Some Thoughts on Destiny

The debate on the nuclear test ban treaty got under way with exactly eight members of the U.S. Senate on hand. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, reasoning that more Senators should be present for the occasion, moved a quorum call. Still, few showed up, so Mansfield rescinded the call.

It was not as if the treaty were a cut-and-dried issue. For two months it had stirred controversy across the U.S., and even as the Senate began its debate the Armed Services' Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee was distributing a 25-page report, supported by six of its seven members, claiming that ratification would result in "serious, and perhaps formidable, military and technical disadvantages" to the U.S.

Who's the Harshest? But for all such doubts and disagreements, there was an air of somnolence about the debate. In the first couple of days, the biggest attraction was Actress Marlene Dietrich, who turned up for a while in the gallery. Rhode Island Democrat John Pastore, chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, wasted a fiery speech on a near-empty chamber. Pastore passionately flung open his blue blazer, clapped his hand over his chest and declared: "I say to those who have doubts about the treaty that I want them to open their hearts and look into their consciences. I want them to realize what they might be doing. If by their vote they destroy and kill the treaty, I say God help us, God help us!"

Even when Barry Goldwater, one of the treaty's principal opponents, rose to speak, there were just three Senators present--all Democrats ready to pounce on him. Barry soon gave them a chance. Reiterating his stand that the U.S. ought to demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Cuba as its price for the treaty, he admitted that even if the Russians complied he would still vote against it. How come, asked one Democrat, when he had said only the week before that such a rider would make the treaty "perfectly acceptable even to its harshest critics"? Well, Barry allowed weakly, he probably was not the treaty's "harshest" critic.

The Old Orator. Only when word got around that Republican Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen was scheduled to speak did the Senate begin to fill. It was known that Dirksen, after harboring "grave doubts," had come around to approval. It was also known that in order to dispel some of the doubts about the treaty, Dirksen and Majority Leader Mansfield had asked President Kennedy to write a letter that Ev would read to the Senate. In his letter, the President offered Senate doubters "unqualified and unequivocal assurances" that the U.S. would maintain its readiness to resume testing, that it would "take all necessary action" if Russia used Cuba to circumvent the test ban in any way, and that the treaty would not bar the U.S. from using nuclear weapons for defense; as if to punctuate his letter, the Atomic Energy Commission set off two more nuclear blasts at its underground test site in Nevada.

Dirksen, the old orator who can still draw a crowd to the Senate, arrived looking uncharacteristically well-pressed in a blue worsted suit. He had with him an eight-page prepared statement, but he quickly set it aside--"I do not read a manuscript very well," he explained--proceeding to deliver the sort of speech for which he has become famous.

"This could be, conceivably, a time of destiny for the country and for the world," said Dirksen. He readily acknowledged his initial doubts. "I rendered some offhand opinions at the time, some of which did not stand up," he said. "I saw them recited in an editorial the other day. One must expect that sort of thing in public life. But I do not let it bother me."

Searing Memory. Nor was the Senator from Illinois troubled by the fact that his constituents have besieged him with letters opposing the treaty. "I have admonished them over and over again," said Dirksen, "that, regardless of the entreaties and presentations that have been made to me, I feel that I must follow a type of formula laid down by Edmund Burke, the great parliamentarian and Prime Minister of Britain, when he said it was his business to consult with his people, but it would be a betrayal of his conscience and a disservice to them if he failed to exercise his independent judgment."

After also citing Chinese philosophy, Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln, Dirksen said that what bothered him terribly was the searing memory of Hiroshima. Then, said he, "for the first time, the whole bosom of God's earth was ruptured by a man-made contrivance that we call a nuclear weapon." Continued Dirksen:

"Oh, the tragedy. Oh, the dismay. Oh, the blood. Oh, the anguish. When the statisticians came to put the cold figures on paper, they were as follows: as a result of one bomb--66,000 killed, 69,000 injured, 62,000 structures destroyed. That was the result of one bomb, made by man in the hope of stopping that war. Little did he realize what this thermonuclear weapon would do, and the anguish that would be brought into the hearts of men, women and children."

Unwanted Epitaph. The U.S.'s young President, said Dirksen, who is 67, "calls this treaty a first step. I want to take a first step, Mr. President. I am not a young man. One of my age thinks about his destiny a little. I should not like to have written on my tombstone, 'He knew what happened at Hiroshima, but he did not take a first step.' "

Concluded Dirksen: "This is a first, a single step. It is for destiny to write the answer. It is for history to render judgment. But with consummate faith and some determination, this may be the step that can spell a grander destiny for our country and for the world."

When it was all over, Mike Mansfield rose, faced his colleague across the aisle, and said, "I salute a great American." The debate may go on until some time next week, but after Ev Dirksen, it would surely be all anticlimax. For his support of the treaty, and his speech on its behalf, had assured its ratification.

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