War Whoop

After a warm week out in Goldwater Country, Pundit Walter Lippmann acquired "a fine sunburn" and some interesting thoughts. "I have learned,'' wrote Lippmann from Arizona, "that we must distinguish between a war party--of which I have seen no traces out here--and a war whoop party, which likes to be warlike but does not want war." What the whoopers want in Cuba, he said, "are the fruits of a successful war without having to fight." But. he added, "only an invasion, and an invasion only in the first days before the casualty lists come in. would satisfy the emotions of the war whoopers.'' Taking the lead in whooping it up, charged Lippmann, were Republican Publisher Eugene Pulliam's right-wing dailies, the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette.

Pulliam wasted no time replying, "We do not advocate an invasion or an occupation," said he in a letter that ran in the Washington Post two days after Lippmann's column appeared. What he wanted all along, said Pulliam, was "a forceful American policy, aimed at Castro's isolation and eventual overthrow" by partial blockade or quarantine. "The day President Kennedy proclaimed the American quarantine last October, we wrote that the Russians would accept it, while a lot of 'liberal' commentators, including Mr. Lippmann, expected the Russians to 'challenge' the American Navy or to start a nuclear war." Whooped Publisher Pulliam in conclusion: "I dare say we proved to be right, which is, perhaps, one of the reasons Mr. Lippmann doesn't like us."

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