AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT

President Lowell's remarks at Washington clear a thunderous atmosphere, Hitherto worried friends of Harvard have had no criterion of the administration's policies beyond its somewhat incomprehensible actions. The pall of secrecy that has enveloped University Hall is at last dispelled; and on the basis of Mr. Allen's article in the Independent and President Lowell's speech of last night a just estimate of the Professor Baker episode can be formed.

It is obvious, granting the Corporation's assumption that a "theatre and a permanent school for playwrights would not be wise" ultimately, that the administration acted quite reasonably. It stood opposed on theory to the plans which Professor Baker was anxious to perfect, and therefore it had no valid reason for making a special effort to finance such a development. Holding this opinion, the Corporation was perfectly justified in devoting its energies to the aid of those departments which in its belief not only needed assistance badly but were of major importance to the growth of the University.

It is with this opinion, this assumption that critics must quarrel. There has been much caustic commenting on various and single incidents; and because the position of President Lowell and the Corporation was not clear some of it has been unjust. The real issue is at last apparent: Is there an important place in Harvard for a "permanent school for playwrights"? The CRIMSON believes that theatrical training has such a place in the University; and that the administration committed a serious error in judgment when it adopted its present opinion.

That others are of like mind is certain. The violent protest of the alumni at Professor Baker's resignation is a partial proof. The report of Mr. Owen Wister's committee is another--and more conclusive.

To argue the proposition fully is here impossible. One observation, however, must weight heavily. Admitting that both the 47 Workshop and the Business School, for example, are purely vocational in purpose, it would seem true that a vocational course which trains men in what has long been recognized as an art is of equal and even more importance to a college of liberal arts than a course which trains for tasks which have but recently been dignified by the name of "profession". Drama is one of the great products of human civilisation; "business" is after all only a means to an end.

Had the administration been convinced of the value of a school of dramatic teaching, it could easily have provided the necessary funds. A million dollars could have been added to the ten million dollar endowment driver; and it would easily have been supplied by men who did not care to contribute to the Business School, the Chemistry, or the Fine Arts departments.

An error in judgment, however, is not necessarily permanent. With the knowledge that the general opinion is opposite from its own, the Corporation can change its views and as a first step act favorably on Mr. Wister's report.