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Democratic Congressman Allard Lowenstein of New York, a leader of last year's dump-Johnson movement and this year's M-day program, puts his case starkly: "This government, God willing, will respond to the wishes of the people, not to a tiny blackmailing minority that is trying to extort something, but to the massive wishes of people who have a right to express their views." Yet there is an inevitable element of coercion. The protest's sponsors plan monthly moratoriums, with each round to be a day longer than the previous one. If that plan works—a doubtful proposition—its impact could be immense.
Once again it was the "children's crusade" that led the way: it was the students who spread the M-day idea. But the original Moratorium concept came in fact from Jerome Grossman, 52, a Massachusetts envelope manufacturer long active in the peace movement. He talked the idea over with Sam Brown Jr., 26, an lowan and former Harvard Divinity School student whom he knew from the McCarthy campaign. Brown persuaded Grossman that the businessman's first idea—a general strike on the traditional European model that would seek to stop the wheels of commerce entirely—was probably too audacious to succeed. Brown's instinct was that a quiet day of discussion and debate carried beyond the campus might well catch on.
The Viet Nam Moratorium Committee was organized by them late in the spring, but the plan was deliberately held back. Early in June, Nixon ordered the first withdrawal of 25,000 troops from Viet Nam and promised more, a step that bought him time with many of the nation's more moderate critics of the war. Later, Brown put off (he Moratorium, from September to October, for two tactical reasons: he wanted the peace movement's student nucleus back on campus, and he wanted more time for discontent to develop over the cautious pace of Nixon's moves. "It's been critical to wait nine months for Nixon to do something," says Grossman.
The techniques of the M-day organization are the same as those of the New Politics of 1968: to speak with a moderate yet deeply committed voice, to work through zealous grass-roots volunteers (armed with lists of sympathizers from last year's campaigns), to force the issue of the war to the forefront of American consciousness through a mixture of informal discussion and dramatic gesture. Many of the leaders of the Moratorium Committee were among the McCarthy and R.F.K. braintrusters: Brown; Adam Walinsky, 32, one of Kennedy's most insistently antiwar aides; and Congressman Lowenstein, 40.
In the cluttered national headquarters on Washington's Vermont Avenue, there is the cheerful, youthful bustle reminiscent of the "Clean for Gene" New Hampshire primary campaign. One wall bears a placard: "When we lasted long enough, they gave us medals. When we died, they said our casualties were low."
Telephones ring constantly as volunteers sort out and fill requests for M-day speakers. Their dedication is awesome.
Supporters at Yale, for example, planned to spend the first two days this week telephoning everyone in the 380-page New Haven directory urging at tendance at a mass rally.
A Matter of Fashion