"Them That Has, Gits"

Militarism and Harvard were recently thrown into the came wastebasket by that dyspeptic surveyor of the preparatory school, Porter Sargent '96, writing the yearly preface to his "Handbook of Private Schools." The latest of the last straws for the dean of Beacon Street was the simultaneous award last June of honorary Doctor of Laws degrees to four of the nation's top war commanders. When Generals MacArthur and Marshall return to pick up the two additional degrees promised them in their absence, Mr. Sargent's disgust will probably be complete. It has a right to be. Not only did the University go out of its way to kowtow to the brass, but its entire handling of the honorary degree situation served, not to enhance Harvard's prestige, but rather to bring it down to the sorry level of other similar institutions scrambling for a ray of reflected glory.

If the significance of the ceremony is ever to match its publicity, the honorary degree should not merely attend national fame or political prominence. Presumably, the University hopes that its prestige will be extended primarily by the men it sends out into the world with its regular degrees. Special honors should be reserved for those who exemplify its ideals; whom it wishes it could claim for its own but cannot unless it be through the device of the honorary degree.

Five of last Commencement's thirteen award recipients were honored because of their military service service not necessarily in excess of duty. One degree to the Chief of Staff, symbolizing the whole staff might have sufficed. Another five were honored for their direct connections with the University. Deserving as they undoubtedly were, their merits were largely intramural and might have been recognized in a less ostentatious manner. Of the remaining three, the more recent works of one, at least, could hardly earn him a greater reputation than that of a Reader's Digest hack writer, leading the observer of such academic proceedings to wonder how much serious consideration is given prospective candidates for honorary degrees.

At the center of this hush-hush operation is a system of scaled nominations presented to the Governing Board. Nominations apparently can be made by anyone connected with the higher echelons of the University. Accustomed more to making recommendations on financial policy, it may be suspected that the Governing Board either lets "political" expediency instead of philosophical objectives guide its choice, or that it allows itself to be influenced by a single adviser. The peculiar prominence attached to the awarding of honorary degrees demands that the next selections be severely limited in number, and that they be screened by a nominating committee chastened by a well-considered notion of what the University wants to stand for.