“Can’t think of anything. Everything is normal. We could use either a few more purificators or else some extra people to iron the ones we have. The whole-wheat hosts are generally preferred by the community to the old ‘fish food’ kind. Someday we are going to have to do something about the sanctuary lamp. It comes down more easily for its weekly change of candle than it goes back up. Nothing we’ve tried has worked to remove the candle wax from Dr. Jethro’s alb, and so that may have to be replaced. As I said, everything’s pretty normal.”
Later that evening Bothwell turned off the projector and rose to reach switches for the table lamps. “I hope you see now, Tony, why my interest in Unidentified Flying Objects is not merely something to fill the lonely hours of an aging bachelor. I consider my investigations to be part of my rule of life as a historian. While it has been said that a historian should believe a hundred impossible things before breakfast, it is equally important that he should doubt a thousand probable ones during the day.”
Tony replied, “Your slides made the point. If we have as many recent and reliable sightings as we do with so many trustworthy witnesses and such technical resources for checking into the events, but still have so little certainty over whether we’re actually receiving visitors from other planets or not, how much more skeptical ought we to be over what can be known about one individual in Florence in the sixteenth century or Avignon in the fourteenth, concerning whom we have very little documentary evidence. Knowing what the majority of his contemporaries may have been like does not necessarily tell us anything about that one individual. As you are so fond of saying, probability does not apply to historical reconstruction.”
Angela stood up and stretched. “I don’t know how you men can be so erudite after Katrina has stuffed us full of seafood gumbo, and we’ve benefitted so elegantly from Rod’s wine collection. Besides, Rod, you don’t know what it means to young scholars setting up housekeeping to sit in really comfortable chairs. We had nothing at Duke worth moving, and what we’ve been able to accumulate locally has been mostly acquired at the auction barn in Crawfordsville on Tuesday nights.”
“Enough of that ‘just an ignorant housewife’ routine, woman,” Tony said to his wife. “You know that you’re the only hard-nosed intellectual among us. You read philosophers not just because you want to know who taught what when, but because you really think they might have some clue to the nature of reality. But you seem a little distracted this evening, and I know it’s not because we’ve been talking over your head. Is something on your mind?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I can’t get the evening’s news off my mind. I don’t think I’m naive about Americans, and I’ve been opposed to our involvement in Vietnam since we first began sending so many advisors over during the Kennedy administration. But I was unprepared for this business at My Lai. I know information has been coming out since mid-November, but now two more soldiers have been charged with the murder of unarmed women, children, and old people. It just makes me sick. How did we ever get into a situation where something like this could happen?”
Tony nodded agreement while polishing his gold-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, it certainly makes that business with the Green Berets seem tame. Until a few months ago that was the nearest thing to an American atrocity story to have come out of the war—other than the fact that we are in it. There eight men were charged with the execution of one person, and he was someone they thought was a double agent. What does your local hero think about all that? Have you heard him say?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Angela asked. “We had a panel discussion in moral theology class about the issues in the Chuyen death, and Seth was asked to visit the class and participate. He seems to think the Special Forces are a bunch of overgrown Eagle Scouts. He told about the schools they had built in the jungle villages, and how their medics gave the natives the best health care they ever had, including some skillful amateur surgery. He pointed out that the Green Berets are experts in counterinsurgency, and they view their job to be training the local people to fight their own battles rather than having Americans fight them for them. He saw the death of Chuyen as an execution of a spy, pure and simple. He did hedge a little when one of the guys pointed out to him that his local freedom fighters were well-paid mercenaries, and he did not really have a comeback when someone said that since the Green Berets had Chuyen in custody, they were no longer in danger from him and could have allowed him to stand trial. But he seemed to have no doubt of the essential rightness of what his buddies are doing. In fact, I gather that he didn’t re-enlist not only because he had felt the call to the ministry, but that he was also disgusted with the rivalry between the various intelligence services and over the lack of support the people back home were giving to heroic men who were going through hell for them.”
“But, Rod,” Tony said, “We still haven’t answered Angela’s original question. How did a clean-living country like ours get involved in a war like this? Are the revisionists right in saying that ever since World War II we have been involved in capitalistic expansion in Europe, and that our imperialism has forced Russia to take defensive measures which we then have called aggression?”
“That’s not the kind of question I want to be involved in with a younger colleague. I’m sure all you young Turks in grad schools have kept far better abreast of such discussions than I have. But I do have some thoughts on the subject.”
“Seriously, we’d like to hear them. I’ll admit I was baiting you a little, but I do want to know what you think. I’ve read a lot of material, but I still have unanswered questions.”
“Well, Tony, the way it looks to me is that until World War II we were an isolationist country that was able to remain rather naive about international affairs. But our situation coming out of that war virtually forced us into involvement. And I do not buy the revisionist thesis. I think Russia was expansionist, and we were not. We did become involved in order to stop aggression, and I think we did so with relatively pure motives. I don’t know of any historical parallel to the Marshall Plan, for instance. But we had too much too quickly. We somehow moved from supporting righteous causes to thinking a cause was righteous because we supported it. And we came to be fascinated with our skill in playing the game of international diplomacy. Angela, I’ve not really checked out all the connections historically, and you would know far better than I do, but I’ve always thought that somehow Reinhold Niebuhr got involved in all of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Niebuhr said that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of imagining that we are uninvolved. He said in effect—I think I’m really quoting Paul Ramsey, but I consider the point of view ‘Niebuhrian’—that if the Good Samaritan had come along five minutes earlier, while the attack was still going on, he would have had to decide what then would be the most loving response. Should he protect the man who had fallen among thieves, or should he refuse to involve himself in violence even if it meant that the man who was being attacked might die? Would he not decide in fact who would die? By intervening he could see that it was the robber rather than the robbed that died, while by standing aloof he would guarantee that it would be the innocent who suffered. I wonder if such thinking did not get us to a position very near to saying that the end justified the means? That seems to be what young Clarke is saying.
“I also think we developed a fascination with gadgetry as much as we did with power. The admiration of John Kennedy and John Foster Dulles for James Bond is a case in point. They bought into the myth of espionage as Fleming fantasized about it. Don’t forget that John le Carré and other authors were writing about the kinds of duplicity with one’s own people that so-called civilized nations resorted to. The final ingredient was a naive young nation just off the farm getting involved with the mysterious East where corruption was no longer in its infancy. This is what I think.”
Angela, who had been wrinkling her brow during the last part of the Canon’s remarks, said, “You’re
