No "National

(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest, but assume no responsibility for sentiments expressed under this head.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The militarist fever seems to be sweeping over professors and students alike in this University to an unprecedented degree. The Harvard Regiment, the Military Lectures, the many letters in the University press are but instances. When, however, President Fitch, one of the spiritual leaders of the Harvard men, publishes in the Bulletin a letter, vehemently attacking the ideal of "peace as an end in itself" as "A dangerous and essentially degenerative doctrine," it becomes right that mere students, otherwise undesirous of publicity, should speak their minds.

President Fitch writes of the "physical development and moral discipline" of military training such as will be offered by the Harvard Regiment. Dr. Sargent declares emphatically that military training yields inadequate and unbalanced results in physical development, and President-Emeritus Charles Eliot presumedly voices the American democratic feeling as to the "moral discipline" when he objects that we do not desire to teach boys and young men the "implicit obedience" motif, rather we desire them to think and act for themselves as men, not as units in a machine. Is not the regimentation of men into machines the very thing Americans fear and deplore in the Prussian scheme of organization?

At the beginning of this war Americans felt that it was the price of the Balance of Power theory and the militarist policy of Europe in general and Prussia in particular. American ideals were not at all on that European plane, and yet today we see statesmen, business men and University leaders in full retreat for that precise European method of force, of piled up armaments and of an international power-magazine liable to instant explosion at the first spark. For America to resort to such European methods is to confess openly, as Lord Roseberry sees, that American aims and standards are as bankrupt as those of Europe. We young men deem this admission to be a betrayal of the worst type, and it is such a confession of failure, alike of American ideals and Christian methods, that President Fitch's letter so plainly portrays. When will these leaders of men in religion and culture turn their scrutiny and brilliant thoughts to the real meaning of "national honor, human justice, universal principles of righteousness gradually becoming articulate in international law"? When does or can Force ever guarantee the continued existence of these high ends? Force can and does achieve victory, but whether that victory is the victory of truth and justice or simply and solely the victory of the "great battalions" depends upon pure chance. In Europe, for instance, it depends upon some obscure Balkan "statesman" casting his nation's armed forces on one side or the other!

Today we see the Allies offered 200.000 Abyssinian soldiers, armed by German and Belgian rifles. It is suggested that they be carried by the Japanese navy to Egypt or Mesopotamia to fight for Britain, France and Russia, whose foreign policy in Morocco and Persia has helped to bring this war, in which Germany was tempted to invade Belgium, and Italy to land in Albania! Where under high heaven is there either "national honor, human justice or universal principles of righteousness" in this perfectly Gilbertian complexity of aims, policies and national alignments?

Meanwhile our "Eastland," our Peabody and Triangle fires, our child labor problems and our huge production of munitions for private profit in mushroom towns where labor laws are laughed at or abrogated, all these stare us in the face when we speak of "national honor and human justice."

National service? Assuredly, We young men desire it, but it must be on the plane of William James' national service for co-operative improvement of humanity, not for the achievement of "national honor" by organized murder, aided and blessed by the ministers of the Church of Christ in the name of Righteousness. W. A. BERRIDGE, 1 Dv.   HUGER R. DAVIDSOX, 3 Dv.   P. N. CRUSOIS '09.   MERRILI. S. GAUNT. 2 And.   LEON S. PRATT, 1 Dv.   ROSS WOOD, 1And.   LUTHER T. SMIGH, 2And.   W. E. LUNDQUIST, 2GB   CHAS, H. NEWMAN, 3L.   HABIR I. KATIBAH, 2Dv.   W. HARRIS CROOK, 2G.   FRANK A. LARSON, 3And.   HOLLAND F. BURR, 2And.   ROGER EDDY TBEAT, 3And.   ALFRED W. STONE, 3And.