ANOTHER CROSSROADS

The Harvard Student Union is due to meet the most crucial crisis in its brief career this afternoon at Phillips Brooks House. There the membership will be called upon to endorse another fanatical onslaught on the Union's basic principles of non-partisanship. This time the enticing vision of a Farmer-Labor Party is to be the incentive for a departure from the liberals' previously announced ideals.

The occasion for the controversy in Student Union ranks is the instruction of delegates from the local chapter to the national convention of the American Student Union in Chicago. There the issue of definite affiliation with a radical political party will arise, and Harvard's radicals are eager to rope the local organization in on their side. By succumbing to their wiles, the Student Union will automatically cease to exist as a living force in the University.

There is no identity of interest between the students of America and the tiny group of disgruntled and ambitious politicians who comprise the Farmer-Labor Party. Communists alone of political dissenters know what they want, aside from political jobs. Certainly the Farmer-Laborite demands are a far cry from the principles of peace and constitutional liberties for which the Student Union professes to stand.

To achieve its avowed objectives the Student Union needs and should strive for power. Bargaining power in the usual sense is one aspect of this need; the respect and admiration of non-member students is another. By allying themselves with any narrow group possessing strictly limited aims and views, Union members would completely nullify any chance of attaining that power. By steering clear of all entanglements, the Union can prove its level-headedness and win ultimate and universal support for future liberal work.