NO SHAME

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Writing as a student at Harvard University, I was sincerely disturbed by your editorial reaction to the conduct of fifteen of our Faculty who met with President Johnson to discuss the war.

I do not pretend to know more about the meeting than what I have read in the Crimson. Yet to me it did not seem that what I read constituted action worthy of the headline "Shame," nor even, as you concluded, behavior suggesting "that their objections to the war are hardly as serious or sincere as they would have us believe." And I appeal to your judgment that their silence was equivalent to a decision "to emulate Mr. Johnson's notorious behavior."

It seems quite obvious that the group was obliged to undertake an inflexible promise of secrecy if they hoped, by their considerable eminence and persuasiveness and not by opposition, to influence Johnson in a candid discussion. This hope need not have been a futile one; it was certainly a long shot, but well worth trying. I suspect that they themselves offered to seal their own lips for its sake. And then came the leak.

If indeed this is to be interpreted as a deliberate breach of faith by Johnson (which could never be proven) then I would like to raise once again the question you have already answered so unfairly. Would it be proper for the Faculty to follow suit in a breach of faith? Would any sensational outcry be worth more than the compromise of their honor, the sacrifice of their standards? Is the only response to political action always to be an eye for an eye, a blow for a blow, a crime for a crime? Frederic R. Kellogg 3L