Students Disturbed About Korean Situation, Future

The Harvard undergraduate is worrying about war. He is thinking about withdrawing from Korea; he is thinking about dropping an atom bomb; he is thinking about seating Communist China in the United Nations; and he is thinking about how the war affects him."

Traditional apathy has given way to a sort of fatalism, and, as the student prepares to go home for Christmas, he is setting his cheerful optimism aside, saving it for some time in the future.

A spot survey taken yesterday breaks down the general attitude into three categories. Predominant is the one expressed by a teaching fellow in Eliot House: "With the war situation as it is, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the undergraduate to study in leisure, to pursue his books without a feeling of guilt, without looking at 16th century Humanism with a feeling of its relative unimportance in the world today."

Limited Ambition

It is this attitude which many students claim is responsible for the limited ambition calling for marks which will get him back in college in a few years. As one student said, "it's hard to do anything more than just pass. I find myself sitting around, reading the papers, listening to the radio, and just talking to the guys in the House about going into the service."

The "academic rat race," which many people thought would materialize due to the "upper half of the class" consideration has never actually materiallized. There is a group which has resigned itself to the wartime situation, and then decided to forget about it on the grounds that it could do nothing. This group claims to be "carrying on as always," but it is definitely in the minority.

A third group, and even smaller, says, "there is a value in study beyond marks. It is this value we have come to college for, and it may be procured without regard of time or future." Although this philosophy is recognized by almost all, It is followed with action by only a determined few.

Opinion on the Korean crisis varies. Some would favor "giving up the moral issue involved in Korea, giving up even nominal control in Formosa if it can prevent an all out war with the Chinese communists."

This decision, however, is overruled by the larger number who would not allow appeasement, even partial appeasement. "Try to maintain a line at the 38th parallel," they say, "pour in as many men as we need to hold on." If we can not do this now they say, pull out and then go back in again, We cannot afford to lose face in the East, this school claims.

Underneath both of these ideas, there is a widespread belief that the present situation was caused by the United States' earlier failures in the Far Eastern countries. Upholding Chiang Kai night that his reference to evacuation of troops, made before a Senator committee, applied to forces in the inflated northeastern actor of the Korean front, and nothing more.

Chinese-North Korean armies have cut off the read between Hamhung and Woman on the east coast, and have increased their pressure on trapped elements of the U. S. First Marine Division, cut off at the southern tip of the Changlin reservoir. At Kote, just north of Hamhung, Marines of the First Regiment were surrounded and greatly outnumbered by heavy enemy concentrations.

There is still no word from the U.S. 17th Regimental Combat Team, ordered, to withdraw from positions on the Manchurian border several days ago.

Communist troops occupied Pyongyang yesterday, only eight hours after the U. N.'s rear guard left, despite heavy allied air attacks. The Eighth Army is reported to be stopping its southerly retreat somewhere below the 38th parallel, north of Seoul, and preparing to hold a line in the hills above the border.

A correspondent who accompanied Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker's army by jeep said the retreat ended somewhere south of the 38th parallel, with the army moving into new positions there