"I Resign"

Weldon James, an associate editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, made sure that his readers knew exactly how he felt. "I quit," he wrote in a signed editorial published last week. "I resign." He and his paper, he went on to explain, had come to a parting of the ways over Viet Nam. "The Courier-Journal is no appeaser," he wrote, "no advocate of U.S. withdrawal, but it does not speak with the sharpness I believe the continuing crisis demands."

So saying, James, 53, announced his intention to go back on active duty as a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. "The quicker more newspapers and more people give the President solid support, the shorter and less dangerously complicated the war will be. I believe that the United States was right about Viet Nam in 1954, right when President Kennedy increased our involvement, right when President Johnson did likewise, and right to commit, in the President's words, 'whatever it takes' to deny the Communists a military triumph there.

"I believe Lyndon Johnson is as right as Roosevelt, as timely as Truman, as cautiously correct as Kennedy, and as entitled to Eisenhower's and the nation's support as the Courier-Journal used to say in editorials I wrote.

"This is no time for the press of a great nation to play Hamlet--or Lippmann. Mr. Lippmann's China-doorstep arguments about Southeast Asia today are identical with his Russia-doorstep arguments about Greece and Turkey in 1947--and I believe identically fallacious about what the United States should do and can do.

"There is enough evidence at hand for the American jury to reach a verdict on Viet Nam. The evidence is not just two decades of history but the exposition of that history. The Courier-Journal's Henry Watterson said 'to hell with the Hohenzollerns.' Mark Ethridge and Barry Bingham said in effect 'to hell with Hitler.' I hold it is past time to say to hell with Ho.

"The Marine Corps does teach the uses of disciplined rage and the application of 'measured strength'--exactly what the United States is employing in Viet Nam today, and it has been asking for Reserves to volunteer. I am proud it believes I can be of some use to it now."

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