On Sunday the plan fizzled. The students failed to finish the letter in time to make Monday edition of the Times. Disagreement and wrangling about the wording of the letter prolonged drafting sessions, which began on Saturday afternoon at Dunbarton College in Washington and lasted late into Sunday night. The delay forced them to shift the delivery date from Sunday to Monday--from a slow news day to a very heavy one. Although they attempted to extend coverage by holding a general press conference, they were swamped by the Monday wave of Washington news.

Aside from these mechanical slip-ups, however, the second letter was far less clearly and forcefully written than the first. Long and rambling, it questioned the government's willingness to accept genuine negotiations that would inevitably produce something considerably short of victory. "We do not know what kind of solution other than 'military' our own government feels it could accept," the letter said.

The students thus appeared to challenge the government to name the kind of solution it would be prepared to see result from negotiations - a pronouncement which no bargainer could be expected to make. But the letter could also be interpreted as calling on the President merely to affirm that he would accept a political solution based on something less than military defeat of the enemy.

The meeting with Rusk the following day strengthened the hand of those students in the group who had argued for a more critical tone. The interview convinced them all, Robert Powell, president of the University of North Carolina student body, said shortly afterward, that "the only way we will accept [peace] is through complete surrender of the goals and /or aims of the other side."

Though the meeting was billed officially as off-the-record, it is known that Rusk rejected the possibility of any coalition government in Vietnam not controlled by groups favorable to the United States. When the students suggested that the U.S. should make the first move toward negotiations, he insisted that the other side must demonstrate its willingness first, and said that Hanoi did not appear to want negotiations.

The students emerged from the meeting angered and frightened by the Secretary's "rigidity." Although they felt he was "concerned" by their criticism, according to Powell, the questions "didn't seem to come across to him." The middle course described in Rusk's letter, he said, "is apparently nothing more than slow but unlimited escalation of the war until the other side capitulates."

III.

Now that the State Department has attempted - and failed-to answer their questions "satisfactorily," the student leaders face a critical set of decisions.

Their letters and statements so far have expressed, very effectively and accurately, the vague sense of dissatisfaction which most students feel toward the war. And their warnings of further "erosion of confidence" have surely had some impact on the Administration's thinking.

But the students' present strategy is likely to diminish in effectiveness with future letters. The President is already well-aware of their discontent, and the questions they plan to pose have been asked before, by more formidable critics.

The "responsible" but vacuous generalizations contained in their past letters can hardly be expected to command the same attention if they appear again above the names of these same 100 or 200 student body presidents and editors. For although the "leaders" have spoken of "constituencies" and have claimed to "represent" opinion, they have stressed that they are participating as individuals, not as representatives of any organizations.

The question is, then, whether the student leaders will alter their present tack in the next letter to President Johnson - either by defining their criticism more clearly, and stating their opposition to further escalation explicitly, or by organizing more broadly on campuses across the nation.

There are considerable risks in attempting to attack specific aspects of the government's policy or to suggest possible options, since any move to treat issues on their merits will open a new source of dissension within the delicately balanced coalition. The student leaders, moveover, have been most successful when they talked about feelings of student, rather than the intricacies of military and political strategy.

The most promising area for further action - and the real test of the new middle - is therefore likely to be in mobilizing larger numbers of students behind expressions of dissatisfaction and doubt.

In taking this course, the student leaders will probably have to sacrifice a large measure of clarity and precision for breadth of support, as they did in writing their letters to the government and it is not clear exactly what mechanisms or institutions will be best suited to organizing this support--public meetings, referendums, etc. But if the standard of success is still efficacy, this approach appears to be the one the new middle will find most promising