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Although its opening meeting tonight will express a solid, non-intervention front, it is becoming increasingly evident that the Student Union is by no means committed to following this policy throughout the year.
The platform of the opposition party was issued by President Alan Gottlieb '41 yesterday. It favored material aid to Britain, solidification of the Western hemisphere, and sanctions against Japan in its foreign policy and urged the preservation of social democracy under President Roosevelt in its domestic plank.
"Full Aid" Group Gaining
Support for this platform is stronger than was first expected and it may well be that Gottlieb will succeed in getting sufficient numbers out in the policy meeting next Tuesday night to bring an about face.
Just what will happen if this occurs is a matter of specification. It is Gottlieb's hope that he can hold the Union together with a strong domestic front while relegating the foreign issue to the background as a subject for forums. Since much of the life blood of the Union is in the Stange-Marx-non-intervention group most notably "The Progressive" this is clearly "desirable."
But just because it is the vitalizing force behind the Union, it seems unlikely that it can be so easily squelched. Hence a Gottlieb victory will probably make a split inevitable.
What will happen then is that the charter from the National Student Union will be revoked from the Gottlieb group, and the Stange-Marx group will continue as the Harvard chapter. The charter will probably be revoked if Gottlieb holds the Union together on his policy forcing and it will act as an independent group.
Gottlieb's Platform
Chief planks in the Gottlieb statement were as follows: "We fully appreciate the importance to the United States of a victory for Great Britain. Cognizant of the necessity of not plunging into war, we urge such material aid to England as is consistent with national defense.
"We feel that the unity of the Western Hemisphere against fascist penetration depends upon a truly good neighbor policy.
"We hold that any program of opposition to aggressive militarism must fight against aid to the Japanese war machine and must give concrete aid to China."
Reversal of Policy
This, it can be seen, is an exact reversal of the thought in the Union when it refused to condemn the invasion of Finland and approaches the policy of the Student Defense League, although the strong declaration on keeping out of war is a marked difference between the two.
Speakers on tonight's program scheduled in Emerson D at 8 o'clock include: Jack McMichael, chairman of the American Youth Congress--Lake Geneva; Thomas MacGowan, New England chief of the Maritime Union; Nathaniel Brooks, one of the students expelled from Michigan for being a "disturbing influence"; Francis O. Matthiessen, President of the Cambridge Teachers' Union; and Leo Marx, editor of the Progressive.
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