The recently organized Harvard Fund Council, through which the Senior class has arranged to accumulate the funds for its twenty-fifth anniversary gift to the University, has issued the following statement of the history, development, and purpose of the Fund. Mr. Thomas W. Lamont '92, President of the Harvard Alumni Association, in commenting on the newly formed organization said:

"The plan of the Harvard Fund to promote the habit among Harvard men of making annual return to the University of a part, even though small, of the great debt which they owe to it is thoroughly praiseworthy."

It is the will and desire of every Harvard man to do his utmost to insure the preservation of Harvard's leadership among American universities. Since the founding of the College in 1636, this leadership has been bound up inseparably with a tradition rich in the names of great teachers and illustrious graduates. From Dunster and Mather descends an unbroken line of famous professors down to Peirce, Longfellow, Gray, Norton, Shaler, Agassiz, Palmer, James, and Briggs. Graduates like Jonathan Trumbull, John Quincy Adams, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph H. Choate, Phillips Brooks, Theodore Roosevelt, and others, have carried throughout the civilized world Harvard thought and Harvard ideals. In the community, in the State, and in the country, for nearly three hundred years Harvard has exerted a steady and growing influence for public good.

Cost of Leadership Is High

Many Harvard graduates are prone to take for granted that the Harvard given them by heritage will likewise persist in the future through some invisible power. That will depend upon Harvard men.

The cost of leadership today is high; and if Harvard is to lead, it must have the means to command the kind of men that have enabled it to lead in the past, and to continue a tradition of great teaching.

To help provide these means, the Harvard Fund was first considered in 1919. In 1923 the plan of the Harvard Fund was authorized jointly by the Harvard Alumni Association and the Associated Harvard Clubs. With the approval of the President and Fellows and the Board of Overseers, and with the appointment of the members of the Harvard Fund Council, the Fund has now been established.

The primary considerations governing the establishment and administration of the Harvard Fund are these:

1. That Harvard University needs a large increase of funds available for the current support, improvement, and, in some instances, the extension of its work.

2. That among the 44,000 alumni, there are a large number whose sense of obligation and loyalty will make them welcome a well-ordered plan whereby they may contribute annually an amount fixed by each contributor for himself for the use of the University.

3. That the amounts contributed should be a moderate, voluntary charge on the giver's current income and should bear such relation to his whole income as he should fix for himself.

4. That the money annually raised for the Harvard fund shall be paid into the Treasury of the University without restriction as to its use, and with entire freedom on the part of the Corporation to use the Fund as it may determine.

Physical Development on Increase

There can be no question about the University's pressing requirement for unrestricted funds. In every department money is needed for assistance and equipment, such as to obtain the maximum of productivity and the minimum of administrative work for the ablest teachers and investigators. This is the one vital need of the University. According as it is measurably met or not, the prestige of Harvard is maintained or lost.

Harvard, in common with many other American colleges and universities, is in the midst of a large building program. For actual volume added, its present physical growth has been approximated only twice before in the history of the University. During the period from 1924 to the close of 1926, a group of buildings--substantially 13 per cent, of its total number--will have been erected.