Lamonts at Work

Down at No. 23 Wall Street, Manhattan, one Thomas W. Lamont is accustomed to put in a good 8-or 9-hour day working at figures. Now a government, now a railroad, now a tin-can factory must have its figures overhauled and set again on its financial way rejoicing. There is, little time for political speculation in the high philosophic sense.

His younger son, Corliss, is temporarily engaged in a job less thoroughly understood by the American public. He is a senior at Harvard. His job might possibly be described as the pursuit of truth. But there appeared, last week, to be a difference of opinion between Mr. Corliss Lament and certain Harvard authorities as to the limits within which the truth might be publicly pursued.

Young Mr. Lamont, as chief undergraduate official of the Harvard Union, desired to invite some Marxian socialists* to address the Union. "No, no," said the Governing Board of the Union, who have apparently discovered the limits beyond which no gentleman shall ever go in truth's pursuit.

Young Mr. Lamont, with strong undergraduate support, is pressing his point, and may yet force the Governing Board to yield.

Corliss Lamont is the most conspicuous of many prominent undergraduates in many colleges who are in revolt against what they call the "stupidity" of preceding undergraduate generations. They have a genial contempt for the traditional extra-curriculum fetish of the campus--the emphasis on athletics, college papers, clubs, "honors." Their informal program is to go into their extra-curriculum activities, beat the campus boys at their own game, and then, with the prestige so acquired, to sound the praises of more excellent things, such as the pursuit of truth.

*Eugene V. Debs, Dr. Scott Nearing, W. Z. Foster.