(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be withheld. Only letters under 400 words can be printed because of space limitations.)

To the Editor of the Crimson:

If it is not too much in keeping with the "Quixotic" reputation the Crimson wishes to give the Harvard Student Union, I should like to question your editorial of yesterday morning, "Windmill Jousting."

You accuse the Student Union and its President, Robert Lane, of unsound judgement in urging a program of participation in political and social movements in the college and the community. Without pretending to give a full exposition of the aims of the Student Union, I should like to make just three points.

First, participation is an excellent means of education. A student can learn far more about the reality of social and economic questions by group work than by mere reading or observation; this is what hard-headed men call "experience." You condone one type of action--"first-hand experience" without taking sides. But this is little more than observation, less valuable than what the educators call "learning through doing." Secondly, the Harvard Student Union hopes to give the student a place of some small importance as a doer, as well as an absorber; in doing this, it hopes to contribute to the practical advancement of the aims for which it stands, as well as to the development of the individual. This cannot be done without the "action" you deplore. Finally, what the Crimson itself speaks of as a successful leadership at the National Convention at Vassar was made possible only by the work that the Harvard group has done; it was the practical achievements of action that gave the Harvard delegation its prestige, and not mere talk.

Again, these three points are in no way a complete statement of the Student Union's position, but they do indicate a line of action which will make the organization at once socially useful, and a vital part of the lives of its two-hundred-twenty odd members. The Harvard Student Union acts and learns by acting, though of course it cannot be sure of its "preparation" to "cope with . . . real life" always; no one can. But let us not, as George Santayana has urged, "come to doubt in the lazy freedom of revery, whether two and two make four."

Carried to its extreme, your policy of "study, learn, and think," but don't go near the water, might, if applied to the Crimson editors, deprive Harvard of an invaluable daily newspaper. Let us learn to swim, as you are; and serve, if we can. W. N. Chambers '39,   Executive Council, H. S. U.