STUDENTS MARKED BY AXIS SAYS GREW

(Reprinted from the Crimson, October 7, 1942)

Former Ambassador to Japan; President of the Harvard Alumni Association; outstanding career-diplomat; under Secretary of State, of State, 1924-1927; acting chief of the Division of Western European Affairs 1918; prominently, connected with the 1919 peace treaty.

In peaceful times it would be my task to tell you of the pleasant colleges years ahead of you and to forecast for you lives of intelligence, comfort, and gracious living. Today that sort of message would be an absurdity. You are not Harvard men merely by the agreeable application of an established usage. You--and all the other young men in America of your age--were forced to a sudden maturity by the tragedy of December 7, 1941.

It is not just the American government whom these enemies must break and overcome for fulfillment of their desire to win for their kind of New Order. It is the American people. It is particularly you. You are young. You are healthier, tougher, more resilient than your elders. You must be broken, shamed, enslaved or killed if the Axis is to win.

To Axis eyes, you are enemies because you are men, and even more enemies because you are young. So far as the Gestapo, the OVRA, and the Japanese Army Special Service Section are concerned, you have signed your death warrants by coming to Harvard.

The only person who can save you from the ruin planned in Tokyo and Berlin is yourself. You are going to fight for your right to grow up, to survive, to live well and think honestly.

National morale, for you men at Harvard, is not something you should study in newspapers or polls. It is something you can find in yourselves. If, like some young men of the stricken nations, you look to a false security--if you count on an easy victory--if you think of doing something but not too much for the war--you may face the saddest of all fates: you may die, but die in vain, because you do not die soon or well enough.

I am sorry that I cannot give each of you advice, and that I cannot relieve you of the responsibilities which war has thrust upon you. No one can do that. Whatever you do, wherever you go, you will be persons worthy of your own respect if you remember that this war concerns you. It is you who must fight it.

Judgement of your own life has been put into your hands. War will not spare you. You will find, as young men in other wars have found, that the most important things are what you do and what you make of yourselves.