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Morris W. Hirsch, 32, a University of California mathematics professor, has been a guiding force of Berkeley's so-called Viet Nam Day Committee since its inception last May; as such, he has promoted attempts to prevent troop trains from going to the Oakland Army Terminal, demonstrations against former U.S. Ambassador to Viet Nam Maxwell Taylor, and a peace march on Oakland last week. "We are told that the war is stopping Communism and it is preserving freedom in South Viet Nam," he says. "The second statement is completely ludicrous. There is no freedom there now. There is tyranny. It is as bad as anything our Government can point to under Communism. It may be stopping Communism temporarily, but I don't think it is the job or in the power of the United States to act as a worldwide policeman, repressing popular movements wherever they seem to be leading to a form of government we don't like."
William C. Davidon, 38, a physics professor at Haverford College near Philadelphia, recently participated in a 30-hour demonstration outside the Morton, Pa., plant of Boeing Vertol, which makes helicopters for military use in Viet Nam; he also fasted for two weeks, taking only orange juice, just to help himself keep the Vietnamese ordeal in mind. Davidon devoutly believes that the U.S. is using Viet Nam as an arena in its power struggle against Communist China. Says he: "To engage in the large-scale killing of people when it is not in the best interest of their country but of ours, is a grossly immoral act."
Ignoring the Obvious
Carl P. Oglesby, 30, is national president of Students for a Democratic Society. The Johnson Administration, he says, "is all wet in its theories about the war in Viet Nam. We don't think you can explain the South Vietnamese insurrection in terms of North Vietnamese support for it any more than you can explain the American Revolution in terms of French support for it. And if Chinese belligerence is made a point of doctrine, if we really believe there is no hope for us in China, then let's go ahead and drop the bombs on Peking. But if we believe that a world in which these two powers get along is better than a world in which they fight, then we ought to exercise our imagination to find ways of repairing the bad relations that now exist between them."