While Time Remains

Behind a facade of sweet reasonableness in its ostensibly three-sided choice, the War Memorial Committee's report actually contains the decision which will eventually materialize unless prompt action develops to demonstrate existent opposition.

That decision, unanimous with the exception of the Student Council's representative, favors a $200,000 name-tablet in Memorial Church, coupled with a $500,000 scholarship fund, for commemoration of the University's Second World War dead. In itself it simply represents the expectable hesitancy on the part of the chieftains of the Alumni Association and the Associated Harvard Clubs to conduct the fundraising campaign which the undergraduate-endowed Student Activities Center would involve. But justified resentful response to the decision will rest with the near-chicanery of the Committee's procedure and its continuous hush-hush policy.

The President of the Associated Harvard Clubs let the cat out of the bag when he confessed that but for Senator Saltonstall's absence from the sessions a final decision would already have been reached. Now the three-month period until the crucial last meeting provides the opportunity for newly-aroused younger Alumni to show where they stand. Complete, airing of the issue through concentrated Committee attempts to make its activities known in the national Harvard community is the least that should be assumed of a distinguished democratically -conceived body.

Organized opposition to the present intent of the Committee-and organized opposition alone can turn the tide--may start out with a negative belittling of the honor roll scheme but it must finish in ablaze of positive assertions for the Student Activities Center proposal. Beyond the undisputed need for such an institution and the student demand resulting from that need the Committee must be made to realize that all of the objections it has raised to the Center are invalid.

Is a Student Activities Center appropriate for a War Memorial? Dean Hudnut feels that by fostering cooperative creative activity it will prove the most appropriate memorial possible. Will it encompass the entire University? Graduate school organizations should of course have equal access to the Student Activities Center. Aren't scholarships a good idea? They are so good that countless hundreds already have been established. Will the Alumni contribute? A War Memorial solicitation, by the admission of Harvard Clubs President Ralph Lowell, transcends other appeals in the eyes of most donors.

When it has forcibly conveyed its contentions and backed them with visible support, an organized alumni group for a Student Activities Center should make crystal-clear its willingness to help raise cash as well as to wait several years if necessary for the proper opportunity for such a drive. Above all its stand must be respectful while firm enough to prevent the planned expenditure of $200,000 for a tablet-motif memorial from going forward.