To the Editors of the Crimson:

Mr. Cleveland suddenly sends a message to Congress asking for a commission upon whose report he is to say to England: "Back down or fight." Mr. Olney adds a letter to Lord Salisbury, saying that England's presence on this continent is a menace and an offence. Congress and a large part of our newspapers and people thereupon go fighting-drunk; and Mr. Roosevelt writes you a letter to call any of us who may have presumed to beg our congressmen to slow-up if they can, "betrayers" of our native land. We are evidently guilty of lese-majeste in Mr. Roosevelt's eyes; and though a mad president may any day commit the country without warning to an utterly new career and history, no citizen, no matter how he feels, must then speak, not even to the representative constitutionally appointed to check the President in time of need.

May I express a hope that in this University, if no where else on the continent, we shall be patriotic enough not to remain passive whilst the destinies of our country are being settled by surprise. Let us be for or against; and if against, then against by every means in our power, when a policy is taking shape that is bound to alter all the national ideals that we have cultivated hitherto. Let us refuse to be bound over night by proclamation, or hypnotized by sacramental phrases through the day. Let us consult our reason as to what is best, and then exert ourselves as citizens with all our might.

Your columns are not the place to discuss the Cleveland-Olney policy. Mr. Roosevelt uses them to call for a bigger navy, that being of course the next obligatory step in the novel national career sprung upon us so abruptly by the President, and which Mr. Roosevelt considers it to be a sort of treason now to oppose. There are enough of us who believe that the development of such a national career would be pregnant of calamity for civilization. Men at the student-age are easily swayed by phrases. But I trust that no catch-words or nicknames will deter Harvard students who have once made up their minds adversely on the general question, from beginning the fight just at this very point, and doing what little they can towards bringing the threatened increase of armament to naught.

Truly yours,

WILLIAM JAMES.