LEAD, KINDLY WHITE

American Defense, Harvard Group, is only four months old, but it is a lusty infant. Since its birth last July, 400 Faculty members have unselfishly devoted their time, thought, and money to the work of the group, which has found homes for 100 refugee children helped recruit Harvard graduates for a Navy cruise, joined in building national morale, sponsored innumerable broad casts, speeches, and forums, and turned out hundreds of newspaper articles and "letters to the editor."

The aims of this active group are defined as follows: "to support immediate, effective and equitable measures for defense...to assist in the creation of a sound national unity founded on the widespread conviction that the hope of perfecting American life lies in freedom from external pressure...to advocate such aid to countries now at war with the totalitarian powers as is approved by sound military opinion in the interests of American defense."

In pursuing these aims the Harvard group is not operating in a vacuum, but has been from the outset an informal adjunct of William Allen White's Committee to Defend America by Aiding England. Speaking at Harvard last week, Minturn Sedgwick, Vice-Chairman of the White outfit, said in describing a hypothetical transfer of American bombers to great Britain, "The President is all for the plan, but only if public opinion gets behind it. That's where the William Allen white committee swings into action, and pretty soon, Bang! and the deal is done." This was not sheer boasting, for the White Committee is probably the most powerful propaganda agency America has ever seen.

Later in his speech Sedgwick said that "unless a miracle happens, it looks as if Uncle Sam will be in the war" by next summer. If Sedgwick has his way, this is how it will happen: When White and his satellites, among them President Conant, decide that American resistance has been sufficiently weakened, the knockout blow will be delivered, and the United States will be blasted into war by a barrage of skillful propaganda shaming Hearst's puny jingoism of 1898.

American Defense, Harvard Group, has geared its educational work to the requirements of the White public opinion mill. The Harvard professors have laid down no long range program, nor defined "defense" any more precisely than in their original statement of aims. Their campaign has been devoted to combatting isolationism, building morale, and plumping for strong defense measures and increased aid to England. But increasingly their position has implied that America should go to the length of vigorous military intervention if that seems the only way to save England.

If this is the underlying assumption made by the members of American Defense, Harvard Group, an assumption on which is predicated the program of defense they advocate, intellectual honesty requires that this fact be stated. If the group has no long range policy at all, then their stand on each specific issue constitutes random shooting from the hip. If the members of the group do have such a policy, but are keeping it under their Homburgs, then they are guilty of the kind of opportunism usually associated with politicians rather than professors. Talk of morale and unity does not answer one basic question: When the time is ripe, is American defense, Harvard Group, ready to go down the line with the William Allen White Committee in a drive for active intervention?