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One Administration effort to defuse M-day succeeded another. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird confirmed publicly what had already been reported (TIME, July 25): that U.S. commanders in Viet Nam no longer have orders to keep up "maximum pressure" on the enemy. He also announced that "Vietnamization" of the war was proceeding at full speed. In a poignant parallel, Laird's son John, 21, declared that he would march on M-day with his fellow students at Eau Claire State University in Wisconsin.
Said John: "I think everybody should be against the war. It's gotten a little out of hand."
The White House let it be known that Nixon was conferring on Viet Nam with Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Joint Chiefs Chairman Earle Wheeler and Laird, and had summoned Henry Cabot Lodge, chief U.S. negotiator at the Paris talks, home for consultations this week (see story, page 23). Lieut. General Lewis Hershey, 76, head of Selective Service for 28 years and a symbol of the draft's caprices and inequities, suddenly found himself relieved of his post and shunted into a job as a presidential manpower consultant, effective next February.* Professor Hubert Humphrey of the University of Minnesota showed up at the White House to endorse Nixon's efforts to find peace in Viet Nam. Humphrey planned to hold classes on M-day, but planned to lead his students in a discussion of the war. "The American people are not going to be hushed," he said, alluding to Hugh Scott's brand of moratorium.
Just how much effect the efforts to defuse dissent would ultimately have remained to be seen. Certainly there were still vast numbers of Americans who supported the President's policy and who were prepared either to ignore or to oppose the Moratorium.
Unsigned Flyers
With a conformity on the issue as tight as that of the Harvard faculty, A.F.L.-C.I.O. delegates in Atlantic City last week voted 999 to 1 to back Nixon on Viet Nam. A Young Americans for Freedom leader in Honolulu went to court last week to seek an order compelling the University of Hawaii to show cause why it should not remain open on M-day; a group called Undergraduates for a Stable America took ads in the Daily Princetonian urging students to attend classes during the Moratorium. Faculty members at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., found unsigned flyers in their mailboxes demanding: "Defend the aims of your college; support your Government's efforts for a just peace; hold and attend classes Oct. 15."
Stanley Buturlia, 48, a North Andover, Mass., machine-shop supervisor who has a son in Viet Nam, has his own reasons for opposing M-day. "If World War II had the television coverage that this war is getting," he argues, "the boys wouldn't have wanted to go. We can't pull out. There's too much involved. Leave the war the way it is. Keep the Communists thinking. Maybe it won't hurt us or my kid's generation; but if we pull out, it would hurt my kid's kids." Less reasonably, Chairman Richard Ichord of the House Internal Security Committee damned the Moratorium as "a propaganda ma neuver designed and organized by Communists." (Law-enforcement officers say that the M-day movement is remarkably free from any such influences.)