Returning the Fire

(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 CRIMSON:

Once more it seems the departments of naval and military science have been put under fire in these editorial columns and thus once more must they answer in spite of the fact that both sides can do little more than repeat the arguments which they have already set forth. In the first place, the sum of $2928.70 it was admitted would keep the library open only during the reading periods, not a very great length of time. This would indeed be a convenience but it is far from a necessity or even an urgent need. A book can always be taken from the library at 5 P. M. and thus the evening is not closed to study. Perhaps the number of copies of one book in the reading room is limited, but may I point out that the student who does not wait until the last moment to do his work can get the book next day, should be miss out in the evening. But these arguments are not entirely necessary, for if the reading room were desperately needed during the evenings I still have enough confidence in Harvard to believe that the money would be supplied without robbing any other department. Longer hours would be a convenience but no more. To an impartial judge, neither a communistic member of the Liberal Club nor a militarist, it would seem a very costly convenience if it required doing away with preparation for self-defense as carried on at Harvard. Don't misunderstand me. If it were a question of maintaining the military and naval courses or of keeping the library open a reasonable length of time I would say, "Do away with the military, as Harvard is not, after all, a military school." But this is not the question. As I understand it, the writer of yesterday's editorial would be willing to do away with the departments in question to keep the library open a few extra hours a day for six weeks out of the year.

I do not think it necessary to go into all the arguments in favor of the military and naval science departments. These have already been set forth. Suffice it to say that in these departments Harvard is merely cooperating with the U. S. government at no very great expense to the university, either financial or scholastic; and will continue to do so, I hope, until relieved of its small part in national defense by the government itself.

There are undoubtedly numbers in Harvard College who think that cooperation with the government a poor policy, but although noted as a liberal college, Harvard is not the nest of radicals and fools that some of the former letters and editorials would indicate.

Therefore I rest my case, hoping that my faith in the student body of Harvard as a fair judge has not been misplaced. Charles F. Tillinghast '35