"I am quite aware that Mr. O'Hara is not a graduate of Harvard and does not appear as a former student upon the printed list of such students. Also, I am pleased that a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former student of mine was elected Governor of Rhodo Island.

Mr. Quinn carried out the best traditions of our School in the admirable public statement that he made when he was Lieutenant Governor, as to the reforms that ought to be carried out by the proposed constitutional convention to bring up-to-date the antiquated features of the fundamental law of the State.

However, the previous careers of these two men and the question whether either or both of them was at Harvard can have nothing to with my opinions about the legal merits of the Governor's proclamation of martial law and about the unfairness of his midnight arrest of Mr. O'Hara in a private libel action for damages of astronomical proportions.

If I have sometimes found the law to be favorable to Mr. O'Hara, this is not due to any liking for him, because in newspapers he has frequently attacked two members of my family for whom I have the highest possible admiration. This personal dislike for Mr. O'Hara, shared by many of my former fellow-citizens in Rhode Island, throws on us an even heavier obligation to be sure that Mr. O'Hara's constitutional rights are not invaded.

Lord Justice Scrutton said in a great English decision upholding the liberties of a disagreeable Irish agitator:

"The law of this country has been very Jeaious of any infringement of personal liberty. This care is not to be exercised less vigllantly, because the citizen whose liberty is in question may not be particularly meritorious. It is indeed one test of belief in principles if you apply them to cases with which you have no sympathy at all."

And the late Judge Cuthbert Pound of New York pungently remarked:

"The rights of the best of men are secure only as the rights of the vilest and most abhorrent are protected."

If the Governor requests, I shall be glad to print his letter in my forthcoming pamphlet on Legal Problems of the Rhode Island Race-track Row."

Governor Quinn's Letter

"My attention has been called to a defense of Walter E. O'Hara which has, strangely enough, come out of Harvard University.

Writing in the Harvard CRIMSON, Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr., getting his background on the race-track situation here from the Boston newspapers, has written a series of articles, parts of which Mr. O'Hara has seen fit to use in his newspaper in defense of himself.

The purport of Professor Chafee's article really amounts to no more than that I am responsible for my actions as Governor.

O'Hara Secretary's Telegram

Mr. O'Hara in New York and will return middle part next week. To best my knowledge Mr. O'Hara has never has been enrolled as student at Harvard and has never made statement that he was. He did operate News Service out of Crimson several years ago with Joseph Slocum. Margaret T. Boodry, Secretary