Fulbright Senses McCarthyism

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31042, 23 April 1966, Page 17

Fulbright Senses McCarthyism

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, April 22.

The chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Senator William Fulbright, said yesterday he feared that the debate over the United States course in Vietnam could bring about a new era of McCarthyism.

The Senator, an opponent of President Johnson’s Vietnam policy, referred to the stormy atmosphere of the 1950’s when the late Senator Joseph McCarthy was engaged in trying to find alleged Communists in government. “Past experience provides little basis for confidence that reason can prevail in an atmosphere of mounting war fever,” he said a lecture prepared for Johns Hopkins University school of advanced international studies. “Decency Offended” Defending his opposition to the Vietnam war, Senator Fulbright said: “There are times in public life as in private life when one must protest, not solely

or even primarily because one’s protest will be politic or materially productive, but because one’s sense of decency is offended, because one is fed up with political craft and public images, or simply because something goes against the grain.

“The catharsis thus provided may indeed be the most valuable of freedom’s uses.”