Committee Appointed by Conant To Investigate Changes in Official Harvard University Seal

A Committee on Seals, Arms, and Diplomas has just been appointed by President Conant, it was learned yesterday. In recognition of his work on the subject for the Tercentennial celebration in 1936, Samuel E. Morison '08, professor of History, has been selected for chairman. The other two members of the committee are Kenneth B. Murdock '16, dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Charles A. Coolidge '81, architect of the new Houses.

Professor Morison will forward discussion on the basis of his researches, which, he hopes, will result in the making of a new seal. He will also urge that a more careful distinction be made between the Seal, which, he claims, should be used only as an official stamp on College documents, and the Arms which, alone, are appropriate for decoration.

The actual results of Professor Morison's researches on the College Seals have been published in an article for the September Graduates Magazine which will go on sale either today or tomorrow. He has established, for the first time, the approximate dates at which seals of various designs were officially used. The motto, "Veritas," he discovered, was not actually used until 1885 except for a brief period under Josiah Quincy although it was officially recommended at an overseers' meeting in 1643. At a meeting of the Harvard Club in New York in 1878 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1816, presented a sonnet ridiculing the omission of "truth" on the Seal, in so doing unintentionally causing a general protest which resulted in the cutting of the one now in use.

The first Seal in the long series of those which have been recorded, was made seven years before the College was chartered, somewhere in the Colonies, but was little if ever used. In 1650 the "In Christi Gloriam" seal, which will be presented to President Conant in the Inauguration ceremony along with the present official one, was probably made in London. In 1693 John Coney, the famous Colonial silversmith, made another, remarkable for its simplicity and dignity, which was used until 1812. At this time a simple reproduction was made. Josiah Quincy, President of the College from 1836 to 1846, and historian of the bicentennial in 1836 next essayed a most elaborate design, but his successor restored the older design. No change was then made until 1885 produced the Appleton design, which remains to the present.

To this pretentious list Professor Morison proposes to add another which will combine all the good points of the existing ones and eliminate the bad. New Arms designed according to correct heraldic form are already under consideration.