MRA: Circumlocutions of Absolute Honesty; New York to Investigate Financial Status

Heikki Lampela is a strikingly handsome 25-year-old Finn with a magnificent square jaw and a massive smile that takes up his whole face. It branches out from his mouth in squared-off semi-circles, and it seems to light him up. Lampela, like most Moral Re-Armament people, is nearly always smiling. But after the Sing-Out show in Sanders Theatre he was not smiling at all. And he had reasons.

For one thing a group of about 50 Harvard and Radcliffe students came inside after an hour-long demonstration in the freezing cold and heckled the Sing-Out performers mercilessly. They yelled "Fascist!" and "Heil, Hitler!" and worse, especially during the the closing speech of national program director John Sayre. Sayre, a former Olympic gold medal winner in rowing, was visibly shaken by the harrassment. He called it "the worst, most persistent, and loudest heckling we've ever drawn anywhere in the world." That bothered Heikki.

Another thing that bothered Heikki was that Harlon L. Dalton '69, president of Harvard-Radcliffe Young Democrats, was very angry. Heikki, MRA's advance man for the Boston tour, had gotten Young Dems, Young Republicans, and the International Relations Council to sponsor Sing-Out and so allow the group to come to Harvard and use Sanders. Dalton made it quite clear that he did not want Young Dems' name on any publicity. The Dems were reluctant to sponsor the group and this became just part of the bargain. But posters that Heikki had printed were up all over Cambridge with the names of the three organizations right on the top "presenting" the MRA Sing-Out. Tickets sold that night said the same thing, and Dalton was angry and Heikki was not smiling.

Finally, there is the more muddled case of the songs. Dalton reminded Heikki after the show that he and some other YD executives had gone through the MRA Songbook picking out "offensive songs." One of them, which was shown on television last fall, mocks out "the moaning and groaning you hear from some of our campuses and coffeehouses today." It was a folk song about a girl who apparently wanted to sleep with her "Willie" and selfishly wanted him to come back from the army. Dalton wanted it out, and Heikki agreed.

Follow Me

Then there were the military songs. Dalton leafed through the book and came to "Follow Me," a rugged 4/4 ditty all about the U.S. Infantry. It ends: "I want to be an Airborne Ranger, Ee-ah! Follow me!" Dalton did not like that one either and Heikki assured him it would be out. Finally, according to the YD president, Heikki agreed to leave only one song with a military reference in the show, and that a mild one.

But Sunday's performance did have a military song in it--a very loud one called "Fort Riley"--"dedicated to the men of the Ninth Infantry who are fighting for us right now in Vietnam." While the song was being sung in Sanders about ten people walked out, and there was heckling and hissing from the audience. "Fort Riley" ends "We're gonna show aggressors everywhere that Uncle Samjaint bluffing." The song was nearly exactly the same as "Follow Me," though Heikki explained later that in "Fort Riley" they were not telling people to follow them into war, just sort of telling them about it. After a long discussion with Heikki and Sayre, Dalton said that he received an apology. Sayre later said, "Dalton is a liar; we never made any agreement, and I'll say that to anyone publicly or privately."

So Heikki was not smiling Sunday night as he stood up on the Sanders stage while his 40-man tech crew took down the lights and the platforms. Below him swirled little groups of MRA singers arguing their doctrine with Harvard students and Cliffies. It is a simple doctrine. MRA wants to change the character of man, using "absolute moral standards as a compass in personal and national life." There are the four absolutes--love, purity, honesty, and unselfishness. But MRA is not an ideology and not a religion. That is clear from the literature, which the Sing-Out Kids and their leaders readily quote: "It is not a religion nor a substitute for religion, nor a sect. It is a non-profit, charitable work financed by people from all walks of life." It is literature like this that could keep that beautiful smile from Heikki's rugged face for quite a while.

"Moral Re-Armament, Inc. is a non-profit corporation incorporated in the state of New York. Our books are on file there and they are audited by ...," Sayre and the others will say. But there is a hitch. MRA is not a usual corporation under New York law. Any non-profit organization that solicits funds in the state must file a full financial report under Article 10a of the Social Welfare Law--except religious agencies, and that is just how MRA classifies itself. As a religious agency, it is exempt from filing an annual report of its income and expenses, which would be public record, so no one knows where the money comes from.

Gilbert Harwood is the chief of the Charities Registration Service of the Department of Social Welfare of the Department of State in New York. That long title entitles Harwood to decide who should be exempt under 10a and who should not. Harwood was read some of this "We are not a religion" material. He said that he had seen it before, and "there is a good chance they are not a religious agency. They do not hold religious services and there is no credo." He told the CRIMSON that he would definately begin an investigation of MRA immediately. If Harwood decides MRA is not a religious agency ("and we have trouble interpreting 'agency,'" he says), then they would be forced to file public financial statements or else sue the state of New York.

MRA could be in trouble, but it has an amazing ability to solve little problems like this. One high State Department official in Washington called them "incredible public relations people." They do have a forceful way of making themselves heard, but a way that often comes into conflict with one of the four absolutes--honesty.

Dalton of the Young Dems will be glad to find he has company. MRA seems to make a habit of using organizations' names without permission, and worse. In the Jan. 17, 1962 issue of Christian Century, a liberal religious magazine, a member of the Easton, Penn., Human Relations Commission relates his run-in with MRA. The Commission agreed reluctantly to sponsor an MRA film called The Crowning Experience, based on the life of a Negro educator. It was all quite innocent until the MRA publicity began to flow: "[MRA] stated--erroneously and to our embarrassment--that we had sponsored and paid for the dinner that preceded the showing of the film. Without authorization they sent out invitations to the dinner over our chairman's name."

Sound familiar? There's more: "In MRA publications and in regular news media there appeared statements reputedly made by local community leaders, all in support of the movement. The catch: those leaders had never made such statements."

The MRA Information Service reported: "The Commission on Human Relations of the Easton-Phillipsburg area invited The Crowning Experience to spearhead the ideological offensive of MRA in the Lehigh Valley.... Its chairman said, "This film is the most moving experience in motion pictures I have thus far encountered.'"

Russell Barbour, the member of the Commission who wrote the article says that none of the statements were true. "We did not 'invite' the film to the area, our chairman does not hold the opinion credited to him... When MRA people were confronted with proof of the misrepresentation, they acknowledged that some 'misconstruction' could be placed on the press release." That is the same kind of apology Heikki mumbled to Dalton on Sunday night.

Barbour found that he was not alone either. "We heard of others who had been similarly used. Even the United States Government!" That experience is a thorny one that everyone involved wants to forget. It is the last documented evidence of MRA receiving governments funds and it happened in 1955. An English journalist named Tom Driberg recounts the episode in his well-documented book, The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament.

Harold E. Talbott, Secretary of the Air Force, put three large aircraft at the disposal of 192 MRA people and flew them by a circuitous route from Manila to Switzerland. They were presenting a play called The Vanishing Island to Asians and Africans. When part of the cast felt like flying to Damascus and Amman, which were not on the schedule, the crews of the plans got angry and refused to fly them there.

The play itself was sharply criti- cized. (One scene in the play shows a "typical" democratic election candidate stuffing a ballot box.) Sherman Adams, Driberg reports said it might do serious damage to the cause of democracy in Asia. Ambassadors cabled protests, and John Foster Dulles notified embassies that MRA had no official standing. Vice-President Nixon tried to get the tour stopped.

The American taxpayers paid $135,000 to send the play around the world. MRA paid $124,930, according to a facsimile check printed in one of their books. Talbott was later forced to resign as Air Force Secretary and--according to Driberg--the MRA affair played no small role in Eisenhower's decision to oust him.

Driberg also illustrates some of MRA's other tactics. They are fond of attributing quotes to people who never said them, especially mayors and top officials who cannot politically afford to issue a denial. MRA will also take full-page ads in newspapers and then later cite them as though they were regular news articles. The Times of India was especially incensed when MRA pulled this stunt on it.

Another coup came in a full-page ad in the London Times of June 9, 1960. It read in part: "'A Hurricane of Common Sense´--that was the headline in a newspaper read by the leaders of Washington. It refers to the manifesto Ideology and Co-existence ... It puts squarely to the modern world the choice--Moral Re-Armamnet or Communism."

The "newspaper read by the leaders of Washington turns out to be not the Washington Post but the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Advertiser, a free sheet dropped on the doorsteps of suburban Washington homes. A right-wing columnist named "Tar" Paulin, the paper's publisher wrote: "As I progressed through [the MRA manifesto's] 31 pages of text something almost wonderous (sic) and magical happened to me. My cynicism gave way to a deeper, greater emotion--moral re-armament ... I'm a dedicated anticommie. I cheer Moral ReArmament. Its litle pamphlet is like a hurricane of commonsense sweeping away the fog of confusion."

And how did Dalton and the Young Republicans and the International Relations Council get mixed up with this organization? Why did they sponsor a Harvard Sing-Out?

The Young Dems case is unclear. Heikki went to the then-president Lawrence E. Seidman '68 and asked him to provide $3000 for the performance. Seidman turned him down, and then the problems began. The YD executive committee was split on the matter of sponsring MRA after Heikki said he didn't want money, just someone to get Sanders for them. Eventually the members who felt that everyone has a right to be heard, "in the spirit of Rockwell," as Dalton says. Seidman made the decision, saying "I hope this won't be a Bay of Pigs" as Dalton took over the club in the middle of the year.

Dalton backed him up, but he admitted later, "We really knew nothing about MRA. We were pretty much opposed to it, but we didn't want to make a fuss about it." Dalton also claimed that Heikki had told him that the Young Republicans had agreed to sponsor the Sing-Out, and YD members knew at the time that no such decision was made. The Young Dems said they would not sponsor MRA without the YR's in on it too. Dalton laid down more stipulations, about publicity and about songs. MRA was not to say that the YD's "invited" them to Harvard. He felt that Heikki would turn the Dems down with all the strings attached, but he didn't.

There is another unsual part of the story. When Heikki first came to ask for money from the YD's, Dalton said. "We completely embarrassed him by asking loaded questions and interrupting frequently. Many people felt very bad about treating him that way, and that may have affected our final decision." So Heikki got his group into Harvard and many Young Dems executives regretted it, especially after the show.

The Young Republicans had a far simpler line. Jay B. Stephens '68, YR president, said right away that he believes everyone should be able to express an opinion. "They (MRA) were providing an opinion that had a right to be heard on the campus. We don't believe in screening an organization to see if they are all right," he said. "Certainly sponsoring does not mean endorsing." He also blasted the YD's for being so reluctant about the whole thing. "I regret aspects of the Harvard community that don't give an open mind to exposing a point of view. It seems the ones who profess to be the most libertarian are not when it comes to matters that affect them directly," he said.

Mary Belle Feltenstein '69, president of the International Relations Council, also admitted that she knew very little about MRA. She went along with Young Dems when she found that they were sponsoring the Sing-Out and ran into some trouble on her own executive board. Like Dalton, she seems to regret having sponsored the group.

She and Dalton and Stephens may regret things a lot more in a few weeks if MRA usse its normal publicity techniques. Pace, the MRA magazine, and press releases all over the country may read: "The Harvard Young Democrats, Young Republicans, and International Relations Council invited Sing-Out to their campus. Harlon Dalton, YD president called it ..."

(Next: The Sing-Out Kids--their hang-ups, motivations, and draft deferments.)