MARCHING ON

The Cambridge School of the Drama, although not a part of Harvard University is sponsored entirely by Harvard alumni and is an obvious and direct attempt to restore Harvard's dramatic prestige so lamentably destroyed by the discontinuation of English 47, Professor G. P. Baker's famous course in the dramatic arts. The department of Naval Science in insisting upon using the Roger's building for drilling in spite of other available places and hence curtailing the program of the drama school-again threatens to erase the theatre from Harvard.

With the unhampered use of this building, which it now occupies the Cambridge School of the Drama could proceed with an expansion program that would enable it to be a leader in the field of experimental theatre schools. Harvard would again be the site of good dramatic instruction and Harvard men could expect to follow in the steps of their now famous predecessors. But all of this hinges upon the fate of a school that is not a part of the University, and this fate has been unfavorably decided by a Department under the direct supervision of the United States Government which insists upon occupying the only building available to the school for the highly non-academic pastime of drilling.

Harvard needs a school of the drama if it is to attempt to meet the requirements of a complete university, and even if the institution now under consideration is not a part of Harvard, it is the nearest approach to a dramatic course that can be hoped for. Drilling, on the other hand, is not an academic necessity. Yet even though the Naval Science Department can present no adequate reason for not carrying on their unessential maneuvers in several other proposed places. Harvard apparently will be forced to see the teaching of the theatrical arts disappear once again, and this time for no good reason.