Whom Age Cannot Wither

The Harvard authorities recently gave out a list of the oldest surviving graduates of Harvard College, men of the classes of '58, '60, '61, '62 and '63; and the astonishing thing about these men, the youngest of whom was old enough to vote in the Congressional elections of 1862, is their amazing vigor and youth.

Call the roll: Frederick George Bromberg, '58, of Mobile. Ala., still a familiar name to progressive Republicans in the South; his classmate, Dr. Walcott, for a third of a century one of the governing board of Harvard College, as integral a part of old Cambridge as the Common, opposite his home; Henry Rogers, who only two years ago wrote his "Memories of Ninety Years": Charles Alexander Nelson, whose presence still seems to linger in the Columbia Library; John Torrey Morse, who began writing American biography more than half a century ago and is still at it-his latest book, published last year, was a life of Thomas Sergeant Perry; on to the eleventh on the list, Mr. Justice Holmes, of the class of '61.

Whenever a Supreme Court opinion shows that fervor and forthrightness which men usually describe as "youthful" it is almost a safe bet that it is Justice Holmes's writing. Only this week, dissenting from the majority verdict in a double taxation case, he spoke in characteristic tones. "As the decisions now stand," he wrote, "I see hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights (the constitutional rights of the states) if they happen to strike a majority of this court as for any reason undesirable. I cannot believe that the (Fourteenth) Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral beliefs in its prohibitions."

No old age there, no lack of fire and verve. Justice Holmes, in his ninetieth year, and his seniors on the Harvard list prove again the eternal truth that age is not a matter of years and days. New York Herald Tribune.