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Communication

When Innocence is Guilt

The Harvard Crimson assumes no responsibility for the sentiments expressed by correspondents, and reserves the right to exclude any communication whose publication may for any reason seem undesirable. Except by special arrangement, communications cannot be published anonymously.

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial statement of November 29 that "the College cries out against the administration which throws its whole energy into training merchants and manufacturers...." naturally brings to mind the question: "What is the attitude of the alumni?"

I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that most of the older graduates, especially those who concentrated in the humanities when they were here, frown upon the rise of the Harvard Business School as decidedly detrimental to the more cultural if less practical studies in the University.

In support of this contention let me quote from a speech made at the annual dinner of the Harvard Business Review last spring by Mr. John Jay Chapman '84, one of the University's finest champions of the cultural tradition:

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"The standing of Harvard, the very meaning of your University, is at stake. In the new generation that is now springing up there are men to whom the ideals, castes, and satisfactions of business are as dust and ashes. These men claim a share in that human inheritance which Harvard once stood for: they seek those foundations of thought that reach down to the centre of life. Yet as they approach you, they find that the ground beneath their feet is in a flux. They come to escape from Pittsburgh and they find Hollywood. What will such men do when they begin to realize that you have no interest in the things they seek, and no interest in the seekers themselves, save to get money from them for the building of more buildings and the herding of more hordes." They will go else where and somehow form themselves into new groups, however small, new saying agencies which will take charge of the intellectual life of the country during the period when its universities have become more servants to commerce." R. W. Ross '27.

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