On Thermonuclear War

Acting President Charles A. Coolidge is appointing a committee to study fallout protection for the University.-News Item

Ten seconds after Boston is attacked, Harvard will be radioactive slag.

This chilling consequence of Boston's strategic importance and Harvard's geographically central location must inform all decisions on a fallout shelter program, as must recognition that anyone trying to destroy a metropolitan region in all-out war would be a fool not to use chemical, radiological, and perhaps biological weapons. The only protection in such war would be self-contained and sealed deep shelters which are economically impractical and probably could not be reached in the warning time given a first-strike target.

But Harvard's decision will be very significant in the national shelter program, even though action does the University little good.

Because it holds a double limelight of academic prestige and well-publicized contact with Washington, Harvard faces serious temptation, and perhaps pressure, to accept the government's line that everyone should build shelters. It can make the current investigation just a study of costs and convenient locations, concluding with some construction and an announcement that Harvard is the first university to give its members safety.

Instead, Harvard must face its responsibility and tell the truth to a nation that has been gulled into believing that urban fallout shelters offer real protection in war. It must refuse to build, and do so with such clarity and force that there can be no inference that the decision was born of sloth or niggardliness.

But where shelters can save lives, the University must act; and outside of cities, shelters are a realistic response to the very threat of nuclear war. Refusal to build is a callous gamble with life, an ill-considered unilateral step toward making America's nuclear deterrent useless.

In such facilities as the Harvard Observatory, located away form metropolitan areas, shelters should therefore be built, and perhaps Harvard should also try to preserve microfilm of a part of the priceless collections of the University's libraries and museums.

Only by combing such moves can Harvard at once emphasize the imminent danger of war and reject the false promises of the shelter panacea. When action makes survival a real hope, the University must act. But it is past time for playing wishing games with our chances in the year to come.