Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Uniformed men use all of Harvard's facilitiesfnot just in the Yard. Here ensigns pass each other near the Law School between classes. japan must have a firm and resolute stand. But by some strange irony, Dean Landis spoke over the radio a few nights later. Said the future head of the Office of Civilian Defense, Russia and England can defeat the Nazis without the help of an American expeditionary force . . . and this defeat will come very soon. A forum for the discussion of post-war problems was set up in Lowell House. The tone of these discussions was Wilsonian, but the pure idealism of Wilson was tempered by the lessons of the last time. Meanwhile, another matter began to occupy the minds of students. In Minneapolis some labor leaders were about to be tried for a charge which seemed entirely unjust. By these trials the Harvard Liberal Union was reminded very forcibly of unpleasant labor trials in the last war. Harvard students, then, had come to the conclusion that their way of life was worth preserving and that to preserve it meant to light. But when and how would America enter the war? Because they could not see the events of the next few weeks, they could only turn their minds to problems about which they were most deeply concerned: the protection of Civil Liberties in the present and the preservation of Democracy in the post-war period. On Saturday, November 22nd, Harvard defeated Yale, 14-O, to complete its most successful season in years. The skies were bright over Cambridge . . . and they were bright over Washington, too. A special envoy was being sent to the United States to continue peace negotiations. Mr. Saburu Kurusu, smiling and bobbing, would arrive any day. Again the Crimion rallied to the cause of Civil Liberties. In an editorial on The Dark Side of Defense, protesting the discrimination against negroes in factories, it said: It is nonsense to refuse a man the right to make a shell or shoot a cannon because of his color when the very weapon is aimed at the same sort of intolerance abroad. Meanwhile, as Pro- fessors Matthiessen and Holcombe again protested the Minneapolis trials, the Harvard Defense Group was urging immediate delcaration of war against Germany. But when declare war? How declare it? The first issue of the Crimson in December carried an ominous editorial, an editorial which could not really be understood until a few days later. Though Secretary Hullis stand leaves the next move up to japan, and though that next move might very conceivably mean war, comparatively little attention is paid to japan by the American public, and if war does come, it will undoubtedly take us by surprisef, The next day, December 2nd, Admiral Stark was sum- moned to the White House. On December 5rd, President Roosevelt was demanding an explanation of japan's recent aggression in Thailand. On the same afternoon, j. P. Mar- quand, somewhere in Widener Library, was presenting to the college the movie script ofil-I. M. Pzalbazm, Exqzzire. On December 5th, Grantland Rice announced that he was placing Chub Peabody on his all-American Team. Mean- i19l-

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r . , . lies in the fact that the imperialistic interests of this country are coincident with the imperialistic interests of the British Empire. But there were, as always, distractions from the world conflict. There were football games and cocktail parties and lectures on Sociology or Fine Arts. A Crimron editorial on The Heathenjapaneen which declared that the overthrow of Prince Konoye set the stage for further aggression whenever Nippon feels the time is ripe .... passed virtually un- noticed. More important were the results of the Dartmouth game: a victory for Harvard and several thousand dollars, worth of damage for the Hotel Statler. Now, as November came, it began to grow colder. Ambassador Cudahy and Senator Wheeler spoke at an America First Rally in Boston. The president of the Student Union was there with a picket line which, he hoped, would contribute much to bringing Harvard students into action against Hit- ler. And Harvardls own edition of Senator Wheeler, Tudor Gardiner 1G, screamed a vituperative reply to Comrade Bennett . . . and his pink playmatesf, Such young men, cried Mr. Gardiner, have clearly demonstrated that, in their bellicosity, V stands for Vicarious. If they want to fight, they can go to Canada and enlist with the blessing of all con- cernedf' Meanwhile, there were vague rumors that ex- Chancellor Bruening of Germany, now a tutor at Lowell House, was being considered by the British for post-war Students, conditioning in the shadow of the Stadium, take time out to watch naval officers march past them on way to drill. 2 i- -1- ,Y-- -H Y, ----.,..,.... .... ,, 1L......,. . .,, ,.,,,,,,,,,,,.,,,..m,,,,mmKm,, leadership of his native land. Professor Sorokin published another book called Cririr of our Age, and Maria Montez, glamorous Hollywood starlet, was, strangely enough, the dinner guest of the very serious-minded Student Union. But students were, as Armistice Day came, coming to a definite conclusion. Women and war aims, wrote the editors of the Crimson, must be understood before they can be handled .... For Americans today, November 11, 1918, represents the beginning of a great defeat-one that must not be repeatedfl There seemed to be a growing feeling among students that war for the United States was not only necessary, l 3 2 In the largest parade in I-Iarvard's history, the ROTC unit marches through the Square to Stadium with 3000 other troops. but perhaps even inevitable. The voices of intervention, the voices that praised the gallant fight of the Russians and of Londoners, were growing louder. But if students knew that war was sure to come, and if they knew that in the years after the war America must play a dominant role, they did not know where or how war would come. Here, then, lay the source of their confusion. As the month of November sped by, the President of the United States and his State Department were beginning to have serious troubles with japan. And while few Americans could believe thatjapan, exhausted by so long a conflict with China, would be strong enough to be a real threat, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo was telling the japanese Diet that there naturally is a limit to our conciliatory attitude and that

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Ha mm' Caddy... During Summer School studying was done on the Yard grass. while, in Tokyo, the officials of the Rising Sun were very doubtful as to whether they could accept the American terms. Then, a week-end came, and on Sunday, those who were listening to the New York Philharmomic Symphony Orchestra were surprised by a break in the program. Thejapanese had Harvard, like the nation, had to change almost over- attacked Pearl Harbor. night from a university at peace to a university at war. Some plans had been made beforehand for air-raids, blackouts, and even acceleration. But, as a few students went off at once to the army and navy, and as others realized that their time at college would be very small, acceleration became almost universal. New courses concerned directly with war work -camouflage, navigation, courses in physicsan d mathematics that would be of use in the services-suddenly appeared in the official academic program. Athletics became compulsory for everyone, registration for summer school reached an all-time high, the Navy took over the Yard for special officers' candi- dates, and sugar disappeared from the tables of House dining halls. And so, Harvard became a modified military training station. The history of the classes of 1943 and 1944 was l20l complete. They had passed through QU the violent anti-war sentiment of 1939-40, Q25 the prologue to war in the fall of 1941, and f3j war itself in 1942. IN the fall of 1942, as Naval and Army officers crowded into the Yard, as students suddenly dropped their college courses to enter the armed services, and as the Dean's office began to worry and wonder over the future of the university itself, there came to those who had been Freshmen in 1939 and 1940, when hope ran high that the United States would remain at peace, new ideas and new attitudes. These new ideas, however, were not the direct result of the war alone, for these ideas had rested somewhere in the back of young men's minds for many years. The war did not create the new set of values that students were gradually adopting: it merely dis- interred it from the mental confusion under which it had lain buried for so long. Perhaps, no student had ever really believed that his country could remain at peace for very long in a world of flaming hatreds. And perhaps this doubt itself caused both the deep resentment against the warmongers of 1939 and the feverish demonstrations at that time for peace at all cost. It was more than a question of this nation's duty as a world power, more than a debate between non-intervention and inter- vention. It was, indeed, a sincere belief that no war was CC012tizzz1ecz' on page 3515 john Sawhill is congratulated on being chosen top ROTC officer.