TO MR. SIGOURNEY

Yesterday morning during the solemn rites in the sunny Eliot Kirkland triangle the Class of 1940 applauded when the Senior Orator said that "America must not again by dragged into the anarchy that is Europe." Two bouts later, in the mardi-gras atmosphere of the Stadium, they booed the 1915 Ivy Orator's incongruous and long-winded speech when they discovered that he was no longer being funny, but was speaking in deadly earnest. Presumably they booed because his empty rhetoric and talk of not being "too proud to fight" was a stale attempt to blur the complex issues of national policy with outworn moral aphorisms. And many Seniors are today sick and angry because they are being asked to attend an admittedly partisan "preparedness" meeting which will seek to make capital out of Commencement-day idealism.

This attitude has been interpreted by many older people as a stubborn cynicism and blindness to the "moral" issues of this war. A more understanding observer, President Conant, told the Jewish War Veterans last week that "The errors of youth today, if they are errors, are symptoms of their idealism." This idealism, the President said, has had peace as its single aim; it must now be broadened and focused on the maintenance of American traditions and the American way of life.

But a unifying loyalty cannot be founded on words alone. In the past decade the younger generation has seen the old stereotypes which constitute much of the "American tradition" used as tools of reaction. The blatant optimism of the twenties did not ring true in the thirties. In the disillusionment and ideological disintegration of the past ten years, young people have sought new standards, new and more active social philosophies. Many thought they had found them in the New Deal.

Against this pattern of shifting loyalties the refusal of many Americans to rally to the "defense" of traditional American values can more readily be understood. Harvard Seniors, and countless thousands who feel as they feel, do not oppose necessary defense measures for America if they are necessary and only for defense. They want a democratic arms program, by selective conscription if necessary; not the building up of an amateur and priggish military caste which will exert a tremendous pressure for war. They want a pan-American solidarity based on democracy--not a hemisphere defense program superimposed on commercial exploitation of Latin America, a program which would inevitably throw our southern neighbors into the arms of our potential enemies. they want an industrial mobilization, if it is necessary, that will not destroy hard-won labor standards under the false pretence of expediency. Above all, they do not want, as the Senior Orator said yesterday, to see "Persecution . . Subvert Americanism in the name of Americanism."

Actually, a plea for spiritual and moral unity in the face of a national crisis is hollow and meaningless while the country's political and intellectual leaders are driving a wedge of fear into the hearts of the American people. For many loyal Americans fear that under the guise of preparedness they will be catapulted into a futile and devasting foreign war while our own imperfect democracy crashes in ruins about them.