WHY A LIBERAL CLUB?

The letter printed elsewhere on this page puts forth a case for maintaining a forum where undergraduates may discuss current political, sociological, and economic problems. There can be little quarrel with the main argument of the correspondent, that there would be value in a communal meeting point at Harvard for all students with more than a passive interest in current events and their underlying causes and ultimate effects.

The question as to the best means of providing this outlet for the transfer of ideas, however, is puzzling and perhaps beyond solution. It has been quite obvious that the Liberal Club of the past few years has fallen far short of a perfect forum. Its members formed just as bigoted a clique of undergraduates as the hidebound conservatives or the extreme radicals, with whose tenets the Liberal Club so often disagreed. Even more of a failure has been the Harvard Socialist Club, or whatever name it seeks to masquerade under this week.

What is needed is some common ground where all these factions can meet, debate, and arrive at their several solutions for the problems of the world. Nothing could be more healthy, more stimulating, or more worthwhile. Unfortunately the difficulties confronting such a Utopian organization are tremendous. The various groups do not want to meet each other regularly. Support of the forum by one clique would immediately give it a touch of the plague in the eyes of the other sects.

The followers of various political or social creeds seem destined to continue their battle of dogma and theory in small bands, shouting from the street corners. Maybe it is all for the best. Universal tolerance still so far from realization, is perhaps not greatly to be desired after all. It is still true that most great intellectual advances have come from men of single purpose and of single mind.