To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

This country will probably soon be at war with Germany. If a war be necessary to uphold the recognized rights of our nation, as it now seems to be, thinking men--and that includes undergraduates--have a difficult but a great duty to perform; that is, to preserve reason and calm judgment when the passions of the unthinking are sweeping them away; it is to remember throughout a conflict its true cause and not to permit childish credulity and unreasoning desire to blind the nation into waging a barbaric war of hate and revenge, blood-lust and conquest. If we fight it will be to maintain our rights as a sovereign nation with honor and dignity; our aim will be to prevent our rights from violation in the future and it will not be merely to punish a present offender, for punishment is a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is regrettable that among civilized nations warfare is the only means of protecting national rights and of preserving national honor, but there is no other, and if there be a true cause, we have no choice but to fight. But throughout a war men of the higher patriotism must bear always in mind that if in the future means can be devised to maintain our rights by reason rather than by might, by civilized methods than by barbaric, in a man's way than in a child's, then the older methods must be substituted by the new. G. R. WALKER '18.