The following article was written for the Crimson by Hendrik Willom Van Loon.

We are celebrating the Harvard tercentenary. That means that Harvard was founded three hundred years ago. But as most of us have but very hazy notions about the state of affairs in our own part of the world in the year of Grace 1636, was ask each other, "Are you going to the Harvard tercentenary?" and then we forget about it. Harvard is there. It always has been there. It probably will last for a good many years to come. So let us go to the movies and if the news-reel, in anticipation of this glorious event, shows us a picture of the Yard as it was twenty years ago, we shall say. "Those were the days, my lads!" and that is that.

Practical Advice

Now not so long ago in the land of my nativity I happened to pick up a translation of the Psalms. The Psalms done from the original Hebrew in a quite pleasing Latin version. The translation was the work of a completely unknown Dutch dominie, the usual Calvinistic medicine-men of the sixteen hundred and seventies. There really was no excuse for my getting the little book except that I like to read well-flowing Latin poetry. I could of course understand only half of everything I read. But I am after the metre.

Arises the question how do you acquire an even flow of language? Well I have discovered a very convenient pons assinorum. My little "donkey-bridge" is provided by Messrs. Corneille, Racine Petrarch or any of the minor Latin poets. Read them with all their umtadee-umtadee-um for about five minutes before you go on the air and you will be astonished at the results.

The Discovery

I therefore bought my Latin Psalms for the sake of N. B. C. and then one evening while listening to the usual rodomontado of my excellent Alois Havrilla (who still loves me though he had been obliged to repeat the same nonsense about my superior qualifications for years and years and years) I idly looked at the back page of my Psalms--which was of course the front page as this was supposed to be a book of Hebrew--and I was so surprised that the production man had to wave wildly from the control room to make me realize that I was supposed to open my mouth and speak my piece and not sit there and grin in surprise.

For this is what I had discovered. My Psalm translation of the year 1670 had been dedicated to no one less than the Rev. Dr. Increase Mather, Harvard 1656, and of all things, it was dedicated to him in his capacity as "convertor to the Indians" and gave quite a list of names of those poor savages, "Who formerly heathen, now become useful preachers of the Gospel."

Another Harvard

Suddenly I had come face to face with an entirely new Harvard. Better than all contemporary accounts, better than the few remaining contemporary pictures, I had seen this small group of buildings, clinging to the slender fringe of civilization along the shores of the Atlantic and being, of all things! a missionary station erected for the benefit of the Indians.

This was a new version. I remembered that John Eliot had translated the Bible and the catechism into the native vernacular for the convenience of his copper-skinned neighbors, but for the rest, I was only aware of the Rev. John Harvard's desire to build himself an "Institute for the Advancement of Learning" for fear that otherwise the true doctrines might disappear from the American soil when he and hiis fellow-ministers should lie in the dust.

Foreign Recognition

I also had vague recollections of a socalled Indian college where the painted savages had been allowed to come and partake of the blessings of the White Man's civilization. But here I got concrete evidence and from a wholly unexpected side, that to the Europeans of the seventeenth century that humble little school in the unclaimed wilderness of Nova Anglia meant something. That they had heard about it. That they were greatly interested in what was being done there. That they knew about the men who were the leaders of that small forepost of enlightenment. And that to many of them, the name Harvard was the only word that had any meaning in connection with the new world.

The Present Age

We live in a strange age. Every age has been a strange age but ours is stranger than most.