HARVARD'S WAR MEMORIAL

Almost ten years ago the United States entered the World War. Harvard men took a brave and self-sacrificing part in that conflict. After mature consideration the administration of this University decided on the form which the memorial to these men should take. Dean Briggs, in his letter to their near relatives made public on January 19, 1926, wrote, ". . . . the University which these men have honored would make their memorial a church . . . a church in which the purest and highest life of the University shall find expression; a church in which the names and records of these Harvard soldiers may be to all who enter it a memory constant and enobling." Later in the year a tentative plan of the new chapel was published.

Since then there has been impenetrable silence. It is understood that efforts have been made toward raising the necessary endowment. It is also understood that these efforts have met with considerable alumni opposition to the proposed form of the memorial. Appleton Chapel is more than adequate to the religious life of contemporary Harvard. Are there not other and greater opportunities fittingly to honor Harvard's dead in the almost boundloss field of this University's activity? This, according to well-founded rumor, is the general platform upon which the opposition takes its stand.

The point is well taken, and if the opposition is as strong as certain indications give every reason to believe the Administration owes it to alumni and undergraduates and above all to the fallen dead, to face it with something more tangible than a mysterious silence. Nothing could be more unfortunate than a memorial which does not bind firmly, and in the terms most intelligible to post-war Harvard, the honor and the lesson of the dead with the work and ideals of the living.

It is certainly very questionable, according to present indications, whether a chapel would fulfill these requirements. There is an alternate scheme which would beyond question fulfill them. By endowing a number of international scholarships, named for the dead, Harvard would not only satisfy the requirements of the non-church as well as the churchman; she would honor her fallen in a noble and useful endeavor toward training men in the international point of view, in broad sympathies and understanding, so that the lives of young men might not again be sacrificed on the battlefield.

Such a memorial should receive unanimous and enthusiastic support. Whatever its fate, however, the very pressing problem of the chapel must be met by the administration before the flight of time sullies Harvard's recognition of her dead and destroys the meaning of their sacrifice.