IGNORANCE OR MALICE?

EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON. - The friends of our university read with surprise an article entitled "Poor Harvard Students," in the Boston Herald of January 3. Permit me to quote certain statements that were made in it: "There are at least eight men out of the twenty-five who took-scholarships in the junior class at Harvard last year who could have well got along without them."

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" - under the elective system men are tempted to, and actually do, take a "soft" courses with the expectation of getting high marks, and so "freezing" on to a big fat scholarship. This has become so large an evil that the high scholars almost invariably shun very valuable but difficult courses, except as extras."

"The style of living set by the large majority of students who come from wealthy or well-to do families is such that unless the poorer students live in much better style than the $500 limit, they will be very uncomfortable. In fact there is an aristocratic, moneyed atmosphere about Harvard which is very uncongenial."

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"At present it is but speaking the honest truth, that there is very little true scholarship at Harvard, little desire to learn for learnings sake, and but very little respect for high scholarship."

If these statements, (the italics are my own) were written by some one not a member of the college, the editors of the Herald are perhaps alone responsible, and the article may have been written under a misapprehension of the facts, but if the author is at present in college, (and there is internal evidence that this so,) then he should be discovered, and branded with the contempt that he deserves. Who is this person that pretends to know the needs and means of the first twenty-five scholars in the present senior class and can pick out eight of these men as being able to get along well without aid from the college funds? Let us trust that this omniscient writer himself is not one of these unfortunate high rank men who "almost invariably shun very valuable courses"! This would-be critic is at present unknown, but it is a pity that there should be even one man among us who thinks that he must ape the habits of men more wealthy than himself. Such a man is not likely to be popular among the hundreds of other men who have not discovered, as yet, this "uncongenial aristocratic, and moneyed atmosphere," which is noticed by this unfortunate writer. But to come to the most serious part of this newspaper article; impelled not by prejudice, perhaps, but by ignorance, this person is not content with attempting to defame the personal character of certain of the most respected and upright members of the senior and junior classes, but has attempted in a closing paragraph to depreciate the fair name of our college, whose honor we trust will never be stained by being compelled to acknowledge this writer as one of her sons. The closing statements in the Herald's article are absolutely false. The writer of such an article, if a member of the college, would be unworthy of criticism, were it not that by just such lying statements as these, our university is brought into disrepute among people who have no means of learning the truth.