THE STUDENT FRIENDSHIP FUND

The Student Friendship Fund of the World's Student Christian Federation is a charity that has for some years appealed to American students for support. Individual drives have been conducted in most American universities every spring. This year the national drive is about to begin, with a goal of fifty thousand dollars for American students to contribute, with two thousand dollars more needed for office work and publicity expenses in this country.

For the last three years, the drive in Harvard University has been a notable failure. This has undoubtedly been due at least in part to faulty organization, to the inefficient manner of conducting drives before the adoption of a Student Council Budget. The question is pertinent, however, whether, whether this lack of support does not spring in some measure from a lack of confidence both in the aims and in the achievements of the Student Friendship fund. The collection of the Budget this year has contributed notably to the ultimate success of the new plan, but in its expenditure there is an equally legitimate test of its merit, and contribution from the Budget to the Student Friendship fund should not be made without thorough investigation of its purposes and of its actual accomplishments.

The situation in Europe immediately after the war was one that demanded some immediate and generous assistance from American students. The work done by the Student Friendship in meeting this situation is not to be disparaged; in restoring some measure of comfort and opportunity to students in war-impoverished sections of Europe, the Fund accomplished a much-needed service. That situation has now subsided, and it remains to be learned what other needs have arisen to warrant the perpetuation of the Student Friendship Fund.

Stimulation of international mindedness and the spread of Christianity are the two goals which are now avowed by the supporters of the Christian Federation. In the most recent pamphlet issued by the Federation, the need for direct material aid is admitted to have subsided, and the furtherance of effort working toward these ends is urged.

The first aim is seriously to be questioned. There are no details to be found as to how the money collected is actually spent in this effort. From what can be learned, it is more than possible that the methods of the Federation work directly to controvert a good intention. The operation of the Fund in Russia is a case in point, where little money is sent in the first place, and where, on the other hand, there is said to the discrimination in favor of certain economic and religious creeds that are not universally accepted, and whose support entails more moralizing and disagreeable proselytizing than it entails friendship and understanding.

The other aim of the Federation is beyond any doubt the more objectionable. The worth of missionary work is a much-disputed point on which it is fortunately not necessary to pass judgment here. There is no very good reason why individual Harvard students should not contribute to missionary work in spreading any kind of religion they might choose. But that blatant and benighted missionary work should be backed officially by Harvard University is deplorable. Much of the influence of Harvard University is dependent today upon a strict avoidance of religious creeds and prejudices. Its teachers and its students certainly represent no unanimity of attitude on religious questions. A contribution to the Fund from Harvard University might presuppose something very much akin to such unanimity. Especially unwarrantable would the contribution appear since the Fund is designed to support a Committee Meeting to plant "the religion of Jesus" in India, a meeting "which makes demands upon the intelligence and the abilities of Federation members in excess of any other meeting so far held-so very beautiful, so very potent is the idea of an international student gathering in the land of the Brahmins."

The work of the fund in combatting race I prejudice is undoubtedly praiseworthy as far it goes. Why an international student organization such as this professes to be should not carry on with equal vigor a war against religious prejudice, it is difficult to understand.

A great part of the difficulty in estimating the worth of the Student Friendship Fund lies in the absence of publicity about its aims and about its methods. Even those few students who have supported the movement in Harvard University in the past have very often had little idea of where their contributions were to go. the literature that has been given undergraduates on the subject has been woefully inadequate, so much so that misunderstanding of the Christian Federation is probably as prevalent as is ignorance of its existence.

If the recent lack of popular support at Harvard is due to causes suggested above, the annual contribution should be discontinued this year. If it can be traced instead to the ignorance which does enshroud the whole affair in Cambridge, the situation should certainly be remedied in the future. In any case, no contribution should be made by the Student Council until more is known. To foster an international consciousness in the minds of American students and some sort of intelligent understanding and cooperation between them and students of foreign nations is too worthy an ambition to be defeated by ineffective organizations or by the prejudices of religious missionaries.