When the College catapulted Thomas E. Dewey into Harvard's honorary Presidency Wednesday, it was not only applauding the Empire State executive; it was also following a tradition as hoary as old ivy and the Charles Regatta. Without slighting Mr. Dewey, it may be said that the College would probably have voted just as happily for any other G.O.P. candidate, whether living or dead. It has always been thus. Since the days of the first President, Harvard, supposed den of political pinks, has consistently lined up on the conservative side, the side of the Federalists, the Whigs, and currently the Republicans.

Only twice since George Washington took his oath of office has the College deserted the Right side. In the 1850's the students left the temperate Whig Party, and throw themselves in with the zealous Republicans. Sla very was one issue which could make radicals of Harvard men, but when the G.O.P. began to drift down the conservative stream, the College followed. And in 1912 the Republican interests of the College were so divided between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt '80, that the students, like the nation, picked a Democrat as Chief Executive.

Counting out these temporary defections, however, the College has consistently demonstrated that it is far from the hothouse to rum, radicalism, and rebellion that it is thought to be. It has not made its point quietly, however. Noise, color, fire, hot words, and hard fists have been a part of every campaign.

The first sign that Harvard was ready to take sides came shortly before the election of 1800. The Hasty Pudding Club, which then represented the College's view fairly accurately, made a declaration of policy. "Three cheers" for Washington, it said, and "three more" for John Adams, 1755, but as for Republican-Democrat Tom Jefferson, "May he exercise his elegant literary talents for the benefit of the world in some retreat, secure from the troubles and dangers of political life." When his campaign brought Jefferson to Harvard he was booed, and the College showed that it hugged warmly the Federalist philosophy of New England.

Until 1824 the Federalists controlled the Massachusetts Government, and at Harvard Federalists dominated the Corporation and the student body. As the old party of Washington died, its policies were handed down to the Whigs and to the Whigs Harvard turned next. The friendship with the Whigs lasted through the Presidency of a Harvard son, John Quincy Adams, '87, through what must have been dreary Jacksonian years, and up until 1848.

In that year Charles Sumner, 1830, and ex-President Adams joined with other Harvard graduates to form the Free Soil Party. College politics then became tangled for a few years; the Board of Overseers, for instance, was a strange mixture of Northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats. But by 1860, the dominant Republican sentiment, which has lasted down to the present, was clear. A poll of the Class of 1860 turned up nine Democrats, 23 Constitutional Unionists, and 74 Republicans. The Unionists held the College's first torchlight parade shortly before election that year, carrying signs such as "Bell (the party candidate) and the Belles, 1860, Harvard."

Black Bottles

The development of the torch-light parade was delayed by the Civil War, but in 1868 the College, Republicans all, terrified Boston. Every student put on his class uniform, bought himself a shingle, a plug hat, and a black bottle with a wick in it, and went on the march for Grant and Seymour.

Disruption in the streets of Boston and Cambridge was so great that four years later College authorities forbade students to march as Harvard men. This was easily taken care of. The Class of 1873 tramped all over the neighborhood with huge transparencies, warning, "Whoever says we are Harvard Seniors is a Liar and a Villain."

"Hayes and Wheeler and Reform in the Faculty, Honesty in Policies and Cribs in Examinations," was the battle cry of the 1876 Republicans. From that campaign came the College's only original campaign poem:

"Half a league, half a league,

Half a league townward,

Boldy from Harvard Square

Rode the five hundred.

What, a conductor there!