Incidents involing Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler's foreign press secretary, brought students closer to the oppressive realities of the Thirties. Hanfstaengl was first chosen a class marshal for his 25th reunion, but he himself declined to serve after protest came from many quarters. Near the end of the year he again embarrassed Harvard by offering a student's scholarship to be used at a German university. The Hitler lieutenant made a similar offer two years later, only to be repulsed again. By this time Harvard opinion was solidly behind President Conant.
A mock trial in the Lowell House Common Room early in the fall of 1934 convicted Adolf Hitler on only two criminal counts out of four; yet even in its serio-comic recognition of Nazi Germany, the Harvard community was beginning to shake the sleep from its eyes. Local politics, however, lost no ground to international. Boston's Mayor Curley got a no-confidence vote from numerous Faculty professors, and hostility to President Roosevelt was confirmed by a straw vote of Faculty and undergraduates. Again Harvard conservatives stood out against the national voice, which of course voted in New Dealers in the off-year local elections.
The Lampoon found itself in trouble again after its infamous "Esquire" issue in spring 1935; in righteous disciplinary fervor the Administration closed down the "Poon establishment while officers scrambled to desert the sinking ship. Only the autumn before, the CRIMSON, Lampoon, and Life magazine had gone on sale in tandem at a combined price of $5.00, never again to be duplicated. A mild stir arose at the vague revival of the Med. Fac, Club, open to any undergraduate who could commit anything which would have him expelled and jailed if caught. But the revival died quickly; members succeeded only in blowing up the old well in front of Hollis Hall.
Commuter Ills
This was the year of revolution for the commuting segment of the community, beginning with the formulation of a Commuters' House Committee at PBH. Both PBH and the commuters were dissatisfied with the arrangements for 250 day students to eat and take part in occasional activties at the center. The pot boiled over when the PBH cabinet expelled the commuters June I, effectively forcing the Administration to provide new quarters. Both sides settled finally upon Dudley House, using only the first floor in the beginning and eventually taking up the whole building.
The Student Council came out against goalpost rioting while the Faculty concerned itself with abolishing the elementary language requirement. This was the year when Tallulah Bankhead told the CRIMSON that drama must never be censored, and the spring when it was discovered that Harvard University was left without a single dean or executive above the rank of secretary to the President for one entire weekend.
Almost all other activities between the opening of the Senior year for the Class of 1936 and the beginning of the Tercentenary celebration ten months later, were eclipsed by a many-faceted dispute over the Teachers Oath Act, which required most instructors in Massachusetts institutions to swear they would support the national and state constitutions. Kirtley F. Mather, professor of Geology, struck out against the Massachusetts Legislature's stricture as "unwarranted and dangerous to democracy." Mather claimed to speak for many Faculty men when he said he would not take the oath since it violated his constitutional rights. Seniors circulated a petition to support him while Mather reconsidered, then retracted his stand in the interest of keeping the University out of a threatened lawsuit.
The CRIMSON harbored no such inhibitions in its editorial columns. Their point was made early in the term: "Nothing could be a more ludicrous and at the same time pathe-