Direct Action

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

May I rise to congratulate the Crime and the Class of 1924 on their joint achievement of complete normaley after all these years? It is a great comfort to feel that at last we are back on sure and familiar ground, wrangling and shouting over the good old stock subjects--socialism and pacifism. Now the advanced thinkers of the class are deminding that the floor of the Union be made wide open to all comers and no holds barred. Well, why not? All the other fields have been exhausted to the point that even the Debating Union cannot survive on the stubble.

Not that it will mean anything, once we get it. The College generally will probably show as little interest in the future as it has in the past: the audiences that will turn out to listen to Mr. Debs or Mr. Nearing will be as curious and as immune to permanent radical influence as the crowd that greeted "Red" Doran in 1921. Mr. Lamont seems to forget that this is not a girls' school; that there is here no great body of persons who are emotionally starved and lacking in attachment to material interests; that there are so many outlets for excess energy and emotion in Cambridge and vicinity that the real interest in pacifism and socialism will continue to be monopolized by the little group of serious thinkers who are always with us. But if they want the Union, by all means let them have it.

It is impossible, however, to maintain such equanimity in face of the attack on the Military Science Department. As a matter of fact, the pacifists should be thankful for the presence of the Unit, for there will be in any class a group of young men of robust instincts and patriotic tendencies who might feel inclined to pacify the pacifists to the damage of the latter if there were not a mild-mannered Col. Browning on the job as a guide toward tolerance. And besides, what business is it of the pacifists if three hundred odd students desire to acquire the gentlemanly art of equitation and lead the strenuous life without the expense of a trip Wyoming. Not to mention the pistol practice and the automobile mechanics caught by the Department.

This initial attempt at direct action on the part of Mr. Lamont and his coherts might well be reconsidered if the pacifists expect to exert any real influence on student thought. R. S. FANNING H.