Even amid huckster cries of "Peace, Progress, and Prosperity," Harvard's undergraduates still include a core of the unconvinced--those who see peace as just a precarious balance of the atomic brink of "massive retaliation," who believe that our progress may be misguided and our prosperity poorly allocated.

Most College students, however, seem content to sip silently the sugar and honey of reassuring slogans, and as the nation's foreign and domestic problems grow in their complexity, a once thriving breed of rugged radicals is dying a lingering death. In the place of vigorous protest and proposals, a majority of today's undergraduates--calling themselves "moderate liberals"--voice either vague satisfaction or, at worst, a perplexed feeling that something, somewhere, is wrong.

And yet, in this climate of semantic "moderation," economic proposals that might have sent people to jail not long ago and are still denounced as dangerously radical, find remarkable acceptance within the College community. Harvard Square has not been treated to a healthy radical pamphlet in years, it is true, and even private discussion of politics has shrunk to an alarming minimum. But in the libraries and lecture halls, students are quietly absorbing the economic and political beliefs of those whom most "conservatives" bitingly call the "left-wingers."

With their more or less approving students, these prominent professors form a potent group that likes to refer to itself as 'liberal." But some of its more forthright members, such as Professor Sam Beer, openly describe their philosophy as "radical democracy," and the group as a whole might best be called the Respectable Radicals.

Although few men--even in the academic community--possess sufficient courage to tag themselves as active "radicals," a suprisingly large number accept the political proposals that the Respectable Radicals put forward. While the group retains its popular identity as "liberals," its program, in many cases, is decidedly radical.

Thus, whereas only a twelfth of Harvard's undergraduates, describe their political temperament as "radical"--judging from the questionnaire--over a seventh support "full socialization of all industries," more than a fifth favor socialization of the medical profession, and nearly a third believe that the Federal government should own and operate all basic industries, such as steel and railroads. In a society that accepts such phrases as "free competition" and "private enterprise" as its conventional rhetoric, it is curious to find extensive support--even among students--for socialization and similar radical proposals.

Much the same third that favor basic socialization also support "immediate unilateral suspension of atomic tests" by the United States (hence the little green stickers on Vespa fenders: Halt Bomb Tests), and "reduction of current unemployment by government action, even at the price of aggravating inflation."

The latter proposal, of course, is finding increasing favor across the nation, and a frightening cluster of special interest groups is buying thousands of column inches in magazines and newspapers in order to fight it. Under the headline, "Government Always Shrinks a Dollar," Republic Steel periodically tells readers that "whenever the government finances something for you, you pay for it--through taxes--with your own dollar that has inevitably been shrunk."

In the field of foreign affairs, a clear-cut majority of the undergraduates polled support "recognition of Communist China by the United States and its admission to the United Nations," as well as a "marked increase" in American economic aid to other countries.

"Reactionary" proposals, on the other hand, find favor only within a small clique at the College: only a twelfth back either repeal of antitrust legislation, or "marked reductions" in our Mutual Security program. This is the Fortnightly crowd--laughed at when they are not ignored.

Fully a fifth of the undergraduates, however, support such "conservative" stands as reducing the current inflation, even at the price of unrelieved unemployment, and barring government wage and price controls except in time of national emergency.

In addition, over half favor "right-to-work" laws. Probably influenced by revelations of union corruption, and the huge amount of anti-union propaganda distributed in the recent Congressional campaign, a significant group of "moderate liberals" have apparently joined the "conservatives" in their sympathy for this bit of legislation.

Though the openly radical proposals of socialization won approval from up to a third, Harvard students reserve their overwhelming support for the "liberal" status quo. Two-thirds support such "Welfare State" projects as Social Security and Federal regional power development. Not surprisingly, current "liberal" proposals receive similar impressive backing: four-fifths approve of Federal aid to public secondary schools; two-thirds, of American economic and non-military technical aid to other countries at its present level, of national health insurance, of Federal aid to private colleges and universities, of government wage and price controls to check inflation; and half, of Federal financial assistance to American cultural activities.

Within the College, as elsewhere, Federal aid is rapidly gaining the status of a magic word. Surrounded by a climate of "liberalism," most Harvard undergraduates seem ready to accept increased Federal activity in almost any area of national life--from schoolrooms to hospitals, from housing developments to theatres, and from farms to factories.

For the most part, the College's students did not arrive in Cambridge with these beliefs; they picked them up at Harvard. Over half admit that their political views have been strongly influenced since Freshman Registration, and of these, seven-tenths have changed either "from conservative to more liberal," or "from liberal to more liberal."