The defeat of the Journal itself hardly characterized the fate of the ideas upon which it had been founded. As the years went by almost all of them became incorporated into The Crimson's own outlook. United, then Associated Press news entered; pictures multiplied far beyond the Journal's dreams; the editorial page lost much of its verbosity and dryness and brought in more and more features and critical elements to make its material increasingly readable; frequent attempts were made to capture graduate school and Radcliffe readership; and makeup worked up to and beyond the Journal's standards of splashiness.......
WITH THE THREAT beaten back, The Crimson could turn back to the business of covering the University's news. The major news event of the post "war" era involved one of The Crimson's own former Managing Editors. Alan R. Sweezy '29, who had been a part of the late 20s revival of the paper, had gone on to become a popular instructor in the Economics Department. Throughout the early 30s, Sweezy's familiar "ARS" appears at the end of notes in the comment book. As an instructor, Sweezy and a colleague, J. Raymond Walsh, became active in the Cambridge Union of Teachers which faculty members had recently established. In 1937, Harvard announced that both men were being given terminal contracts. In 'explaining the dismissals of the two men, the University said that they:
...have been offered two-year concluding appointments as instructors in Economics at Harvard. Their cases present no unusual features; decisions in regard to these men by the Department of Economics and the Administration have been made solely on the grounds of teaching capacity and scholarly ability. There has been no departure in this case from the principles laid down in a recent report of an Overseers Committee on the Department of Economics.
President Conant recalled, decades later, that his wording of the statement had been unfortunate.
To large numbers of the Harvard community and almost all of the general public, the entire press announcement was taken to mean that the two gentlemen in question were being dropped because of their inadequacies as teachers and scholars. The protests were soon heard loud and clear.
And the soonest, loudest, and clearest of all was The Crimson's. An editorial the day after the appearance of the College's statement pointed out that overcrowding in the Economics Department seemed to be a more important factor in the Walsh-Sweezy dismissal than their competence. In days to come, the paper would point out that both men, and especially Sweezy, were highly regarded teachers. The Crimson pointed out that the College's statement could jeopardize both instructors' chances of getting other jobs. The whole matter took almost a year to die out, until both men found positions outside of Harvard, and a committee appointed by the President standardized promotion and tenure procedures.
We have seen that "Putzi" Hanfstaengl brought The Crimson face to face with the specter of Nazism. In 1936, the paper opposed participation in the Munich Games, and continued on an anti-Nazi track from then on.
The Tercentenary of Harvard College was marked with a series of thick, lavishly illustrated papers detailing the pyrotechnics of the celebration. Crimson reporters must have been run ragged keeping track of the speeches, learned papers, and not so learned bashes which went on during the celebration, but the Business Board managed to sell space by the yard to hotels, shopkeepers, merchants, tailors, theatres, and a score of other enterprises eager to congratulate Harvard on its longevity. On the whole, The Crimson's job on the Tercentenary could stand up to any other coverage--including the Boston Transcript's, even though that paper threw a huge staff and multi-sectioned papers into soup-to-nuts coverage of the Tercentenary.
The waning of the thirties brought the last major structural change in the running of The Crimson. Under the old system, editors would climb a ladder of advancement, from Assistant Managing Editor to Managing Editor to President, stepping in the first rung in their junior year and advancing one grade every semester. Under this plan, the first choice for President in every class was forced out of office after only a few months. In the thirties, with an expanded paper, a brace of supplements, and a Confidential Guide now issued as a separate magazine, the President had little time to do anything but learn the technicalities of his office before moving on. Thus, in 1937, the Constitution was overhauled, specifying that officers would be elected in the fall of their Junior year, take office in February, and leave office in January of their Senior year. The first President elected under this system was Cleveland Amory '39.