For Mei Lin, On Our Twenty-SecondnWedding Anniversarynby Frederick TurnernWhen you were twenty-two a messenger,nWho said a king had sent him, came to you,nSet in your hands a book before you werenReady to answer him, what you would do;nAnd said the book was strange as it was rare.nAnd she that opened it must first be surenOf her heart, to live what was written there.nOr else the king would die that very hour;nAnd that the book must faithfully each daynBe tended with pure water and with light.nIts chamber swept with brooms lest it decay.nIts virtue vanish in the shades of night.nTwenty-two years, my love, not knowing ifnThe messenger told truth or told a lie,nYou kept the book in honor, as a wifenMight keep a husband; lest the king should die.nYou never opened up a single page.nUncertain of your heart, if it were true;nPatient beyond your youth, beyond your age.nYou will yet wait another twenty-two.nTexas RainbownSolemn, unbent, an arch of rays,nA rigid shaft of curvaturenSo perfect, yet so dim upon the air.nHas purified the hazenAnd given all its pointed light,nIts wink and tinctured shimmeringsnTo edge and sharpen out these earthly thingsnIn a sneeze of delight.nOur life’s a mother-liquid, andnIts solute and its golden leavennFalls from the fading sacrifice of heavennOver the greenbright land.n321 CHRONICLESnto movements “whose ultimate objectivesnare short of the universal andnreligious ones” pursued by the AFSC.nIn 1962 Meacham signed a declarationnto the World Peace Council that disassociatednthe American peace movementnfrom the government-sponsoredn”peace groups” of the Soviet bloc.nHowever, by 1967 Meacham wasncalling on pacifists to “relate constructively”nto revolutionary struggles and tonfind ways to respond when the USnattempted “by violence to suppress anrevolutionary struggle,” as in Vietnam.nA year later, Meacham was in NorthnVietnam and returned convinced thatnHanoi “is in fact a decent government”nthat would respect South Vietnam’snautonomy after reunification, wouldnmaintain “a mixed economy focused onnthe needs of the people,” and wouldnpose no threat to its neighbors. Henbelieved the claim of Hanoi’s primenminister, Pham Van Dong, that “wenfight well because we believe in decencynand humanity of all people.” Meachamnwas also on the steering committee ofnthe National Antiwar Conference (Julyn1969), along with leaders of the CommunistnParty USA and the SocialistnWorker’s Party, and was a cochairmannof the New Mobilization to End thenWar. The “New Mobe” was a groupnbased on the “non-exclusion principle,”nwhich was the new term for a unitednfront between pacifists and the hard left,nincluding those affiliated with Sovietnfront groups and those who openlynworked not for peace but for the militarynvictory of the Communists.nWhen in 1975 questions were raisednabout the establishment of concentrationncamps and the suppression of religionnby the victorious Communists,nMeacham denounced such concerns asn”support of the imperialists in our landnagainst whom we once joined hands inncommon struggle.” He went on tonclaim:nOur Vietnamese friends havendisplayed both grace andncourage in a prolonged, bitternand successflil struggle, and nownthey are seeking to heal thenwounds of war, restore theirnravaged land and move ahead tona just and confident society. Wenought to remember our debt tonthem and do what we can tonhelp.nnnA trip to Vietnam in 1977 onlynconfirmed Meacham’s convictionsnabout the Communist regime. One ofnMeacham’s colleagues on the trip, WallacenCoUett, a businessman who wasnchairman of the AFSC board of directors,neven compared the lives of thosenwho were forcibly exiled to the junglengulags (euphemistically called “newneconomic zones”) to America’s pioneernfamilies building new communities onnthe frontier. The word “humane” couldnnot be used often enough in the reportsnissued by the AFSC about Vietnamesen”socialism.”nThe same process was repeated bynthe other groups studied. As late asn1966, the WILPF executive committeencould vote not to endorse the “InternationalnWar Crimes Tribunal” set up bynthe Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation,nbecause only allegations made againstnWashington and Saigon would be tried.nBut by 1968 the WILPF policy committeenwas stating that “[w]e can neverncondone wrongdoing by any nation, butnneither can we equate our militarynaction in Vietnam with the actions ofnthe North Vietnamese or the NLF.”nThe Communist cause was just, whereasnthe American cause was not. At then1970 WILPF annual meeting, PresidentnKatherine Camp condemned thenUS as the chief evil in the world:nIt is exploitation by uncontrolledneconomic enterprise and thenplanned-for deprivation of thenunequal. It is the anti-humannattitude which has forged anworld-wide anti-communistnmilitary alliance and whichnsupplies most of the nations ofnthe world with the machinery ofndeath, in defiance of mankind’snbest hope for peace, the U.N. Itnencourages the growing numbernof military dictatorshipsnthroughout the world. Its logicalnconclusions are apartheid,ngenocide and war.nAt WRL, David Dellinger was askingnwhether it was not possible “to looknapprovingly on the struggle of the NationalnLiberation Front without endorsingnor applauding its violence.” Insteadnof adopting a “plague on both yournhouses” view, he argued, pacifistsnshouldn. . . step up the tempo of ourn