THE WARSAW FESTIVAL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

This letter comes in reply to your article of November 21st concerning my talk at Harvard on the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students held in Warsaw this past summer.

The article conveyed an entirely erroneous impression of my talk and I would like to make clear that the purpose of my talk was to discuss with American young people the Festival, as being an opportunity to meet and talk with youth from all over the world, exchange cultural presentations, and participate in activities with them so that some of the tensions of the cold war years may more easily be broken down through direct contact.

I think that the theme of the Festival, "Peace and Friendship," is not an alien one to American young people, and through my experience there I found that this was not a propaganda device but simply an expression of friendship of youth from all over the world.

Secondly, no mention was made of the content of either my talk or the films, both of which point out the fact that the Festival, a gathering of 30,000 youth from 114 countries sponsored by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students, had youth attending of all all political shadings, many of whom were not members of these organizations, e.g., 1200 from France, 1300 from Great Britain, 4000 from the Scandinavian countries, and a delegation from Japan representing 600,000 people from almost every major youth organization. The activities of the Festival included cultural competitions, performances of top young artists, a pre-Olympic sports competition, and exhibitions of life in every country.

Thirdly, my talk was not sponsored by either of the aforementioned organizations, but solely by myself and that the contributions collected both at Harvard and at the Community Church where I also spoke were to pay for the expenses of the projector and operator, and for my travel expenses.

I would like to reiterate that I indeed encouraged people to go to the next Festival in Moscow in 1957 to see for themselves, as I was able to do, especially now in this era of growing exchange between east and west and with passport restriction lifted on travel to Eastern Europe. I have the fullest confidence that Harvard students are intelligent enough to draw their own conclusions from such a trip.