DEFENSE OF TOCSIN

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Stanley Hoffmann's remarks about Tocsin, reported in the CRIMSON this morning, probably will not "bring down a storm of wrath" from anyone; but they deserve a couple of comments.

Whether Tocsin overestimates the danger of war is a matter of personal judgment. Professor Hoffmann seems not to find the danger very great. President Kennedy, in his now-famous speech to the U.N. General Assembly, said that "every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles...

A worse charge, to my mind, is that Tocsin puts "an inordinate stress on survival as a goal of American foreign policy." It is true that our strongest objection to the strategy of nuclear deterrence is our belief that it does not really secure safety from destruction. But this is not our only objection. Most Tocsin members feel that the strategy and structure of the cold war--with its myth of an implacable and apocalyptic total conflict between the Communist system and our own--is contributing to a growing erosion of the civil freedoms and social ideals which in the past have made this country great. In the name of an illusory national security, the rights of labor unions to strike are being abridged; right-wing idiots are finding huge audiences for programs of reaction and political bigotry; dissidents are investigated and loyalty oaths perpetrated; now the Communist Party, never weaker or less effective, is being suppressed. All this is justified in the name of "defense"--well, exactly what is it that we are defending? It is because this nation's foreign policy emphasizes only defense, deterrence of aggression, because it stresses only survival at the expense of liberty, social justice and whatever else--at home or abroad--is good and worth struggling for, that I and many of my friends find it distasteful...

Of course, as Professor Hoffmann should have known, Tocsin's policy of "unilateral initiative" is designed to facilitate, within the limits of military safety, a reduction of tension to a level at which we can again pay some attention to the positive goals of foreign and domestic policy. Christopher Z. Hobson '63.