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The latest issue of the Guardian avoids the extremes both of concentrating too much upon wartime questions and of ignoring them altogether. Two of the articles are concerned directly with the war; the other three are discussions of problems which were present before the war began and will be even more pressing when it is concluded.
By far the most challenging are the contributions of Father Smyth of the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth and of an anonymous senior who writes under the pseudonym of Clark Hamilton '43. After a long and somewhat tedious statement of early Christian dogma, Father Smyth concludes that Christianity is in essence a collectivist faith, that it must concern itself with the evils of this world, and that the only Christian solution of those ills is therefore a collectivist one. This article is more Leftist in tone than even the famed Malvern Conference, and demonstrates that the Church both at home and abroad can be more than a defender of the status quo. "Clark Hamilton's" composition, "We Will Have Dictatorship," points down the same collectivist path but winds up at a wholly different destination, for society here is described as hurtling headlong toward the Right. The author postulates an intense economic depression after the war, the resultant final collapse of capitalism, and a great concentration of power in the hands of the President. He then dilutes this bitter pill by admitting that there will still be an elective process and there need be no brutality involved. Thus the Left and Right are balanced in eleven pages, but the honors go to the Left.
The other articles perform the Guardian's usual feat of clarifying the issues without bringing the solution any nearer. Of the two undergraduate authors, Jerry Brown, '44, has done the better job. His "Mcdicine for the Masses" is a clear and orderly exposition of the problems and definitions involved, but the conclusion cannot be termed either novel or startling. Richard Weinberg's "Paying for the War" contributes little. The leading article of the issue, General Arnold's three- and-one-half page dissertation on "The College Man in Aviation," is a hodge-podge of personal reminiscences, a muddy description of life in the Infantry, and a call to join the Air Corps. It has more facts but less appeal than a good recruiting poster.
As the first issue of a new Board, this Guardian provides a range of subject matter which it will be hard to equal and a standard of presentation which it will be easy to exceed.
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