TO BE FRANK

Now that the Yale game has been played, the CRIMSON feels that some comment may be made on Mr. Hardwick's remarks at the Union. These, to be brief, were that the CRIMSON has not been "supporting" the football team. A plea of guilty will be the quickest way to answer the charge. The CRIMSON does not "support" the football team, any more than it "supports" the Harvard Dramatic Club, the Harvard Glee Club, the Harvard Corporation, the Harvard Lampoon, or the Phillips Brooks House Association.

The CRIMSON is not a party organ, but a newspaper run by Harvard undergraduates, carrying the news of the day and editorials on subjects that are thought to be of interest to Harvard men.

In the interpretation of the importance of news, the editors have tried to establish a proper sense of values; in their editorial comments they have expressed their own ideas, not those of "undergraduate sentiment". The news value of even a Penn game on the Monday after it was played, with less than a total of 90 inches of news space in the CRIMSON, hardly exceeds ten inches--the amount given on the day in question. No metropolitan paper gives one ninth of its news columns to intercollegiate football.

Undergraduate sentiment is too vague and ill-defined, at Harvard at least, to make a suitable foundation upon which to build an editorial policy. Every paper represents the opinions and prejudices of those who run and own it.

Mr. Hardwick believes that football is the most important occurance at Harvard. The CRIMSON does not share in this opinion. It, to be frank, does not think that a student juggling a football while studying represents a true picture of Harvard life--and if the abolition of this, and other similar habits has been the result of the CRIMSON's policy, the CRIMSON has no regrets.

But Mr. Hardwick has given the CRIMSON too much credit and the student body far too little.