COLUMNISTS COMPLAINT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I note the item in a recent issue of the CRIMSON, announcing that David Lively '58, John Butcher '57, and members of the Harvard Fellowship of Reconciliation are circulating petitions demanding that the United States send surplus food to the Chinese Communists, who allegedly have lost crops due to a flood of the Yangtze River.

For your information, I am enclosing a four page mimiograph statement for the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Washington, D.C., the title of which is "Statement of the Central Committee of CPSU and of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of the Fulfillment of the State Plan for Grain Deliveries by the Collective Farms and State Farms of the Soviet Union from the 1954 Harvest."

The statement reveals that as of November 5, 1954, the state and collective farms in the Soviet Union have exceeded the state plan for grain deliveries by many millions of poods (one pood equals 36.113 pounds); for example, "the amounts of grain delivered and sold to the state are greater by 289,000,000 poods than on the same date in 1953." . . . the grain harvest in Siberia was double that of last year . . . . grain production in Altai Territory this year has grown almost four-fold.

The statement further reveals that the state quota has been exceeded by many millions of poods in wheat, rye, cereals, feed crops, corn, potatoes, and vegetables.

Also, according to the tally made by Central Statistical Board of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, live stock available in the country as of October 1, 1954 was greater than on October 1, 1953, in the following amounts: cows by 1,500,000 head, total cattle by 1,900,000 head, pigs by 3,400,000 head.

A complete total attached shows that the state and collective farms exceeded per cent of plan in some instances by as much as 398 per cent.

The statement of the Central Committee of the CPSU concludes, "Socialist agriculture has shown in practice that its advantages over any non-socialist forms of agriculture are so great as to enable it to solve within a brief period of time the problem of satisfying the constantly growing requirements of the countries population for farm products."

Obviously, Messrs, Lively, Butcher and the Fellowship of Reconciliation have apparently been taken in by capitalist and anti-communist propaganda. It is clear from the statement of the Central Committee of the CPSU itself that the people in the Soviet orbit (which includes Red China) are not only well fed, but are enjoying the fruits of a system which they themselves declare to be far superior to that of "decadent Capitalist" production in the United States.

It is clear, therefore, that the Fellowship of Reconciliation is wasting its time circulating petitions for food which is not needed by the Communists. I will suggest that as an alternative, they circulate the same petitions demanding that the surplus foods be circulated to South Viet Nam, where more than 350,000 homeless and hungry refugees, driven from their homes by the well fed Reds, are in dire need of substinence. Herbert A. Philbrick   New York Herald Tribune