Conant Says U.S. Should Enter War Now; Council Urges Degrees For Senior Draftees

Immediate American entry into the war as an active belligerent was urged by President Conant in a radio address over a national hook-up yesterday afternoon.

Last fall Harvard's President said that America should enter the war when military strategy demanded it. Yesterday he said, "I shall urge that considering only the best interests of a free United States the hour for action is at hand... In my opinion, strategy demands we fight tomorrow, honor and self interest that we fight before the British Isles are lost."

In examining the alternatives which confront the nation, the President declared a negotiated peace between England and Germany an impossibility; said that America must and will fight the Axis sooner or later; and predicted that the fight can be won when the United States and Britain achieve both air and naval superiority."

A negotiated peace, President Conant stated, is unthinkable "because the people of Great Britain know that such a peace would mean the eventual enslavement of every man, woman and child upon their island."

Calling the theory that England will shortly be defeated by invasion "a black council of despair," Conant suggested that when invasion of Great Britain is imminent or actually under way, the United States would "finally in a last desperate effort to defend the cause of freedom join our forces with the British fleet."

Invasion Means Fighting Here

"A successful invasion of Great Britain in my opinion would not terminate the struggle, but rather remove the action to our shores," he added.

"Unless the United States is prepared to shape its philosophy to that of the totalitarian states through a pact of mutual understanding, we shall eventually be forced to defend our freedom by acts of war."

The sooner we enter the war, the sooner will victory be achieved, President Conant stated. When American plane production gives the British quantitative as well qualitative air superiority, victory will be near. "Without control of the seas, and helpless in the air, Germanw will face defeat . . . . If we fight now, we may greatly shorten the trials through which we as a nation shall have to pass."

Confidently asserting that Americans need not lose freedom and democracy in war, President Conant said that a nation which "has declared as its ideal a democratic republic which knows no class distinction" is "a social order well worth defending."