"For Fools Rush In--"

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It is a source of mild surprise to some of us that the CRIMSON has so naively put its head into the noose that the Army League is known to have strung for it. Upon a telegraphic summons from the latter organization, which is lobbying indefatigably for compulsory military service, the CRIMSON obligingly announces a policy of actively favoring military training, calls for a straw-vote without any previous discussion of the question, and arranges to send an official delegation to Washington on Thursday to lay the convincing results before the Senate Military Affairs Committee, in order to counteract the staggering effect of recent "pacifist" testimony. In former days the CRIMON has given us to believe that it possesses a mind of its own, inquiring and open, deliberative, not easily to be shaken. But not so in these when the world is drunk with state-sickness and when to be a liberal and an intellectual, a moderate and a lover of mankind is to be damned as unpatriotic.

It is a source of much regret to many of us that the straw-vote, taken at this behest, has been preceded by no discussion in the columns of the CRIMSON, and, moreover, that the question on the ballot has been phrased as it has. The real question is not "Are you in favor of some form of universal military train- ing?", but "Are you in favor of any system of universal military training which is made compulsory?" And on this question, involving a departure from the spirit and tradition of America and from what we have conceived to be the ideal of all government as deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed, Harvard is asked to register a categorical opinion without any opportunity to give the question that deliberate consideration which its importance makes it deserve. Under these circumstances the result will signify little else than a generous desire on the part of Harvard to do its part, whatever that be, in defending the country,--a fact which the past history of the institution renders it superfluous to repeat. There will even be those who, remembering the result of the presidential straw-vote in October, will discount the verdict entirely as reflecting the very opposite of the opinion of the country which is so unfortunate as to lie beyond the Connecticut.  BRENT D. ALLINSON '1