(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be withheld. Only letters under 400 words can be printed because of space limitations.)

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I, for one, regret the refusal of the University to accept the Hanfstaengl offer of a Munich Scholarship. The petty question of manners and formality is not at all revelant to the actual issue of the case: namely, whether or not student would derive benefit from such European study.

The fact that the University would act as a medium between the donor and the selected student does not imply credence in the political beliefs of Germany any more than the granting of a Harvard scholarship to a resident of Alabama implies support of Negro suppression in southern United States. And the student's acceptance of the scholarship neither entails any obligation to Herr Hanfstaengl nor evinces approval of his character. This scholarship is an opportunity for intimate investigation into the thoughts and customs of Europe; and to construe any other meaning is to slander the student's intelligence. The very purpose of education is to fit the mind for just this sort of impartial investigation. Certainly a Harvard education does not leave the mind so contracted that there is no available space for new ideas, nor so vacant that all unfamiliar conceptions find immediate and permanent abode there. Liberalism is not merely a sacred ratification of democracy: it also includes a degree of toleration for differing conceptions of government.

The refusal of the University to accept this scholarship is not upholding the tenets of liberalism, except in a very narrow sense; the refusal is doing nothing in itself to mitigate any probable abuses of scholastic facilities in Germany; but it does any to some student of limited means the opportunity to investigate those "abuses" for himself. Ernst W. Mueller '39