Looking Back:

It is no accident that the names of four Harvard men who fought and died for their country in World War I remain excluded from the honor roll engraved on the stones of Memorial Church.

In 1931, when the University was making plans to build a church to commemorate the Harvard men killed in the war, it opted to exclude from the dedication the names of those who died fighting against the Aliied forces. Even in an era when student criticism of the University was relatively gentle by today's standards. the University's war memorial proposal sparked a heated debate.

Most students supported the idea of a memorial project but opposed the University's plans on both practical and ethical grounds. They believed that some other type of memorial might be more useful to the Harvard community and that, whatever its form, the memorial should be dedicated to all Harvard men who died in the war.

Then-President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, was a regular worshipper at the chapel's morning services, and he hoped that a new, more esthetically attractive chapel would promote greater student interest and participation. But both students and alumni criticized the University's choice of memorial, pointing out that there was already a chapel (Appleton) in the Yard and that it was certainly adequate for the small number of students who attended services there.

Many students wanted the memorial to take the form of a new auditorium to be used for dramatic performances, concerts, debates and even Commencement exercises. Other suggestions included the establishment of a center for world peace or a scholarship foundation.

Some students noted that about 30 per cent of the Harvard war dead were not Protestant and that therefore a memorial church would be inappropriate, since Roman Catholics. Jews, Christian Scientists, and Agnostics would not worship in it. Others circulated flyers asking. "What Would Our Dead Have Wished?--A Meaningless Memorial?"

In an effort to dispel rumors that Lowell was trying to impose the church proposal unilaterally. Allston Burr, Class of 1889, chairman of the Harvard War Memorial Fund Committee, wrote a letter to the editors of the Crimson, in which he disclosed that his committee had studied the question for five years before arriving at the church proposal. The committee had then sent letters to the next-of-kin of the Harvard dead, explaining the committee's proposal for a memorial church and asking for contributions. Burr wrote.

Burr's letter dealt the decisive blow to the proposals for other forms of memorial. He stated that "all subscriptions to the Harvard War Memorial have been given for a church. To use the fund for any other form of memorial would be a breach of trust. Many subscribers, and some for large sums, are dead."

Although the letter quelled debate on the from of the memorial, the question of whether the names of the men who had died for Germany would be included in the dedication remained to be resolved. At first, the Corporation claimed that the memorial could not bear their names because the terms under which the $8000 in contributions had been raised "clearly established that the gift was made to commemorate those men who died fighting for the Allied cause."

The Wesley Foundation, at the time the largest religious student organization on campus, criticized the exclusion of names as incompatible with the Christian ideals that a church should represent. And the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBH), another organization that disapproved of the restricted dedication, took its protest one step further, obtaining a copy of the original pledge form, which stipulated the terms of the contributions. The form read: "To enable Harvard College, in reliance upon this and other subscriptions, to build and endow a University Church as a memorial to the Harvard men who lost their lives in the World War, I agree to give to the President and Fellows of Harvard College $---."

Since the pledge form contained no stipulation that the memorial commemorate only the Allied dead and since the five contributions that had been made on individual terms similarly contained no restrictive stipulations, PBH unanimously adopted a resolution contesting the Corporation's decision.

Responding to this challenge, Lowell wrote, "A memorial to men who died for a cause is meaningless for that purpose if it includes those who died for a different or contrary cause....To say that no memorial shall be raised to men who gave their lives for a cause unless those who died on the other side are included is either to condemn the cause as unworthy of the sacrifice; or to say, like barbarians, that all warfare is glorious, and that all who died in battle are to be honored simply because they were warriors."

So when Willard L. Sperry, chairman of the Board of Preachers, dedicated Memorial Church on Armistice Day, 1932, the names of the 373 Harvard men who died for the Allied cause were handsomely inscribed in brass letters on the travertine tablets of the memorial room, directly below the spire. On the floor lay Harvard's insignia, on the ceiling the seal of the United States--E Pluribus Unum.

But outside the memorial room, toward the back of the chapel, there is now a separate memorial plaque for those to whom the church could not be dedicated: "Harvard University has not forgotten her sons, Fritz Daur, Konrad Delbruck, Kurt Peters, Max Schneider, who under opposite standards gave their lives for their country, 1914-1918."