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Michael Herr, in his book Dispatches, says that "Viet Nam was what we had instead of happy childhoods." Narcissism again. But there is a mature sense in which it is true. Viet Nam may have been a hallucination. It was surely a warning, though one not always easy to read. It was also a kind of national rite of passage, a great power learning Kipling's lesson the hard way. In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer describes how a tribesman chosen to be king must be enchained and thrashed before his coronation. The moral may be that a nation, like a king, needs a little chastening perspective.