To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

On Tuesday, May 14, the Crimson published a letter from several junior members of the Harvard Faculty protesting the recent resumption of nuclear testing by the United States. Certain statements in this letter indicate that these people have failed to consider fully the imperatives of policy making on questions of national security.

A decision to test nuclear weapons must be reached by balancing all relevant factors. The moral, political, and propaganda implications of testing are important, and they have been debated vigorously by the public in recent years. However, the decision also must be based on a detailed technical and scientific understanding of nuclear weapons, access to intelligence reports and analysis of the enemy's developments, and a complete knowledge of our own stage of developments. For security reasons, most of this information is classified and is available only to the President, his advisors on national security, and experts from both parties in the Congress. Only they are qualified to make the decision, since only they have access to all the essential information.

On the basis of this complete range of information, the relevant departments of government subjected the issues involved in the current question to several months of rigorous examination and debate before the President made the final decision. Since the United States Government has followed this procedure in reaching a decision which it believes is in the best interest of the nation and the free world, we endorse its recent decision on nuclear testing.

Tom A. Alberg

Kenneth W. Anderson

Mark F. Clark

Paul Fenton

John Field

Lee A. Freeman Jr.

V. Thomas Fryman Jr.

George Gilder

Jeffrey Goldman

Stephen A. Greene

Dennis Longwell