To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your account in last Friday's Crimson of my talk on Vietnam to the Society of Harvard Dames was half-right, but your headline was 100 per cent wrong. The headline said: "Huntington Says U.S. Will Lose War in Vietnam." What I said was that we could not now or in the foreseeable future win the war in Vietnam. I also said that we could not afford to lose the war and that there was no reason why we had to lose the war unless the North Vietnamese were determined to push the conquest of the South at all costs to themselves. Our current policy, which I did endorse, warns the North that they can escalate the war in the South only at the price of our escalating in the North. Presumably the two things the North Vietnamese leaders want most to avoid are destruction by the Americans and occupation by the Chinese. "You can achieve these goals." We have in effect told them, "by reining in your forces in the South." This policy will not win the war in the South for us, but it can prevent our losing that war.

The text of your story made it appear that I had a detached view on withdrawal. This is not the case. Withdrawal, as I emphasized in my talk, would not end the war; it to Thailand. The Communists themselves have made this quite clear with the creation of a "free Thai liberation movement." Those Americans and Europeans who now urge "peace in Vietnam" are advocating "was in Thailand." The cost of American withdrawal from South Vietnam includes the sacrifice of two countries (South Vietnam and Laos) to the Communists, the disruption and probably destruction of a third (Thailand), by insurrection, the drastic weakening of a fourth (Malaysia), and the general undermining of the American and British positions in southeast Asia. Samuel P. Huntington,   Professor of Government