Communication Trouble

Secretary of State Rusk says followers of freedom and of communism do not speak the same language. After last week's World Assembly of Youth gathering in Amherst, the same obviously can be said about the delegates and Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy.

In fact, Friday night's program made one wonder if the youthful representatives of several nations fully understood what they were saying and voting. Shortly after they had adopted a resolution criticizing U.S. retaliation for attack, they cheered the attorney general's statement that U.S. forces in South Viet Nam are "committed to freedom".

They "deplore the violent confrontation between 'North Vietnamese' and 'United States armed forces'... and the subsequent United States military action", they voted. But their resolution made no mention of unprovoked attack upon American destroyers on the high seas.

This is doubletalk and typical of high-minded but single-standard thinking which so many of these organizations display. They call upon this country for a high standard of morality. But they seldom pay the same attention to the other side.

Pressed for reasons, they reply blandly that the United States is a great nation and supposed to set a standard for the world to follow. The WAY resolution last Friday night was a good example. Not one word about the Chinese direction and support of aggression in Asia. Not a single note of condemnation for Communism and its expansion by murder policy.

Many Americans were unhappy over the Navy's raid on North Viet Nam shore installations. They realize, however, that failure to act would strengthen Peking's claims that the United States is a "paper tiger" and lead to far more flagrant aggression. Two wrongs may not make a right but turning one's other cheek to the Communists is a sure way to decapitation.

If these young persons want a world of justice and peace they must cease single-standard argument. Unfortunately, good-will is not enough in dealing with the Marxists. If they gain enough followers of this line, World Assembly of Youth members will provide their own doom.
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

label levels:

There is currently no available "Beginner" label. The following is the default level label: This editorial from The Greenfield Recorder dated August 12, 1964, clearly expresses the hostility many Americans felt towards dissent against United States policy in Vietnam. Commenting on a World Assembly of Youth resolution critical of United States policy, the editorial criticizes the Assembly's absence of condemnation of Communism. The editorial sees the Chinese as directing and supporting the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 2 and 4, 1964. The author also sees the incident as a part of a larger and more broad-based Communist aggression. This belief about a Communist plan to take over all of Southeast Asia was called the "domino theory". The belief that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident may have been manufactured by the United States as grounds for war did not publicly surface for another decade.

top of page