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Student demonstrations correspondence, 1965
Memo from John W. Lemmon Page 6
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IT PAYS TO GIVE HUMAN EVENTS FOR CHRISTMAS... See back page story to find out why. HUMAN EVENTS YOUR WEEKLY WASHINGTON REPORT THIRTY-FIVE CENTS October 30, 1965 Vol. XXV. No. 44 Copyright 1965 by HUMAN EVENTS, INC. Human Events is published weekly by HUMAN EVENTS, INC., 410 First Street S.E. Washington, D.C. 20003 Second class postage paid at Washington, D.C. and other mailing offices. $12.50 per year NEWS [[mailing label]] DR J LEMMON 527 S IOWA WASHINGTON IOWA 2/66 [[mailing label]] DRAFT-DODGERS STEP UP ACTIVITIES It's Time to Get Tough with the "Demonstrators' From the Chicago Tribune When the attorney general of the United States gets around to conceding that there are Communists among the demonstrators who are stridently demanding that we bug out of the war in Viet Nam, that is not especially news to anyone who can tell a hawk from a handsaw. Nevertheless, the fact that Mr. Katzenbach has been able to make this obvious discovery encourages us to hope that he will act on it. There have been so many "demonstrations" and "marches" beginning with the rash of civil rights processions and sit-ins, that the country has become inured to them and accepts the easy rationalization that this sort of thing is an exercise of the right of petition. Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that, all too often, these were exercises in provocation and incitement. The development of anti-war and "beat the draft" demonstrations, organized usually from university centers and spreading out from there, represents a further refinement of the tactics of civil disobedience. The operation is intended to hamstring national policy, discourage the laws requiring patriotic duty in service of the flag, and impede the conduct of a war. To that degree it meets the constitutional definition of treason, which consists in making war against the United States or in "adhering" to its enemies, "giving them aid and comfort." Communist propaganda mills all over the world are making the most of the opportunities afforded them by American student radicals, party-lining professors and pacifists of all descriptions. Unquestionably, the Communist North Vietnamese will take this clamor as indicating a widespread disaffection in the United States and will be heartened to read into it omens of victory ahead. For all this outcry is intended to put the nation's will in question, and from a distance will be given exaggerated weight. It seems to us that this organized disloyalty verges on criminal syndicalism and should be prosecuted as such, for the ringleaders of the movement are feeling chesty over how much they have already been able to get away with and are planning fresh excesses for the weeks ahead. As the attorney general mentioned, the government is not impotent in this situation, and we hope it will go to work. There are federal laws dealing with treason, sedition, destruction of draft cards, interfering with troop movements or military installations, and urging, aiding and abetting persons to avoid the draft. Ever since the disorders on the University of California campus at Berkeley a year ago, a generation of radical malcontents has been thinking up new ways to bedevil civil order, and almost any "cause" will serve as the vehicle for revolutionary purpose. Last year at Berkeley it was "free speech"; this year it is Viet Nam. We have seen how far the young activists are willing to go--"demonstrations" which are more nearly riots; challenges to university and police authority; lying down in front of troop trains; seeking to immobilize the Oakland port of military embarkation; even trying to make a "citizen's arrest" of an air base commander. The President is called a murderer and a war criminal. the government itself is challenged and reviled. A stop must be put to this business. The government must act, and it must act in the toughest way possible. For if this movement goes much farther, it will be insurrection and there will be violence in the streets. [[caption of photo]] College students parade towards historic Boston Common to protest the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Most of the students were from Boston University, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [[caption of photo]] [[caption of photo]] This was the scene on the University of California campus at Berkeley. [[caption of photo]] People Laughed at Hitler's Marchers By ALICE WIDENER In the center of Manhattan's elegant "silk stocking" district, at Madison Avenue and 68th Street, October 16th a fashionably dressed middle-aged man stood watching the Socialists' "peace parade" of more than 10,000 radicals in New York City. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, turned away and said to some onlookers, "Mostly a bunch of kids. It's too funny to pay attention to." At once, I felt myself transported back to Berlin in 1930. My husband and I were in a limousine with Erich Will, son-in-law of the famous German industrialist Hugo Stinnes. We were driving out to Grunewald, a lovely suburb of Berlin for the weekend. At a crossroads, the car stopped to let pass a group of boys marching and shouting slogans. The young man leading them wore an armband with a swastika. We asked Erich who the boys were and what they were chanting. "Ach!" he said, " bunch of kids. It's too funny to pay attention to." We said they didn't look funny to us. "A lot of nonsense," said Erich sincerely, and changed the subject. He was killed in World War II. On the corner of Madison Avenue, October 16, 1965, I took a few quick steps to catch up with the man who said the marching Socialist radicals were funny. "Sir, excuse me," I said and told him I thought the so-called "peace" marchers weren't funny; they were trooping after vicious, fanatical leaders. "If they get a chance," I said, "these leaders will line you and me against a wall in Yankee Stadium and riddle us with machine gun bullets. That's how much they love peace. They love it as Castro did during his firing squad games in the Havana sports arena. They love it the way police on the East Berlin side of the wall love peace. This parade isn't funny; it's deadly menacing." Next morning the New York Daily News carried an editorial about the students in Students for a Democratic Society and the May 2 Movement and the Progressive Labor party, who set up a camp in Michigan last spring to train recruits in guerrilla warfare to fight alongside the Communists. The News concluded, "And they are deadly serious about it." They are. Anyone believing the October 15 and 16 radical Socialist demonstrations through the United States (all synchronized with similar ones abroad) were merely the harmless exercises of young people in dissent and free speech is worse than apathetic or indifferent to the security of our nation, he or she is totally irresponsible about it. Almost all the newspapers have reported that he radically activist group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), has been a chief coordinator for the nationwide demonstrations of the kind that caused hundreds of onlookers to cry "treason!" from the sidewalks of New York at the marchers in the streets. Let no patriotic American make a mistake about Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It is the legitimate off- (Continued on following page) For more on Viet Nam demonstrations, see pages 2 and 4.
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IT PAYS TO GIVE HUMAN EVENTS FOR CHRISTMAS... See back page story to find out why. HUMAN EVENTS YOUR WEEKLY WASHINGTON REPORT THIRTY-FIVE CENTS October 30, 1965 Vol. XXV. No. 44 Copyright 1965 by HUMAN EVENTS, INC. Human Events is published weekly by HUMAN EVENTS, INC., 410 First Street S.E. Washington, D.C. 20003 Second class postage paid at Washington, D.C. and other mailing offices. $12.50 per year NEWS [[mailing label]] DR J LEMMON 527 S IOWA WASHINGTON IOWA 2/66 [[mailing label]] DRAFT-DODGERS STEP UP ACTIVITIES It's Time to Get Tough with the "Demonstrators' From the Chicago Tribune When the attorney general of the United States gets around to conceding that there are Communists among the demonstrators who are stridently demanding that we bug out of the war in Viet Nam, that is not especially news to anyone who can tell a hawk from a handsaw. Nevertheless, the fact that Mr. Katzenbach has been able to make this obvious discovery encourages us to hope that he will act on it. There have been so many "demonstrations" and "marches" beginning with the rash of civil rights processions and sit-ins, that the country has become inured to them and accepts the easy rationalization that this sort of thing is an exercise of the right of petition. Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that, all too often, these were exercises in provocation and incitement. The development of anti-war and "beat the draft" demonstrations, organized usually from university centers and spreading out from there, represents a further refinement of the tactics of civil disobedience. The operation is intended to hamstring national policy, discourage the laws requiring patriotic duty in service of the flag, and impede the conduct of a war. To that degree it meets the constitutional definition of treason, which consists in making war against the United States or in "adhering" to its enemies, "giving them aid and comfort." Communist propaganda mills all over the world are making the most of the opportunities afforded them by American student radicals, party-lining professors and pacifists of all descriptions. Unquestionably, the Communist North Vietnamese will take this clamor as indicating a widespread disaffection in the United States and will be heartened to read into it omens of victory ahead. For all this outcry is intended to put the nation's will in question, and from a distance will be given exaggerated weight. It seems to us that this organized disloyalty verges on criminal syndicalism and should be prosecuted as such, for the ringleaders of the movement are feeling chesty over how much they have already been able to get away with and are planning fresh excesses for the weeks ahead. As the attorney general mentioned, the government is not impotent in this situation, and we hope it will go to work. There are federal laws dealing with treason, sedition, destruction of draft cards, interfering with troop movements or military installations, and urging, aiding and abetting persons to avoid the draft. Ever since the disorders on the University of California campus at Berkeley a year ago, a generation of radical malcontents has been thinking up new ways to bedevil civil order, and almost any "cause" will serve as the vehicle for revolutionary purpose. Last year at Berkeley it was "free speech"; this year it is Viet Nam. We have seen how far the young activists are willing to go--"demonstrations" which are more nearly riots; challenges to university and police authority; lying down in front of troop trains; seeking to immobilize the Oakland port of military embarkation; even trying to make a "citizen's arrest" of an air base commander. The President is called a murderer and a war criminal. the government itself is challenged and reviled. A stop must be put to this business. The government must act, and it must act in the toughest way possible. For if this movement goes much farther, it will be insurrection and there will be violence in the streets. [[caption of photo]] College students parade towards historic Boston Common to protest the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Most of the students were from Boston University, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [[caption of photo]] [[caption of photo]] This was the scene on the University of California campus at Berkeley. [[caption of photo]] People Laughed at Hitler's Marchers By ALICE WIDENER In the center of Manhattan's elegant "silk stocking" district, at Madison Avenue and 68th Street, October 16th a fashionably dressed middle-aged man stood watching the Socialists' "peace parade" of more than 10,000 radicals in New York City. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, turned away and said to some onlookers, "Mostly a bunch of kids. It's too funny to pay attention to." At once, I felt myself transported back to Berlin in 1930. My husband and I were in a limousine with Erich Will, son-in-law of the famous German industrialist Hugo Stinnes. We were driving out to Grunewald, a lovely suburb of Berlin for the weekend. At a crossroads, the car stopped to let pass a group of boys marching and shouting slogans. The young man leading them wore an armband with a swastika. We asked Erich who the boys were and what they were chanting. "Ach!" he said, " bunch of kids. It's too funny to pay attention to." We said they didn't look funny to us. "A lot of nonsense," said Erich sincerely, and changed the subject. He was killed in World War II. On the corner of Madison Avenue, October 16, 1965, I took a few quick steps to catch up with the man who said the marching Socialist radicals were funny. "Sir, excuse me," I said and told him I thought the so-called "peace" marchers weren't funny; they were trooping after vicious, fanatical leaders. "If they get a chance," I said, "these leaders will line you and me against a wall in Yankee Stadium and riddle us with machine gun bullets. That's how much they love peace. They love it as Castro did during his firing squad games in the Havana sports arena. They love it the way police on the East Berlin side of the wall love peace. This parade isn't funny; it's deadly menacing." Next morning the New York Daily News carried an editorial about the students in Students for a Democratic Society and the May 2 Movement and the Progressive Labor party, who set up a camp in Michigan last spring to train recruits in guerrilla warfare to fight alongside the Communists. The News concluded, "And they are deadly serious about it." They are. Anyone believing the October 15 and 16 radical Socialist demonstrations through the United States (all synchronized with similar ones abroad) were merely the harmless exercises of young people in dissent and free speech is worse than apathetic or indifferent to the security of our nation, he or she is totally irresponsible about it. Almost all the newspapers have reported that he radically activist group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), has been a chief coordinator for the nationwide demonstrations of the kind that caused hundreds of onlookers to cry "treason!" from the sidewalks of New York at the marchers in the streets. Let no patriotic American make a mistake about Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It is the legitimate off- (Continued on following page) For more on Viet Nam demonstrations, see pages 2 and 4.
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