McCarthy Throws Support To People's Peace Treaty

Eugene J. McCarthy has given public support to the People's Peace Treaty.

McCarthy's name appeared with 100 others on an ad in yesterday's New York Times which endorsed the treaty and asked for contributions which would be used to build support for "a common focus" for efforts to end the war.

[The AP reported yesterday that the United States sent 1000 warplanes from South Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia in support of Thai and South Vietnamese ground troops fighting along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in central Laos.]

The former Democratic Presidential contender said yesterday in a phone interview from Washington that he endorsed the treaty because "I agree with what it proposes: a negotiated settlement, a coalition government, and immediate troop withdrawal."

McCarthy noted that the peace treaty was an effort that "strikes me as being more effective than marches or demonstrations."

"You have to try to create a climate, a culture in which a germ will grow, a condition in which the President can or will act to end the war," McCarthy explained.

Skeptical

Nevertheless, McCarthy said that he was still skeptical about Nixon's response. "You'd think that an administration that is so concerned with a silent majority might be a little more responsive to an open majority opposed to the war."

The Berrigan brothers, Noam Chomsky, Charles E. Goodell, I. F. Stone, George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, Erich W. Segal '58 and Rock Hudson also endorsed the treaty.