WHOSE CHILD ARE YOU?

Under the arresting title "Farewell to Harvard?" the current American Mercury points to the paradox of this University's relation to the New Deal. Mr. Houghton, the author is not exaggerating in this gloomy prediction of the future of the liberal university under such a form of government. He falls victim, however, to superficial appearances when he attempts to pin Mr. Roosevelt and his administration on Harvard.

It should no longer be necessary to deny that the Washington government of the past four years bears a Cambridge trademark. In spite of the American Mercury's description of Mr. Rosevelt as a "typical product of its training," the exact opposite seems to be true to those familiar with its ideals and teachings. Harvard's historical battle from Dunster and Leverett to Lowell and Conant, has been for a free university in a free commonwealth.

If even the fundamental character of Harvard had left its impression on Mr. Roosevelt during his undergraduate days, he would now find it impossible to lead the New Deal. For almost two centuries and a half the leaders of this University fought for one ideal against church and state. They believed that no class in the population had the right to carry out self-seeking designs at the expense of another class. Mr. Roosevelt, with his rabble-rousing talk about "economic royalists," with his subtle encroachment upon freedom of thought through his outbursts against those of an opinion different from his own, has little in common with Harvard.

To use a phrase of Mr. Houghton's, the President is "surrounded by Harvard men." The untruth of such a generalization has often been shown. Professor Frankfurter's influence in the New Deal has always been an interesting myth, and, even the slight power he had in 1933 has since vanished. Professor Sprague was an adviser with the stamp of Harvard too strongly upon him, and as a result was dropped from the New Deal wagon almost as soon as he had hitched a ride. If prominent New Deal agencies employ young lawyers from Harvard Law School, the corporation offices of New York are even more saturated with them.

Being the oldest and probably most prominent American university, Harvard has naturally turned out men of every political color. Mr. Roosevelt is a famous graduate, but his character hardly coincides with that of the men who have made his University great. Critics who are trying to find a cause for the New Deal must look for it elsewhere. Mr. Roosevelt is its leader, not because of, but rather in spite of, his early training.