"New Freedom"

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

It is with no little misgiving that I write this letter; misgiving born partly from fear of its being misunderstood; partly of the presumptuousness of its contents. But it is because I sincerely feel that I am expressing the inarticulate opinion of a great portion of the undergraduate body that I assume the responsibility which this communication places upon me.

There can be no question that for the past year or more the quality of the editorial page of the CRIMSON has been steadily declining. Not only are your editorials, in the main, miserably written, but they exhibit an appalling lack of conviction. In an attempt to formulate an editorial policy there has resulted a complete lack of policy. By way of example, I cite the ludicrous sophistry of the editorial published in Friday morning's paper of last week on the Mellon scholarship. If you desired to change your position from that previously taken on the Hanfstaengl scholarship, it would have been far wiser and infinitely more honest to have admitted flatly your earlier mistake. Or, if you still felt as you had previously, the honorable course would have been to so state.

But I do not want to waste paper with invective. It is the duty of the critic to suggest an alternative. The CRIMSON has just had an election. New men occupy the higher offices. The editors are thus given a fresh start. But I do not mean to emphasize the change of personnel so much as the psychological advantage which is to be gained from the new elections. They provide a new starting-point; they are a jumping-off point. They enable the editors to climb upon a mountain-top and survey the scene; to breathe fresh, clean, new, air.

It is because I am convinced of the valuable place which the CRIMSON could occupy in the University that I write. It is because I am convinced that there still remains a nucleus around which an honest, effective, force for good can be builded that I write. Therefore, with all the earnestness that I can muster, I urge you to grasp the opportunity which is yours. If the opportunity is utilized, you shall have a new birth of freedom, but only the truth can make you free. V. H. Kramer '35.