STATEMENT FROM THE ADVOCATE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I should like to take the opportunity provided by your letter column to express the Advocate's sincere regret to its readers for any similarity between material which appeared in its December issue and writings previously published elsewhere. We do not condone our error, although it is an obvious fact that we cannot be expected to have read and become acquainted with all plagiarizable literature.

Since your exposure in Thursday's paper of the indebtedness of one of our stories to D. H. Lawrence's "The Sun," it came to my attention on Saturday, and I expected to make public in this letter written on Sunday, that in the same issue the story called "Mary Jane and Jerry" contained verbatim extracts from Nancy Hale's "Midsummer," published in the New Yorker. This letter cannot begin to reveal our displeasure and embarrassment at such unethical practices.

Our only action in this unfortunate situation can be to make deepest apologies to The New Yorker, to Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher of the Lawrence story, and to our readership for our unintentional abrogation of their good faith. George A. Kelley,   President, The Harvard Advocate