Conant Eludes Battery Of Cameramen At Ceremonies

When President Conant, upon his election last spring, welcomed newspaper photographers and posed for them willingly, the metropolitan papers unctuously hailed an end of the Lowellian tradition of presidential aloofness. But the camermen were wondering last night whether their New Deal at Harvard was going to materialize after all.

At about dusk yesterday a battery of cameras was gathered around University Hall to snap the notables as they emerged from the inauguration ceremonies, and especially to catch President Conant. While the photographers trained their instruments on the south entrance, a slim figure clad in a felt hat and gray overcoat with collar turned up, slipped down the north steps and disappeared from the Yard in the direction of Memorial Hall. Some ten minutes later the newshawks were glibly informed by a grinning Yard cop that the president had left.

Contrary to their feeling when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. '37 eluded them at registration, the photographers in this case did not specifically blame Major Charles R. Apted '06, Superintendent of Caretakers, for their ill fortune, but looked accusingly upon one of his subordinates. They had not been told that everybody would leave by the southern entrance, and so could not accuse anyone of deliberate connivance. But they were inclined to feel that the president, whether advised by Major Apted or not, had taken unfair advantage of the opportunity to slip out unnoticed. One of them, indeed, was heard to remark," Who does he think he is Jesse James?"