Nation: Illustrious Support

Would John F. Kennedy have followed the same course as Lyndon Johnson in Viet Nam? Robert F. Kennedy has long hinted that the answer to that futile but fascinating question would be an emphatic no. Last week, for the first time, the New York Senator came right out and accused Lyndon Johnson of reversing his brother's politics.

"We turned," said Kennedy on CBS's Face the Nation. "We've switched." Originally, he argued, the purpose of the U.S. was to help South Vietnamese preserve free choice—and no more. "Now we're saying we're going to fight there so that we don't have to fight in Thailand, so that we don't have to fight on the West Coast of the U.S., so that they [the Communists] won't move , across the Rockies."

Principal Threat. The clear implication of Bobby's statement was that his brother had had no use for either the "domino theory" or the argument that China might threaten U.S. security. Bobby was wrong on both counts. Two months before his death, John F. Kennedy was asked if he doubted the validity of the theory that a defeat in Viet Nam would imperil the rest of Southeast Asia. "No," he replied. "I believe it. I think that the struggle is close enough. China is so large, looms so high just beyond the frontiers, that if South Viet Nam went, it would not only give them an improved geographic position for guerrilla assault on Malaya, but would also give the impression that the wave of the future in Southeast Asia was China and the Communists." As for China, Jack Kennedy described it on Aug. 1, 1963 as a "Stalinist" regime, itching for war and consequently "menacing" to the U.S.

Though the late Adlai E. Stevenson has also been posthumously characterized by antiwar dissenters as an ardent dove on Viet Nam and a pooh-pooher of the theory that China may one day endanger the U.S., the fact is that he shared J.F.K.'s views to a striking extent. In a memorandum written in November 1964, eight months before his death, Stevenson warned: "The principal threat to world peace and Western security in the foreseeable future will almost certainly be Communist China." As China's nuclear-supported military strength and prestige grew, he predicted, "it will use that prestige and a disproportionate share of its resources to extend its influence and create maximum disorder in Asia and Africa."

End Run. Whatever their views on China, U.S. voters affirmed once again last week that they do not consider a precipitate pull-out from Viet Nam the best way to settle the war. In Cambridge, Mass., with the last absentee ballots from the Nov. 7 election finally counted, a war referendum showed 17,742 opposed to U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam v. 11,349 in favor. The 3-to-2 margin against withdrawal was roughly the same as the one piled up by San Francisco voters last month. In ivied wards around Harvard and M.I.T., one of the nation's strongest dovecotes, the vote was surprisingly close—4,108 to 3,134 for withdrawal; beyond Harvard Square, blue-collar areas were heavily against a pullout.