THE MAIL

To the Editor of the Crimson:

Surely we have been taken in by a hoax. a clever satire. It is unthinkable that Mr. Davis meant his poll-tax letter as a serious argument, rather than as a device to pull the legs of the southern arrogancy clique. We are all of us aware of the ignorance of the poverty-stricken, but it differs very little from the ignorance of the vast majority of those who are able to pay the tax. How can this letter have been more than a wicked, heartless gibe at the poll-taxers. Hucy Long, who Mr. Davis says, is the arch type of political mongrel wafted to power by the illiterate and pitiable, was so wafted originally by persons paying such taxes. Next door to the bayou state, the great state of Texas whose elections have not seen the blemish of free voting for these many years, presents a noble line of public officials in support of the poll-taxer's thesis. From impeached governor to hill-billy bands, this record of public servants glitters for all to see and serves as an invincible demonstration of the superior type of man lifted to public office by the educated and superior, whose intellectual pre-eminence is amply attested to by the academic distinction of the ability to pay the poll-tax.

Surely in matters in which there is room for the widest disagreement, legitimate disagreement, between the best of recognized experts in the field, and the field of politics is certainly such as field. Mr. Davis has no intention of making the ability to pay the poll-tax both the right to vote and proof positive of objective, truth. The Crimson scribbler who maligned Mr. Davis in an editor's note attached to Mr. Davis letter must be banished to work for which he is better fitted. He has failed to recognize a master of the serio-jocose. The Crimson will certainly not retain in his present dangerous capacity a man who fails to recognize the new-Swift our Mr. Davis. Marion J. Levy. Jr. '39.