OUT OF CHAOS

Today a motley, apprehensive horde of youth will undergo their fiery baptism of registration. The prevailing atmosphere of bewildered anxiety insures the experienced a profitable hunting; but with calm evening and the Yard emerges a sense of reassurance. Their names have been recognized, they have received confusingly minute instructions, and the first term bill is already due; there is the essence. Within a few short weeks the transition will be complete. As individuals they will have graduated to Freshman agnosticism and crew cuts, to indifference and gabardine; there is the effect. They are Harvard men.

Taken as a whole the class of 1936 can find little cause for complaint in the four year period which is destined to shape their undergraduate career. True, they enter College at a time when family and University budgets are severely restricted to essentials, a condition which necessitates a definite curtailment of extra, nonetheless agreeable conveniences. But this handicap, if such indeed it can honestly be termed, is far offset by two notable advantages. Today, as Freshmen, they will find men's minds quickened to thought and imagination by the problems of the present crisis; to the eager student such an atmosphere is well worth the small sou of temporary, financial restriction. Four years hence, as alumni, the probability is that they will face a much kinder and less turbulent world than their brethren of the past two graduating classes.

As far as their internal relations to Harvard itself are concerned, the men of 1936 should be well content with their lot. In the House Plan, theirs is a charted course. The experience of the past two years has wrought significant changes which will be to the advantage of all, but especially to those now entering. To graduate in the Tercentenary year, moreover, is no small honor, measured by alumni standards of recollection. Today's Freshmen have indeed been well started on their undergraduate career.