University's AVC Hits Communist, Fascist Veterans

Backing the stand of top AVC leaders opposing Communist and Fascist infiltration, the Harvard Chapter of the American Veterans Committee last night scored in dramatic terms the "perverse philosophy" of the American Communist Party and its efforts to "exploit the hardships of the veteran in order to further the Party's selfish political ends."

Leading the dissenters, Frank Haley ocC expressed the view that AVC's platform in itself serves to answer accusations of 'Red' domination in its direct disagreement with the Party Line.

Former chapter chairman Richard G. Axt '47 declared, on the other hand, that there were "no valid grounds for failing to support National since, in the words of Charles Bolte, 'those statements merely confirm and make explicit what has always been implicit in ... the Preamble to our Constitution: that subservience to the principles of conspiratorial and undemocratic organizations is utterly incompatible with membership in AVC."

Back Planning Committee

The resolution of AVC's National Panning Committee which won the chapter's approval by the 74-58 tally, asserts that "we are unhappily aware that we shall be accused from some quarters of having joined forces with those distasteful spokesmen of the right who have loosely and maliciously applied the label 'communist' to many commendable organizations. We wish emphatically to dissociate ourselves from the red-baiting tactics of the henchmen of reaction, but we cannot lot their bad example dissuade us from our determination to make known our stand."

Arnold W. Rivkin 2L, chapter member and a member of the National Planning Committee, who first introduced the resolution to the NPC, said following the meeting he was "particularly gratified that attempts to confuse the issue by cries of 'red-bating' were unavailing. The chapter voted in endorsement of a steadfast liberal program for a democratic America in a world at peace, and against any attempt of facists or communists, without or within the organization, to sabotage that program."