The Presidency: Protecting the Flank

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Sitting next to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos at a U-shaped table of gleaming rubbed mahogany in Mala-cafiang Palace, home of the islands' rulers—Spanish, American, and finally Filipino—for a century, Johnson noted that four principles dominated the talks. They were that "aggression must fail," that the allies must press pacification and development programs in South Viet Nam, that the budding spirit of cooperation among Asians must be nurtured, and that peace must be pursued. The important thing, he said, was not to mislead Hanoi as Hitler was misled before World War II. "I know that some people scoff at my use of Munich to illustrate this point," he said. "But you just can't laugh at the principle of it. We cannot let our indifference be their invitation."

The President spoke of the peace demonstrators who had dogged him on his visit Down Under. "In the last few days," he said, "I have seen banners that say, 'We want peace,' and I say, 'So do I.' But I would also like to say to those young people carrying those signs, 'You brought them to the wrong persons.

Take your banners to Hanoi, because there is where the decision for peace hangs in the balance.' "

A few hours later, more than a thousand demonstrators materialized on the lawn under his hotel window carrying placards that could not be answered this side of sanity: HEIL LYNDON, said one; JOHNSON is HITLER'S GRANDSON? asked another. Egged on by leaders of a Communist-front group called Kabataang Makabayan, the demonstration dissolved into a rock-throwing riot, and before it ended, 20 protesters had been carted off in patrol wagons and a dozen in ambulances.

In Sight of the Gallows. While Lyndon Johnson was holed up in his suite, work was already under way on the conference's final communique. From 8 in the evening until 3 the next morning, ambassador-level drafters worked over five versions. The foreign ministers spent three more hours polishing it. Finally the heads of state, finding the language too stiff, gave it yet another going-over. The original drafts are covered with scrawls from Lyndon Johnson's heavy, felt-tipped black pen and more compact scratchings from his allies' ballpoints.

The communiqué (see box), and in fact the whole conference, was a minor triumph for the U.S. policy of the middle way in Viet Nam. "We set out with modest objectives," said a member of the U.S. delegation, "and I think we achieved them." The principal achievement was to avert a schism between the hard-lining nations on Asia's mainland, South Korea, Thailand and Viet Nam ("The ones in sight of the gallows," as one U.S. aide puts it), and the safer, softer-lining insular nations, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.

By patient advance spadework in Asian capitals, U.S. diplomats managed to resolve the differences and preclude embarrassments. In Saigon, for example, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge urged Premier Nguyen Cao Ky to beware of impetuous remarks that might wreck the conference—such as repeating his proposal to invade North Viet Nam. "Lodge told Ky that ad libs were fine—so long as you'd worked on them day and night for six months before tossing them out," said one American.

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