"FATHER, FORGIVE THEM--"

Those who have had anything to do with the gathering of Harvard's news have long felt that the University stood in need of a competent director of publicity. The one "big" news story of the Harvard week, the Corporation's decision on the Stadium, has convinced even less interested parties that the University is badly mismanaging her relations with the press and thereby with her graduates and the public.

Since the resignation of Mr. Seymour. Harvard's official news has been taken care of by a miscellaneous collection of well meaning gentlemen with many fine qualities, included among them a Simon pure spirit of amateurism as far as the newspaper game is concerned. This week these gentlemen decided that the Corporation's decision, reached Monday, should be withheld from a rapidly curious public until Friday, in order that the Alumni Bulletin should "get" an even break."

The result, forecast by every newspaperman, has been a mad orgy of snooping, culminating yesterday in three Boston papers "jumping the release date"--in other words, printing official announcements ahead of the agreed-upon time. The Stadium announcement was spread to the world a day ahead of time by the Herald-Traveler, the Boston American, and even the very proper Boston Evening Transcript.

There is no need to blame there papers unduly. Even the most honest of citizens is not tempted by having to leave alone the unguarded and unlocked wealth of, say, the Federal Treasury. Told that the University had news on Monday, it is not strange that Boston's energetic papers should make some effort to beat their rivals. Not only does the Bulletin not get its "even break," but the placid life of Boston journalism is destroyed. And more serious than this, the University, though not, of course, to blame for the questionable conduct of the Traveler, American, and Transcript is put into the position of the well-meaning but somewhat unpractical bank offered as a horrible example above.

The CRIMSON hopes that the present state of affairs will not continue much longer, and in the meanwhile is glad to offer her congratulations to the honest citizens of Newspaper Row, the Herald, Post, and the Globe, who though they are not lacking in energy, played the game according is the rules.