YOUNG QUESTION WAR

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31343, 13 April 1967, Page 13

YOUNG QUESTION WAR

(From FRANK OLIVER, special correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

Mr Hubert Humphrey is home after running the European gauntlet and Mr Lyndon Johnson has gone to South America to fight the battle of Punta del Este, which may well prove to be a tough one for him.

Mr Humphrey’s journey has been, as all such journeys officially are, a success, but the suspicion is he told the President that there is more than a little opposition in Europe to what the United States is trying to do in Vietnam, or at least opposition to the methods used to attain the aim.

It was perhaps a little unfortunate that he arrived back just as official sources in the Pentagon admitted that antipersonnel bombs were being used in the bombing of North Vietnam where, officially, the utmost pains are taken to avoid civilian casualties. This did nothing whatever to close that nagging credibility gap. Untiring Pollster Simultaneously the idefatigible Dr. Gallup was announcing that Mr Johnson was being plagued by defections in his own party because of Vietnam policies and actions. All in all it was not the happiest week-end the President has spent in the White House. And all this came after Dr. Martin Luther King, a disciple of Gandhi, had been calling for a civil disobedience movement to try to halt the Vietnam war. In linking Vietnam with the plight of Negroes at home Dr. King was probably guilty of a great error but such a movement could, if it started, be a little troubesome to the President

As more than one writer has been saying recently there is something present today which did not exist here in either of the two world wars —a younger generation which dares to question war. This probably has something to do with the figures which Dr. Gallup is now producing. He finds that only 24 per cent of the population believes the Administration is telling the country all it should know and that 65 per cent believe the contrary, that only 42 per cent of people approve the way the Vietnam situation is being handled and that 45 per cent believe the opposite. last July he discovered that the President had a 48-44 lead over Governor Romney if the presidential race had been run then and that now in March, 1967, Governor Romney is in the lead by 52-43. The poll concludes that there have been a lot of Democratic defections in the interim which augurs badly for the President if public sentiment next year remains what it is today. Disc Jockeys It may have some significance that in recent days some of the disc jockeys who while away the dark hours by playing records for the sleepless have been giving the customers good doses of “Over There, Over There,” and “Mademoiselle From Armentiers” in order, as one writer says, “to remind the present generation that we fought a war 50 years ago to ‘end all wars.’ ”

John S. Knight, of the Knight chain of newspapers, commented on Sunday, that many comrades of his fell on the fields of France in the First World War and the lucky ones never forgot and began to think there must be “a better way of composing

international disputes than by force of arms.” He continued: “It is never the peoples of the world who incite a country to war but their leaders. If the young people of today are different from those of us who accepted the gauntlet without question, it is because they dare investigate the causes of war and examine its immorality.” Understanding Youth He then asks the patriots at home—who have been called on for no visible sacrifice to “try to understand the feelings and emotions of our youth when they are less than enthusiastic over our professed national goals.” This seems to put succinctly what a number of people in the public prints have put rather more diffusely, that a new generation is challenging what their elders have done in the past. The writer has probably put his finger on the thing that bothers a great many people either consciously or subconsciously—the inequality of sacrifice. Nearly half a million of the physical flower of the nation is fighting and dying in Vietnam while practically everyone at home is grousing about the possibility of a surtax in July to pay for the war. The only ones who really feel the war and its toll are the wives and others who get those chilling telegrams that

begin “We regret...” Everyone else seems to be doing nicely thank you. Prosperity continues and the economic boom goes on. Most people felt more strongly about the Korean war than they do about this one. With the young it is definitely unpopular, generally speaking. It is becoming highly unpopular with the Negro community which, rightly or wrongly, believes it is “over represented” in Vietnam which means a higher proportion of Negro soldiers than the Negro proportion of the population. In his enthusiasm for less war in Vietnam and more war against poverty at home, Dr. King has been using some intemperate language and using similes with little or no basis in fact. His anti-war sentiments do seem to have run away with him, even to the point of white-washing Hanoi. But there can be no doubt that he is influencing a good deal of Negro opinion with what results the long hot summer may well demonstrate. In brief his argument is that Vietnam is a futile war waged for the wrong ends and it is a barrier to social progress at home which prevents Negroes achieving the place they deserve in American life. It is an appealing argument to a Negro in a slum tenement.