A GLAD HAND TO 1912

Of all the Classes of Harvard graduates that return to honor the University this week, by far the most important is 1912. Men coming back to their twenty-fifth reunion hold a particularly vital position, not only in the official reunion ceremonies, but in the body of the University itself. For it is to these men, all in the prime of life and yet with most productive and useful years still in store, that the University looks for support and guidance.

While the returning classes have set up a tradition of generosity toward the University, both by class gifts and in individual donations--gifts which are becoming harder to make and yet which are increasingly needed as time goes on--financial support is far from the primary consideration of the University in welcoming its twenty-fifty classes. For these men are at an age to be called upon for active service on the various governing bodies and the visiting committees of the University, and by their opinion to guide and influence general University policy.

But for the returning class itself the twenty-fifth reunion is most valuable. It permits the renewal of friendships that may have lapsed because of geographical and other reasons, it enables Harvard men who have come from all sections to exchange views on the University and life in general, and above all it gives a restful and amusing holiday on which the returning graduates can relieve the scenes of their youth, sporting on the green sward, often with the boon of families, and partaking of such rare Falernian as Cambridge still has to offer. Thus from every point of view the return of Harvard's classes for their twenty-fifty is a boon to the University, and a glad hand goes out his week to extend a hearty welcome to the men of 1912.