MASTER FINLEY

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Many friends and admirers, and acquaintances even, of John Finley must have shared my own feeling of dissatisfaction with the profile of him which appeared two weeks ago in the CRIMSON. I am not concerned about minor inaccuracies, which are inevitable in any attempt at reporting (and which have been well documented already); nor can I complain of lack of praise in a piece which was clearly meant to be eulogistic in tone and at the same time fair: nor, finally, do I want to take issue with the observations of a more critical sort. No doubt many of them are just.

My dissatisfaction, I think, was with the startling incompleteness of the picture. Who would have guessed from the profile, for example, that John Finley had written a standard major study of Thucydides before he became Master of Eliot House? Or that during the years in which he has poured his time, his energy and his very life into the Mastership he has produced two further important works on Greek literature? Or that to him was recently dedicated Sir Maurice Bowra's monumental work on Pindar?

And who would have guessed that his politics have been consistently liberal, sometimes even "radical"? Or that his support and friendship have gone above all to people and to causes associated with minority rights and social justice? Or, for that matter, that he was one of the original architects of General Education?

When I myself think of the myriad activities of his far-ranging life and of the stories which have grown up around them, my mind turns to incidents somewhat different from those used by your writer. I like to recall his moving letter to the Boston Herald in reply to the vulgar remarks of a columnist after F. O. Mathiessen's death. I like to remember the time when armed with nothing but quiet assurance he took an axe from the hands of a mentally disturbed student. I laugh to recall how his presidency of the Saturday Club led Robert Frost into a slip of the tongue at President Kennedy's inauguration.

I think with relief of his easy and sensible management of committees, with admiration of his hilarious and devastating humor in debate, of his soaring eloquence in behalf of his principles and of his down-to-earth, ceaseless labors to make them work. It is no fun to be on the opposite side of a question from him. He throws the whole energy of his being into the advocacy of his views and the support of his friends. But at the end one finds that he has never lost sight of standards and values which transcend the heat of conflict and transitory differences of opinion.

I hope that these remarks can perhaps serve as an addendum to the profile. They are likely, I fear, to leave the picture as incomplete as before. Mr. Reed wrote with skill and insight; he did a far better job than one usually finds in such sketches. But in trying to picture for us possibly the most influential figure in the turbulent Harvard community of the last quarter-century he attempted something of more than ordinary difficulty. The plain truth, I think, is that some people are too varied in their energy, their interests, their influence to be caught in a single profile. One cannot cage an eagle. Zeph Stewart Master of Lowell House