A Disgrace

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

What occurred on Friday night in Sanders Theatre was a disgrace to Harvard University, a damaging blow to the peace movement and a warning to men of conscience. The basic right of freedom of expression was denied to men who had come here to justify the Administration's policy in Indochina. Whether that policy is defensible is open to grave question; their privilege to try is not.

Though insanity and confuse? on reign in Southeast Asia, is that an similar (??) at home? Though atrocities (??) in the name of freedom (??) for an abandonment (??) Though shouting and (??) ing, will they affect the (??)war machine? The tactics employed at Sanders Theatre were immature and self-defeating. They certainly did not hurt the speakers, who will return to their embassy offices with a renewed sense of righteousness. The real victim was the cause of peace, as another wound was inflicted on an already suffering dove.

I have little admiration for the Harvard Administration or its sheriff, Archibald Cox. But when Cox fought back tears to continually plead, "I beg of you to let the speakers be heard," he commanded my empathy and respect. When rational discourse and reasoned argument are abandoned for obscene rhetoric and frenzied screaming, the time has come not to reassess national but personal priorities, and determine what we are learning and living and fighting for.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

As Curtis Bok said long ago, "In the whole history of law and order, the longest step forward was taken by primitive men when, as if by common consent, the tribe sat down in a circle and allowed one man to speak at a time." The current insane abandonment of plain good manners calls for the tribe to make firm and quiet ejection of our disrupters.