OCR Text |
Show Kennedy Speaks ToColIegeStudents By ANGELYN NELSON Chronicle Staff Writer Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) Wednesday said young men should be allowed to fulfill service to their country in areas other than in the military service during peace time and then reaffirmed his position on a negotiable peace in Vietnam. t Speaking from Brigham Young ! University to students at six Western West-ern universities via Tele-Lecture, the presidential hopeful stated military mili-tary laws could be altered if young men could render "a different but equally valuable kind of service to their country." Sen. Kennedy cited difficulties in proposing alternatives to the draft laws, and said he didn't have a complete plan. "It could only work in peace time for nothing is comparable to the risk of combat and those burdens must be met by all of our citizens," the senator said. "Difficulties arise if the alternatives alterna-tives re-enforce the already rampart ram-part social and economic, and problems if we assume they overcome over-come unattractive aspects of military mili-tary life," said Sen. Kennedy. "But I do say that America should be a nation where a man could serve his country without a ' uniform and without a gun." The United States has three courses of action in Vietnam, Sen. Kennedy related. First, we could have an unilateral withdrawal. "I'm strongly opposed to that." ? v- " & - I Second, the war could continue in the present pattern and escalate which it is "quite clear that it has not been a successful and effective policy." Third, the United States could achieve a negotiated settlement. settle-ment. "It is the one I'm in favor of (adopting)." 8-Step Plan Sen. Kennedy listed eight steps by which a settlement could be reached in Southeast Asia. They include ending corruption in the South Vietnamese government, calling call-ing for a general mobilization of the South Vietnamese people, drafting draf-ting of South Vietnamese 18 and 19 year-olds, ridding South Vietnam of corrupt public officials, stopping search and destroy missions unless the South Vietnamese conduct them, guarding cities with American Ameri-can troops and placing South Vietnamese Viet-namese on the front and using diplomatic dip-lomatic channels. "The American public will have to realize the National Liberation Front will play a role in the Vietnamese Viet-namese government, and they will not come to the peace table to surrender," sur-render," said the Democrat. "I think what we have to do fundamentally in the cities is develop de-velop jobs for people," commented Sen. Kennedy of the plight of the cities, "and get away from the welfare system." Dole System Over the period of the last 30 years in this country we have developed de-veloped a system of doles, he continued. con-tinued. Instead of a welfare program, pro-gram, we should have a job system. sys-tem. Tax incentive could be given private enterprise to create jobs, so the local sector would be running run-ning the program instead of the federal government, Sen. Kennedy suggested. Moving into the area of the struggle strug-gle for the presidency, Sen. Kennedy Ken-nedy appealed to the students for support for a "victory of purpose." "I've found in this last week a new sense of position," related the Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy concluded his Utah tour Wednesday Wednes-day night with a speech before an overflow crowd at the Terrace. candidate, "not so much for my candidancy, but for the principle that we remain the masters not the servants of our political life, and I think that's what's at stake in this election year." Can Be Changed "I think that we have come to realize," he continued, "not simply that our course must be changed but that this course can be changed and that it can be this year." The "special mission" of this generation, Sen. Kennedy told the students, is the "committment to accept the burden of change across he whole range of conditions which are this nation's failures." The failures include the starving children in the state of Mississippi "whose minds will never be the same because we haven't provided them enough to eat," and the Americans Am-ericans who spend their lives in despair in the ghettos "reduced to the idle indignity of welfare," he said. "These and many more are the scars on the body of this nation," said Sen. Kennedy, "and they must be changed, and we must change them. And they can be changed, and they will be if our generation is willing to make that committment committ-ment to America. And if America will let you make it." |