Nation: The Use of Power With a Passion for Peace

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Again, in a memorial speech last month at Franklin Roosevelt's grave site in Hyde Park, Bundy said: "We cannot have peace without power, and power alone does not make peace. We cannot limit ourselves to one objective at a time. We, like Caesar, have all things to do at once. And this is hard. In Viet Nam today we have to share in the fighting; we have to lead in the search for peace; and we have to respond, in all that we do, to the real needs and hopes of the people of Viet Nam."

Noise Level. Bundy's keen appreciation of the legitimate uses of power was nurtured in an extraordinary family that has long been accustomed to authority. His mother, now 74, traces her lineage practically to Plymouth Rock, is a niece of longtime Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell and Poetess Amy Lowell. His father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., but managed to overcome that handicap and break into Boston's upper stratum by means of a brilliant marriage and an equally brilliant law career.

"We grew up in a happy, normal family," says Bundy's sister, Mrs. G. d'Andelot Belin, wife of a Boston lawyer, "with perhaps a higher noise level than some." The five Bundy children, says Boston Attorney Elliot Richardson, who knew Bundy at Harvard, grew up as part of "the American Establishment, if there is one. These are people who are used to thinking in terms of what the problem is in the most pragmatic, clearheaded, analytical terms."

Bill Bundy was in Jack Kennedy's class at the Dexter School in suburban Brookline, and Mac was a year behind. Still a year apart, Bill and Mac won top honors at Groton, were Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, were tapped by Eli's most elite senior society, Skull and Bones.

When World War II broke out, Mac enlisted as an army private after memorizing an optometrist's chart so that his poor eyesight wouldn't keep him out. He became an officer, was assigned as a military aide to Admiral Alan G. Kirk. In wartime London, Bill Bundy recalls, Mac knew all the right people. "He went to Harold Laski's soirees on Tuesday night and Lady Astor's on the weekend. It was a balanced ticket."

Critic John Mason Brown, a cabin mate of Mac Bundy's aboard Kirk's flagship the Augusta during the Normandy landings, recalls that even then Mac was hardly the shy type. "On D-plus-one," said Brown, "I was summoned to the admiral's quarters and all the brass were having breakfast, including General Bradley. Mac was there too—the lowly lieutenant. Bradley was explaining some invasion move, and at one point he said, 'And then we go in here.' Mac said—in effect—'No we don't.' And Bradley accepted it."

Too Cold for Comfort. Mustered out in 1945 as a captain with a Bronze Star, Bundy spent 18 months helping former Secretary of War Henry Stimson write his memoirs, On Active Service in Peace and War. The book's closing lines, addressed to younger generations, remain strikingly relevant: "Let them learn from our adventures what they can.

Let them charge us with our failures and do better in their turn. But let them not turn aside from what they have to do, nor think that criticism excuses inaction."