Editorial

JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES 0 0 . I . Editor Associate Editor Editorial Assistant Editorial Board Advisory Board . DENIS SMITH BERNARD R. BLISHEN ELIZABETH A. McLEOD MAURICE J. BOOTE ROBERT D. CHAMBERS LEON DION KENNETH E. KIDD ANDRE LAURENDEAU W. L. MORTON T. H. B. SYMONS ANTHONY ADAMSON CLAUDE T. BISSELL DONALD G. CREIGHTON KATHLEEN FENWICK DAVID M. HAYNE JOHN HIRSCH JEAN PALARDY CLAUDE RYAN B. D. SANDWELL RONALD J. THOM REVUE D'ETUDES CANADIENNES Redacteur Redacteur adjoint Assistante Comite de redaction Comite consultatif Editorial The spasmodic Canadian debate on the war in Vietnam leaves one with an eery sense of grasping at the mist: of drifting about in a heavy sea fog, listening to muffled cries of agony ashore, while unable to locate their source or to get onto shore to discover or relieve the causes of misery. This nightmare mood is probably not peculiar to Canada: it is the result of the way we have perceived the tragedy, and the way we have tried to act; and many other countries have taken the same approach. The honest brokers in this war, Canada among them, have mostly been agnostics about its long-term result. Our policy has been to get the belligerents to the bargaining table without giving any indication of the nature of the settlement that might emerge. But our utter failure to bring about a cease-fire, or even to influence the antagonists to hold the line, must throw the whole of this broker's approach into doubt. The fact seems to be that despite their protestations, the United States and the Viet Cong do not want the help of brokers; the positions they hold are mutually incompatible, and are at present not negotiable. The war will go on as long as each side retains its pure and zealous sense of mission. Journal of Canadian Studies If this is true, the practical irrelevance of much of the Canadian discussion of the war becomes apparent. The preoccupation with a cessation of U.S. bombing in the North, and of troop infiltration to the South, has only a short-term diplomatic purpose, and that purpose might well fail. There is not much reason to believe that preliminary concessions by each side will bring the 1 belligerents together at peace talks, because each side must know that the other's minimum acceptable conditions are unacceptable to it. The demand that bombing of the North should halt gains its strength now from its humanitarian, rather than its diplomatic, purpose. It is evil to bomb civilian populations. But this is not the ground on which Mr. Pearson and Mr. Martin stand. They oppose moral posturing; their position is taken for diplomacy's sake, not morality's. If the bombing does not stop, will they simply go on, for months on end, requesting this as the prelude to negotiations? An observer could then be excused for concluding that what had begun as a diplomatic tactic had in fact become the worst sort of posturing. To claim that Canada must continue to keep its communications open, both to Washington and to Hanoi, in the hope that the Canadian channel will be vital when negotiations are in prospect, is, as Thomas Hockin wrote recently in the Globe and Mail, to mistake mechanisms for policy. In doing so, we may be sacrificing a special Canadian opportunity to contribute to peace-making on a more basic level. There are many other equally reliable go-betweens; if a cease-fire does become possible, its achievement will not depend upon Canada's availability as a messenger. The Canadian government shrewdly recognizes that we may have some role to play in a settlement, and that this role will probably, somehow, involve communicating with the Americans, who are our friends. What the government has failed to discover is what it should be communicating. Is it possible that our most important responsibility lies in speaking coolly - and publicly - about the nature of the longterm settlement? This means, probably, that we would be speaking for the most responsible dissenters in the United States, who cannot foresee either an American military victory, or a peace 2 settlement that would satisfy the dominant American prejudices, and who...