Crime Personalized, Liberal Voice to Sentimental Fenn

Some people are just naturally the sentimental type, and some aren't. But the CRIMSON has a real appeal for its editors and alumni, sentimental or not. It is the affection of son for father, and father for son; the feeling that one has for a person or an institution that has helped to form his life and thought, as well as the fondness that a man bears for his own handiwork.

Thus the CRIMSON becomes personalized; transformed from a mere newspaper with chameleon properties, changing with each succeeding board or college generation, into a permanent set of values and standards which are transmitted to its stewards as they come and go, strengthened or weakened according to the ability and integrity of those stewards.

What are these values? Probably each alumnus defines them for himself. Co-operation, friendship, loyalty, and an understanding and appreciation that goes deeper than common tolerance are certainly included. Intellectual and editorial honesty, willingness to accept and consider criticism from any source, and the maintenance of breadth and varsity in personnel as well as ideas are others. But the most important virtues, to my mind, are balance and courage, temperance and nerve.

In the possession and exercise of these virtues, and in the state of mind which they produce, we find the true liberalism. Neither a certain current set of beliefs, nor a wild-eyed seizure upon something just because it is new, nor the investigation which starts with formed opinion, praiseworthy though that opinion may be can be honestly liberal. There is as much danger today from those whom one authority calls "dogmatic modernists" as from the traditional rock-ribbed reactionary. For liberalism in an approach, an attitude of mind, a way of life which meets an issue fortified with knowledge and intelligence, shorn of prejudice, and willing and anxious to make a decision and carry it through.

The CRIMSON most worthwhile and enduring contribution to Harvard College and to its editors lies in its sponsorship and expression of this liberalism. Preaching this faith and acting upon it, the CRIMSON can be truly effective in shaping the minds and opinions of those who peruse its columns, and the personalities and lives of those who write them.