"Fair Harvard" Too Sacred to be Ragged.

(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest, but assume no responsibility for sentiments expressed under this head.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Many of us have been awaiting, with considerable interest, the first public appearance of the Regimental Band in connection with any event other than a Regimental affair. Those interested in the musical activities of the college are inclined to be unusually charitable toward an admirable institution, which may blunder through no fault other than its youth; but members of the older musical organizations cannot help feeling that the playing of "Fair Harvard" in mutilated rag-time, as it was rendered at the meet Saturday, is, at best, an extraordinary violation of good taste in the light of Harvard tradition.

Many colleges choose to make use of their hymns as march tunes and songs of victory, but it has always been a source of satisfaction to us here, if the writer is not mistaken, that the most sacred of the old Harvard songs, revered alike for its antiquity and its associations, is sung and played only upon most solemn occasions or at moments of deepest feeling. We have a notion that by maintaining our hymn aloof from freer and coarser use, we render it cleaner and pleasanter as a remainder of the more inspiring aspects of University life.

Every Harvard man stands up and bares his head when he hears the first strains of the old hymn,--yet who can imagine in his fellow classmen an impulse to uncover during the modernified rendition brought forward by the Band?

It is hoped that this communication will be taken by the members of that body in the spirit in which it is written, as a friendly, though, on that account, none the less spirited suggestion, from one who believes he repeats the whole-somely conservative opinion of many of the older members of the Glee Club, who, through long association, have best learned to love and appreciate "Fair Harvard." I. C. WHITTEMORE '17.