The Fund In Football

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Although your correspondent appreciates your attempt to tone down the frantic demands of Harvard graduates for a "big-time" football team, I cannot permit to go unnoticed the following statements in the editorial in yesterday's paper. It states: "The majority of graduates, unfortunately, retain their Harvard connection only through the football team, with the result that large endowment funds and winning elevens tend to go hand and hand. Even if the College believes their views wrong, it is often impolitic to disregard them." There is absolutely no support whatever for the statement that at Harvard large endowments depend on winning football teams. The Harvard endowment steadily increased absolutely as well as relatively until the depression. Yet our football teams remained more or less constant in the quality of their playing during this period. (Whether this is true of all universities is not our concern.)

Your inference that Harvard College should pander to the demands of fanatical football fans even though it knows this to be "wrong" is foreign to the traditions of any free educational institution and to Harvard in particular. If an educational institution stands for anything it should stand for intellectual and moral honesty. Your suggestion that it should depart from this ideal (I do not deny than in the past it has not been constantly adhered to unfortunately) is a disgrace to your own integrity.

At the risk of being Lippmannish I should like to add that the rest of the editorial in my opinion is good, and no one can fail to support your stand for moderation in Harvard football. For moderation is the Greek ideal, and of all peoples they were most successful in the art of physical recreation. V.H. Kramer '35.