To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The flasco of the 11 Russian students' visit to this country is one of the most mismanaged bits of political maneuvering on our part in recent months. With a little foresight the State Department could have turned their trip to excellent advantage. But, as so often happens, we are now about to emerge on the short and of world opinion.

Obviously the Russians wanted propaganda fodder from the visit. We have give them plenty--first, a year's wait for permission to enter the country; then, the carefully-selected itinerary which read like a page from an Intra-Tourist manual; and now, the business of fingerprints. This last blunder is inexcusable.

New Russia cries that she never fingerprinted American newsmen and that her boys are being treated as common criminals. We counter weakly by saying the proposed visit was an "unofficial" one and unofficial visitors must be fingerprinted. . . . It's the law, the law.

A lot of good our legalism does us in the face of the self-righteous Soviet indignation now feeding into the world press. Our allies and the fence-sitters will stack the two stories against each other and wonder if we're not a police state after all.

This is just what Russia wanted, and we have been very obliging. In the past we have waived regulations when our advantage has been served. Evidently we don't know what is good for us any more. Malcolm D. Rivkin '53