If throughout his reign...
Sir: In his article 'If throughout his reign Napo- leon . . .,' Mr Stephen Vizinczey misquotes Mary McCarthy's Vietnam. He quotes her as saying that 'Johnson, escalating, feigns to have no control over the war,' which would be absurd. What she actually says is that he 'feigns to have no option in the war,' i.e. to get out. Mr Vizinczey objects that Miss McCarthy's choice of the verb 'feign' is wrong, although he himself ascribes to President Johnson the 'illusion that if one can destroy the world, one must be able to control it' If this really is John- son's 'obsession,' then 'feign' is precisely the right word to describe his professions of helplessness in the face of Hanoi.
Miss McCarthy, by the way, makes a very im- portant qualification of her statement. 'This hypo- critical performance may, like most play-acting, have a certain psychological truth. Johnson and his advisers, like all Americans, are the conditioned subjects of the free-enterprise system, which despite some controls and government manipulation, ap- pears to function automatically, requiring no con- sent on the part of those involved in it.'
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