Professors Discuss 'Crimson' at Time Of Eighty-Fifth Anniversary This Year

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

An eighty-fifth Anniversary is certainly an occasion for celebration, whether of a man or of an institution. I know no one of either that has survived so many years of hard work and controversy with such becoming youthfulness as the CRIMSON. I am glad to add my congratulations to the many others that, I am sure, will come to the CRIMSON on this occasion.

It has been suggested that I comment on Faculty attitudes towards the CRIMSON. I am as much perplexed for an answer to this suggesition as I often am when, on occasion, I am asked, "What does Harvard think"--about some controversial question. Faculty attitudes vary, it is safe to say; and, with less safety, I am tempted to add that I suspect that the attitudes have some relation with current attitudes of the CRIMSON towards the Facuty. I have heard Faculty opinions of the CRIMSON couched in language which is unprintable; I have heard voiced charges of "irresponsibility," "immaturity," and "inaccuracy" against the CRIMSON; but I noticed that what the CRIMSON publishes, the Faculty reads, and, when really important issues are discussed by well-in-formed editors, as they frequently are, the CRIMSON's views are quoted with respect in Faculty debates.

There can be no question, I think, that in these eighty-five years successive editors have built for the HARVARD CRIMSON a strong place in Harvard College. Although I can't vouch that a canvass of the Faculty would bring an overwhelming paean of praise for the CRIMSON, I believe that the Faculty owes a large debt of gratitude to the CRIMSON, probably greater than it realizes. Faculty members would, I think, almost universally commend the paper for its occasional "feature articles." They would, I suspect, be less complimentary about the editorials on subjects of which they have special knowledge, but they would be more generous in respect for criticism of other departments than their own. But I don't know whether they would agree or disagree with my own view that the greatest service of all performed by the CRIMSON is in its gathering of news. As the sole daily newspaper at Harvard, it is the principal, and almost the only medium which makes it possible for one segment of this society to learn what other segments are doing and to make known currently its own activities in important preliminary stages before those activities have reached the stage for more general publication in books or the public press. In fact, I have reason to believe that Faculty members, like many others in this complex society, are sometimes almost completely dependent upon the CRIMSON for their knowledge of what their more remote colleagues are doing. Delmar Leighton