"God"

(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:

"What America needs is to be laughed at, and to laugh at itself, loud and long, and what the members of the Liberal Club need more than anything else is to go on a sustained bat."

God!

"God!", long-drawn and emphatic, was in former days on the CRIMSON an expression of disgust and despair. I hope that much survives. . . .

Thus you climax an Ed 1 chiding the Liberal Club for one of its periodic attempts to stand up on its wobbly legs and make motions. The Liberal Club announces its intention of sending to Congress a petition advocating certain pieces of legislation; you comment, first, ". . . its members are in danger of losing their sense of humor", and last, "What America needs is to be laughed at. . ." . And in the middle, you oracularly assert, "A University is an institution for detached, impartial study of the arts and sciences, contemporary and modern." I repeat: God!

I am not a member of the Liberal Club. I am not very much interested in the activities of the Liberal Club. But I am interested in the stupidities, inanities, and childish attempts at wit which make the reputation of Harvard's undergraduate newspaper, and thereby to a large extent of Harvard's undergraduates.

I refrain from asking what in the American scene is calculated to make fifteen millions of unemployed burst into spontaneous laughter. I refrain, from asking just what chortling in high glee over the delightful ironies of current economic phenomena will do for those fifteen millions. I refrain from asking how a breadline in Union Square or a jovial clash between striking longshoremen and machine-gunning militiamen on San Francisco docks will provide "What America needs." I do not think you should be expected to be able to supply answers to those question, because, after all, you are merely attending a university, and "A university is an institution for detached, impartial study of the arts and sciences, contemporary and modern."

But there is one question I think you should be expected to answer. I should like to ask the Editor of the CRIMSON, as a detached, impartial student of that contemporary and modern art and science of collegiate journalism, what good--in the name of his illustrious spiritual ancestors James Bryant Conant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John Hopkins Morison--what good has it done the CRIMSON to have everybody laughing at it? Thomas B. O'Connor '36.

P.S. The obvious note is, of course, an unadorned "God!" The next most obvious one is: "Mr. O'Connor was formerly president of the defunct Harvard Journal." I just want to make it easy for you.

(Ed. Note--"God!")