Defense Group Asks F.D.R. To Take Stronger Position

Following up their open letter of March 18, the American Defense, Harvard Group, sent a resolution to President Roosevelt yesterday urging the Administration to "take immediate steps to make its policy effective, whether that means further transfer of destroyers of collaboration with the British in the convey service."

Quoting the President's words of March 15, 1941, when he advocated "unqualified, immediate, all-out aid" the Group held that "the purpose of this stated policy... is in danger of being nullified."

Ship-Sinking Crisis Reached

In explaining the reason for re-opening their petition correspondence with the White House, the resolution reads: "We believe that the destruction of shipping in the Atlantic has reached a stage of crisis." This has a considerably more disturbed tone than the first petition.

On March 18, Roger D. Fisher '43, League President, said, "There is no point in producing goods for Britain without seeing to it that the goods are safely shipped, since, if they are sunk, they are simply wasted." He supplemented this by pointing out that, "Since Britain is having ships sunk as a rate of twice their capacity to construct, sooner or later there will not be enough ships available." The Defense Group feels that the crisis they were referring to has now arrived.

Administration Agree

On both occasions, they have pointed to the Administration as being in agreement with the principles of their own policy. The convey system, they urge, is merely the most sensible way of insuring that the country's policy of material aid will take real effect.

Among the signers of this resolution were such prominent names as : President Ada L. Comstock of Radcliffe College; James M. Landis, dean of the Harvard Law School; Harold M. Westergaard, dean of the Graduate School of Engineering; and Professors W. Y. Elliott, Sidney B. Fay, Bruce C. Hopper, Howard Mumford Jones, S. E. Morison, Bliss Perry, and A. E. Schlesinger.