ENEMY WITHIN THE GATES

Beyond the resentment which all Americans will feel when they read of the activities of the Yankee-American. Action, Harvard has an additional and more personal grudge against the "Red Shirts." For Harvard has been imposed upon, it has been unwittingly implicated in an insidious and vicious movement with which it has not the slightest sympathy. The racial and religious intolerance evidenced by "Yankee-American" James's blasts against the Irish Catholics, the reactionary demand for limited suffrage, the ridiculous accusations against Harvard's own Professor Heinrich Bruening--all this is a far cry from the liberalism for which Harvard has long stood.

Ironic and unfortunate is the part Phillips Brooks House has played in the Y.A.A. affair. Brooks House had no knowledge of the actual nature of the supposedly innocent "Sunday afternoon discussion group"; and Dean Sperry has stated that unless James can disprove the accusations made against him, the privilege of holding his meetings at P.B.H. will immediately be revoked. But Brooks House must still be blamed for an understandable yet careless grant of the use of its rooms to an outside organization whose purposes it had not first investigated.

In the past, P.B.H. has been a haven for all organizations which could not afford the expense of maintaining meeting places of their own; its rooms have been granted alike to the Bach Cantata and the Young Communist League. There seems to be little reason for a withdrawal of this hospitality. The present embarrassment has arisen because of the activities of a group not connected in any way with the University, and containing not a single undergraduate member. No difficulties of a similar sort have ever arisen because of the courtesy P.B.H. has shown to any college groups, and so Brooks House need not close its doors to them. Before, it extends the same privileges to outside organizations, however, it should make doubly sure that they advocate no such repugnant steps as overthrow of the government by force, or the persecution of racial or religious minorities.