Three-Way War Memorial Recommendation Veils Near Coup for Plaque, Scholarship Fund

Memorial Church will sport $200,000 worth of new bronze-tableted inscription and cream-marble statuary next Fall unless Alumni as well as undergraduates become articulate on the question of commemoration for the University's World War II dead.

Up to the present time the joint Associated Harvard Clubs-Alumni Association committee charged with making the recommendation has heard from only a handful of concerned old grads. Armed with 10-1 majority agreement at its October 19 meeting, the group has prominently put forth its near fait-accompli: a half-million-dollar scholarship fund coupled with the honor-roll-like display in the Church.

The formal report claims that equal chance still exists for the Student Activities Center and Medical Center proposals. But according to Ralph Lowell '12, acting chairman until Leverett Saltonstall '14 returns from a European Congressional junket, the committee fought sore temptation to announce a final decision now. "Only deference to the Senator," Lowell admitted Wednesday, "determined our plan to wait until the turn of the year."

Lone dissenter at the dozen-man-sessions two Sundays ago was Richard G. Axt, Jr. '46, Council President at the time of the poll showing overwhelming support in Cambridge for a Student Activities Center. Augustus Thorndike '19, who insisted for personal reasons that his vote be technically considered for the Medical Center, actually favors the plaque-scholarship combination and has stated that he will go along with the flock on the next tally. The vote of Representative John F. Kennedy '40, seriously ill, is not known.

Only Begun to Fight

Axt and his successor Edric A. Weld, Jr. '46 say they have only begun to fight. "It is hard to imagine in these days," Weld remarked at news of the committee's viewpoint, "that men of affairs could suggest $200,000 for any plaque of any sort in any location with so many constructive projects crying for support." To Weld the "constructive project" is mandate demands he back to the end has undergone a sort of sly five-month-long slow strangulation.

On June 3 the Council had submitted a reiteration of its 1946 position urging, on the basis of detailed findings, that appropriateness and need called for a Student Activities Center as the War Memorial selection. An appendix specified ten features of the Center it envisioned. When the War Memorial Committee received the recommendation, in company with a then-swollen roster of some 34 possibilities ranging from expanded ROTC facilities to a Harvard Forest, the document went in toto for a financial estimate to University architects, Coolidge, Shepley, Bullfinch, and Abbott of 1 Court Street.

By September Henry R. Shepley '10 had turned over in behalf of his firm a tentative set of blueprints based on the Council's suggestions. The plans sent cold shivers of quizzical delight up the spines of those boosters who got a look. Shepley's fertile imagination had produced sketches of a six-story high main building connecting to a 2000-capacity theater wing. It was all wonderful, but like peace, how could it be realized.

Wise in the ways of the extra-University world, Axt guessed that the financial estimate accompanying Shepley's plan could hardly bring joy to that Alumni officialdom faced with the money-raising chores for any War Memorial. The figure was a minimum of $3,000,000 exclusive of an equal endowment for operational expenses. No one doubted that it would require that sum easily to meet the mythical ideal envisaged in the sheaf of blueprints.

Good Intentions

Axt and Weld don't talk about whether exuberance or deliberate intention caused the architects to come forth with a scheme costly to a staggering degree. They simply point to the colossally liberal scope of every aspect in that group of drawings. Four "large" meeting rooms are 20 by 65 feet. Ten "small" meeting rooms are 15 by 15. Provision is made for two broadcasting studios. Thirty offices would occupy space 10 by 20 each. Even the 11 rest rooms would boast dimensions of 15 by 20.

"The architect's concept," Weld declared, "is unfortunately completely out of proportion to any suggestions the Council ever made and to any actual need. It is too bad that the Council members responsible for the report on which the architects based their plans and their subsequent estimates were never con-consulted."

By now it is generally grasped that the scale of a Student Activities Center might be less ambitious; and that dropping such recreational features as a dance hall and a snack bar with adjoining flagstoned terrace could well lop off entire floors. But the damage has been done. Once the first on-paper version of the project had found its way to the committee members, the Student Activities Center had become identified with inaccessibly grandiose magnificence of the $6,000,000 stripe.

Estimate Back to Normalcy

In the October 19 committee sessions themselves the Student Activities Center had to be discussed in terms of the $3,000,000 plus dollar-for-dollar endowment estimate provided by the University architects. Only after the meeting, in a hazy series of maneuvers by the Committee's Secretary, Henry C. Clark '11, apparently intended to balk publicity about the committee's activities, was a switch in figures introduced. This change was casually included in the report of the meeting. The report quoted "$3,000,000 to $4,000,000" as the Center's cost including endowment.

'Not Impartiality'

Weld hesitates to say so in ringing words, but it is his belief that the entire proceedings, even irrespective of the price estimates, have not been conducted with the "impartiality we on the Council expected as a matter of course from this committee." A September 18 letter in advance of the recent meeting went to the Committee membership: Axt, Henry H. Chatfield '39, Kennedy, Lowell, Frederick F. Moseley, Jr. '36, George A. Perey '18, Nathan Pereles '04, George Rublee, '90, Philip C. Staples, Jr. '37, Thorndike, and Robert S. Wolcott '36. The author was chairman Saltonstall. Clear statements opposed the alleged crucial University needs that are pressed upon us." Specifically he plugged his personal view that "a fitting memorial to the World War II veterans could be added to the Chapel in a proper way that would be similar in form and in dignity to the memorial now there."

The Council's frank partiality was justified to its satisfaction in the reasoning and documentation of its report. This stated that out of a poll of 2500 students had come 50.4 percent favoritism for a Student Activities Center and all but 1.8 percent sentiment in favor of the general principle of a "utilitarian" memorial, in opposition to something such as the embellishment to Memorial Church now leading the field.

In the face of the Council's thesis the committee's towering hostility from the start deserves defense. Associated Harvard Clubs President Lowell thinks the Student Activities Center an unwise choice because it will in his view serve the College to the virtual exclusion of University-wide significance.

He adds that the Union was intended to fulfill the very functions now slated for the new Center and that "it didn't work." Then in an inkling of much that is left unsaid he notes the greater dignity of "spontaneous" fund-raising from a broad-based donor group capable of small contributions rather than what one alumnus calls the usual "browbeating of wealthy men" alone. The Student Activities Center is in Lowell's estimation so large an undertaking from the standpoint of soliciting money that it has assumed all the marks of complete impracticability.

The General Will

Now that the cards are on the table, the financial estimate has hit $2,500,000, with a $1,500,000 figure from Shepley Wednesday and an endowment approximation by Lowell the same day of an even million. This is admittedly not a maximum estimate and would have to undergo revision were labor and material costs to suddenly rise. But Axt feels it is a figure which would probably have created a psychological climate more favorable to his cause had it appeared two months ago.

At the present time Axt seems convinced that the only hope for a memorial other than the plaque-scholarship duo rests with the arousing of sufficient informed support within the body of younger Alumni, especially veterans of the recent war, to sell the committee a new version of the General Will.

Weld strenuously objects to the conspicuous failure of the committee so far to provide for any extensive airing of the three choices still eligible for consideration. Not only does the listing of these in the official report devote disproportionate space to the plaque, but the "Alumni Bulletin" about to reach its readers treats each item with the greatest brevity, referring in one line to "a Student Activities Center in Cambridge."

The question of leadership for an opposition force accentuates the still-unrecorded stand of Representative Kennedy. As the young liberal spokesman in the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kennedy has attempted to alter over-cautions policies in that oligarchical organization. Slated for February are the Memorial Committee's meeting and executive gatherings of the Harvard Clubs and the Alumni both able to confirm a decision.