Promise of Joy (17 page)

“—American commercial enterprises were attacked, and a group of American missionaries was slaughtered, by the forces of Prince Obifumatta. We decided to give assistance to the M’Bulu, and with our aid, he is presently maintaining his control of the country.

“Prince Obifumatta is receiving heavy assistance from the Soviet Union, and from the People’s Republic of China.

“In Panama, similarly aided by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, a revolutionary movement led by the former Ambassador to the United States, Señor Felix Labaiya, is attempting to seize the country and the Canal. We are assisting the legitimate Panamanian government in repulsing this attempt.

“So we have the United States on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China on the other, arrayed against one another in two small client states in two widely separated areas of the world. But though the countries are small, the stakes are very high. We know this, and Moscow and Peking know this. And that is why we are where we are.

“Now: how do we terminate these two situations and get out of each with our honor—”

(“There he goes again!” “He’s got a good cliché going, man. You don’t expect him to drop it now?”)

“—and with the security of this country and the non-Communist world intact? Because, believe me, my friends, both must be preserved. Gorotoland is the strategic heart of Africa, the crossroads of the continent, which is why the Communist powers are there. Panama’s strategic importance to us, and to world commerce, is obvious, I think, to everyone. Neither can be permitted to fall to Communist control.

“At the same time, we do not want, and we do not seek, any permanent controlling involvement ourselves. If we can guarantee Gorotoland’s genuine independence, the genuine independence of Panama and the freedom of the Canal to all traffic on an equal basis, then that is all we want.

“How to arrive at these objectives is not so simple. Yet we must try.

“Therefore I am issuing an invitation at this moment to the new Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, and to the Chairman of the Chinese People’s Republic, and such aides and assistants as they may wish to bring with them, to meet me and my advisers in the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, at noon one week from today.

“The purpose of our meeting will be to negotiate and settle the twin situations in Gorotoland and Panama.

“As far as I and my advisers are concerned, we are ready to stay in Geneva for as long as necessary to bring these two conflicts to an end which will establish peace and satisfy the legitimate interests of all parties, including the countries directly involved, and the major powers.

“I would hope to have a reply from the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, and the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, at the very earliest possible moment—I would hope not later than noon tomorrow.

“I take this action on my own initiative, without prior consultation with anyone, because I believe the search for peace to be my first and overriding duty as your President.”

(“Well, how about
that?”
they asked one another knowingly at the
Times
and the
Post—
or the
Pimes
and the
Tost,
so mirror-image were they in their attitudes toward him, toward the world and toward anyone who did not agree with their own rigidly intolerant and illiberal views. “Old Orrin is certainly desperate for a gimmick, isn’t he?”)

“So we come, inevitably, to the matter of this nation’s defenses—because what we do in Geneva, and what we do thereafter, will depend to a great degree on how much strength we can put behind our words. Strength, as history shows, is all the Communists respect. Smiles, blandishments,
‘détentes,’
agreements, conferences, cozy talks, kindly gestures, ‘treaties,’ solemn pieces of paper—they all mean nothing.

“Strength is all that matters.

“When we have it, we get reasonable arrangements the world can live with.

“When we don’t, we get the back of the hand.

“I do not intend”—and for the first time his voice abandoned its measured cadence, his head came up in a sharply challenging way, he stared straight into the massed cameras—“for the United States in my Administration to take the back of the hand from anybody.”

(“Twenty minutes after he began speaking,” Frankly Unctuous reported with a certain smug satisfaction he could not quite keep out of his voice, “the President has received his first noticeable round of applause.”)

“Therefore, I am sending to the Congress this afternoon an emergency supplemental appropriations bill for the Department of Defense in the amount of ten billion dollars. This measure will provide for an immediate expansion of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and the missile and satellite forces of the United States. I shall ask the Congress to give it immediate priority. I hope it can be passed and reach my desk not later than one month from today.”

(“There he goes, right back to the same old big-stick militaristic policy,” they said at the
Pimes
and the
Tost.”
You see, you can trust him: he always blows it.” “Damned war-lover!”)

“These, my fellow Americans, represent the two basic aspects of the foreign policy of my Administration:

“Frank and candid negotiation, tough but fair-minded bargaining looking toward lasting agreements to reduce tension and bring peace to the world—and the military strength without which that kind of negotiation and agreement is impossible in the modern world.

“Domestically, I hope that my Administration can be equally practical, equally tough-minded, equally firm—and equally fair.

“We have done much in recent years to strengthen ourselves internally. We need to do much more.

“Racial tensions still exist, their causes still abound. We will tackle them firmly and fairly.

“We will do the same in those areas of the economy where labor tensions exist.

“Full medical insurance for all citizens is not yet a reality despite many attempts to achieve it in recent years. We will continue to strive for that goal.

“Energy is still a major problem. We will continue to expand our exploration and development of new energy sources, particularly in the areas outside petrochemicals. We will continue to increase our network of atomic reactors.

“Unemployment remains at a relatively low level, but it is still too much. We will attempt to encourage new businesses and industries to provide more jobs. The gross national product is sagging. We will do our best to bring it up.

“Agriculture will continue to receive the same close attention from my Administration that it has received from others. The price gap between producer and consumer is still too low for the producer, too high for the customer, too close to profiteering for the middleman. We will seek ways to close that gap.

“Inflation continues to plague us—declining somewhat, but still too great for a healthy economy. We will use all the weapons available to government to control it, and bring it down.

“All of these things I pledge to you as our goals in this Administration. I expect personally to give all of them my diligent and continuing personal attention.

“But first we must, if we can, solve the foreign crisis and help the world achieve a viable and lasting peace. And to do that, we need not only an America strong in military defenses but strong in spirit, in hope and in idealism. The climate for that kind of America, my friends, can be set by me—but the achievement of it has to be done by all of us.

“We have here a land which still, for all its troubles of recent years, possesses as much of decency, good will and human goodness as any nation anywhere—more than most, I like to believe, though that may be too prejudiced. But I think not.

“I think that America, with all her faults—and they are many—and with all her strengths—and they too are many—still guards and preserves what remains of human liberty in the world. She does so because it is her historic role, as it was her historic reason for being, in the first place. And she does so because you, a majority of the American people, I believe, still have faith in her and the things for which she stands.

“We Americans are human, and so we are a very complex conglomeration of good, evil, weakness, strength, certainty, uncertainty, carefully considered policy and sudden, unpredictable impulse. We swing like the pendulum sometimes, but always, so far in our history at least, we have come back to middle ground. So I pray it may ever be, for that is our greatest strength: that the storms rise and blow over, and the Republic still stands.

“With your help and your support, we will survive and continue to discharge our duty to ourselves and to all mankind—the duty to preserve, protect, defend and increase freedom in the world. We shall do it with humility but with a conviction that our hearts are good and our purposes sound: with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, but always—with firmness.

“Thank you, and God bless you all.”

(“How’s that for waving the flag and drowning in clichés?” they asked one another at the
Tost
. “Of all the crap,” they said scornfully at the
Pimes.
“Does he really think he’s going to get away with
that?”
)

“At the conclusion of his brief speech,” Frankly Unctuous reported to his listeners, who were aware of it already, “the President received his second scattering of applause in a routine performance which curiously seemed to stir little interest, and even less enthusiasm, in one of the smallest and least responsive crowds ever to attend an inauguration.”

Knox offers to meet in Geneva with Soviets, Chinese to negotiate settlement of Gorotoland, Panama. Inaugural stresses military strength, reliance on arms to gain “reasonable arrangements world can live with.” Congress cool to demand for new billions for armed forces. Anti-war groups condemn “return to big-stick diplomacy.” Sparse inaugural crowd seems unstirred by new President’s appeal to faith in America.

Which, he realized as he went through the customary motions of the brief lunch with Congressional leaders, an awkward meal in which everyone carefully avoided the issues he had raised in his speech, was a fairly accurate summation. Neither the audience nor his former colleagues on the Hill had seemed particularly stirred. It would be even more of an uphill battle than he had anticipated.

Yet, he told himself stubbornly while his tightly guarded limousine and its accompanying Secret Service cars fell into line to lead the parade down Capitol Hill, along Pennsylvania Avenue, past scattered but not unfriendly crowds, to the White House and the reviewing stand, this was the way he saw it, and this was how he would proceed. He would not have been faithful to his own beliefs or to his own concept of the country’s role in the world if he had attempted to trim, appease or compromise with the many enemies, foreign and domestic, who longed to see America brought down. He would not have been Orrin Knox had he not stated his own view of America, which, balanced between good and bad, came down in the last analysis on the side of the good he still felt to be America’s greatest strength.

So if they didn’t like it, they could lump it: not exactly
, he thought with a wry inward smile, the most effective state of mind for a President of the United States to be in, but one he couldn’t avoid sometimes. He knew the practical requirements of getting along with Congress would speedily modify it, if he wished to get anything through that difficult body. And he did want to get his new defense bill through. In fact, it was imperative.

It was also imperative that he get some word as soon as possible from Moscow and Peking. The moment he arrived at the reviewing stand he beckoned to his new Secretary of State, just taking his seat with the Cabinet two rows back. Robert A. Leffingwell worked his way promptly forward to his side.

“Bob,” he said in a low voice for his ears alone, as the first band playing “Hail to the Chief” went by, “I want you to go into the Oval Office and open the hot lines to Moscow and Peking. Call me the minute there’s a response.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Bob Leffingwell said. “Will you pass the word to the Secret Service and Signal Corps so I can get in?”

“It’s done,” he said, and calling over the chief of the Secret Service, conveyed the instructions.

Then he turned back to the parade, smiled and waved, and began the vigil which was to last, as it turned out, until almost midnight.

“Not only was it a flat, lifeless, disappointing speech,” they wrote sternly at the
Tost
for the editorial that would appear in tomorrow morning’s edition, “but it carried one extremely ominous note. Our bellicose new President is not only going to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ freedom everywhere—
everywhere,
mind you—but he is going to ‘increase’ it. And how does he intend to do that, pray tell, unless he means to launch us on a new imperial conquest of all those many areas of the world where independent-minded peoples beg to differ from his particular narrow concept of what ‘freedom’ is?”

“There are many things we deplore about the Inaugural Address,” they wrote with equal severity at the
Pimes,
“but one thing above all others stands out: the apparent determination of President Knox to return to a concept of armed diplomacy which the failures of two decades have proved to be a ghastly mistake. How can he possibly reach agreement with the Soviet Union and China in this fashion? How can he possibly answer those great nations’ sincere desire for peace, and the sincere desire for peace of all the Communist world, by such a belligerent stance? He calls on the one hand for a meeting in Geneva, and on the other for an enormous new shotgun to take along with him in his hip pocket. And the Communists are to believe he comes in peace? We would not consider it likely that they will fall for any such transparent two-faced ploy. Indeed, for the sake of the world’s peace, we sincerely hope they will not.”

“President Knox’s call for a return to ancient American virtues,” Frankly Unctuous said in his plummy tones, staring earnestly into the camera, mustache twitching, chipmunk cheeks pursed in disapproval, “might be moving if it were not so outdated—and if it did not contrast so glaringly with his appeal to arms as a guarantee of peace. He apparently sees himself as some sort of world savior, bent upon forcing his concept of freedom upon the entire world. It is the sort of paranoia that in other lands has led to dictatorship, destruction, the death of millions and the death of peace. We sincerely hope Congress will reject his appeal for more military funding—as we hope the Soviets and Chinese will reject his arrogant insistence that they come to Geneva. That is not the way to achieve the peace that we, and all mankind, so desperately desire.”