"Dull, Humorless, Trivial"

To The Editor of the CRIMSON:

I was not especially surprised upon perusing yesterday morning's CRIMSON to note that there was no mention of one of the most important items of the past day. It seems from the way this year's content reads, that the CRIMSON's policy is not to print the news of the day but to fill four pages of paper with any copy easy to obtain. Whether the news printed is newsworthy or whether it is accurate space to be important.

Last night members of Kirkland House gave Ben Jonson's "Alchemist." They put on a play over 300 years old in the Elizabethan style and gave an amusing and thoroughly entertaining performance before the members of the House, the other House masters, President Conant, and many other prominent members of the faculty. Now even if the play had been poorly done, I would think the CRIMSON would critize it. Certainly enough space is wasted on prosaic reviews of ancient movies at the University. It may be argued that the play was privately given for a select audience and that the CRIMSON had no way of learning about this performance. The CRIMSON'S managing editor, however, lives in Kirkland House. One of the major events of the Houses, might not, of course, be worthy of this great journal. Yet on the front page of yesterday's paper is an item about a play to be put on in Eliot House two weeks hence.

This matter is just one glaring example of the CRIMSON'S gross inadequacy. Anyone who wishes to know the news about Harvard's football team must read a daily such as the New York Times. Two days before the Yale game the CRIMSON fails to give more than four inches of space to the Varsity team and although the Times gives the complete starting lineup, the CRIMSON again fails in its function as a supposed news organ.

Furthermore, this year's editorial page in general has been as dull, humorless, and trivial as most Ph.D. theses. Did every person who could write a stimulating editorial switch to the ill-fated Journal? If the CRIMSON board is in doubt as to the cause of its existence, I refer to page eighty of the October issue of the Lampoon.

Indeed, it is disgraceful that the daily undergraduate paper of so great a University should have sunk to such a low state. Harry Kahn, Jr. '37.

(Ed. Note--The CRIMSON acknowledges its error about the Kirkland House play and wishes to offer an apology. Since Mr. Kahn evidently foresaw the omission, however, he missed a chance to help us out of our "dull, humorless, and trivial" condition. The starting lineup of the Harvard team was run in Tuesday's CRIMSON.