Word: tocsins
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Conceivably Tocsin could develop a third peace program, designed neither to appeal to the policy-making nor to help undergraduates to walk off their indignation. The arms race and the war economy could contain the seeds of a far-reaching radical critique of American society and politics. But since few of Tocsin's members were ever interested in an intellectually rigorous organization, it is not likely that they will undertake the job of constructing such a critique...
Discouragement and consequent loss of intellectual momentum also afflicted members of Tocsin who worked in H. Stuart Hughes's campaign for Senator last fall. he campaign, in fact, followed very much the same road that Tocsin travelled...
...early months of the campaign, Hughes's shrewdest advisors had urged him to do precisely what Tocsin had failed to do--to draw the connections between the arms race and other domestic and diplomatic issues; the campaign was to be distinguished by the intellectual cogency of Hughes's arguments, rather than by the glamour and vacuity which characterize American campaigns--not least of all Teddy's. Hughes had taken their advice and did not change his tack during the Cuban crisis; as he pointed out in an article in Commentary several months after the elections to do anything but criticize...
...Hughes remained relatively cool under fire, the mass of his supporters--many of them Tocsin members--broke. In the Commentary article he tells of the disastrous loss of morale among his workers after October 22; the result, he says, was that the campaign fell completely apart during its last two weeks. The campaign, despite the poor returns (less than two per cent of the vote), was in some ways a success; still, the compelling implication of the campaign --and Tocsin's performance in it--is that peace politics is not up to making substantial criticisms of foreign or defense policy...
...Tocsin will not fulfill its initial promise until the leaders impose on the membership the realization that Tocsin's job is to remain a voice of intelligent radicalism even when no one is listening. If the membership continues to waver between exaltation and despair, Tocsin will move dispiritedly into the demonstrators' camp--where it would be on a small, second-rate picketing organization...