POLITICS AND POT-HOLES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Some time ago I was invited, along with Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania and Wayne Morse of Oregon, to address the Oberlin Mock Convention at Oberlin College, Ohio. Since a copy of what is unfortunately the only Breakfast Table Daily in Cambridge containing a letter from one Vernon M. Hawkins, 3rd '51 (a truly extraordinary person whom, try as I may, I cannot dislike) reached me on the eve of that address, and also considering that the remarks I intend to make here tomorrow have a certain limited relevance to the question at hand, I shall quote from that speech:

Politics is a muddy road full of pot-holes. It is fraught with frustration and despair. It demands equal discretion in choosing enemies as well as friends. It subjects a man to the taunts and arrows of malicious opponents. Even political success reaps its own bitter harvest--jealousy.

But for all these, politics gets in your blood stream and rampages around so that you cannot be still in its presence. It sets up its own code of values in which one cheering audience is worth more than a thousand insults, in which years of calumny are wiped away by one mother who says she wants her little boys to grow up to be like you.

Its wheels grind erratically. One it turns out smooth, polished, sterling and lustrous. Another rough, crude, callow, and crass. It requires knowledge as for a skilled trade, the application needed for a profession, the devotion for a cause. It demands all of your intellectual, physical, and emotional reserves, but its victories are sweet. Sweetly,   Roger Allan Moore   National College Director   Young Republican National Federation

N.B. Under no condition may any abridgements be made in publication of the main body of the letter from the greeting through the signature.