Rise and Sing.

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the Bulletin:

Your issue of October 30th carries more than two pages of correspondence anent the CRIMSON's editorial on the West Point game. It is rather surprising to note that these communications are unnimously condemnatory. Not one graduate voice is raised in support of the courageous expression of opinion by the young Cambridge editors. Possibly it is significant that all of the letters printed are from New York or Boston and from graduates of more than twenty years standing. Harvard alumni represent such a broad cross-section of the country that, to the university's lasting credit, a respectable minority party can usually be mustered for almost any cause, whether it be infant damnation in 1641 or cancellation of war debts in 1931. In the present instance perhaps there has not yet been time for refreshing ideas from the provinces to reach your presses.

Agree or not with the CRIMSON's argument--details may be debated indefinitely--the eligibility rules are in question--Harvard is an institution for liberal education--West Point is a specialized military academy, etc.--regardless of conclusion one must salute independence of thought and fearless publication of convictions. How easy and safe to have written merely a dignified gloat over the victory. It is what ninety per cent of us would have done had we been the editors on that Monday after the game, and our rah-rah effusion would have wasted the time of the few hundred local subscribers who read it. Instead, the CRIMSON publishes a real editorial. It is reprinted from Hanger to El Paso, and it makes its readers sit up and think.

From Ikhnaton down to Gandhi it has been those who have bucked the crowd for their principles who have risen above the mediocrity of the mass. In recent years the CRIMSON has shown an admirable reluctance to truckle to the established order of things as they are. More than once its staff has brayed the Bourbon majority with stimulating spirit. Minority hats off again to the CRIMSON. R. D. Whittemore 1913 Cragmor, Colorado.

(Ed. note: This letter is reprinted by permission of the Alumni Bulletin)