Education: Switch

U.S. undergraduates have changed their minds about war. This fact became clear this fall as soon as they had unpacked their trunks and begun to write editorials for their college papers.

Last year Cornell students sent a dummy tank to the White House with the inscription: “Dear President Roosevelt—keep America out of war.” The Harvard Crimson said: “[We are] frankly determined to have peace at any price.” The Crimson’s President Spencer Klaw and the Yale Daily News’s Kingman Brewster Jr. declared: “Intervention seems to us a fantastic moral proposition.” Campuses throughout the land echoed their theme.

Although observers unfamiliar with the impulsive undergraduate mind were startled, wise heads like Yale’s President Charles Seymour remained serene. His estimate of undergraduate feelings: “Convince us that war is the best means of serving our American ideals and we will follow you anywhere.”

Apparently convinced—by what, no man knew—collegians last week for the most part were more interventionist than their elders. Most spectacular switch was by students in the arch-isolationist Big Three.

Princeton. Eighty-two per cent of the freshman class were willing to fight overseas (compared to 33% a year ago) ; 89% said it was more important to beat Hitler than stay out of war; 36% wanted to fight right away. Said the Princetonian (100% isolationist a year ago): “We . . . believe that the valid debate is over, that isolationists in large measure now amount to merely obstructionists. . . . We urge these people to examine their own consciences, to ask themselves as democratic citizens if it were not better for democracy that they yield as we have yielded.”

Yale. Last year’s arch-isolationist News is still isolationist under holdover Chairman William Ford (who succeeded Kingman Brewster). But next January the News will switch; its next chairman will be Sterling Tomkins Jr., ardent interventionist.

Harvard. Said the new editors of the once-isolationist Crimson last week: “Isolationists like Chicago’s Hutchins hold .. . that America is not mentally mature enough to make entry in the War worth the cost—that we will make our high-flown pledges meaningless by again torpedoing the peace conference. . . . The best answers to these cynics are the Roosevelt-Churchill Atlantic Charter . . . and the meeting next month in Washington of Vice President Wallace with Sir Leith-Ross which will give substance to that pledge.”

University of Wisconsin. The Cardinal, mildly interventionist last year, last fortnight demanded repeal of the Neutrality Act.

University of Kansas. The Kansan about-faced from isolationism to interventionism.

University of Iowa. Said the lowan in September 1940: “Let us not . . . permit ourselves to be led . . . into the belief that war is inevitable for the United States. It isn’t inevitable. . . . We must at any cost avoid war.” In September 1941: “We agree with Mr. Roosevelt; this is the defense of the Americas. . . . And if it draws us into war upon the seas, then war it shall be.”

University of Chicago. The Maroon, taking issue with President Robert Maynard Hutchins, was emphatically interventionist last year, still is.

University of Missouri. Said the Student last May: “We feel that 16 years of schooling have prepared us for something more than going to war. . . .” Last week Missouri students held a “War Dance” and the Student’s new Editor Harlan Byrne, who comes from General John J. Pershing’s home town, Laclede. Mo., declared: “We must tip our weight to the British side of the battle scales. Perhaps this will mean war participation.”

University of Minnesota. Said the Daily last February: “The United States . . . can be an effective democracy only if it can remain at peace.” Said the Daily’s new Editor Lowell Frederick Jones, a draftee, last week: “If I were convinced that Britain would be licked … I’d be in favor of another A.E.F.”

Northwestern. Last week the Northwestern’s editorial board, mostly pacifist and isolationist last year, met to bring its policy up to date. The vote: for isolation —1; for intervention—26.

Stanford. Mildly isolationist last year, the Daily last week blasted Alumnus Herbert Hoover’s faculty poll on foreign policy (see below), declared: “We have picked our side of the fence. We think the menace can best be eradicated by following the policies of the present Administration.”

Cornell. This week the Sun declared: “When shall we declare war? . . . We should stand ready to accept the advice of the President and his small circle of advisers as to the hour in which we must cast off the last vestiges of wishful isolationism.”