Plans for the Lamont Undergraduate Library proceed at a pace paralleled only by the growth of controversy over this subject. Exhibiting rare enthusiasm, University Hall has pursued the planning of this structure disregarding the many reservations voiced by faculty, alumni and students. These plans are nearing completion; it is time the Library Committee pulled in the reins, called a halt, and turned to a reconsideration of the site for this new building and its effect on the expansion policy of the University.

If the trend of the past half century is allowed to continue, a picture of the yard fifty years from now will dishearten these who feel a strong attachment to what remains of Harvard's once-gracious heart. Originally the site of undergraduate dormitories and class-buildings of Georgian structural style, this confine has been transformed by the recurring needs of the past 300 years into a vast architectural pudding, spiced with neat tid-bits such as Boylston and Weld. As the needs grew, the landscaping diminished, the charm receded to three small areas, one of which is to be used for Lamont's edifice. In fifty years of this type of inward expansion, Harvard can expect to resemble any big-city college that has gone over to the drab business of manufacturing college graduates.

The future expansion of Harvard is no baseless hypothesis. The mushrooming graduate schools, broad national increase in enrollments, G.I. Bill, government subsidies for advanced research, all make up a demand that Harvard grow with the times. But this growth does not mean that what is now left of the Yard must b subject to the whims of succeeding generations of growth-intoxicated planners. It is about time the University took to protecting its meagre reserves of physical attractiveness instead of sacrificing them to short-view expediency.

There are other places for Lamont to go. Originally the faculty committee had settled on a Mt. Auburn Street location, with alternate sites chosen along the streets radiating between the Yard and Mt. Auburn. Architects who have seen the designs for the building feel strongly that it would fit these locations, while it might saddle the yard with a Memorial Hall all its own. In many ways this compromise locale might prove fairer to the House men who would not be forced to walk as far as the Yard for after-class study. For the great mass of students who use library facilities between morning classes, the two minute walk across Massachusetts Avenue should not prove too full of insidious lures away from the good path of scholarly concentration.

It is not merely the question of where to put a new library. It is a question of this greater expansion of which Lamont may be only the beginning. The University must not allow the Yard to disintegrate into just another Cambridge block. To do this while disregarding outside and convenient sites is to misuse a treasured locale and insult generations of men who have lived there.