Acu. /W fa O f. &**f*'A>
Eliot B-U
,      Cambridge, *iaes.
lh   October 14, 19*1
Dear lir. Hayter,
After reading your letter of Oct. 2nd addressed
to John urdway and concern*! with the possibility of
discovering oppurtunlties for young men to serve in
England, the group of boys particularly interested
In the idea would lllce to ask a few questions.
First, we would lllce to know where we would be
most useful;  in reconstruction work, in the array, on
the sea, anywhere, or if the case is such, whether we
would be more bother than we are worth.
You mention the need of technical qualifications;
could you elaborate a little further? Host of us are
college students and we would be able perhaps to find
an oppurtunity to actively train ourselves.
The most interested among us so far have teen boys;
however, in the last few weeks a growing number of young
women have become interested and we wondered what ser-
vices they could perform in England. One of them, for ex-
ample, is training to become a nurse and we would like
to know whether these skills would be oust in demand.or
perhaps those of a different nature.
Our group as it stands now is rather amorphous
as might be expected due to the unavoidable uncertainty
of our program. However, in the thoughts of each of us

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perhaps the foremost is the idea of service. V/e have
discovered, that in this country in peace time ***** there
is the need of a "moral equivalent of war"; that the
challenge of facing and resolving a social tension in
an area satisfies the need which young people feel for
giving of themselves to their full extent in a con-
structive cause; we have realized that there are
potentialities in men which a crisis situation will
develop, as in the case of war, and that these should
be given a chance to develop in society at peace; we
realize that if we are ever^have a successful inter-
national community we must first be disposed to live
together with cooperation and selflessness, for other-
wise internationalism is superimposed on a people who
are not ready to accept the new orientation toward
their feiibows and the inevitable result is failure.
We have found these things to be true by sharing in
the life, work, suffering, and triumphs of rural and
urban communities in this country and Mexico. Most of
us have spen$ some time in the development of a work
service for the entire country, both under the Ameri-
can Friends Service Committee, in the Civilian Conser-
vation Corps, and in perhaps the latest development,
Camp -Vllliam James, named for the American philosopher
who first enunciated the principle of the "moral equiv-
alent. These wor*c camps are run on a cooperative basis
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and are composed of young people of different national-
it lea and from all levels of society; they offer one a
chance to try living on a truly democratic basis, to meet
problems of human interrelationship both within and with-
out the camps on an empirical level.
Since war is in progress we must temporarily put
aside the conception of a "moral equivalent" in our
t he real
international approach and deal with thing. Thus
the de*feat of Germany is for us a necessary means to
an end. tfe want to participate in the destructive aspect
of the operation in order that we may be Justified in
sharing in the task of reconstruction; our relationships
will be on a man to man level rather than government to
government.
It may seem foolish to you that we are idealistic
at a time such as this; however we feel that this is the
precise time to be of that frame of mind; and furthermore
we believe that our idealism is practically founded in
the empirical^ world and may be termed idealism merely
because it is a different approach; certainly it is an
essential consideration in the development of a true and
lasting peace. We must plan for the future now in broad
outline, filling in essential detail later according to
a general principle. It is essential that we maintain
a certain objectivity in the matter in order that pre-
judice against Nazi actions and Ideology cause us to be
prejudiced in our dealings with post-war G-ermany. This
war must be fought in order to clean the slate, com-

pletely and finally. Then we shall be ready for a "moral
equivalent" on an international scale.
This beautiful objectivity which we try to maintain
may seem to you a rather difficult position to take when
your family and friends are constantly under fire; perhaps
we would falter under a like situation. Emotions are
tricky things; what we must try to do is to use our emo-
tions as an incentive toward the maintenance of our work-
ing ideal---the brotherhood of man.
This discussion is necessarily subjective to a
certain degree; however we felt it -vise to shift the res-
ponsibility of correspondance in orJar that you would
get a fuller understanding of the group through the
letters which we send. In this case your correspondant
is
sincerely yours,
Norris Tibbetts