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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 1. 1967.

[introduction]

As a writer closes in on the events he is recording, his chances of remaining emotionally and intellectually detached from his subject narrow to nothing at all. In history, objectivity is always a relative matter, a state of mind. When the historian chooses to submerge himself in the process he can confidently be assumed no longer master of his soul.

Such is the sad saga of William Manchester. Manchester, a reporter and writer of history, became a victim of the vortex of the Kennedy legend. He is known to regard Kennedy, and the complete court and regalia, with an uncritical bias amounting to assinine devotion. Not one of the old school of critical historians.

Manchester is. of course, the party "commissioned" by the Kennedy family to produce the "definitive" and cul-minatory account of the events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. Prior to his undertaking this assignment, similar advances were made to two journalist-historians (Theodore White and Walter Lord), who circumspectly declined the commission with its implied elements of control.