Urgent October 19, 1965 Dear The enclosed statement has been prepared by a group of RAFGOPI at M.I.T. The idea is to try to publish it as an ad in the New York Times Sunday October 33.; Contacts have been made with an aim to joint, or simultaneous, or subsequent publications by other fa<y groups cooperating with the National Universities Committee on Problems of Peace and War. Can you please'.read the.enclosed statement, think of possible _ - : improvements (minor changes;please) and join us' in an brganitiational meeting at 4:00 p.m., Thursday October 21, M.I.T. Room 56-746 (New Life Science Wing, Seventh Floor). If you cannot attend, please .' send suggestions or phone~app&.ML,to~ S. E..Luria,] M.I.T. 'Room '5&- . . . ., _ ., (_ . . 423; phor&%4-@CO, Ext. 4joj or `4714. LET US STOP THE BLOODSHED The war in Vietnam is continuing with ever-increasing human suffering, mounting destruction, and diminishing hope for just and speedy resolution. Irrespective of the extent to which the opposing factions in South Vietnam have been instigated, supported, and supplied from the outside, whether from America or from North Vietnam, it is now clear to everyone that the struggle has become a war conducted by the American armed forces against the people of Vietnam. In this brutal war the masses of the Vietnamese people are the unwilling and helpless victims of bombs and fire. But the American people are themselves undergoing a brutalizing and degrading experience. A barbarous war is being waged in their name, with the immense American military power unleashed on a defenseless civilian population. Inevitably, and with horrified reluctance, our thought goes to the horrors of a recent era. Ethiopia, Guernica, Lkdice, Rotterdam -- these were the symbols of the degradation of man at the hands of the Fascists and Nazis. Mr. President, we do not want to witness such horrors anywhere every again. No, Mr. President, we are not behind you. c We do not want this country to be guilty of such atrocities. The anticommunism of Hitler did not justify the murder of millions -- Germans or Spaniards, Christians or Jews. Anticommunism does not justify the current indiscriminate killing of people, South Vietnamese or North Vietnamese, American or Asian. We ask you to stop this unnecessary bloodshed now. We ask you to order an immediate halt to the bombings, to the destruction of villages because they may perhaps give shelter to rebels, to the burning ofZt::6- - w people's food because it may perhaps fall into rebels* hands. Your present policy is supposedly aimed at forcing negotiations. We 50 not believe that formal negotiations are a prerequisite to ending the bloodshed. We believe that, if we stop the bombings and we stop waging aggressive war, we shall create the breathing spell, the atmosphere of sanity, needed to bring the people of Vietnam together to work out their own peace, and --- to bring the nations of the world togeth-er to guarantee ,tut; peace. L/ Mr. President, now is the time to put an ena to dying. --- The current threats of investigations and the fostering of anti-peace hysteria will not deter us from speaking up against a wrong and immoral policy. We shall continue to protest, Mr. President, and to oppose your present policy in Vietnam with all our strength, because only thus can we do our part in trying to protect the peace of the world and the moral integrity of our Nation.