Tribune Sees Pink Tinge in Hymarx Text

A "Hymarx" outline was the subject Friday of a vitriolic attack by the Chicago Tribune in the fifth of its current series on Harvard left wingers.

Eugene Griffin, in the next to last article of his series on "Harvard and its connections with left wingers," devoted a column and a half to comments and quotations from a Hymarx edition entitled "Governments of England and Russia," written by Alfred H. Rosenthal '33. In the article, headlined "Russia Termed a Paradise in Harvard Book," Griffin said that "the book has a sympathetic, glowing tone thruout toward communist Russia."

The impression that Griffin received from the "Harvard Coop book" was that Russia is a "sort of paradise of happy, contented people, better off in several ways than any other people in the world." Griffin further quoted the Hymarx as calling American newspapers "the prostituted vehicles of capitalism."

An investigation by Griffin of Student Outlines Company, Boston, publishers of Hymarx editions, revealed that the company occupies "a cluttered third floor space presided over by a man in baggy pants." Added to this, "the man upstairs did not want to talk much about his business."

Aid and Comfort

The sixth and last story in Griffins current crusade appeared in the Tribune Saturday. It concerned the refusal of Franklin B. Ober, a 1913 graduate of the Law School, to contribute last Spring to a fund for Law School buildings because "Harvard teachers, particularly Harlow Shapley and John Ciardi, were giving 'aid and Comfort' to Communism."

Ober's proposals were replied to last spring by both President Conant and Grenville Clark '03, a member of the Corporation. Clark stated that the proposals were "absolutely contrary to Harvard's tradition and all she stands for."

In both 1948 and 1949 Griffin also wrote a series of articles attacking the University as a "hotbed" of Communism.