Truman, Erhard Sure to Get Honoraries

Twelve years ago, the CRIMSON first predicted that Harry S Truman would garner an honorary LL.D. at Commencement. It has come up with similar predictions in other years, but the former President has still to be decorated by the Harvard Corporation.

At last, however, there can be no doubt. Surely, at 80, Mr. Truman is certain to get his award.

And, for the first time in many years, the CRIMSON has another sure thing in the honorary degree sweepstakes: because of careless security, everyone knows Ludwig Erhard is also in line for honors.

The rest, as always, must be intelligent guessing. Crimson sleuths have managed to find out that Elliott Perkins will be escorting one of the lucky men. Best guess: Sir Isaiah Berlin of Oxford, who spent last year as a guest in Lowell House.

Who has the Corporation singled out from the 25th Reunion Class? Possibly Leonard Bernstein. And far more possibly Walter Jackson Bate (an LL.D from Harvard outshines even a Pulitzer).

Kingman Brewster, Yale's new president, is going to get an honorary sooner or later. If it's sooner, it will be this year; if later, next. Brewster would be one of the few lawyers to get an LL.D at a recent Commencement. If the Corporation perceives its oversight, it might even the balance by honoring John Marshall Harian, whose conservative leanings may appeal to the Corporation's Boston and Baltimore lawyers.

Sir William Hodge, a mathematician and master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, is now in the United States, and is, therefore, a possibility, too. And since Lady Bird Johnson will be in Cambridge to deliver the Radcliffe Baccalaureate on June 9, one wonders if her husband might be coming here from Holy Cross College on the 11th.

Other predictions: Adlai Stevenson, Thurgood Marshall, Jose Figueres, Philip Hofer, Whitney Young, Mark Rothko, Wilmarth Lewis, Mary I. Bunting, Krister Stendahl, Donald R. Griffin, George Beadle Alfred H. Barr, Leonard Baskin, Archibald Cox, Paul Nitze, Alfred A. Knopf, Walter Muir Whitehill, and Clifford K. Shipton.

And the CRIMSON's dark horse for 1964: Jose Luis Sert.