ABSTRACT
The sine qua non of conservative anticommunism, military interventionism, was intended as the first instalment in a larger policy that would reintroduce self-control throughout the world, the removal of the main disturbers of such self-control seen as the indispensable beginning. Self-control was what all conservatives desired, that is, control not organised and not external but coming from internalised correct ideas. Others, like the Republican Senator Lawrence Y. Sherman, who also argued for intervention, favoured it as a war move purely, and still others, like Senator Lodge, completely despaired of the possibility of ever really introducing self-control in Russia, whatever success there might be in recreating an eastern front. In essence, the apologia for violence was also an affirmation of the necessity for speedy socialistic transformation as the only way to self-control.
