VCs in Vietnam
Sir: As one who has had a vc in the family, I feel it wholly deplorable that the Queen should have been put in the posit;on of awarding two vcs to Australians fighting in the Vietnam war. One of them she has just presented personally.
Although, when he was in the Antipodes. Mr Harold Macmillan unwisely went on record in deploring the fact that British troops were not fighting alongside the Australians in Vietnam, his remarks evoked widespread criticism, and only a minority of his party supported his view. If there was nothing else to prove the point, this seemed enough to show that British public opinion is undoubtedly hostile to the war.
Both Australia and America are deeply divided over Vietnam. The Gorton govern- ment recently lost seats on the issue. and in the United States Her Majesty's action, if it becomes widely known, seems bound to evoke criticism. Here at home, while a ma- jority of people feel the Vietnam war is -not our war, there has been almost complete en- dorsement of the Prime Minister's critical at- titude to it, both on moral and military grounds. Further, I think, many feel that Mr Wilson has been right to express his disagreement with American policy to successive United States' Presidents on the basis of believing that allies should from time to time be outspoken with each other.
Surely the Queen should be excluded from any controversial awards of Britain's highest military honour? And if it is felt, after con- sidering all the facts, that she has been in- volved in two unwise actions, steps should be taken now to prevent any recurrence of such incidents?
If the dwindling Rhodesian lobby at Westminster were so to fix things as to have Her Majesty presenting the vc to a member of today's Rhodesian armed forces resisting African freedom fighters, the situation, for
some of us, would only seem worse in degree and circumstances than it actually is in the cases I criticise.
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