U.S. Watches Young People’s Revolt

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 19

U.S. Watches Young People’s Revolt

[From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent] WASHINGTON, November 1. It is becoming difficult to pick up a newspaper or magazine that is not discussing or investigating the current revolt of youth against events in Vietnam.

The phenomenon bothers everybody and that surely must include the occupant of the White House. It bothers this city, it bothers citizens everywhere and in particular it bothers the Americans who are fighting in Vietnam.- Nobody seems to understand the real reasons for the revolt, not even those who are doing the protesting against this unpleasant war. I have seen many of the

protesters on the television screen, and when interviewed they are mostly inarticulate and consequently unconvincing. The general public in the beginning could not quite understand what all the protesting and teach-ins were about and did not get really shocked or bothered until youngsters tried to prevent troop trains reaching troopships on the west coast, and when young men started burning their draft cards in public. People everywhere began to wonder whether the rising generation was a pacifist generation, another form of the isolationism of 30 years ago.

To the extreme Right, of course, these youngsters are all “Commies.” Investigation, however, seems hardly to bear this out: although undoubtedly a handful of Communists are using the protest marches and card-burn-ings for their own purposes. This has not been proved

satisfactorily but common sense says that if the Communists did not fish in these muddied waters they would be false to themselves, their beliefs and purposes. The protestors have been dubbed a bunch of draft dodgers but that does not seem to hold water.

That they want to dodge the draft which might put them in Vietnam is a certainty but there is some evidence that they would not refuse to fight for their country in some other war. If they just wanted to dodge any draft there are a dozen ways of doing it. The card-burners are trying to indicate that they have real reasons for wanting to avoid military service in South-east Asia. There is in existence an organisation called Students for a Democratic Society, which has chapters on university campuses from the east to west coasts. Members are in revolt about some-

thing though it is not clear what.

The president of the organisation is a man of 30 who felt sufficiently strong about his beliefs and the objects of the S.D.S. to leave a job paying 12.000 dollars a year to head the organisation. He is quoted by the magazine “Newsweek” as saying: “What’s happening are gross injustices in the American political system that have .been allowed to become institutionalised. We have to put faith back with the people, let them decide, let them participate.” The noise of the meetings and protest marches reached such a point that a glance at the newspapers gave the impression that the protests were in the majority, and this evoked the counter demonstrations by young people who felt that the Vietnam war had to be fought until a conference table showed up and who believed that the aims of their Government were good. They had been convinced

by such speeches as the famous Baltimore speech of the President.

Walter Lippmann, who says the student demonstrations are self-defeating and those youths who burn their draft cards misguided, considers these demonstrations and card-burnings as a “pathetic reminder” of what happens in a free country when debate on great matters of life and death is throttled down and discouraged. People should not forget, he says, that these youths come from a nation which expects to understand what its Government is doing, from a nation not habituated to obedience and the idea that it must listen to its superiors and not talk back. Clearly he is among those who continue to believe that the administration has not said half enough about what it is trying to do in Vietnam and the reasons for the radical changes of Vietnam policies that have taken place in the last year.