In single moments, we may see glory.

At 2 p.m. last Friday, near the end of a normal working day, an operator on the Harvard switchboard heard the news that others had only dreamed of. Lamont Library was going to explode.

As it turned out, the bomb threat-which also included the Union and Fogg Art Museum-was as empty as the hope of warmth on a January day. But while it lasted it was enough to free the prisoners of Lamont for nearly two hours.

The unidentified caller said the big blast would come at 4 p.m. By 3:30, Harvard police had cleared all three buildings. They combed the buildings, came out empty-handed, and opened the doors once more. Shortly after 5 p.m., life in Lamont was back to its dismal norm.

Safety First

"We can't take them too seriously," Harvard's chief of police Robert Tonis said of the bomb threats. "But regardless of their frequency, we always have to be careful."

When evacuation time came, devotees of French 20 and Thomas C. Schelling's "Conflict, Coalition, and Strategy" were busy filling in their exam bluebooks in Fogg Lecture Hall.

"The course was concerned with game theory," one of Schelling's students said, "the use of bluffs and strategy in economics. It was a great time to apply theory to fact."

Only the battlefield was changed. The exam resumed in another building.