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shared humanity
Dogged, by Fate
yll
ferror in Greece
Lansing, Mich
.DEARSIRS: After a year of mditary rule in Greece the
junta has sncceeded ~n alienating theproud Greek people
by depriving them of such rights as freedom of speech,
assembly and due process of law Such oppression has resulted in growing unrest and recently accelerated nnderground reqistance, notably in Salonika. and Patras (The
New Y m k Tluws, Apr. 19) . . . .
It appears onlyprudent
thatthe
nations of thefree
world step up thelr efforts to restole a true democratic
order in Greece. The large-scale terrorandintimidat~on
. . . imposed on the Greek people seems hardly the makings
of the type of stability compatlble with the
long-range
interests of the Western bloc.
John Kinney
..-
. -
. .
legal absusxIfty
New Yo1.k C i / y
DEARSIRS:On Monday, May 27, the Supreme Court held
that Congress could constitutionally make it a crime for one
lo burn his draft card, whatever the reason fol such action.
The result of thls holding is that a young man will now
spend six years in jail
Behind all the verbiage and legal niceties, behind all the
issue making and word playing, behind the distinctions between speech and action upon which freedom i s made to
turn, does anybody, including the lawyers and the judges,
realize that essentially what we are doing i s putting, someone in jail for six years for burning a worthless piece of
This
paper?
is absurd.
Stephen Gillels
splenetic
Reno, Nev.
DEARSms: I must protest RichardEberhartslevjew
of
Conrad Aikens Tker [Thumb-Sucking, The Nation, Apr.
I]. I have reservations about the poem myself. (And stdl
greatel ones about the pertinence or fitness of the illustratlons ) I feel that Mr Aiken was undertaking the impossible, and that some less direct and abstract approach might
have come closer to success.
But Mr. Aiken knew, I am sure, that he was undertaking
the impossible, and knew also, I am even more certain, the
dangers of his method. The undertakmg was an act of high
poet~c courage, and emotjonally, to my mind (and how
else could it work?), it dld succeed to a remarkable degree.
To discard It as Thumb-sucking is splenetic (I dont
h o w why)andsub-critical,
Walrer Van Tilburg Clark
778
Long ago, the American Presidency became a dangerous office. No one attacked the persons of our first fifteen
Presidents? but from Lincoln on four have died by the assassins bullet and three others-Theodore
Roosevelt,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman-have been
shot at. In the past few years, killings at a lower political
level have been numerous; witness the martyrs of the civil
rights cause, with Martin Luther King, Jr., the latest victim and the greatest loss from the standpoint of a nonviolent solution to the race problem. And now, Robert F.
Kennedy, the most senseless killing of them all. It is tragic
for the victim;tragic for the Kennedy family, so blessed
withability and wealth, sodogged by fate; tragic for a
country which must seem -to the world as lethal for all who
aspire to give it leadership as is the Congo or Haiti. TWO
hours after Senator Kennedy was shot, the British Broadcasting Corporation offered its listeners a prayer: We
pray for the Americanpeople
that theymaycometo
their senses.
I
In essence, the single point in RFKs campaign-as i n ,
that of Eugene McCarthy-was that America must come
to its senses. And in that lies a tragedy that goes deeper
than the bullet. It involves the whole situation of the Kennedy clan, of which only one son of Joseph P. and Rose
Kennedy now survives. Robert alwayslived
under the
shadow of liis brother, and much of the acclaim which
greeted him whereverhe went, and .a large part of the votes
which would hive been cast for him, were an inheritance
from the -late President.- Robert- never stood entirely -OR.
his own feet, never entirely freed his own aliundant talent
from the memory of what John F, Kennedy accomplished
andmighthaveaccomplished
had he beensp!ared. And
now, in grim turn, we shalt never know what Robert might
haveaccomplished.
This was not merely Roberts personal problem; it concerned his relations to the Democratic ParLy and to the
country as a whole. JFK was, after all, responsible for
Johnson, whom he chose for purely political reasons and
without whom he would probably have lost in 1960. Thus
the policyagainstwhich Robert rebelled-and, however
long he delayed, he did rebel-was one whidh he and his
brother hadput in motion. Rusk, McNamara, Taylor,
Lodge and other outstanding hawks, active or acquiescent,
were initially Kennedy appointees. It was Kennedy who,
in one way or anotheT,gave Johnson the opportunity to
involve the United States in la great war on the hainland
of Asia and thus by necessity to ignore all the problems,
domestic and oreign, that today beset the most powerful
of nations, And it was this whole mindless, cruel drift that
Robert Kennedy was determined to stop. He was moved
by impulses of the most responsible patriotism but he was
also moved by family: the Kennedys are proud, He would
secure his brothers good name by defying, and if possible
defeating, the evil consequences that had flowed from his
brothers brutally interrupted administration. And now a
bullet has put a stop to that.
THE N A n o N I J z t n e
27. 1968
&ForGod%
. If any example were needed of the corrupting monotone
of voice and thought that Robert Kennedy was intent upon
replacing, it was provided by Lyndon Johnsons television
appearance on the night when the Senlator was dying. He
opened his brief talk with a perfunctoq and platitudinous
THE NATION/JLfne 17,1968
EDITORIALS
77s
ARTICLES
782 Walter Reuther Breaks His CIiains
Robert G . Sherril2
Leslie R . Colitt
BOOKS
E . J . Widick
Clark Knowlton
THE ARTS
797 Good-by,Cmbusier
798 The Sedenltaries (poem)
799 Passengers Will Please
Refrain
800 Book Marks
801 Theatre
802 Music
SO2 Rumor (poem)
805 Films
Nathan Silver
Ansebrn Hollo
George Zabriskie
Sara Blackburn
Niclzolas Biei
Benjamin Boretz
Lawrence Locke
Robert Hatch
Frank W . Lewis
Publieher
Associate Publisher
GIFFORD PRILLLPS
Editor
Associate Editor
Executive Editor
LiteraryEtlitor
CARET McWILLlAMS
ROBERT HATCH
PHIL KERBV
HELEN Y G L E S W
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i779j
expression of shock,dismay and sympathy for the Kennedys. On this score he is not to be much criticized. It is
difficult for a public man to utter convincing words of condolence, and Johnsons task was the more difficult beoause
he could not pretend to any love for the man.
But we have been told ad nauseam that LBJ, however
ignorant his opinions and ill-considered his actions, truly
loves his country. So he went before the country on that
tragic, perilous night, and what did he say? He called for
an end to violence in the streets and appointed a commission to investigate the causes thereof, Did he mention
Vietnam, or poverty, or life in the ghetto, or the frustrated
aspirations of every minority group in America? Did he,
refer to the waste of our resources, the contamination of
our environment, the arrogance of our colossal stanceon
this earth? He cited none of these things: My fellow citizens, we cannot, we miist not, tolerate the sway of violent
men among us, Was there nobody in his retinue to tell
him that he indicted himself?
He appointed a commission to acquaint him with the
causes of violence. If it were sincere, what could such a
commission tell him except truths about his ownAllministration so bitter that he has long since proved himself unable or unwilling to accept them? But this commission will
not attempt to drive home any such hard facts: it is itself
made up ovenvhelmingly of men who have supported his
policy in Vietnam, men who believe that we can kill without scruple in Southeast Asia and by moral unction and
poIice implacability suppress the consequences at home.
NO President who had read with. seeing eyes the report of
the Kerner Commission could possibly require the services
of another such body, let alone that of the Milton Eisenhower Commission.
But Johnson does not see; his eyesare turned inward to
a reality of his own invention, and he responds to events
with programed jerks thatare faithfully echoed in the
articulated gestures of his platform delivery. That is what
Robert Kennedywasfighting,
and Eugene McCarthy is
fighting. SO, to borrow one of the Presidents favorite
apostrophes, let us, for Gods sake, put an end toit.
And let US remember that Humphrey is its heir and Nixon
its only too loyal opposition.
Den%Underrate Nippon
A s late as the interval between the twoWorldWars,
the idea prevailed in the United States that the Japanese
were mere copyists in engineering andthe physical sciences. This was an exaggeration, compounded of race
prejudice and the tensions that existedbetween the two
countries. Actually,even before the turn of the century
Japan had become a great military and industrial power,!
based, as under modern conditions it had to be, on a competent scientific and technological work force.
After World War 11, Japan recovered rapidly from defeatand pushed ahead in electronics, shipbuilding and
other fields, including railroads. I n t h e h s t area, advances
were especially noteworthy: while, with few exceptions,
U.S. carriers were jettisoning their passenger service, the
Japanese were improving theirs and attracting customers.
780
17.196+
781