A DESPERATE GOVERNMENT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Were the recent indictments of Spock, Coffin, et al part of a coolly calculated policy? Or an act of desperation? Or both? Let me suggest a context which may explain why the government chose this time to prosecute some articulate and famous spokesman from the draft resistance movement.

The recent indictments are an escalation but by no means the first attack. Men who refused induction have been swiftly prosecuted and sent to prison. Moreover in many cities the most active young people in the anti-war movement have been singled out for special attention by the local police.

Constant trips to court, finding lawyers, raising money for legal defense and operating in a climate of general insecurity are real tests for any movement group. Worst of all, police harassment is rarely dramatic and usually does not lend itself to raising basic issues to the public at large. Police harassment and prosecution of draft refusers operates very quietly and can be very effective at isolating and demoralizing movement groups.

But if this is so, why then the escalation? The answer is, I think, that the tried and proven methods take time, and time is running out. Contact with young men ranging from those who come to the Boston Draft Resistance Office to those we talk to on the way to the induction center has convinced me that few enter the army willingly or without deep misgivings. This was not the case a year ago. Stories from returning service-men describe morale problems which approach general paralysis. The draft resistance movement has made a small but important contribution to this new opposition to the war.

Finding time running out the government now seeks a dramatic confrontation to prove that even famous people involved in draft resistance are not immune from prosecution. The fundamental purpose of this attack is not to put Spock, Coffin, et al away, to make martyrs of them, but to intimidate into inaction those thousands of others whose daily activities now give life to the movement, those without whom Spock and Coffin, for all their courage, would be isolated and ineffective. A week ago no one could have predicted the outcome. Today it is clear that the government has failed. Moreover people under attack all over the country can now deal with local prosecution as part of a national struggle around issues which are important to most Americans.

The recent indictments were both coolly calculated, and an act of desperation. They have failed. John Maher '60