The Week

Truth came to the New York Civil Liberties Union the other day, quietly, on little cat feet, after soup and salad. “We Liberals,” said Florida legislator John B. Orr Jr., at the NYCLU annual luncheon, “putter aimlessly in our insulated gardens while humanity rambles toward destruction.” Mr. Orr quickly sobered up, and went on to talk about the First Amendment.

Apparently acting on a deliberate plan to impress domestic, Russian and world opinion with American power and firmness, Washington has continued over the past fortnight the series of moves begun so dramatically by the naval boarding of the cable-cutting Soviet trawler. With U.S. backing, Brazil-following a recent Philippine precedent-told Soviet fishing boats that they would be seized if they entered Brazilian waters without permission. Major publicity-stressing the new “strategic vulnerability of the Soviet Union”-was given to a record twelve day trip of the nuclear submarine, Skate, under the polar ice. Congress released testimony by Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor and Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke that our present nuclear capability “could destroy the Soviet Union several times over.” Defense Secretary Neil McElroy “advertised” the fact that we could “utterly destroy the Soviet Union” in order “to prevent any horrible miscalculation on a potential enemy’s part.” That the U.S. public backed the official posture was shown by a Gallup Poll: more than 80 per cent believes “we should keep American forces in Berlin-along with British and French forces-even at the risk of war.” Into these mounting psychological waves, the sudden re-recognition of Communist Bulgaria dropped with a fiat thud, as if to suggest that the appeasement wing of the State Department had not heard what the resistance wing was doing.

Featured Tags

Truth came to the New York Civil Liberties Union the other day, quietly, on little cat feet, after soup and salad. “We Liberals,” said Florida legislator John B. Orr Jr., at the NYCLU annual luncheon, “putter aimlessly in our insulated gardens while humanity rambles toward destruction.” Mr. Orr quickly sobered up, and went on to talk about the First Amendment.

Apparently acting on a deliberate plan to impress domestic, Russian and world opinion with American power and firmness, Washington has continued over the past fortnight the series of moves begun so dramatically by the naval boarding of the cable-cutting Soviet trawler. With U.S. backing, Brazil-following a recent Philippine precedent-told Soviet fishing boats that they would be seized if they entered Brazilian waters without permission. Major publicity-stressing the new “strategic vulnerability of the Soviet Union”-was given to a record twelve day trip of the nuclear submarine, Skate, under the polar ice. Congress released testimony by Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor and Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke that our present nuclear capability “could destroy the Soviet Union several times over.” Defense Secretary Neil McElroy “advertised” the fact that we could “utterly destroy the Soviet Union” in order “to prevent any horrible miscalculation on a potential enemy’s part.” That the U.S. public backed the official posture was shown by a Gallup Poll: more than 80 per cent believes “we should keep American forces in Berlin-along with British and French forces-even at the risk of war.” Into these mounting psychological waves, the sudden re-recognition of Communist Bulgaria dropped with a fiat thud, as if to suggest that the appeasement wing of the State Department had not heard what the resistance wing was doing.