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The often bellicose South was shifting —not to outright opposition, but to a growing feeling of frustration. Henry Bass, who used to head the Atlanta Workshop in Nonviolence, found "a new element" among today's Southern critics of the war. "People who had faith in Nixon, who thought he might be able to end the war in six months, are waiting and wondering," he said. "There is no hope for peace in 1969 or 1970, and the thought of the war not ending until 1971 is just more than people can take." Miami Beach Banker Jack Gordon argued that M-day "may be the last opportunity that business and professional people will have to voice a protest against the war." If the Moratorium is unsuccessful, he felt, the young and militant will turn to violent uprisings that will rouse middle-class revulsion.
In Houston, businessmen have been especially active in stirring pro-peace feelings and, like many others, Lawyer Bill Ballew gave the kids the credit. "Many parents have been won over by the dialogue with their collegiate children who supported McCarthy," he said. "For many, it finally dawned on them that we couldn't win. The promise of victory crumbled."
Obviously a great deal of the Moratorium agitation was emotional, even sentimental, and amateurish. Partly for those reasons, it was violently attacked by some radicals who reject the strategy of nonviolent effort within the established U.S. system. Myron Mather, Harvard senior and S.D.S. activist, dismissed the protest as irrelevant: "All those McCarthy jackasses will just be indulging in their patriotic, onanistic impulses. There isn't one of them who knows anything about Realpolitik."