Let me start with three observations on which I think all sides agree. First, the present struggle in Vietnam represents a profound conflict of moral responsibility. It is this which makes peace by negotiation so difficult. If the issues were defined in terms of the interests of opposing powers alone, the disproportion of the means now being used to any conceivable rational end would long since have led to compromise. The fact is, however, that all sides in the conflict are driven by a profound sense of obligation to purposes in which they believe, and which transcend their, interests. For Ho Chi Minh and the Communist leadership in Vietnam the war is part of the struggle of exploited peoples all over the world to overthrow their imperialist and capitalist enemies in order to build a socialist society. For a great majority of non-Communists in the Eastern world, and a large number in the West, it represents the struggle of a nationalist movement with democratic tendencies to establish control by the people of Vietnam over their own country.

When I was passing through England not long ago, a news photo in the Daily Telegraph caught my attention. The front page showed a picture of English students, the Cambridge Peace Action Group, carrying a sign before the married quarters area of the United States Air Force Base in Suffolk. “Wars will cease,” the banner logically proclaimed, “when men refuse to fight.”

Today, of course, when we see signs advising men to refuse to fight, we are almost always talking about the war in Vietnam. A good deal of information about the war in Vietnam, its history, its circumstances, and its problems is available to the general population. Everyone is aware of the Green Beret, of French colonialism, General Giap's theory of guerrilla warfare, the Seventh Fleet, Ho Chi Minh, napalm, Madam Nu, burning Buddhists, the bomb, the Gulf of Tonkin, General de Gaulle's theories, Dien Bien Phu, the Oakland Army Base, Cam Ramh Bay, the black market in Saigon, Viet Cong assassinations, the thousands of American dead, Senator Fulbright's Hearings, the elections in South Vietnam, the Geneva Conference, the 325th Division of the North Vietnamese Army, the Demarcation Zone, and General Ky's black flying suit with the purple scarf. These and a host of other images are never far from our Vietnamese reflections.