War & Peace

At Miami University in Oxford, Ohio last week 1.500 members of the Student Christian Associations (affiliated college chapters of the Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A., etc.) plumped unequivocally for peace. At University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. National Student Federation delegates, representing student councils in 150 U. S. colleges, plumped for peace and preparedness. But the main fireworks in undergraduate preoccupation with war and peace boomed last week at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N. Y.. where convened the American Student Union.

The A. S. U. is made up of youthful communists (Leninists, Trotskyites, and Lovestonites), Socialists, Laborites, Roosevelt liberals and a smattering of unclassified pacifists. Two years ago their convention was rebuffed at the doors of Ohio State University, which revoked its invitation when American Legionnaires objected. But A. S. U. had in the interim helped mobilize 500.000 students in a peace demonstration last spring and last week Yassar College was glad to greet its 652 delegates and visitors.

The delegates heard messages from President Roosevelt. John L. Lewis, and Minnesota's Governor Elmer A. Benson, got an official welcome from Vassar's tall, tolerant Henry Noble MacCracken. They were bedded in Main Hall, the men in one wing, girls in another. In the corridors between the two wings the college had prudently stationed watchmen. Among the delegates were Economist Stuart Chase's son Robert (Harvard). Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo's niece Nancy (Swarthmore), Law Professor Felix Frankfurter's niece Ruth (Barnard), famed Lawyer Samuel Untermyer's grandson Frank (Cornell). Absent were A. S. U.'s executive committee members George Watt and Paul MacEachron, fighting with the Loyalists in Spain. Several A. S. U. members have been killed in the Spanish War.

Not only war in Spain but war in China weighed heavily on the minds of the delegates. The A. S. U. had for two years subscribed to the Oxford pledge not to fight in any war, denounced all policies that might lead to war. But last week war had become a less academic question and the delegates were confronted with a new peace plan-- ''collective security." This program, advanced by President Roosevelt in his Chicago "quarantine" speech, implies embargoes and other sanctions against aggressor nations. Shouting that government embargoes (not the same as private boycotts) were the surest road to war, the Socialists, Trotskyites, Lovestonites and peace-at-any-price pacifists rallied behind the Oxford oath. To the support of "collective security" sprang the Communists and Roosevelt liberals, who declared only "positive action" by the U. S. could avert war. But all could agree on a personal boycott of Japan, and in the midst of the wrangle the delegates interrupted their recriminations, marched out on the snow-covered campus, lit matches to a pile of boxes. One girl kicked off her shoes, stripped the silk stockings off her legs and, standing bare-foot in the snow, hurled the stockings into the fire. Other silk-clad girls followed suit, snatched the silk ties from male delegates. When all the silk in sight had disappeared, they raced into the dormitories, returned with other armloads of students' underthings. Around the fire danced the delegates chanting: Make lisle the style, wear lisle for a while. If you wear cotton, Japan gets nottin'.

Returning to debate by a vote of four-to-one the convention routed the peasce-at-any-price advocates, revoked its support of the Oxford oath, adopted a belligerent "collective security" program. Thereupon all A. S. U.'s young delegates, having enjoyed themselves hugely marched out of Vassar singing Solidarity Forever.

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