Nation: At War with War

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By the end of the most searing week of his presidency, Nixon had grown elaborately conciliatory. Six Kent State students who drove to Washington on the spur of the moment to talk with Ohio Congressmen were taken to the White House to see Presidential Adviser John Ehrlichman. Learning of their presence, Nixon invited them into the oval office the next morning for an hour's conversation. Later he conferred with eight university presidents who had previously advised him on higher-education policy. Most of the men, including Harvard's Nathan Pusey and William Friday of the University of North Carolina, arrived battle-weary from their troubled campuses. After the conference, Nixon named one of the educators, Alexander Heard of Vanderbilt, as a special adviser on student affairs. At the same time the President pointedly refused to see 37 other college presidents, including Princeton's Robert F. Goheen, Notre Dame's Theodore Hesburgh and Columbia's Andrew Cordier, who petitioned for an end to American involvement in Indochina.

At his televised press conference on the eve of the Washington demonstration, the President looked understandably weary and nervous. Outside the White House gates, students were already gathering. They filled the warm evening with the refrain of the John Lennon mantra: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." Inside, the President told the press and the nation: "Those who protest want peace. I know that what I have done will accomplish the goals that they want. I agree with everything they are trying to accomplish."

Nixon was trying his best to reconstruct consensus, to show that if he was not embittered by the protest movement, neither was he cowed. He also attempted to display flexibility. He was not about to muzzle anyone, he said, but he counseled his subordinates that "when the action is hot, keep the rhetoric cool." He defended the Cambodia decision anew, but he also added that the troops would be coming out faster than anticipated. While not withdrawing from his tactical rationale for the Cambodian venture, Nixon gave an impression that was very different from the belligerent patriotism with which he announced the foray.

Singular Odyssey

Before dawn the next morning, Nixon impulsively wakened his valet and set off with a clutch of Secret Service men for the Lincoln Memorial, where he talked for an hour with a group of drowsy but astonished demonstrators. His discussion rambled over the sights of the world that he had seen —Mexico City, the Moscow ballet, the cities of India. When the conversation turned to the war, Nixon told the students: "I know you think we are a bunch of so and so's." He said to them, the President recalled later, that "in 1939 I thought Neville Chamberlain was the greatest man living and that Winston Churchill was a madman. It was not until years later that I realized that Churchill was right." He confessed afterwards: "I doubt if that got over."

Before he left, Nixon said: "I know you want to get the war over. Sure you came here to demonstrate and shout your slogans on the ellipse. That's all right. Just keep it peaceful. Have a good time in Washington, and don't go away bitter."