Viet Cong Patriots?

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

April 30 faculty members of many Greater Boston universities gathered in Lowell Lecture Hall to adopt a reply to Secretary of State Rusk. The reply which was adopted attacks U.S. policy as immoral and as an outrage to the conscience of the world.

However the men in Washington already know about the immorality and unpopularity of their policy. They plea its necessity.

The protesting statement does not deal with this plea. It almost did. In hasty and ill-considered action those present voted to delete the following paragraph:

"The Administration seems to be working with only one historic model of aggression, namely, that which would make it the Viet Cong today's counterpart of Hitler's Sudeten Germans, about to deliver up a stalwartly democratic Asian Czechoslovakia! Stubborn and unimaginative anti-Chamberlain-ship is perhaps as anachronistic and inept in the face of nationalist-Communist guerilla warfare as was the Braddock-Cornwallis military complex in coping with revolutionary American backwoods patriots supplied by France. American policy should reflect our full awareness of the anti-colonial, nationalist fervor that pervades great parts of Asian and Africa." (emphesis added)

The deletion was made because of fear that someone might conclude that some equation was made between U.S. patriots and the Viet Cong. Unfortunately this paragraph was the only one in the whole document which showed an awareness of what the Administration is trying to to do, and the only one which attempted to show why what is was trying to do will not work.

The President and his Secretaries have made it abundantly clear that they are trying to stop World War II in Vietnam. No opportunity should be missed to point out that such a goal is an anachronism and is impossible. The faculty members are missing such an opportunity. The paragraph should be retained. If necessary the italicised words could be dropped to avoid the interpretation which was feared. Richard A. Kraus   Teaching Fellow in Economics