Pain and tragedy often teach men, and sometimes nations. Comfort mothers conceit more surely than necessity does invention, and torment accompanies die birth of thought as it does that of men. Even in Vietnam there is that much hope; national anguish may lead us. to a new and better understanding of the world and of our role in it, and to a foreign policy which avoids the grim and needless alternatives that have confronted us in Southeast Asia.

The hope, however, is ambiguous. Pain should stimulate the search for causes and cures, but it may produce no more than flight. In intellectual as well as physical matters, there are hurts so great as to be “blinding.”