ABSTRACT
Returning from an idyllic week at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Vietnam never seemed more remote despite its relative geographic proximity, I received news that brought an overwhelming sense of personal loss. Not one but two friends had passed away: A.J. Muste—pacifist, radical, and believer in mass action; and Bernard B. Fall—realpolitician, conservative, and advocate of elite solutions. Muste was twice the age of Fall, and it must be frankly said, Fall was twice the theorist of Muste. But together each represented the best of his generation; each represented an authentic voice against the present American military intervention in Vietnam. Fall, painfully and slowly, came to be the intellectual backbone of resistance to the War, whereas Muste, proudly, unhesitatingly, from the very outset it seems, was the spiritual backbone to resistance. For once the cliche-ridden phrase—who will replace them?—is not only a meaningful question, but temporarily unanswerable.
