In the beginning, everything was as it should have been. The snow fell exactly with the beginning of vacation, clogging transportation everywhere, rendering life pleasantly hidcous in New York, turning the rutted streets of Cambridge into a shiny, insidious menace.

It was after Christmas that the first menacing signs appeared. The snow waned under furious rains, fought back for one cold night, and then slipped down the drains. For once, the Almighty had come to the rescue of James M. Curley, and had taken away what He had put there. But stranger things were in store: the thermometers climbed to the fifties, resort owners tore their hair, and each succeeding day brought a strange bright glare to the usually gray skies.

As the sun shone on through the first week of reading period, undergraduates began to eye it nervously. Perhaps it was the reflection of a year in which Durocher joined the Giants, Harvard beat Yale, and Harry S. Truman won an election; or worse, it might be the result of some miscalculation deep in a lead-lined atomic pile at Oak Ridge. Whatever it was, it spawned a strange, unreasoning fear--a fear that no bravado, no artificial courage could erase.

This newspaper will not knuckle under to the fears that are gripping the timid, the small-minded, and the owners of ski resorts; it is just such a super-natural, cosmic crisis that can call forth in the individual a stamina and vigor which transcends ordinary, day-to-day courage. Besides, the Old Farmer's Almanac predicts snow within a week. That's good enough for us.