To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The CRIMSON on Saturday broke one of the oldest and strongest traditions of the University by printing an account of a lecture given in academic privacy. This lecture, given by Professor Aron on Algeria, was arranged as part of the work of Government 195, and its strictly academic character was explained to those who attended. Your reporter evidently came late, for I cannot believe that his offense was intentional. Unfortunately his story, though in itself a better-than-average newspaper account of a lecture, is a demonstration of the importance of the rule against such reporting.

The headline on this story (and to a much smaller degree the story itself) describes Professor Aron as critical of De Gaulle and the FLN. This headline might lead some of your readers to suppose that Professor Aron used a Harvard platform to press the personal political views which he has put forth in France as a French citizen. In fact he did nothing of the sort; on the contrary he gave particular attention to the task of presenting clearly the attitudes of Frenchmen and Algerians with whom he himself does not agree.

Few kinds of discourse are more testing than the discussion of a deeply distressing issue in the life of one's own country before a foreign audience; you cannot speak at you would at home; you have a responsibility to those of your countrymen who are not present. Professor Aron's sensitive understanding of this responsibility made his lecture a model of honor, and it was equally honorable in its treatment of those in arms against France. It was "critical" only in the sense that a first-rate political analyst gave critical attention to the central elements of the problem under study. The lecture was remarkable for the generosity and sympathy of Professor Aron's discussion of the principal conflicting forces. These are things that it is not at all easy to report well, and so I hope our rules will not soon be broken again. McGeorge Bundy,   Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.