To the Editor of the Crimson:

Fair, well considered criticism of an individual or organization is in the end always salutary, but your editorial, "Smoked Ham" (Nov. 14), clever though it may have been, was neither fair nor well considered. One swallow does not make a summer, and one lapse of taste in its selection of a play does not signify, as that editorial stated, that the Harvard Dramatic Club is on the road "to hamdom." But the editorial went further than this and implied that the Club was already on that much-trodden road before the affair of "The Trojan Horse."

T. S. Eliot's "The Family Reunion" and O'Neill's "The Great God Brown," two of last year's three productions, are not indicative that the Club has lowered its standards of play selection, and the third production, William Gillette's "Too Much Johnson," can be defended on the grounds that it is an amusing period piece belonging to the Mauve Decade, a play that ran for years to the laughter of our fathers and grandfathers. In fact, if the writer of "Smoked Ham" will look back over the plays preformed by the Club during the past five years, I warrant that he will note nothing trashy about ninety per cent of them. They were plays that could not have been seen on the commercial stage and were worth the seeing.

Moreover, they were given in the face of an increasing apathy among the students towards the Club's productions, a deplorable situation in itself, and a puzzling one in view of the great enthusiasm shown in other colleges for undergraduate productions of every description. Probably one explanation of this disinterestedness in Harvard Dramatic Club plays is that they were performed without benefit of an up-to-date theatre, Harvard, the cradle of college dramatics, being almost the only university in America that does not possess today a modern theatre or theatre-auditorium. Be that as it may, it is most discouraging to act to blocks of empty seats, and yet the Club has courageously continued to stage plays from the pockets of its members through sheer love of the theatre. It cannot long survive, however, without more student support. W. B. Van Leannp.