The recently announced plans of the Harvard Corporation to construct a Memorial Chapel in honor only of the Harvard Alumni who died in the Allied Cause was warmly protested in a resolution adopted Sunday night and officially announced yesterday by the students of the Harvard Wesley Foundation. The students believe that if the proposed new chapel is to be built at all, it should be in honor of all Harvard Alumni who fought in the World War, regardless of which side they took.
This would include three alumni who fell on the German side, but whose names the Corporation had not planned to inscribe on the proposed new edifice. The students think that since the memorial is to be a religious building, any other course would be incompatible with the ideals of Christianity.
The Wesley Foundation is the largest student religious group at Harvard. It is connected with, and meets each Sunday night at the Epworth Methodist Church of Cambridge. Only four dissenting votes were recorded.
The resolution follows:
WHEREAS, according to newspapers accounts, the new War Memorial Chapel to be erected by Harvard University is to commemorate only the Harvard men who died for the Allied cause; and
WHEREAS the use of religion, for purely nationalistic purposes is in direct opposition to the ideals of Christianity;
THEREFORE, be it resolved, that we as Christians, members of the Wesley Foundation at Harvard do hereby express most emphatically our strong objection to the proposed. Harvard War Memorial Chapel, and that we petition the President and Fellows of Harvard University either to commemorate all Harvard men who gave their lives in the World War, or to refrain from putting the Memorial in the form of a Chapel.
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IN MEMORIAM