GOP Mascot Rallies for Thieu

FREEDOM SQUARE--In a nostalgic return to the campus activism of the late sixties, the Harvard Lampoon, a coalition group of middling to liberal humorists, led a pre-victory demonstration yesterday on behalf of Nguyen Van Thieu, President of South Vietnam.

Highlights of the demonstration were a six-foot tall, female Indian elephant--variously referred to as "Popsie," "Pachyderm," and "Hey You"--and a march down Massachusetts Avenue that succeeded in interrupting the flow of traffic not even long enough for the folks at Krackerjacks to mount their spray-sloganed, aluminum antitrashing barriers.

In a nostalgic return to the campus quietism of the fifties, a few hundred students were on hand to follow the elephant from the Lampoon's Castle to the Yard. Every effort was made to avoid trampling the newly seeded lawns between Widener Library and Memorial Church, where the brief, but telling, rally took place.

Surrounded by neatly lettered placards proclaiming. "In Your Hut You Know He's Right," "Let Saigons be Saigons," and "Beat Northeastern," Popsie lead the march with elan, stopping briefly to tip his trunk to the seemingly unflappable statue of John Harvard, before losing interest in the proceedings entirely.

Sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Students for a Democratic Vietnam (HRSDV), the rally kicked off with an exhortation by James H. Siegelman '73, Lampoon President. "We went to New Hampshire for McCarthy in '68," Siegelman began, concluding. "And so we went to Elsie's and to Tommy's. We must not sleep from apathy, we must abandon it."

The afternoon's entertainment--already an hour late due to the inability of Popsie's driver to find his way to the Lampoon Castle through the one-way streets that now surround Cambridge's famous Brattlewalk--continued with speeches from representative academics, conservative students and plain old jocks.

Frederick D. Weil '73, Lampoon Ibis, led the crowd in the singing of a Dylanesque arrangement of "Nguyen Thieu's Blues," sung to a note of social protest.

Bread and Circuses Puppet Theater contributed a gorilla skit entitled "Macthieu" to no one's edification. S. Eric Rayman '73, Lampoon Hautboy, brought the proverbial curtain down on his head with a reading of telegrams to N. V. Thieu that included:

"Sorry I lost you 30 sure votes, Best Wishes Captain Medina." And, from New York, "Much interested in your penal control and rehabilitation program, Stop. Regard incident at Attica, Stop. Please send info on intriguing Tiger Cage Idea. The Governor."

The demonstration ended quietly at 1:30 p.m., much to the relief of the two vice-presidents, three assistants-to-the dean and five young-men-on-the-make who looked on in dismay from behind the reinforced windows of University Hall.

A spokesman for some dean or other indicated that the University might not press charges unless it felt called upon to do so or Scotty Reston ran an angry column in the Times.