WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 27--Thousands of marchers, about 800 of them from Harvard, came to Washington Saturday to protest American policy in Vietnam.

The turnout was higher than the 20,000 anticipated, although the refusal of New York City bus drivers to bring demonstrators to Washington stranded about a thousand demonstrators in New York. Washington police estimated that 20,000 to 25,000 were on the scene; march coordinator Sanford Gottlieb thought it was more like 45,000.

District police found the tone of the demonstration far more satisfactory than others they have confronted. Police officials praised the marchers calm behavior and the demonstration monitors' control of the crowd.

The tone was too mild to suit some of the student participants. Several groups were angered by Gottlieb's attempt to keep "unauthorized signs" out of the parade. But many of the signs calling for immediate American withdrawal from Vietnam were in evidence anyway.

The marchers were older than the usual demonstration-goers. At the afternoon's speechmaking, attempts to rouse the audience with freedom songs and folk-singing failed--many of the people present didn't know the words.

And the speeches, which followed the marchers' three-hour picketing of the White House, failed to bring the crowd shouting to its feet.

This had to be the first anti-Vietnam rally ever at which invocation was read (there were large pockets of people who refused to stand up for it). Most of the speakers went out of their way to disown the more radical elements of the protest movement.

Ronnie Dugger, editor of The Texas Observer, denounced draft-dodging, draft card burning, and pro-Viet Cong sentiment, before calling on President Johnson for an immediate cease-fire.

Joseph M. Duffy, Jr., associate professor of English at Notre Dame, quoted extensively from the speech of Pope Paul VI before the United Nations.

The Old Socialist

The first loud cheers of the afternoon came for 81-year-old Socialist leader Norman Thomas. Almost unable to see the crowd. Thomas pounded his arms rhythmically on the lectern and denounced "this monstrous war." Like other speakers, he called for a cease-fire and an end to the bombings of North Vietnam.

He urged opponents of the war to run candidates for Congress in 1966. He ended with an appeal for America to stop the war, and drew loud cheers by crying, "I would rather save her soul than her face."

Mrs. Martin Luther King brought cheers by reminding the crowd of her husband's long fight for civil rights. She disclaimed experience in foreign affairs but warned "the experts" that "bombings only make an oppressed people more determined to throw off the yoke of oppression."

Loudest for Oglesby

The student half of the crowd saved its loudest applause for Carl Oglesby, the bearded, 30-year-old president of the Students for a Democratic Society. He was the only student among the speakers.

Oglesby said that American involvement in Vietnam had been caused by liberals. "These men are not immoral monsters," he said. But, he continued, "the U.S. government seems incapable of friendship for any revolution anywhere."

Liberalism was failing, he suggested, because of its marriage to the "corporate system." Pointing to the Dominican crisis. Oglesby ran down a list of U.S. advisers who owned stock in companies with investments in the Dominican Republic--Ellsworth Bunker, Abe Fortas. Adolph Berle, and Averill Harriman's brother.

He concluded his 40-minute speech with a call for a "humanist revolution" to overthrow the corporate system.

About 500 people, older, non-students for the most part, left on ten buses from Freedom Square in front of Lowell House Friday night. They were among an 5000 New Englanders who made the Washington trip.

Pickets began to assemble in front of the White House about 11 a.m. By noon there were knots of demonstrators on every sidewalk within two blocks of the White House, and by 1 p.m., a circle of marchers had completely surrounded the ellipse in front of the Washington monument.

While pickets marched, a delegation of leaders conferred for 90 minutes with Chester Cooper, an aide to White House advisor McGeorge Bundy. According to Gottlieb, Cooper reiterated an administration suggestion that those who desired peace write letters to North Vietnam and the Viet Cong asking them to agree to unconditional negotiations.

Motorcyclists

During the speeches, several members of the Pagans, a Washington motorcycle club, climbed into the front rows and began shouting. It was the only attempt at active interference by the 500 counter-demonstrators who showed up.

Another incident came when members of the U.S. Committee to Aid the National Liberation Front tried to carry some Viet Cong flags to a spot two blocks from the White House, where they planned to demonstrate. Gottlieb had asked them to keep the flags out of the parade. Possibly trying to avoid his moniters, they inadvertently walked through the crowd of counter-pickets.

They were halfway through when a voice cried, "Ready-get 'em." Four counter-pickets grabbed the demonstrators and Eddie Summers, a junior from Temple University, made off with a flag. While passers-by yelled, "Burn it, spit on it," Summers applied a borrowed cigarette lighter to the flag. It wouldn't burn. He tried to tear it. It wouldn't tear. He spat on it. Then police, who broke up the fight and then watched the attempted flag burning, moved in and took the banner away.

Three other flags met the same treatment; Nazi party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was arrested in a scuffle over one.

Rockwell made a comback hours later when he and his Nazis led a counterrally near the Capitol. Chief attraction was Herb "the Skull" Booker, a representative of California's Hell's Angels motorcycle gang. Booker, who is bald but wears a long beard, declared, "They say we're repulsive. But those peace creeps, they're the ones who are repulsive." He also protested press censorship. "I ran over four peace creeps with my own cycle, and the press didn't say anything about it. If that ain't censorship, I don't know what is.