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To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Reading the voluminous and for the most part short-sightedly partisan controversy concerning the departure of Professor Baker for Yale has moved me to wonder whether it would not be appropriate to say something for the other side. Practically all that I have read has stressed the so-called "forcing out" and horrible treatment of Professor Baker at the hands of Harvard University--and by "Harvard" is meant the head of the University, although the vociferous commiserates of Professor Baker do not always have the courage to say so. I should like to propose a few questions.

In the first place, was the 47 Workshop the most important thing in the college, after all? I do not here propose to criticise it, although I have read some of its productions and am talking not entirely in the dark. But I should like to ask whether the production of Slavically mournful, not quite "eqochmaking," plays is really of greater importance than, say, the foundation of a new scholarship or the sorely needed endowment of a laboratory or a professorship in one of the branches of the arts. Harvard is not an overwhelmingly rich college, over-endowed and able to spend as much as would be desirable in the vital business of education. And even without consideration of the financial side, is it not also a dangerous thing when a subsidiary part of the curriculum threatens to become paramount in importance? Good as it was, the 47 Workshop was not everything.

This Baker incident would not in itself be so important, were it not that it appears to give a chance for expression to a tendency which seems to me pernicious, unthinking, and to the last degree unjust. I refer to the tendency of opposition to President Lowell and the Administration, which tendency will assuredly come to life again with renewed vigor now, at the regrettable departure of Dr. Hotson, although there is logically no excuse for its doing so. In cannot see any reason or excuse for such an opposition to an unintelligent criticism of President Lowell. And I feel sure that it is not entirely representative of undergraduate feeling. He has worked well and constructively for the college since his appointment, and so far as I can determine, has been as good a man to succeed his wonderful predecessor as could have been found anywhere. Furthermore, his policy with regard to the 47 Workshop seems to me to have been the only logical one to follow, for anyone who had the best interest of the University at heart.

This letter is not anti-Baker, or anything of the sort. I am as sorry as anyone that Professor Baker left Harvard, and as glad that he is well endowed now and can go on with the will at Yale. But I do want to point out that there are two sides to the question, and to suggest that the President is rather a leader to follow than a man to criticise for incidents in which no blame at all attaches to him. Edgar W. Pangborn '28.