Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission towhich theycall us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands ofinnertruth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government'spolicy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit movewithoutgreat difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought withinone'sown bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues athandseem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadfulconflictwe are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but wemustmove on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of thenight havefound that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but wemustspeak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to ourlimited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, forsurelythis is the first time in our nation's history that a significantnumberof its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying ofsmooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon themandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spiritisrising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray thatour own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeplyinneed of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayalof my ownsilences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I havecalledfor radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many personshavequestioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of theirconcernsthis query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking aboutwar, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace andcivilrights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of yourpeople,they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source oftheir concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questionsmeanthat the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or mycalling.Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world inwhichthey live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it ofsignalimportance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why Ibelievethat the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church inMontgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly tothissanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea tomy belovednation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the NationalLiberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the totalsituation andthe need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neitherisit an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Frontparagons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in asuccessfulresolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasontobe suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and historygive eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolvedwithout trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF,but ratherto my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibilityinending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprisingthat I haveseven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moralvision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facileconnectionbetween the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have beenwaging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in thatstruggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor--both black and white -- through the poverty program. There wereexperiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnamand Iwatched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idlepolitical plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew thatAmericawould never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation ofits poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men andskills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I wasincreasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and toattack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place whenit becameclear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopesofthe poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers andtheirhusbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportionsrelativeto the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men whohadbeen crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles awaytoguarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found insouthwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly facedwiththe cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as theykill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat themtogether in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarityburning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they wouldneverlive on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face ofsuch cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness,for it growsout of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last threeyears -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among thedesperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotovcocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried toofferthem my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that socialchange comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But theyasked-- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nationwasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bringabout the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew thatIcould never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressedinthe ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatestpurveyorof violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake ofthoseboys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds ofthousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rightsleader?" andthereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have thisfurther answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the SouthernChristianLeadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul ofAmerica." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision tocertainrights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction thatAmericawould never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of itsslaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In awaywe were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, whohadwritten earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has anyconcernforthe integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. IfAmerica's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must readVietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopesofmen the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determinedthatAmerica will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, workingforthe health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and healthof Americawere not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also acommission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked beforefor "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyondnational allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet havetolive with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ.Tome the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is soobviousthat I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking againstthewar. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant forall men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours,forblack and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have theyforgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved hisenemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the"Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one?CanI threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the roadthat leadsfrom Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was mostvalidif I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share withall men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the callingofrace or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood,andbecause I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially forhissuffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speakforthem.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of uswho deemourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader anddeeperthan nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goalsandpositions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, forvictims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no documentfromhuman hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search withinmyself for waysto understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to thepeople of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side,not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have beenlivingunder the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I thinkofthem too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningfulsolution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear theirbroken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamesepeopleproclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French andJapanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. Theywere led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the AmericanDeclarationof Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused torecognizethem. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of herformer colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not"ready" forindependence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogancethat has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With thattragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seekingself-determination, and a government that had been established not byChina (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearlyindigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants thisnewgovernment meant real land reform, one of the most important needs intheir lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnamthe right ofindependence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French intheirabortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent ofthe French warcosts. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, theybeganto despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged themwithour huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even afterthey had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costsofthis tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independenceand landreform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But insteadtherecame the United States, determined that Ho should not unify thetemporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as wesupportedone of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, PremierDiem.The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out allopposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even todiscuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all thiswaspresided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S.troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods hadaroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but thelongline of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change --especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troopcommitments insupport of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and withoutpopular support. All the while the people read our leaflets andreceivedregular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now theylanguish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese--the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them offthe land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal socialneeds are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by ourbombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a millionacres of theircrops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areaspreparingto destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with atleast twenty casualties from American firepower for one"Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million ofthem-- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of thechildren, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streetslikeanimals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they begforfood. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers,soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with thelandlords and aswe refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform?What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as theGermans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentrationcamps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam weclaimto be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: thefamily andthe village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We havecooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communistrevolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We havesupported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corruptedtheirwomen and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soonthe onlysolid physical foundations remaining will be found at our militarybasesand in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortifiedhamlets.The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam onsuchgrounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speakforthem and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are ourbrothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is tospeak forthose who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NationalLiberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC orCommunists? What must they think of us in America when they realizethatwe permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bringtheminto being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think ofourcondoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? Howcanthey believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from thenorth" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can theytrust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderousreignof Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon ofdeath into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even ifwedo not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men wesupportedpressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our owncomputerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that theirmembership is lessthan twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them theblanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we areawareof their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear readytoallow national elections in which this highly organized politicalparallelgovernment will have no part? They ask how we can speak of freeelectionswhen the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta.And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plantohelp form without them -- the only party in real touch with thepeasants.They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peacesettlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions arefrighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on politicalmythagain and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion andnonviolence when ithelps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, toknowhis assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see thebasicweaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn andgrow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called theopposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummelthe land,and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep butunderstandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack ofconfidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of Americanintentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independenceagainst the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership intheFrench commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and thewillfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a secondstruggleagainst French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuadedtogive up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenthparallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched usconspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely broughtHoChi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they hadbeenbetrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these thingsmust beremembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi consideredthepresence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have beentheinitial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreigntroops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any largenumber of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tensofthousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truthabout theearlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimedthat none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh haswatchedas America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he hassurely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plansforan invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and miningweare doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps onlyhissense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the mostpowerfulnation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands ofbombson a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from itsshores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have triedin these lastfew minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and tounderstandthe arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concernedabout our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that whatweare submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing processthat goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek todestroy.We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must knowafter ashort period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting forarereally involved. Before long they must know that their government hassentthem into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticatedsurelyrealize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while wecreate hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak asa child ofGod and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for thosewhoseland is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whosecultureis being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying thedouble price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption inVietnam.I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast atthe path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my ownnation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative tostopit must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam.Recently oneof them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heartof the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct.The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming theirenemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefullyon the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in theprocess they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. Theimage of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedomand democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in themind of theworld that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will becomeclear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an Americancolonyand men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goadChina into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If wedonot stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the worldwillbe left with no other alternative than to see this as some horriblyclumsyand deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not beable toachieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from thebeginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental tothe life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which wemustbe ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, weshould take theinitiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like tosuggestfive concrete things that our government should do immediately to beginthe long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from thisnightmarish conflict:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that suchaction will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds inSoutheast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and ourinterference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National LiberationFront has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play arole in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnamgovernment.
5. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops fromVietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in anoffer togrant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a newregimewhich included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparationswecan for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid thatisbadly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuingtask whilewe urge our government to disengage itself from a disgracefulcommitment.We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in itsperverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions withwordsby seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we mustclarify forthem our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with thealternativeof conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the pathnowbeing chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater,MorehouseCollege, and I recommend it to all who find the American course inVietnama dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministersofdraft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status asconscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and notfalse ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on thelineif our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humaneconvictionsmust decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we mustall protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping thereand sendingus all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade againstthe war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to goonnow to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but asymptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if weignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy-andlaymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will beconcerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned aboutThailandand Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa.Wewill be marching for these and a dozen other names and attendingrallieswithout end unless there is a significant and profound change inAmericanlife and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyondourcalling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that itseemed to himthat our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During thepast ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which nowhasjustified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. Thisneedto maintain social stability for our investments accounts for thecounter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tellswhyAmerican helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia andwhyAmerican napalm and green beret forces have already been active againstrebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of thelate John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said,"Thosewho make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolutioninevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role ournation hastaken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible byrefusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from theimmense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of theworldrevolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.Wemust rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a"person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motivesandproperty rights are considered more important than people, the gianttriplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of beingconquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question thefairnessand justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand weare called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that willbeonly an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jerichoroad must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantlybeaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. Truecompassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is nothaphazardand superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggarsneeds restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon lookuneasilyon the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteousindignation,it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the Westinvesting huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only totake the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of thecountries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliancewiththe landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." TheWestern arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others andnothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of valueswilllay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settlingdifferences is not just." This business of burning human beings withnapalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, ofinjecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane,ofsending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physicallyhandicappedand psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justiceand love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more moneyonmilitary defense than on programs of social uplift is approachingspiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world,can well leadthe way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragicdeath wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that thepursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There isnothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruisedhands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defenseagainstcommunism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated bytheuse of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shoutwar and through their misguided passions urge the United States torelinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are dayswhichdemand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not calleveryone aCommunist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in theUnited Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not thefinalanswers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in anegative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy,realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to takeoffensiveaction in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek toremovethose conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are thefertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men arerevoltingagainst old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombsofa frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. Theshirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as neverbefore."The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in theWestmust support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because ofcomfort,complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust toinjustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of therevolutionaryspirit of the modern world have now become the archanti-revolutionaries.This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionaryspirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to makedemocracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Ouronly hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionaryspiritand go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostilitytopoverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shallboldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed thedaywhen "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shallbemade low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough placesplain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysisthat ourloyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nationmustnow develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order topreserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborlyconcern beyondone's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for anall-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oftmisunderstoodand misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches ofthe world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolutenecessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am notspeakingof some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that forcewhichall of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principleoflife. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads toultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist beliefaboutultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of SaintJohn:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone thatloveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth notGod; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, andhis love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.We can nolonger afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar ofretaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by theever-risingtides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations andindividuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As ArnoldToynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the savingchoice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil.Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love isgoing to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We areconfrontedwith the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life andhistory there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination isstillthe thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked anddejectedwith a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does notremainat the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause inherpassage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over thebleachedbones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written thepathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life thatfaithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving fingerwrites, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today;nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new waysto speak forpeace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a worldthat borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be draggeddown the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for thosewhopossess power without compassion, might without morality, and strengthwithout sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the longand bitter-- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling ofthesons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall wesaythe odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?Willour message be that the forces of American life militate against theirarrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there beanother message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with theiryearnings,of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours,andthough we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucialmomentof human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell,eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.