THE LIBERAL CLUB

In today's CRIMSON there appears a statement of the Liberal Club's public disavowal of any intention to hold an anti-war demonstration on the Widener steps Saturday afternoon. In view of the University's official displeasure at the earlier announcement, this retraction cannot come as much of a surprise. University Hall, wherever its sympathies may lie, obviously could not permit so gross a broach of hospitality, and University Hall does hold all of the cards. But the circumstances of the retraction were singular enough to make comment only just.

In the first place, the decision to hold a demonstration was made by a very small bloc of the Liberal Club, a bloc, to be exact, which constitutes less than one seventh of its membership. This group, in the absence of the regular leaders of the club, struck upon the demonstration as an opportunity to disseminate peace propaganda without any reference to its consequences, either to the Liberal Club or to Harvard. The Liberal Club itself is a minority organization, and this bloc was a minority within a minority, but it would have been awkward to explain a deliberate affront to West Point away on these terms.

It is unfortunate that the dissension within the Liberal Club should have come so near to precipitating a difficult situation. Certainly the Club has shown in its activity this year that it intends to reinforce the ideals of toleration upon which it was founded. Those ideals, in the past, have never envisaged heckling and insult. There are channels for the expression of Communist opinion; there is the National Students' League, and there are within the University numerous study groups dedicated to the principles of the Third International. But really liberal thought must condemn any attempt by this opinion to jeopardize the external relations of the University beneath the aegis of a professedly tolerant organization.