■ We see you, Polycarp: Polycarp Kusch, Nobel Prize winning physicist now taking over as vice president at Columbia, gave it as his view that “research directed toward a specific military objective is inappropriate to a university”; but then, three or four moralisms later, revealed that during World War II he was involved at Columbia in “intensely war-related research on high- frequency vacuum tubes. In those days, war-related research was what everyone was doing.” Polycarp! That sort of thing is “inappropriate to a university.” Er, no. “We had a real villain then,” Kusch explained, clearing everything up.
■ A month ago the dove leadership in the Senate believed it had a firm majority against any ABM system. Then came the President’s carefully thought out, limited, experimental proposal for protection of our missile sites and thus of our strategic retaliatory power. Next, Defense Secretary Laird’s disclosure of the alarming facts, kept under cover by his predecessor, of the Soviet effort to achieve a first strike capability that would leave us at the Kremlin’s mercy. Not all senators are unreasonable men. The odds on acceptance of Mr. Nixon’s recommendation are rapidly rising.
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