What the Hell Do We Care

By this time the reading and moviegoing public may well be getting a little callous, even a little bored, toward the harrowing pictures in the press, cinema, and slick-paper magazines of the distress caused by the war abroad. It was perhaps inevitable that this sort of immunity should set in, concerned as people are with "the larger issues" of the war effort itself. Nevertheless, if the net result of Harvard's recent British war-relief drive can be taken as typical, this tendency has reached appalling proportions. Three thousand five hundred undergraduates contributed a grand total of less than $85.

On a humanitarian appeal for food, clothing, and medical supplies it would seem that even the most extreme of isolationists and interventionists could unite. The isolationists are on no more solid ground in damning it as an "emotional alignment" (a la their late-lamented Walter Millis) than are their opponents in fighting the Hoover food plan as a device to help Hitler. The drive was clearly, simply, one to ease dreadful suffering and deprivation. Harvard's niggardly response was a disappointment and a disgrace.