Sober Statistics

Harvard has never felt chagrin at its Class of 1910 which featured such celebrities as Columnists Walter Lippmann and Heywood Broun, Poet Thomas Stearns Eliot, Communist John Reed, New York's Representative Hamilton Fish Jr., Economist Stuart Chase. The Class of 1911, however, sported so few notables 25 years after graduation as to prompt Sportswriter John Roberts Tunis, Harvard 1911, to publish a pessimistic portrayal of his classmates' aspirations and accomplishments (Was College Worth While?}. Most distinguished member of 1911, in the consensus of the class, was Cartoonist Gluyas Williams, who shone on the Harvard Lampoon as an undergraduate. For First Marshal, the Class of 1911 elected former President Herbert Jaques of the U. S. Golf Association. Few of 1911 got rich, fewer still Author Tunis judged to have won "genuine distinction" (TIME, Sept. 14). Up for scrutiny this year stand 536 Harvardmen of the Class of 1912. The proud 1912 alumni plan the "greatest and most elaborate" 25th reunion yet staged in Cambridge, chafe to outdo Author Tunis' rumpled Class of 1911 in display and distinction. When the 1912 Reunion Committee met in Boston last month, the Boston committeemen sported cutaways, top hats and sticks to demonstrate that the local 1912 representation comprised elegant gentlemen not to be confused with Boston's traditional "sloppy dressers." In its first issue The Twelve Twenty-Five Express, advance Reunion pepsheet, last week published its estimate of the Class of 1912 long before the appearance of the autobiographical 25th anniversary report. Estimator was another ex-Lampoon wit, Humorist Robert Charles Benchley,* who proceeded to set down 1912's "Sobering Statistics": "In 25 years, the Class of 1912 has produced only one Bishop of Albania, or, at any rate, only one Bishop of Albania who later became Prime Minister.-j-"Only one member of the Class has caught a Giant Panda.** "We have only one Weather Man who advocates the 'frontal method' (three dimensions) over the 'surface method' (two dimensions). "In all these years, only one member has been elected Village Clerk of Hewlett Harbor, L.

I. "Of all the 'banana knockers' in Eua, Nukualofa, Tonga Islands, only one is a Harvard 1912 man." Some 1912 luminaries who failed a Benchley citation: onetime Securities & Exchange Commissioner Joseph Patrick Kennedy, New York's former Republican State Chairman William Kingsland Macy, Massachusetts' Representative Richard Bowditch Wigglesworth, Author Frederick Lewis Allen (Only Yesterday), New York University's Richard Offner, expert on Florentine Art, Japan's steamship tycoon Ryozo Asano, the New York Times's Science News Editor William L. ("Bill") Laurence.

First Marshal of 1912 is Cleveland Steelman Hugh Gaddis.

From questionnaires sent out to his classmates, Author Tunis learned that most of Harvard 1911 read no books, boast no intellectual diversions, live generally mediocre lives. By a "personal, house-to-house canvass" Classmate Benchley collected a grim set of 1912 confessions: "I have three children, all of whom look like me. "I have no children, all of them Chinese. (It is only fair to state that this came from a Chinese classmate.) "I have two daughters, one of whom thinks I went to Colgate and the other of whom goes around with a Princeton man. "The only date I remember from my history courses is 800 A.D., the year Charlemagne was made Holy Roman Emperor. In 25 years nobody has ever even brought up the name Charlemagne, much less the year 800.

"I took three years of German in college, and two years later they changed the name of sauerkraut to 'Liberty Cabbage' ! "I haven't read any books. . . . "No spik Engliss." Harvardman Tunis concluded that the Class of 1911 comprised a "bunch of contented cows" who had accomplished almost nothing. "Of course, "retorted Harvardman Benchley in The Twelve Twenty-Five Express, "any member of 1912 could have predicted this ... as early as 1909." Cracked he: "If I were a calamity-howler, I could show that 72% haven't got $3,-000,000 to their name, 91% can't juggle, and that we haven't had a single President of the U. S." P: In the latest report of the Class of 1919, Harvardman Ernest Aldrich Simpson of London writes: "Just working!"

*His son, Nathaniel Goddard ("Nat") Benchley, Harvard '38, was elected president of the Lampoon last December. t Fan Stylian Noli, exiled in 1924. Also expected at the 1912 Reunion is U. S. Minister to Albania Hugh Gladney Grant. **Kermit Roosevelt, who in 1929 while on an expedition in the Himalayas with Brother Theodore & Classmate Charles Suydam Cutting shot (not "caught") a Giant Panda, now on exhibition in Chicago's Field Museum.

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