COMPTROLLER ENDICOTT

Harvard has rolled dizzily in Harkness millions. Harvard has watched some hundred thousands in Krueger and Toll swirl gently into a financial maelstrom. But through New Era and New Deal, oblivious to both, fingers of steel have clasped the purse-strings of Lehman Hall. To the undergraduate, Arthur L. Endicott has been the symbol of an impersonal and mechanical bureaucracy, a vague object for resentment about high room rents, and monotonous food, and broken fire doors. To those who know him by sight, the tall, straight-backed figure, with solemn expression, steely-gray hair, and amazing height of starched white collar, has seemed a character out of Harvard's past. Like his ancestor, the Puritan governor, Arthur Endicott has ruled his domain with an iron hand little softened by words of tact. The very air of an incongruously well-appointed Lehman Hall, has been chilled and rarified by a spirit of strict New England economy.

The Comptroller has had his gentler side. The visitor to his office was sometimes startled to hear a soft chuckle break the icy atmosphere of his little realm. The secretaries who have felt his disapproval would be surprised at the solicitude beneath the unbending surface. Yet few associates would deny the truth of the prophecy that when the Revolution comes, Mr. Endicott will be the first to die on the barricades.

Even at Harvard some things end. Comptroller Endicott is not the first of the old guard to fade from the Harvard picture; he will not be the last. An officer modelled on the lines of an Endicott would slip with little grace into an underling's post beneath a new financial vice-president. It is fitting that the Comptroller should prefer oblivion to ignominy.