NSA Discloses Student Life Abroad

Recent political developments in Europe and Asia have changed drastically the nature and work of national student groups, according to an August publication of the National Student Association.

Reports received in answer to an NSA questionnaire show how student unions in Eastern Europe have taken up the economic programs of the new "people's governments" in these countries, and how students in Germany and Japan have started-up now organizations with encouragement from the occupation authorities.

Perhaps the most dramatic account of student cooperation has come from Spain, where the 24-year-old Federal Union of Spanish Students has gone underground and practises resistance to the France regime.

Secret Operation

The Spanish Union presently operates in secret; its report to the NSA names only its officers who live beyond Spanish borders.

"We do not give the headquarters address in the interior (of Spain) for obvious reasons," the Union has reported . . . "We cannot give number of members."

This much the Union will say: that it is now giving "superclandestine lectures" to imprisoned Spanish workers.

But the F.U.S.S. adds, "Fifteen years ago the record achieved by the (Union) would have enabled us to answer your questions with pride. . . . Nowadays our situation is totally changed; our organization in Spain can only carry out its work in the underground under the continuos threat of persecution; in exile, it is too scattered all over three continents.

"Our efforts are concentrated towards two main goals; to help our comrades of the interior of Spain whose directions we follow and leadership accept, and, to capacitate the emigrated youth who are meant to be an important democratic force in the future of Spain, for in our country, only a very restricted number of students have access to the present Universities, and the instruction they receive is limited, cautious, had totalitarian.

"During the last 35 years our organization has been fighting for a free University for the people. . . . Today we need moral and material help from the free students of the world. To them we ask not to forget that facism which has cost so much blood is still alive in Spain."

Don't Like IUS

In making their plea for aid, however, the Spanish students made it plain that they have no use for the largest international student group, the International Union of Students, which states that it has 54 member organizations representing 3,000,000 students.

NSA leaders at Harvard and elsewhere have charge that the IUS is Communist-dominated, and the NSA has "officially suspended" previous attempts to affiliate with the international group.

The Spanish Union said, "We admit that the IUS kindled great hopes in our friends of the interior as well as in ourselves (Union members in exile). . . . (But) the IUS has not been able to achieve its mission as a result of the political shade that has been cast upon that organization. . . .

"On the other hand we might have been satisfied if the IUS, which was supposed to be a 'progressive, antifascist, democratic organization' would have helped the Spanish students in their underground struggle against Franco.

"Unfortunately, the IUS has done nothing at all, aside from using the Spanish people's sufferings as a 'line' for their 'political' propaganda.'

In Eastern European countries, student groups have organized work brigades and other activities to help the reconstruction programs of the various governments.

Work Brigades

Czechoslovakia has called upon its National Union of Students for voluntary work-brigades since April, 1948--two months after the Communists came into power. Czech universities reward work brigade members with "special concessions on examinations for participants," and students in coal-mining brigades receive special make-up courses.

Czech and Rumanian working brigades have traveled to assignments in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, although it is doubtful whether groups are still being dispatched to Yugoslavia, in view of the strained relations between that country and other Eastern European nations.

The National Union of Students in Rumania reports that its members contributed 91,200 man-hours of voluntary labor in 1948.

The Rumanian group has also worked to enact the sweeping social changes planned by the new government.

"One of the first aims of the new organization (set up in May, 1947) was to obtain the admission of 30 percent of poor workmen's and peasants' sons into faculties," the NSA reports. "Today this goal has been achieved. All universities are state universities, and are 'entirely supported' by the state. Fees are in proportion to the income of the student' family. . . .

"The fascist conceptions which had led part of our youth astray have vanished. In the some way, education is at present no longer considered a privilege and a diversion for the sons and daughters of wealthy and influential people.

"Special attention has been turned to ideological and political enlightenment of students. . . . (The Rumanian Union), as regards professional education of the students, has organized 32 preparatory courses run by students for high school graduates. . . ."

Action Committee

Since the new government took over in Czechoslovakia, control of that country's Union of Students has passed to Action Committees in each of the universities. These Committees, whose members represent all four major political parties, were rejustituted in February, 1948, by Premier Gottwald.

Action Committees, the NSA reports, "now act as policy-making organs, drawing programs and making all political decisions. . . . All political problems are decided by the Action Committees "so the faculty (departmental) unions can carry out their programs."

One student group, the National Union of Students of Vietnam, is currently involved in a war against the French in the present conflict in French Indo-China. "The resistance and the work it requires takes all our time," the Vietnam student states.

The Vietnam Union is helping "students (or their families) who fail victims of French atrocities or violence, or who die in the battlefield . . . (and) by means of lectures, dramas, musical concerts. . . working to raise the people's consciousness regarding the notions of independence, democracy, etc."

In Germany the Military Government helped to form student parliaments in 1946. Zonal council were formed by summer, 1948, in each of the occupation zones.

"In the case of each of the Western zones," the NSA reports, "the zonal boards were formed in 1947 with the understanding that they were to be only a preliminary organization . . . to be dissolved when political conditions in Germany permitted the formation of an all-German student organization."

But Germany's East-West split has prevented such an "all-German" body; last January the three western zonal boards formed the German Student Association, with headquarters now in Cologne.

Japanese Students

The Japan Student Association was formed over two years ago and now has 2000 or more student members from 50 universities and colleges.

The Association has found it difficult, however, to collaborate with other national student groups. "Since our country is still under some control," the Association reports, "our program is obliged to be limited to a small scale so far as international activities are concerned. We have held twice a Japanese American Student Conference since the War, but the delegation of American side was to be from the occupation personnels."

The NSA booklet was prepared by Robert L. West, vice president for International Affairs.