At last, prideful and vain as Harvard was, she had found a cause bigger than herself, and in the act of giving aid she was being swallowed up.

In November the United States took the offensive against the Germans in Africa, penetrating Oran and pushing Rommel's desert rats before them. On the 23rd, the Crimson lost to Yale, 7-3. Five days later the roof of Boston's Coconut Grove restaurant came crashing down in flames on its hundreds of screaming victims. Five Harvard undergraduates died. But by now Harvard's seniors had little attention to spare for local news. America had tasted blood in North Africa, and beginning in late November thirty members of the class of '43 dropped out of Harvard each week.

The student, having attended the summer semester and most of the fall, was assured of a degree. Why not drop out? One could always come back to school, if one lived. Besides, Harvard wasn't Harvard anymore. As soon as undergraduates left, the Army and Navy moved men in. On December 6, General Hershey froze the Enlisted Reserves, and enlistment or the draft were the only alternatives left. A fellow could be picked up at 18 now, so no one--freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior--was going to stay in school much longer anyway, if he were able-bodied.

So a large chunk of men had left Cambridge in September. In January, most were scheduled to graduate. This time, there were Commencement exercises, shortened though they were. Saturday, January 9, 1943, was Class Day. The Senior Super was held that night. On Sunday President Conant delivered a Valedictory address, paying tribute to those about to leave for war. Before that freezing Sunday in Massachusetts' mid-winter, Harvard's Class of 1943 numbered 525 remaining members; afterwards, 149 stayed in Cambridge, some of them deferred, some in ROTC and Enlisted Reserve units that hadn't yet been called to active duty, was it worthwhile staying on? A Harvard undergraduate was rarer than a soldier now, and 20 per cent of the Faculty--400 men--had left the University for military duty. And most portentous of all, the WAVES had established a headquarters at Radcliffe.

If the way of the Service seemed hard, civilian life was no more inviting. Food and gasoline were available only on the ration system. There was little money to spend on Boston night-life. And even free speech was thought an extravagance that couldn't always be allowed. Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell fell victims to a controversial court decision in February, 1943; they were told they could no longer criticize high government officials on their radio broadcasts in this state of national emergency.

Most of Harvard's remaining professors found themselves understandably pre-occupied with the war. Charles Townsend Copeland might continue his annual poetry readings in Emerson Hall, but Pitirim Sorokin abandoned purely academic pursuits to perfect and publicize his plan for world peace--national sovereignty, he believed, had to be sacrificed for a world government with a monopoly of force.

And, of course, athletics could not remain the same, under tensions of the war-time economy and the brawn drain. In March Harvard announced that all inter-collegiate sports would end after the baseball season; the intra-mural program would be developed more extensively to take their place.

Harvard officially went on trimester that month, but the change went unnoticed by most Harvard "students," who were new-comers; Harvard was now a military school. On May 27, the Harvard CRIMSON suspended publication, "to return only when Harvard is once again a liberal arts college." And on that same date, Harvard's Spring version of Commencement took place, a one-day affair. Of 1115 degrees conferred, only 368 of them were awarded to undergraduates, of both the Class of '43 and '44.

All members of the Class of '43 were out, at last.

Perhaps, the gulf between the Class of '43 and the graduates of 1968 is not as wide and profound as one may initially beliee. A visiting Nieman Fellow by the name of Fred Neal wrote in the CRIMSON in 1943, "Harvard's reputation in Washington is not only academic. Particularly in that maelstrom called Capitol Hill, Harvard is almost synonymous with long hair, unworkable theories, and those vague activities described as 'un-American.'"

Neal went on to mourn that Capitol Hill's image of Harvard was for the most part mistaken, that Harvard men hadn't yet fulfilled the radical potential they undoubtedly had.

At a Harvard which was more military school than anything else, it was perhaps impossible for Harvard men to fulfill the radical potential that undoubtedly had. If not for the war--the war which was so clear-cut--the Class of '43 might have been much more like the one graduating this Thursday