SDS AND RHODESIA

To the Editors of the Harvard CRIMSON:

The sudden sabre-rattling stance of the Students for a Democratic Society in protesting "British inaction to uphold democracy" is an astounding feat of double-think. Can anything be more rash, ill-considered, and detrimental to the cause of peace? The SDS admittedly does not profess to be a pacifist group. Nonetheless, the demand for immediate recourse to military action is hardly the initial response to be expected of a body whose origins lie in the sense of moral outrage at the holocaust in Southeast Asia. Surely the SDS is not merely attempting to counter-act the imputation of cowardice and draft-dodging by championing a war in another part of the world. What a cruel perversion of liberal principles it would be to promote majority African rule by means of the physical elimination of a reactionary white minority. The war in Vietnam is not wrong simply because American policy operates against the probable wishes of the majority of the Vietnamese people; it is pernicious because war itself is an immoral and obsolete method of solving international conflicts.

The present government in Rhodesia was legally elected under an undemocratic constitution. There is no legally constituted African government to be upheld in its place at this time. It is not the government that is illegal but its rebellion. The defiance of the British prohibition of a unilateral declaration of independence must not be met with indifference or resignation. Prime Minister Harold Wilson warned the Rhodesian leaders that their challenge would not go unanswered. A war in which British soldiers would be called up to kill their Rhodesian "cousins" would not be universally applauded in England. Nevertheless, Wilson has not ruled out the possibility of ultimate military intervention. Such a course would be justified only in the event that all other efforts fail to dissuade the rebels from their disastrous course. The British government has a deep responsibility for all the people of Rhodesia, but it has given no indication that it does not intend to fulfil its commitments. The combination of international pressures and economic sanctions must be invoked before exacerbating the tension in Rhodesia by bloodshed. Britain itself with American support, the Commonwealth, and--above all--the United Nations must all strive to achieve an equitable solution. The crisis demands resolute action; trigger-happy recklessness--even in the cause of freedom--is just as reprehensible in Rhodesia and in the Dominican Republic.

One must question the process of decision-making in the SDS; it is difficult to believe that the opinions of its members were considered at all before the Rhodesian summons was issued. Such irresponsible behavior can only confirm the estimate of the SDS held by its critics. The position on Rhodesia is in sharpest contrast to the impressively knowledgeable campaign of protest and persuasion being waged over the war in Vietnam. Those of us who might join the SDS if only to disprove the hypothesis that the smallness of its membership implies a lack of support for its Vietnam policy must reconsider the wisdom of such affiliation. This kind of impulsive action can only bring the SDS into disrepute among its friends as well as its enemies. Fred M. Leventhal '60   Teaching Fellow in History