Editor's note: The writer of the above communication, whose name is withheld by request, is the wife of a prominent Harvard graduate and sister of a member of the Yale football team.)