To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In reply to the letter of Dr. Caner '17, I would like to offer my opinion, for whatever it may be worth, that the caricature of our president by certain students at the Yale game probably does represent the feelings of the majority of the students at Harvard. Since he does not seem to understand this attitude, I would like to enlighten him as to its causes.

The students of this and several other colleges have been living in a cultural period which is typified by a reaction that inevitably follows a period of disastrous war. Like the clear that follows the storm, the literature of the Thirties came forth with painfully cold facts . . . The wreckage of the storm was everywhere: debts that no one had any intention of paying; a Europe carved up into an Economic Impossibility; an America of plenty with starving millions; white crosses.

Now that this period is coming to a close, and clamoring for war is being heard, it is only natural that there should be those who hang back, those who stop long enough to see a suspicious resemblance to the last war, those who wonder if the costs of a German-dominated Europe and a lowered world standard of living are not equalled by the price of war.

They question your view, Dr. Caner, for the simple reason that it is contray to what they have learned in a free institution. You have made a great mistake in supposing that the teachings of 1917 would be continued for the next few decades, so that when the time came, you could start right in again where you left off. You may call these new graduates "soft" or what you will, but like the father who punishes his sons for reading his diary, you will never be able to beat out of them the truth they have acquired. Johnson Parker '41