THE CRIMSON-DIGEST POLL

With the appearance today of the ballots sent out by the CRIMSON in conjunction with the Literary Digest poll concerning the Roosevelt administration all Harvard University students will have the opportunity to express their reaction to the Roosevelt regime, and the results should prove of more than usual interest. Such polls of under graduate opinion on many issues of major importance are becoming increasingly popular, since they offer probably the only satisfactory way of securing the opinion of the informed and thinking youth of today on current problems.

In the present case, however, the answer to the principal question on the ballot indicating whether or not the voter is sympathetic to the Roosevelt policies so far, may lead to some ambiguity in interpreting the results. The policies of the Roosevelt regime have been so far-reaching in scope that they have affected practically all contemporary fields of human endeavor, including the social, economic, and political. Hence, the diversity of opinion with which the New Deal has so far been received and which makes it all but impossible to express unqualified approval or disapproval of its methods. The liberal who is repelled by quasi-regimentation of industry through codes may nevertheless be wholeheartedly in favor of such projects for social reform the abolition of child labor and unemployment insurance.

However his may be, University men will probably welcome the opportunity to express their general reaction to the New Deal. As the generation which will shortly be entering the market place and taking up the direction of affairs as their elders relinquish control, they are naturally anxious to see that their heritage shall not turn out to be a mess of pottage. They are the ones on whom will rest in large measure the burden of paying the freight on the post-war joy ride and the subsequent smash; and whatever follies may have been or are likely to be committed in the name of reconstruction will also loom large on the bill.

Complete opinion on these matters cannot, of course, be indicated by a simple yes or no concerning the methods of the Roosevelt government.

Yet on the whole, although the returns of the poll must be interpreted with extreme care, the fact that college students in general have no immediate are to grind which might otherwise impart a bias to their innermost convictions should make it more than usually trustworthy. In any case the poll will indicate conclusively whether or not Harvard's traditionally conservative student body leans to the left or right, since, broadly speaking, this is the only issue which can be satisfactorily settled considering the broad scope of the more pertinent of the two questions.