To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

This is by way of a memorandum to unsuspecting politically minded Freshmen.

The CRIMSON published an editorial last Tuesday declaring that they had suffered a sea-change on the question of America's entrance into war--that after several years of non-interventionist sympathies they had at last seen the wisdom (or the inevitability) of intervention. The Great Awakening, one is led to believe, was brought about by recent events at home and aboard, with the subsequent realization that "a policy of aiding England to which the "short of war" reservation was tacked . . . never could have worked."

Now lest anyone should suspect this of being a legitimate conversion to interventionism--that is, a conversion based on a rational re-assessment of the present world situation--, we beg leave to inform all interested parties that the "conversion" is simply the result of a numerical change in the political balance of the CRIMSON staff brought about by the appointment of new members to the staff to replace the outgoing class of '41. In re-reading that editorial, then, one should be careful to throw out the force that a genuine conversion is supposed to lend to the force of an argument!

What remains is, unfortunately, as dubious as the "conversion." For we are treated first to a series of declarations of faith without any rational foundation for them whatever, and then to a description of the present status of our foreign policy which, if true, makes traitors of the Executive branch of the federal government.

If the CRIMSON really believes that England, China, and Russia are military allies of the United States, then they must believe that we are at war. But we are certainly not legally at war. In which case the Executive branch has flatly violated the Constitution by seizing the armed forces and making them subservient to their own private whims. Which is, of course, treason. If this is a true description of the present situation, then the Executive branch should forthwith be tried and convicted of treason and summarily hanged, as duly provided by law.

I do not advocate any such violent measure for the simple reason that it is quite obvious that we are not at war, that we are not military allies of England, China, and Russia. President Roosevelt's orders to shoot any belligerent vessels within the defensive waters of this hemisphere is simply for the purpose of driving such vessels out of those waters, and hence cannot in any sense be said to constitute a military alliance or the waging of war. There is, in short, no evidence for the assumption that the Executive has acted treasonously.

I would especially urge all Freshmen to beware the sort of sophistry of which the CRIMSON's editorial is such an out standing example a decadent intellectualist sophistry that so charms with its vagaries that so charms with its vagaries as to make it impossible for its victims as to make it impossible for the victims to see what is every where obvious to the man in the street--that his country is not at war  David K. Eichler 2G.,  Executive Council  Harvard Committee Against  Military Intervention.

(Ed. Note: Mr. Eichler is mistaken about the validity of our "conversion." The board that is responsible for Tuesday's interventionist editorial is the same board that determined last spring's short-of-war policy. Freshmen interested in sophistry are advised to re-read Mr. Elchler's letter.