At Age 70--At War Again

With this issue, The Crimson marks 70 years of continuous publication. The peace and war prosperity and depression, cynicism and faith, liberalism and conservatism of those years are captured on its pages. The course of American history is traced in the musty bound volumes of past papers. Only a few years before the Magenta first saw the light of day, came the war between the states. The newly born publication gazed on the socalled "reconstruction" of the Union, the abuses and debauchery that marked the spoilation of a great opportunity. Today the Crimson defends the position of minorities, in this nation and all nations; their equal claim to the God-given rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is the essence of Democracy. It rejects "tolerance" in favor of an interdependent and working brotherhood.

Twenty, years later the Crimson recorded the disgraceful period of selfish imperialism and expansion. Today it decries that period, its purposes as well as its methods. The principles of self-aggrandizement and power which guided the nation at that hour are attacked by the Crimson as they reappear today as "the American Century." Rather than the use of the "white man's burden" and "bringing salvation to the heathen" as mere window-dressing for economic and territorial conquest, the Crimson accepts them today only if they signify understanding guidance for undeveloped nations directed towards their independence and self-rule. Another 20 years passed, and the Crimson watched Woodrow Wilson evolve and put into practice his "new freedom", with its liberal reforms and its promise of social betterment. Today the Crimson supports the New Deal, foreshadowed by the Wilsonian program and so similar in its aims and accomplishments. The greatest good for the greatest number, though it may require the abandonment of American "rugged individualism", though some traditions are swept away and some groups hard-hit, though the activities and the power of the people's government are extended, is our goal. So long as the New Deal is the best way to achieve this goal, the Crimson will support it.

A quarter of a century ago, the Crimson watched a nation take up arms to "Make the World Safe For Democracy." Today the Crimson believes we are at war for the Four Freedoms, only one of which is safety, and realizes that security is not the privilege of one form of government alone. Above all we believe that the only peace worth fighting for is one grounded in discussion among equals and backed up with the strength and will of the whole. Differing from opinions expressed on the opposite page, we believe that constructive and active planning now are necessary if we are to obtain that peace. Such planning, we believe, is a powerful potential weapon for our war effort, and a necessary prelude for a lasting peace.

[On the next page, a group of Crimson graduates gave their advice about the war to the paper and to Harvard students. One, Jerome D. Greene 96. Secretary of the Harvard Corporation, dismissed as "folly" the idea that one aim of the war should be "the replacement of pre-existing imperial administrations by autonomous democratic governments. "-Ed,] January 25, 1943