LOW MARKS FOR THE PROFESSORS

The letter that arrived on Special Presidential Assistant McGeorge Bundy's desk came from 127 faculty members of St. Louis' Washington University. It fairly bulged with naive and loaded questions about U.S. policy in Viet Nam. "Who is the enemy?" it asked. "Who are our allies?" "What kind of proof must North Viet Nam provide to convince us that it is not intervening in South Viet Nam?" Is it true that Washington's real purpose "is to provoke China into action which would allow the United States to bomb targets in that country?" As a former Harvard dean and member of the academic community, the scholars advised, Bundy was morally obliged to give them the lowdown. Would he, therefore, be so good as to pop out to St. Louis in the next few days to do so?

The answer was no, he would not. Bundy, who can chill a polar bear with his codfish-cold scorn, replied that his schedule was crowded; besides, he could hardly accept "an invitation given on ten days' notice." There were, however, a few points he wanted to impress on the scholars. Wrote he, in his icy reply:

I CANNOT honestly tell you that I think your letter reflects great credit on its authors, either as a piece of propaganda or as a serious effort to engage in discussion.

The Corporative State. I find strange your assumption that a public official is somehow especially accountable to the profession in which he worked before coming to the Government. I have supposed that Government officials were supposed to work for all of the American people, and that a businessman was not especially accountable to business circles, a man from labor to the unions, or a professor to university people. The premise from which you appear to be working is that of the corporative state, and I myself do not find Mussolini a sound guide to the principles of public service. There is no reason why I should be especially accountable to you, even on the uncertain assumption that you are truly representative of the academic community.

As to your specific question, who is the enemy, I direct your attention to the President's speech on April 7.* Your question is answered fully in that speech, which was on the record three days before you wrote.

You ask who are our allies. I do not share your judgment that the problem of public support for the South Vietnamese government is more severe now [than it was 18 months ago], and I certainly do not believe that there is general popular support for the Viet Cong in South Viet Nam. On the contrary, I think it plain, on the evidence of reliable observers from many countries, that the South Vietnamese as a people do not wish to be taken over by the Viet Cong.

Enough Said. I do not understand why a group of academic men, presumably careful students of the historical record, should frame a question about free elections on the premise that the men in Hanoi might permit such elections in North Viet Nam. Whatever may have been the hopes of the signers of the Geneva Agreements on this score, there is nothing in the record of the last ten years which suggests that this Communist regime is different from any other on this point. The center of the problem in South Viet Nam is to ensure the right of the people there to peaceful self-determination, and that is the purpose of the United States. That purpose is not advanced by the assumption that there is any serious prospect of genuinely free elections in the North or any likelihood that Hanoi will offer such elections.

There are other distortions in your letter, and other assumptions in its questions which are contrary to fact, but I may have written enough to suggest that if your letter came to me for grading as a professor of Government, I would not be able to give it high marks.

* At Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, Lyndon Johnson declared: "The first reality is that North Viet Nam has attacked South Viet Nam; its object is total conquest."

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