Despite waverings and contradictory statements, the general drift of American policy in Vietnam is to intervene more brazenly, more openly, more brutally and with greater and greater force. Senator Dirksen has said that the U.S. is now clearly involved in an open war a 1a Korea. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week demonstrations took place in New York (one 18,000 strong) against the latest moves of the Johnson administration. The strength of the reaction to U.S. aggressive moves is clearly responsible for the vacillation in the leading circles of the American military set-up. Needless to say, the protest movement in the U.S. would receive a huge boost if the Labour Government would join the ranks of the protesters. Mr. Wilson has claimed that his behind-the-scenes activities are more fruitful/ é “political masturbation" of the demonstrators. All Mr. Wilson's silence has achieved to date is that universal condemnation of Labour in the third world, But the demonstrators have shown that there is another Britain,
The nature of the war in Vietnam is shown by the photographs which we received from Mr. Christopher Farley of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. These photographs show how civilians are being slaughtered in North Vietnam by U.S. napalm bombing; Mr. Farley describes them as follows: "..two photogrpahs show the shrivelled bodies of civilians burned ‘alive by napalm on March 2 in attacks on villages along the Gianh river. A further picture shows the wife of Nguyen Luong and their two baby daughters, all killed in a raid on Quynh Luu on March 15. Finally, there is the body of Mrs. Hoang Thi Huyen, eight months pregnant, killed on March 2 while fishing on the Gianh river." Need we say more?