‘Balance’ Wanted In Vietnam Debate

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 13

‘Balance’ Wanted In Vietnam Debate

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, May 8.

The Johnson Administration appeared yesterday to be trying to cool off the increasingly sharp battle of words in Washington over the Vietnam war.

The deputy Defence Secretary, Mr Cyrus Vance, said the national dialogue on Vietnam had become “heated and intolerant.” He called for a restoration of balance. At the same time, he detailed arguments against the views of some critics that the American role in an essentiaally civil conflict in Vietnam was unjust. Mr Vance told a meeting of Episcopal (Anglican) Church leaders in Martinsburg, west Virginia, that the Americans wanted to permit South Vietnam to choose its own destiny and that this was in keep-

Ing with Judeo-Christian ethics. His speech was seen here as a move to calm the rising controversy generated by appeals to patriotism last month from the United States commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, and assertions that dissenters were prolonging the war by bolstering the enemy’s confidence. Mr Richard Goodwin—who was one of President Kennedy's personal assistants—described the charge against dissenters in a ‘Washington Post’ article today as “shameful demagogy.”