"RED" AND "YELLOW"

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. Only letters under 400 words can be printed because of space limitations.

To the Editor of the Crimson:

The Crimson has evidently taken to heart the recent formation of the League of Yellow Journalists. Less than a week after the inception of the organization, the student body of Harvard (or, rather, that part of it that reads the Crimson) is being treated to the spectacle of a Red Scare that would make Mr. Hearst blush only because of the amateur nature in which it is concocted. It is with this amateur nature that I would take issue.

Saying that a letter signed by seven of the nine members of the executive committee of the Harvard Student Union was "written by what might be called a rump of the executive board" is of course making a statement of which any member of the League of Yellow Journalists should be proud. Commendable from this point of view also is the implication that the former president of the Peace Society and the Phillips Brooks House representative on the committee (both of whom led the opposition to national affiliation) are members of a "tireless and determined radical group" merely because they accept the twice-expressed will of the majority. I also liked the title of the editorial--"Shot-Gun Wedding." It is loaded with pertinent implications.

But, from a purely professional point of view, the complete lack of CAPITALIZED WORDS is really regrettable. Also, as one admirer of the Boston American to another, don't you think that, when writing non-sequitur passages, long words such as "coordination" should be omitted? Of course, I may be wrong, but my personal conviction is that long words might just possibly make the reader stop to think, and I do not feel that this is desirable.

The Crimson editorials on the HSU are taking notable steps in the right direction, and I applaud these. However I feel that they are not yet perfectly imitative of their models, and it is for that reason that I am taking this means of pointing out some of the more obvious lacks of REFINEMENT Marvin Williams '30