AmbassadorGrew Describes Slavery Of '04 Candidates

Editorship of the Harvard Crimson was quite a different proposition in my day from what I imagine it is today. As I remember the procedure, candidates for editorship were called out every five or six months. I do not now remember just how many we were but it was a sizable group. During those months we were simply reporters and went around on our own initiative trying to gather useful news which we turned in daily. Based on the quality and quantity of our reporting, there was a gradual weeding out of candidates until we were reduced to a comparatively small number. Then, at a given moment, we who had survived the purges were placed on assignments of which we learned from consulting the bulletin board at the CRIMSON daily. Thereafter this group steadily diminished until, by the process of elimination, only two remained and these two were duly elected editors of the CRIMSON.

After becoming editors I do not remember that we did any work at all because the editing was carried on by the President, the Managing Editor and other officers. I do well remember the tremendous relief at being released from the slavery of the past months which our election brought about. Thereafter I do not think we ever attended meetings or were consulted on editorial policy so that our jobs then became sinecures and we spent the rest of our editorships passively basking in the glory of being members of the Board.

As fifty years have gone by since my election as an editor in 1901 or 1902, the intervening years may have obscured the details of the system as it then existed, but I think that this was about the way the CRIMSON was run in those earlier days. Anyway, I remember that we editors were very proud indeed to have our names on the masthead of so distinguished a journal as the Harvard CRIMSON. Joseph C. Grew '02   (State Department, 1904-1942,   Ambassador to Japan, 1932-1941)