Private Peace-Seekers

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30945, 29 December 1965, Page 11

Private Peace-Seekers

(NZ.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, Dec. 28. A Yale professor, Mr Staughton Lynd, is at present in Hanoi on behalf of a New York publication called “Viet Report” to clarify the peace terms of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, one of the editors of the magazine confirmed tonight.

“Viet Report,” which first appeared in July and is published monthly, claims to be

non-partisan, although it is generally critical of United States Vietnam policy. John McDermott, one of its editors, confirmed a “New York 'limes” report that Professor Lynd left New York for Brussels on December 19, on his way to Hanoi through Prague. The report said that he was accompanied by Thomas Hayden, a founder of a group called Students for a Democratic Society, and Herbert Aptheker, a well-known American Marxist theoretician.

Mr McDermott could not personally confirm that the latter two men were with

Professor Lynd, who is an assistant professor of history at Yale, but he presumed that the report was correct. Messrs Lynd and Hayden were quoted in the published report as haring issued a statement before their departure saying: “We have no assurance that we can add anything to American understanding of the other side’s approach to peace. The recent bombing of Haiphong and the danger that this dreadful war may be further escalated, however, confirms us in the feeling that we should try. “We go as politically independent individuals. The money for our trip is our own, or comes as gifts or loans from individual friends. One of us, Professor Staughton Lynd, has specifically been asked to make this factfinding effort by the magazine “Viet Report,” to the editorial board of which he belongs.” Could Face Fine

The report said that the three men cotrid face a 5000dollar fine, five years in prison, or both, for visiting North Vietnam without permission from the State Department. It said that they might also be subject to prosecution under a law making it a crime for an unauthorised citizen to deal with a foreign government in an attempt to influence its relations with the United States.