A Boost for Back Bay

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It is seldom that a dispassionate man feels called upon to answer an attack upon the existing order of things. But, having read the communication you printed last Friday under the heading of "The Mental Luxury of Conservatism," and realizing the enormous force such communications exert on the public opinion of our community and the insidious threat they offer to the very existence of Boston society, I think it necessary to reply. Being neither a Northeasterner nor a Middle-Westerner, I truest that I am not partisan.

Often it is better to pass over a criticism and try to explain the critic. Be it said at once that I have no hostility toward the middle-western man. But I think that if he had a keener sense of humor he would not be so dead in earnest about attacking poor old Boston. He breezes into Harvard with a mental complex, of which Chicago possibly is the password. He finds here a large number of his class-mates already acquainted and firmly established in a society into which he cannot break as a Ford breaks into a show-window. He generally does not deign to make friends with Bostonians-who are so much inferior to the men of C--. Yet he finds no social life for a Harvard man outside of Boston. Socially Harvard is not independent.

When once this youth from the middle-west has decided not to "play" his Bostonian classmates to get himself introduced into their social sets, he firmly resolves to despise these men who out-shine him in their appearance at debutante dances, etc. Having resolved to despise them he hunts for reasons to justify his contempt: he ridicules their accent, their mannerisms, their dress. In short they are not like him, and they are having a gayer time, therefore, they are not to be despised as sissies and cads.

What is the solution? Simple as can be! Let every man from the middle-west be introduced to at least three of the prettiest girls in the "tradition-nurtured" society of Boston, and his criticism will cease as by magic. M.W. SELF '23.

March 6, 1921.