Finis

This is the last paper of what may prove the last term of the old Harvard. It has not been a normal term, nor essentially a happy term. For many it has been a final proof of the impossibility of continuing a truly liberal education in the midst of war. Few people now at Harvard can do anything but welcome the coming conversion.

This is the last Crimson written to the Class of '43, the last class which has been, in any sense, able to complete the education for which Harvard is famous. It is the last term for most of the ERC, and for many of the Air Corps reservists. The next few months will see the departure of most of the men not already engaged in a specific war job. By the end of the term the Retraining Program should be under way, and uniforms will have taken over the last stronghold of education, the undergraduate classroom. This term is an end. The next will see the final conversion and a new beginning.

It is proper that this should be so. The grind, the intellectual, and the club man have been equally hit; none can still find the old satisfaction here. It is high time for the colleges to undertake their new task. Yet so meaningful a tradition can not be shelved without regret, and it is with full awareness of the finality of the break that we say good-by to all those for whom this term is the last.