To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In Tuesday's CRIMSON Professor Morison addressed a frank and reasonable appeal to the students. Men of understanding, he said, support war measures only after soul-searching deliberation and because they know the alternative is worse. He asked the students, therefore, to respect the sanity and sincerity of those with whom they disagee. Professor Morison's admirable letter was probably occasioned by the severely critical editorial in last Friday's CRIMSON on the meeting for Militant Aid to Britain.

Unfortunately, as those who attended know, some speakers at that meeting did not conform to the standards of sanity and sincerity which Professor Morison describes and which might be expected on such an occasion.

Even making due allowance for an unconscionable jocularity, there was a deliberate recklessness in Professor Seavey's suggestion that we wipe out immediately the Japanese fleet and a deliberate casualness in Professor Elliott's statement that war was no worse than traffic in Harvard Square that made it hard to believe this was a serious discussion of the most serious of all proposals. The questions from the students were sincere and intelligent, but they were turned aside alternately with facetiousness from Professor Seavey and with a threatening truculence by Professor Elliot, who attributed to his questioners the most discreditable motives. In both men there appeared a conscious insincerity that suggested they underestimated both the students and the war; and a ruthless and light-hearted belligerence, extremely disquieting to many who heard them and calculated to arouse the worst and discredit the best in undergraduate opinion.

Remembering that meeting, we feel that Professor Morison's excellent counsel should be directed not only to the students but also to those members of the faculty who, in the desire to arouse emotion and forestall critical discussion, threaten to override the very principle which it is their duty to teach. Robert G. Davis,   Briggs-Copeland Instructor in English   Philip C. Horton,   Instructor in English

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

The British Ambassador's speech before the American Farm Burean Association last night indicates that the hour for a final decision by the American People between peace and war is drawing near. The Ambassador does not protend that aid by measures short of war will be enough for Great Britain in her present need. He states frankly that America must decide whether it is to her interest to give Britain "whatever assistance may be necessary in order to make certain that Britain shall not fall."

This is not a new issue. It was already before the country when the two major political parties were holding their national conventions last June and July. The representatives of the greater part of the American People in attendance at the conventions decided against resort to war at that time as an instrument of national policy. The Republican platform declared explicitly and unequivocally that "the Republican party is firmly opposed to involving this Nation in foreign war." The Democratic platform was equally explicit and unequivecal. "We will not participate in foreign wars," it declared, "and we will not send our army, naval or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside the Americas, except in case of attack." The presidential candidates in the ensuing campaign stood squarely upon their platforms, and the successful candidate repeatedly pledged himself to maintain the policy to which he was committed by the convention which renominated him.

There must be very strong and cogent reasons for repudiating these pledges immediately after the election. The repudiation by the British Government after the parliamentary elections five years ago of its pledges to maintain the system of collective security was one of the principal causes of the weakness and ultimate failure of its foreign policy. The loss of confidence on the part of the French people in the good faith of their rulers in recent years contributed greatly to the dismal collapse of the Republic These are the outstanding lessons of recent European politics. They will not be forgotten by either the people or the politicians of America.

The chief reason which the British Ambassador offers for American aid to Britain by measures which do not stop short of war is that without such aid Britain may not be able to win and that Americans should be fearful of the consequences of British defeat. Such reasoning rests upon a misunderstanding of American psychology. Nearly all Americans lament the defeat of France and would lament a similar defeat of Britain. But they are unready to believe that they are dependent upon any foreign power for their own national defense, and they can not easily be frightened into participation in a foreign war. When six months ago France fell and the fall of Britain seemed no less imminent than it does now, the American people refused to be governed by such fears. Now that we are in a better position to defend ourselves by our own efforts, we are even less likely to be stampeded into a different decision by the same fears. The repudiation of campaign pelages by our rulers under such circumstances would not strengthen our powers of defense. If no better reason for entering a foreign war can be found, a decision to enter now will have the same unhappy effects upon American morale as we have seen produced abroad by similar acts of bad faith on the part of trusted public men. The British campaign to bring America into the war has opened very inauspiciously.

The American people are not unthinking pacifists. They are willing to fight for causes which seem to justify fighting. But it is necessary that the justification be clear and cogent and consistent with American interests. We recognize that there must be a new order of some kind after this war. But the kind of new order for which Americans may be expected to fight is one which can rest on the consent of the peoples who may be concerned. A new balance of power, which can be maintained only by a constant threat of forcible intervention in Europe, is not an international order for which Americans should be asked to lay down their lives in foreign wars. There are better ways of guarding the independence of America.  Arthur N. Holcombe '06, Professor of Government  William Ernest Hocking '01, Alford Professor of Philosophy  Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Astronomy