ABSTRACT
Russell’s anxieties about the future course of U.S. policies and the prospects for peace, following the death of Kennedy, were exacerbated by America’s increasing involvement in Vietnam. Early in 1964 it became clear that the war in Vietnam was not only to be continued by the Johnson Administration but stepped up. Russell redoubled his efforts to arouse the American people to the cruel nature of the war and of their government’s role in extending it. He wrote to a number of leading American papers and his letter appeared in the New York Herald Tribune of January 17:
Do Americans understand the nature of their war in Vietnam—chemical warfare, the wholesale destruction of villages (1400 out of 2600) and the herding of the peasant population into barbed-wire encampments because of the sympathy they have for the insurgents?
Napalm with its torturous effects is widely employed. The jellied gasoline can neither be rubbed off nor washed off. The victim must slowly burn to death. Its purpose is to terrify all who observe its effect. Therefore this warfare is as atrocity-ridden as any ever conducted.
The United States undertook this war instead of permitting the elections for a unified Vietnam agreed on in the international conference. The regime in the South is tyrannical. Recent suicides indicate the population is more unhappy than ever. The overthrow of Diem resulted from his attempt to negotiate with the North for a neutral and united Vietnam.
The war can be ended now and the suffering stopped by a neutral government neither pro-West nor pro-East.
