I think it was only the other day that in my particular eye the world did, in fact, seem for a moment self-contained; and I walked along a downtown street in Berkeley with a friend wholly absorbed, so I would have thought, in our discussion of our practical affairs. But when we came to the intersection where the latest editions were displayed on the news racks, my eye darted to the headlines despite myself. We hesitated, both of us looking at the headlines a little to one side of them in the same way one looks at a very faint light in the darkness for in that way one sees both the thing itself and its relationship to the space around it; and we knew at once, by the sheer magnitude and blackness of the headlines in relation to the workaday, familiar street behind them, that things had become much more serious in the world in the past eight hours. We read of another American reverse, and how the enemy were perfidious and fanatical, while the defeated Americans were both chivalric and courageous. I noticed the others who had paused to glance sideways in the same direction, and the passersby who, presumably because their worlds had been less self-contained than mine a moment before, hurried on up the street toward some private solution, but not without looking to the news rack with a certain fear and surprise as they passed. The pressure moved against all of us.

We were all thinking of different things, no doubt-I of the fact that I am thirty-one, in consequence, have a few months of leisure left; the handsome lady on my left of her youngster who will be eighteen in September. And the young fellow who came and stood behind my shoulder, sucked his teeth a moment and flung himself away with an oath-he was doubtless wondering why he had not resigned his commission in the naval reserve in proper time. It may be one of us was merely thinking about his supply of bourbon. But in the various modes of our different fragmented worlds we shared the fact that each of us, individually, was threatened in the last thing he possesses-himself. Sooner or later, we all knew, they are going to come to get us, each of us, in the same way, or in different ways. Neither our lives, nor our deaths, belonged to us any more. Someone, sometime, we knew, is going to come to claim them. And we knew there is nothing within our power that can remove this threat or forestall its ultimate visitation in just the particular suburb of our comfort and belief.

Small wonder that my friend and I thought sympathetically of our appetites and went inside to sit over the consolations of a chocolate milkshake. The pressure was inexorable. Do what we may, we cannot change the one fact that they are after us, they want what we have, and most of all, they want ourselves. And because of that, it is demanded of us that we sacrifice ourselves, yes, that we die, and that we destroy what we have, so that they cannot have us or what we possess. My God, what a dilemma for people like ourselves who love milkshakes so much and think no evil! It is demanded of us that we make war to enjoy peace, and that we die in order to survive!

Men prefer a clean death. As we stand each of us in his immense solitariness before the newspaper headlines, we are driven to a choice of deaths. We would rather die for familiar things, among faces that speak a familiar tongue. We would far rather die in the sanction of our neighbors than without it. Above all, we would prefer to die in victory, and not in defeat. But even if that is denied to us-victory, I mean-we feel, most of us, that the first who come to get us and demand our lives will on the whole provide us the cleaner death. That will be our own government, and the familiar things will be the American flag, democracy, organized baseball and a Christian burial. How much better to die for these things when the government comes to get us than to die because the enemy, the perfidious and fanatical enemy has come to get us, has invaded us, trampled our cities and like a contemptible insect swarmed into our suburbs to sting us to death. That, we are given to understand, is our alternative. Well then we would rather die in a more chivalric, a cleaner fashion, in the name of our country and with it slogans on our lips. Such a thought, if we are sufficiently young, may improve the flavor of our milkshake while we envision the particular circumstances-our buddies around us, the charge, the gallant fall, the American Legion painting our name on its honor role, and the mayor back home giving a solemn speech. We may not understand Korean politics too well, but valor we do understand. Just give us a chance!

But still, the pressure remains, because fundamentally we do not want to die, no matter how young we are.

It seems to me quite impossible to touch on the Korean war, or to speculate upon the more massive wars to come, without first orienting oneself in relation to this basic experience one shares with his neighbors. We are engaged in a struggle to possess the conditions of our own death. Some of us will survive. These will be lucky. Some of us will profit. These will have to live with themselves. But we have a certain knowledge that all of us are called upon to place our lives in the service of values that are primary to us. We know that we are caught in this circumstance and that there is no way out of it, but only a way farther in. We know certainly that some of us must perish for the sake of what we believe and feel compelled to defend. Therefore the most vital as well as the most interesting thing in contemplating the war is the absolute task it imposes on each of us to find out what he believes in-in the sense that he would give his life to defend it. The really interesting thing about the Korean war is that it symbolizes, with its characteristic mixture of courage and falsehood, belief and cynicism, the basic and immediately urgent problem confronting us-to decide what is really important to us, and what is really important for mankind; to decide what must be preserved, for ourselves as we face the demand for our sacrifice; and for other men who either face the same demand or constitute the threat.

For myself, the answer to this question comes quickly. Milkshakes and the ready satisfaction of my appetite are important to me, but I am not willing to die for them. I am not willing to die for my right to live behind a green lawn in a suburban house. My standard of living, my American standard of living has many comforts for me, but I am not willing to make an altar of them for the sacrifice of my life. No, if it is a question of being willing to perish for these things the puny materialism on which they rest emerges at once. My deepest sympathy is rather that I retain, as long as I can, the situation which admits of direct communication between myself and others; for clearly, while I can still communicate with other men there remains at least a chance that we may not only live together but make out of our differences and likenesses a better integrated and more productive life. As long as I can communicate I can create. As long as I can communicate I am free. And conversely, as long as I receive and accept the communication of others I am able to grow. But if this fundamental condition is eliminated, I am not free, I cannot grow, and I cannot create. It is my freedom, the chance that I may grow, the chance that I may create, for which I would lay down my life if it were required.

I must say in parenthesis that I do not possess the richest faith known to man-this is an understatement-and I feel that with ample rain and good soil I shall, perhaps, in due time, indeed grow to the possession of other, much more complicated reasons for believing the same thing. I am here, in any case, simply setting out the minimal condition for my own death. I insist on this condition. And it is only in the defense of this condition, I must admit, that I am able to perceive the slightest hope for a survival worth the sacrifice we are all called upon to make.

There is an archetypal situation which seems to underlie all that is uttered and assumed about warfare and the preservation of human values today. It is a kind of racial nightmare which all of us dream, the true root of fear in our social as well as our private natures. The situation is that of the invaded city, beleaguered, then occupied by the alien horde; and presently, a smashing at one's own door and the enemy in one's own room. He has none of the humane concern one has for oneself. He is there to despoil, or to rape, or to shoot one unceremoniously through the head. The idea of the enemy in one's own room, personally, physically present there, taking all one has without mercy, is the ultimate consequence implied in national defeat. Presumably this is what is happening in Korea, and it is this, the newspapers inform me, that I must defend the United States against by the methods already adopted against North Korea.

I have to answer the question, then, whether I am not ready or indeed anxious to take every preventive measure open to me and my fellow citizens. I am, of course. But what measures are open to me which in themselves do not destroy the communicative circumstance I have already identified as the condition of my sacrifice? I have said that, to me, if it is a question of the final stakes, this is the only thing worth preserving. But the war apparatus of any nation, and most certainly that of the United States, contradicts and annihilates that condition. If I consent to bomb Moscow from fifty thousand feet, or sit in a Pentagon office writing home front propaganda, or stoke the boiler of a destroyer after enemy submarines, or shoulder a bazooka in the anti-tank corps-in short, whatever I may do with the sanction of my neighbors to further the government's war will instantly preclude any remaining chance which may be said to exist now that the men and women defined as my enemy-the Communists all over the world-can ever enter into a human fellowship with the men and women who are my countrymen. I shall refuse, naturally, to support or engage in any action which precludes that possibility. For after all, this is a matter of my life.

Someone will ask whether I consider that the remaining chance for such a fellowship is very great. Suppose a great many Americans should refuse to support the war as I do. Then the Communists would come. And do I imagine that a Stalinist America would preserve the condition of my "freedom, growth and creativity." Should such a situation exist it would be very difficult indeed. It would be hard. It would be harder, even, than it is for most of us as we are at this moment, secure in our suburbs, to confront the necessity of finding the enemies of our passions, prejudices and despite in some inner room of our consciousness where we are compelled to meet them whole. But if there is any responsibility in human communication, it would remain in such a situation, and it would remain as the only possibility of my freedom. And I must of course add that if our hypothesis is real-namely, that the situation came about because a large number of Americans refused to support the war-the whole qualitative world we live in would be so radically different from what it is that one cannot safely predict what might happen. It has never been tried.

But we all know, don't we, that you can't trust Communists? And what is the predicate of communication with one whom, as a matter of principle, it is impossible to trust? -It is as little possible to trust a Russian commisar [sic], I think, as it is an American public relations officer-as to the allegations of either. But Russian men and women in general-yes, I am inclined to the belief that these are as trustworthy as any people. Perhaps this is merely a sentimental imputation. But in that case, I should still wish to try.

But suppose, in the ultimate reaches of defeat and savagery, that the enemy enters my room and I am killed? Or worse. What has become of my freedom, my growth and my creativity? What about the indispensable condition-communication-which it has been my whole purpose to preserve and defend. Suppose long after my idealism has suffered the ultimate extinction of a ukase forbidding private discussion of public matters, I find that the final answer is simply brutality-a hatchet through the head. What then?

The intent of my comments has been to indicate that if I must choose, it is there that I choose to risk my life and to possess the conditions of my death. Admittedly the risk is great. But what risk is not in the midst of the situation which itself requires a choice of deaths. Today we must dispense with the luxury of imagining we can avoid risk in a choice of alternatives with our countrymen. We can only go farther into the situation, and we can never emerge from it until the choice we make is based on the human interests which we share with our enemies as distinguished from the political and economic interests which we do not. We must be willing to face the possibility that all beyond is blackness. That is the condition of our time. We're in for trouble. The pressure is excessive. In such circumstances the real enemy is the conscriptor, the general, the diplomat, who denies the communication of people and the very existence of human worth.