| iT Nam, He fe W. Edgerton, Publishe t mill; . lon. BS in the: er country, Y a WE in South A has aa The president ious 7 We are very lp thos © what we can to io ‘sg e ople preserve their be do ea of the past few tg VE 7 alter the fact that Asiq'® business in South- Un nti} a Wa We intervened in the Pear qeouth Vietnam did not Out, Eyer threatened from y sa now the only for- feng: etican South Vietnam is in ay: We are de- ye Sil wa aigon government fate q.ce it is not clear that k “lending the people’s tary di € government is a ‘latorship. No one General Khanh was Popular vote. rage ns ig President Kennedy or ten Wut war” had gone ean, oe On Mar. 6 of os New York Times ar is largely a con- €rners fought on (Puss ler» the civil rights prob- Stat, 1S solved, the United e ? ss Other faces the fate that beet top reat civilizations, type from Mighty to be con- fro Without, “were des- This © Within”, “ty Warn} : “dian Dice was sounded by May Ore Gregory in an ty Cony, Speech to the 31st Meal paper of: the Ameri- “4, Cali Per Guild in Long f 3 wh Ornia, recently. This. pr ie ae Social revolution tty, Not blac In the street to- ‘ta nee against white,” Hiderme, {ne _ assembled t ag nN and women, “Gt 0 ainst wrong. Check e ce and find out il time that wrong . never find it.” €xcer o Rae from Grego- R ch Bigt burch ge has failed us. by. fo, os the most segre- 09 pet American life to- ‘tas, tha, cent of all white Vere, (0 church on See a black face, a senior circuit judge of the United Pi ppeals, wrote a letter to the New York Times. It in that paper’s Aug. 9 issue. e . Meiope eve Judge Edgerton’s letter is an honest appraisal of ‘S role in Southeast Asia and a courageous statement of i of Americans really think but are 2 atmosphere of jingoism and war propaganda that has On A ; ug. 6, two days after U.S. military planes bombed North reluctant to ex- The full text of the letter follows: Southern land.” And General Khanh himself has said that on the Vietcong side “they are not all Communists.” According to Walter Lipp- mann, “The truth, which is being obscured for the American people, is that the Saigon gov- ernment has the allegiance © probably no more than 30 per- cent of the people and controls (even in daylight) not much more than a quarter of the ter- ritory.” The Saigon government has done little to attract the allegi- ance of the people. It has herde peasants into “strategic ham- lets” and kept them there except for daily work in the fields. Last June one “gcorched-earth opera- tion” destroyed a thousand tons of rice and a great quantity © livestock to deprive the Viet- cong of supplies. An earlier AS- sociated Press photograph show- ed a child burned by bombs dropped on @ village believed to contain guerrillas. and 99.9 percent of all black people that go to church on Sun- day never see a white face. “Somehow down somewhere down the line, rica is going to have to wake up. Right now everybody 15 trying to place the blame here, place the blame there. There is no blame to be placed in @ revolu- tion at all. When it is over, We can decide where the mistakes were made. The main thing now is saving this country.” “The white man in America is a. psychological slave, and the Negro is a psychological mas: ter, I can go tO the Ed Sullivan show Sunday and come out for integrated marriages, and noth- ing will happen to me. If Ed Sullivan came out for them, he would lose his job. Who is free among us? y white man in m my home, worry about “J can take any ¥ America and give hi and I don’t have to We have no business in Southeast Asia Our defense department ack- nowledges that we furnish na- palm bombs. Two thousand Vietnamese women sat-in at government outposts protesting the night-time artillery bomb- ardment of their villages, doubt- less intended to kill Vietcong but killing peaceful villagers as well, Our intervention cannot be ground that a But no one of Southeast n if a few thousand square miles and a few million people were added to the vast empire of Communist China, it would not critically change the power situation. When, if not pefore, C© atomic weapons, ny tolerate American military ac- tion in Southeast Asia than we would tolerate Russian military action in Cuba. Our intervention in South Vietnam increases the danger of atomic war. And evé General Eisenhower and ‘SECA retary Dulles made the mistake of trying to stake out an Ameri- can protectorate jn Asia. The peing or mine, but there his well- is few whites can give me theirs. who is free among us: “J do’ these radio shows where eople call in, and do you know how frightening it is when many people call in and say, Iam for the cause; I can’t give my name. Jsn’t that wild? America, 1964, a white man can’t , and he thinks he’s eating in his T his school, “J had to g°0 into Mississippi day, and a good friend of ees ‘Be careful. You illed.’ I would rather to get freed Vietnam try!ng to gu foreigner 4 better way of life than my own kids have.” e «we talk about, ‘Well, I am with your cause, put these de- Disagreement is being voiced by thousands of Americans such as those on the New York picketline shown above. Kennedy administration made this mistake of transforming military aid into military parti- cipation. It is said that we are commit- ted, and that the United States does not break its word. Secretary McNamara says, “The road ahead will be long and hard,” but “it is not in our tradition to back off when the going gets tough.” I believe our intervention con- tinues chiefly because it is hard to admit we have been wrong. But dogged perseverance in a costly mistake is no virtue. Successive administrations have said we shall stay in the war. But the Secretary of De- fense, the Secretary of State, and even the president, have no authority under the constitution to commit us to any policy for years or generations. Even Con- gress and the president together cannot bind their successors. All laws are subject to amendment and repeal. All policies may be reviewed. As Senator Gruening has said, after “ten years of tragic futi- lity... it is time to reassess our policies and that we quit...” monstrations just got. to stop. You can’t break the law.’ “t got four kids, and I am teaching every one of them to break all bad laws. “jt kills me to hear white America tell me about breaking a law that’s bad when this is what this country was based on. We didn’t tell the mother coun- try we wasn't going to pay the taxes. We. threw the damned tea in the water. George Wash- ing on one Christmas Eve night convinced a bunch of hungry barefoot, half-frozen soldiers about a bad law they had to break, and if he hadn’t, we might all have a British accent right now. “The early Americans broke bad laws for freedom, and we going to break bad laws for freedom. I admit, and I am try- ing to impress this on the de- monstrators, that the day is just about over now where you go to jail for one day and come out. If a gangster can stick up a bank and get caught and go to jail for 20 years for wrong, with U.S. military interference in Vietnam Senator Morse, as a member of the: Foreign Relations Commit- tee, says “the military experts recognize that the war cannot be won with conventional wea- pons.” He concludes: “We should never have stayed in. We should get out.” Simply getting out would be better than simply staying in. But we might well propose to both sides that free elections be held under United Nations aus- pices to establish a democratic government. We might also ask the United Nations to undertake conciliation. The Secretary General has re- commended reconvening the 1954 Geneva Conference regard- ing what had been French Indo- china. We might seek an agree- ment among the great powers chiefly concerned that none will make or support any war in Southeast Asia. A plan is not necessarily use- less because General de Gaulle advocates it. If we did not achieve a political settlement, we should be no worse :off than we are now. Henry W. Edgerton, Monhegan Island, Me., Aug.6, 1964. then we must be willing to go te jail for life for right.” “People tell me, ‘Well, why don’t you Negroes go to the court?’ We tried the courts. How can I get any justice out of a local court when the judge is an elected official out of a white neighborhood and he got to go back for re-election? He couldn’t help me if he wanted to. “Let me give you an example . of what we up against. in the. courts, and many times -the judge is not even aware of it. “Let’s take two individuals. Let’s take a white man that is makinz $30,000 a year. He and his wife can’t get along, and they get a divorce, and she gets custody of the kids, and two years later she remarries an- other white man that is making $30,000 a year. Do you think her first husband can go into an American courtroom and get custody of those kids just be- cause she remarried? Do you? No, he can’t but if she married me, he could.” August 28, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7