The Week

■ The very Reverend Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury, denounced the United States for “its reckless and fruitless maintenance of the most cruel and unprincipled war in the history of the world.” We are used to such hyperbolic condemnations from clergymen nowadays; but the Dean made this particular statement in 1863, and the war he denounced was the one that ended slavery.

■ In March 1968 Presidential candidate Richard Nixon planned a radio speech disavowing the possibility of a military solution in Vietnam, and proposing settlement of the war through U.S.-Soviet summit talks. The chief author of that almost-speech, Richard Whalen, in his new book Catching the Falling Flag, explains how Lyndon Johnson’s untimely abdication announcement and his subsequent meeting with Nixon ultimately reversed Nixon’s original opposition to the LBJ war policy. If Nixon has retained an interest in the original plan, this might explain Kissinger’s secret trip to Moscow and Nixon’s own adherence to Soviet summitry in the face of increasing Russian arms aid to North Vietnam.

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■ The very Reverend Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury, denounced the United States for “its reckless and fruitless maintenance of the most cruel and unprincipled war in the history of the world.” We are used to such hyperbolic condemnations from clergymen nowadays; but the Dean made this particular statement in 1863, and the war he denounced was the one that ended slavery.

■ In March 1968 Presidential candidate Richard Nixon planned a radio speech disavowing the possibility of a military solution in Vietnam, and proposing settlement of the war through U.S.-Soviet summit talks. The chief author of that almost-speech, Richard Whalen, in his new book Catching the Falling Flag, explains how Lyndon Johnson’s untimely abdication announcement and his subsequent meeting with Nixon ultimately reversed Nixon’s original opposition to the LBJ war policy. If Nixon has retained an interest in the original plan, this might explain Kissinger’s secret trip to Moscow and Nixon’s own adherence to Soviet summitry in the face of increasing Russian arms aid to North Vietnam.