A PRACTICAL IDEAL

With Commencement approaching, and the attention of graduates turned on the University again, it is appropriate that the question of a War Memorial should be revived. Little hope can be held out for early action, as the Endowment Fund is too recent. But widespread discussion at this time will have the value of revealing the desires of the alumni regarding the form the memorial should take, so that when the time for action arrives, the committee will be ready to move forward with certainty and speed.

The report of the Associated Harvard Clubs committee, published yesterday, expressed a very definite opinion. The members, according to their report, are opposed to anything of a utilitarian nature. They believe that a memorial should exist for its own sake; its primary purpose should be to keep before the minds of Harvard men the sacrifices made by their fellow-students and graduates in the War, and they fear that a dormitory, gymnasium, or auditorium would obscure the ideal for which it was erected. Therefore they conclude that something in the nature of an ornamental monument, a belfry, or a new chapel would be the only suitable memorial.

Such an opinion is quite understandable; in fact it expresses a noble ideal, and since the committee is in an influential position, its words must be heeded. Unfortunately, to our way of thinking, the conception of such a memorial seems to indicate a confusion of relative values. In the fear of putting utilitarian motives uppermost, the committee goes too far to the other extreme, and forgets that however fine abstract memories may be, and however eager the University is to express its gratitude in the most ideal terms, still there is a higher ideal--the humanitarian. To perpetuate the Past is a purpose with which college men will sympathize; but the more immediate concern must rightly be the Future. There are crying needs in the University which must be met at once it the great traditions and purposes of Harvard are to be upheld. Surely it is finer, without neglecting the idea of the memorial, to combine it with something that can at the same time be of concrete value of the world. It is almost repugnant to think of repaying the service and sacrifice of our War victims with something that represents not service but empty idealism.

More than once in the past, the CRIMSON has expressed the opinion that a dormitory would be the finest possible memorial, one which would be a far more constant reminder than an unused monument or a chapel. Harkness at Yale, the Walker Memorial at Technology, and our own library, are all examples of highly utilitarian buildings which never lost sight of the memorial purpose for which they were erected. As long as the CRIMSON believes that undergraduates, at least, favor the practical ideal rather than the abstract, it will earnestly continue to support the proposal for a memorial dormitory. Meanwhile, expressions of opinion from others will not be unprofitable.