Voice from the Silent Center

The Viet Nam debate too often resembles a pingpong match between those who vociferously damn Lyndon Johnson for doing too much and those who chide him for doing too little to end the war. Yet for all the noise they make, so far, at least, the critics on both sides have been heavily outnumbered by the millions of Americans in the middle who, however confused or unhappy about the war, see no simple alternative to the Johnson Administration's present course and have no medium for their views. Last week the majority found a new voice.

At Washington's National Press Club, former Democratic Senator Paul Douglas and General of the Army Omar Bradley announced the formation of a nonpartisan Citizens Committee for Peace with Freedom in Viet Nam. "Voices of dissent have received attention far out of proportion to their actual numbers," the committee said in a 900-word policy statement. "Our objective is to make sure that the majority voice of America is heard—loud and clear—so that Peking and Hanoi will not mistake the strident voices of some dissenters for American discouragement and a weakening of will."

Among the committee's 100 or so founders are some of the nation's most illustrious figures. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower belong; so do Dean Acheson and James F. Byrnes—thus accounting for every living former President and Secretary of State. Dwight Eisenhower's last Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates is a member, as are A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany, General Lucius D. Clay, former Harvard President James Bryant Conant, ex-Governor Pat Brown of California and retired Senator Leverett Saltonstall.

Patient Resistance. "The idea was mine," said Douglas, a pacifist in the early 1930s who saw heavy combat in his 50s in World War II as a Marine officer. Disturbed that the Viet Nam debate was dominated by "extremists on both sides," he began writing friends last summer, incorporated the committee on July 31, and helped to draft a policy statement that was edited in longhand by Eisenhower.

The committee emphasized that "we are not supporters of a President or of an Administration; we are supporters of the office of the presidency." "We favor," it said, "a sensible road between capitulation and the indiscriminate use of raw power. We believe that we speak for the great 'silent center' of American life, the understanding, independent and responsible men and women who have consistently opposed rewarding international aggressors from Adolf Hitler to Mao Tse-tung." Lest Hanoi get the wrong idea from antiwar demonstrations, it added: "We want the aggressors to know that there is a solid, stubborn, dedicated, bipartisan majority of private citizens in America who approve our country's policy of patient, responsible, determined resistance."

Cacophonous Counterpoint. Whether or not the aggressors were listening, the committee had to contend with a cacophonous counterpoint at home. From the right came a demand by World War I Flying Ace Eddie Rickenbacker that the U.S. bomb North Viet Nam's ports, dams and people. "You're not fighting human beings over there," he told a Houston interviewer. "You're just fighting two-legged animals. The people are just slaves."