But the similarity between the Classes of 1917 and 1941 was not limited to the fact that both went to war, for the First World War also saw a significant amount of anti-war protest.

The central issue during the First World War was military preparedness. In March 1915, the Collegiate Anti-Militarism League was formed and it announced its opposition to all increases in American military strength. A number of students sent a letter to President Wilson in May supporting his isolationist stand, and denouncing blind or pyrotechnic patriotism.

That same spring, the National Security League of Harvard was organized. "We must carefully consider our lamentable lack of preparedness," their statement of purpose said. "Our organization will seek to arouse such public sentiment as will influence the proper authorities to enforce some systematic plan of national defense."

The groups which had so effectively presented the anti-war position in the spring of 1915 were considerably weaker by the fall of the same year as the consensus of student opinion shifted toward the preparedness position. The CRIMSON, which had opposed U.S. preparations for war the previous spring, changed its policy and became one of the leading spokesman for increased American military strength. The Student Council also adopted a resolution supporting increased preparedness and voluntary military training for all students.

To provide some form of voluntary training, the Harvard Regiment was organized. The Regiment, which attracted nation-wide attention, gave its 1200 student members training in military tactics, taught them how to use rifles and expected them to attend one lecture a week in military science. In March, 1916, 52 students organized an aero corps to train Harvard men as aviators to fight with the United States Army in case of war.

During the fall of 1916 and the winter of 1917 the issue had changed from "should the U.S. prepare?", to "how should the U.S. prepare?", and the dispute between the preparers and the pacifists flared up again. It

A number of Harvard students sent a letter to President Wilson in May of 1915 supporting his isolationist stand, and denouncing blind or pyrotechnic patriotism. was at this time that the Senate began to discuss the Chamberlain Bill, calling for universal military service. Many Harvard organizations, including the Student Council and the CRIMSON, supported conscription, but pacifist organizations from several Eastern universities, including Harvard, sent delegations to the Senate committee which was hearing testimony on the Bill. Speaking for the International Polity Club, several Harvard students told the committee that the voluntary system of service had proved adequate and that the government should not use compulsion until it had been proved that it was impossible to obtain soldiers in any other way.

But a University-wide poll, held soon after, refuted the pacifists. In January of 1917, less than three months before the United States entered the war, 72 per cent of the students voted for conscription. The CRIMSON commented: "Those men who have declared both formally and informally that Harvard is against universal training are shown to have spoken with no cause. The views of a University may not be circumscribed by the desires of any partisan of peace, however lofty his ideals or altruistic his hopes."

But the pacifist movement was not completely dead. At the end of January a majority of students at the Divinity school signed a petition which was sent to Congress opposing any form of conscription on the grounds that it was un-Christian, contrary to American ideals, and self-defeating since it bred international misunderstanding and distrust. As war became more imminent, such protests became more unusual, and an increasing number of students at the University entered some form of voluntary military training.

Anti-war protests at Harvard followed essentially the same pattern in the First and Second World Wars. While the United States was still uncommitted and indecisive, students organized and petitioned and argued and protested. But once America became involved the dissension disappeared. The Vietnam war protest at Harvard is unique in the history of the University, not because it exists at all-- for Harvard has a long tradition of anti-war protest--but because it has not voluntarily dissolved itself as soon as the first American bullets were fired, as soon as the first American soldiers were killed