To the Editor of the Crimson:

I write for those young men of the Class of '44 and Wigglesworth Hall who a few weeks ago waved gallantly the British Jack and sang with their Groton accents for the eternity of the British Empire.

They are going to fight to save the American way of life, to preserve all that we hold dear. The fight will be for a free press . . . of Hearsts and Adlers, for they know that the Worker is read only by a bunch of noisy New York Jew agitators and that a New Republic will always come around to the right way of thinking when the pressure is put on. It will be for the right to assemble freely at Miss Deborah Dillingfeather's party to sample champagne and ski talk till four in the morning; for the privilege of a jury trial (thank God there's only one Dick Whitney and as for those Reds Sacco and Vanzetti, they should have been sent back to Russia in the first place); for a democracy extolled by sophists who call themselves teachers and hypocrites who call themselves representatives of the people.

But tell us, you men in tweeds, can free speech mean much to the millions of Americans who only look in at the windows of Thanksgiving dinners and hear with wistful ears the solid sound of think leather sole on the cold pavement. Nine million farmers can assemble all right . . . to see white milk run gray in the dust of the road, to smell full grains burning sharp and sad in clear fall air while the government budget swings to its unbalanced balance.

I am not a pacifist, and I believe we may one day have to fight against Hitler or the system he has made. But if we must have ideals for which to fight let us not cling to the empty ones of warmongers or misdirected intellectuals. A future lies before us, if only we can open our eyes to it, in which men may lie sincerely and to the best of their ability.

You sang blindly for a rotten-toothed, dragglemaned lion that wants to smother the world with the weight of its years, to save itself from the cubs it has raised in the mines of the North and the mills of Manchester. But your duty is here, to lay the old Bald-Head quietly to rest, to deck its young with bright feathers and make strong their wings for flight. Mare Jaffe '42.