Retort Courteous

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial of last Tuesday, criticizing Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn's New York speech, calls for no little criticism itself. It indicates ignorance of Dr. Meiklejohn's activities and ideas, and, what is less to be expected from an undergraduate editorial, inattentive reading of excerpts of the speech.

You speak of his "usual sackcloth and ashes," implying thereby that you know a great deal about Dr. Meiklejohn and actually proving that you did not. Did your editorial writer ever read any of his other speeches, or his books? Did he ever hear of the Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin, headed by Dr. Meiklejohn? There, a group of teachers, discouraged as you often are with the sterility and formalization of so much college study, is investigating methods and materials of instruction in the belief that something can be done to remedy both. Their inspirer is not "utterly discouraged with the futility of all educational institutions"; he wants to make the institutions better, and as a disciple of Socrates he begins by looking to see what is wrong, and having found it he criticizes it. That is the function of Dr. Meiklejohn's words; his acts, at Wisconsin and formerly at Amherst, show what he believes should be done, and what he does.

A male Cassandra does not say that man "must study so that be can improve living." He would be more likely to assume that there was no use in studying, because living could not be improved. Yet that is what Dr. Meiklejohn said, and that is what you called him.

I hope that if and when you publish this letter you will append your definition of a pessimist. Sincerely yours,   Paul M. Herzog '27.

Madison, Wisconsin.