Over the Fence

While 30% of U.S. newspapers have at one time or another declared openly for a shooting war, U.S. magazines have been more backward. Not even the most interventionist of them has, in so many blunt words, told the U.S. to start firing. Last week one of them did.

The New Republic, famed as a fence-sitting liberal sheet, placarded its cover: FOR A DECLARATION OF WAR, devoted four pleading pages to the argument: "It is plain in this midsummer the United States has reached the opportunity for a great decision, which may never come again." Denying it had ever been "absolutist in pacifism," the New Republic added: "We were right to hesitate at first. . . . But now we do understand. ... If it is our war enough so that we must pour our material wealth into the scales on one side only, then it is our war to fight as well."

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