Our Citizens of Vision

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In your columns of Monday's CRIMSON was an article on the Buffalo Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement. You termed it a congress of students interested in "pleasing intellectual exercises" and in visionary idealism. As excuses for the American student's lack of interest in political and international affairs, you claimed that the "land is too comfortable" and that no great oppression is taking place. "The issues are too prosaic to merit opposition or support of armed force."

Insomuch as these were only two unofficial delegates from the 3000 odd undergraduates of Harvard at this convention, it might seem that the Harvard student's mind turns rather towards lighter subjects during vacation. But anyone who heard Kirby Page speak on the problems facing the youth of today would not feel that their "political emotions" were all in vain. The facts of overproduction, un-equal distribution of wealth, class enmity, unemployment, and disarmament, are not fully realized by college students. A statement such as Kirby Page made, that if some agreement concerning reparations is not reached within the year, Germany is likely to assume a dictatorship and renounce all her debts, makes one realize that these problems are imminent and not mere subjects to be thrown aside.

The suggestions made at the Convention do not seem entirely visionary. In a poll taken among all the delegates, many of whom had taken military training at their colleges, an overwhelming majority voted against compulsory courses in it. At Cornell, Tech, and elsewhere there is already agitation against it in the student body. The proposal that it be petitioned to appoint a student to the Geneva disarmament committee was made in the hope that the feelings of young men and women might be exposed. If enough pressure is felt from those who are affected, results are bound to come. Some student leader such as Luther Tucker of Yale, who has studied the situation and the facts, would not be as ineffective as one might suppose.

A little more study of the problems of the world under world-known figures such as John R. Mott, Dr. T. Z. Koo, Kirby Page, and others, would make us citizens of more vision, perhaps, but of less ignorance and lack of interest. Daniel B. Dorman '32