PROBABLY TWO MILLION Vietnamese died in the brutal and senseless American war that ravaged most of their country. U.S. terror bombing in the countryside herded Vietnamese into the cities, severing the ties that bound them to their land and rudely thrusting them into a new and terrible life on the edge of existence. It would be hard to determine who suffered more from the American presence -- the dead or the living.

Americans who opposed the war have understandably found it difficult to reconcile their sentiments with the criminal actions of their government. Yet, as visitors to North Vietnam and liberated areas in the South have reported, the Vietnamese distinguish between the American government and the American people. They recognize the efforts made by many of our people to pressure the government out of Southeast Asia, and they apparently feel no lasting hatred for the American people.

This week the Harvard community has a chance to respond to those sentiments. A group of students and faculty are sponsoring Vietnam-America Friendship Week. The week's activities afford us a chance to expand our limited knowledge of a people and a nation our government has bombed almost into oblivion, and thereby lay the basis for a firm and lasting friendship between the people of the two nations.

We encourage the community to support the week's activities and attend as many of them as possible. We also urge people to contribute generously to fund raising conducted during the week on behalf of the Cambodian victims of the continuing American bombing.

The brutal actions of the American government can never be undone. To our everlasting shame, they remain woven into the fabric of history as vividly as the bomb craters that pockmark the Vietnamese landscape. Yet this week we can take one small step to acknowledge our responsibility, to make a gesture of friendship, to begin to move away from conflict and toward a growing community of mutual understanding.