CLEVELAND, OHIO sprawls comfortably just south of polluted Lake Erie. The city does not appear crowded. The expensive Tudor mansions along Fairmont Boulevard give way gradually to the apartments in Shaker Heights, which in turn, lead to the ghetto. Hugh Calkins '45 is from Cleveland. Kent State is 50 miles away.

A week ago Cleveland was the site of a gathering of the clan- or rather, a gathering of two clans. The Sheraton-Cleveland is a large, expensive hotel. Its lobby is not much different from the lobbies of the other hotels in this county where rich people stay. This particular night, the Grand Ballroom was being rented by the Cuyahoga-Lake Division of the Ohio Republican Finance Committee. The purpose was a $250-a-plate dinner to raise money for the Republicans. The featured speaker was the Vice-President of the United States.

The chairman of the finance committee was H. Stuart Harrison. Mrs. Harrison is also chairman of the board of Cleveland-Cliffe Iron Co. Over 1400 people attended the dinner that night, and at $250 a throw, that meant more than a quarter million dollars was raised.

Across town, another group of 1400 people was meeting. They came from across the country. These people were considerably younger than those who sat at the tables in the Grand Ballroom. They were meeting in the auditoriums and classrooms of the Cuyahoga Community College. Their reason for gathering was to attend a National Emergency Conference Against the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam War.

The Conference was called by the Cleveland Area Peace Action Council. In the long list of sponsors of the Conference were the names of Noam Chomsky, Dick Gregory, Fred Halstead and Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science. There were also representatives of the Berkely Strike Coordinating Committee, the National Chicago Moratorium, the Student Mobilization Committee, the San Francisco Peace and Freedom Party, and the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.

Perhaps most interesting were the large number of union executives such as the Vice President of the International Association of Firefighters, or the Chairman of the Black Caucus of Local 481 of the American Federation of Teachers in Newark. Conspicuous by their absence on the list of sponsors were the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Progressive Labor Party.

BUT THERE was a big difference between who sponsored the conference and who actually showed up. The big names like Dick Gregory or Noam Chomsky were not in evidence. Despite the large number of unions supporting the conference, most of the participants were students. The conference itself was essentially a struggle between the Student Mobilization Committee-Young Socialist Alliance faction and the Students for a Democratic Society-Progressive Labor Party faction. Most of the other, smaller groups contented themselves with manning their literature tables and did not engage much in the rhetorical battles waged by the bigger groups.

Two small groups, however, did provide a sort of comic relief to the main struggle. One of them, the Worker's League, spent most of its time attacking another small group called the Sparticists. The Sparticists, in turn, constantly accused the Workers' League of having sold out. The ideological differences between the two groups are purported to be so subtle that even the most astute observers do not know what they are.

On the other hand, the split between SMC-YSA and SDS-PL is significant. It revolves about a conflicting view of the nature of the struggle, both in terms of tactics, and in the terms of the ultimate goal. The conflict is not taken lightly by the organization. Recently at M. I. T. there were fistfights between the two factions. In March, at the Boston Moratorium, run by the SMC, SDS had to storm the stage to get a speaker. Earlier, at the November March on Washington, run by the New Mob, some people crowded around the speakers platform were most reluctant to let Senator Goodell speak, and those running the show feared that the platform would be rushed, splitting of political hairs. The garments as rhetorical quibbling and upon first being exposed to the kind of debates that went on in the auditorium, one is tempted to see the arguticipants were intense- very intense. Most of the conference was conducted by shouting, and speakers were frequently interrupted by screams of angre from their ropponents. At times whole sections of the audie shout in unison such "BULLSHIT" or "POWER TO THE WORKERS," depending upon the ideology of the speaker. Several times the meeting broke down completely, and the chairman could exert no control as people shouted back and forth across the room at each other, pointing accusing fingers at their opponents.

Some of the debates were in fact petty. One had only to remember the various mass meetings the Harvard community has tried to hold- or recall meetings of the Harvard Faculty- and it was clear that mass meetings in general are chaotic and full of emotions which afterwards seems out of proportion to the magnitude of the problem being discussed.

One had also to realize that the auditorium was not filled with people who were there to listen quietly. Many of the people there had been leaders in their local communities and were used to giving speeches and disagreeing with people. The number of followers in the room was small. Most of the people in that room were leaders. Most of them were angry. They were angry at the society whose evils they were so familiar with. They were used to directing their anger at officials around them. Brought together in one room, they turned their anger upon each other.

THE SDS-PL group felt the SMC was trying to sell out the movement to the hands of liberal politicians, whose sincerity was dubious. They were sensitive to the fact that the SMC is financed by Cyrus Eaton, an industrialist. They felt that the conference had dealt with union leaders, but not with the rank and file members. They attacked the non-exclusionary sentiment of the SMC group which would allow the movement to tolerate liberal politicians who happened to be against the war.

The SMC group, on the other hand, felt that SDS and PL were being unrealistic and were likely to isolate the movement by attacking too many people. They were in favor of constructing an alliance with those forces in power which would be helpful in ending the war. They felt that SDS and PL were too concerned about the purity of the allies that SMC wanted to use.

In a situation where being against the Vietnam war can mean anything from supporting Vietnamization to wanting victory for the National Liberation Front, the subtleties of political stances can be very confusing. To label one SDS-PL and the other SMC-YSA is on oversimplification.

The essence of the problem is that there are several splits within the left ?? may solidify in the next few ?? into one basic division. Splintering in the left is an old phenomenon. Some of the groups at the conference split up from each other decades ago. What has intensified the situation, however, is the involvement in the antiwar movement of the liberal segment of the country. There are many different reasons for being against the Vietnam war, and the unification of those with different motives has led to some strange bedfellows. As the former allies become more intimately acquainted, they begin to see that their unity is illusory.