THE DEEP END

Tonight the Student Union and the Teachers Union are presenting two well-known speakers, Andre Malraux, a French novelist, and Louis Fischer of the "Nation" in a review of the Spanish civil war. The acquisition of these men is, without question, an accomplishment. The program shows, at the same time, a regrettable lack of balance, for both are by reputation enthusiastic supporters of the loyalist government.

Presumably the Student Union would like to have as broad and popular a student base as possible --such at least, was the original intent of the founders. To spread that base the organization must preserve a measure of dispassionate presentation of highly controversial subjects. A successful example of this type of discussion was the recent analysis of the seaman's strike by a labor organizer and a shipowner under Union auspices. It was, in a word, a public forum for free discussion.

By and large Harvard men resent being propagandized more than anything else; they demand a two-sided presentation of thorny questions and willingness on the part of purveyors of information to let them make up their own minds. An application of this theory to tonight's affair should have been made. It would not have been difficult to add to the list of speakers a rebel sympathizer who would dwell upon the Fascist solution of the Spanish struggle. It might even have been possible to advance one more step and invite a detached observer whose particular interest centered upon the international complications arising out of the civil war. A program incorporating these three features would leave little to be desired.

It would be the consensus of Americans that the present war represents a conflict between two totalitarian philosophies, either of which sits ill on democrat's stomach. Yet the names of the speakers makes certain that tonight's discussion will be more of a loyalist rally than a forum of debate. Further, the sponsors believe that the charged oratory will facilitate mulcting the audience of its coppers to improve the efficiency of loyalist machine-gunners. The Student Union has thus committed itself and its hearers to a certain set of preconceived ideas, to a "cause" which, however, emotionally satisfying, is hardly enlightening. Unless the Union recaptures its spirit of impartiality it will stray from the road of greatest usefulness and popularity and inevitably lose itself in the narrow, trackless paths of partisanship.