Recent political developments in Europe and Asia have changed drastically the nature and work of national student groups, according to an August publication of the National Student Association.

Reports received in answer to an NSA questionnaire show how student unions in Eastern Europe have taken up the economic programs of the new "people's governments" in these countries, and how students in Germany and Japan have started-up now organizations with encouragement from the occupation authorities.

Perhaps the most dramatic account of student cooperation has come from Spain, where the 24-year-old Federal Union of Spanish Students has gone underground and practises resistance to the France regime.

Secret Operation

The Spanish Union presently operates in secret; its report to the NSA names only its officers who live beyond Spanish borders.

"We do not give the headquarters address in the interior (of Spain) for obvious reasons," the Union has reported . . . "We cannot give number of members."

This much the Union will say: that it is now giving "superclandestine lectures" to imprisoned Spanish workers.

But the F.U.S.S. adds, "Fifteen years ago the record achieved by the (Union) would have enabled us to answer your questions with pride. . . . Nowadays our situation is totally changed; our organization in Spain can only carry out its work in the underground under the continuos threat of persecution; in exile, it is too scattered all over three continents.

"Our efforts are concentrated towards two main goals; to help our comrades of the interior of Spain whose directions we follow and leadership accept, and, to capacitate the emigrated youth who are meant to be an important democratic force in the future of Spain, for in our country, only a very restricted number of students have access to the present Universities, and the instruction they receive is limited, cautious, had totalitarian.

"During the last 35 years our organization has been fighting for a free University for the people. . . . Today we need moral and material help from the free students of the world. To them we ask not to forget that facism which has cost so much blood is still alive in Spain."

Don't Like IUS

In making their plea for aid, however, the Spanish students made it plain that they have no use for the largest international student group, the International Union of Students, which states that it has 54 member organizations representing 3,000,000 students.

NSA leaders at Harvard and elsewhere have charge that the IUS is Communist-dominated, and the NSA has "officially suspended" previous attempts to affiliate with the international group.

The Spanish Union said, "We admit that the IUS kindled great hopes in our friends of the interior as well as in ourselves (Union members in exile). . . . (But) the IUS has not been able to achieve its mission as a result of the political shade that has been cast upon that organization. . . .

"On the other hand we might have been satisfied if the IUS, which was supposed to be a 'progressive, antifascist, democratic organization' would have helped the Spanish students in their underground struggle against Franco.