To the Editor of the Crimson:

As one in general sympathy with the Harvard Committee against Military Intervention, I was sorry to read in Tuesday's Crimson the statement, which "expresses that committee's views on a pro-American policy." Obscurity, even when contributed by so honored a name as Charles A. Beard's, is something that an effective committee should strictly avoid.

Dr. Beard says that we are faced by a choice between policing the world and sticking to the American continent; that the second alternative is in line with our historic tradition; and that if Hitler comes to America, we'll fight him then, so why worry until we see the whites of his eyes.

With the sentiments underlying most of this argument, everyone will agree, particularly with Dr. Beard's insistence that we worry about American democracy, not about policing the world. The argument itself is less convincing. A big doubtful area has to do with the question of our readiness to fight in case of invasion. If we admit the possibility of fighting in South American in two years, we had better start preparing for it now.

But there's another, and equally important, angle to the question, and one which people like Dr. Beard tend to forget: the political. The question boils down to, Would France have fought at all if Pierre Laval were premier? and the answer is obviously, No. Or again, Would Churchill, Bevin and Morison be in power in England now if England had declined to fight? Again, No. Who would have been? The same group that Laval represented in France; the determined enemies of every social reform; the gang which will always benefit by appeasement. In regard to the American situation, then, just who will be in power if we pursue an anti-British policy? or, more concretely, who are the boys who are yelling against aid to England?

As you look over the group, you find that practically all of them, with the ambiguous exception of John L. Lewis, are people who have fought the social reforms of the past eight years. They are such champions of labor as Henry Ford and Robert Wood, such defenders of civil liberties as Ham Fish and Father Coughlin, such tribunes of the people as Taft and Vandenberg, such bulwarks of our freedom as the Hearst press, all bound together by the awful fear that war will serve as an excuse for the further extension of governmental control over business. These are people who are paying for the anti-English drive, not because they care a damn about American democracy, but because they will benefit by English defeat and will get to power through it.

What chance will there be of making democracy work at home with this group running the government? What chance, when the annual expenditures for defense will make social legislation impossible? When every frustrated, unsatisfied hoodlum in America will start buying colored shirts and parading with his local fascist party? When it will be impossible to critize fascism, lest it disturb relations with our good friends and customers beyond the seas. Hitler won't have to invade America until it is so torn be inner conflict that the German army could cross the ocean in canoes. It is time to end these theories of invasion, so easily refuted by calculations of gross tonnage. When Hitler gets ready to invade the United States will have a government unwilling and unable to resist.

If the Committee is really against Military Intervention, it would spend its energy in much better ways than in reprinting vague manifestoes by distinguished but bewildered scholars. Let it protest against the Ford contracts; let it urge that the strongest consideration be given the Routher plan; let it help create a climate of opinion where the government can crack down, if necessary, on labor-baiting employers like Ford. This is a better way of making democracy work at home than handing the country over to the reactionary wing of the Republican party. And above all, increase production and ship as much as possible to England. If this sort of activity does not interest the Committee, it ought to drop its mask and call itself the Committee against Government Intervention in Business.  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. '38,  Junior Fellow