World Scene

Sir: The anti-Communist fanatics are having a field day just now. First there was John Halifax’s report on Father de Jaegher’s talk. We know there are a minority of ‘hawk’ clergy in all denominations, and visitors to Vietnam as well as people living there can differ in their viewpoints. We also know that an anti-Communist priest who had served Diem and the occupying French would be much more acceptable than a man of liberal views to the authorities in Saigon. Father de Jaegher’s half-hour talk, to be just, would have had to include an account of the distress and misery caused by American intervention. Father de Jaegher’s priestly office may unfortunately give his views a spurious authority for some readers. If priests can be disciplined for opposing the decision of the Pope in matters relating to contraception, it is difficult to see why they are left entirely free to speak publicly in favour of continued military action in Vietnam when the Pope is working and pleading for a negotiated peace. Now various writers in your correspondence columns are raging against Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia, and we also have the public spectacle of President Johnson and our own Prime Minister shedding crocodile tears over that event. Nobody can justify the Russian intervention. But the Governments of the self-called democratic and Christian countries page 608 have lost their moral influence by their disgracefully large share in the Cold War, by stockpiling nuclear weapons, by the Vietnam intervention and arms race. They have disastrously weakened the United Nations and thrown away any right to play even a police role in this new tragedy and crisis. The Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia may strengthen the hawks, such as Governor Connolly at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, whose ignorant bellicosity stands in contrast to the realism of Senator Kennedy calling for the cessation of bombing and the withdrawal of forces from Vietnam. It is a grim portent for the American Presidential election. Czechoslovakia has been a Communist country for twenty years. Liberal trends there may be more apparent than real. We should not rush to take sides in what may turn out to be no more than a clash between factions.

Mary C. Matheson (Presbyterian), James K. Baxter (Roman Catholic).

1968 (529)