Plaque Picked as Memorial

Harvard's war memorial will be a $70,000 marble inscription in Memorial Church.

By unanimous vote the Associated Harvard Clubs executive board yesterday accepted the Saltonstall Committee report and repudiated 2,361 College alumni who sent in postcards asking for a voice in the selection.

Both the Harvard Clubs and the Alumni Association had to approve the plaque plan to make it a reality. The project new goes before the Corporation, which will almost certainly accept the memorial gift.

Before discussing the memorial the executive board was presented with 2,570 postcards received by the Alumni Committee for a University Memorial Activities Center. One hundred eighty cards said yes to the plaque, but 2,361 others asked alumni be permitted to vote on the choice of a war memorial.

After Senator Leverett Saltonstall '14 had read his group's report to the board it held a short discussion, and then voted in the plaque.

The plea for a ballot was rejected, Archer O'Reilly, Jr. '29, secretary of the board, explained last night, "because that is not within the purview of this committee or the Associated Harvard Clubs."

The board stuck to the Saltonstall proposal, O'Reilly said, because it felt that a student activities center or other proposed functional building would "degenerate" in time. Another reason for the plaque was that it had "the assurance of being completed."

Support Activities Center

Although these views closely matched those of the Saltonstall Committee, O'Reilly said that the lack of argument surprised him. "I was expecting more than developed," he stated, "but this thing wasn't railroaded." O'Reilly said that most board members had not reached Boston until shortly before the meeting and had not time to talk with each other about the memorial.

Although it discarded the plan for an activities center attached to Memorial Hall, the board saw the need for it, O'Reilly said. "I feel certain," he stated, "that all the men gathered here today will contribute to an activities center . . . if that is what the Corporation thinks should be first on the University's building list."

At present, however, the University has rated a graduate center and three or four other projects ahead of the activities center.