The General Assembly, which adjourns today, has performed in an atmosphere of crisis and struggle from the day it convened. It was faced immediately with a showdown on the schools, an issue which was met squarely in conjunction with the governor with a decision not to risk abandoning public education. There followed the historic appropriations and budget fight, in which the General Assembly decided to tackle executive powers. The final decision went to the executive but a way has been opened for strengthening budgeting procedures and to provide legislators information they need. Long-range planning of programs and ways to finance them have become musts if the state in the next few years is to avoid crisis-to-crisis government. This session, for instance, may have insured a financial crisis two years from now. In all the turmoil, some good legislation was passed. Some other good bills were lost in the shuffle and await future action. Certainly all can applaud passage of an auto title law, the school bills, the increase in teacher pensions, the ban on drag racing, acceptance by the state of responsibility for maintenance of state roads in municipalities at the same rate as outside city limits, repeal of the college age limit law and the road maintenance bond issue. No action has been taken, however, on such major problems as ending the fee system, penal reform, modification of the county unit system and in outright banning of fireworks sales. Only a token start was made in attacking the tax reappraisal question and its companion issue of attracting industry to the state. The legislature expended most of its time on the schools and appropriations questions. Fortunately it spared us from the usual spate of silly resolutions which in the past have made Georgia look like anything but ``the empire state of the South''. We congratulate the entire membership on its record of good legislation. In the interim between now and next year, we trust the House and Senate will put their minds to studying Georgia's very real economic, fiscal and social problems and come up with answers without all the political heroics. The League of Women Voters, 40 now and admitting it proudly, is inviting financial contributions in the windup of its fund drive. It's a good use of money. These women whose organization grew out of the old suffrage movement are dedicated to Thomas Jefferson's dictum that one must cherish the people's spirit but ``Keep alive their attention''. ``If once they become inattentive to the public affairs'', Jefferson said, ``you and I, and Congress and assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves''. Newspapermen and politicians especially are aware of the penetrating attention and expert analysis the league gives to public affairs. The league workers search out the pros and cons of the most complex issues and make them available to the public. The harder the choice, the more willing the league is to wade in. And the league takes a stand, with great regularity, on the side of right. Cities and counties interested in industrial development would do well in the months ahead to keep their eyes peeled toward the 13 northwest Georgia counties that are members of the Coosa Valley Area Planning and Development Commission. Coupling its own budget of $ 83, 750 with a $ 30, 000 state grant authorized by Gov. Vandiver, the group expects to sign a contract in March with Georgia Tech.. Then a full-time planning office will be established in Rome to work with a five-member Georgia Tech research staff for development of an area planning and industrial development program. The undertaking has abundant promise. It recognizes the fact that what helps one county helps its neighbors and that by banding together in an area-wide effort better results can be accomplished than through the go-it-alone approach. The Rusk belief in balanced defense, replacing the Dulles theory of massive retaliation, removes a grave danger that has existed. The danger lay not in believing that our own A-bombs would deter Russia's use of hers; that theory was and is sound. The danger lay in the American delusion that nuclear deterrence was enough. By limiting American strength too much to nuclear strength, this country limited its ability to fight any kind of war besides a nuclear war. This strategy heightened the possibility that we would have a nuclear war. It also weakened our diplomatic stance, because Russia could easily guess we did not desire a nuclear war except in the ultimate extremity. This left the Soviets plenty of leeway to start low-grade brushfire aggressions with considerable impunity. By maintaining the nuclear deterrent, but gearing American military forces to fight conventional wars too, Secretary of State Rusk junks bluff and nuclear brinkmanship and builds more muscle and greater safety into our military position. DeKalb's budget for 1961 is a record one and carries with it the promise of no tax increase to make it balance. It includes a raise in the county minimum wage, creation of several new jobs at the executive level, financing of beefed-up industrial development efforts, and increased expenditures for essential services such as health and welfare, fire protection, sanitation and road maintenance. That such expansion can be obtained without a raise in taxes is due to growth of the tax digest and sound fiscal planning on the part of the board of commissioners, headed by Chairman Charles O. Emmerich who is demonstrating that the public trust he was given was well placed, and other county officials. G. Mennen Williams is learning the difficulties of diplomacy rapidly. Touring Africa, the new U. S. Assistant Secretary of State observed ``Africa should be for the Africans'' and the British promptly denounced him. Then he arrived in Zanzibar and found Africans carrying signs saying ``American imperialists, go home''. Chin up, Soapy. Confidence in the state's economic future is reflected in the Georgia Power Company's record construction budget for this year. The firm does a large amount of research and its forecasts have meaning. It is good to know that Georgia will continue to have sufficient electrical power not only to meet the demands of normal growth but to encourage a more rapid rate of industrialization. Georgia's mental health program received a badly needed boost from the General Assembly in the form of a $ 1, 750, 000 budget increase for the Milledgeville State Hospital. Actually it amounts to $ 1, 250, 000 above what the institution already is receiving, considering the additional half-million dollars Gov. Vandiver allocated last year from the state surplus. Either way it sounds like a sizable hunk of money and is. But exactly how far it will go toward improving conditions is another question because there is so much that needs doing. The practice of charging employes for meals whether they eat at the hospital or not should be abolished. The work week of attendants who are on duty 65 hours and more per week should be reduced. More attendants, nurses and doctors should be hired. Patients deserve more attention than they are getting. Even with the increase in funds for the next fiscal year, Georgia will be spending only around $ 3. 15 per day per patient. The national average is more than $ 4 and that figure is considered by experts in the mental health field to be too low. Kansas, regarded as tops in the nation in its treatment of the mentally ill, spends $ 9 per day per patient. Georgia has made some reforms, true. The intensive treatment program is working well. But in so many other areas we still are dragging. Considering what is being done compared to what needs to be done, it behooves the hospital management to do some mighty careful planning toward making the best possible use of the increase granted. The boost is helpful but inadequate. Assassination, even of a tyrant, is repulsive to men of good conscience. Rafael Trujillo, the often blood-thirsty dictator of the Dominican Republic for 31 years, perhaps deserved his fate in an even-handed appraisal of history. But whether the murder of El Benefactor in Ciudad Trujillo means freedom for the people of the Caribbean fiefdom is a question that cannot now be answered. Trujillo knew a great deal about assassination. The responsibility for scores of deaths, including the abduction and murder of Jesus Maria Galindez, a professor at Columbia University in New York, has been laid at his door. He had been involved in countless schemes to do away with democratic leaders in neighboring countries such as President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela. It was a sort of poetic justice that at the time of his own demise a new plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government, reportedly involving the use of Dominican arms by former Venezuelan Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, has been uncovered and quashed. The recent history of the Dominican Republic is an almost classical study of the way in which even a professedly benevolent dictatorship tends to become oppressive. Unquestionably Trujillo did some good things for his country: he improved public facilities such as roads and sanitation, attracted industry and investment and raised the standard of living notably. But the price was the silence of the grave for all criticism or opposition. El Benefactor's vanity grew with his personal wealth. The jails were filled to overflowing with political prisoners who had incurred his displeasure. He maintained amply financed lobbies in the United States and elsewhere which sycophantically chanted his praise, and his influence extended even to Congress. Until the last year or so the profession of friendship with the United States had been an article of faith with Trujillo, and altogether too often this profession was accepted here as evidence of his good character. Tardily the Government here came to understand how this country's own reputation was tarnished by the association with repression. Last year, after Trujillo had been cited for numerous aggressions in the Caribbean, the United States and many other members of the Organization of American States broke diplomatic relations with him. Thereupon followed a demonstration that tyranny knows no ideological confines. Trujillo's dictatorship had been along conservative, right-wing lines. But after the censure he and his propaganda started mouthing Communist slogans. There was considerable evidence of a tacit rapprochement with Castro in Cuba, previously a bete noire to Trujillo -- thus illustrating the way in which totalitarianism of the right and left coalesces. What comes after Trujillo is now the puzzle. The Dominican people have known no democratic institutions and precious little freedom for a generation, and all alternative leadership has been suppressed. Perhaps the army will be able to maintain stability, but the vacuum of free institutions creates a great danger. The Dominican Republic could turn toward Communist-type authoritarianism as easily as toward Western freedom. Such a twist would be a tragedy for the Dominican people, who deserve to breathe without fear. For that reason any democratic reform and effort to bring genuine representative government to the Dominican Republic will need the greatest sympathy and help. High-speed buses on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, operating between downtown Washington and Cabin John, Glen Echo and Brookmont, would constitute an alluring sample of what the new National Capital Transportation Agency can do for this city. In presenting plans for such express buses before the Montgomery County Council, the administrator of the NCTA, C. Darwin Stolzenbach, was frankly seeking support for the projects his agency will soon be launching. Such support should not be difficult to come by if all the plans to be presented by the NCTA are as attractive as this outline of express buses coming into the downtown area. Because the buses would not stop on the parkway, land for bus stations and for parking areas nearby will be needed. The NCTA is well advised to seek funds for this purpose from the present session of Congress. The inference has been too widely accepted that because the Communists have succeeded in building barricades across Berlin the free world must acquiesce in dismemberment of that living city. So far as the record is concerned, the Western powers have not acquiesced and should not do so. Though Walter Ulbricht, by grace of Soviet tanks, may be head man in East Germany, that does not give him any right to usurp the government of East Berlin or to absorb that semi-city into the Soviet zone. The wartime protocol of September 12, 1944, designated a special ``Greater Berlin'' area, comprising the entire city, to be under joint occupation. It was not a part of any one of the three (later four) zones for occupation by Soviet, American, British, and French troops respectively. After the Berlin blockade and airlift, the Council of Foreign Ministers in 1949 declared a purpose ``to mitigate the effects of the present administrative division of Germany and of Berlin''. For some time the Communists honored the distinction between the Soviet zone of Germany and the Soviet sector of Berlin by promulgating separately the laws for the two areas. Then they moved offices of the East German puppet government into East Berlin and began illegally to treat it as the capital of East Germany. That this and the closing of the East Berlin-West Berlin border have not been accepted by the Western governments appears in notes which Britain, France, and the United States sent to Moscow after the latter's gratuitous protest over a visit of Chancellor Adenauer and other West German officials to West Berlin. The Chancellor had as much business there as Ulbricht had in East Berlin -- and was certainly less provocative than the juvenile sound-truck taunts of Gerhard Eisler. The British and other replies to that Moscow note pointed out efforts of the Communist authorities ``to integrate East Berlin into East Germany by isolating it from the outside and attempting to make it the capital of East Germany''. They insisted on the ``fundamental fact'' that ``the whole of Berlin has a quadripartite status''. This is far from acknowledging or recognizing those efforts as an accomplished fact. There remains, of course, the question of what the West can do beyond diplomatic protest to prevent the illegal efforts from becoming accomplished facts. One ground of action certainly exists when fusillades of stray shots go over into West Berlin as Communist ``vopos'' try to gun down fleeing unarmed residents. Another remained when an American Army car was recovered but with a broken glass. The glass may seem trivial but Communist official hooliganism feeds on such incidents unless they are redressed. Remembering the step-by-step fate of Danzig and the West German misgivings about ``salami'' tactics, it is to be hoped that the dispatch of General Clay to West Berlin as President Kennedy's representative will mark a stiffening of response not only to future indignities and aggressions but also to some that have passed. Thousands of buffalo (``bison'' they will never be to the man on the street) grazing like a mobile brown throw-rug upon the rolling, dusty-green grassland. A horizon even and seamless, binding the vast sun-bleached dome of sky to earth. That picture of the American prairie is as indelibly fixed in the memory of those who have studied the conquest of the American continent as any later cinema image of the West made in live-oak canyons near Hollywood. For it was the millions of buffalo and prairie chicken and the endless seas of grass that symbolized for a whole generation of Americans the abundant supply that was to take many of them westward when the Ohio and Mississippi valleys began to fill. The National Park Service now proposes to preserve an area in Pottawatomie County, northeast Kansas, as a ``Prairie National Park''. There the buffalo would roam, to be seen as a tapestry, not as moth-eaten zoo specimens. Wooded stream valleys in the folds of earth would be saved. Grasslands would extend, unfenced, unplowed, unbroken by silo or barn -- as the first settlers saw them. The Park Service makes an impressive ecological and statistical case for creating this new park. American history should clinch the case when Congress is asked to approve. A Philadelphia distiller is currently breaching the customary prohibition against hard-liquor advertising on TV and radio. Starting with small stations not members of the National Association of Broadcasters, the firm apparently is seeking to break down the anti-liquor barriers in major-market stations. Probably the best answer to this kind of entering wedge is congressional action requiring the Federal Communications Commission to ban such advertising through its licensing power. The National Association of Broadcasters code specifically bars hard-liquor commercials. Past polls of public opinion show popular favor for this policy. Even the Distilled Spirits Institute has long had a specific prohibition. Why, then, with these voluntary barricades and some state laws barring liquor ads, is it necessary to seek congressional action? Simply because the subverting action of firms that are not members of the Distilled Spirits Institute and of radio and TV stations that are not members of the NAB tends to spread. Soon some members of the two industry groups doubtless will want to amend their codes on grounds that otherwise they will suffer unfairly from the efforts of non-code competitors. Although the false glamour surrounding bourbon or other whisky commercials is possibly no more fatuous than the pseudo-sophistication with which TV soft-drinks are downed or toothpaste applied, there is a sad difference between enticing a viewer into sipping Oopsie-Cola and gulling him into downing bourbon. A law is needed. Registered Democrats in New York City this year have the opportunity to elect their party's candidates for Mayor and other municipal posts and the men who will run their party organization. In the central contest, that for Mayor, they may have found some pertinent points in what each faction has said about the other. Mayor Robert F. Wagner must, as his opponents demand, assume responsibility for his performance in office. While all citizens share in blame for lax municipal ethics the Wagner regime has seen serious problems in the schools, law enforcement and fiscal policies. The Mayor is finding it awkward to campaign against his own record. State Controller Arthur Levitt, on the other hand, cannot effectively deny that he has chosen to be the candidate of those party leaders who as a rule have shown livelier interest in political power than in the city's welfare. They, too, have links with the city's ills. Both men are known to be honest and public-spirited. Mayor Wagner's shortcomings have perhaps been more mercilessly exposed than those of Mr. Levitt who left an impression of quiet competence in his more protected state post. As Mayor, Mr. Levitt might turn out to be more independent than some of his leading supporters would like. His election, on the other hand, would unquestionably strengthen the ``regulars''. Mr. Wagner might or might not be a ``new'' Mayor in this third term, now that he is free of the pressure of those party leaders whom he calls ``bosses''. These are, of course, the same people whose support he has only now rejected to seek the independent vote. But his reelection would strengthen the liberal Democrats and the labor unions who back him. If this choice is less exciting than New York Democrats may wish, it nevertheless must be made. The vote still gives citizens a voice in the operation of their government and their party. Both Mr. K's have so far continued to speak softly and carry big sticks over Laos. President Kennedy, already two quiet demands down, still refused Thursday to be drawn into delivering a public ultimatum to Moscow. But at the same time he moved his helicopter-borne marines to within an hour of the fighting. And Secretary Rusk, en route to Bangkok, doubtless is trying to make emergency arrangements for the possible entry of Australian or Thai SEATO forces. For Mr. Kennedy, speaking softly and carrying a sizable stick is making the best of a bad situation. The new President is in no position to start out his dealings with Moscow by issuing callable bluffs. He must show at the outset that he means exactly what he says. In this case he has put the alternatives clearly to Mr. Khrushchev for the third time. At his press conference Mr. Kennedy said, ``All we want in Laos is peace not war a truly neutral government not a cold war pawn''. At the scene he has just as clearly shown his military strength in unprovocative but ready position. Since Laos is of no more purely military value to Moscow itself than it is to Washington, this approach might be expected to head off Mr. Khrushchev for the moment. But because of the peculiar nature of the military situation in Laos, the Soviet leader must be tempted to let things ride -- a course that would appear to cost him little on the spot, but would bog Washington in a tactical mess. As wars go, Laos is an extremely little one. Casualties have been running about a dozen men a day. The hard core of the pro-Communist rebel force numbers only some 2, 000 tough Viet Minh guerrilla fighters. But for the United States and its SEATO allies to attempt to shore up a less tough, less combat-tested government army in monsoon-shrouded, road-shy, guerrilla-th '- wisp terrain is a risk not savored by Pentagon planners. But if anything can bring home to Mr. Khrushchev the idea that he will not really get much enjoyment from watching this Braddock-against-the-Indians contest, it will probably be the fact that SEATO forces are ready to attempt it -- plus the fact that Moscow has something to lose from closing off disarmament and other bigger negotiations with Washington. Fortunately both the Republicans and America's chief Western allies now are joined behind the neutral Laos aim of the President. Actually it would be more accurate to say that the leader of the alliance now has swung fully behind the British policy of seeking to achieve a neutral Laos via the international bargaining table. It is ironic that Washington is having to struggle so for a concept that for six years it bypassed as unreasonable. The State Department tacitly rejected the neutral Laos idea after the Geneva conference of 1954, and last year Washington backed the rightist coup that ousted neutral Premier Souvanna Phouma. But since last fall the United States has been moving toward a pro-neutralist position and now is ready to back the British plan for a cease-fire patrolled by outside observers and followed by a conference of interested powers. The road to a guaranteed-neutral, coup-proof Laos is today almost as difficult as warfare on that nation's terrain. But for the safety of Southeast Asia, and for the sake of the Laotian people -- who would not be well-ruled by either militant minority now engaged in the fighting -- this last big effort to seal that country from the cold war had to be made. The world awaits Mr. Khrushchev's choice of alternatives. The Senate's overwhelming (64-13) vote to support locally controlled educational TV efforts should be emulated in the lower house. Twice previously the Senate has approved measures backing ETV and the House has let them die. But this year prospects may be better. The House communications subcommittee is expected to report out a good bill calling for the states to match federal funds. This year's Senate measure would provide each state and the District of Columbia with $ 1, 000, 000 to be used in support of private, state, or municipal ETV efforts. The funds would be used for equipment, not for land, buildings, or operation. The relatively few communities that have educational stations have found them of considerable value. But, lacking money from commercial sponsors, the stations have had difficulties meeting expenses or improving their service. Other communities -- the ones to be aided most by the Senate bill -- have had difficulty starting such stations because of the high initial cost of equipment. Sam Rayburn was a good man, a good American, and, third, a good Democrat. He was all of these rolled into one sturdy figure; Mr. Speaker, Mr. Sam, and Mr. Democrat, at one and the same time. The House was his habitat and there he flourished, first as a young representative, then as a forceful committee chairman, and finally in the post for which he seemed intended from birth, Speaker of the House, and second most powerful man in Washington. Mr. Rayburn was not an easy man to classify or to label. He was no flaming liberal, yet the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the New Frontier needed him. He was not a rear-looking conservative, yet partisans of that persuasion will miss him as much as any. Two of the vital qualities demanded of a politician by other politicians are that he always keep a confidence and that he keep his word. Sam Rayburn took unnumbered secrets with him to the grave, for he was never loquacious, and his word, once given, was not subject to retraction. It might be added that as he kept his word so he expected that others keep theirs. The demonstration of his power was never flamboyant or theatrical. His leadership was not for audiences. A growl, a nod, was usually enough. When it was not, one of the great dramas of Washington would be presented. He would rise in the well of the House, his chin upon his chest, his hands gripping the side of a desk, and the political and legislative chatter would subside into silence. He spoke briefly, sensibly, to the point and without oratorical flourishes. He made good, plain American common sense and the House usually recognized it and acted upon it. These public efforts were rare because Mr. Rayburn normally did his counseling, persuading and educating long before an issue reached its test on the House floor. He expected Democrats to do their duty when it had been patiently pointed out to them. With his long service he had a long memory, an excellent thing in a political leader. He was, of course, in the House for a very long time. There are only two men remaining in Congress who, with Rayburn, voted for the declaration of war against Germany in 1917. To almost two generations of Americans it must have seemed as though the existence of Mr. Sam coincided with that of the House. And it was the House he loved. To be presiding officer of it was the end of his desire and ambition. The Senate to him was not the ``upper body'' and he corrected those who said he served ``under'' the president. He served ``with'' him. Sound the roll of those with whom he served and who preceded him in death. Woodrow Wilson, with whom he began his years in Washington, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, FDR, with whom he managed a social revolution. And those still with us, Herbert C. Hoover, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. He was a fighter for those of his own party. Mr. Truman has only to recall the ``hopeless'' campaign of 1948 to remember what a loyal partisan he was and the first experience of Mr. Kennedy with Congress would have been sadder than it was had not Mr. Sam been there. As it was, his absence because of his final illness was a blow to the administration. With Republican presidents, he fought fair. He was his own man, not an automatic obstructionist. He kept his attacks on Republicanism for partisan campaigns, but that is part of the game he was born to play. Under any name -- Mr. Speaker, Mr. Democrat, Mr. Sam -- he was a good man. Thirteen Italian airmen who went to the Congo to serve the cause of peace under the United Nations banner have instead met violent death at the hands of Congolese troops supposedly their friends. In 18 months, no more grisly incident has been reported from that jungle. Simply out of bloodlust, their murderers dismembered the bodies and tossed the remains into the river. The excuse was offered for them that they had mistaken the Italians for Belgian mercenaries. In other words, atrocities by savages wearing the uniform of the central government might be condoned, had the victims been serving the cause of dissident Katanga. Does this suggest that the Congo is fit for nationhood or that UN is making any progress whatever toward its goal of so making it? To the contrary, through the past six weeks violence has been piled upon violence. Mass rapes, troop mutinies, uncontrolled looting and pillage and reckless military adventures, given no sanction by any political authority, have become almost daily occurrences. Yet this basic condition of outlawry and anarchy is not the work of Katanga. It happens in the territory of the Leopoldville government, which is itself a fiction, demonstrably incapable of governing, and commanding only such limited credit abroad as UN support gives it. The main question raised by the incident is how much longer will UN bury its head in the sand on the Congo problem instead of facing the bitter fact that it has no solution in present terms? The probable answer is that it will do so just as long as Russia can exercise a veto in favor of chaos and until young African nations wake up to the truth that out of false pride they are visiting ruin on Central Africa. Right now, they are pushing a resolution which would have UN use its forces to invade and subjugate Katanga. That notion is fantastically wrong-headed from several points of view. The UN army is too weak, too demoralized for the task. Further, it has its work cut out stopping anarchy where it is now garrisoned. Last, it makes no sense to deliver Katanga, the one reasonably solid territory, into the existing chaos. The Congo should have been mandated, because it was not ready for independence. The idea was not even suggested because political expediency prevailed over wisdom. It is perhaps too late now to talk of mandate because it is inconsistent with what is termed political realism. But if any realism and feeling for truth remain in the General Assembly, it is time for men of courage to measure the magnitude of the failure and urge some new approach. Otherwise, UN will march blindly on to certain defeat. A recent editorial discussing a labor-management agreement reached between the Southern Pacific Co. and the Order of Railroad Telegraphers has been criticized on the grounds that it was not based on complete information. The editorial was based on a news association dispatch which said that the telegraphers had secured an agreement whereby they were guaranteed 40 hours'pay per week whether they worked or not and that a reduction in their number was limited to 2 per cent per year. Our comment was that this was ``featherbedding'' in its ultimate form and that sympathy for the railroad was misplaced since it had entered into such an agreement. The statement was also made that undoubtedly the railroad had received some compensating benefit from the telegraphers, but that it was difficult to imagine what could balance a job for life. Additional information supplied to us discloses that the railroad gained a stabilized supply of telegraphers of which it was in need. Also, normal personnel attrition would make the job reduction provision more or less academic. The situation with regard to the Southern Pacific was therefore a special one and not necessarily applicable to other situations in other industries. The solution reached in the agreement was more acceptable to the railroad than that originally included in a series of union demands. Time was when the house of delegates of the American Bar association leaned to the common sense side. But the internationalists have taken over the governing body of the bar, and when the lads met in St. Louis, it was not to grumble about the humidity but to vote unanimously that the United Nations was scarcely less than wonderful, despite an imperfection here and there. It was, the brief writers decided, ``man's best hope for a peaceful and law abiding world''. Peace, it's wonderful, and ``world law'', it's wonderful, too, and shouldn't we get an international covenant extending it into space, before the Russians put some claim jumper on the moon? Meanwhile, in Moscow, Khrushchev was adding his bit to the march of world law by promising to build a bomb with a wallop equal to 100 million tons of TNT, to knock sense into the heads of those backward oafs who can't see the justice of surrendering West Berlin to communism. A nuclear pacifier of these dimensions -- roughly some six and a half times bigger than anything the United States has triggered experimentally -- would certainly produce a bigger bang, and, just for kicks, Khrushchev might use it to propel the seminar of the house of delegates from St. Louis to the moon, where there wouldn't even be any beer to drink. While he was at it, the philosopher of the Kremlin contributed an additional assist to the rule of reason by bellowing at those in the west who can't appreciate coexistence thru suicide. ``Fools'', he bayed, ``what do you think you are doing''? The only response we can think of is the humble one that at least we aren't playing the marimba with our shoes in the United Nations, but perhaps the heavy domes in the house of delegates can improve on this feeble effort. Another evidence of the spreading rule of reason was provided from Mexico City with the daily hijacking of an American plane by a demented Algerian with a gun. The craft made the familiar unwelcome flight to Havana, where, for some unknown reason, Castro rushed to the airport to express mortification to the Colombian foreign minister, a passenger, who is not an admirer of old Ten O'Clock Shadow. The plane was sent back to the United States, for a change, but Castro kept the crazy gunman, who will prove a suitable recruit to the revolution. Less respect for the legal conventions was displayed by Castro's right hand man, Che Guevara, who edified the Inter-American Economic and Social council meeting in Montevideo by reading two secret American documents purloined from the United States embassy at Caracas, Venezuela. The contents were highly embarrassing to American spokesmen, who were on hand to promise Latin Americans a 20 billion dollar foreign aid millennium. Perhaps the moralities of world law are not advanced by stealing American diplomatic papers and planes, but the Kennedy administration can always file a demurrer to the effect that, but for its own incompetence in protecting American interests, these things would not happen. The same can be said about the half-hearted Cuban invasion mounted by the administration last April, which, we trust, is not symptomatic of the methods to be invoked in holding off the felonious Khrushchev. Pass the iron rations, please, and light another candle, for it's getting dark down here and we're minded to read a bit of world law just to pass the time away. The board of suspension of the Interstate Commerce commission has ordered a group of railroads not to reduce their freight rates on grain, as they had planned to do this month. The request for lower rates originated with the Southern railway, which has spent a good deal of time and money developing a 100-ton hopper car with which it says it can move grain at about half what it costs in the conventional, smaller car. By reducing rates as much as 60 per cent, it and its associated railroads hope to win back some of the business they have lost to truckers and barge lines. The board's action shows what free enterprise is up against in our complex maze of regulatory laws. Word of Dag Hammarskjold's death in an African plane crash has sent a shockwave around the globe. As head of the United Nations he was the symbol of world peace, and his tragic end came at a moment when peace hangs precariously. It was on the eve of a momentous U. N. session to come to grips with cold war issues. His firm hand will be desperately missed. Mr. Hammarskjold was in Africa on a mission of peace. He had sought talks with Moise Tshombe, the secessionist president of Congo's Katanga province where recent fighting had been bloody. He earnestly urged a cease-fire. The story of the fatal crash is not fully known. The U. N.- chartered plane which was flying from the conference city of Ndola in Northern Rhodesia had been riddled with machinegun bullets last weekend and was newly repaired. Whether this, or overt action, was the cause of the crash must be promptly determined. The death of Mr. Hammarskjold removes the United Nations'most controversial leader. He was controversial because he was uncompromising for peace and freedom with justice. He courageously defended the rights of small nations, and he stood his ground against the savage attacks of the Communist bloc. The Congo, in whose cause he died, was the scene of one of his greatest triumphs. His policies had resolved the conflicts that threatened to ignite the cold war and workable solutions were beginning to take shape. When the recent Katangan outbreaks imperiled these solutions Mr. Hammarskjold, despite the danger, flew to exert a calming influence. He gave his life for his beliefs. The U. N. session scheduled for today will meet under the cloud of his passing. It is a crucial session with the world on the edge of momentous developments. If the manner of his passing moves the nations to act in the spirit of his dedication the sore issues that plague the world can yet be resolved with reason and justice. That is the hope of mankind. reaching agreement on projects of value to the whole community has long been one of Greater Miami's hardest tasks. Too many have bogged down in bickering. Even when public bodies arrived at a consensus, at least one dissenting vote has been usual. So we note approvingly a fresh sample of unanimity. All nine members of the Inter-American Center Authority voted for Goodbody & Company's proposal to finance the long-awaited trade and cultural center. The widely known financial firm has 60 days to spell out the terms of its contract. If the indenture is accepted, the authority will proceed to validate a bond issue repayable from revenue. Then Goodbody will hand over a minimum of $ 15. 5 million for developing the spacious Graves Tract to house the center. The next step awaits approval today by the Metro commissioners as the members of the Dade County Port Authority. They allotted $ 500, 000 three years ago to support Interama until its own financing could be arranged. Less than half the sum has been spent, since the Interama board pinched pennies during that period of painstaking negotiations. The balance is being budgeted for the coming year. Unanimity on Interama is not surprising. It is one of the rare public ventures here on which nearly everyone is agreed. The City of Miami recently yielded a prior claim of $ 8. 5 million on the Graves Tract to clear the way for the project. County officials have cooperated consistently. So have the people's elected spokesmen at the state and federal levels. Interama, as it rises, will be a living monument to Greater Miami's ability to get together on worthwhile enterprises. progress, or lack of it, toward civil rights in the 50 states is reported in an impressive 689-page compilation issued last week by the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Much happened in this field during the past 12 months. Each state advisory committee documented its own activity. Some accounts are quite lengthy but Florida's is the shortest of all, requiring only four paragraphs. ``The established pattern of relative calm in the field of race relations has continued in all areas'', reported this group headed by Harold Colee of Jacksonville and including two South Floridians, William D. Singer and John B. Turner of Miami. ``No complaints or charges have been filed during the past year, either verbally or written, from any individual or group. ``The committee continues to feel that Florida has progressed in a sound and equitable program at both the state and local levels in its efforts to review and assess transition problems as they arise from time to time in the entire spectrum of civil rights''. Problems have arisen in this sensitive field but have been handled in most cases with understanding and restraint. The progress reported by the advisory committee is real. While some think we move too fast and others too slowly, Florida's record is a good one and stands out among the 50. West Germany will face the crucial tests that lie ahead, on Berlin and unification, with a coalition government. This is the key fact emerging from Sunday's national election. Chancellor Adenauer's Christian Democratic Party slipped only a little in the voting but it was enough to lose the absolute Bundestag majority it has enjoyed since 1957. In order to form a new government it must deal with one of the two rival parties which gained strength. Inevitably this means some compromise. The aging chancellor in all likelihood will be retired. Both Willy Brandt's Social Democrats, who gained 22 seats in the new parliament, and the Free Democrats, who picked up 23, will insist on that before they enter the government. Moon-faced Ludwig Erhart, the economic expert, probably will ascend to the leadership long denied him. If he becomes chancellor, Dr. Erhart would make few changes. The wizard who fashioned West Germany's astonishing industrial rebirth is the soul of free enterprise. He is dedicated to building the nation's strength and, as are all West Germans, to a free Berlin and to reunion with captive East Germany. What is in doubt as the free Germans and their allies consider the voting trends is the nature of the coalition that will result. If the party of Adenauer and Erhart, with 45 per cent of the vote, approaches the party of Willy Brandt, which won 36 per cent, the result would be a stiffening of the old resolve. West Berlin's Mayor Brandt vigorously demanded a firmer stand on the dismemberment of his city and won votes by it. The Free Democrats (12 per cent of the vote) believe a nuclear war can be avoided by negotiating with the Soviet Union, and more dealings with the Communist bloc. The question left by the election is whether West Germany veers slightly toward more firmness or more flexibility. It could go either way, since the gains for both points of view were about the same. Regardless of the decision two facts are clear. West Germany, with its industrial and military might, reaffirmed its democracy and remains firm with the free nations. And the career of Konrad Adenauer, who upheld Germany's tradition of rock-like leaders which Bismarck began, draws near the end. Americans are a nation of joiners, a quality which our friends find endearing and sometimes amusing. But it can be dangerous if the joiner doesn't want to make a spectacle of himself. For instance, so-called ``conservative'' organizations, some of them secret, are sprouting in the garden of joining where ``liberal'' organizations once took root. One specific example is a secret ``fraternity'' which will ``coordinate anti-Communist efforts''. The principle is commendable but we suspect that in the practice somebody is going to get gulled. According to The Chicago Tribune News Service, State Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk of California has devised a series of questions which the joiner might well ask about any organization seeking his money and his name: 1. Does it assail schools and churches with blanket accusations? 2. Does it attack other traditional American institutions with unsupportable and wild charges? 3. Does it put the label of un-American or subversive on everyone with whom it disagrees politically? 4. Does it attempt to rewrite modern history by blaming American statesmen for wars, Communism, depression, and other troubles of the world? 5. Does it employ crude pressure tactics with such means as anonymous telephone calls and letter writing campaigns? 6. Do its spokesmen seem more interested in the amount of money they collect than in the principles they purport to advocate? In some instances a seventh question can be added: 7. Does the organization show an affinity for a foreign government, political party or personality in opposition or preference to the American system? If the would-be joiner asks these questions he is not likely to be duped by extremists who are seeking to capitalize on the confusions and the patriotic apprehensions of Americans in a troubled time. Falling somewhere in a category between Einstein's theory and sand fleas -- difficult to see but undeniably there, nevertheless -- is the tropical green ``city'' of Islandia, a string of offshore islands that has almost no residents, limited access and an unlimited future. The latter is what concerns us all. Whatever land you can see here, from the North tip end of Elliott Key looking southward, belongs to someone -- people who have title to the land. And what you can't see, the land underneath the water, belongs to someone, too. The public. The only real problem is to devise a plan whereby the owners of the above-water land can develop their property without the public losing its underwater land and the right to its development for public use and enjoyment. In the fairly brief but hectic history of Florida, the developers of waterfront land have too often wound up with both their land and ours. In this instance, happily, insistence is being made that our share is protected. And until this protection is at least as concrete as, say, the row of hotels that bars us from our own sands at Miami Beach, those who represent us all should agree to nothing. The reaction of certain City Council members to California's newest anti-secrecy laws was as dismaying as it was disappointing. We had assumed that at least this local legislative body had nothing to hide, and, therefore, had no objections to making the deliberations of its committees and the city commissions available to the public. In the preamble to the open-meeting statutes, collectively known as the Brown Act, the Legislature declares that ``the public commissions, boards and councils and other public agencies in this state exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. ``The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The full implementation of these noble words, however, has taken the efforts of five sessions of the Legislature. Since 1953 California has led the nation in enacting guarantees that public business shall be publicly conducted, but not until this year did the lawmakers in Sacramento plug the remaining loopholes in the Brown Act. Despite the lip service paid by local governments, the anti-secrecy statutes have been continuously subverted by reservations and rationalizations. When all else fails, it is argued that open sessions slow down governmental operations. We submit that this is a most desirable effect of the law -- and one of its principal aims. Without public scrutiny the deliberations of public agencies would no doubt be conducted more speedily. But the citizens would, of course, never be sure that the decisions that resulted were as correct as they were expeditious. If the Dominican Republic achieves free, democratic government, it will be due in large part to the U. S. show of force that enabled President Balaguer to prevent a threatened restoration of Trujillo dictatorship. Outwardly, Ciudad Trujillo is calm. None of the Trujillo family remains. Mr. Balaguer is in control, and opposition leaders have no further excuse to suspect his offer of a coalition government preliminary to free elections in the spring. Had U. S. warships not appeared off the Dominican coast, there is every possibility that the country would now be wracked by civil war. Ultimately either the Trujillos would have been returned to power or the conflict would have produced conditions favorable to a takeover by Dominican elements responsive to Castro in Cuba. Within the Organization of American States, there may be some criticism of this unilateral American intervention which was not without risk obviously. But there was no complaint from the Dominican crowds which lined Ciudad Trujillo's waterfront shouting, ``Vive Yankees''! More, the U. S. action was hailed by a principal opposition leader, Dr. Juan Bosch, as having saved ``many lives and many troubles in the near future''. Mr. Balaguer's troubles are by no means over. He will need the help of all OAS members to eradicate, finally, the forces of authoritarianism, pro-Trujillo and pro-Castro alike. In cooperating toward that objective, OAS might move with the speed and effectiveness demonstrated by the United States. those watching the growing rivalry between craft unions and industrial unions may recognize all the pressures that led to the big labor split in 1935. Now, as then, it is a matter of jobs. Craft unions seek work that industrial unions claim, such as factory maintenance. The issue was sufficiently potent in 1935 to spark secession from the American Federation of Labor of its industrial union members. That breach was healed 20 years later by merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Or that's what it looked like at the time. But automation and the increasing complexity of factories has renewed the competition for jobs. Walter Reuther, leader of the industrial union faction of the AFL-CIO, says another two years of this squabbling will be disastrous for all American labor. Whether it could be as disastrous for American labor as, say, Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters, is a matter of conjecture. But the jurisdictional disputes that result from the craft-industrial rivalry do not win friends for labor. Engaged as it is in a battle for world trade as a condition of national survival, this country can have little patience with labor's family feuds. The concept of labor as a special class is outmoded, and in the task confronting America as bastion of the free world, labor must learn to put the national interest first if it is itself to survive. the Army, Navy and Air Force, among others, may question Secretary Freeman's claim that the high estate of United States agriculture is the ``strongest deterrent'' to the spread of communism. But the secretary insists that the success of the American farmer is the ``greatest single source of strength'' in the struggle to insure freedom around the world. Mr. Freeman said that in many of the countries he visited on a recent world trade trip people were more awed by America's capacity to produce food surpluses than by our industrial production -- or even by the Soviet's successes in space. This shouldn't surprise the secretary; American taxpayers have been impressed by the surpluses for a long, long time. In fact, over the years, the American farmer's capacity to over-produce has cost the taxpayers a large dollar. And thus far, Mr. Freeman has offered very little relief. The 1961 feed grain program, which the secretary sponsored, has been declared a billion dollar fiasco. In exchange for higher price supports, growers pledged reduction in planted acreage. But the farmers outsmarted Washington by shortening the distance between the rows and pouring on the fertilizer. The result: $ 1. 1 billion added to the deficit in the federal budget. Perhaps, as Mr. Freeman says, American agriculture may stop the Communists, but it is also swindling the American taxpayer. A senate subcommittee headed by Sen. Jackson of Washington has been going over the State Department and has reached some predictable conclusions. The department needs a clearer ``sense of direction'' at the top and it needs fewer, but better, people, Sen. Jackson says. The subcommittee is not alone in questioning the effectiveness of the department. President Kennedy has indicated his dissatisfaction with its performance. But those who would revitalize so complex an organization must, first of all, overcome the resistance of layers of officials wedded to traditional procedures, suspicious of innovation and fearful of mistakes. Nor does Sen. Jackson discuss the delicate situation created by the presence in the White House of a corps of presidential assistants engaged in the study of foreign policy. This tends to create friction and confusion and has not made it easier for Secretary Rusk to restore vigor and initiative among his subordinates. But competent observers believe he is making progress, particularly toward what Sen. Jackson lists as the primary need -- ``a clearer understanding of where our vital national interests lie and what we must do to promote them''. The Jackson report will provide some of the political support Mr. Rusk will need if he is to get rid of department personnel engaged, as Sen. Jackson puts it, ``in work that does not really need doing''. Mr. Rusk should also draw comfort from Sen. Jackson's recommendation that congressional methods of dealing with national security problems be improved. Self-criticism is a rare but needed commodity in Congress. forecasting economic activity is a hazardous undertaking even for the specialist. But now apparently the job of Secretary of Labor requires that he be willing to risk his reputation as a prognosticator of unemployment trends. James P. Mitchell, when he was the head of the department, promised to eat his hat if unemployment didn't drop below three million a couple of years ago. He lost, but settled for a cake in the shape of a fedora. His successor, Secretary Goldberg, also has been guessing wrong on a drop in the unemployment rate which has been holding just under 7 per cent for the last 11 months. No betting man, Mr. Goldberg says he's merely ``putting my neck out again'' by predicting the rate will go down this month. He is basing his guess on new government statistics that show business has broadened its stride -- a new record high in personal income, an increase in housing starts, a spurt in retail sales and a gain in orders for durable goods. Mr. Mitchell had an excuse for losing -- the steel strike lasted much longer than he anticipated. Mr. Goldberg has less reason for missing. The economy seems to be sailing along on an even keel and the 1961 hurricane season and auto strikes are at an end so they can't be blamed in November. The odds thus appear favorable that the secretary's neck may be spared. Cambodia's chief of state, who has been accused of harboring Communist marauders and otherwise making life miserable for neighboring South Viet Nam and Thailand, insists he would be very unhappy if communism established its power in Southeast Asia. But so convinced of communism's inevitable triumph is Prince Sihanouk that he is ready to throw in the towel. ``I have to see the facts'', is the way the prince puts it. And from that point of vantage he concedes another two years of grace to nations maintaining a pro-Western posture. Prince Sihanouk's powers of prognostication some day may be confirmed but history is not likely to praise the courage of his convictions. Commerce Secretary Hodges seems to have been cast in the role of pacemaker for official Washington's economic forecasters. Weeks ago he saw a business upturn in the second quarter of this year while his colleagues in the Cabinet were shaking their heads in disagreement. Recently Treasury Secretary Dillon and Labor Secretary Goldberg fell into line with Mr. Hodges'appraisal, though there has been some reluctance to do so at the White House. And now Mr. Hodges has pioneered further into the economic unknown with the announcement that he thinks business has stopped sliding and that it should start going upward from this point. He is the first top administration officer to see the bottom of the slump. The secretary based his assessment on the upturn in retail sales. February's volume was 1 per cent above January's for the first pickup since last October, although it's still 1. 5 per cent off from February 1960. Corroborating Mr. Hodges'figures was the Federal Reserve Board's report of the large sales increase in the nation's department stores for the week ending March 4. In Newark, for example, this gain was put at 26 per cent above the year-earlier level. Of course, some of the credit for the sale boost must be given to improvement in the weather and to the fact that Easter comes more than two weeks earlier than in 1960. Another optimistic sign, this one from the Labor Department, was the report that the long rise in unemployment compensation payments ``was interrupted for the first time in the week ending Feb. 25''. Initial claims for jobless benefits were said to have dropped by 8, 100 in the week ending March 4. Mr. Hodges is so hopeful over the outlook that he doesn't think there will be any need of a cut in income taxes. Well, we can't have everything. Prosperity for the whole nation is certainly preferred to a tax cut. New Jersey folk need not be told of the builder's march to the sea, for in a single generation he has parceled and populated miles of our shoreline and presses on to develop the few open spaces that remain. Now the Stone Harbor bird sanctuary, 31 acres of magic attraction for exotic herons, is threatened, but the battlefront extends far beyond our state. Against the dramatic fight being waged for preservation of 30 miles of Cape Cod shoreline, the tiny tract at Stone Harbor may seem unimportant. But Interior Secretary Udall warns that there is a race on between those who would develop our few surviving open shorelines and those who would save them for the enjoyment of all as public preserves. The move for establishment of a national seashore park on 30, 000 acres of Cape Cod, from Provincetown to Chatham, is strengthened by President Kennedy's interest in that area. But preservation of the natural beauty of the Cape is of more than regional concern, for the automobile age has made it the recreation spot of people from all over the country. By comparison, Stone Harbor bird sanctuary's allies seem less formidable, for aside from the Audubon Society, they are mostly the snowy, common and cattle egrets and the Louisiana, green, little blue and black-crowned herons who nest and feed there. But there is hope, for Conservation Commissioner Bontempo has tagged the sanctuary as the kind of place the state hopes to include in its program to double its park space. The desirability of preserving such places as the Cape dunes and Stone Harbor sanctuary becomes more apparent every year. Public sentiment for conserving our rich natural heritage is growing. But that heritage is shrinking even faster. much of the glamor President Kennedy's Peace Corps may have held for some prospective applicants has been removed by Sargent Shriver, the head corpsman. Anybody who is expecting a joyride should, according to Mr. Shriver, get off the train right now. First of all, the recruits will have to undergo arduous schooling. It will be a 16-hour training day. Then off to a remote place in an underdeveloped country where the diet, culture, language and living conditions will be different. And the pay, of course, will be nil. Despite all this, the idea apparently has captured the imagination of countless youths whose parents are probably more surprised by the response than anybody else. The study of the St. Louis area's economic prospects prepared for the Construction Industry Joint Conference confirms and reinforces both the findings of the Metropolitan St. Louis Survey of 1957 and the easily observed picture of the Missouri-Illinois countryside. St. Louis sits in the center of a relatively slow-growing and in some places stagnant mid-continent region. Slackened regional demand for St. Louis goods and services reflects the region's relative lack of purchasing power. Not all St. Louis industries, of course, have a market area confined to the immediate neighborhood. But for those which do, the slow growth of the area has a retarding effect on the metropolitan core. The city has a stake in stimulating growth and purchasing power throughout outstate Missouri and Southern Illinois. Gov. Dalton's New Commerce and Industry Commission is moving to create a nine-state regional group in a collective effort to attract new industry. That is one approach. Another would be to take the advice of Dr. Elmer Ellis, president of the University of Missouri, and provide for an impartial professional analysis of Missouri's economy. He says the state, in order to proceed with economic development, must develop an understanding of how the various parts of its economy fit together and dovetail into the national economy. The research center of the University's School of Business and Public Administration is prepared to undertake the analysis Dr. Ellis has been talking about. He and Dean John W. Schwada of the Business School outlined the project at a recent conference. The University can make a valuable contribution to the state's economic development through such a study. In Southern Illinois, the new federal program of help to economically depressed areas ought to provide some stimulus to growth. The Carbondale Industrial Development Corp. has obtained a $ 500, 000 loan to help defray the cost of remodeling a city-owned factory to accommodate production that will provide 500 new jobs. Carbondale is in the Herrin-Murphysboro-West Frankfort labor market, where unemployment has been substantially higher than the national average. The Federal program eventually should have a favorable impact on Missouri's depressed areas, and in the long run that will benefit St. Louis as well. Politics-ridden St. Clair county in Illinois presents another piece of the problem of metropolitan development. More industrial acreage lies vacant in St. Clair county than in any other jurisdiction in the St. Louis area. The unstable political situation there represents one reason new plants shy away from the East Side. And then there is St. Louis county, where the Democratic leadership has shown little appreciation of the need for sound zoning, of the important relationship between proper land use and economic growth. St. Louis county under its present leadership also has largely closed its eyes to the need for governmental reform, and permitted parochial interests to take priority over area-wide interests. Some plant-location specialists take these signs to mean St. Louis county doesn't want industry, and so they avoid the area, and more jobs are lost. Metropolitan St. Louis's relatively slow rate of growth ought to be a priority concern of the political, business, civic and other leaders on both sides of the Mississippi. Without a great acceleration in the metropolitan area's economy, there will not be sufficient jobs for the growing numbers of youngsters, and St. Louis will slip into second-class status. Many of our very best friends are reformers. Still we must confess that sometimes some of them go too far. Take, for example, the reformers among New York City's Democrats. Having whipped Mr. De Sapio in the primaries and thus come into control of Tammany Hall, they have changed the name to Chatham Hall. Even though headquarters actually have been moved into the Chatham building, do they believe that they can make the new name stick? Granted that the Tammany name and the Tammany tiger often were regarded as badges of political shame, the sachems of the Hall also have a few good marks to their credit. But it is tradition rather than the record which balks at the expunging of the Tammany name. After all, it goes back to the days in which sedition was not un-American, the days in which the Sons of St. Tammany conspired to overthrow the government by force and violence -- the British government, that is. Further, do our reforming friends really believe that the cartoonists will consent to the banishment of the tiger from their zoo? They will -- when they give up the donkey and the elephant. Instead of attempting the impossible, why not a publicity campaign to prove that all the tiger's stripes are not black? That might go over. The White House itself has taken steps to remove a former Batista official, Col. Mariano Faget, from his preposterous position as interrogator of Cuban refugees for the Immigration Service. The Faget appointment was preposterous on several grounds. The Kennedy Administration had assured anti-Castro Cubans that it would have nothing to do with associates of Dictator Batista. Using a Batista man to screen refugees represented a total misunderstanding of the democratic forces which alone can effectively oppose Castro. Moreover, Col. Faget's information on Cuba was too outdated to be useful in ``screening'' Castro agents; the Colonel fled to the friendly haven of the Dominican dictatorship as soon as Castro seized power. And while he had headed Batista's anti-Communist section, the Batista regime did not disturb the Communists so much as more open opponents who were alleged to be Communists. Responsibility for the Faget appointment rests with Gen. J. M. Swing, an Eisenhower appointee as head of the Immigration Service. Gen. Swing has received public attention before this for abuse of some of the prerogatives of his office. His official term expired last summer. Some reports say he was rescued from timely retirement by his friend, Congressman Walter of Pennsylvania, at a moment when the Kennedy Administration was diligently searching for all the House votes it could get. Congressman Walter has been all-powerful in immigration matters, but he has announced plans to retire in 1962. At that point the Administration will have little reason to hang onto Gen. Swing. The Faget case was the kind of salvage job the Administration should not have to repeat. As President, Dwight D. Eisenhower often assumed a role aloof from the strife of partisan politics. As a former President, however, Mr. Eisenhower abandoned this role to engage in partisan sniping during a New York Republican rally, and generally missed his target. Mr. Eisenhower seized upon the incident of the postcard lost by a Peace Corps girl in Nigeria to attack the entire Corps as a ``juvenile experiment'' and to suggest sending a Corps member to the moon. This was juvenile ridicule. Nowhere did the speaker recognize the serious purpose of the Corps or its welcome reception abroad. His words were the more ungracious to come from a man who lent his name to the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships dedicated to the same goal of international understanding. The former President blithely ignored recent history in speaking of ``dollarette'' dollars under Kennedy Administration fiscal policies. It was the Eisenhower Administration which produced the largest peacetime deficit. Finally, Mr. Eisenhower found nothing but confusion in Washington. This statement recalls the 1959 Berlin crisis, when President Eisenhower first told reporters that Berlin could not be defended with conventional weapons and then added that a nuclear defense was out of the picture too. The crisis has been renewed since then but the confusion has hardly been compounded. Ex-Presidents, relieved of accountability for policy, sometimes seem to feel free of accountability for their words. Some of former President Truman's off-the-cuff discourses have been in that vein. Nobody can deny the right of former Chief Executives to take part in politics, but the American people expect them always to remember the obligations of national leadership and to treat issues with a sense of responsibility. This is a matter of respect for the Presidency. Mr. Eisenhower's New York speech does not encourage respect for that or for his elder statesmanship. The Queen Mary has long been a symbol of speed, luxury, and impeccable British service on the high seas. Reports that the venerable liner, which has been in service since 1936, was to be retired struck a nostalgic note in many of us. But the Cunard line, influenced by unpleasant economic facts and not sentiment, has decided to keep the Queen Mary in service until next Spring at least. A new queen, with the prosaic title of Q3, had been planned for several years to replace the Queen Mary. The British government, concerned about the threat of unemployment in the shipbuilding industry, had put through a bill to give Cunard loans and grants totaling $ 50, 400, 000 toward the $ 84, 000, 000 cost of a new 75, 000-ton passenger liner. Since 1957, more and more trans-Atlantic passengers have been crossing by air. Economy class fares and charter flights have attracted almost all new passengers to the airlines. Competition from other steamship lines has cut Cunard's share of sea passengers from one-third to one-fourth and this year the line showed a marked drop of profits on the Atlantic run. The Cunard line has under consideration replacing the Queen Mary with a ship smaller than 75, 000 tons. This would be cheaper to operate and could be used for cruises during the lean winter months. Also under consideration is an increased investment in Cunard Eagle Airways which has applied to serve New York. The decline of the Cunard line from its position of dominance in Atlantic travel is a significant development in the history of transportation. Gen. Maxwell Taylor's statement in Saigon that he is ``very much encouraged'' about the chances of the pro-Western government of Viet Nam turning back Communist guerrilla attacks comes close to an announcement that he will not recommend dispatching United States troops to bolster the Vietnamese Army. Gen. Taylor will report to President Kennedy in a few days on the results of his visit to South Viet Nam and, judging from some of his remarks to reporters in the Far East, he is likely to urge a more efficient mobilization of Vietnamese military, economic, political and other resources. There was good reason for Gen. Taylor to make an inspection trip at this time. Communist guerrillas recently have been reported increasing their activities and the great flood of the Mekong River has interposed a new crisis. South Viet Nam's rice surplus for next year -- more than 300, 000 tons -- may have been destroyed. The Viet Cong, the Communist rebels, may have lost their stored grain and arms factories. The rebels may try to seize what is left of the October harvest when the floods recede and the monsoon ends in November. Nothing that is likely to happen, however, should prompt the sending of United States soldiers for other than instructional missions. The Indochina struggle was a war to stay out of in 1954, when Gen. Ridgway estimated it would take a minimum of 10 to 15 divisions at the outset to win a war the French were losing. It is a war to stay out of today, especially in view of the fact that President Ngo Dinh Diem apparently does not want United States troops. He may want additional technical help, and this should be forthcoming. South Viet Nam has received $ 1, 450, 000, 000 in United States aid since 1954 and the rate of assistance has been stepped up since Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's visit last May. Gen. Taylor, the President's special military adviser, is a level-headed officer who is not likely to succumb to propaganda or pressure. It is probable that his recommendations will be informed and workable, and that they will not lead to involving the United States in an Asian morass. Gov. John M. Dalton, himself a lawyer and a man of long service in government, spoke with rich background and experience when he said in an address here that lawyers ought to quit sitting in the Missouri General Assembly, or quit accepting fees from individuals and corporations who have controversies with or axes to grind with the government and who are retained, not because of their legal talents, but because of their government influence. Ambassador Stevenson yesterday described the U. N.' s problem of electing a temporary successor to the late Dag Hammarskjold as ``the gravest crisis the institution has faced''. Of course it is. If the decision goes wrong, it may be -- as Mr. Stevenson fears -- ``the first step on the slippery path downhill'' to a U. N. without operational responsibilities and without effective meaning. The integrity of the office not merely requires that the Secretary General shall be, as the Charter puts it, ``the chief administrative officer of the Organization'', but that neither he nor his staff shall seek or receive instructions from any government or any other authority ``external to the Organization''. In other words, the Secretary General is to be a nonpartisan, international servant, not a political, national one. He should be, as Dag Hammarskjold certainly was, a citizen of the world. The Charter does stipulate that ``due regard'' shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on ``as wide a geographical basis as possible''. The United States and its allies have had no objection to this. What they have objected to is the attempt of the Russians to make use of the tragedy of Dag Hammarskjold's death to turn the entire U. N. staff from the Secretary down into political agents of the respective countries from which they come. The controversy now revolves mainly around the number and geographic origin of the deputies of the Secretary General and, more particularly, around the nature of his relationship with them. Although the United States and the U. S. S. R. have been arguing whether there shall be four, five or six top assistants, the most important element in the situation is not the number of deputies but the manner in which these deputies are to do their work. If any one of them has any power to veto the Secretary General's decisions the nature of the organization will have changed. If they give him advice when he asks it, or if they perform specified duties under his direction, the nature of the U. N. will not of necessity change. The Secretary General must have, subject to the constitutional direction of the Security Council and the General Assembly, the power to act, to propose action and to organize action without being hobbled by advisers and assistants acting on someone else's instructions. This is the root issue for which the United States should stand. We should not become confused or let our public become confused over irrelevant questions of number or even of geography. What we must have, if the United Nations is to survive, is as nonpolitical, nonpartisan an organization at the top as human beings can make it, subject to no single nation's direction and subservient to no single nation's ambition. The new City Charter, which should get a Yes vote as Question No. 1 on Nov. 7, would not make a good Mayor out of a bad one. There is no such magic in man-made laws. But it would greatly strengthen any Mayor's executive powers, remove the excuse in large degree that he is a captive of inaction in the Board of Estimate, increase his budget-making authority both as to expense and capital budgets, and vest in him the right to reorganize city departments in the interest of efficiency and economy. Lawmaking power is removed from the Board of Estimate and made a partnership responsibility of the City Council and the Mayor. Thus there is a clearer division of authority, administrative and legislative. The board is diminished in both respects, while it retains control over zoning, franchises, pier leases, sale, leasing and assignment of property, and other trusteeship functions. The board will be able to increase, decrease, add or eliminate budget items, subject to the Mayor's veto; but the City Council will now share fully this budget-altering power. Overriding of mayoral veto on budget changes will require concurrence by board and Council, and a two-thirds vote. The Controller retains his essential ``fiscal watchdog'' functions; his broad but little used investigative powers are confirmed. He loses now-misplaced tax collection duties, which go to the Finance Department. On net balance, in spite of Controller Gerosa's opposition to the new Charter as an invasion of his office, the Controller will have the opportunity for greater usefulness to good government than he has now. Borough Presidents, while retaining membership in the Board of Estimate, lose their housekeeping functions. Highways go to a new Department of Highways, sewers to the Department of Public Works, such street cleaning as Borough Presidents now do (in Queens and Richmond) to the Sanitation Department. Some fiscal changes are important. The expense (operating) budget is to be a program budget, and red tape is cut to allow greater autonomy (with the Mayor approving) in fund transfers within a department. The capital budget, for construction of permanent improvements, becomes an appropriating document instead of just a calendar of pious promises; but, as a second-look safeguard, each new project must undergo a Board of Estimate public hearing before construction proceeds. A road block to desirable local or borough improvements, heretofore dependent on the pocketbook vote of taxpayers and hence a drag on progress, is removed by making these a charge against the whole city instead of an assessment paid by those immediately affected. This will have a beneficial effect by expediting public business; it will also correct some injustices. Enlargement of the City Council and a new method of selecting members will be discussed tomorrow. The Inter-american Press Association, which blankets the Western Hemisphere from northern Canada to Cape Horn, is meeting in New York City this week for the first time in eleven years. The I. A. P. A. is a reflection of the problems and hopes of the hemisphere; and in these days this inevitably means a concentration on the effects of the Cuban revolution. As the press in Cuba was gradually throttled by the Castro regime, more and more Cuban publishers, editors and correspondents were forced into exile. The I. A. P. A. found itself driven from journalism into politics as it did its best to bring about the downfall of the Castro Government and the return of the Cuban press to the freedom it knew before Batista's dictatorship began in 1952. Freedom of the press was lost in Cuba because of decades of corruption and social imbalances. In such conditions all freedoms are lost. This, in more diplomatic language, is what Adlai Stevenson told the newspaper men of Latin America yesterday on behalf of the United States Government. He felt able to end on a note of hope. He sees evidence of fair winds for the ten-year Alliance for Progress plan with its emphasis on social reforms. No group can contribute more to the success of the program than the editors and publishers of the Inter-American Press Association. The Twenty-second Soviet Communist Party Congress opens in Moscow today in a situation contrasting sharply with the script prepared many months ago when this meeting was first announced. According to the original program, Premier Khrushchev expected the millions looking toward the Kremlin this morning to be filled with admiration or rage -- depending upon individual or national politics -- because of the ``bold program for building communism in our time'' which the Congress will adopt. But far from being concerned about whether or not Russia will have achieved Utopia by 1980, the world is watching Moscow today primarily for clues as to whether or not there will be nuclear Armageddon in the immediate future. The evident contradiction between the rosy picture of Russia's progress painted by the Communist party's program and the enormous dangers for all humanity posed by Premier Khrushchev's Berlin policy has already led to speculation abroad that the program may be severely altered. Whether it is or not, the propaganda impact on the free world of the document scheduled to be adopted at this meeting will be far less than had been originally anticipated. And there must be many Soviet citizens who know what is going on and who realize that before they can hope to enjoy the full life promised for 1980 they and their children must first survive. This Congress will see Premier Khrushchev consolidating his power and laying the groundwork for an orderly succession should death or illness remove him from the scene in the next few years. The widespread purge that has taken place the past twelve months or so among Communist leaders in the provinces gives assurance that the party officials who will dominate the Congress, and the Central Committee it will elect, will all have passed the tightest possible Khrushchev screening, both for loyalty to him and for competence and performance on the job. Dr. James B. Conant has earned a nationwide reputation as a moderate and unemotional school reformer. His earlier reports considered the American public schools basically sound and not in need of drastic change. Now, a close look at the schools in and around the ten largest cities, including New York, has shattered this optimism. Dr. Conant has come away shocked and angry. His new book, entitled ``Slums And Suburbs'', calls for fast and drastic action to avert disaster. There is room for disagreement concerning some of Dr. Conant's specific views. His strong opposition to the transfer of Negro children to schools outside their own neighborhood, in the interest of integration, will be attacked by Negro leaders who have fought for, and achieved, this open or permissive enrollment. Dr. Conant may underestimate the psychological importance of even token equality. His suggestion that the prestige colleges be made the training institutions for medical, law and graduate schools will run into strong opposition from these colleges themselves -- even though what he is recommending is already taking shape as a trend. But these are side issues to a powerful central theme. That theme cuts through hypocrisies, complacency and double-talk. It labels the slums, especially the Negro slums, as dead-end streets for hundreds of thousands of youngsters. The villains of the piece are those who deny job opportunities to these youngsters, and Dr. Conant accuses employers and labor unions alike. The facts, he adds, are hidden from public view by squeamish objections to calling bad conditions by their right name and by insistence on token integration rather than on real improvement of the schools, regardless of the color of their students. A call for action ``before it is too late'' has alarming implications when it comes from a man who, in his previous reports on the schools, cautioned so strongly against extreme measures. These warnings must not be treated lightly. Dr. Conant's conscientious, selfless efforts deserve the nation's gratitude. He has served in positions of greater glamour, both at home and abroad; but he may well be doing his greatest service with his straightforward report on the state of the public schools. A fascinating letter has just reached this desk from a correspondent who likes to receive so-called junk mail. He was delighted to learn that the Post Office Department is now going to expand this service to deliver mail from Representatives in Congress to their constituents without the use of stamps, names, addresses or even zone numbers. In accordance with legislation passed at the last session of Congress, each Representative is authorized to deliver to the Post Office in bulk newsletters, speeches and other literature to be dropped in every letter box in his district. This means an added burden to innumerable postmen, who already are complaining of heavy loads and low pay, and it presumably means an increased postal deficit, but, our correspondent writes, think of the additional junk mail each citizen will now be privileged to receive on a regular basis. Letter writing is a dying art. Occasional letters are sent by individuals to one another and many are written by companies to one another, but these are mostly typewritten. Most mail these days consists of nothing that could truly be called a letter. Old, tired, trembling the woman came to the cannery. She had, she said, heard that the plant was closing. It couldn't close, she said. She had raised a calf, grown it beef-fat. She had, with her own work-weary hands, put seeds in the ground, watched them sprout, bud, blossom, and get ready to bear. She was ready to kill the beef, dress it out, and with vegetables from her garden was going to can soup, broth, hash, and stew against the winter. She had done it last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and she, and her people were dependent upon these cans for food. This did not happen in counties of North Georgia, where the rivers run and make rich the bottom land. Nor in South Georgia, where the summer sun shines warmly and gives early life to the things growing in the flat fields. This happened in Decatur, DeKalb County, not 10 miles from the heart of metropolitian Atlanta. And now, the woman, tired and trembling, came here to the DeKalb County cannery. ``Is it so the cannery is going to close''? O. N. Moss, 61, tall, grey as a possum, canning plant chief since 1946, didn't know what to say. He did say she could get her beef and vegetables in cans this summer. He did say he was out of cans, the No. 3's, but ``I requisitioned 22, 000''. He said he had No. 2's enough to last two weeks more. Threat of closing the cannery is a recent one. A three-man committee has recommended to Commission Chairman Charles O. Emmerich that the DeKalb County cannery be closed. Reason: the cannery loses $ 3, 000 yearly. But DeKalb citizens, those who use the facilities of the cannery, say the cannery is not supposed to make any money. ``The cannery'', said Mrs. Lewellyn Lundeen, an active booster of the cannery since its opening during the war and rationing years of 1941, to handle the ``victory garden'' produce, ``is a service to the taxpayer. And one of the best services available to the people who try to raise and can meat, to plant, grow vegetables and put them up. It helps those people who help themselves. ``The county, though, seems more interested in those people who don't even try, those who sit and draw welfare checks and line up for surplus food''. A driver of a dairy truck, who begins work at 1 a. m. finishes before breakfast, then goes out and grows a garden, and who has used the cannery to save and feed a family of five, asked, ``What in the world will we do''? ``What in the world'', echoed others, those come with the beans, potatoes, the tomatoes, ``will any of us do''? Moss, a man who knows how much the cannery helps the county, doesn't believe it will close. But he is in the middle, an employe of DeKalb, but on the side of the people. The young married people; the old couples. The dairy truck driver; the old woman with the stew. ``Don't ask me if I think the cannery helps'', he said. ``Sir, I know the cannery helps''. Most of us would be willing to admit that forgiveness comes hard. When a person has thoughtlessly or deliberately caused us pain or hardship it is not always easy to say, ``Just forget it''. There is one thing I know; a person will never have spiritual poise and inner peace as long as the heart holds a grudge. I know a man who held resentment against a neighbor for more than three decades. Several years ago I was his pastor. One night, at the close of the evening service, he came forward, left his resentment at the altar and gave his heart to God. After almost everyone had gone he told me the simple story of how one of his neighbors had moved a fence a few feet over on his land. ``We tried to settle this dispute'', he said, ``but could never come to an agreement. I settled it tonight'', he continued. ``I leave this church with a feeling that a great weight has been lifted off my heart, I have left my grudge at the altar and forgiven my neighbor''. Forgiveness is the door through which a person must pass to enter the Kingdom of God. You cannot wear the banner of God and at the same time harbor envy, jealousy and grudges in your heart. Henry Van Dyke said, ``Forgive and forget if you can; but forgive anyway''. Jesus made three things clear about forgiveness. We must, first of all, be willing to forgive others before we can secure God's forgiveness. ``For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive -- your trespasses''. Matthew 6: 14-15. It will do no good to seek God's forgiveness until we have forgiven those who have done us wrong. Then, Jesus indicated that God's forgiveness is unlimited. In the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray we find these words, ``Forgive us our debts''. When a person meets God's requirements for the experience of forgiveness he is forgiven. God's mercy and patience will last forever. Forgiveness implies more than a person wanting his past sins covered by God's love. It also implies that a man wants his future to be free from the mistakes of the past. We want the past forgiven, but at the same time we must be willing for God to direct the future. Finally, we must be willing to forgive others as many times as they sin against us. Once Peter asked, ``How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, until seventy times seven''. Matthew 18: 21-22. Jesus not only taught forgiveness, He gave us an example of it on the cross. With all the energy of his broken body he prayed, ``Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do''. Luke 23: 34. She's been in and out of my house for a dozen years now, although she's still a teen-ager who looks like a baby, she is getting married. Her mother, now dead, was my good friend and when she came to tell us about her plans and to show off her ring I had a sobering wish to say something meaningful to her, something her mother would wish said. For a while there was such shrill girlish commotion I couldn't have made myself heard if I'd had the equivalent of the message to Garcia. But when some of the squeals had subsided and she had been through one of those sessions that are so indispensable to the young female -- six girls sprawled on one bed, drinking Cokes and giggling -- she came back to the kitchen to talk with me a minute. ``How do you know you love somebody enough to get married''? She asked. It was the oldest and toughest question young lovers have ever asked: How can you be sure? ``Aren't you sure''? I asked, looking at her searchingly. I wanted to grab her by the arm and beg her to wait, to consider, to know for certain because life is so long and marriage is so important. But if she were just having a normal case of pre-nuptial jitters such a question might frighten her out of a really good marriage. Besides, in all honesty, I don't know how you can be sure. I don't know any secret recipe for certainty. In the fevered, intoxicating, breathless state of being in love the usual signposts that guide you to lasting and satisfying relationships are sometimes obscured. I knew of but one test and I threw it out to her for what it was worth. ``Does he ever bore you''? I asked. ``Bore me''? She was shocked. Oh, no-o! ``I mean'', I went on ruthlessly, ``when he's not talking about you or himself or the wonders of love, is he interesting? Does he care about things that matter to you? Can you visualize being stranded with him on a desert island for years and years and still find him fascinating? Because, honey, I thought silently, there are plenty of desert islands in every marriage -- long periods when you're hopelessly stranded, together. And if you bore each other then, heaven help you. She came back the other day to reassure me. She has studied and observed and she is convinced that her young man is going to be endlessly enchanting. She asked if I had other advice and, heady with success, I rushed it in, I hope not too late. Be friends with your mother-in-law. Jokes, cartoons and cynics to the contrary, mothers-in-law make good friends. I do not know Dr. Wilson Sneed well. But I was deeply moved by his letter of resignation as rector of St. Luke's Church in Atlanta. It was the cry of not just one heart; it spoke for many in the clergy, I suspect. The pulpit is a lonely place. Who stops to think of that? Imagine the searching and the prayer that lay behind the letter the rector wrote after almost a decade of service to this majestic church. ``Such a church needs vigor and vitality in its rector and one man has only so much of these endowments'', he told his members. A minister should not stay ``beyond the time that his leadership should benefit'' his church, he wrote, ``for he becomes ordinary. And so the young minister resigned, to go and study and pray, having never passed a day, he told his parishioners, when ``I did not gain from you far more than I ever gave to you''. His very honest act called up the recent talk I had with another minister, a modest Methodist, who said: ``I feel so deeply blessed by God when I can give a message of love and comfort to other men, and I would have it no other way: and it is unworthy to think of self. But oh, how I do sometimes need just a moment of rest, and peace, in myself''. A man who gives himself to God and to the believers of his church takes upon himself a life of giving. He does not expect to get great riches or he would not have chosen to answer the call to preach. The good ones are not motivated to seek vainly, nor are they disposed to covet comfort, or they would have been led to fields that offer comfort and feed vanity. Theirs is a sacrificial life by earthly standards. Yet we who lean upon such a man and draw strength from him and expect interpretation of the infinite through him -- we who readily accept his sacrifice as our due, we of the congregations are the first to tell him what is in our minds instead of listening to what is in his soul. We press him to conform to our comfortable conceptions and not to bruise our satisfactions with his word, and God's. We do not defeat the good ones with this cruelty, but we add to their burden, while expecting them to bestow saintliness upon us in return for ostentatious church attendance and a few bucks a week, American cash. If we break the minister to our bit, we are buying back our own sins. If he won't break, we add to the stress he bears. And a minister of all men is most conscious that he is mere man -- prone to the stresses that earthly humanity is heir to. We expect him to be noble, and to make us so -- yet he knows, and tries to tell us, how very humble man must be. We expect bestowal of God's love through him. But how little love we give him. The church truly is not a rest home for saints, but a hospital for sinners. Yet every Sunday we sinners go to that emergency room to receive first aid, and we leave unmindful that the man who ministered to us is a human being who suffers, too. Mr. Podger always particularly enjoyed the last night of each summer at Loon Lake. The narrow fringe of sadness that ran around it only emphasized the pleasure. The evening was not always spent in the same way. This year, on a night cool with the front of September moving in, but with plenty of summer still about, the Podgers were holding a neighborhood gathering in the Pod. The little cottage was bursting with people of all ages. In the midst of it all, Mr. Podger came out on the Pod porch, alone. He had that day attended a country auction, and he had come back with a prize. The prize was an old-fashioned, woven cloth hammock, complete with cross-top pillow, fringed side pieces, and hooks for hanging. Mrs. Podger had obligingly pushed things around on the porch to make room for it, and there it was, slung in a vine-shaded corner, the night breeze rippling its fringe with a slow, caressing movement. Mr. Podger sat down in it, pushed himself back and forth in one or two slow, rhythmic motions, and then swung his feet up into it. He closed his eyes and let the unintelligible drift of voices sweep pleasantly over him. Suddenly one young voice rose above the others. ``But'', it said, ``do you always know when you're happy''? The voice sank back into the general tangle of sound, but the question stayed in Mr. Podger's mind. Here, in the cool, autumn-touched evening, Mr. Podger mentally retraced a day that had left him greatly contented and at peace. It had begun with the blue jay feather. Walking along the lake before breakfast, Mr. Podger had seen the feather, and the bird that had lost it in flight. The winging spread of blue had gone on, calling harshly, into the wood. The small shaft of blue had drifted down and come to rest at his feet. All day long Mr. Podger, who was a straw-hat man in the summer, had worn the feather in the band of his broad-brimmed sunshield. Would a blue feather in a man's hat make him happy all day? Hardly. But it was something to have seen it floating down through the early morning sunshine, linking the blue of the sky with the blue of the asters by the lake. Then, since the auction was being held nearby, he had walked to it. And there, on the way, had been the box turtle, that slow, self-contained, world-ignoring relic of pre-history, bent, for reasons best known to itself, on crossing the road. It was doing very well, too, having reached the center, and was pursuing its way with commendable singleness of purpose when Mr. Podger saw hazard approaching in the shape of a flashy little sports car. Would the driver see the turtle? Would he take pains to avoid it? Mr. Podger took no chances. Taking off his hat and signaling the driver with it, Mr. Podger stepped into the road, lifted the surprised turtle and consummated its road-crossing with what must have been a breath-taking suddenness. The turtle immediately withdrew into its private council room to study the phenomenon. But Mr. Podger and the driver of the sports car waved at each other. Here in the cool darkness Mr. Podger could still feel the warmth of midday, could still see the yellow butterflies dancing over the road, could still see the friendly grin on the young, sun-browned face as the driver looked back over his shoulder for a moment before the car streaked out of sight. Where was the driver now? What was he doing? And the turtle? Mr. Podger smiled. For a few brief minutes they had all been part of one little drama. The three would never meet again, but for some reason or other Mr. Podger was sure he would always remember the incident. Then there had been the auction itself. Mr. Podger heard again; at will, the voice of the auctioneer, the voices of the bidders, and finally the small boy who had been so interested in Mr. Podger's hammock purchase. ``I like them things, too'', he had said. ``We got one at home. You know what? If you're lyin'out in the hammock at night, and it gets kinda cool -- you know -- you just take these sides with the fringe on -- see -- and wrap'em right over you. I do it, lots o'times -- I like to lie in a hammock at night, by myself, when it's all quiet. The wind moves it a little bit -- you know. Mr. Podger had thanked him gravely, and now he made use of the advice. As he pulled the fringed sides up and made himself into a cocoon, Mr. Podger saw that thin, attractive, freckled little face again, and hoped that the boy, too, was lying in a cool, fringed-wrapped quiet. Alacrity, the Podger cat, came by the hammock, rubbed her back briefly against it, and then, sure of a welcome, hopped up. She remarked that she found the night wind a little chilly, and Mr. Podger took her inside the fringe. Soon her purring rivaled the chirping of the tree crickets, rivaled the hum of voices from inside the Pod. Mr. Podger was just adding this to his pictures of the day when the screen door opened and Pam burst out. ``Dad''! She said. ``It's getting so chilly we've lighted a fire, and we're going to tell a round robin story -- a nice, scary one. We need you to start it. Why are you out here all by yourself? Aren't you happy''? Mr. Podger opened his cocoon and emerged, tucking Alacrity under his arm to bring her in by the fire. ``Of course I am'', he said. ``Never happier in my life. I just came out here to know it''. As the South begins another school year, national and even world attention is directed at the region's slow progress toward racial equality in the public schools. Desegregation is beginning in two more important Southern cities -- Dallas and Atlanta. In each city civic and education leaders have been working hard to get public opinion prepared to accept the inevitability of equal treatment. These programs emphasize the acceptance of biracial classrooms peacefully. The programs do not take sides on the issue itself. They point out simply that ``it is the law of the land''. The two cities have the examples of Little Rock and New Orleans to hold up as warnings against resorting to violence to try to stop the processes of desegregation. Even better, they have the examples of Nashville and Houston to hold up as peaceful and progressive programs. In each case there was an initial act of violence. In Nashville, a school was dynamited. In Houston, there were a few incidents of friction between whites and Negroes, none of which were serious. In each city quick public reaction and fast action by the city government halted the threats of more serious incidents. The Nashville plan, incidentally, has become recognized as perhaps the most acceptable and thus the most practical to put into effect in the troubled South. It is a ``stair-step'' plan, in which desegregation begins in the first grade. Each year another grade is added to the process, until finally all 12 grades are integrated. The schedules are flexible so that the program can be accelerated as the public becomes more tolerant or realizes that it is something that has to be done, ``so why not now''. The program has worked well in both Nashville and Houston. It met a serious rebuff in New Orleans, where the two schools selected for the first moves toward integration were boycotted by white parents. Another attempt will be made this year in New Orleans to resume the program. Generally, throughout the South, there is a growing impatience with the pattern of violence with which every step of desegregation is met. Perhaps the most eloquent move toward removal of racial barriers has been in Dallas. During the summer, Negroes began quietly patronizing previously segregated restaurants and lunch counters in downtown retail establishments. It was part of a citywide move toward full integration. So successful has been this program, worked out by white and Negro civic leaders, that further extensions are expected in the next few months. Hotels, for example, are ready to let down the bars. Already, at least one hotel has been quietly taking reservations on a nonracial basis. Several conventions have been held in recent months in hotels on a nonsegregated basis. This is a radical change in attitude from the conditions which prevailed several years ago, when a series of bombings was directed against Negroes who were moving into previously all-white neighborhoods of Dallas. It is also symptomatic of a change in attitude which appears to be spreading all across the South. Southern whites themselves are realizing that they had been wrong in using violence to try to stop Negroes from claiming equal rights. They insist they are ashamed of such violence and intimidation as occurred in Alabama when the Freedom Riders sought to break down racial discrimination in local bus depots. All across the South there are signs that racial violence is finding less approval among whites who themselves would never take active part but might once have shown a tolerant attitude toward it. There are many causes for this change. One of the most important is economic. Business leaders are aware now that they suffer greatly from any outbreak of violence. They are putting strong pressure on their police departments to keep order. In the past these same Southerners were inclined to look the other way. And as the businessmen have begun to act, a real sense of co-operation has sprung up. This co-operation has emboldened other Southern whites to add their voices to demands for peaceable accommodation. They realize that by acting in concert, rather than individually, they will not be picked out as objects of retaliation -- economic and otherwise. Since moving from a Chicago suburb to Southern California a few months ago, I've been introduced to a new game called Lanesmanship. A driver cruising easily at 70 m. p. h. in Lane A of a four-lane freeway spies an incipient traffic jam ahead. Traffic in the next lane appears to be moving more smoothly so he pokes a tentative fender into Lane B, which is heavily populated by cars also moving at 70 m. p. h.. The adjacent driver in Lane B has three choices open to him. He can (1) point his car resolutely at the invading fender and force the other driver back into Lane A; (2) slow down and permit the ambivalent driver to change lanes; or (3) alternately accelerate and decelerate, thus keeping the first driver guessing as to his intentions, thereby making a fascinating sport of the whole affair. The really remarkable thing to me is that most California natives unhesitatingly elect to slow down and permit the invading car free access. Whether or not this is done out of enlightened self-preservation, I don't know. But it is done, consistently and I'm both surprised and impressed. This could never happen in my native Chicago. There such soggy acquiesence would be looked upon as a sure sign of deteriorating manhood. In Chicago, the driver cut out would likely jam his gas pedal to the floor in an effort to force the other car back. Failing this, he would pull alongside at the first opportunity and shake his fist threateningly. This negative explanation of courtesy on the freeways, however, does an injustice to Southern California drivers. At the risk of losing my charge-a-plate at Marshall Field and Company, I would like to challenge an old and hallowed stereotype. After three months of research, I can state unequivocally that Los Angeles drivers are considerably more courteous and competent than any other drivers I've ever encountered. During one recent day of driving about Los Angeles there were actually a dozen occasions when oncoming drivers stopped an entire lane of traffic to permit me to pull out of an impossible side street. An out-of-town writer came up to Paul Richards today and asked the Oriole manager if he thought his ball club would be improved this year. Now Richards, of course, is known as a deep thinker as baseball managers go. He can often make the complex ridiculously simple, and vice versa. This happened to be vice versa, but even so, the answer was a masterpiece. ``It's a whole lot easier'', he said, ``to increase the population of Nevada, than it is to increase the population of New York city''. And with that he walked off to give instruction to a rookie pitcher. ``That is undoubtedly a hell of a quote'', said the writer, scratching his head. ``Now, if I can just figure out what he's talking about, I'll use it''. This was just Richard's way of saying that last year the Birds opened spring training with a lot of jobs wide open. Some brilliant rookies nailed them down, so that this spring just two spots, left and right field, are really up for grabs. It should be easier to plug two spots than it was to fill the wholesale lots that were open last year, but so far it hasn't worked that way. This angle of just where the Orioles can look for improvement this year is an interesting one. You'd never guess it from the way they've played so far this spring, but there remains a feeling among some around here that the Orioles still have a chance to battle for the pennant in 1961. Obviously, if this club is going to move from second to first in the American League, it will have to show improvement someplace. Where can that improvement possibly come from? You certainly can't expect the infield to do any better than it did last year. Brooks Robinson is great, and it is conceivable that he'll do even better in 1961 than he did in 1960. You can't expect it, though. Robby's performance last year was tremendous. It's the same with Ron Hansen and Jim Gentile. If they do as well as they did in 1960 there can be no complaint. They shouldn't be asked to carry any more of the burden. Hansen will be getting a late spring training start, which might very well set him back. He got off to an exceptional start last season, and under the circumstances probably won't duplicate it. There are some clubs which claim they learned something about pitching to him last year. They don't expect to stop him, just slow him down some with the bat. He'll still be a top player, they concede, because he's got a great glove and the long ball going for him. But they expect to reduce his over-all offensive production. Gentile can hardly do better than drive in 98 runs. Don't ask him more. I have a hunch Marv Breeding might move up a notch. But even so, he had a good year in 1960 and won't do too much better. So, all in all, the infield can't be expected to supply the added improvement to propel the Birds from second to first. And the pitching will also have trouble doing better. Richards got a great performance out of his combination of youth and experience last season. Where, then, can we look for improvement? ``From Triandos, Brandt and Walker'', answers Richards. ``They're the ones we can expect to do better''. The man is right, and at this time, indications are that these three are ready for better seasons. Triandos hasn't proved it yet, but he says he's convinced his thumb is all right. He jammed it this spring and has had to rest it, but he says the old injury hasn't bothered him. If he can bounce back with one of those 25 home runs years, the club will have to be better off offensively. I'm still not convinced, though, I'll have to see more of him before predicting that big year for him. Hank Foiles, backed up by Frank House who will be within calling distance in the minors, make up better second line catching than the Birds had all last year, but Gus is still that big man you need when you start talking pennant. To me, Brandt looks as though he could be in for a fine year. He hasn't played too much, because Richards has been working on him furiously in batting practice. He's hitting the ball hard, in the batting cage, and his whole attitude is improved over this time last year. When he came to Baltimore, he was leaving a team which was supposed to win the National League pennant, and he was joining what seemed to be a second division American League club. He was down, hard to talk to, and far too nonchalant on the field. As of now, that all seems behind him. He's been entirely different all spring. And Walker looks stronger, seems to be throwing better than he did last year. Let him bounce back, and he could really set up the staff. So, if the Orioles are to improve, Brandt, Triandos and Walker will have to do it. So far the platoons on left and right fielders don't seem capable of carrying the load. Of course, this isn't taking into consideration the population of Nevada and New York city, but it's the way things look from here at this point. Is the mother of an ``autistic'' child at fault? (The ``autistic'' child is one who seems to lack a well-defined sense of self. He tends to treat himself and other people as if they were objects -- and sometimes he treats objects as if they were people. ) Did his mother make him this way? Some people believe she did. We think differently. We believe that autism, like so many other conditions of defect and deviation, is to a large extent inborn. A mother can help a child adapt to his difficulties. Sometimes she can -- to a large extent -- help him overcome them. But we don't think she creates them. We don't think she can make her child defective, emotionally disturbed or autistic. The mother of a difficult child can do a great deal to help her own child and often, by sharing her experiences, she can help other mothers with the same problem. Since little is known about autism, and almost nothing has been written for the layman, we'd like to share one experienced mother's comments. ``. As the mother of an autistic child who is lacking in interest and enthusiasm about almost anything, I have to manipulate my son's fingers for him when he first plays with a new toy. He wants me to do everything for him. ``You don't believe that autistic children become autistic because of something that happens to them or because of the way their mother treats them. But I do and my psychiatrist does, too. I know, that my son wants control and direction, but being autistic myself I cannot give full control or direction. ``One thing I notice which I have seldom heard mentioned. This is that autistic people don't enjoy physical contact with others -- for instance, my children and I. When I hold my son he stiffens his whole body in my arms until he is as straight and stiff as a board. He pushes and straightens himself as if he can't stand the feeling of being held. Physical contact is uncomfortable for him''! This mother is quite correct. As a rule, the autistic child doesn't enjoy physical contact with others. Parents have to find other ways of comforting him. For the young child this may be no more than providing food, light or movement. As he grows older it may be a matter of providing some accustomed object (his ``magic'' thing). Or certain words or rituals that child and adult go through may do the trick. The answer is different for each autistic child, but for most there is an answer. Only ingenuity will uncover it. ``Dear Doctors: We learned this year that our older son, Daniel, is autistic. We did not accept the diagnosis at once, but gradually we are coming to. Fortunately, there is a nursery school which he has been able to attend, with a group of normal children. ``I try to treat Daniel as if he were normal, though of course I realize he is far from that at present. What I do is to try to bring him into contact with reality as much as possible. I try to give him as many normal experiences as possible. ``What is your experience with autistic children? How do they turn out later''? Many autistic children grow up to lead relatively normal lives. Certainly, most continue to lack a certain warmth in communication with other people, but many adjust to school, even college, to jobs and even to marriage and parenthood. -- A first grader colors pictures one solid color, everything -- sky, grass, boy, wagon, etc.. When different colors are used, she is just as likely to color trees purple, hair green, etc.. The other children in the class use this same coloring book and do a fairly good job with things their proper color. Should I show my daughter how things should be colored? She is an aggressive, nervous child. Is a relaxed home atmosphere enough to help her outgrow these traits? -- Her choice of one color means she is simply enjoying the motor act of coloring, without having reached the point of selecting suitable colors for different objects. This immature use of crayons may suggest that she is a little immature for the first grade. No, coloring isn't exactly something you teach a child. You sometimes give them a little demonstration, a little guidance, and suggestions about staying inside the lines. But most learn to color and paint as and when they are ready with only a very little demonstration. Seen in decorating circles of late is a renewed interest in an old art: embroidery. Possibly responsible for this is the incoming trend toward multicolor schemes in rooms, which seems slated to replace the one-color look to which we have been accustomed. Just as a varitinted Oriental rug may suggest the starting point for a room scheme, so may some of the newest versions of embroidery. One such, in fact, is a rug. Though not actually crewel embroidery, it has that look with its over-stitched raised pattern in blue, pink, bronze and gold and a sauterne background. The twirled, stylized design of winding stems and floral forms strongly suggests the embroidered patterns used so extensively for upholstery during the Jacobean period in England. Traditional crewel embroidery which seems to be appearing more frequently this fall than in the past few years is still available in this country. The work is executed in England (by hand) and can be worked in any desired design and color. Among some recent imports were seat covers for one series of dining room chairs on which were depicted salad plates overflowing with tomatoes and greens and another set on which a pineapple was worked in naturalistic color. For a particularly fabulous room which houses a collection of fine English Chippendale furniture, fabric wall panels were embroidered with a typically Chinese-inspired design of this revered Eighteenth Century period. Since the work is done by hand, the only limitation, it is said, ``is that of human conception''. Modern embroidered panels, framed and meant to be hung on the wall, are another aspect of this trend. These have never gone out of style in Scandinavian homes and now seem to be reappearing here and there in shops which specialize in handicrafts. An amateur decorator might try her hand at a pair during the long winter evenings, and, by picking up her living room color scheme, add a decorative do-it-yourself note to the room. California Democrats this weekend will take the wraps off a 1962 model statewide campaign vehicle which they have been quietly assembling in a thousand district headquarters, party clubrooms and workers'backyards. They seem darned proud of it. And they're confident that the GOP, currently assailed by dissensions within the ranks, will be impressed by the purring power beneath the hood of this grassroots-fueled machine. Their meeting at San Francisco is nominally scheduled as a conference of the California Democratic Council directorate. But it will include 200-odd officeholders, organization leaders and ``interested party people''. -- Plans for a dramatic, broad-scale party rally in Los Angeles next December that would enlist top-drawer Democrats from all over the country. -- Blueprints for doubling the CDC's present 55, 000 enrollment. -- Arrangements for a statewide pre-primary endorsing convention in Fresno next Jan. 26-28. -- And proposals for a whole series of lesser candidate-picking conventions in the state's 38 new Congressional districts. At the head of the CDC is an unorthodox, 39-year-old amateur politico, Thomas B. Carvey Jr., whose normal profession is helping develop Hughes Aircraft's moon missiles. He's approached his Democratic duties in hard-nosed engineering fashion. Viewed from afar, the CDC looks like a rather stalwart political pyramid: its elected directorate fans out into an array of district leaders and standing committees, and thence into its component clubs and affiliated groups -- 500 or so. Moreover, the entire state Democratic hierarchy, from Gov. Brown on down to the county chairmen, also participates in this huge operation. Contrarily, Republican ``volunteers'' go their separate ways, and thus far have given no indication that they'd be willing to join forces under a single directorate, except in the most loose-knit fashion. Carvey believes that reapportionment, which left many Democratic clubs split by these new district boundaries, actually will increase CDC membership. Where only one club existed before, he says, two will flourish henceforth. Biggest organizational problem, he adds, is setting up CDC units in rock-ribbed Democratic territory. Paradoxically the council is weakest in areas that register 4-and 5-to-1 in the party's favor, strongest where Democrats and Republicans compete on a fairly even basis. Like most Democratic spokesmen, Carvey predicts 1962 will be a tremendously ``partisan year''. In all probability, the council will screen and endorse candidates for the Assembly and for Congress, and then strive to put its full weight behind these pre-primary favorites. Naturally, the statewide races will provide the major test for the expanding council. Shunted aside by the rampant organizers for John F. Kennedy last year, who relegated it to a somewhat subordinate role in the Presidential campaign, the CDC plainly intends to provide the party's campaign muscle in 1962. There is evidence that it will be happily received by Gov. Brown and the other constitutional incumbents. Carvey considers that former Vice President Nixon would be Brown's most formidable foe, with ex-Gov. Knight a close second. But the rest of the GOP gubernatorial aspirants don't worry him very much. In his CDC work, Carvey has the close-in support and advice of one of California's shrewdest political strategists: former Democratic National Committeeman Paul Ziffren, who backed him over a Northland candidate espoused by Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk. (Significantly, bitter echoes of the 1960 power struggle that saw Mosk moving into the national committee post over Ziffren are still audible in party circles. note: We've just received an announcement of the 54th Assembly district post-reapportionment organizing convention Wednesday night in South Pasadena's War Memorial Bldg., which graphically illustrates the CDC's broad appeal. State Sen. Dick Richards will keynote; state and county committeemen, CDC directors and representatives, members of 16 area clubs, and ``all residents'' have been invited. This is going to be a language lesson, and you can master it in a few minutes. It is a short course in Communese. It works with English, Russian, German, Hungarian or almost any other foreign tongue. Once you learn how to translate Communese, much of each day's deluge of news will become clearer. At least, I have found it so. For some compulsive reason which would have fascinated Dr. Freud, Communists of all shapes and sizes almost invariably impute to others the very motives which they harbor themselves. They accuse their enemies of precisely the crimes of which they themselves are most guilty. President Kennedy's latest warning to the Communist world that the United States will build up its military strength to meet any challenge in Berlin or elsewhere was, somewhat surprisingly, reported in full text or fairly accurate excerpts behind the Iron Curtain. Then the Communese reply came back from many mouthpieces with striking consistency. ``President Kennedy once again interpreted the Soviet proposals, to sign a peace treaty with Germany as a threat, as part of the world menace allegedly looming over the countries of capitalism. Evidently the war drum beating and hysteria so painstakingly being stirred up in the West have been planned long in advance. The West Berlin crisis is being played up artificially because it is needed by the United States to justify its arms drive''. ``President Kennedy's enlargement of the American military program was welcomed on Wall Street as a stimulus to the American munitions industry. When the stock exchange opened this morning, many dealers were quick to purchase shares in Douglas, Lockheed and United Aircraft and prices rose substantially. Over 4 million shares were sold, the highest figures since early June. (Quotations follow''. ``Former Vice President Nixon came out in support of President Kennedy's program for stepping up the arms race. He also demanded that Kennedy take additional measures to increase international tension: specifically to crush the Cuban revolution, resume nuclear testing, resist more vigorously admission of China to its lawful seat in the United Nations, and postpone non-military programs at home''. ``The American press clamored for many days promising President Kennedy would reply to the most vital domestic and foreign problems confronting the United States. In fact, the world heard nothing but sabre-rattling, the same exercises which proved futile for the predecessors of the current President. If there were no West Berlin problem, imperialist quarters would have invented an excuse for stepping up the armaments race to try to solve the internal and external problems besetting the United States and its NATO partners. Washington apparently decided to use an old formula, by injecting large military appropriations to speed the slow revival of the U. S. economy after a prolonged slump''. ``The U. S. President has shown once again that the United States needs the fanning of the West Berlin crisis to justify the armaments race. As was to be expected Kennedy's latest speech was greeted with enthusiasm by revenge-seeking circles in Bonn, where officials of the West German government praised it''. ``U. S. pressure on Britain to foster war hysteria over the status of West Berlin has reached its apogee. British common sense is proverbial. The present attempts of the politicians to contaminate ordinary Britons shows that this British common sense is unwilling to pull somebody else's chestnuts out of the fire by new military adventures''. ``A better position for negotiations is the real point of this speech. Kennedy knows the West will not wage war for West Berlin, neither conventional nor nuclear, and negotiations will come as certainly as the peace treaty. Whenever some Washington circles were really ready for talks to eliminate friction they have always succumbed to pressure from the war clique in the Pentagon and in Bonn. In Kennedy's speech are cross currents, sensible ones and senseless ones, reflecting the great struggle of opinions between the President's advisers and the political and economic forces behind them. Well, dear listeners, despite all the shouting, there will be no war over West Berlin''. ``Chairman Khrushchev received the U. S. President's disarmament adviser, John McCloy. Their conversation and dinner passed in a warm and friendly atmosphere''. The ``West Berlin'' crisis is really an East Berlin crisis. The crisis was artificially stirred up by the Kremlin (Wall Street) and the Red Army (Pentagon) egged on by the West Germans (East Germans). The reason was to speed up domestic production in the USSR, which Khrushchev promised upon grabbing power, and try to end the permanent recession in Russian living standards. Chairman Khrushchev (Kennedy) rattles his rockets (sabre) in order to cure his internal ills and to strengthen his negotiating position. His advisers in the Politburo (White House) are engaged in a great struggle of opinions, so he is not always consistent. The Soviet Union will fight neither a conventional nor a nuclear war over Berlin, and neither will its Warsaw Pact allies. The West has no intention of attacking Russia. Chairman Khrushchev and John McCloy had a terrible row at Sochi. See, Communese is easy -- once you get onto it. Aug. 4, 1821, nearly a century after Benjamin Franklin founded the Pennsylvania Gazette -- a century during which it had undergone several changes in ownership and a few brief suspensions in publication -- this paper made its first appearance as the Saturday Evening Post. The country was now full of Gazettes and Samuel C. Atkinson and Charles Alexander, who had just taken over Franklin's old paper, desired a more distinctive name. When founded by Franklin the Gazette was a weekly family newspaper and under its new name its format remained that of a newspaper but its columns gradually contained more and more fiction, poetry, and literary essays. In the middle of the century, with a circulation of 90, 000, the Post was one of the most popular weeklies in the country. But during the second half of the century its fortunes reached a low point and when in 1897 Cyrus H. K. Curtis purchased it -- ``paper, type, and all'' -- for $ 1, 000 it was a 16-page weekly filled with unsigned fiction and initialed miscellany, and with only some 2, 000 subscribers. Little more than a fine old name, valuable principally because of the Franklin tradition, the Saturday Evening Post was slow to revive. But Curtis poured over $ 1 million into it and in time it again became one of the most popular weeklies of the country. ``Remember the French railroad baron who was going to take me floating down the Nile''? ``Remember the night Will Rogers filled a tooth for me between numbers''? ``Sure, we met a barrel of rich men but it's hard to find the real thing when you're young, beautiful and the toast of two continents'' ``Remember Fanny Brice promised my mother she would look after me on the road''? All this remembering took place the other night when I had supper with the Ziegfeld Girls at the Beverly Hills Club. A quarter of a century has gone by since this bevy of walking dreams sashayed up and down the staircases of the old New Amsterdam Theater, N. Y.. But watching Mrs. Cyril Ring, Berniece Dalton Janssen, Mrs. Robert Jarvis, Mrs. Walter Adams order low-calorie seafood, no bread, I could see the Ziegfeld Girls of 1920 were determined to be glamorous grandmothers of 1961. I was anxious to hear about those dazzling days on the Great White Way. All I could remember was Billie Dove pasted over the ceiling of my big brother's room. ``Billie was really beautiful''! Exclaimed Vera Forbes Adams, batting lovely big eyes behind glitter rimmed glasses. Sing Sing's prisoner strike was motivated by a reasonable purpose, a fair break from parole boards. But once the strike trend hits hoosegows, there is no telling how far it may go. Inmates might even demand the 34-hour week, all holidays off and fringe benefits including state contributions toward lawyers'fees. Some day we might see a Federation of Prison and Jail Inmates, with a leader busily trying to organize reformatory occupants, defendants out on bail, convicts opposed to probation officers, etc.. A three-day confinement week, with a month's vacation and shorter hours all around could be an ultimate demand from cell occupants of the nation, with fringe benefits including: 1. Wider space between iron bars and agreement by prison boards to substitute rubber in 20 per cent of metal. 2. An agreement allowing convicts to pass on type of locks used on prison doors. In case of a deadlock between prison boards and inmates, a federal arbitration board to include a ``lifer'' and two escapees should decide the issue. 3. Specific broadening of travel rights. 4. The right to leave the hoosegow any time to see a lawyer instead of waiting for a lawyer to make a trip to the prison. 5. Recognition of Prisoners Union rule that no member of an iron or steel workers union be permitted to repair a sawed-off bar without approval and participation of representative of the cell occupant. 6. No warden or guard to touch lock, key or doorknob except when accompanied by a prisoners'committee with powers of veto. 7. State and federal approval of right to walk out at any time when so voted by 51 per cent of the prisoners. The death of Harold A. Stevens, oldest of the Stevens brothers, famed operators of baseball, football and race track concessions, revived again the story of one of the greatest business successes in history. Harold, with brothers Frank, Joe and William, took over at the death of their father, Harry M. Stevens, who put a few dollars into a baseball program, introduced the ``hot dog'' and paved the way for creation of a catering empire. Family loyalties and cooperative work have been unbroken for generations. IBM has a machine that can understand spoken words and talk back. Nevertheless, it will seem funny to have to send for a mechanic to improve conversation. Rembrandt's ``Aristotle Contemplating Bust of Homer'' brought $ 2, 300, 000 at auction the other night. Both Aristotle and Homer may in spirit be contemplating ``bust'' of the old-fashioned American dollar. The owner of the painting got it for $ 750, 000, sold it for $ 500, 000 in a market crash, and bought it back for $ 590, 000. Apologies are in order from anybody who said, ``Are you sure you're not making a mistake''? ``Wagon Train'' is reported the No. 1 TV show. After all, where else can the public see a wagon these days? Lucius Beebe's book, ``Mr. Pullman's Elegant Palace Car'', fills us with nostalgia, recalling days when private cars and Pullmans were extra wonderful, with fine woodwork, craftsmanship in construction, deep carpets and durable upholstery. Beebe tells of one private car that has gold plumbing. Jay Gould kept a cow on one deluxer. -- Rep. Frelinghuysen, R-5th Dist., had a special reason for attending the reception at the Korean Embassy for Gen. Chung Hee Park, the new leader of South Korea. Not only is Mr. Frelinghuysen a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but he is the grandson of the man who was instrumental in opening relations between the United States and Korea, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Secretary of State in the administration of Chester A. Arthur. In addition Rep. Frelinghuysen's brother Harry was on the Korean desk of the State Department in World War 2. Next year is the 80th anniversary of the signing of the treaty between Korea and the United States and experts in Seoul are trying to find the correspondence between Frederick Frelinghuysen, who was Secretary of State in 1883 and 1884, and Gen. Lucius Foote, who was the first minister to Korea. They enlisted the help of the New Jersey congressman, who has been able to trace the letters to the national archives, where they are available on microfilm. In his first six weeks in office he presided over 96 conferences, attended 35 official breakfasts and dinners, studied and signed 285 official papers and personally took 312 telephone calls. In addition, he said, he has answered more than 400 messages of congratulations which led him to the comment that he himself had decided he wouldn't send another congratulatory message for the rest of his life. Air Force life is great, the cadet wrote, ``though the fourth-class system is no fun''. ``We have just returned from Roswell, N. M., where we were defeated, 34 to 9'', the young man noted. ``We have a tremendous amount of talent -- but we lack cohesion''. Among the many stories about the late Speaker Rayburn is one from Rep. Dwyer, R-6th Dist.. Mrs. Dwyer's husband, M. Joseph Dwyer, was taking a 10-year-old boy from Union County on the tour of the Capitol during the final weeks of the last session. They ran across Mr. Rayburn and the youngster expressed a desire to get the Speaker's autograph. Mr. Dwyer said that although it was obvious that Mr. Rayburn was not well he stopped, gave the youngster his autograph, asked where he was from and expressed the hope that he would enjoy his visit to Congress. Two days later Mr. Rayburn left Washington for the last time. The 350th anniversary of the King James Bible is being celebrated simultaneously with the publishing today of the New Testament, the first part of the New English Bible, undertaken as a new translation of the Scriptures into contemporary English. Since it was issued in the spring of 1611, the King James Version has been most generally considered the most poetic and beautiful of all translations of the Bible. However, Biblical scholars frequently attested to its numerous inaccuracies, as old manuscripts were uncovered and scholarship advanced. This resulted in revisions of the King James Bible in 1881-85 as the English Revised Version and in 1901 as the American Standard Version. Then in 1937 America's International Council of Religious Education authorized a new revision, in the light of expanded knowledge of ancient manuscripts and languages. Undertaken by 32 American scholars, under the chairmanship of Rev. Dr. Luther A. Weigle, former dean of Yale University Divinity School, their studies resulted in the publishing of the Revised Standard Version, 1946-52. The New English Bible (the Old Testament and Apocrypha will be published at a future date) has not been planned to rival or replace the King James Version, but, as its cover states, it is offered ``simply as the Bible to all those who will use it in reading, teaching, or worship''. Time, of course will testify whether the new version will have achieved its purpose. Bible reading, even more so than good classical music, grows in depth and meaning upon repetition. If this new Bible does not increase in significance by repeated readings throughout the years, it will not survive the ages as has the King James Version. However, an initial perusal and comparison of some of the famous passages with the same parts of other versions seems to speak well of the efforts of the British Biblical scholars. One is impressed with the dignity, clarity and beauty of this new translation into contemporary English, and there is no doubt that the meaning of the Bible is more easily understandable to the general reader in contemporary language in the frequently archaic words and phrases of the King James. ``Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. ``But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? ``And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered him. ``And Jesus, when he was baptized went up straightway out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him''. Certainly, the meaning is clearer to one who is not familiar with Biblical teachings, in the New English Bible which reads: ``Then Jesus arrived at Jordan from Galilee, and he came to John to be baptized by him. John tried to dissuade him. ' Do you come to me '? He said; ' I need rather to be baptized by you. Jesus replied,'let it be so for the present; we do well to conform this way with all that God requires. John then allowed him to come. After baptism Jesus came up out of the water at once, and at that moment heaven opened; he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove to alight upon him''; (the paragraphing, spelling and punctuation are reproduced as printed in each version. Among the most frequently quoted Biblical sentences are the Beatitudes and yet so few persons, other than scholars, really understand the true meaning of these eight blessings uttered by Jesus at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. To illustrate, the first blessing in the King James Bible reads: ``Blessed are the poor in spirit; for their's is the kingdom of heaven''. The new version states: ``How blest are those who know that they are poor; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs''. Some of the poetic cadence of the older version certainly is lost in the newer one, but almost anyone, with a fair knowledge of the English language, can understand the meaning, without the necessity of interpretation by a Biblical scholar. To a novice that is significant. In the second and third chapters of Revelation the new version retains, however, the old phrase ``angel of the church'' which Biblical scholars have previously interpreted as meaning bishop. This is not contemporary English. For the most part, however, the new version is contemporary and, as such, should be the means for many to attain a clearer comprehension of the meaning of those words recorded so many hundreds of years ago by the first followers of Christ. Originally recorded by hand, these words have been copied and recopied, translated and retranslated through the ages. Discoveries recently made of old Biblical manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek and other ancient writings, some by the early church fathers, in themselves called for a restudy of the Bible. To have the results recorded in everyday usable English should be of benefit to all who seek the truth. There is one danger, however. With contemporary English changing with the rapidity that marks this jet age, some of the words and phrases of the new version may themselves soon become archaic. The only answer will be continuous study. The New Testament offered to the public today is the first result of the work of a joint committee made up of representatives of the Church of England, Church of Scotland, Methodist Church, Congregational Union, Baptist Union, Presbyterian Church of England, Churches in Wales, Churches in Ireland, Society of Friends, British and Foreign Bible Society and National Society of Scotland. Prof. C. H. Dodd, 76, a Congregational minister and a leading authority on the New Testament, is general director of the project and chairman of the New Testament panel. Sizzling temperatures and hot summer pavements are anything but kind to the feet. That is why it is important to invest in comfortable, airy types of shoes. There are many soft and light shoe leathers available. Many styles have perforations and an almost weightlessness achieved via unlined leathers. Softness is found in crushed textures. Styles run the gamut from slender and tapered with elongated toes to a newer squared toe shape. Heels place emphasis on the long legged silhouette. Wine glass heels are to be found in both high and semi-heights. Stacked heels are also popular on dressy or tailored shoes. Just the barest suggestion of a heel is found on teenage pumps. While white is the coolest summer shade, there are lots of pastel hues along with tintable fabrics that will blend with any wardrobe color. In the tintable group are high and little heels, squared and oval throats, and shantung-like textures. Don't overlook the straws this year. They come in crisp basket weaves in natural honey hues, along with lacey open weaves with a lustre finish in natural, white, black and a whole range of colors. In the casual field straws feature wedge heels of cork or carved wood in a variety of styles. For added comfort some of the Italian designed sandals have foam padded cushioning. The citrus tones popular in clothing are also to be found afoot. Orange and lemon are considered important as are such pastels as blue and lilac. In a brighter nautical vein is Ille De France blue. Contrast trim provides other touches of color. Spectators in white crush textures dip toe and heel in smooth black, navy and taffy tan. Designed for summer comfort are the shoes illustrated. At the left is a pair of dressy straw pumps in a light, but crisp texture. In a lacey open weave shoes have a luster finish, braided collar and bow highlight on the squared throat. At right is a casual style in a crushed unlined white leather. Flats have a scalloped throat. An electric toothbrush (Broxodent) may soon take its place next to the electric razor in the American bathroom. The brush moves up and down and is small enough to clean every dental surface, including the back of the teeth. In addition, the motor has the seal of approval of the Underwriters Laboratories, which means it is safe. The unit consists of a small motor that goes on as soon as it is plugged in. The speed is controlled by pressing on the two brake buttons located where the index finger and thumb are placed when holding the motor. The brushes can be cleaned and sterilized by boiling and are detachable so that every member of the family can have his own. Most of us brush our teeth by hand. The same can be said of shaving yet the electric razor has proved useful to many men. The electric toothbrush moves in a vertical direction, the way dentists recommend. In addition, it is small enough to get into crevices, jacket and crown margins, malposed anteriors, and the back teeth. The bristles are soft enough to massage the gums and not scratch the enamel. It is conceivable that Broxodent could do a better job than ordinary brushing, especially in those who do not brush their teeth properly. Several dentists and patients with special dental problems have experimented with the device. The results were good although they are difficult to compare with hand brushing, particularly when the individual knows how to brush his teeth properly. The electric gadget is most helpful when there are many crowned teeth and in individuals who are elderly, bedfast with a chronic disease, or are handicapped by disorders such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. But for many of us, it will prove an enjoyable luxury. It is not as convenient as the old type toothbrush and the paste tends to shimmy off the bristles. Since the apparatus is new, it requires experimentation and changes in technique. writes: Does numbness in the left hand at night, which awakens the person, indicate brain tumor? no. This is a common symptom and the cause usually is pressure on the nerve leading to the affected hand. The pressure may come from muscles, tendons, or bones anywhere from the neck to the hand. writes: Do steam baths have any health value? No, other than cleaning out the pores and making the sweat glands work harder. An ordinary hot bath or shower will do the same. writes: What makes my hands numb when sewing? There are many possibilities, including poor circulation, a variety of neurological conditions, and functional disorders. This manifestation may be an early sign of multiple sclerosis or the beginning of sewer's cramp. writes: Does a brace help in sciatica? A back brace might help, depending upon the cause of sciatica. writes: Does the cholesterol go down when most of the thyroid gland is removed? no. It usually goes up. The cholesterol level in the blood is influenced by the glands of the body. It is low when the thyroid is overactive and high when the gland is sluggish. The latter is likely to occur when the thyroid is removed. The gap between the bookshelf and the record cabinet grows smaller with each new recording catalogue. There's more reading and instruction to be heard on discs than ever before, although the spoken rather than the sung word is as old as Thomas Alva Edison's first experiment in recorded sound. Edison could hardly have guessed, however, that Sophocles would one day appear in stereo. If the record buyer's tastes are somewhat eclectic or even the slightest bit esoteric, he will find them satisfied on educational records. And he will avoid eye-strain in the process. Everything from poetry to phonetics, history to histrionics, philosophy to party games has been adapted to the turntable. For sheer ambition, take the Decca series titled modestly ``Wisdom''. Volumes One and Two, selected from the sound tracks of a television series, contain ``conversations with the elder wise men of our day''. These sages include poet Carl Sandburg, statesman Jawaharlal Nehru and sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, in Volume One, and playwright Sean O'Casey, David Ben-Gurion, philosopher Bertrand Russell and the late Frank Lloyd Wright in the second set. Hugh Downs is heard interviewing Wright, for an added prestige fillip. There's more specialization and a narrower purpose in two albums recently issued by Dover Publications. Dover ``publishes'' what the company calls ``Listen And Learn'' Productions designed to teach foreign languages. Previous presentations have been on French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, German and Japanese. But the firm has recognized the tight dollar and the tourist's desire to visit the ``smaller, less-traveled and relatively inexpensive countries'', and is now prepared to teach modern Greek and Portuguese through recordings. The respective vocabularies ``essential for travel'' are available in separate albums. Thanks to Spoken Arts Records, history buffs may hear Lincoln's ``most memorable speeches and letters'' in a two-disc set, interpreted by Lincoln authority and lecturer Roy P. Basler. As a contemporary bonus, the set includes Carl Sandburg's address at a joint session of Congress, delivered on Lincoln's birthday two years ago. For those who ``like poetry but never get around to reading it'', the Library of Congress makes it possible for poets to be heard reading their own work. The program was instituted in 1940, and releases are available only from the Recording Laboratory of the Library of Congress, Washington 25, D. C.. A catalogue is available on request. Newest on the list are John Ciardi, W. D. Snodgrass, I. A. Richards, Oscar Williams, Robert Hillyer, John Hall Wheelock, Stephen Vincent Benet, Edwin Muir, John Peal Bishop and Maxwell Bodenheim. Two poets are paired on each record, in the order given above. Decca is not the only large commercial company to impart instruction. RCA Victor has an ambitious and useful project in a stereo series called ``Adventures In Music'', which is an instructional record library for elementary schools. Howard Mitchell and the National Symphony perform in the first two releases, designed for grades one and two. Teaching guides are included with each record. In an effort to fortify himself against the unforseen upsets sure to arise in the future, Herbert A. Leggett, banker-editor of the Phoenix ``Arizona Progress'', reflects upon a few of the depressing experiences of the feverish fifties. One of the roughest was the TV quiz shows, which gave him inferiority complexes. Though it was a great relief when the big brains on these shows turned out to be frauds and phonies, it did irreparable damage to the ego of the editor and many another intelligent, well-informed American. But the one that upset the financially wise was the professional dancer who related in a book how he parlayed his earnings into a $ 2, 000, 000 profit on the stock market. Every man who dabbles in the market to make a little easy money on the side and suffers losses could at the time hardly face his wife who was wondering how her husband could be so dumb. Investors breathed more freely when it was learned that this acrobatic dancer had turned magician and was only doing a best seller book to make some dough. People who take us for suckers are like the Westerner who had on exhibit his superior marksmanship in the form of a number of bull's-eye achievements. The promoter who wanted to sign him up for the circus asked him how he was able to do it. His answer was simple but honest. He just shot at the board and then drew circles around the holes to form a bull's-eye. One of the obstacles to the easy control of a 2-year-old child is a lack of verbal communication. The child understands no. He senses his mother's disapproval. But explanations leave him confused and unmoved. If his mother loves him, he clings to that love as a ballast. It motivates his behavior. He wants Mommy to think him a good boy. He doesn't want her to look frowningly at him, or speak to him angrily. This breaks his heart. He wants to be called sweet, good, considerate and mother's little helper. But even mother's loving attitude will not always prevent misbehavior. His desires are so strong that he needs constant reassurance of his mother's love for him and what she expects of him, in order to overcome them. His own inner voice, which should tell him what not to do, has not developed. It won't develop until he has words with which to clothe it. The conscience is non-existent in the 2-year-old. What can a mother do then to prevent misbehavior? She can decrease the number of temptations. She can remove all knick-knacks within reach. The fewer nos she has to utter the more effective they will be. She should offer substitutes for the temptations which seem overwhelmingly desirable to the child. If he can't play with Mommy's magazines, he should have some old numbers of his own. If Daddy's books are out of bounds his own picture books are not. Toys he has can be made to act as substitutes for family temptations such as refrigerator and gas stove. During this precarious period of development the mother should continue to influence the growth of the child's conscience. She tells him of the consequences of his behavior. If he bites a playmate she says, ``Danny won't like you''. If he snatches a toy, she says, ``Caroline wants her own truck just as you do''. There is no use trying to ``Explain'' to a 2-year-old. Actions speak louder. Remove temptations. Remove the child from the scene of his misbehavior. Substitute approved objects for forbidden ones and keep telling him how he is to act. He won't submit to his natural desires all the time, and it's Mother's love that is responsible for his good behavior. This is the period during the melancholy days of autumn when universities and colleges schedule what they call ``Homecoming Day''. They seek thereby to lure the old grad back to the old scenes. The football opponent on homecoming is, of course, selected with the view that said opponent will have little more chance than did a Christian when thrown to one of the emperor's lions. It is true, of course, the uncertainties of life being what they are, that as now and then the Christian killed the lion, homecoming days have been ruined by a visiting team. Even with all possible precaution, homecomings are usually rather cruel and sad, and only the perpetually ebullient and the continually optimistic are made happy by them. More often than not, as the Old Grad wanders along the old paths, his memory of happy days when he strolled one of the paths with a coed beside him becomes an ache and a pain. He can smell again the perfume she wore and recall the lilting sound of laughter, and can smell again the aroma of autumn -- fallen leaves, the wine of cool air, and the nostalgia of woodsmoke which blows through all the winds of fall. It is at precisely such moments that he encounters a couple of undergraduates, faces alight, holding hands and talking happily as they come along, oblivious of him, or throwing him the most fleeting and casual of glances, such as they would give a tethered goat. Usually, they titter loudly after they have passed by. His dream goes. He feels, suddenly, the weight of the fat that is on him. His bridgework or his plates feel loose and monstrous. His bifocals blur. His legs suddenly feel heavy and unaccountably weary, as if he had walked for miles, instead of strolling a few hundred yards along the old campus paths. Bitterness comes over him and the taste of time is like unripe persimmons in his mouth. It is not much better if he meets with old classmates. Too often, unless he hails them, they pass him by. He recalls with a wry smile the wit who said, on returning from a homecoming reunion, that he would never go again because all his class had changed so much they didn't even recognize him. If they do meet and recognize one another, slap backs and embrace, the moment soon is done. After all, when one has asked whatever became of old Joe and Charlie when one has inquired who it was Sue Brown married and where it is they now live when questions are asked and answered about families and children, and old professors when the game and its probable outcome has been exhausted that does it. By then one begins to notice the middle-age spread; the gray hairs, the eyeglasses, bodies that are too thin or too heavy; the fading signs of old beauty; the athlete of by-gone years who wears a size 46 suit and puffs when he has finished a sentence of any length then, it is time to break it up and move on. He sits in the stands and he doesn't like that. Enough of his life was spent there on the field for him never to like watching the game as a spectator in the crowd. He always feels lonely. A team feels something. On a team a man feels he is a part of it and akin to the men next to him. In the stands he is lonely and lost, no matter how many are about him. He sits there remembering the tense moment before the ball was snapped; the churning of straining feet, the rasp of the canvas pants; the smell and feel of hot, wet woolen sleeves across his face. He remembers the desperate, panting breath; the long runs on the kick-offs; the hard, jolting tackles; the breakthrough; the desperate agony of goal-line stands. And so, he squirms with each play, remembering his youth. But it is no use. It is gone. No matter how often a man goes back to the scenes of his youth and strength, they can never be recaptured again. Since the obvious is not always true, the Republican National Committee wisely analyzed its defeat of last autumn and finds that it occurred, as suspected, in the larger cities. Of 40 cities with populations of 300, 000 and more, Mr. Kennedy carried 26 and Mr. Nixon 14. There are eight states in which the largest urban vote can be the balance of power in any close election. These are New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Illinois and Minnesota. In 1952 Mr. Eisenhower won all but Missouri. Yet, in 1960 all eight gave majorities to Mr. Kennedy. Republican research broke down the vote in Philadelphia. Mr. Nixon, despite a very earnest effort to capture the minority groups, failed to do so. His visit to Warsaw, Poland, after the Russian journey in the summer of 1959 was expected to win the Polish vote which, in several cities, is substantial. Yet, the GOP breakdown discovered that in Philadelphia Mr. Nixon received but 21 per cent of the so-called ``Polish'' vote; 30 per cent of the ``Irish'' vote, and 18 per cent of the ``Negro'' vote. A GOP ``task force'committee will seek to find out how its party may win support from the ethnic and minority groups in cities. The task force might make a start in Washington with Republican congressional leaders. These gentlemen already have done the party harm by their seeming reluctance to vote aid for the depressed areas and by their criticism of Mr. Kennedy for talking about a recession and unemployment. This error was compounded by declaring the recession to be ``a statistical one'', and not a reality. The almost six million persons without jobs and the two million working part-time do not consider themselves and their plight as statistical. They did not view the tour of the distressed cities and towns by Secretary of Labor Goldberg as politics, which the GOP declared it to be. The people visited were glad to have a government with heart enough to take an interest in their misery. Senator Mundt's gross distortion of President Eisenhower's conversation into a denunciation of President Kennedy as too left wing, a statement Mr. Eisenhower declared to be entirely false, is another case in point. If the Republicans and Southern Democrats join to defeat medical care for the old under the Social Security program, they will thereby erect still another barrier to GOP hopes in the cities. The present Republican leadership as practiced by Mundt, Goldwater, Bridges, Dirksen, et al, is repeating the errors of the party leadership of the 1930s. In that decade the partisan zeal to defend Mr. Hoover, and the party's failure to anticipate or cope with the depression, caused a great majority of Americans to see the Republican party as cold and lacking in any sympathy for the problems of human beings caught up in the distress and suffering brought on by the economic crash. The Republican party was not lacking in humanity, but it permitted its extremely partisan leadership to make it appear devoid of any consideration for people in trouble. Farmers called their mule-drawn pickup trucks ``Hoover carts''. Smokers reduced to ``the makings'', spoke of the sack tobacco as ``Hoover dust''. One may be sure the present Republican congressional leadership hasn't meant to repeat this error. But it is in the process of so doing because it apparently gives priority to trying to downgrade John F. Kennedy. That this is not good politics is underscored by the latest poll figures which show that 72 per cent of the people like the way in which the new President is conducting the nation's business. The most articulate Republicans are those who, in their desire to get back at Mr. Kennedy, already have created the image of a Republican leadership which is reluctant to assist the distressed and the unemployed, and which is even more unwilling to help old people who need medical care. If they also defeat the school bill, the GOP task force won't have much research to do. It will early know why the party won't win back city votes. The 1962 General Assembly has important business to consider. The tragedy is that it will not be able to transact that business in any responsible manner. After the Griffin-Byrd political troup has completed the circuit in November in the name of a Pre-Legislative Forum, this is going to be the most politically oriented Legislature in history. Every legislator from Brasstown Bald to Folkston is going to have his every vote subjected to the closest scrutiny as a test of his political allegiances, not his convictions. Hoped-for legislative action on adjustment of the county unit system stands less chance than ever. And just how far can the Legislature go toward setting up a self-insurance system for the state in the midst of a governor's race''? How unpartisan will be the recommendations of Lt. Gov. Garland Byrd's Senate Committee on Government Operations? The situation already was bad because the Legislature moved the governor's race forward a few months, causing the campaigning to get started earlier than usual. But when former Gov. Marvin Griffin and Lt. Gov. Byrd accepted the invitations of the Georgia State Chamber of Commerce to join the tour next November, the situation was aggravated. Neither had a choice other than to accept the invitation. To have refused would have been political suicide. And it may be that one or both men actually welcomed the opportunity, when the bravado comments are cast aside. The Georgia State Chamber of Commerce tried to guard against the danger of eliminating potential candidates. It wanted the State Democratic Executive Committee to pick the ``serious candidates''. But State Party Chairman James Gray of Albany said no, and he didn't mince any words. ``They are just asking too much'', he said. We can't think of anyone else who would want to separate serious candidates from other candidates, either. Politics is an accelerating game. ``If an opponent accuses you of lying, don't deny it. Say he is a horse thief'', runs an old adage. These men are spenders. If either one ever started making promises, there is no telling where the promises would end. Griffin's Rural Roads Authority and Byrd's 60, 000 miles of county contracts would look like pauper's oaths. The trouble is that at first glance the idea looks like such a good one. Why not have them travel the state in November debating? It would present a forum for them in almost every community. But further thought brings the shuddery visions of a governor's race being run in the next Legislature, the spectre of big spending programs, the ooze of mudslinging before the campaign should even begin. There is a way out of this. The Chamber has not arranged a pre-legislative forum. It has arranged a campaign for governor. If it will simply delay the debates until the qualifications are closed next spring, and then carry all the candidates on a tour of debates, it can provide a service to the state. But the Legislature should be granted the opportunity to complete its work before choosing up sides for the race. Former British Prime Minister Attlee says Eisenhower was not a ``great soldier''. Ike's somewhat like George Washington. Both won a pretty fair-sized war with a modest assist from British strategy. Congressmen returning from recess say the people admire President Kennedy so much, they're even willing to heed his call to sacrifice -- and give up his program. Slogan of the John Birch Society: ``Paddle your own canoe. The guy who makes the motor boats may be a Communist''. A Republican survey says Kennedy won the'60 election on the religious issue. Too many people were afraid if the GOP won, they'd have to spend all their time praying. The Providence Journal editorial (Jan. 25) entitled ``East Greenwich Faces A Housing Development Problem'' points to a dilemma that faces communities such as ours. Your suggested solution, it seems to me, is grossly oversimplified and is inconsistent with your generally realistic attitude toward, and endorsement of, sound planning. First of all there is ample area in East Greenwich already zoned in the classification similar to that which petitioner requested. This land is in various stages of development in several locations throughout the town. The demand for these lots can be met for some time to come. This would seem to indicate that we are trying neither ``to halt an influx of migrants'' nor are we ``setting up such standards for development that only the well-to-do could afford to buy land and build in the new sites''. What we are attempting to do is achieve and maintain a balance between medium density and low density residential areas and industrial and commercial development. It is in fact entirely consistent with your suggestion of modest industrial development to help pay governmental costs. Bostitch, Inc. is approximately half way through a 10-year exemption of their real estate tax. The wisdom of granting such tax exemptions is another matter, but this particular instance is, in my opinion, completely satisfactory. The 1960 tax book for East Greenwich indicates a valuation for this property in excess of two million dollars. With our current $ 3 per hundred tax rate, it is safe to assume that this will qualify when you suggest a community should ``try to develop a modest industrial plant'' as the best way to meet these problems. In order to attract additional industry that is compatible with this community it is all the more important to present to the industrial prospect an orderly balance in the tax structure. As this tax base grows so then can your medium and low density residential areas grow. Mr. Richard Preston, executive director of the New Hampshire State Planning and Development Commission, in his remarks to the Governors Conference on Industrial Development at Providence on October 8, 1960, warned against the fallacy of attempting to attract industry solely to reduce the tax rate or to underwrite municipal services such as schools when he said: ``If this is the fundamental reason for a community's interest or if this is the basic approach, success if any will be difficult to obtain''. He went on to say: ``In the first place, industry per se is not dedicated to the role of savior of foundering municipalities. It is not in business for the purpose of absorbing increased municipal costs no matter how high a purpose that may be''. While Councilman Olson cited the anticipated increase in school costs in answer to a direct question from a taxpayer, the impact upon a school system does not have to be measured only in increased taxes to find alarm in uncontrolled growth. We in East Greenwich have the example of two neighboring communities, one currently utilizing double sessions in their schools, and the other facing this prospect next year. It has already been reported in your newspapers that the East Greenwich School Committee is considering additions to at least one elementary school and to the high school to insure future accommodations for a school population that we know will increase. If they are to be commended for foresight in their planning, what then is the judgment of a town council that compounds this problem during the planning stage? Where then is the sound planning and cooperation between agencies within the community that you have called for in other editorials? I submit that it cannot be dismissed simply by saying we are not facing the facts of life. The ``fruitful course'' of metropolitanization that you recommend is currently practiced by the town of East Greenwich and had its inception long before we learned what it was called. For example: 1. The East Greenwich Police Department utilizes the radio transmission facilities of the Warwick Police Department, thereby eliminating duplication of facilities and ensuring police coordination in the Cowessett-East Greenwich-Potowomut area of the two communities. 2. The East Greenwich Fire District services parts of Warwick as well as East Greenwich. 3. The taxpayers of East Greenwich appropriate sums of money, as do other Kent County communities, for the support of the Kent County Memorial Hospital, a regional facility. 4. The East Greenwich Free Library receives financial support from the town of East Greenwich and the City of Warwick to supplement its endowment. 5. Feelers were put out last year to the City of Warwick, as reported in your newspapers, suggesting investigation of a common rubbish disposal area to service the Potowomut and Cowessett areas of Warwick along with East Greenwich. 6. East Greenwich was one of the first Rhode Island towns to enter into contract agreement with the Rhode Island Development Council for planning services we could not provide for ourselves. 7. The education program for retarded children conducted by the East Greenwich school system has pupils from at least one neighboring community. I feel compelled to write this because I am greatly concerned with the problem of community growth rate and the relation between types of growth in a town such as East Greenwich. I believe it is an area in which professional planners have failed to set adequate guide posts; and yet they cannot ignore this problem because it concerns the implementation of nearly all the planning programs they have devised. These programs are volumes of waste paper and lost hours if the citizens of a community must stand aside while land developers tell them when, where, and in what manner the community shall grow. We have far less to fear in the migrant family than we have in the migrant developer under these conditions. Until professional planners meet this situation squarely and update the concepts of zoning in a manner acceptable to the courts, I hope we in East Greenwich can continue to shape our own destiny. I would like very much, on behalf of my husband and myself, to send our eternal thanks to all the wonderful people responsible for the Gabrielle Fund. It is indeed true, as stated in the famous novel of our day, ``For Whom The Bell Tolls'', that ``no man is an island, entirely of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main''. Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Irving J. Fain, president of the Temple Beth El; Rev. DeWitt Clemens, pastor of the Mathewson Street Methodist Church; Mr. Felix Miranda, of the Imperial Knife Co.; and to Mrs. Rozella Switzer, regional director of The National Conference of Christians and Jews, who asked them to serve as a committee for the fund. It is through them that we have become aware of the divine humanity in man, and therefore, that most people are noble, helpful and good. Bless you my friends, for it is through love and service that brotherhood becomes a reality. I am a sophomore at Mount Pleasant High School. My future plans are to become a language teacher. Of course, having this desire, I am very interested in education. A few weeks ago, I read in the Bulletin that there were to be given Chinese classes in Cranston. The article also said that a person had to be 18 years old or over, and must not be going to high school to attend these classes. The following week, I read in the Sunday paper that the students of Russia begin European and Asian languages in the seventh grade. I wish you could see the situation as I see it. If Russian pupils have to take these languages, how come American students have a choice whether or not to take a language, but have to face so many exceptions? I do not think that America is like Russia, not in the least! I am proud of my country, the small city I live in, my wonderful parents, my friends and my school; but I am also a young, able and willing girl who wants to study the Chinese language but is not old enough. Then people wonder why Russian pupils are more advanced than American students. Well, there lies your answer. At the height of the first snowstorm we had, it was impossible for me to get medical attention needed during an emergency. However, the East Providence Rescue Squad made its way through to my home in time of desperation. Words cannot tell of the undivided attention and comfort their service gave to me. The concern they felt for me was such as I shall never forget and for which I will always be grateful. The rescue squad is to be praised immensely for the fine work they do in all kinds of weather. Had they not gotten me to the hospital when they did, perhaps I would not be here to commend them at this time. Many thanks for a job well done. The Providence Sunday Journal article (Jan. 29) asking whether American taxpayers are being victimized by a gigantic giveaway to pay for the care of war veterans who have non-service-connected disabilities sounds as though The Providence Journal is desperate for news. Usually a veteran has to hang himself to get space on the front page. On the question of admission to Veterans Administration hospitals of service-connected and non-service-connected disabled veterans, it must be recognized that there are many men who are greatly affected by war service. It can manifest itself before discharge from service, or it can come out years later. There is one other point we should never lose sight of: Many veterans who enter VA hospitals as non-service cases later qualify as service-connected. No psychiatrist could tell me that the experience in a war can not have its effect in the ensuing years. The arguments advanced by those individuals and groups who oppose the system in force and who would drastically curtail or do away entirely with hospital care for the non-service-connected case, seem to be coldly impractical and out-of-step with the wishes of the general public. I believe in priority for service-connected disabled veterans in admission to VA hospitals. But I don't believe we should close the door on non-service-connected patients. This matter is of great importance, and the outcome may mean the difference between life or death, or at least serious injuries, for many veterans. Some critics say that the length of stay in a hospital is too long. There's a reason for this length of stay. First of all, the admitting physician in the VA hospital gets the patient as a new patient. He has no experience with this veteran's previous medical record. If the doctor is conscientious, he wants to study the patient. As a result, it takes a little longer than it would on the outside where the family physician knows about the patient. Secondly, the VA physician knows that when the patient leaves the hospital, he is no longer going to have a chance to visit his patient. So he keeps the veteran in until he can observe the effects of treatment or surgery. The American public must be presented with the facts concerning VA hospitalization. The public should understand that whether they support a state hospital or a VA hospital, the tax dollar has to be paid one way or the other. The responsibility is still going to be there whether they pay for a VA hospital or the tax dollar is spent for the state hospital. An adequate system of VA hospitals is better equipped to care for the veterans than any 50 state hospitals. It seems that open season upon veterans'hospitalization is once more upon us. The American Medical Association is once again grinding out its tear-soaked propaganda based upon the high cost of the Veterans Administration medical program to the American taxpayer. Do they, the A. M. A., offer any solution other than outright abolition of a medical system unsurpassed anywhere in the world? We veterans acknowledge the fact that as time passes the demand for medical care at VA hospitals will grow proportionately as age fosters illness. Nevertheless, we wonder at the stand of the A. M. A. on the health problem confronting the aged. They opposed the Forand bill, which would have placed the major burden of financial support upon the individual himself through compulsory payroll deduction; yet they supported the Eisenhower administration which will cost a small state like ours approximately five million dollars (matched incidentally by a federal grant) to initiate. -- No doubt there have been moments during every Presidency when the man in the White House has had feelings of frustration, exasperation, exhaustion, and even panic. This we can sympathetically understand. But no President ever before referred to his as a ``lousy job'' (as Walter Trohan recently quoted President Kennedy as doing in conversation with Sen. Barry Goldwater). During his aggressive campaign to win his present position, Mr. Kennedy was vitriolic about this country's ``prestige'' abroad. What does he think a remark like this ``lousy'' one does to our prestige and morale? If the President of the United States really feels he won himself a ``lousy job'', then heaven help us all. -- Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara has asked Congress for authority and funds to build fallout shelters costing about 200 million dollars. Why should Congress even consider allowing such a sum for that which can give no protection? Top scientists have warned that an area hit by an atomic missile of massive power would be engulfed in a suffocating fire storm which would persist for a long time. The scientists have also warned that no life above ground or underground, sheltered or unsheltered could be expected to survive in an area at least 50 miles in diameter. This sum spent for foreign economic aid, the peace corps, food for peace, or any other program to solve the problems of the underdeveloped countries would be an investment that would pay off in world peace, increased world trade, and prosperity for every country on the globe. Let us prepare for peace, instead of for a war which would mean the end of civilization. -- It seems college isn't what it should be. I refer to the attire worn by the students. Upon a visit to a local junior college last week, I was shocked to see the young ladies wearing short shorts and the young men wearing Bermuda shorts. Is this what our children are to come face to face with when they are ready for college in a few years? Education should be uppermost in their minds, but with this attire how can anyone think it is so? It looks more like they are going to play at the beach instead of taking lessons on bettering themselves. High school students have more sense of the way to dress than college students. Many high school students go past my house every day, and they look like perfect ladies and gentlemen. No matter how hot the day, they are dressed properly and not in shorts. -- The granting of the Jan Masaryk award August 13 to Senator Paul Douglas is a bitter example of misleading minorities. Douglas has consistently voted to aid the people who killed Masaryk, and against principles Masaryk died to uphold. Douglas has voted for aid to Communists and for the destruction of individual freedom (public housing, foreign aid, etc.). -- In Today's ``Voice'', the CTA is urged to reduce fares for senior citizens. Rising costs have increased the difficulties of the elderly, and I would be the last to say they should not receive consideration. But why is it the special responsibility of the CTA to help these people? Why should CTA regular riders subsidize reduced transportation for old people any more than the people who drive their own cars or walk to work should? CTA regulars already subsidize transportation for school children, policemen, and firemen. -- In reply to a letter in Today's ``Voice'' urging the sale of meat after 6 p. m., I wish to state the other side of the story. I am the wife of the owner of a small, independent meat market. My husband's hours away from home for the past years have been from 7 a. m. to 7 p. m. the early part of the week, and as late as 8 or 9 on week-ends. Now he is apparently expected to give up his evenings -- and Sundays, too, for this is coming. There is a trend to packaging meat at a central source, freezing it, and shipping it to outlying stores, where meat cutters will not be required. If a customer wishes a special cut, it will not be available. We are slowly being regimented to having everything packaged, whether we want it or not. Most women, in this age of freezers, shop for the entire week on week-ends, when prices are lower. Also, many working wives have children or husbands who take over the shopping chores for them. Independent market owners work six days a week; and my husband hasn't had a vacation in 14 years. No, we are not greedy. But if we closed the store for a vacation, we would lose our customers to the chain stores in the next block. The meat cutters'union, which has a history of being one of the fairest and least corrupt in our area, represents the little corner markets as well as the large supermarkets. What it is trying to do is to protect the little man, too, as well as trying to maintain a flow of fresh meat to all stores, with choice of cut being made by the consumer, not the store. -- I, too, congratulate the American Legion, of which I am proud to have been a member for more than 40 years, on the recent state convention. I regret that Bertha Madeira (Today's ``Voice'') obtained incorrect information. Had I been granted the floor on a point of personal privilege, the matter she raised would have been clarified. The resolution under discussion at the convention was to require the boards of election to instruct judges to properly display the American flag. Judges under the jurisdiction of the Chicago board of election commissioners are instructed to do this. The resolution further asked that polling place proprietors affix an attachment to their premises for the display of the flag. It was my desire to advise the membership of the Legion that the majority of polling places are on private property and, without an amendment to the law, we could not enforce this. My discussion with reference to the resolution was that we should commend those citizens who serve as judges of election and who properly discharge their duty and polling place proprietors who make available their private premises, and not by innuendo criticize them. At no time did I attempt to seek approval or commendation for the members of the Chicago board of election commissioners for the discharge of their duties. -- The Illinois Commission for Handicapped Children wishes to commend the recent announcement by the Catholic charities of the archdiocese of Chicago and DePaul University of the establishment of the Institute for Special Education at the university for the training of teachers for physically handicapped and mentally retarded children. In these days of serious shortage of properly trained teachers qualified to teach physically handicapped and mentally handicapped children, the establishment of such an institute will be a major contribution to the field. The Illinois Commission for Handicapped Children, which for 20 years has had the responsibility of coordinating the services of tax supported and voluntary organizations serving handicapped children, of studying the needs of handicapped children in Illinois, and of promoting more adequate services for them, indeed welcomes this new important resource which will help the people of Illinois toward the goal of providing an education for all of its children. -- I just want to let you know how much I enjoyed your June 25 article on Liberace, and to thank you for it. Please do put more pictures and articles in about Liberace, as he is truly one of our greatest entertainers and a really wonderful person. -- Is this, perhaps, one of the things that is wrong with our country? Engineering graduates of Illinois Institute of Technology are reported receiving the highest average starting salaries in the school's history -- $ 550 a month. My son, who has completed two years in engineering school, has a summer job on a construction project as an unskilled laborer. At a rate of $ 3. 22 an hour he is now earning approximately $ 580 a month. Ironic, is it not, that after completing years of costly scientific training he will receive a cut in pay from what he is receiving as an ordinary unskilled laborer? (Editorial comment on this letter appears elsewhere on this page). -- Your July 26 editorial regarding the position of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on prospective tax relief for DuPont stockholders is based on an erroneous statement of fact. As a result, your criticism of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the Department of Justice was inaccurate, unwarranted and unfair. The editorial concerned legislative proposals to ease the tax burden on DuPont stockholders, in connection with the United States Supreme Court ruling that DuPont must divest itself of its extensive General Motors stock holdings. These proposals would reduce the amount of tax that DuPont stockholders might have to pay -- from an estimated 1. 1 billion dollars under present law to as little as 192 million dollars. Congressman Wilbur D. Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, asked the Department of Justice for its views on these legislative proposals as they related to anti-trust law enforcement. The Attorney General responded by letter dated July 19. Copies of this letter were made avaliable to the press and public. In this letter, Mr. Kennedy made it clear that he limited his comment only to one consideration -- what effect the legislative proposals might have on future anti-trust judgments. There are a number of other considerations besides this one but it is for the Congress, not the Department of Justice, to balance these various considerations and make a judgment about legislation. Yet your editorial said: ``Now the Attorney General writes that no considerations'justify any loss of revenue of this proportion '''. What Mr. Kennedy, in fact, wrote was: ``It is the Department's view that no anti-trust enforcement considerations justify any loss of revenue of this proportion''. The editorial, by omitting the words anti-trust enforcement, totally distorted Mr. Kennedy's views. The headline is offensive, particularly in view of the total inaccuracy of the editorial. -- I concur most heartily with today's letter on the futility of writing to Sen. Dirksen and Sen. Douglas. But when you write to Congresswoman Church, bless her heart, your letter is answered fully and completely. Should she disagree, she explains why in detail. When she agrees, you can rest assured her position will remain unchanged. I think we have the hardest working, best representative in Congress. -- A recent news story reported that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin delayed 103 airplane passengers 10 minutes in London while they finished their drinks. They do our country great harm by such actions. Those in the public eye should be good examples of American citizens while abroad. The plane should have started at the scheduled time and left Sinatra and Martin to guzzle. -- Overt socialism means government ownership and management of a nation's main industries. In covert socialism -- toward which America is moving -- private enterprise retains the ownership title to industries but government thru direct intervention and excessive regulations actually controls them. In order to attract new industries, 15 states or more are issuing tax free bonds to build government owned plants which are leased to private enterprise. This is a step toward overt socialism. Issuing bonds for plant construction has brought new industries to certain regions. Sir -- We are writing in reference to a recent ``suggestion'' made to the staff of the Public Health Nursing Service of Jersey City (registered professional nurses with college background and varying experiences). The day before Election Day, to which we are entitled as a legal holiday, we were informed to report to our respective polls to work as ``workers of the party''. Being ethical and professional people interested in community health and well-being, we felt this wasn't a function of our position. Such tactics reek of totalitarianism! As we understand, this directive was given to all city and county employes. To our knowledge no nurse in our agency has been employed because of political affiliation. We, therefore, considered the ``suggestion'' an insult to our intelligence, ethics, Bill of Rights, etc.. Our only obligation for this day is to vote, free of persuasion, for the person we feel is capable in directing the public. This is our duty -- not as nurses or city employes -- but as citizens of the United States. Sir -- I read of a man who felt he should not build a fallout shelter in his home because it would be selfish for him to sit secure while his neighbors had no shelters. Does this man live in a neighborhood where all are free loaders unwilling to help themselves, but ready to demand that ``the community'' help and protect them? Community shelters are, of course, necessary for those having no space for shelter. If in a town of 2, 000 private homes, half of them have shelters, the need for the community shelters will be reduced to that extent. In designing his home fallout shelter there is nothing to prevent a man from planning to shelter that home's occupants, ``plus-one'' -- so he will be able to take in a stranger. I hope the man who plans to sit on his hands until the emergency comes will have a change of heart, will get busy and be the first member of our ``plus-one'' shelter club. Sir -- People continue to inquire the reason for the race for outer space. It's simple enough from my point of view. I am for it. It is the only method left for a man to escape from a woman's world. Sir -- When the colonies decided upon freedom from England, we insisted, through the Declaration of Independence, that the nations of the world recognize us as a separate political entity. It is high time the United States began to realize that the God-given rights of men set forth in that document are applicable today to Katanga. In the United Nations Charter, the right of self-determination is also an essential principle. This, again, applies to Katanga. The people of Katanga had fought for, and obtained, their freedom from the Communist yoke of Antoine Gizenga, and his cohorts. By political, economic, geographic and natural standards, they were justified in doing so. The United States and the U. N. denounce their own principles when they defend the Communist oppressors and refuse to acknowledge the right of self-determination of the Katangans. Sir -- Permit me to commend your editorial in which you stress the fact that a program of county colleges will substantially increase local tax burdens and that taxpayers have a right to a clear idea of what such a program would commit them to. The bill which passed the Assembly last May and is now pending in the Senate should be given careful scrutiny. The procedure for determining the amounts of money to be spent by county colleges and raised by taxation will certainly startle many taxpayers. Under the proposal the members of the board of trustees of a county college will be appointed; none will be elected. The trustees will prepare an annual budget for the college and submit it to the board of school estimate. This board will consist of two of the trustees of the college, and the director and two members of the board of freeholders. It will determine the amount of money to be spent by the college and will certify this amount to the board of freeholders, which ``shall appropriate in the same manner as other appropriations are made by it the amount so certified and the amount shall be assessed, levied and collected in the same manner as moneys appropriated for other purposes''. The approval of only three members of the board of school estimate is required to certify the amount of money to be allotted to the college. Since two of these could be trustees of the college, actually it would be necessary to have the consent of only one elected official to impose a levy of millions of dollars of tax revenue. This is taxation without representation. Sir -- Your editorial, ``Housing Speedup'', is certainly not the answer to our slum problems. The very rules and regulations in every city are the primary case of slum conditions. Change our taxing law so that no tax shall be charged to any owner for additions or improvements to his properties. Then see what a boom in all trades, as well as slum clearance at no cost to taxpayers, will happen. Our entire economy will have a terrific uplift. Sir -- An old man is kicked to death by muggers. The medical examiner states that death was due to ``natural causes''. Sir -- Every resident of this city should visit the Newark Museum and see the exhibit ``Our Changing Skyline in Newark''. It will be at the museum until March 30. It is a revelation of what has been done, what is being done and what will be done in Newark as shown by architects'plans, models and pictures. It shows what a beautiful city Newark will become and certainly make every Newarker proud of this city. It should also make him desire to participate actively in civic, school and religious life of the community so that that phase of Newark will live up to the challenge presented by this exhibit. Sir -- I hasten to join in praise of the men in the toll booths on the Garden State Parkway. Recently I traveled the parkway from East Orange to Cape May and I found the most courteous group of men you will find anywhere. One even gave my little dog a biscuit. It was very refreshing. The viewers of the ``Deep Peep Show'' at 15th and M Streets NW have an added attraction -- the view of a fossilized cypress swamp. Twenty feet below the street level in the excavation of the new motel to be constructed on this site, a black coal-like deposit has been encountered. This is a black swamp clay in which about one hundred million years ago cypress-like trees were growing. The fossilized remains of many of these trees are found embedded in the clay. Some of the stumps are as much as three feet long, but most of them have been flattened by the pressure of the overlying sediments. Although the wood has been changed to coal, much of it still retains its original cell structure. In the clay are entombed millions of pollen grains and spores which came from plants growing in the region at the time. These microfossils indicate the swamp was ``formed during the Lower Cretaceous period when dinosaurs were at their heyday and when the first flowering plants were just appearing. The 15th Street deposit is not to be confused with the nearby famous Mayflower Hotel cypress swamp on 17th Street reported in The Washington Post, August 2, 1955, which was probably formed during the second interglacial period and is therefore much younger. Recently the secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation was interviewed on the air. While I respect his sincere concern for peace, he made four points that I would like to question. 1. He said, ``Let's work for peace instead of protection from aggression''. I would ask, ``Why not do both''? Military power does not cause war; war is the result of mistrust and lack of understanding between people. Are we not late, especially those of us who call ourselves Friends, in doing enough about this lack of understanding? 2. As to protection, the speaker disapproved of shelters, pointing out that fallout shelters would not save everyone. Is this a reason for saving no one? Would the man with an empty life boat row away from a shipwreck because his boat could not pick up everyone? 3. The speaker suggested that the desolation of a post-attack world would be too awful to face. If the world comes to this, wouldn't it be the very time when courage and American know-how would be needed to help survivors rebuild? Many of our young people think it would. 4. Lastly, the speaker decried our organized program of emergency help calling it ``Civilian Defense''. In 1950, Public Law 920 created Civil Defense (different from Civilian-groups of World War 2), a responsibility of the Government at all levels to help reduce loss of life and property in disaster, natural or manmade. Far from creating fear, as the speaker suggests, preparedness -- knowing what to do in an emergency -- gives people confidence. Civil Defense has far to go and many problems to solve, but is it not in the best spirit of our pioneer tradition to be not only willing, but prepared to care for our own families and help our neighbors in any disaster -- storm, flood, accident or even war? It seems rather peculiar that residents of apartments are denied the right of providing themselves with the protection and companionship of dogs. I feel that few burglars would be prone to break and enter into someone's apartment if they were met with a good hardy growl that a dog would provide. In addition, would not the young female public of Washington be afforded a greater degree of protection at night when they are on the streets if they were accompanied by a dog on a leash? I grant that the dog may not be really protective, based on his training, but if you were roaming the streets looking for a purse to snatch or a young lady to molest, how quick would you be to attack a person strolling with a dog? I would like to suggest that the landlords and Commissioners get together and consider liberalizing the practice of prohibiting dogs in apartments. Use the terraces of the Capitol for a sidewalk cafe? Could Senator Humphrey be serious in his proposal? Is nothing in this country more sacred than the tourists'comfort? Perhaps the idea of sidewalk cafes could be extended. The Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials are rather bleak. Why not put a cafe in each so the tourists would not have to travel too far to eat? Unfortunately the cafes might not make enough money to support themselves during the off season. As an added suggestion to balance the budget, the Government could sell advertising space on the Washington Monument. It is visible throughout the city, and men from Madison Ave. would jump at the chance. Sen. Hubert Humphrey is obviously a man with a soul and heart. He, like most of us, wants to be able to sit, to contemplate and be moved by the great outdoors. Let us have more benches and fewer forbidden areas around fountains and gardens. Let us, like the French, have outdoor cafes where we may relax, converse at leisure and enjoy the passing crowd. Two strong dissents from the majority report of the Joint Economic Committee (May 2) by Senators Proxmire and Butler allege that the New Deal fiscal policy of the Thirties did not work. For the first time in history the entire world is dominated by two large, powerful nations armed with murderous nuclear weapons that make conventional warfare of the past a nullity. The United States and Soviet Russia have enough nuclear weapons to destroy all nations. Recent statements by well-known scientists regarding the destructive power of the newest nuclear bombs and the deadly fall-outs should be sufficient to still the voices of those who advocate nuclear warfare instead of negotiations. President Kennedy was right when he said, ``We shall never negotiate out of fear and we never shall fear to negotiate''. I have just returned from a seven-week trip to Europe and the Far East. It is quite evident that the people of Western Europe are overwhelmingly opposed to participation in a nuclear war. The fact is that the Italians, French and British know that they have no defense against nuclear bombs. We have no right to criticize them, as they realize they would be sitting ducks in a nuclear war. We should stand firmly and courageously for our right to free access into Berlin. It would be criminal folly if the Communists tried to prevent us. But there is nothing we can do to stop Soviet Russia from granting de facto recognition to East Germany. Soviet Russia has been invaded twice by German troops in a generation. In the last war Russia lost more than ten million killed and its lands and factories were devastated. The truth is that Communist Russia fears the resurgence of German militarism. Berlin is merely being used by Moscow as a stalking horse. Actually, the Communists, out of fear of a united and armed Germany, would probably be willing to agree to a disarmed Germany that would be united and neutral and have its independence guaranteed by the U. N.. If the Communists are sincere in wanting a united, neutral and disarmed Germany, it might well be advantageous for the German people in this nuclear age. It could provide security without cost of armaments and increase German prosperity and lessen taxation. France and other Western European nations likewise fear a rearmed Germany. If the German people favor such a settlement we should not oppose Germany following the example of Austria. President Kennedy has urged a peace race on disarmament that might be called ``Operation Survival'' which has many facets. Why not make a beginning with a united and disarmed Germany whose neutrality and immunity from nuclear bombing would be guaranteed by the Big Four powers and the United States? A united Germany, freed of militarism, might be the first step toward disarmament and peace in a terrorized and tortured world. In your editorial of Sept. 30 ``The Smoldering Congo'' you make the following comment: ``Far too many states are following the Russian example in refusing to pay their assessments. It is up to the Assembly to take action against them. They are violating their Charter obligation, the prescribed penalty for which is suspension of membership or expulsion''. ``Article 17, Section 1: The General Assembly shall consider and approve the budget of the Organization. ``Section 2: The expenses of the Organization shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly. ``Article 19: A Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years''. The U. S. S. R. and her followers are careful in paying their obligations to the regular budget. But they refuse, as do the Arab states, to support the United Nations'expenses of maintaining the United Nations Emergency Force in the Middle East as a buffer between Egypt and Israel, and the U. N. troops in the Congo, which expenses are not covered by the regular budget of the United Nations, but by a special budget. According to the official interpretation of the Charter, a member cannot be penalized by not having the right to vote in the General Assembly for nonpayment of financial obligations to the ``special'' United Nations'budgets, and of course cannot be expelled from the Organization (which you suggested in your editorial), due to the fact that there is no provision in the Charter for expulsion. In your Sept. 27 editorial appraisal of the work of the First Session of the Eighty-seventh Congress you referred to the lack of ``consciousness of destiny in a time of acute national and world peril''. Yet your list of things left undone did not include repeal of the Connally amendment to this country's domestic jurisdiction reservation to its Adherence to the Statute of the International Court of Justice. The Connally amendment says that the United States, rather than the court, shall determine whether a matter is essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States in a case before the World Court to which the United States is a party. If the case is thus determined by us to be domestic, the court has no jurisdiction. Since the Connally amendment has the effect of giving the same right to the other party to a dispute with the United States, it also prevents us from using the court effectively. Yet although the Kennedy Administration, and the Eisenhower Administration before it, have both declared themselves solidly for repeal of the Connally amendment, as contrary to our best interests, no action has yet been taken. Our ``destiny'' in these perilous times should be to lead strongly in the pursuit of peace, with justice, under law. To achieve this destiny, acts as well as words are needed -- not only acts that lead to physical strength but also acts that lead to strength based on right doing and respect. What better affirmative step could be taken to this end than repeal of the Connally amendment -- an act which could expose the United States to no practical risk yet would put an end to our self-judging attitude toward the court, enable us to utilize it, and advance in a tangible way the cause of international law and order? We believe that the list of vital things left undone to date by the Eighty-seventh Congress should have included repeal by the Senate of the Connally amendment. Many home-bound subway riders utilizing the Flushing-Main Street express are daily confronted with the sight of the local departing from the Woodside station as their express comes to a stop, leaving them stranded and strained. To the tens of thousands who must transfer to ride to Seventy-fourth Street and change for the IND, this takes a daily toll of time and temper. The Transit Authority has recently placed in operation ``hold'' lights at BMT Thirty-ninth and Fifty-ninth Street stations in Brooklyn. This ``holds'' the local until the express passengers change trains. Without question, this time and temper saver should be immediately installed at the Woodside station. As a business man I have to use the telephone constantly, from three to four hours a day. In the last few years the telephone company has managed to automate many areas of their service. It has not been any great mental effort on my part to keep up with this mechanization which has brought about new ways of dialing. However, there are still several types of calls that necessitate the use of telephone operators. I have been absolutely shocked at the ineptness of the young ladies who are servicing person-to-person calls, special long-distance calls, etc.. Either it is lack of training, lack of proper screening when hiring, lack of management or possibly lack of interest on the part of the telephone company, which does have a Government-blessed monopoly. I disagree with the writer who says funeral services should be government-controlled. The funeral for my husband was just what I wanted and I paid a fair price, far less than I had expected to pay. But the hospitals and doctors should be. Recently I visited the very remarkable Pilgrim School for retarded children. Hazel Park donates its recreation center, five days a week, to the school. There is no charge and no state aid. Kiwanis, American Legion and other groups donate small sums and the mothers do what they can to bring in dollars for its support. There are 70 children there and the mothers donate one day a week to the school. Reading, writing and simple arithmetic are taught along with such crafts as working in brass. They make beautiful objects. Enough trading stamps were collected to buy a 12-passenger station wagon. Southfield schools furnish an old 45-passenger bus (the heater in which needs repair since some of the children ride a long distance and need the heat). The school is located at 9-1 / 2 Mile Road, Woodward Heights. Visitors are welcome to come see what these dedicated mothers can do. I was surprised at Mayor Miriani's defeat, but perhaps Mayor-elect Cavanagh can accomplish some things that should have been done years ago. Maybe he can clean out the white elephants in some of the city departments such as welfare, DPW and sanitation. Negligence in garbage and rubbish collections and alley cleaning is great. He should put the police back to patrolling and walking the streets at night. There should be better bus service and all of our city departments and their various branches need a general and complete overhauling. Our litterbug ordinances are not enforced and I have yet to read of a conviction in a littering case. Drunken truck drivers in the city departments should be weeded out. Educate the city employes to give real service to the public. After all, they are paid by the public, they should be examples. At a recent meeting of the Women's Association of the Trumbull Ave. United Presbyterian Church, considerable use was made of material from The Detroit News on the King James version of the New Testament versus the New English Bible. Some members of the organization called attention also to the article on hymns of inspiration, the Daily Prayer and Three Minutes A Day, as being very helpful. We feel that The Detroit News is to be complimented upon arranging for articles on these subjects and we hope that it will continue to provide material along wholesome lines. Thank you for the article by George Sokolsky on the public apathy to impudence. How old do you have to be to remember when Americans, especially children, were encouraged to be polite? Why has this form of gentility gone out of American life? How can we old-fashioned parents, who still feel that adults are due some respect from children, battle the new type of advertising that appears on TV without denying the children the use of television entirely? Writers of ads must get their inspiration from the attitude of ``modern'' parents they have observed. From necessity, they are also inspired by the ``hard-sell'' attitude of the sponsor, so, finally, it is the sponsor who must take the responsibility for the good or bad taste of his advertising. I commend Senator Hart for his brave fight to establish a national park in the dunes area. I just wish to congratulate Inspector Trimmer and his efficient police troops in cleaning the city of those horrible automobiles. We have now a quiet city, fewer automobiles, less congestion, and fewer retail customers shopping in center city. Good for Mr. Trimmer. Maybe he will help to turn our fair city into a ``ghost'' town. I worked on the Schuylkill Expressway and if it had not been for the big trucks carrying rock and concrete there wouldn't be an Expressway. Without these massive trucks highways would still be just an idea of the future. Mr. George Hough (Oct. 30) sounds like a business man who waits until the last minute to leave his home or shop. The trucks today help pay for this highway. They try to keep within the speed limits. Although today's trucks are as fast as passenger cars, a truck driver has to be a sensible person and guard against hogging the road. The letter writer who suggested saving money by taking kids out of school at 14 should have signed his letter ``simpleton'' instead of ``simplicitude''. Such kids only wind up among the unemployed on relief or in jail where they become a much bigger burden. There are lots of jobs available for trained high school graduates, but not for the dropouts. What we need is more vocational training in high schools, not more dropouts. I suppose I am missing some elementary point but I honestly cannot see how two wrongs can make a right! I am referring to this country conducting atmosphere tests of nuclear bombs just because Russia is. Will our bombs be cleaner or will their fallout be less harmful to future generations of children? If an atom bomb in 1945 could destroy an entire city surely the atomic arsenal we now have is more than adequate to fulfill any military objective required of it. As I see it, if war starts and we survive the initial attack enough to be able to fight back, the nuclear weapons we now have -- at least the bombs -- can inflict all the demage that is necessary. Why do we need bigger and better bombs? I repeat, two wrongs do not make a right. Everyone should take time to read Martin Luther's Hymn ``A Mighty Fortress Is Our God''. To our everlasting shame, we led the world in this nuclear arms race sixteen years ago when we dropped the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Having led the world in this mad race I pray that we may have the wisdom and courage to lead it out of the race. Are we to be the master of the atom, or will the atom be our master -- and destroy us! Just because Cheddi Jagan, new boss of British Guiana, was educated in the United States is no reason to think he isn't a Red. We have quite a few home-grown specimens of our own. If we go all gooey over this newest Castro (until he proves he isn't) we've got rocks in our heads. How many times must we get burned before we learn? Just to remind the Communists that the bombs dropped on Japan were to end a war not start one. The war could have continued many years with many thousands killed on both sides. Intelligent people will admit that bombs and rockets of destruction are frightening whether they fall on Japan, London or Pearl Harbor. That is why the United Nations was formed so that intelligent men with good intentions from all countries could meet and solve problems without resorting to war. Russia has showed its intentions by exploding bombs in peace time to try to frighten the world. Why aren't the Soviets expelled from the U. N.? While ``better late than never'' may have certain merits, the posthumous award of the Nobel Prize for Peace to the late Dag Hammarskjold strikes me as less than a satisfactory expression of appreciation. Had it been bestowed while the Secretary General of the United Nations was living, unquestionably he would have been greatly encouraged in pursuing a difficult and, in many ways, thankless task. According to one report, however, Mr. Hammarskjold was considered ``too controversial'' a figure to warrant bestowal of the coveted honor last spring. Actually, of course, that label ``controversial'' applied only because he was carrying out the mandate given him by the world organization he headed rather than following the dictates of the Soviet Union. At Khrushchev's door, therefore, can be placed the primary blame but also at fault are those who permitted themselves to be intimidated. It is well for us to remember that a wreath on a coffin never can atone for flowers withheld while they still can be enjoyed. As has happened so often in the past, the ability to recognize true greatness has been inadequate and tardy. Just a brief note of appreciation to Vice President Johnson and Pakistani camel driver Bashir Ahmad for providing a first-class example of ``people to people'' good will. If only this could be done more often -- with such heartening results -- many of the earth's ``big problems'' would shrink to the insignificances they really are. P. S.. Thanks for your good coverage of Ahmad's visit, too! Your continuing editorials concerning the Schuylkill Expressway are valuable; however, several pertinent considerations deserve recognition. One of the problems associated with the expressway stems from the basic idea. We shuffle a large percentage of the cars across the river twice. They start on the East side of the Schuylkill, have to cross over to the West to use the expressway and cross over again to the East at their destination. Bridges, tunnels and ferries are the most common methods of river crossings. Each one of these is, by its nature, a focal point or a point of natural congestion. We should avoid these congestion points or, putting it another way, keep cars starting and ending on the East side of the river -- on the East side. Widen the East River Drive at least one lane. So widen it as to minimize the present curves and eliminate drainage problems. Paint continuous lane stripes and install overhead directional lights as on our bridges. One additional lane would then be directional with the traffic burden and effectively increase the traffic carrying capability of the East River Drive by fifty percent. This could be accomplished without the tremendous expenditures necessitated by the Schuylkill Expressway and without destroying the natural beauty of the East River Drive. I wish to advocate two drastic changes in Washington Square: 1. Take away George Washington's statue. 2. Replace it with the statue of one or another of the world's famous dictators. There's no sense in being reminded of times that were. Washington Square seems not part of a free land. It may remind one of Russia, China or East Berlin; but it can't remind one of the freedom that Washington and the Continental soldiers fought for. The Fairmount Park Commission will no doubt approve my two proposals, because it is responsible for the change of ideological atmosphere in the Square. The Feeding of Birds is Prohibited in This square. Does each tentacle of the octopus of City Government reach out and lash at whatever it dislikes or considers an annoyance? If birds don't belong in a Square or Park, what does? They are the most beautiful part of that little piece of nature. The trees are their homes; but the Commission does not share such sentiments. The whole official City apparently has an intense hatred toward birds. Starlings and blackbirds are scared off by canon, from City Hall. Just a preliminary measure. If any are left, presently, we may expect to see signs specifically prohibiting the feeding of them too. The City Government is not united in an all-out, to-the-death drive to stamp out gangs, delinquents, thugs, murderers, rapists, subversives. Indeed no. Let every policeman and park guard keep his eye on John and Jane Doe, lest one piece of bread be placed undetected and one bird survive. Of course, in this small way of forcing the people to watch as tiny and innocent and dependent creatures die because we're afraid to feed them and afraid to protest and say, ``How come? What's your motive? Who wants this deed done''? -- in this small way do the leaders of a city, or of a nation, inure the masses to watching, or even inflicting, torture and death, upon even their fellow men. One means to help the birds occurs to me: Let the chimes that ring over Washington Square twice daily, discontinue any piece of music but one. Let them offer on behalf of those creatures whose melody has been the joy of mankind since time began, the hymn ``Abide With Me''. There is a trend today to bemoan the fact that Americans are too ``soft''. Unfortunately, those who would remedy our ``softness'' seek to do so with calisthenics. They are working on the wrong part of our anatomy. It is not our bodies but our hearts and heads that have grown too soft. Ashamed of our wealth and power, afraid of so-called world opinion and addicted to peace, we have allowed our soft-heartedness to lead to soft-headed policies. When we become firm enough to stand for those ideals which we know to be right, when we become hard enough to refuse to aid nations which do not permit self-determination, when we become strong enough to resist any more drifts towards socialism in our own Nation, when we recognize that our enemy is Communism not war, and when we realize that concessions to Communists do not insure peace or freedom, then, and only then will we no longer be ``soft''. America doesn't need to ``push-up'', she needs to stand up! The new column by Maurice Stans regarding business scandals, is fair and accurate in most respects and his solution to the problem has some merit. However, he states unequivocally ``the scandals in business are far less significant than the scandals in labor''. I must, in fairness, take issue with his premise, primarily because the so-called scandals in labor unions were very much connected with business scandals. The area most prominently commented on during the McClellan hearings had to do with ``sweetheart contracts''. These arrangements would have been impossible if the business community was truly interested in the welfare of its employes. A sweetheart arrangement can come about as often by employers doing the corrupting as by unscrupulous labor leaders demanding tribute. Anyone familiar with the details of the McClellan hearings must at once realize that the sweetheart arrangements augmented employer profits far more than they augmented the earnings of the corruptible labor leaders. Further, it should be recalled that some very definite steps were taken by Congress to combat corruption in the labor movement by its passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act. The nuclear war is already being fought, except that the bombs are not being dropped on enemy targets -- not yet. It is being fought, moreover, in fairly close correspondence with the predictions of the soothsayers of the think factories. They predicted escalation, and escalation is what we are getting. The biggest nuclear device the United States has exploded measured some 15 megatons, although our B-52s are said to be carrying two 20-megaton bombs apiece. Some time ago, however, Mr. Khrushchev decided that when bigger bombs were made, the Soviet Union would make them. He seems to have at least a few 30-and 50-megaton bombs on hand, since we cannot assume that he has exploded his entire stock. And now, of course, the hue and cry for counter-escalation is being raised on our side. Khrushchev threatens us with a 100-megaton bomb? So be it -- then we must embark on a crash program for 200-megaton bombs of the common or hydrogen variety, and neutron bombs, which do not exist but are said to be the coming thing. So escalation proceeds, ad infinitum or, more accurately, until the contestants begin dropping them on each other instead of on their respective proving grounds. What is needed, Philip Morrison writes in The Cornell Daily Sun (October 26) is a discontinuity. The escalation must end sometime, and probably quite soon. ``Only a discontinuity can end it'', Professor Morrison writes. ``The discontinuity can either be that of war to destruction, or that of diplomatic policy''. Morrison points out that since our country is more urbanized than the Soviet Union or Red China, it is the most vulnerable of the great powers -- Europe of course must be written off out of hand. He feels, therefore, that to seek a discontinuity in the arms policy of the United States is the least risky path our government can take. His proposal is opposed to that of Richard Nixon, Governor Rockefeller, past chairmen Strauss and McCone of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Edward Teller and those others now enjoying their hour of triumph in the exacerbation of the cold war. These gentlemen are calling for a resumption of testing -- in the atmosphere -- on the greatest possible scale, all in the name of national security. Escalation is their first love and their last; they will be faithful unto death. Capable as their minds may be in some directions, these guardians of the nation's security are incapable of learning, or even of observing. If this capacity had not failed them, they would see that their enemy has made a disastrous miscalculation. He has gained only one thing -- he has exploded a 50-megaton bomb and he probably has rockets with sufficient thrust to lob it over the shorter intercontinental ranges. But if his purpose was to inspire terror, his action could hardly have miscarried more obviously. Not terror, but anger and resentment have been the general reaction outside the Soviet sphere. Khrushchev himself is reported to be concerned by the surge of animosity he has aroused, yet our own nuclear statesmen seem intent on following compulsively in his footsteps. When one powerful nation strives to emulate the success of another, it is only natural. Thus, when the Russians sent up their first sputnik, American chagrin was human enough, and American determination to put American satellites into orbit was perfectly understandable. But to imitate an opponent when he has made the mistake of his life would be a new high in statesmanlike folly. When East Germans fled to the West by the thousands, paeans of joy rose from the throats of Western publicists. They are less vocal now, when it is the West Berliners who are migrating. The flood is not as great -- only 700 a week according to one apparently conservative account -- but it is symptomatic. West Berlin morale is low and, in age distribution, the situation is unfavorable. Nearly 18 per cent of West Berlin's 2, 200, 000 residents are sixty-five or older, only 12. 8 per cent are under fifteen. R. H. S. Crossman, M. P., writing in The Manchester Guardian, states that departures from West Berlin are now running at the rate not of 700, but of 1, 700 a week, and applications to leave have risen to 1, 900 a week. The official statistics show that 60 per cent are employed workers or independent professional people. Whole families are moving and removal firms are booked for months ahead. The weekly loss is partly counterbalanced by 500 arrivals each week from West Germany, but the hard truth, says Crossman, is that ``The closing off of East Berlin without interference from the West and with the use only of East German, as distinct from Russian, troops was a major Communist victory, which dealt West Berlin a deadly, possibly a fatal, blow. The gallant half-city is dying on its feet''. Another piece of evidence appears in a dispatch from Bonn in The Observer (London). Mark Arnold-Foster writes: ``People are leaving (West Berlin) because they think it is dying. They are leaving so fast that the president of the West German Employers'Federation issued an appeal this week to factory workers in the West to volunteer for six months'front-line work in factories in West Berlin. Berlin's resilience is amazing, but if it has to hire its labor in the West the struggle will be hard indeed''. The handwriting is on the wall. The only hope for West Berlin lies in a compromise which will bring down the wall and reunite the city. State Department officials refusing to show their passes at the boundary, and driving two blocks into East Berlin under military escort, will not avail. Tanks lined up at the border will be no more helpful. The materials for compromise are at hand: The Nation, Walter Lippmann and other sober commentators (see Alan Clark on p. 367) have spelled them out again and again. A compromise will leave both sides without the glow of triumph, but it will save Berlin. Or the city can be a graveyard monument to Western intransigence, if that is what the West wants. The removal of Stalin's body from the mausoleum he shared with Lenin to less distinguished quarters in the Kremlin wall is not unprecedented in history. It is, in fact, a relatively mild chastisement of the dead. A British writer, Richard Haestier, in a book, Dead Men Tell Tales, recalls that in the turmoil preceding the French Revolution the body of Henry 4,, who had died nearly 180 years earlier, was torn to pieces by a mob. And in England, after the Restoration, the body of Cromwell was disinterred and hanged at Tyburn. The head was then fixed on a pole at Westminster, and the rest of the body was buried under the gallows. Contemplating these posthumous punishments, Stalin should not lose all hope. In 1899, Parliament erected a statue to Cromwell in Westminster, facing Whitehall and there, presumably, he still stands. Nikita Khrushchev, however, has created yet another problem for himself. The Lenin tomb is obviously adequate for double occupancy, Moscow is a crowded city, and the creed of Communism deplores waste. Who will take Stalin's place beside Lenin? There is Karl Marx, of course, buried in London. The Macmillan government might be willing to let him go, but he has been dead seventy-eight years and even the Soviet morticians could not make him look presentable. Who, then, is of sufficient stature to lodge with Lenin? Who but Nikita himself? Since he has just shown who is top dog, he may not be ready to receive this highest honor in the gift of the Soviet people. Besides, he can hardly avoid musing on the instability of death which, what with exhumations and rehabilitations, seems to match that of life. Suppose he did lie beside Lenin, would it be permanent? If some future Khrushchev decided to rake up the misdeeds of his revered predecessor, would not the factory workers pass the same resolutions applauding his dispossession? When a man is laid to rest, he is entitled to stay put. If Nikita buys a small plot in some modest rural cemetery, everyone will understand. The appointment of U Thant of Burma as the U. N.' s Acting Secretary General -- at this writing, the choice appears to be certain -- offers further proof that in politics it is more important to have no influential enemies than to have influential friends. Mongi Slim of Tunisia and Frederick Boland of Ireland were early favorites in the running, but France didn't like the former and the Soviet Union would have none of the latter. With the neutralists maintaining pressure for one of their own to succeed Mr. Hammarskjold, U Thant emerged as the only possible candidate unlikely to be waylaid by a veto. What is interesting is that his positive qualifications for the post were revealed only as a kind of tail to his candidacy. In all the bitter in-fighting, the squabbles over election procedures, the complicated numbers game that East and West played on the assistant secretaries'theme, the gentleman from Burma showed himself both as a man of principle and a skilled diplomat. He has, moreover, another qualification which augurs well for the future. He is a Buddhist, which means that to him peace and the sanctity of human life are not only religious dogma, but a profound and unshakable Weltanschauung. U Thant of course, will hold office until the spring of 1963, when Mr. Hammarskjold's term would have come to an end. Whether the compromises -- on both sides -- that made possible the interim appointment can then be repeated remains to be seen. Mr. Khrushchev's demand for a troika is dormant, not dead; the West may or not remain satisfied with the kind of neutralism that U Thant represents. In a sense, the showdown promised by Mr. Hammarskjold's sudden and tragic death has been avoided; no precedents have been set as yet; structurally, the U. N. is still fluid, vulnerable to the pressures that its new and enlarged membership are bringing to bear upon it. But at least the pessimists who believed that the world organization had plunged to its death in that plane crash in the Congo have been proved wrong. No one who has studied the radical Right can suppose that words are their sole staple in trade. These are mentalities which crave action -- and they are beginning to get it, as Messrs. Salsich and Engh report on page 372. Even in areas where political connotations are (deliberately? ) left vague, the spirit of vigilantism is spreading. Friends, a picture magazine distributed by Chevrolet dealers, describes a paramilitary organization of employees of the Gulf Telephone Company at Foley, Alabama. ``If the day should ever come that foreign invaders swarm ashore along the Gulf Coast'', the account reads, ``they can count on heavy opposition from a group of commando-trained telephone employees -- all girls. Heavily armed and mobilized as a fast-moving Civil Defense outfit, 23 operators and office personnel stand ready to move into action at a minute's notice''. According to Friends, the unit was organized by John Snook, a former World War 2, commando who is vice president and general manager of the telephone company. The girls, very fetching in their uniforms, are shown firing rockets from a launcher mounted on a dump truck; they are also trained with carbines, automatic weapons, pistols, rifles and other such ladies'accessories. This may be opera bouffe now, but it will become more serious should the cold war mount in frenzy. The country is committed to the doctrine of security by military means. The doctrine has never worked; it is not working now. The official military establishment can only threaten to use its nuclear arms; it cannot bring them into actual play. A more dangerous formula for national frustration cannot be imagined. As the civic temper rises, the more naive citizens begin to play soldier -- but the guns are real. Soon they will begin to hunt down the traitors they are assured are in our midst. All false gods resemble Moloch, at least in the early phases of their careers, so it would be unreasonable to expect any form of idol-worship to become widespread without the accompaniment of human sacrifice. But there is reason in all things, and in this country the heathenish cult of the motor-car is exceeding all bounds in its demands. The annual butchery of 40, 000 American men, women and children to satiate its blood-lust is excessive; a quota of 25, 000 a year would be more than sufficient. No other popular idol is accorded even that much grace. If the railroads, for example, regularly slaughtered 25, 000 passengers each year, the high priests of the cult would have cause to tremble for their personal safety, for such a holocaust would excite demands for the hanging of every railroad president in the United States. But by comparison with the railroad, the motor car is a relatively new object of popular worship, so it is too much to hope that it may be brought within the bounds of civilized usage quickly and easily. Yet it is plainly time to make a start, and to be effective the first move should be highly dramatic, without being fanatical. Here, then, is what Swift would have called a modest proposal by way of a beginning. From next New Year's Day let us keep careful account of each successive fatality on the highways, publicizing it on all media of communication. To avoid suspicion of bigotry, let the hand of vengeance be stayed until the meat-wagon has picked up the twenty-five thousandth corpse; but let the twenty-five thousand and first butchery be the signal for the arrest of the 50 state highway commissioners. Then let the whole lot be hanged in a public mass execution on July 4, 1963. The scene, of course, should be nine miles northwest of Centralia, Illinois, the geographical center of population according to the census. A special grandstand, protected by awnings from the midsummer sun of Illinois, should be erected for occupancy by honored guests, who should include the ambassadors of all those new African nations as yet not quite convinced that the United States is thoroughly civilized. The band should play the Rogues'March as a processional, switching to ``Hail Columbia, Happy Land''! As the trap is sprung. Independence Day is the appropriate date as a symbolical reminder of the American article of faith that governments are instituted among men to secure to them certain inalienable rights, the first of which is life, and when any government becomes subversive of that end, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. The highway system is an agency of government, and when it grinds up 40, 000 Americans every year the government is destroying its own taxpayers, which is obviously a silly thing for any government to do. Hanging the responsible officials would not abolish the government, but would emphasize its accountability for the lives of its individual citizens, which would certainly alter it, and definitely for the better. Moreover, the salubrious effects would not be exclusively political, but at least partially, and perhaps primarily social. It would challenge sharply not the cult of the motor car itself but some of its ancillary beliefs and practices -- for instance, the doctrine that the fulfillment of life consists in proceeding from hither to yon, not for any advantage to be gained by arrival but merely to avoid the cardinal sin of stasis, or, as it is generally termed, staying put. True, the adherents of staying put are now reduced to a minor, even a miniscule sect, and their credo, ``Home-keeping hearts are happiest'', is as disreputable as Socinianism. Nonetheless, although few in number they are a stubborn crew, as tenacious of life as the Hardshell Baptists, which suggests that there is some kind of vital principle embodied in their faith. Perhaps there is more truth than we are wont to admit in the conviction of that ornament of Tarheelia, Robert Ruark's grandfather, who was persuaded that the great curse of the modern world is ``all this gallivantin '''. In any event, the yearly sacrifice of 40, 000 victims is a hecatomb too large to be justified by the most ardent faith. Somehow our contemporary Moloch must be induced to see reason. Since appeals to morality, to humanity, and to sanity have had such small effect, perhaps our last recourse is the deterrent example. If we make it established custom that whenever butchery on the highways grows excessive, say beyond 25, 000 per annum, then somebody is going to hang, it follows that the more eminent the victim, the more impressive the lesson. To hang 50 Governors might be preferable except that they are not directly related to the highways; so, all things considered, the highway commissioners would seem to be elected. As the new clouds of radioactive fallout spread silently and invisibly around the earth, the Soviet Union stands guilty of a monstrous crime against the human race. But the guilt is shared by the United States, Britain and France, the other members of the atomic club. Until Moscow resumed nuclear testing last September 1, the US and UK had released more than twice as much radiation into the atmosphere as the Russians, and the fallout from the earlier blasts is still coming down. As it descends, the concentration of radioactivity builds up in the human body; for a dose of radiation is not like a flu virus which causes temporary discomfort and then dies. The effect of radiation is cumulative over the years -- and on to succeeding generations. So, while we properly inveigh against the new poisoning, history is not likely to justify the pose of righteousness which some in the West were so quick to assume when Mr. Khrushchev made his cynical and irresponsible threat. Shock, dismay and foreboding for future generations were legitimate reactions; a holier-than-thou sermon was not. On October 19, after the Soviets had detonated at least 20 nuclear devices, Ambassador Stevenson warned the UN General Assembly that this country, in ``self protection'', might have to resume above-ground tests. More recently, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, ``admitted'' to a news conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, that the US might fall behind Russia (he apparently meant in weapons development) if the Soviets continue to test in the atmosphere while we abstain. The trial balloons are afloat. All of which makes it more imperative than ever that the biological and genetic effects of fallout be understood. But for the average citizen, unfortunately, this is one of science's worst-marked channels, full of tricky currents and unknown depths. The scientists, in and out of government, do not agree on some of the most vital points, at least publicly. But the PHS conceded that the new radioactive particles ``will add to the risk of genetic effects in succeeding generations, and possibly to the risk of health damage to some people in the United States''. Then it added: ``It is not possible to determine how extensive these ill effects will be -- nor how many people will be affected''. Having hedged its bets in this way, PHS apparently decided it would be possible to make some sort of determination after all: ``At present radiation levels, and even at somewhat higher levels, the additional risk is slight and very few people will be affected''. Then, to conclude on an indeterminate note: ``Nevertheless, if fallout increased substantially, or remained high for a long time, it would become far more important as a potential health hazard in this country and throughout the world''. Dr. Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, has been less ambiguous, whether you choose to agree with him or not. The damage to human germ plasm would be such that in the next few generations 160, 000 children around the world would be born with gross physical or mental defects. Long-lived carbon-14 from the fusion process would cause four million embryonic, neonatal or childhood deaths and stillbirths over the next 20 generations, and between 200, 000 and one million human beings now living would have their lives cut short by radiation-produced diseases such as leukemia. Most of these would be in the Northern Hemisphere, where the fallout is concentrating. Pauling's estimate of 200 megatons yield from the present series of Russian tests will probably turn out to be too high, but a total of 100 megatons is a distinct possibility. The lack of scientific unanimity on the effects of radiation is due in part to insufficient data covering large population groups, from which agreed-on generalizations could be drawn. But more than one conscientious researcher has been inhibited from completely frank discussion of the available evidence by the less excusable fact that fallout has been made a political issue as well as a scientific problem. Its dangerous effects have been downgraded to the public by some who believe national security requires further testing. An illustration of this attitude is found in John A. McCone's letter to Dr. Thomas Lauritsen, reported in a note elsewhere in this issue of The New Republic. To this day the Atomic Energy Commission shies away from discussing the health aspects of fallout. A recent study on radiation exposure by the AEC's division of biology and medicine stated: ``The question of the biological effect of (radiation) doses is not considered'' herein. Of course, the AEC is in a bind now. If it comes down too hard on the potential dangers of fallout, it will box the President on resuming atmospheric tests. So the Commission's announcements of the new Soviet shots have been confined to one or two bleak sentences, with the fission yield usually left vague. Now, of course, that the Russians are the nuclear villains, radiation is a nastier word than it was in the mid, when the US was testing in the atmosphere. The prevailing official attitude then seemed to be that fallout, if not exactly good for you, might not be much worse than a bad cold. After a nuclear blast, one bureaucrat suggested in those halcyon days, about all you had to do was haul out the broom and sweep off your sidewalks and roof. Things aren't that simple anymore. Yet if Washington gets too indignant about Soviet fallout, it will have to do a lot of fast footwork if America decides it too must start pushing up the radiation count. As of October 25, the AEC had reported 24 shots in the new Soviet series, 12 of them in a megaton range, including a super bomb with a yield of 30 to 50 megatons (the equivalent of 30 million to 50 million tons of TNT); and President Kennedy indicated there were one or two more than those reported. Assuming the lower figure for the big blast and one shot estimated by the Japanese at 10 megatons, a conservative computation is that the 24 announced tests produced a total yield of at least 60 megatons. Some government scientists say privately that the figure probably is closer to 80 megatons, and that the full 50-megaton bomb that Khrushchev mentioned may still be detonated. If the new Soviet series has followed the general pattern of previous Russian tests, the shots were roughly half fission and half fusion, meaning a fission yield of 30 to 40 megatons thus far. To this must be added the 90 to 92 megatons of fission yield produced between the dawn of the atomic age in 1945 and the informal three-power test moratorium that began in November, 1958. One of the inescapable realities of the Cold War is that it has thrust upon the West a wholly new and historically unique set of moral dilemmas. The first dilemma was the morality of nuclear warfare itself. That dilemma is as much with us as ever. The second great dilemma has been the morality of nuclear testing, a dilemma which has suddenly become acute because of the present series of Soviet tests. When this second dilemma first became obvious -- during the mid to late'50's -- the United States appeared to have three choices. It could have unilaterally abandoned further testing on the grounds of the radiation hazard to future generations. It could have continued testing to the full on the grounds that the radiation danger was far less than the danger of Communist world domination. Or it could have chosen to find -- by negotiation -- some way of stopping the tests without loss to national security. This third choice was in fact made. With the resumption of Soviet testing and their intransigence at the Geneva talks, however, the hope that this third choice would prove viable has been shaken. Once again, the United States must choose. And once again, the choices are much the same. Only this time around the conditions are different and the choice is far harder. The first choice, abandoning tests entirely, would not only be unpopular domestically, but would surely be exploited by the Russians. The second choice, full testing, has become even more risky just because the current Soviet tests have already dangerously contaminated the atmosphere. The third choice, negotiation, presupposes, as Russian behavior demonstrates, a great deal of wishful thinking to make it appear reasonable. We take the position, however, that the third choice still remains the only sane one open to us. It is by no stretch of the imagination a happy choice and the arguments against it as a practical strategy are formidable. Its primary advantage is that it is a moral choice; one which, should it fail, will not have contaminated the conscience. That is the contamination we most fear. Leaving aside the choice of unilateral cessation of tests as neither sane nor clearly moral, the question must arise as to why resumption of atmospheric tests on our part would not be a good choice. For that is the one an increasingly large number of prominent Americans are now proposing. In particular, Governor Nelson Rockefeller has expressed as cogently and clearly as anyone the case for a resumption of atmospheric tests. Speaking recently in Miami, Governor Rockefeller said that ``to assure the sufficiency of our own weapons in the face of the recent Soviet tests, we are now clearly compelled to conduct our own nuclear tests''. Taking account of the fact that such a move on our part would be unpopular in world opinion, he argued that the responsibility of the United States is ``to do, confidently and firmly, not what is popular, but what is right''. What was missing in the Governor's argument, as in so many similar arguments, was a premise which would enable one to make the ethical leap from what might be militarily desirable to what is right. The possibility, as he asserted, that the Russians may get ahead of us or come closer to us because of their tests does not supply the needed ethical premise -- unless, of course, we have unwittingly become so brutalized that nuclear superiority is now taken as a moral demand. Besides the lack of an adequate ethical dimension to the Governor's case, one can ask seriously whether our lead over the Russians in quality and quantity of nuclear weapons is so slight as to make the tests absolutely necessary. Recent statements by the President and Defense Department spokesmen have, to the contrary, assured us that our lead is very great. Unless the Administration and the Defense Department have been deceiving us, the facts do not support the assertion that we are ``compelled'' to resume atmospheric testing. It is perfectly conceivable that a resumption of atmospheric tests may, at some point in the future, be necessary and even justifiable. But a resumption does not seem justifiable now. What we need to realize is that the increasingly great contamination of the atmosphere by the Soviet tests had radically increased our own moral obligations. We now have to think not only of our national security but also of the future generations who will suffer from any tests we might undertake. This is an ethical demand which cannot be evaded or glossed over by talking exclusively of weapon superiority or even of the evil of Communism. Too often in the past Russian tactics have been used to justify like tactics on our part. There ought to be a point beyond which we will not allow ourselves to go regardless of what Russia does. The refusal to resume atmospheric testing would be a good start. when his Holiness Pope John 23, first called for an Ecumenical Council, and at the same time voiced his yearning for Christian unity, the enthusiasm among Catholic and Protestant ecumenicists was immediate. With good reason it appeared that a new day was upon divided Christendom. But as the more concrete plans for the work of the Council gradually became known, there was a rather sharp and abrupt disappointment on all sides. The Council we now know will concern itself directly only with the internal affairs of the Church. As it has turned out, however, the excessive enthusiasm in the first instance and the loss of hope in the second were both wrong responses. Two things have happened in recent months to bring the Council into perspective: each provides a basis for renewed hope and joy. First of all, it is now known that Pope John sees the renewal and purification of the Church as an absolutely necessary step toward Christian unity. Far from being irrelevant to the ecumenical task, the Pontiff believes that a revivified Church is required in order that the whole world may see Catholicism in the best possible light. Equally significant, Pope John has said that Catholics themselves bear some responsibility for Christian disunity. A major aim of the Council will be to remove as far as possible whatever in the Church today stands in the way of unity. Secondly, a whole series of addresses and actions by the Pope and by others show that concern for Christian unity is still very much alive and growing within the Church. The establishment, by the Holy Father, of a permanent Secretariat for Christian Unity in 1960 was the most dramatic mark of this concern. The designation of five Catholic theologians to attend the World Council of Churches assembly in New Delhi as ``official'' observers reverses the Church's earlier stand. The public appeal by the new Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Cicognani, for renewed efforts toward Eastern and Western reunion was still another remarkable act. Nor can one forget Pope John's unprecedented meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustin Cardinal Bea, the director of the Secretariate for Christian Unity, has expressed as directly as anyone the new spirit that pervades the Church's stance toward the Protestant and Orthodox Churches. Noting all the difficulties that stand in the way of reunion, he has said that they ought not to discourage anyone. For discouragement, or the temptation to abandon our efforts, ``would show that one placed excessive trust in purely human means without thinking of the omnipotence of God, the irresistible efficacy of prayer, the action of Christ or the power of the Divine Spirit''. Can any Christian fail to respond to these words? the administration's official budget review, which estimates a 6. 9 billion dollar deficit for the current fiscal year, isn't making anyone happy. Certainly it isn't making the President happy, and he has been doing his apologetic best to explain how the budget got into its unbalanced condition, how he intends to economize wherever he can and how he hopes to do better next year. We sympathize with Mr. Kennedy, but we feel bound to say that his budget review doesn't please us either, although for very different reasons. Furthermore, we find his defense of the unbalanced budget more dismaying than reassuring. In the first place, a large part of the discrepancy between President Eisenhower's estimate of a 1. 5 billion dollar surplus for the same period and the new estimate of an almost seven billion dollar deficit is the result of the outgoing President's farewell gift of a political booby-trap to his successor. The Eisenhower budget was simultaneously inadequate in its provisions and yet extravagant in its projections of revenue to be received. The rest of the deficit is also easily understood. Four billion dollars of the spending increase is for defense, an expenditure necessitated by the penny-wise policies of the Eisenhhower Administration, quite apart from the recent crises in Berlin and elsewhere. Four hundred million dollars of the increase is for the expanded space program, a responsibility similarly neglected by Mr. Eisenhower. The farm program will cost an additional 1. 5 billion, because of unusual weather factors, the Food for Peace program and other new measures. Anti-recession programs -- aid for the unemployed, their children and for depressed areas -- account for only 900 million of the 6. 9 billion dollar deficit. Our complaint is that in many crucial areas the Kennedy programs are not too large but too small, most seriously in regard to the conventional arms build-up and in aid and welfare measures. And yet Mr. Kennedy persists in trying to mollify the intransigents of the right with apologies and promises of ``tightening up'' and ``economizing''. We wish the President would remember that ``fiscal responsibility'' was the battle-cry of the party that lost the election. The party that won used to say something about a New Frontier. introduction of the ``dialogue'' principle proved strikingly effective at the thirty-fourth annual meeting of the Catholic Association for International Peace in Washington the last weekend in October. Two of the principal addresses were delivered by prominent Protestants, and when the speaker was a Catholic, one ``discussant'' on the dais tended to be of another religious persuasion. Several effects were immediately evident. Sessions devoted to ``Ethics and Foreign Policy Trends'', ``Moral Principle and Political Judgment'', ``Christian Ethics in the Cold War'' and related subjects proved to be much livelier under this procedure than if Catholics were merely talking to themselves. Usually questions from the floor were directed to the non-Catholic speaker or discussion leader. In the earlier sessions there was plentiful discussion on the natural law, which Dr. William V. O'Brien of Georgetown University, advanced as the basis for widely acceptable ethical judgments on foreign policy. That Aristotelean-Thomistic principle experienced a thorough going-over from a number of the participants, but in the end the concept came to reassert itself. Speakers declared that Protestants often make use of it, if, perhaps, by some other name. A Lebanese Moslem told about its existence and application in the Islamic tradition as the ``divine law'', while a C. A. I. P. member who has been working in close association with delegates of the new U. N. nations told of its widespread recognition on the African continent. The impression was unmistakable that, whatever one may choose to call it, natural law is a functioning generality with a certain objective existence. Another question that arose was the nature of the dialogue itself. The stimulus from the confrontation of philosophical systems involving certain differences was undeniable. It was expected that the comparison of different approaches to ethics would produce a better grasp of each other's positions and better comprehension of one's own. But a realization that each group has much of substance to learn from the other also developed, and a strong conviction grew that each had insights and dimensions to contribute to ethically acceptable solutions of urgent political issues. One effect of the spirited give-and-take of these discussions was to focus attention on practical applications and the necessity of being armed with the facts: knowledge of the destructive force of even the tiniest ``tactical'' atomic weapon would have a bearing on judgments as to the advisability of its use -- to defend Berlin, for example; the pervasive influence of ideology on our political judgments needs to be recognized and taken into due account; it is necessary to perceive the extent of foreign aid demanded by the Christian imperative. Everywhere I went in Formosa I asked the same question. I was searching for an accent of self-delusion or, even, of hypocrisy. I never found it among any of the Chinese with whom I spoke, though granted they were, almost all, members of the official family who, presumably, harbor official thoughts. But I questioned, also, professional soldiers, who would not easily be hypnotized by a septuagenarian's dreamy irredentism. Their answer was: it can be done, and we will do it. And then I put the question as pointedly as I could directly to Chiang Kai-shek: ``In America'', I said, ``practically no one believes that you subjectively intend to re-enter the Mainland. What evidence is there of an objective kind that in fact your government proposes to do just that, and that it can be done''? He smiled. (He always smiles -- at least at visitors, I gather. He smiled also at a British bloke seated next to me, who asked the most asinine questions. I recalled sympathetically the Duke's complaint in Browning's ``My Last Duchess''. ) He smiled, and said a word or two to the interpreter, who turned to me, ``The President wonders where you are going after you leave Taipei''? That, I smarted, is a royal rebuff if ever there was one. I answered the routine question about my itinerary, rather coolly. Chiang spoke again, this time at greater length. ``The President says'', the translator came in, ``that the reason he asked you where you were going is because he hoped you would be visiting other areas in Southeast Asia, and that everywhere you went, you would seek the answer to your question. He says that if he were to express to you, once again, his own profound determination to go to the Mainland, and his faith that that return is feasible, he would merely sound redundant. So you yourself must seek these objective data, and come to your own conclusions. Any information we have here in Taiwan is at your disposal''. Fair enough. What are the relevant data? For every person on Taiwan, there are sixty in Mainland China. If the raw population figures are crucially relevant, then it is idle to think of liberation, as idle as to suppose that Poland might liberate Russia. Relative military manpower? Less than 60-1, but at least 6-1. The estimates vary widely on the strength of the Chinese army. Say four million. The armed forces of Taiwan are at a working strength of about 450, 000, though a reserve potential twice that high is contemplated. Skill? Training? Morale? It is generally conceded that the Formosan air force is the best by far in Asia, and the army the best trained. The morale is very high. Even so, it adds up to impossible odds, except that the question arises, On whose side would the Mainland Chinese army fight? The miserable people of China, the largest cast ever conscripted to enact an ideological passion play, cannot themselves resist overtly. They think, perforce, of physical survival: everything else is secondary. But the army which Mao continues to feed well, where are its sympathies? The psychological strategists in Taiwan stress the great sense of family, cultivated in China over thousands of years. It has not been extirpated by ten years of Communist depersonalization. Every soldier in the army has, somewhere, relatives who are close to starvation. The soldiers themselves cannot stage a successful rebellion, it is assumed: but will their discontent spread to the officer class? The immediate families of the generals and the admirals are well fed: a despot does not economize on his generals. But there are the cousins and aunts and nephews. Their privations are almost beyond endurance. In behalf of what? Leninism-Marxism, as understood by Exegete Mao. To whom will the generals stay loyal? There is little doubt if they had a secret ballot, they would vote for food for their family, in place of ideological purity out on the farm. It is another question whether ``they'' -- or a single general, off in a corner of China, secure for a few (galvanizing? ) days at least from instant retaliation -- will defy the Party. But the disposition to rebel is most definitely there. But there must be a catalytic pressure. The military in Taiwan believe that the Communists have made two mistakes, which, together, may prove fatal. The first was the commune program, which will ensure agricultural poverty for years. The family is largely broken up; and where it is not, it is left with no residue, and the social meaning of this is enormous. For it is the family that, in China, has always provided social security for the indigent, the sick, the down-and-out members of the clan. Now the government must do that; but the government is left with no reserve granary, under the agricultural system it has ordained. Thus the government simultaneously undertook the vast burden of social security which had traditionally been privately discharged, and created a national scarcity which has engendered calamitous problems of social security. The second mistake is Tibet. Tibet has historically served China as a buffer state. A friendly state, sometimes only semi-independent, but never hostile. China never tried to integrate Tibet by extirpating the people's religion and institutions. Red China is trying to do this, and she is not likely ever to succeed. Tibet is too vast, the terrain is too difficult. Tibet may bleed China as Algeria is bleeding France. These continuing pressures, social, economic and military, are doing much to keep China in a heightening state of tension. The imposition of yet another pressure, a strong one, from the outside, might cause it to snap. The planners in Taiwan struck me as realistic men. They know that they must depend heavily on factors outside their own control. First and foremost, they depend on the inhuman idiocies of the Communist regime. On these they feel they can rely. Secondly, they depend on America's ``moral cooperation'' when the crucial moment arrives. They hope that if history vouchsafes the West another Budapest, we will receive the opportunity gladly. I remarked jocularly to the President that the future of China would be far more certain if he would invite a planeload of selected American Liberals to Quemoy on an odd day. He affected (most properly) not to understand my point. But he -- and all of China -- wears the scars of American indecisiveness, and he knows what an uncertain ally we are. We have been grand to Formosa itself -- lots of aid, and, most of the time, a policy of support for the offshore islands. But our outlook has been, and continues to be, defensive. A great deal depends on the crystallization of Mr. Kennedy's views on the world struggle. The Free Chinese know that the situation on the Mainland is in flux, and are poised to strike. There is not anywhere on the frontiers of freedom a more highly mobilized force for liberation. The moment of truth is the moment of crisis. During the slow buildup, the essence of a policy or a man is concealed under embroidered details, fine words, strutting gestures. The crisis burns these suddenly away. There the truth is, open to eyes that are willing to look. The moment passes. New self-deceiving rags are hurriedly tossed on the too-naked bones. A truth-revealing crisis erupted in Katanga for a couple of days this month, to be quickly smothered by the high pressure verbal fog that is kept on tap for such emergencies. Before memory, too, clouds over, let us make a note or two of what could be seen. The measure was instantly taken, as always in such cases, of public men at many levels. One knows better, now, who has bone and who has jelly in his spine. But I am here concerned more with policy than with men. Public men come and go but great issues of policy remain. Now, everyone knows -- or knew in the week of December 10 -- that something had gone shockingly wrong with American foreign policy. The United States was engaged in a military attack on a peaceful, orderly people governed by a regime that had proved itself the most pro-Western and anti-Communist within any of the new nations -- the only place in Africa, moreover, where a productive relationship between whites and blacks had apparently been achieved. Of course the fighting was officially under the auspices of the United Nations. But in the moment of truth everyone could see that the U. S. was in reality the principal. The moment simultaneously revealed that in the crisis our policy ran counter to that of all our NATO allies, to the entire Western community. By our policy the West was -- is -- split. But the key revelation is not new. The controlling pattern was first displayed in the Hungary-Suez crisis of November 1956. It reappears, in whole or part, whenever a new crisis exposes the reality: in Cuba last spring (with which the Dominican events of last month should be paired); at the peaks of the nuclear test and the Berlin cycles; in relation to Laos, Algeria, South Africa; right now, with almost cartoon emphasis, in the temporally linked complex of Tshombe-Gizenga-Goa-Ghana. This prime element of the truth may be stated as follows: Under prevailing policy, the U. S. can take the initiative against the Right, but cannot take the initiative against the Left. It makes no difference what part of the world is involved, what form of regime, what particular issue. The U. S. cannot take the initiative against the Left. There is even some question whether the U. S. can any longer defend itself against an initiative by the Left. We can attack Tshombe, but not Gigenza. No matter that Gizenga is Moscow's man in the Congo. No matter that it is his troops who rape Western women and eat Western men. No matter that the Katanga operation is strategically insane in terms of Western interests in Africa. (Even granted that the Congo should be unified, you don't protect Western security by first removing the pro-Western weight from the power equilibrium. We can force Britain and France out of the Suez, but we cannot so much as try to force the Russian tanks back from Budapest. We can mass our fleet against the Trujillos, but not against the Castros. We can vote in the UN against South African apartheid or Portuguese rule in Angola, but we cannot even introduce a motion on the Berlin Wall -- much less, give the simple order to push the Wall down. We officially receive the anti-French, Moscow-allied Algerian FLN, but we denounce the pro-Europe, anti-Communist OAS as criminal. In the very week of our war against Katanga, we make a $ 133 million grant to Kwame Nkrumah, who has just declared his solidarity with the Communist bloc, and is busily turning his own country into a totalitarian dictatorship. As our planes land the war materiel that kills pro-Western Katangans, we stand supinely bleating while Nehru's troops smash into a five-hundred-year-old district of our NATO ally, Portugal. What explains this uni-directional paralysis? It is the consequence of the system of ideas that constitutes the frame of our international -- and in some degree our domestic -- policy. The Suez-Hungary crisis proves that this system was not invented by the new Administration, but only made more consistent and more active. Most immediately relevant to these episodes in Goa, Katanga and Ghana, as to the Suez-Hungary crisis before them, is the belief that the main theater of the world drama is the underdeveloped region of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From this belief is derived the practical orientation of our policy on the ``uncommitted'' (``neutralist'', ``contested'') nations, especially on those whose leaders make the most noise -- Nehru, Tito, Nkrumah, Sukarno, Betancourt, etc.. Our chief aim becomes that of finding favor in neutralist eyes. If we grasp this orientation as a key, our national conduct in all of the events here mentioned becomes intelligible. And it becomes clear why in general we cannot take the initiative against the Left. To write a play, the dramatist once needed an idea plus the imagination, the knowledge of life and the craft to develop it. Nowadays, more and more, all he needs is someone else's book. To get started, he does not scan the world about him; he and his prospective producer just read the bestseller lists. So far this season, Broadway's premieres have included twice as many adaptations and imports as original American stage plays. Of straight dramas, there are All The Way Home, which owes much of its poetic power to the James Agee novel, A Death In The Family; The Wall, awkwardly based on the John Hersey novel; Advise And Consent, lively but shallow theater drawn from the mountainously detailed bestseller; Face Of A Hero (closed), based on a Pierre Boulle novel. The only original works attempting to reach any stature: Tennessee Williams'disappointing domestic comedy, Period Of Adjustment, and Arthur Laurents'clever but empty Invitation To A March. Clearly the most provocative plays are all imported originals -- A Taste Of Honey, by Britain's young (19 when she wrote it) Shelagh Delaney; Becket, by France's Jean Anouilh; The Hostage (closed), by Ireland's Brendan Behan. Among the musicals, Camelot came from T. H. White's The Once And Future King, and novels were the sources of the less than momentous Tenderloin and Do Re Mi. Wildcat and The Unsinkable Molly Brown were originals, but pretty bad, leaving top honors again to an import -- the jaunty and charmingly French Irma La Douce. The only other works at least technically original were dreary farces -- Send Me No Flowers (closed), Under The Yum-Yum Tree, Critic's Choice. In the forthcoming The Conquering Hero and Carnival, Broadway is not even adapting books, but reconverting old movies (Hail The Conquering Hero and Lili). Originals are not necessarily good and adaptations are not necessarily bad. Some memorable plays have been drawn from books, notably Life With Father and Diary Of Anne Frank. And particularly in the musical field, adaptations have long been the rule, from Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow to Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady. As Critic Walter Kerr points out: ``Adaptations, so long as they are good, still qualify as creative''. And other defenders invariably argue that, after all, Shakespeare and Moliere were adapters too. The difference is that the masters took the bare frame of a plot and filled it with their own world; most modern adapters totally accept the world of a book, squeeze it dry of life, and add only one contribution of their own: stage technique. The most frequent excuse for the prevalence of unoriginals and tested imports is increasing production expense -- producers cannot afford to take chances. But that explanation is only partly true. Off-Broadway, where production is still comparatively cheap, is proving itself only slightly more original. Laudably enough, it is offering classics and off-beat imports, but last week only one U. S. original was on the boards, Robert D. Hock's stunning Civil War work, Borak. The real trouble seems to be the failing imagination of U. S. playwrights. He: ``Come with me to the Casbah''. She: ``By subway or cab''? That exchange was not only possible but commonplace last week in Manhattan, as more and more New Yorkers were discovering 29th Street and Eighth Avenue, where half a dozen small nightclubs with names like Arabian Nights, Grecian Palace and Egyptian Gardens are the American inpost of belly dancing. Several more will open soon. Their burgeoning popularity may be a result of the closing of the 52nd Street burlesque joints, but curiously enough their atmosphere is almost always familial -- neighborhood saloons with a bit of epidermis. The belly boites, with their papier-mache palm trees or hand-painted Ionic columns, heretofore existed mainly on the patronage of Greek and Turkish families. Customers often bring their children; between performances, enthusiastic young men from the audience will take the floor to demonstrate their own amateur graces. Except for the odd uptown sex maniac or an overeager Greek sailor, the people watch in calm absorption. Small, shirt-sleeved orchestras play in 2 / 4 or 4 / 4 time, using guitars, violins, and more alien instruments with names that would open Sesame: the oud, grandfather of the lute; the darbuka, a small drum with the treelike shape of a roemer glass; the def, a low-pitched tambourine. The girls sit quietly with the musicians, wearing prim dresses or plain, secretarial shifts, until it is time to go off to a back room and reappear in the spare uniform of the harem. If a dancer is good, she suggests purely and superbly the fundamental mechanics of ancestry and progeny -- the continuum of mankind. But a great many of what Variety calls the ``Cooch Terpers'' are considerably less cosmic than that. Each dancer follows the ancient Oriental pattern -- she glides sideways with shoulders motionless while her stomach migrates, and, through breathing and muscle control, she sends ripples across her body to the fingertips and away to the far end of the room. This is done at varying speeds, ranging from the slow and fast Shifte Telli (a musical term meaning double strings) to the fastest, ecstatic Karshilama (meaning greetings or welcome). The New York dancers are highly eclectic, varying the pattern with all kinds of personal improvisations, back bends or floor crawls. But they do not strip. The striptease is crass; the belly dance leaves more to the imagination. When a dancer does well, she provokes a quiet bombardment of dollar bills -- although the Manhattan clubs prohibit the more cosmopolitan practice of slipping the tips into the dancers'costumes. With tips, the girls average between $ 150 and $ 200 a week, depending on basic salary. Although they are forbidden to sit with the customers, the dancers are sometimes proffered drinks, and most of them can bolt one down in mid-shimmy. All over the country, belly clubs have never been bigger, especially in Detroit, Boston and Chicago, and even in small towns; one of the best dancers, a Turkish girl named Semra, works at a roadhouse outside Bristol, Conn.. The girls are kept booked and moving by several agents, notably voluble, black-bearded Murat Somay, a Manhattan Turk who is the Sol Hurok of the central abdomen. He can offer nine Turkish girls, plans to import at least 15 more. But a great many of the dancers are more or less native. Sometimes they get their initial experience in church haflis, conducted by Lebanese and Syrians in the U. S., where they dance with just as few veils across their bodies as in nightclubs. As the girls come to belly dancing from this and other origins, the melting pot has never bubbled more intriguingly. Jemela (surname: Gerby), 23, seems Hong Kong Oriental but has a Spanish father and an Indian mother, was born in America and educated at Holy Cross Academy and Textile High School, says she learned belly dancing at family picnics. Serene (Mrs. Wilson), 23, was born in Budapest and raised in Manhattan. Daughter of a gypsy mother who taught her to dance, she is one of the few really beautiful girls in the New York Casbah, with dark eyes and dark, waist-length hair, the face of an adolescent patrician and a lithe, glimmering body. Many belly dancers are married, but Serene is one of the few who will admit it. Marlene (surname: Adamo), 25, a Brazilian divorcee who learned the dance from Arabic friends in Paris, now lives on Manhattan's West Side, is about the best belly dancer working the Casbah, loves it so much that she dances on her day off. She has the small, highly developed body of a prime athlete, and holds in contempt the ``girls who just move sex''. Leila (Malia Phillips), 25, is a Greenwich Village painter of Persianesque miniatures who has red hair that cascades almost to her ankles. A graduate of Hollywood High School, she likes to imagine herself, as she takes the floor, ``a village girl coming in to a festival''. Gloria (surname: Ziraldo), circa 30, who was born in Italy and once did ``chorus work'' in Toronto, has been around longer than most of the others, wistfully remembers the old days when ``we used to get the seamen from the ships, you know, with big turtleneck sweaters and handkerchiefs and all. But the ships are very slow now, and we don't get so many sailors any more''. The uptown crowd has moved in, and what girl worth her seventh veil would trade a turtleneck sweater for a button-down collar? Of the handful of painters that Austria has produced in the 20th century, only one, Oskar Kokoschka, is widely known in the U. S.. This state of unawareness may not last much longer. For ten years a small group of European and U. S. critics has been calling attention to the half-forgotten Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, who died 42 years ago at the age of 28. The critics'campaign finally inspired the first major U. S. exhibit of Schiele's works. The show has been to Boston and Manhattan, will in time reach Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. Last week it opened at the J. B. Speed Museum in Louisville, at the very moment that a second Schiele exhibit was being made ready at the Felix Landau gallery in Los Angeles. Schiele's paintings are anything but pleasant. His people (see color) are angular and knobby-knuckled, sometimes painfully stretched, sometimes grotesquely foreshortened. His colors are dark and murky, and his landscapes and cityscapes seem swallowed in gloom. But he painted some of the boldest and most original pictures of his time, and even after nearly half a century, the tense, tormented world he put on canvas has lost none of its fascination. The son of a railway stationmaster, Schiele lived most of his childhood in the drowsy Danubian town of Tulln, 14 miles northwest of Vienna. He was an emotional, lonely boy who spent so much time turning out drawings that he did scarcely any schoolwork. When he was 15, his parents finally allowed him to attend classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Even there he did not last for long. Cried one professor after a few months of Student Schiele's tantrums and rebellion: ``The devil himself must have defecated you into my classroom''! For a while his work was influenced deeply by the French impressionists, and by the patterned, mosaic-like paintings of Gustav Klimt, then the dean of Austrian art. Gradually Schiele evolved a somber style of his own -- and he had few inhibitions about his subject matter. His pictures were roundly denounced as ``the most disgusting things one has ever seen in Vienna''. He himself was once convicted of painting erotica and jailed for 24 days -- the first three of which he spent desperately trying to make paintings on the wall with his own spittle. For years he wore hand-me-down suits and homemade paper collars, was even driven to scrounging for cigarette butts in Vienna's gutters. Drafted into the Austrian army, he rebelliously rejected discipline, wangled a Vienna billet, went on painting. It was not until the last year of his life that he had his first moneymaking show. Melancholy obsession. The unabashed sexuality of so many of his paintings was not the only thing that kept the public at bay: his view of the world was one of almost unrelieved tragedy, and it was too much even for morbid-minded Vienna. He was obsessed by disease and poverty, by the melancholy of old age and the tyranny of lust. The children he painted were almost always in rags, his portraits were often ruthless to the point of ugliness, and his nudes -- including several self-portraits -- were stringy, contorted and strangely pathetic. The subject he liked most was the female body, which he painted in every state -- naked, half-dressed, muffled to the ears, sitting primly in a chair, lying tauntingly on a bed or locked in an embrace. The most surprising thing about the Twenty-second Congress of the Soviet Communist Party is that it is surprising -- perhaps quite as much, in its own way, as the Twentieth Congress of 1956, which ended with that famous ``secret'' report on Stalin. The publication last July of the party's Draft Program -- that blueprint for the ``transition to communism'' -- had led the uninitiated to suppose that this Twenty-second Congress would be a sort of apotheosis of the Khrushchev regime, a solemn consecration of ideas which had, in fact, been current over the last three or four years (i. e., since the defeat of the ``anti-party group'') in all theoretical party journals. These never ceased to suggest that if, in the eyes of Marx and Lenin ``full communism'' was still a very distant ideal, the establishment of a Communist society had now, under Khrushchev, become an ``immediate and tangible reality''. It seems that Khrushchev himself took a very special pride in having made a world-shaking contribution to Marxist doctrine with his Draft Program (a large part of his twelve-hour speech at the recent Congress was, in fact, very largely a rehash of that interminable document). He and other Soviet leaders responsible for the document were proud of having brought forward some new formulas, such as the early replacement of the dictatorship of the proletariat by an ``All People's State'', and also of having laid down the lines for a much greater ``democratization'' of the whole hierarchy of Soviets, starting with the Supreme Soviet itself. Their plan for rotation of leaders promised a salutary blow at ``bureaucracy'' and would enable ``the people'' to take a more direct and active part in running the country. Also, elections would be more democratic; there might even be two or more candidates for voters to choose from. No doubt, there was still a lot in the Draft Program -- and in Khrushchev's speech -- which left many points obscure. Was it the party's intention, for example, to abolish gradually the kolkhoz system and replace it by uniformly wage-earning kolkhozes, i. e., state farms (which were, moreover, to be progressively ``urbanized'')? As we know, the Soviet peasant today still very largely thrives on being able to sell the produce grown on his private plot; and it is still very far from certain how valid the party's claim is that in ``a growing number of kolkhozes'' the peasants are finding it more profitable, to surrender their private plots to the kolkhoz and to let the latter be turned into something increasingly like a state farm. If one follows the reports of the Congress, one finds that there still seems considerable uncertainty in the minds of the leaders themselves about what exactly to do in this matter. The Draft Program was interesting in other respects, too. It contained, for example, a number of curious admissions about the peasants, who enjoy no sickness benefits, no old-age pensions, no paid holidays; they still benefit far less than the ``other'' 50 per cent of the nation from that ``welfare state'' which the Soviet Union so greatly prides itself on being. Over all these fairly awkward problems Khrushchev was to skate rather lightly; and, though he repeated, over and over again, the spectacular figures of industrial and agricultural production in 1980, the ``ordinary'' people in Russia are still a little uncertain as to how ``communism'' is really going to work in practice, especially in respect of food. Would agriculture progress as rapidly as industry? This was something on which K. himself seemed to have some doubts; for he kept on threatening that he would ``pull the ears'' of those responsible for agricultural production. And, as we know, the Virgin Lands are not producing as much as Khrushchev had hoped. One cannot but wonder whether these doubts about the success of Khrushchev's agricultural policy have not at least something to do with one of the big surprises provided by this Congress -- the obsessive harping on the crimes and misdeeds of the ``anti-party group'' -- Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others -- including the eighty-year-old Marshal Voroshilov. Molotov, in particular, is being charged with all kinds of sins -- especially with wanting to cut down free public services, to increase rents and fares; in fact, with having been against all the more popular features of the Khrushchev ``welfare state''. The trouble with all these doctrinal quarrels is that we hear only one side of the story: what, in the secret councils of the Kremlin, Molotov had really proposed, we just don't know, and he has had no chance to reply. But one cannot escape the suspicion that all this non-stop harping on the misdeeds of the long liquidated ``anti-party'' group would be totally unnecessary if there were not, inside the party, some secret but genuine opposition to Khrushchev on vital doctrinal grounds, on the actual methods to be employed in the ``transition to communism'' and, last but not least, on foreign policy. The whole problem of ``peaceful coexistence and peaceful competition'' with the capitalist world is in the very center of this Congress. ``Molotov altogether rejects the line of peaceful coexistence, reducing this concept merely to the state of peace or rather, the absence of war at a given moment, and to a denial of the possibility of averting a world war. His views, in fact, coincide with those of foreign enemies of peaceful coexistence, who look upon it merely as a variant of the ``cold war'' or of an ``armed peace''. One cannot help wondering whether Molotov and the rest of the ``anti-party group'' are not being used as China's whipping-boys by Khrushchev and his faithful followers. For something, clearly, has gone very, very seriously wrong in Soviet-Chinese relations, which were never easy, and have now deteriorated. The effect of Chou En-lai's clash with Khrushchev, together with the everlasting attacks on Molotov & Co., has shifted the whole attention of the world, including that of the Soviet people, from the ``epoch-making'' twenty-year program to the present Soviet-Chinese conflict. Not only, as we know, did Chou En-lai publicly treat Khrushchev's attack on Albania as ``something that we cannot consider as a serious Marxist-Leninist approach'' to the problem (i. e., as something thoroughly dictatorial and ``undemocratic''), but the Albanian leaders went out of their way to be openly abusive to Khrushchev, calling him a liar, a bully, and so on. It is extremely doubtful that the handful of Albanians who call themselves Communists could have done this without the direct approval of their Chinese friends. The big question is whether, in the name of a restored Chinese-Soviet solidarity, the Chinese will choose to persuade the Albanians to present their humble apologies to Khrushchev -- or get rid of Enver Hoxa. These seem about the only two ways in which the ``unhappy incident'' can now be closed. But Albania is merely a symptom of a real malaise between China and Russia. There are other symptoms. Khrushchev, for all his bombastic prophecies about the inevitable decay of capitalism, is genuinely favorable to ``peaceful coexistence'' and would like, above all, the Berlin and German problems to be settled peacefully; he knows that he was never more popular than at the time of the Russo-American ``honeymoon'' of 1959. But it seems that pressures against him are coming from somewhere -- in the first place from China, but perhaps also from that ``China Lobby'' which, I was assured in Moscow nearly two years ago, exists on the quiet inside the party. To these people, solidarity and unity with China should be the real basis of Russia's future policy. And the Chinese, as the Albanian incident shows, have strong suspicions that Khrushchev is anxious to secure a ``shameful'' peace with the West. The fact that China (which is obsessed by Formosa -- to Khrushchev a very small matter) should be supported by North Korea and North Vietnam is highly indicative. And one cannot but wonder whether Marshal Malinovsky, who was blowing hot and cold, exalting peace but also almost openly considering the possibility of preventive war against the West, wasn't trying to keep the Chinese quiet. And this brings us inevitably to the 30-or 50-megaton bomb. Was not this dropped primarily in order to ``appease'' the Chinese -- especially after ``Khrushchev's ``humiliating'' surrender to the West in canceling the German peace-treaty deadline of December 31? What does it all add up to? Indications are that Khrushchev (and, with him, the bulk of the Soviet people) favor peaceful coexistence and (with the exception of Berlin) the maintenance of the status quo in the world. The Chinese, North Vietnamese and North Koreans, on the other hand, feel that, militarily, Russia is strong enough to support them in the ``just wars of liberation'' they would like to embark on before long: with China attacking Formosa and the North Koreans and North Vietnamese liberating the southern half of their respective countries. Perhaps Khrushchev is in a more difficult position than any since 1957, when the ``anti-party group'' nearly liquidated him. He seems strong enough inside the party to cope with any internal opposition; but if he is up against China's crusading spirit in world affairs, he is going to be faced with the most agonizing choice in his life. He may support China (but he won't); he may break with China (which would be infernally difficult and perhaps disastrous), or he may succeed, by all kinds of dangerous concessions, in persuading China to be patient. The next days may show where things stand. On a misty Sunday morning last month, a small band of militant anti-Communists called the Minutemen held maneuvers in a foggy field about fifteen miles east of here. Eleven men, a woman and a teen-age boy tramped over cold, damp, fog-enshrouded ground during a two-hour field drill in the problems of guerrilla warfare. To the average American, this must sound like an incredible tale from a Saturday night TV movie. But to the Minutemen, this is a serious business. They feel that the United States is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with communism for survival and world supremacy. They feel that World War 3, has already begun, and they are setting themselves up as a ``last line of defense'' against the Communist advance. Their national leader, Robert Bolivar DePugh of Norborne, Mo., says the Minutemen believe that guerrilla tactics are best suited to defeat the Red onslaught. In their maneuvers last month, they wore World War 2, camouflage garb and helmets, and carried unloaded M-1 rifles. The maneuvers were held ``in secret'' after a regional seminar for the Minutemen, held in nearby Shiloh, Ill., had been broken up the previous day by deputy sheriffs, who had arrested regional leader Richard Lauchli of Collinsville, Ill., and seized four operative weapons, including a Browning machine gun, two Browning automatic rifles and an M-4 rifle. Undismayed by this contretemps, a small band of the faithful gathered at Lauchli's home at 6: 30 A. M. the next day, put on their uniforms, and headed for a farm several miles away. A 60 mm. mortar and a 57 mm. recoilless rifle owned by Lauchli were brought along. The mortar was equipped with dummy shells and the recoilless rifle was deactivated. After a tortuous drive in an open truck and a World War 2, army jeep down soggy trails, the band arrived at a small clearing squeezed between a long, low ridge and a creek-filled gully. Here the two leaders, DePugh and Lauchli, hastened to put the group through its paces. The Minutemen were instructed in the use of terrain for concealment. They were shown how to advance against an enemy outpost atop a cleared ridge. They practiced movement behind a smoke screen laid by smoke grenades; and they attempted a skirmish line of advance against a camouflaged enemy encampment. Eleven dummy rounds were fired by Lauchli in a demonstration of rapid-fire mortar shooting. Mrs. DePugh, the mother of five children and an active member of her husband's organization, participated in all the exercises. There were no ``casualties'', but the ``guerrillas'' admitted to being ``a little tired'' when the leaders called a halt at 9 A. M. to enable out-of-town members to catch a plane. I would like to add one more practical reform to those mentioned by Russell Kirk (Dec. 16). It has to do with teachers'salaries and tenure. Next September, after receiving a degree from Yale's Master of Arts in Teaching Program, I will be teaching somewhere -- that much is guaranteed by the present shortage of mathematics teachers. I will also be underpaid. The amazing thing is that this too is caused by the dearth of teachers. Teaching is at present a sellers'market; as a result buyers, the public, must be satisfied with second-rate teachers. But this is not the real problem; the rub arises from the fact that teachers are usually paid on the basis of time served rather than quality. Hence all teachers, good and bad, who have been teaching for a given number of years are paid the same salary. I am firmly convinced that considering the average quality of teachers in this country, the profession is grossly overpaid. It follows that teachers as a group cannot expect any marked salary increases; there is a limit to how much the public will pay for shoddy performance. The only hope which good teachers have for being paid their due is to stop dragging the dead weight of poor teachers up the economic ladder with them. The only hope which the public has for getting good teachers is to pay teachers on the basis of merit rather than tenure. Here, as in all sectors of the economy, quality and justice are both dependent on the right of the individual to deal directly with his employer if he so chooses. On the eve of the ``great debate'' on the proposal to give the President broad powers to make across-the-board tariff concessions which could practically bring us into the Atlantic Community, we should face the alternatives on this proposition. What we will be sacrificing in any such arrangement will be our power to be selective which is contained in the reciprocal trade principle under which we now operate. Without this power we lay open any American industry which the Europeans may find it economically profitable to destroy to the will of others. It is this loss of initiative in how we conduct our economy which may lead to the loss of initiative in how we conduct our political affairs. I disagree with Mr. Burnham's position on the Common Market (Nov. 18) as a desirable organization for us to join. For him to ignore the political consequences involved in an Atlantic Union of this kind is difficult to understand. The pressure for our entry to the Common Market is mounting and we will proceed towards this amalgamated trade union by way of a purely ``economic thoroughfare'', or garden path, with the political ramifications kept neatly in the background. The appeal is going to be to the pocketbook and may be very convincing to those who do not see its relation to political and legal, as well as economic, self-rule. In entering this union we will be surrendering most, if not all, of our economic autonomy to international bodies such as the Atlantic Institute (recently set up) or the O. E. C. D., I. M. F. and others. To think that we can merely relinquish our economic autonomy without giving up our political or legal autonomy is wishful thinking. If it is not enough that all of our internationalist One Worlders are advocating that we join this market, I refer you to an article in the New York Times'magazine section (Nov. 12, 1961), by Mr. Eric Johnston, entitled ``We Must Join The Common Market''. He says: ``It has swept aside petty nationalisms, age-old rivalries, and worn-out customs''. Referring to Britain, he says, ``We see a nation that traditionally values sovereignty above all else willing to give up its economy, placing this authority in Continental hands''. Since the goal of our international planners is a World Government, this Atlantic Community would mark a giant step in that direction for, once American economic autonomy is absorbed, a larger grouping is a question of time. Frankly, it is being very cleverly done for, in a sense, they have us over a barrel. Listen to what Mr. Johnston has to say: ``Consider the savage wounds that isolationism would inflict. We would lose our export markets and deny ourselves the imports we need. We would be crippled by reduced output, industrial decline, widespread unemployment''. But the solution to this dilemma is not the incorporation of the United States into an Atlantic Community or ``economic empire'', but merely what libertarians like Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig Von Mises have been arguing for years: an end to government regulations, an end to government competition in industry, and a realistic depreciation allowance for industry. Create a free market here, give us a sound, debt-free money system, and we'll compete with anyone, Europe and Asia combined. In short, get this governmental monstrosity off our backs and we won't have to worry about European competition or Communism either. If we want to preserve our sovereignty, this is the way to do it; not acquiesce to an international planning board. If we go into this Common Market, we might just as well stop talking about Constitutional guarantees, Connally Amendments or, for that matter, conservatism in general. We welcome this able brief for the negative as part of a many-sided discussion of the Atlantic Common Market which JNR will be continuing in our pages. -- ed.. Mental telepathy? The Peiping Chinese were the only major silver seller in the world markets who stopped selling the metal on Monday morning, November 27, anticipating by two days the announcement of the U. S. Treasury that the pegged offering price will be removed. In 1954 I was drafted and after serving two years honorably on Active Duty I was not required to participate in any further Army Reserve activities. Now, more than five years later, I cannot in any realistic sense be called a trained soldier. But, in spite of this, I, at present a man 31 years of age and a College Professor, have been recalled ``by direction of the President'' to report on November 25th to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for another twelve months of Active Duty as an Sp 4 (the equivalent of a PFC). Today, seven years after the date of my initial induction as a draftee, I am Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Science at St. Michael's College. For, after leaving the Army in 1956, I spent five years in Graduate School first at Boston College and then at the University of Toronto. This time, added to that which I had already spent in school prior to my induction in 1954, makes a total of twenty-two (22) years of education. The possibility of recall into the Army is part of the price that a modern American has to pay for the enviable heritage of liberty which he enjoys. With this no loyal citizen can quarrel. However, it seems axiomatic that the government has an obligation ``to exercise its mandate reasonably, equitably and with full regard for the disruptions which it inevitably causes''. In my own case, I submit that such reasonable and fair exercise is woefully lacking. Taken back into the Army now as an Sp 4, I am leaving 110 college students whose teacher I am. (A wry sidelight on this is that most of my students have deferments from the draft in order to attend my classes. ) At this late date, it is impossible for St. Michael's College to find a suitable replacement for me. Even apart from the fact that now at the age of 31 my personal life is being totally disrupted for the second time for no very compelling reason -- I cannot help looking around at the black leather jacket brigades standing idly on the street corners and in the taverns of every American city and asking myself if our society has gone mad. In news broadcasts I consistently hear the foreign volunteers fighting in the Katanga Army referred to as mercenaries. This confuses me no end. If the Hessian troops sent here willy-nilly by the Hessian Government to fight for England in the 1770's were mercenaries, what shall we call the UN troops sent to the Congo willy-nilly by their governments to fight for the United Nations? If the UN troops are not mercenaries then the Hessians were not mercenaries either. And if the foreigners fighting in the Katanga Army are mercenaries then Lafayette and Von Steuben were mercenaries too, as were also the members of the Lafayette Escadrille in the early part of World War 1, and of Chennault's Flying Tigers in the early days of World War 2. It doesn't take a Gore Vidal to tell you what's wrong with Cherokee Textile's slogan (Pitney-Bowes Objects'', July 1). It's an eighteenth-century negative, man! Suggest the following twenty-first-century amendment: By moving the term ``Republic'' to lower case, substituting the modern phrase, ``move ahead'' for the stodgy ``keep'', and by using the Postmaster's name on every envelope (in caps, of course, with the ``in spite'' as faded as possible), the slogan cannot fail. ``On trial in Jakarta for having flown for the Indonesian anti-Communist insurgents, U. S. pilot Alan Lawrence Pope boldly told the court that in supporting the freedom fighters, he was actually defending the sovereignty and independence of Indonesia. Facing a prosecution which has demanded the death penalty, he said:'I have participated in the war against Communism in Korea and at Dienbienphu, and I have helped in the evacuation of North Vietnamese to the free world. I have done all this for the freedom of the individuals concerned and also for the states which have been threatened by Communist domination. At least in Indonesia, Khrushchev found an American proud to be at total war with Communism''! Since then nothing has happened to save the life of Pope. ``U. S. Flier Loses Plea. Indonesia Court Upholds Pope's Death Sentence. -- Indonesia Military Supreme Court has confirmed the death sentence passed on Alan Lawrence Pope, an American pilot. Pope was convicted last year of having aided North Celebes rebels by flying bombing missions. He has been in prison since May, 1958, when his aircraft was shot down over Moluccas. He may appeal to President Sukarno for clemency''. As we see, Pope may appeal to President Sukarno, Khrushchev's friend, for clemency. This possibility is anything but reassuring. The Eleanor Roosevelt Tractor Committee acts on behalf of the Cuban freedom fighters. But who will act now and immediately to save the life of Alan Pope? Are tractors available for him? Does anybody think of saving the life of an anti-Communist American pilot? A few days before I saw your mention of what Texas Liberals were doing to promote ``Louis Capet'' (The Week'', June 3), another analogy had occurred to me. Consider this table: 1. ``With no strong men and no parliament to dispute his will, he was the government''. 2. Regency -- Truman. ``A'dust-settling'period of decadence and decline''. 3. Louis 15, -- Eisenhower. ``He opened his mouth, said little, and thought not at all''. 4. Louis 16, -- Kennedy. ``Not completely virtuous, but completely incompetent''. And Marie Antoinette -- Jacqueline Bouvier. ``The beautiful and light-hearted''. 5. French Revolution -- Conservative Revolution? Truly, that Liberals should choose Louis 14, as a bogey-symbol of conservatism is grotesquely ironic, considering the Louis 14, character of their Grand Monarque, FDR: not only in his accretion of absolute power and personal deification, (le roi gouverne par lui meme), but in the disastrous effects of his spending and war policies. In defeating ``Louis Capet'', John Tower's victory in Texas signals, once again, the end of the divine right of Liberalism. It seems to me that N. C., in his editorial ``Confrontation'' (SR, Mar. 25), has hit upon the real problem that bothers all of us in a complex world: how do we retain our personal relationship with those who suffer? This affects us all intimately, and can leave us hopeless in the face of widespread distress. I know of no other solution than the one N. C. proposes -- to do what we can for each sufferer as he confronts us, hoping that this will spread beyond him to others at some time and some place. Never have I seen this expressed so clearly and so sympathetically. Thank you for the illustrated editorial ``Confrontation''. It is both great writing and profound religion. N. C. has said something important so well that this preacher will many times be tempted to quote the whole piece. I feel that N. C. hit the very core of our existence in the editorial ``Confrontation''. Personally, it meant a great deal; my only hope is that it will be shared by many, many others. ``Confrontation'' should fortify us all, whether in Southeast Asia or the U. S.. Congratulations to N. C. for successfully delving into the heart of the problems that face the Peace Corps. I concur that it is necessary for Americans to have a confrontation of the situation existing in foreign lands. It would be heartbreaking to see idealism, and hence effective leadership, thwarted by the poverty and hardship which young Americans will run into. The editorial ``Confrontation'' was certainly direct in its appeal to those of us living here in America. I personally gained strength from it. Thanks for continuing to capture the attention and uncover so many areas of need in this amazing world. N. C.' s editorial ``Confrontation'' is a stunning piece of writing. I would hope that Sargent Shriver will encourage everyone entering the Peace Corps to read it. The important people to humanity are not the Khrushchevs and the Castros but the Schweitzers and the Dooleys, and the others like them whose names we will never know. Editor's note: Reprints of ``Confrontation'' will be included among the material to be distributed to members of the Peace Corps. A Peace Corps official described the editorial as ``precisely the message we need to communicate to the men and women who will soon be Peace Corps volunteers''. F. L. Lucas's article in SR's April 1 issue seemed to be a very fair and objective analysis of the New English Bible. I certainly hope this will be the impression left in the minds of readers, rather than the comment by Cleveland Amory in his first of the month column. It is blind, fundamentalist dogmatism to say, ``Messing around with the King James version seems to us a perilous sport at best''. Lester Markel is on the right track in his article ``Interpretation Of Interpretation'' (SR, Mar. 11). The current stereotype of straight news reporting was probably invaluable in protecting the press and its readers from pollution by that combination of doctored fact, fancy, and personal opinion called yellow journalism which flourished in this country more than a generation ago. We don't need this type of protection any more. The public is now armed with sophistication and numerous competing media. Besides, there are no longer enough corruptible journalists about. The accepted method of writing news has two major liabilities. First, it does not communicate. A reporter restricted to the competing propaganda statements of both sides in a major labor dispute, for instance, is unable to tell his readers half of what he knows about the causes of the dispute. Second, it subjects the news to distortion by the unscrupulous. The charges by the late junior Senator from Wisconsin not only destroyed innocent people but misled the nation. Yet the press was powerless to put these charges in perspective in its news columns. Despite several years of front-page stories, the average citizen was unable to get a complete picture of McCarthy until he saw on the television screen what the reporters had been seeing all along but had no effective way of communicating. The Senator had boxed them in with their own restrictions. It seems to me the time has come for the American press to start experimenting with ways of reporting the news that will do a better job of communicating and will be less subject to abuse by those who have learned how to manipulate the present stereotype to serve their own ends. The objective should be to provide a method of getting into print a higher percentage than is now possible of the relevant information in the possession of reporters and editors. I would like to see you devote some space in an early issue to the news blackout concerning President Kennedy's activities, so far as Southern California is concerned. You have on more than one occasion praised the idea of a televised press conference and the chance it gives the people to form intelligent opinions. To begin with, the all-powerful Los Angeles Times does not publish a transcript of these press conferences. I am sure that they did when Eisenhower was President. Next, because of the time differential, the conferences come on the networks during the middle of the day. Up until now, the networks have grudgingly run half-hour tapes at 5 P. M. or sometimes 7 or 10: 30 P. M.. Even then, a few of the ``less interesting'' questions are edited out and glibly summarized by a commentator. However, last night the tapes were not run at all during the evening hours and all we got on TV were a few snatches which Douglas Edwards and Huntley and Brinkley could squeeze into their programs. This is no criticism of them, as they obviously cannot get a half-hour program into a fifteen-minute news summary. The radio stations did run ``transcripts'' (I thought) during the evening hours. However, by comparing the TV snatches, two different radio station re-runs, and the censored Los Angeles Times version, I found that the radio stations had edited out questions (ABC removed the one regarding Laos) or even a paragraph out of the middle of the President's answer. I am interested to know he is getting mail from all over the country about the ``abuse'' he is being subjected to. We out here don't see enough of the conference to know he is being abused. I don't know if this is the situation in other parts of the country; apparently it is not. It also happened with the Inauguration, which was not re-run at all during the evening hours, and I wrote to the TV editor of the Times. He did mention in his column the fact that he had received many letters about this and he himself did not understand the networks and the independent local stations'not doing this -- but nothing happened. Can you bring the networks'attention to this? I was interested in James Webb Young's Madison Avenue column in which he raised the question: ``Do We Need a College of Propaganda''? (SR, Feb. 11). In my estimation, we definitely do; and the sad part of it is that we had one, which was rounding into excellent shape, and we let it disintegrate and die. During the war, we set up schools for the teaching of psychological warfare, which included the teaching of propaganda, both black and white and the various shades of grey in between. We had a couple of schools in this country, the principal one being on the Marshall Field estate out in Lloyd's Neck. There were also a couple in Canada, and several in England. The English schools preceded ours, and by the time we got into it they had learned a lot about the techniques of propaganda and its teaching. Four of us here in the United States attended, first as students, then as instructors, almost every one of these schools, in England, Canada, and the United States. We set up the Lloyd's Neck school, worked out its curriculum, and taught there. Toward the end of the war, we really felt that we had learned something about propaganda and how to teach it. When the end did come, and the schools were disbanded and abandoned, we felt and hoped that the machinery of psychological warfare would not be allowed to rust. We hoped that its practitioners and teachers might be put on some sort of reserve list and called back for refresher courses each year or so. Alas, no such thing happened. There apparently is no school of propaganda or psychological warfare. A study at the Pentagon and at the service academies revealed that nothing was being done there. And not one of the four men who attended all the schools has ever been called on to apply any of his knowledge in any way. Congratulations on the article ``Do We Need A College Of Propaganda''? This is one of the most constructive suggestions made in this critical field in years, and I certainly hope it sparks some action. many of us in public relations were flattered that Richard L. Tobin chose to devote his editorial in the March 11 Communications Supplement to the merger of the Public Relations Society of America and the American Public Relations Association. I was surprised and sorry to find in your issue of March 4 a long and detailed attack upon a book that had not yet been published. Whether in his forthcoming book C. P. Snow commits the errors of judgment and of fact with which your heavily autobiographical critic charged him is important. One should be able to get hold of the book at once. But the attack was made from an advance copy. If this practice should take root and spread, the man who submits a manuscript to a publisher will find himself reviewed before he is accepted and publication will become a sort of post-mortem formality. Editor's note: Sir Robert Watson-Watt wrote, on page 50 of SR Research for 4 March 1961: ``I have read an advance copy of the Snow book which is to be titled,'Science And Government. Until the work actually appears I am not privileged to analyze it publicly in detail. But I have compared its text with already published commentaries on the 1960 series of Godkin lectures at Harvard, from which the book was derived, and I can with confidence challenge the gist of C. P. Snow's incautious tale''. Watson-Watt's remarks in SR did not then, constitute a review of the book but a rebuttal to the Godkin Lectures. Representatives of Harvard University Press, which is publishing the book this month of April, recognize and freely acknowledge that they invited such reaction by allowing Life magazine to print an excerpt from the book in advance of the book's publication date. The text of the book leaves a somewhat milder impression than the prepublication excerpt. Sir Robert Watson-Watt's ``rebuttal'' of Sir Charles Snow's Godkin Lectures is marred throughout by too forceful a desire to defend Lindemann and apparently himself from Sir Charles'supposed falsehoods while stating those ``falsehoods'' in an unclear incoherent argument. The article presents the reader with an absurdity at its beginning. It calls the conclusion admitted valid by ``historians and military strategists alike'' a ``perverted conclusion. Nonsense''. It submits an enthusiastic, impressionistic conception of Lindemann contributing another aspect of the man, but on no more authoritative basis than Sir Charles'account. We are left to choose between the two Lindemanns. The only fact that holds any weight in the article is the result of the tea party. But we are to believe that Lindemann actively supported radar outside the Tizard Committee, and dissembling, discounted it inside? If so, I would lean to Sir Charles'conception of the man. I think it was a grave error to print the article at this time. To the unfortunate people unable to attend the Godkin lectures it casts an unjustifiable aura of falsehood over the book which may dissuade some people from reading it. 