ANNIVERSARY

Fifteen years ago this morning the Titanic sank, slowly settling in the depths amid the quiet of an April dawn. And among her passengers was one whose name is daily on the lips of a host of Harvard men--the name of Harry Elkins Widener, "devoted to high ideals and characterized by scholarly habits and a fondness for collecting rare books."

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library now rises as a testimonial to a victim of that fatal voyage. Dominating the Yard, it stands as a mute but forceful tribute to two very sacred ideals: the memory of a son, and the love of good books. Within its walls are stored the volumes which that man loved and though its portals pass the feet of others who share his reverence and who week what he sought. It is not a mausoleum: It is the expression of an undying spirit.

In commemoration of this fifteenth anniversary of Harry Elkins Widener's death it is fitting that those words spoken at the laying of the cornerstone of the Library should be quoted. "We may indulge the hope that as long as scholarship and learning are honored and the wisdom of the pas, is cherished, the endless generations of future scholars will seek this spot and recall with the same grateful spirit with which we recall the names of Harvard and of Gore, the name of the donor of the enduring building to be erected here."