. . . AND A MORAL ATROCITY

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Friends have called my attention to the fact that Mr. Richard Hyland cites me in his atrocious "Defense of Terrorism." Readers of the CRIMSON may be interested in knowing how Mr. Hyland knows what I am "fond of saying." He came to see me once, back in the spring of 1968. We had a long talk and he tried to get me to agree, among other things, that the participation of the United States in World War II was a mistake. "But Mr. Highland," I interposed, thinking to appeal to his instinct for survival, "you're a Jew, aren't you? If we hadn't joined the fight against Hitler. you probably wouldn't be alive today. "Oh no, says he, "that was in Europe." His attitude then explains, I think, a great deal about his writing now: the glib, absurd equation of Hitler's factories of death and the war in Vietnam; the facile postmortem advice to the Jews of Auschwitz and Treblinka (they should have fought, he thinks, precisely because it would have made no difference) from someone who writes that the only reason he wouldn't blow up the Center for International Affairs is that he might get caught.

Yet these are only pieces of Mr. Hyland's exercise in personal catharisis and public outrage. I confess that when I first read it. I didn't know whether it was meant to be taken seriously. Was it some kind of hoax? If I wanted to look through the literature and find an example of mindless, gastric-juice romanticism. I couldn't have found a better example. If I quoted it to my class, the students would think I'd made it up. It's the kind of piece-along with the accompanying report on the CFIA-that one is ordinarily inclined to ignore, if only out of consideration for the author. Yet I don't think any of us here at Harvard can afford to ignore this kind of intellectual and moral atrocity in these times. Too much is at stake, and too many are ready to interpret silence as tacit sanction. The effect, if not the aim, of Mr. Hyland's writing is to soften up his readers for other assaults on the minds and freedoms of this community.

Mr. Hyland is nothing less than candid. He spells out the strategy for us. "The Weatherman attack on the CFIA," he writes, "made the subsequent Guided Tour much more palatable." On that occasion, rudeness and insolence toward teachers, contemptuous flouting of the rights of fellow students, disorderly and potentially dangerous behavior-all things that would have been severely and properly punished-suddenly became acceptable. The victims of this abuse found solace in the thought that it could have been worse; and they were joined in this by their colleagues, who found further comfort in the hope or assumption that this kind of thing could not happen to them. (In these matters, the faculty have a great deal to learn from the student militants, who for all their factionalism, have a keener sense of solidarity; hence the universal cry for amnesty and the frequent demand for collective responsibility. We have all the more reason to be grateful to Prof. Stanley Hoffmann for his letter of reproof and indignation.)

So with the CRIMSON: whatever we read now, people will sigh and say, it's not so bad as that Hyland piece; and they will entertain suggestions and swallow lies and toy with fantasies that will soften them up for the next propagandistic outrage. (And no doubt the CRIMSON will tell its readers, as in the Editor's letter of October 7, that the Supplement does not present an "official" view; that there is no "censorship" and "barely any guidance" over the pieces that appear in these pages: and that writers can say what they want there, "free of the sometimes-stifling conventions of the other pages.")

Some of the effects of this preparatory brainwashing are already apparent. A number of persons have remarked to me that they are relieved to see Mr. Hyland make a distinction between property and persons: bomb buildings only after 5, he writes, when the people who work there are more likely to have gone home. Similarly, many students and faculty have comforted themselves with the thought that the Harvard-Radcliffe SDS have condemned the Weatherman assault on the CFIA an act of violence against working people. Yet there is nothing in the morality of Mr. Hyland or the local SDS that assures such thoughtful discrimination in the future. When the time is right-when, to use Mr. Hyland's jargon, a "combination of possibilities and a progressive view of history" make violence against persons useful-we shall have the violence and with it a revised edition of the "Defense of Terrorism." It isn't hard to defend this kind of Schrecklichkelt when the end justifies the means and the only real clue to right or wrong is how your stomach feels. Besides, for those with tender stomachs, there are always evasions, like defining some people as unpersons.