Words Across the Sea

Republican Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater was at sea much of last week, ostensibly in retirement during the Democratic Convention.

Yet during most of his five days aboard the borrowed 83-ft. yacht Sundance, bobbing in the Pacific off the California coast, Barry stubbornly refused to let any controversies die out, and even created new ones. One day, leaning against the yacht's railing, and wearing brilliant orange-red pants, a white terry-cloth shirt, and a day's growth of beard, he welcomed reporters aboard for a press conference.

He admitted that his own polls have him trailing Johnson by 63% to 29% . "I wouldn't call that good, but I don't think polls are too dependable any more," declared Goldwater. Then he said frankly, "I don't believe I'm as strong in the South as some people would like to believe."

In His Bones. When a reporter asked what he thought the major campaign issue would be, Barry said foreign affairs. He said he had a feeling in his "political bones" that the Johnson Administration was trying to negotiate a secret settlement in South Viet Nam before Election Day. Such negotiations might not be bad, said Goldwater, if they provided an "honest settlement." Then he astonished the newsmen by saying: "I've thought for some time that talks with the Red Chinese might be profitable."

Once ashore, newsmen could scarcely believe their notes: Barry Goldwater willing to negotiate with Red China? Press Aide Paul Wagner hurriedly put in a radiophone call to Barry for further clarification. He came back and told the confused newsmen that Goldwater merely meant that the U.S. should be ready to threaten the Red Chinese if they continued to supply Viet Cong guerrillas--telling them that "if they didn't stop, then you would blow up a bridge or show some other sort of force." Wagner explained that Barry had told him on the phone: "I'm not really recommending this but it might not be an impossible idea."

Making Waves. Earlier in the week, even while on land, Barry made waves. Before the national convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cleveland, he ignored Democratic charges that he is trigger-happy, said again that NATO's Supreme Commander should have greater control over what Barry has now begun to call "conventional nuclear weapons." Said Goldwater to the veterans: "Let me stress that these small conventional nuclear weapons are no more powerful than the firepower you have faced on the battlefield. They simply come in a smaller package." Barry's argument was directly disputed two days later before the same audience by Deputy Defense Secretary Cyrus R. Vance, who snapped: "How 'conventional' was the 'small' weapon over Hiroshima? The typical tactical weapon was several times its yield, and the nuclear firepower available to a single infantry division is hundreds of times the destructive force of the bombs which destroyed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

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