ONWARD AND UPWARD

With Congress hell-bent to carve up the national budget, Federal Arts projects have come in for more than their share of epithets. "Useless," "extravagant," and myriads of other Republican, battle cries are heard. 210 Harvard Faculty members have risen in protest against this attack, vehemently defending Federal Arts on the ground that "a democratic government can assure its citizens a freedom of life, of enterprise, and of access to the arts of civilization such as no other government can or will assure them." They protest against the stifling of this "freedom of access" by distorted Congressional "economy."

The Arts in today's United States are shackled to a financial oligarchy by their dependence on private patronage. Plays must have their gag lines, books their seductions, and opera its Diamond Horseshoe, all to entice the sacred dollars out of those few well-filled pocket-books. For without those dollars, the Arts cannot live. Partly to break those shackles which link the Arts so irretrievably with private enterprise, the Administration at Washington inaugurated the Federal Arts projects. By subsidizing these projects, the Government has tried to life the Arts above the dictates and limits of a limited public and pass them on to the great majority of citizens who could not otherwise enjoy them. No one can deny that in this attempt, the Administration has made mistakes, has been guilty of extravagance and short-sightedness. No such tremendous effort, newly launched, can deny its feet of clay. Certainly these defects warrant reform, but not the slaughter which bloodthirsty senators demand.

Yet that slaughter is imminent since Federal Arts, affecting comparatively few people, have few defenders. The strongly individualistic professional class knows no such politically powerful organizations as labor or Big Business. Instead they are content to sit contentedly in their ivory towers and watch their interests, less directly the interests of the whole country, guillotined by Congressional executioners.

That a portion of the Harvard Faculty, that stronghold of virulent individualism, has taken initiative in protesting against the execution of Federal Arts is a challenge to teachers throughout the country. For teachers are not mere pedants whose work is signed, scaled and delivered with a diploma. They are custodians of America's intellectual and artistic life and as such should meet with concerted action this threat to a part of the Arts.