U.S. Must Win Psychological War, Veritas Committee Founder Says

"We are not fighting a cold war, but the hottest psychological war the world has even seen, and we are losing it," Kenneth Robertson '29, founder of the Veritas Committee, asserted last night.

To explain the menace of Communism, he showed a film, Communist Encirclement 1961, produced by the National Education Program, Directed at educating America's youth about the dangers of Communism, the film illuminated the Soviet Union's growth since 1922 and Communist infiltration into the United States.

After the movie, Robertson directed a question period, during which he asserted that he did not know much about the John Birch Society but considered its portrayal of former President Eisenhower as a Communist outrageous. But, he stated that the Society was "on the whole a good thing," and recommended the reading of Robert Welch's One Hundred Steps to Truth.

"Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlal Stevenson, and Hubert Humphry have their little ideological world, but, even though they have the best intentions, they are aeons removed from the actual facts of today," Robertson claimed.

Citing Cuba as an example, he criticized some of the United States' past policies, because "Every time you have a dictatorship friendly to America, we cut the legs out from under it."

Robertson agreed that certain Americans should be allowed to enter Communist countries and spread the message of freedom but feared that they would not see the "real" people, which he said constituted 97 per cent of the population behind the iron curtain.

When evidence that the film Operation Abolition was highly inaccurate was presented, Robertson was skeptical. He suggested that the San Francisco riots should have been quieted at their outset and no trouble would have developed.

"Capitalism has brought this country further and faster than any other system in the world," stated Robertson, and "even though this may have been done at the expense of other countries, we have repaid them $90 billion."