Off The Cuff

The poll the Crimson took last week turned out, like all polls, to be irresistible to the College's humorists, who wrote in votes for many curious people. Ted Williams led the write-ins with four, and was followed closely by Senator Vandenberg with three, and President Conant and Harold Stassen with two each. Abraham Lincoln, Father Feeney, John P. Wintergreen, Sigmund Freud, Jim Cronin, William Jennings Bryan, and Mickey Mouse got a vote spiece.

There were other kinds of jokes, too.

Somebody said he lived at 10 Apathy Way and was undecided, and somebody else said that he had to vote for Thurmond because Eiscuhower isn't running. And that winds up the poll's comic output, except that I forgot to say that Calvin Coolidge also got a vote, and just in case even this master stroke of wit leaves you glum, it at least should remind you that when Dorothy Parker heard that Coolidge had died, she asked "How can they tell?"

It is impossible to pass smoothly from Calvin Coolidge to the Deep South in one sentence, so don't be startled to find yourself reading about Princeton. Last week there was a poll on presidential candidates, at Princeton, suh, and J. Strom Thurmond got more than 10 percent of the votes while Harry Truman got only 8 percent. Thomas E. Dewey got 72 percent. And at Wellesley, to round out the castern collegiate poll situation, Dewey got about 600, Truman about 40, and Wallace between 30 and 40. In view of this, I would like to suggest, on behalf of both the people of the United States and the girls of Wellesley, that Governor Dewey would be wise to make a last-minute shift and run for President of Wellesley--a position which just happens to be wide open. He would be more popular there than in the White House. He would be in the great tradition of Eisenhower and Stassen. And the most harm he could do would be to wreak his efficiency on the cops along Route 16.

During this presidential campaign, lots of people have said lots of stupid things. But it took a Harvard professor to utter what is certainly the greatest campaign monstrosity that has reached my cars. His name is Warren Abner Seavey, he is the Bussey Professor of Law, and he was speaking for Dewey at the Law School Forum Friday evening. "Perhaps," he suggested, "the man who drove the gangsters from New York may be able to drive the gangsters from the Kremlin."

Just to show that I'm broad-minded, I'd like to be able to quote some equivalent absurdity in favor of Truman. Unfortunately, there haven't been any. At least, I haven't heard any from Harvard professors. Both Mark Howe, of the Law School, who spoke for Truman at the Law School Forum, and Sam Beer, of the Government Department who backed Truman in a debate with Professor Cherington Thursday evening, gave exceptionally clear, intelligent talks. So did Cherington, as a matter of fact--but Beer and Howe managed to persuade me that what I had thought all along was 100 percent right. And when your candidate is Harry Truman, that takes persuading.