M-DAY'S MESSAGE TO NIXON

Friday, Oct. 24, 1969

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THEIR numbers were not overwhelming. Probably not many more than 1,000,000 Americans took an active part in last week's Moratorium Day demonstrations against the Viet Nam war; that is barely half of 1 % of the U.S. population. Yet M-day 1969 was a peaceful protest without precedent in American history because of who the participants were and how they went about it. It was a calm, measured and heavily middle-class statement of weariness with the war that brought the generations together in a kind of sedate Woodstock Festival of peace. If the young were the M-day vanguard, many in the ranks wore the housewife's apron and the businessman's necktie, and many who clambered to enlist were political leaders.

In most of the nation, TIME correspondents found that the size and vitality of the M-day turnout exceeded dispassionate expectations. Even in the Midwestern heartland, reported Chicago Bureau Chief Champ Clark, "so many of these folks—far from being professional liberals or agitators or youths simply trying to avoid the draft—were pure, straight middle-class adults who had simply decided, in their own pure, straight middle-class way, that it was time for the U.S. to get the hell out of the war in Viet Nam."

Even Tenor. The impact of M-day was more than the sum of its disparate parts. Hundreds of thousands of Americans found, face to face, that they had a common cause. Those who participated actively may be only the visibly restive; many sympathizers and many others merely interested watched the day's events unfold on television. "Probably the majority of the country were touched in some way by the outpouring," TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey concluded. "It was the collection of smaller events in the churches, the schools, the town halls and on the sidewalks that gave M-day its meaning."

New York provided an extraordinary juxtaposition of moods as the Mets won the World Series the day after M-day. For a few hours, the paper pouring down into Manhattan streets suggested a return to normality and a celebration of all the usual pleasures—and excep-> tional miracles—of everyday life. But this could not erase the deep weariness and despair over the war.

The President had expressed his doubts that the demonstrations would tell him anything new. What, in fact, was M-day's message to Richard Nixon? Many participants demanded immediate and total withdrawal from Viet Nam of all U.S. forces. Yet the Moratorium by no means constituted a call to the President for that solution—although it evidently gained new respectability and popularity (see story on page 20). What M-day did raise was an unmistakable sign to Richard Nixon that he must do more to end the war and do it faster. Unless the pace of progress quickens, he will have great difficulty maintaining domestic support for the two or three years that he believes he needs to work the U.S. out of Viet Nam with honor and in a way that would safeguard U.S. interests and influence in the world.