LIBEL!

Mr. Wolff says a libel suit against the '40 Crimson editors wasn't his idea. It wasn't the editors' idea either; anyone can look in the February 7 Transcript and see that it was Mr. Benjamin Bowker's, who has worked for Mr. Wolff for years. In fact, the grapevine has been humming of a prospective suit for months. Yet Mr. Wolff has it all figured out that he is a poor helpless fly entangled in a spider's web, and that his decision to sue is an act of martyrdom. Actually, none of his points in support of this view holds water.

First, if he should win his suit, it is absurd to think that the Crimson would continue its attack upon him. Naturally, the whole campaign would collapse if its arguments were proved untrue. Second, Mr. Wolff's own statement that his income this year is higher than usual indicates that he is well able to hire expert legal aid, if he wants to, for not long ago the magazine Time looked into Harvard tutoring schools and reported that they are a decidedly lucrative business. Finally, he does not have to prove actual monetary loss from the Crimson attack in order to win damages. He has only to prove that this paper has libelled him.

Obviously Mr. Wolff's "poor little me" complex is nothing more than a pose, and yet in a way he is foolhardy to bring such a suit. It will be well-night impossible for him to disprove the fact that mass reviews, and the dispensing of canned knowledge have involved unethical practices and have had a harmful effect upon Harvard education. If they have not been harmful, if they do not reflect upon the integrity of a Harvard degree, then Harvard is not the institution three hundred-odd graduating classes have thought it to be.