Time Must Have a Stop

The Harvard chapter of AVC is in a distinctly anomolous position today. For although over 800 veterans are on their rolls and at least nominally behind what broadsides describe as a "liberal, dynamic program," AVC has for some time not been able to move as tellingly as it might. A normally vigorous executive board has had to content itself with utilizing only a fraction of the pressure potential inherent in the organization. The restless and dissatisfied veteran who pinned his pent-up hopes here is prey to disillusion and embitterment.

But AVC cannot be written off. What is true for AVC is true today for all liberal organizations. The liberal is everywhere on the defensive; the mass imagination seems uncapturable in the way that Americans were swept by the New Deal philosophy in 1932. Liberal organizations are flying in the face of the times, and must needs watch their egorts splintered into only partial effectiveness.

All this means that it is the time for organizations such as AVC to quit! The answer cannot be yes. Losing ground today, they still have a mission; and surrender equates with suicide.

They have, instead, a very tough row to hoe. When only one-eighth of an organization's membership shows up at regular meetings and only a quarter at elections, the implementation of any action program is formidably difficult. The awakening and solidification of the membership must therefore be a primary objective. Before the popular imagination can be captured, the imagination of the people who will lead the movement must be captured. Showmanship in accomplishing this should not be eschewed: well-publicized "big-name" speakers, well-drawn posters or handbills aimed at bringing indifferent members into activity, radio time-almost anything to awaken the nucleas of the future.

These are the jobs of the organizational leaders. The task of the restless and disillusioned membership is harder. They must not follow the easy road to cynicism and negativism. They must realize that the time, not their philosophy, is wrong. And they must also come to know that the clock moves, and that the time cannot always be wrong.