Cunningham's Story on Matthiessen Attacked; Terms of Will Announced

A two-column article on the late Professor Francis O. Matthiessen by Boston Herald columnist Bill Cunningham has led to a flurry of editorial rebuttals in that paper over the last week. The article appeared last Monday, the day of Matthiessen's funeral, and referred to his suicide as "a confession of moral cowardice" and the "ne plus ultra of dramatizing oneself to the last possible fraction of a second."

Thursday the mail column of the Herald carried a letter of protest from Professor John H. Finley '25, Master of Eliot House, and yesterday's paper carried six more communications objecting to the original column. One of these was from Law School Professor Mark DeWolfe Howe and another was by Bernard DeVoto.

Hits Matthiessen's Politics

The Cunningham article was headlined "Matthiessen's End a Warning--Basic Intelligence Triumphs Over Professor's Ideology."

The article launched into an attack on Matthiessen's political affiliations and the manner of his death. "To me," Cunningham continued, "he represented the worst kind of college professor, the kind who can command attention through his degrees and the faculty standing he holds in some great university, but who prostitutes both--and himself--in unholy causes.

"My argument has always been that if such gents want to strip to their constitutional shorts and wade into the political sty on their own, nobody has any license to deny them the right, but when they insist on wearing their full academic regalia . . . they're strictly cheating, and, to that extent are phonies."

"Subversive Organizations"

The column goes on the cite Matthiessen's participation in the 1948 Progressive Party convention, and then devotes four paragraphs to listing his "Communist-front, or otherwise subversive" organizations.

The article then concludes,

"All this, somehow, let him down in the end. His friends, follow caustists and colleagues, have hastened to surmise that he decide to end it all because he saw no hope for the things he believed in. Isn't it just as plausible that, possibly his basic intelligence finally triumphed, he saw he was wrong, but the weakness that led him into all this mess robbed him of guts enough to admit it?"

Finley's replay asserted that Cunningham's view was purely a political comment and "lacked feeling for the final complexity of any human life." His letter continued.

Life Not That Simple

"Moral sensitiveness is not an easy matter. The very qualities which lead to insight, devotion, and generosity, all of which Professor Matthiessen had as a teacher, are subject to doubt and strain. They do not grow from contentment and security, but from search and perhaps from insecurity...

"As Americans, we believe in a man's right, within the law, to state his views. We do so because we believe him a free man morally responsible to the complexity of life, not merely a creature of the social order. We must therefore reject a view of Professor Matthiessen, or of any

The text of Professor Howe's letter to the CRIMSON on Cunningham's column may be found on page 2 of this issue. man, that sees his life, much less his death, as simple and explicable, at theme for politics, an opportunity to prove a point. There are contradictions in everyone, as obviously there were in him. But from the same nature as sprang his political intensity and his last fearful decision grew also gentleness, vision, and sympathy.

DeVoto Complains

DeVoto's letter in yesterday's Herald found the political implications in the Cunningham article "disturbing" and "scurrilous." Stating his point in a series of questions, he asked, "Does Mr. Cunningham believe that the freedoms so guaranteed (in the Constitution) should be restricted or abridged? If so, to which citizens should they be restricted and how much should they be abridged?"

Howe's letter in the Herald called Cunningham's article "obscene gloating over a deep personal tragedy."

Academic Freedom

Another of the nine letters printed yesterday was from Charles W Bailey, 2nd, '50 of Eliot House, who stated, "I believe that one of the basic tenets of academic freedom is that a University is no more obliged to support a man's personal opinions than it is expected to attempt to censor them. . . . Apparently Mr. Cunningham fails to understand that two or more men in the group may have different opinions."

John Crider, Editorial Chairman of the Herald, estimated that so far about 40 letters have been received on the topic of Cunningham's article. Of these, about three-fourths have attacked the Column