The real impact of the moderate presence at the meeting became apparent an hour later, when SDS and NAC members marchen toward Shannon Hall. In an impromptu debate on whether the building should be burnt down, leaders of both radical groups suggested caution, and revealed they were unsure of their political base. "I don't think that it was good that Dean May was applauded," one SDS leader told the crowd, "I think we should have a march to the Houses to build support," After more than an hour of debate, the crowd drifted off. A day later, the scene was repeated. SDS marched to Shannon Hall, only to be frustrated by a crowd of some 350 other students, most of them freshmen. Some had come on their own: others were prodded into action by freshmen proctors and baby deans. The face off between the two groups raised the possibility of open brawling among students- the one thing Harvard administrators had always implied would be sure to close the University- but after an hour or two of discussion, SDS again turned away.

THOUGH the face-offs at Shannon Hall were the most dramatic instances of moderate student action in the spring. the moderates ultimately won the day in later mass meetings. The first strike meeting had set up a strike steering committee, and had left its mandate largely undefined. The committee then took upon itself the responsibility of drawing up tactical plans for ratification by later mass meetings. Within a week, the strike steering committee was in deep trouble. Enough moderates came to a mass meeting to vote down proposals for further obstructive picket lines around University Hall, and to pass a motion calling for political action to be directed outside the University, and reducing the strike steering committee's power to negligible proportions. The steering committee splintered over the issue: a majority of the committee voted to reject the mass meeting's decision, much of the committee resigned and soon the committee and with it. the radical thrust of the strike- was but a memory.

This collapse of the radical strike aided early organization of another center of political action. Within hours after the Cambodian invasion, the moderate left was getting busy. Anti-war students and Faculty met in small caucuses around the University, and began planning lobbying trips to Washington, summer canvassing against the war, and support for anti-war candidates in the fall. Organizers of the as-yet-unnamed effort wryly admitted that it seemed like a throw-back to political action of earlier years. "Maybe we could call it Indochina Summer," mused Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, recalling the similar 1967 Vietnam Sumer campaign.

"INDOCHINA Summer" would have been a little too flip, so Harvard Peace Action was the name eventually chosen for the effort. By May 8, the group had shepherded more than 1000 Harvard students and Faculty to lobby on Capitol Hill against the war; after the trip. it began to lay out plans for summer action against the war instudents' home towns. Peace Action maintained an attitude of neutrality toward the Strike Steering Committee: nonetheless, its very existence as an alternate center for political action against the war began to siphon off students disgruntled with the strike's approach. Several hundred signed up with Peace Action to do anti-war campaigning in their home towns over the summer.

As the spring drew to a close. Peace Action was the most successful political show in town. How long it would remain in that happy position was most, however, most uncertain. What impact would non-violent, essentially "within the system" political work have on the course of the United State's foreign and domestic policies? How long would students remain satisfied with this approach, entailing as it does a considerable amount of paperwork, shoe leather, and otherwise demanding tasks? In the end, will Peace Action only provide a new stream of disillusioned liberals for the radical cause? Questions like these were hashed over in the group's Phillips Brooks House headquarters throughout the May. No sure answers could be found: the unsatisfying conclusion emerged that, whatever the deficiencies of the Peace Action approach, no other seemed more likely to work.

That note of uncertainty just about sums up the political lessons of the past years at Harvard. Student political action-whether radical or more moderate-has been largely unsuccessful in achieving substantive goals like pressing the war to an end. Victories have been transient, and the groups which won them have often disappeared within a few months, or turned to bickering with their political rivals. Students as political workers have had little staying power; increasing it, if that can be done, will probably be one of the main preoccupations of activists of all shades in the months and years to come.