PETITIONS & PRANKS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The nearly nation-wide fuss made around the "cross-burning" in the Harvard Yard is a most amazing fact to someone born in a country where racial discrimination has never been a major issue.

It is an amazing fact, indeed, much more disturbing, per se, than the "cross-burning" itself. The latter incident, as it turns out was nothing but a practical joke, although of a very poor taste. It seems that the best warning or punishment against that kind of prank should have been the sort of spanking that parents would give to children caught playing with matches near a barrel of gun powder, i.e., a good old spanking, moral if not physical. In the end, that what the boys got . . .

Here, at the Business School, one of the best teachings we receive is that it is unsound and even dangerous to jump to conclusion before having established a specific ground upon which to stand.

This is certainly not what was done in the present case. That a Boston Newspaper published a sensational article about it is not the most surprising of all. It is common practice that newspapers and their reporters ever be on the lookout for sensationalism. In our days, big juicy headlines have too often become, more than the quality of the information itself, the usual means to increase sales . . .

But, first of all, the news had to reach the newspaper, News travels fast from lips, to ears, one says. In the present case, though it is doubtful, for until the publication of that article, there were many persons, whose lives evolve mainly around the Yard, who had not heard the first word of it. Therefore, it might not be too surprising if the initial "viciousness" in the whole deal had been in the transmission of the so-called news to where it, would hurt the most by being made into a public issue.

Should this not be the case, the only other plausible explanations, then, for the attitude of the ones who broke the news, are either childishness and irresponsibility or the fanaticism of a zealot. Both can be as dangerous, if not more, than the first alternative.

As to the "petition" circulated by the Liberal Union and the Society for Minority Rights . . . it is at best a meaningless shot in the dark. Again, the motivations behind it may be of many sorts, and it would be futile to comment upon the various possibilities. To me, it looks like an uncalled for attempt to obtain Publicity. Very poor taste, indeed, as poor as the prank which originated it.

Morally and psychologically, a petition has but a disputable value. Europe, where I was born, is perhaps dying because too many dreamers, fools, cowards, or criminals have originated and signed petitions without first giving a good healthy look at what real issues were at stake.

Among those who will have signed that last petition, there will be the ones who got all excited about it and "strongly felt that that was it." There will some who shall never know why they did it and others, finally, who did not dare to do like anyone else. It is even possible that some of them would not, in the depth of their heart, mind a little bit of racial discrimination.

What does it prove then, save that any active and loud-spoken individual or group will always find enough beings to make a troop which will follow blindly for various motives?

By its character, a petition is somewhat of a plebiscite since it restricts the individual's freedom of opinion. The late Adolph Hitler, in the first-half of his best-seller "Mein Kampf," explained at length how to win a plebiscite. His psychology of the masses, although it is at times very accurate, does not correspond in the least to our ideals of democracy.

Personal experience comes from years of a war duty which placed me often, in the fight against the totalitarians of those days, in close contact with the men who today lure, mislead and enslave--through petitions, manifests and "coups," in a calculated and skillful progressions--the millions of human beings who too easily forget that God created them as individuals, make me look with contempt upon that kind of propaganda.

On the other hand, in a democracy as basic as is the United States, one may wonder what are the achievements of groups which try to establish at first that they are "the" ones who know how to be liberal or how to protect the rights of minorities, yet behave themselves just the other way around. For in the end, their mere attitude implies apparently that all the others "are not so good after all." This feeling, meant too often to hide a pathological inferiority complex, even more often leads to sheer arrogance which is unbearable and nullifies whatever "good-will" might be within the motivation.

After all, the very recognition that minorities exist is but the first step towards the acceptance of the concept that some individuals are inferior. This is an insult, per se, to the recognized and intrinsic value of the individual.

To teach everyone that before his own rights he has, as a human being, equal moral duties toward the community to which he belongs is a much better way to get rid of all narrow prejudices and shameful discriminations. This is, I believe, what American Schools and Universities are supposedly doing today.

Such puerile and hysterical reactions and moves as those occasioned by the stupid "cross-buring" incident, beside whatever use could be made of them by a skillful communist propaganda on the go to get us at any price, can only be very harmful to the efforts of men who are, all over this country doing their best to make us "better men in a better world." As such, it is nothing that any American, either by birth or by choice, should feel very proud of. Henry J. Maubert   Harvard Business School