Memorial Verdict

It may all be settled today. This afternoon the executive board of the Associated Harvard Clubs meets in its Commonwealth Avenue headquarters to hand down a "yes" or a "no" or a "maybe" on the Saltonstall Committee's choice of a University War Memorial. If the answer is "yes," it will be final and irrevocable, and workmen will soon begin setting the $70,000 inscription into the walls of Memorial Church. And if the answer is "yes," the gentlemen who head the Harvard Clubs will have violated the democratic principle upon which their organization is founded, and upon which Harvard should choose a memorial to its World War II dead.

The choice should be made by the men who will pay for the memorial, not solely by the directors of the Alumni Association, who have already accepted the plaque plan, and the directors of the Harvard Clubs. Two groups have asked that the franchise be extended. Alumni Bulletin editorials have urged an official polling of all alumni. And, after sending a brochure to all College alumni, the Committee for a Memorial Activities Center is receiving a flood of postcards which show that Harvard's graduates want a say in their memorial.

Students have already been heard. They have told alumni officials that the inscription would be a useless, empty, somewhat cold kind of memorial. The vast majority of the College wants a utilitarian memorial, preferably a Student Activities Center.

But even if the Harvard Club officers choose to forget the students, they must not ignore the thousands of University alumni they represent, the thousands whose memorial this will be. There is a just and democratic way open to the gentlemen who meet this afternoon. This way is to set the Saltonstall Committee plan to one side and give University alumni the ballot they desire.