Capable of Honor (34 page)

For several moments Walter did not reply, and they could almost see him forcing himself to become calm, to adopt the bland and superior air with which he was accustomed to deliver his opinions, to become again Walter Wonderful, the Instant Wise Man.

“Well,” he said finally, “I will make no apologies for my honestly expressed views—”

Orrin Knox snorted.

“You should. To me, and to the President, and,” he added with a deliberate insulting slowness, “to all who agree with us, whom you and your crowd blackguard and besmirch the length and breadth of this land every hour on the hour.”

Again there was silence in the room.

“I hope you lose the nomination, Orrin Knox,” his host said at last in a cold and remote voice. “I hope you are driven forever from public life, and your complaisant President with you. Anything I can do to assist in this result,” he added with a wintry smile, “I intend to do. Even though,” he said with a sarcastic glance at Governor Jason and Bob Leffingwell, “others may deem me too vehement, and may possibly not be really worthy of my support. Just where do you stand, Ted? Anywhere?”

“I have already discussed with the President where I stand,” Governor Jason said with an air of almost insolent calm.

“Does he know,” Walter inquired dryly, “or is he as confused as the rest of us about your apparent equivocations concerning the greatest crisis the United States and the United Nations have faced in this generation?”

“Walter can’t help talking as though he were writing a column,” Helen-Anne remarked. “Every sentence a living gem. Give me another brandy, dear heart. I can’t take you without it.”

“I hear you’re going over to Orrin,” Walter said scornfully, as he obliged with an automatic courtesy.

“Keep listening,” she suggested cheerfully. “You never know what you'll hear next, in this town.”

“I hate to see you sacrifice a reasonably successful career,” he said with his most patronizing air. But instead of reacting she gave him a pitying look she knew would infuriate.

“I really think you have no conception of what you are doing to your reputation,” she said, shaking her head sadly and looking to Beth and Ceil for agreement. “Those columns.
Poor
Walter.”

“Those columns,” he said, suddenly provoked to a genuine anger, “state a view held by untold millions of decent and fair-minded people in America and throughout the world. This is all flip nonsense that is being talked here. The fundamental fact has been, and remains, that the United States has invaded a small, helpless nation for unworthy motives and suspect purposes, and that in the process of safeguarding its invasion it has twice used the veto to shatter and destroy the peace-keeping functions of the United Nations. Now that is the fact of it, and cheap rationalizations and appeals to the flag are not going to change it. Men who equivocate now,” he said with a sudden heavy emphasis, swinging again upon Ted Jason, “are going to find themselves forced by events into the only honorable position, which is one of opposition to this bloodthirsty insanity. Better they move there now as a matter of free choice, than later as a matter of political necessity.”

Ted made a movement as if to speak, but again it was Bob Leffingwell who interceded.

“Riding pretty high, aren’t you, Walter," he suggested mildly. “Some of us aren’t so positive as you are about where that honorable position is.”

“I am going to make a speech tomorrow night,” Walter said slowly, leaning forward, square-tipped fingers on knees. “In it, I expect to state what seems to me the only decent and responsible philosophy that liberal men can follow in this crisis. I expect my speech to have some effect upon the nomination and the campaign.” He gave Bob Leffingwell a challenging look. “Do you deny that it will?”

“No,” Bob Leffingwell said, still mildly. “I expect it to.”

“And after it has been made,” Walter said flatly, “when the press comes to you and asks you whether or not you endorse it, you will find yourself in a position where you will have to endorse it or be branded a warmonger along with all the other reactionaries. And so,” he finished calmly, once more in command of things, “will Ted.”

Bob Leffingwell nodded.

“That is why, my friend,” he said with a thoughtful slowness, “I do not think I will introduce you tomorrow night.”

“But, DARLING—” Patsy started to protest, even as Walter straightened abruptly and spoke as though she did not exist.

“But,” he said with an air of disbelief that anyone could do such a thing to him, “you’re the previous award-winner. You said you would!”

Bob Leffingwell continued his thoughtful appraisal for a moment.

“I think it will be best if I just stay out of it.”

“Bravo for you, Bob!” Helen-Anne exclaimed. A silence fell, during which the Knoxes looked at each other. Patsy shook her head in dismay, Ted looked perfectly bland, Ceil waited with a polite, attentive air, and Helen-Anne shrewdly studied them all. Finally their host spoke, in a voice heavy with emotion and the effort to keep it under control.

“Very well,” he said, leaning forward once again, hands on knees, to stare at them. "You do as you please. All of you, do as you please! But I shall speak for Governor Jason tomorrow night and I shall make it impossible for him not to run as the leader of the untold millions all over the world who oppose the insanity of this Administration. I shall continue to oppose that insanity as long as the blood of life is in me. I think Harley Hudson and Orrin Knox are betraying America, betraying humanity, betraying the world. I truly believe this, and I believe that millions upon millions of people agree with me. I see nothing but disaster ahead if this course continues. I truly believe this,” he repeated almost in a whisper. “I truly do. I cannot abandon the country to such a fate if I can possibly prevent it. I cannot.”

“Well,” Ceil said, standing up with a graceful motion, “on that note, I think we had best get back in to Washington. Ted has some people to see, and I want to do some shopping, and—we just have many things to accomplish between now and tomorrow night. It has been so delightful,” she said, turning to Beth and holding out her hand as the others rose. “Perhaps another time we can visit more fully. Although,” she said with a wistful little shrug, “politics being what it is—”

“Yes, I know,” Beth said, ignoring, as did they all, their still-seated host. “That’s one of the tragedies of Washington, I think—the people who might have been friends if only their ambitions hadn’t sent them crashing into one another.”

“We wish you luck,” Ceil said, quite sincerely.

“And we you,” Beth replied, turning to shake hands with Governor Jason as they all moved toward the door, Walter at last rising slowly behind them and following.

“Bob,” Orrin said, “come see me sometime, if you feel like it. Your ideas would be helpful in this situation.”

“I may,” Bob Leffingwell said, his tone recognizing, as did Orrin’s, that this was their first really amicable exchange in many months. “I just may.”

“I hope so,” the Secretary said. “Thank you for the lunch, Walter,” he tossed back over his shoulder without turning around.

“Yes,” Helen-Anne said dryly, “we do thank you so much, lover.”

“It HAS been exciting,” Patsy agreed.

But they really hardly looked at him, and the men did not pause to shake his hand.

The last they saw of him as their cars swung around the parking circle and started down the drive was a short, stolid—yet, in some way he would not have perceived and would have bitterly denied—pathetic figure, standing in the classic doorway of his lovely old home, staring out across the Virginia countryside with world’s-end in his eyes.

“WELL,” Patsy said as the cars reached the road and by tacit agreement theirs moved rapidly out and away from the Knoxes’, “I must say THAT was something.”

“You want to watch out, Ted,” Bob Leffingwell remarked. “You’re apt to get yourself boxed in where you can’t move, with that crowd.”

“They haven’t boxed me yet,” Governor Jason said grimly, “and they aren’t going to.”

“Of course if
you
introduce Walter tomorrow night—” Ceil suggested ironically. Then she looked thoughtful. “You know, I really think—”

Her husband nodded.

“I’m way ahead of you, darling.” He smiled. “For once. I’m going to.”

“My!” Patsy said. “That will be exciting, too.”

“I swear to God,” Helen-Anne said as they went through Leesburg and headed for home, “I think he’s around the bend.”

“I don’t,” Orrin said. “I think he’s deadly serious. It’s probably just as well Harley’s going to speak tonight and blanket him out.”

Helen-Anne looked pleased.

“Good. I told him to.”

Beth laughed.

“I think it’s so nice: you tell Harley what to do and Walter tells Orrin what to do. That way you both have the situation covered.”

“I hope Harley lets him have it,” Helen-Anne said in an un-amused tone. “He deserves it.”

But the President was more subtle than that when, at 9 P.M., he went on the air from his oval office in the West Wing. Outside on Pennsylvania Avenue the Ministers’ Vigil for Gorotoland, three hundred strong, was marching solemnly up and down, as it had been all day, while across the avenue in Lafayette Square groups of supporters and critics engaged in occasional shoutings, shovings, and angry japings that teetered uneasily on the edge of conflagration. In the grand ballroom of the Sheraton-Park the hastily organized National University Teach-in on Gorotoland, three thousand strong, was still, as it had been since 10 A.M., wildly applauding the thirty speakers who had been invited to attack the Administration, vigorously booing the six who had been permitted to appear on its behalf. In New York and Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, and Salt Lake City, the banners of COMFORT, DEFY, and KEEP were flying side by side in parades that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere but appeared to be remarkably cohesive and well organized just the same. All over the land the people who had never said a word of protest while the United States was meekly taking its losses around the world in carefully limited patty-cake engagements with the enemy were suddenly outraged, infuriated, and enjoying a delicious togetherness, now that the United States was acting tough.

O the marches, the speeches, the parades and demonstrations!

O the happy full-page ads in the
New York Times
, the glorious Communications to the Editor, the marvelous statements and petitions proclaimed in televised mass rallies the wonderful release of at last being able to denounce your own country as you had always hoped you could!

The grand and glorious self-righteousness—the marvelous
sincerity
of it all!

It was the high point of many drab lives in Academe and Theologia.

They would never forget it.

Never.

Yet even upon them, in their teach-ins, talk-outs, pray-downs, and spit-ats, there fell a silence at 9 P.M. when the President began to speak. His address had not been announced until three hours before, and it was not only in America, of course, that his critics and supporters waited anxiously to hear. Long after midnight in Europe, early in the dawn of Asia, wherever the reach of Telstar and Early Bird bound the earth, and that was everywhere, men paused in their riots and demonstrations, their speeches and denunciations, to study the measured words and the kindly, untroubled face that represented to so many of them the hated United States and its fearsome attack upon the shaky pillars of a fantasy world in which the United States was supposed always to retreat, never to stand firm. Now that world was in ruins, as it had been inevitable that someday it would be; but still they could not believe it. They watched the face and heard the words and their shock and horror grew, for again there was no retreating and now the President was moving against his opposition with a shrewdness they were suddenly afraid they could not match. It made their reaction even more violent than it was already.

“My countrymen,” he said quietly, “I thought I would talk to you tonight, very briefly, about duty and responsibility and the honor that moves great nations and peoples when they are truly great.

“You have been made aware in the last three days—” and he smiled slightly, an ironic but undismayed smile—“of all my shortcomings as your President. You have been made aware of all the awful things that I have done, and my principal adviser, the Secretary of State, has done.

“At least”—and again he smiled the small, ironic smile—“you have been made aware that some people consider them awful.

“Some very prominent and vocal people consider them awful. Some people who would rather condemn their own country, perhaps, in order to preserve an unreal, impractical concept of the world, than defend it against those who have made of international integrity a laughingstock and of collective security an empty phrase.

(On Kalorama Road, watching with friends at a black-tie dinner, Walter Dobius said bitterly, “Oh, it’s someone else who’s destroying collective security, is it?” His host and hostess laughed a trifle nervously, but his fellow guests, including the Ambassadors of Guinea and Pakistan, nodded sagely.)

“What are the techniques,” the President asked, “which are used by these people—this small but influential group whose power is out of all proportion to their numbers? You have read them in a hundred crises, you have listened to them on a thousand occasions when your country was attempting to deal firmly with its enemies.

“There is the headline or bulletin so phrased that it instantly gives the American citizen the impression that his own country is in the wrong, no matter what the truth is.

“There are the sympathetic stories about the poor enemy citizens who are being hurt by war, never balanced by equally pertinent and worthy stories about the loyal citizens who are being hurt by war.

“There are the shocked disclosures of how disorganized and corrupt and irresponsible the loyal government is—and the admiring reports of how shrewd, well-organized and invincible the enemy government is.

“There are the diligent—one might almost say, the eager—reports of American losses and mistakes, somehow never quite matched or balanced by reports of enemy losses and mistakes.