Harvard, Radcliffe Student Leaders Sign Letter To Protest Viet War

Two Harvard students were among student leaders from 100 U.S. colleges who sent a letter to President Johnson last week protesting the war in Vietnam.

Gregory B. Craig '67, chairman of the Harvard Undergraduate Council, and Susanne J. Wilson '67, president of the Radcliffe Government Association, joined student body presidents and editors in charging that there is a "wide disparity between American statements about Vietnam and American actions there."

The letter pointed out that "a significant and growing number of our contemporaries are deeply troubled about the posture of their Government in Vietnam ... there are many who are deeply troubled for every one who has been outspoken in dissent."

"There is increasing confusion about both our basic purpose and our tactics," the letter added, "and there is increasing fear that the course now being pursued may lead us irrevocably into a major land war in Asia--a war which many feel could not be won without recourse to nuclear weapons, if then."

The letter offered no specific policy recommendations besides a suggestion that the New Year's truce, which ended early this week, be extended indefinitely.

The students also attacked the present Selective Service law as "unfair." They argued that there is a drift, among students, "from confusion toward disaffection" about the war.

"Unless this conflict can be eased," the letter stated, "the United States will find some of her most loyal and courageous young people choosing to go to jail rather than to bear the country's arms, while countless of others condone or even utilize techniques for evading their legal obligations."

The idea for writing the letter grew out of a debate at the annual congress of the National Student Association last summer at the University of Illinois. First drafted in September, the letter was not sent during the fall so that it would not seem "an election gimmick."

Representatives from five Ivy League colleges, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Yale signed the letter. All participants specified, however, that they were acting as individuals, not on behalf of their institutions.