The most basic question raised by the war in Vietnam is not one of tactics but of war itself. Our problem is not whether to use gas, napalm, phosphorous or defoliants—nor even whether torture should be permitted: it is quite simply whether we should be resorting to arms at all.

I am well aware this question is not new, especially within the religious communities. With a few alterations here and there, the exchange in ancient Rome between Celsus and Origen (debating whether Cliristians should serve in the army) would be considered timely in any contemporary journal.

Surfeited with the unprecedented horrors of World War II, the moral consciousness of the Western world has become jaded. There was a time-in the mid-1930's—when it protested Mussolini's practice of forcing castor oil down the throats of political prisoners and then parading them in public while stalwart Fascists watched the spectacle with sadistic glee. During his Ethiopian campaign, Mussolini's use of irritant gases to give brave but ill-shod and illequipped Ethiopian tribesmen “the hot foot” was also condemned by a moral conscience that had not yet learned to accept the organized cruelty of World War II—the terror bombings of both British and German cities, and the unexampled savagery of the German invasion of Russia, widely heralded by Nazi propaganda as a great anti-Communist “crusade.“

There can be little doubt that the omission on the part of John XXIII to speak of communism in either of the two greatest encyclicals of our time, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris, has caused grave consternation in various Catholic circles.

This consternation has gone as far as Vatican II. The Council from the beginning was born on a note of positive confrontation with the modern world in the open spirit of John XXIII. It was taken for granted that from the opening words of John to the Council Fathers, there would be no anathemas and condemnations.

Let me begin by confessing that my personal opposition to the American military operations in North and S.outh Vietnam derives from a broader commitment to religious pacifism. I regard the acts being performed by our government and its forces as a direct violation of the letter and the spirit of the Christian revelation. To the extent that they are conducted “in my name,” so to speak, without affording me or the others who share my convictions some effective and still legal way to dissociate myself from this immorality, my rights as a citizen to live according to my religious beliefs are also being violated.

Once again we are practicing brinkmanship in a manner that even the late Secretary of State Dulles would have envied. How we have done so and why the American people in the Atomic Age have permitted their government repeatedly to get itself into perilous situations which could escalate into a general nuclear war cannot really be understood without reference to the background of our thinking since World War II. We must separate fact from fiction, which means that we must re-examine critically and objectively the premises and conclusions from which our actions have sprung.

In the days following President Johnson's April 7 Vietnam policy speech at Johns Hopkins University, it has seemed more difficult than ever to gain a morally secure vantage point from which to view American involvement in that “dirty and brutal and difficult war.“

There was a chorus of acclamation which included U Thant, the leaders of many nations, and a generous press. Joseph Alsop credited the President with a “great speech” of “noble aims, high aspirations, and warmly humane feelings,” the high paint of which was the quotation from Deuteronomy: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death….“

Several days later, the morning mail brought the simultaneous complaints of Human Events and the Fellowship of Reconciliation against Mr. Johnson.