December 1,1967—Recife. After flying all night from Miami, I arrived in Recife this morning.’ I wanted to see the town, the shanty towns which are called “favelas” (the word is the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish “barriadas”), the dry “sertao” of the interior if possible and one or more of the coastal sugar plantations.

The northeast of Brazil is divided into two general regions: the coastal sugar plantations, owned by powerful but not always prosperous sugar barons and worked by illiterates, most of whom receive less than the Federal minimum wage of $26 a month; and the interior sertao, populated by illiterate and extremely poor farmers who, in the frequent droughts, often starve or pour desperately intd Recife or other cities.

I will not here discuss whether it is right or wrong for a country to intervene in the affairs of other states. I will assume that great powers will interfere with small powers and consider, rather, how the great power should exercise its responsibilities.

We must begin by recognizing two major difficulties that face a great power. The first is that many of the problems—in fact most of the problems—which it faces in dealing with small countries are immune to power. This applies particularly to a Communist insurgency, which is designed to be immune to the application of power. It also applies, of course, to intervention which is perfectly respectable and normal, such as the giving of aid. In the case of aid, many of the problems are impervious to power in its broadest sense, that is, to resources, material, money, and so on.

I am certainly not the first traveler in Latin America struck by the diversity of its countries. The cliche has it that so many distinct entities were set up between 1810 and 1825 merely because the peoples of the continent could not comprehend Bolivar's admonitions that strength lies in unity. Whatever the validity of Bolivar's dream for South America, it is quite obvious why there are some twenty countries there instead of one or two, as is the case with the North American part of the liemisphere. Practically everything is a dividing factor south of the Rio Grande: geography and the configuration of the land, the ethnic composition of the populations, the historical antagonisms, the economic jealousies.

Let me start with three observations on which I think all sides agree. First, the present struggle in Vietnam represents a profound conflict of moral responsibility. It is this which makes peace by negotiation so difficult. If the issues were defined in terms of the interests of opposing powers alone, the disproportion of the means now being used to any conceivable rational end would long since have led to compromise. The fact is, however, that all sides in the conflict are driven by a profound sense of obligation to purposes in which they believe, and which transcend their, interests. For Ho Chi Minh and the Communist leadership in Vietnam the war is part of the struggle of exploited peoples all over the world to overthrow their imperialist and capitalist enemies in order to build a socialist society. For a great majority of non-Communists in the Eastern world, and a large number in the West, it represents the struggle of a nationalist movement with democratic tendencies to establish control by the people of Vietnam over their own country.

The currently emerging debate on the desirability of the U.S. undertaking to deploy an anti-ballistic missile defense system (A.B.M.) threatens to become the next national defense issue to have an impact on national elections. In the past we have all become familiar with real or alleged “bomber gaps,” “missile gaps,” and “conventional gaps.” The basis for all these “gaps” was a deep fear that potential enemies would subject ns to nuclear blackmail, or that our own failure to develop other kinds of military forces would require us to respond to any emergency with an all-out nuclear attack.

In an earlier essay, I pointed out how our obsession with nuclear war had encouraged us to discount the significance of conventional war. I want now to turn to an examination of how specific groups in the U.S. have changed their positions in recent years on the subject of defensive weapons. In doing so I have borrowed the term used in 1960 by Henry Kissinger to describe the shifting arguments of the Air Force and Navy.

When the “Fort Hood Three” announced their intention to refuse to serve in Vietnam because the war, in their conscientious judgment, was immoral, illegal, and unjust, a spokesman for the Pentagon condemned them on the ground that they could have applied for conscientious objector status before induction.

But under present Selective Service law the Fort Hood Three could not have applied for conscientious objector status, because they are not pacifists. I believe that most American young men who refuse to serve in Vietnam are in the same position: they are not conscientiously opposed to all wars, but they are conscientiously opposed to this war.

It is with some misgiving that I presume to comment on the Freedom House advertisement, for I rather suspect its message was not addressed to the likes of me in (he first place. It is most unlikely that my personal conviction that the war in Vietnam is an unjust war quite undeserving of.the active or direct support of any religiously motivated American would qualify me as a “moderate” in their eyes. On the other hand, since I support the principle they choose to condemn as some kind of a “fantasy,” I feel this gives me something of a right to present these comments as an unsought, and probably unwanted, rebuttal.

It stems true to say that on the matter of war all Christians travel a common path-—a pith recognizing the sacredness the high value of life and the awfulness of life-taking—until they come to a fork in that road with one route being pacifism and the other being thf acceptance of war as a sometimes just act. The essential meaning of Just War theory is portrayed by the second path it is in assertion that under some circumstances war mil be a justifiable enterprise for the Christian. To say that war's justice or lack there of cannot be known a priori but only after the examination of the values at stake and an assessment of circumstances and thereby to place war along with other classes of human action under the aegis of prudence—that is the basis of the Just War position.

“Many thinking people in Europe agree that United States policy in Vietnam is bankrupt,” Enda McDonagh said. “It is on the way to making the ‘free world’ a myth,” François Houtart said. “The futility of the Vietnam war outweighs anything to be gained from it,” Michael Ramsey said, “and its continuation will cause world opinion to be hardened against America.”

All three speakers know the United States intimately and are personally and by traditional commitment its devoted friends.. Not one of them is French, and I am sure none is a Communist. Yet this is how they spoke in the second half of 1967. And between them they reflect a broad spectrum of the thought of Christian churchmen in Europe. The first two are Roman Catholic priests, professors of moral theology at Maynooth College. Ireland, and of sociology at the Unh'ersity of Louvain, Belgium, respectively. The third is Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Government's general reactions to the now renowned Harrison Salisbury articles on civilian casualties in North Vietnam were, first, anger that Salisbury had exaggerated the scope of the problem by depending upon the Communists for statistical data; second, an admission that there had indeed been civilian casualities in the North because it is difficult to bomb anywhere without involving some civilians; third, an emphatic declaration of intent to restrict the bombing to purely military targets. I want to argue here that this declaration was unwise, if well intentioned, for at least two reasons. It implied, first of all, that the entire conduct of World War II, both on land and in the air, was invalid - not merely the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Second, by attempting to draw the old and stark distinction between combatants and non-combatants, it obscured the nature of the problem. I want to mention a few aspects of that problem here. Jack Walker, who has seen extensive military service, recently contributed a series of articles on the "Nuclear Obsession" to worldview.

We Iive in an age of unexamined concepts which risk becoming the more dangerous as they pass into action under the pressure of vague emotions. This is not to say that generosity is completely lacking, only that its impulses are not followed up by a careful analysis of reality. In fact, such an analysis is easily branded “cold” and “inhuman,” and generosity, the heart's voice, comes to be regarded as a substitute for policy. This situation is not improved but rather worsened by the entry of organized religious forces, the churches, into the area of international politics. The Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant, have of course been present in that area for centuries as very active elements.

The remarks on conscientious objection in the Freedom House statement do not clarify a complicated, difficult subject. Indeed, I think they reduce an important complexity to a polemical simplicity.

One of the “fantasies” which Freedom House objects to — and which it attributes by implication to the anti-war movement on the issue of Vietnam — is the notion “that military service in this country's armed forces is an option exercisable solely at the discretion of the individual.”

It might be well to begin with a confession. I have something of an intellectual “investment” in the book I propose to discuss here. Carl Amery's principal thesis finds a rather neat summary in the title given the English edition of his book, Capitulation: The Lesson of German Catholicism (Herder and Herder, 1967). In the course of developing his thesis and teaching the “lesson,” he reinforces and broadens the findings of some of my own published efforts of the past and, to make matters more embarrassing under the circumstances, includes a generous number of citations from those works. The occasional differences in interpretation between us are minor; and in the general implications he draws from the history of the “capitulation” of German Catholics of all ranks to the demands of National Socialism we are in almost total agreement.

I suppose I should start this piece by clearly stating that I do not believe in the draft in any form. I happen to hold with Benedict XV that it is an abomination among free men. Yet, if we must have a draft, it must be as equitable as humanly possible. There must be no privileged groups in a truly democratic society; it is, therefore, unjust that seminarians and clergy be exempted from the draft.

Before going into the specifics of the argument, I take it as an accepted political as well as theological fact that the absolute pacificist must be exempted from active military duty as long as he is willing to make his contribution to his countrymen in another capacity. This principle was upheld by Vatican II (Pastoral Constitution, par. 79°) and, as such, rejoins a pacifist tradition of the Church almost entirely forgotten for some sixteen hundred years.

In the first sense of the term, the representation of that not actually present, it is in fact a fantasy “that military service in this country's aimed forces is an option exercisable solely at the discretion of the individual,” as Freedom House proclaims. The “option” of military service is indeed not exercised today “solely at the discretion of the individual,” neither in this country nor any other. Such an option is “not actually present”.

Which means what? Simply that a central meaning of freedom — “… existing under a government which … does not encroach upon individual rights … acting of one's own will or choice; not determined from without” — is not yet a reality for young men anywhere on this planet.

What is the major reason for America's dilemma in Vietnam? Actually, the same reason holds for the near-boiling point of the cold war, for the resumption of arms sales to Arab countries following the Middle East crisis, for current American intervention in Thailand, Laos, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador. Columbia and others; for mutual defense treaties with 42 nations; for military and economic aid to nearly 100 other nations. The same reason, furthermore, why defense appropriations constitute nearly 10% of gross national product; why Congress appropriates money for the Defense Department faster than the Pentagon can spend it; why 72% of every tax dollar goes for war and war preparation; why the Pentagon controls almost the exact percentage of Federal property in the world (53%) that the United States itself controls of the world's productive capacity. The reason is of course, our wealth, and the type of society necessary to produce it.

If anything has been adopted as the single, most important, immediate objective of the U.S, “Foreign Policy Establishment,” it is the conclusion, with the Soviet Union, of a treaty designed to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that do not already possess them. I use the word “discourage,” because it seems clear that the treaty itself is not intended to produce anything more than an abstention, on the part of the U.S. and the USSR, from active participation in the act of proliferation. There is to be no commitment, or so it would appear, to joint action (economic, political, or military) to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Before discussing Vietnam: Crisis of Conscience and the effort it represents, it is well to say something about the diversity within the religious community and its concern for peace. Most of what follows does not deal, for instance, with those who espouse the position of absolute pacifism nor with the historic “peace churches” such as the Friends, Mennonites and others. (But even in these instances discretion is necessary since some of the “peace churches” [e.g., the Friends] are active in the political sphere and some of the groups originally formed by pacifist impetus [e.g., Fellowship of Reconciliation] are increasingly open to those who enter the quest for world peace from a different direction.)