HARVARD'S DUTY SHOWN

The following communication has been received from th Hon. Augustus Peabody Gardner '86, representative from the Sixth Massachusetts District and member of the House Committee on Ways and Means. In it he calls upon all members of the University to back up the President in whatever move he makes and to be prepared to face any crises that may arise. The smooth-tongued eloquence of the pacifist and alien resident must be avoided.

Mr. Gardner says:

It is the duty of every Harvard man to support the President without any hesitation in any step which the President takes to enforce the rights of the United States against Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. It is no time for patriotic citizens to question the wisdom of the President in asserting these rights as he has done from time to time. The fact is that the President did assert our rights with the full approval of most of us and the acquiescence of all. The time to question those assertions of our rights has gone by; the time for their enforcement has come.

It is the duty of every Harvard man to abstain from offering nostrums of his own for the avoidance of war. The President will avoid war if it can honorably be avoided. If it cannot honorably be avoided, war must come. It is the duty of Harvard men to line up ready for orders, not to take a vote as to the wisdom of those orders. If war must come, let us enter the war as a united nation, not as a divided nation after a bitter political struggle. Let every Harvard man frown on the suggestion that war be preceded by an ugly campaign of recriminations to see whether Mr. Bryan's views or the President's views shall prevail. Imagine your country torn into two camps. Imagine smooth tongues and vitriolic pens hired perhaps by foreign gold, exasperating the community with cries of "Peace! Peace! Vote for Peace!" Imagine an alliance between the spineless pacifist and the American, if there be such, of foreign blood whose allegiance lies with the country of his birth, not with the country of his adoption. Imagine insidious writings and insidious speeches and insidious advertisements describing timidity as "good will towards men" and extolling cowardice by christening it "humanity." Let every Harvard man who loves his country join resolutely in frowning Mr. Bryan down. Our captain is lining up his men and nerving them to courage and self-sacrifice. Heaven grant that no intermeddling politician disguised as a saint may in the name of our mothers and our children be permitted to appeal to mankind's overmastering instinct of self-preservation and love of self-indulgence.