The Harvard Conservative

If this year's first issue of the Harvard Conservative is not so complete a waste of paper as the single edition published last spring, it has taken to wasting a much better grade of the stuff.

The lead article, as seems the inevitable fate of lead articles in such publications, discusses peaceful co-existence and makes the usual telling points. Joseph Stalin was not a very nice guy. Khrushchev didn't use to be a very nice guy and probably hasn't changed much. Peaceful co-existence, William Henry Chamberlain goes on, is not the same thing as a Russian surrender. Khrushchev has committed himself to refraining from those particular forms of conflict which are most likely to incinerate the globe. The fact that this accomplishment, although limited, is not completely without utility is grudgingly admitted in the last paragraph.

Now this article, and those like it, which are the stock-in-trade of the Conservative student press, are not really wrong. They are merely horribly obvious, horribly repititious and all the same. How many times is it necessary to repeat the seldom denied fact that it is still the announced Soviet policy to support "just anti-imperialist wars of liberation?"

Chamberlain does not mention, even in passing, the possibility that the Soviet Union might not always find it expedient to follow its announced policy. He fails to consider the Sino-Soviet split at all. It may well be true that Khrushchev has not abandoned any of the Soviet Union's old foreign policy goals, but he has certainly reordered their relative priorities.

Richard Derham '62, who also contributed to the first issue of the magazine, covers the problems of Cuba with similar originality. Derham points out that the Kennedy Administration is officially committed to the eventual elimination of the Castro regime but is currently not doing anything to bring about that elimination. He mentions closing American ports to ships of nations carrying "a substantial part of the Cuban trade," economic blockade, and aid to guerrilla refugee groups capable of returning to Cuba and leading a guerrilla war as examples to prove that there are "workable alternatives to our present 'do nothing' policy."

It is difficult to argue with this position, since whether or not Castro ought to be "brought down" has passed from there realm of those things we know through reason to that of those we know through faith. Consistency, in any event, has never been the greatest virtue of Kennedy's Cuban policies.

With regard to the problem which U.S. Latin American policy currently emphasizes, however, Derham is much weaker. He admits that the elimination of Castro from Cuba will not necessarily prevent the rise of Communist governments or revolutions in other Central and South American countries, announces that the Alliance for Progress is not going to do so either. The only suggestion he makes, however, is that military aid, with emphasis on anti-insurgency operations, be increased.

He completely ignores the role of reform and the non-Communist left in Latin America and offers no hint as to what American policy should be toward them. And, for all its importance as a symbol and possible "base for subversion," Cuba is merely a small and unimportant island when compared with Brazil or Venezuela.

The most worthless article in the 16-page magazine is not either of these, however, nor yet Danny Boggs' analysis of the Conservative revival at last August's NSA Convention. Boggs came to the conclusion that, although conservative ideas, well-presented, did have reasonable chance of passage, simply saying "This is Conservative" was not sufficient to get a measure passed. It is a rare critique of the NSA which claims that it is.

No, the most worthless article, not even excepting the appeal for members by the Harvard Conservative Club, which publishes the sheet, is one entitled "Liberal Education and the Individual" by a Sharrel Keyes of Randolph Macon Woman's College. It is possible to determine that Miss Keyes rejects vocationalism, but otherwise it is a little hard to determine what sort of education she is talking about. She emphasized the importance of "spelling, mathematics, geography, and grammar," and then states the educated man "would find that mathematics and philosophy are not such strange bed-fellows and that Buddha's teachings can have meaning for the twentieth century American." He will also have "freed himself from the concept of utility." All of this sounds very nice, on first reading, but on the second go-round it comes out as the syllabus for a sort of parody of a Gen Ed course.

It cannot really be said that the magazine is terribly bad, on the whole. It's well proofed and contains few patently false statements. On the other hand, it says nothing new, and, aside from Mr. Boggs' report on the NSA convention, merely mouths cliches. Nobody around here ever thought the Conservative Club did like Khrushchev or oppose individuality.