RECOGNIZING AN EDUCATOR

Harvard could show its contempt for Curleyism in no better way than by the appointment of Dr. Payson Smith to the Graduate School of Education. Even aside from his country-wide reputation as an educator, the story of his banishment from the State House at the instigation of the present Governor of the Commonwealth should be proof enough of the man's worth.

During his nineteen-year administration as Masachusetts Commissioner of Education Dr. Smith created an organization which was not only the first of its kind but also a pattern for Departments of Education in other states throughout the country. But this colorless and academic accomplishment held no allure for James M. Curley, who, it is pleasant to note, is a product of the Massachusetts school system before Dr. Smith had an opportunity to establish adequate education. Far outweighing any qualifications he may have had for the post of Commissioner of Education was the man's unpardonable sin--he was a Republican.

If the discharge of Dr. Smith was a blot on the Commonwealth, the political machinations with which it was accomplished were a disgrace which should have shown the citizens of Massachusetts clearly enough just what they were getting when they "returned capability to the State House." The reappointment of Dr. Smith by the pontifical Governor Curley and his subsequent rejection on the part of the Council, which, we are supposed to believe, was acting completely on its own initiative, were acts of political duplicity to which even Bay States are not accustomed.

It is fitting that a university about to establish a school in political science should open its gates to a victim of the lack of it. Massachusetts, dying as it is of hypocrisy, may exchange its most valuable servants for Curley's marionettes, but Harvard has shown that it can recognize real education even where the Commonwealth cannot.