BARGAIN

Every year at this time the local townsmen sally forth with the late Tex Guinan's greeting on their lips and welcome the Harvards back to Cambridge. They spend all summer thinking up indispensable accessories to the up-to-date undergraduate--banners, magazines, furniture, statues of John Harvard and the Lord knows what--and ten dollar bills don't go far in Harvard Square.

But this year men are not thinking exclusively in terms of Harvard Square; in their minds are still the scenes they saw on the way to Cambridge. Many of them came from the West, coming from Chicago by way of Albany and across the flood areas, through cities without light, without heat, without food or medical aid where waters rolled down from mountains and swept all before them. And many came from New York, threading their way in cars through devastated countryside or flying over the Connecticut River that resembled a lake without boundaries: They must have thought of what they could not see, of the people who once lived on those fields. . . .

And to these men who came with dollars from Denver or Minneapolis the Red Cross yesterday offered a bargain. For ten dollars it will not give them a pair of imported trousers, but to another American citizen, destitute through no fault of his own, it will give food, shelter, security and rehabilitation. An Act of God has placed 50,000 people in need of this aid, and it will be given. Harvard will help.