The Fulton County Grand Jury said Friday an investigation of Atlanta's recent primary election produced no evidence that any irregularities took place.
The jury further said in term-end presentments that the City Executive Committee, which had over-all charge of the election, deserves the praise and thanks of the City of Atlanta for the manner in which the election was conducted.
The September-October term jury had been charged by Fulton Superior Court Judge Durwood Pye to investigate reports of possible irregularities in the hard-fought primary which was won by Mayor-nominate Ivan Allen Jr..
Only a relative handful of such reports was received, the jury said, considering the widespread interest in the election, the number of voters and the size of this city.
The jury said it did find that many of Georgia's registration and election laws are outmoded or inadequate and often ambiguous.
It recommended that Fulton legislators act to have these laws studied and revised to the end of modernizing and improving them.
The grand jury commented on a number of other topics, among them the Atlanta and Fulton County purchasing departments which it said are well operated and follow generally accepted practices which inure to the best interest of both governments.
Merger proposed
However, the jury said it believes these two offices should be combined to achieve greater efficiency and reduce the cost of administration.
The City Purchasing Department, the jury said, is lacking in experienced clerical personnel as a result of city personnel policies.
It urged that the city take steps to remedy this problem.
Implementation of Georgia's automobile title law was also recommended by the outgoing jury.
It urged that the next Legislature provide enabling funds and re-set the effective date so that an orderly implementation of the law may be effected.
The grand jury took a swipe at the State Welfare Department's handling of federal funds granted for child welfare services in foster homes.
The jurors said they realize a proportionate distribution of these funds might disable this program in our less populous counties.
Nevertheless, we feel that in the future Fulton County should receive some portion of these available funds, the jurors said.
Failure to do this will continue to place a disproportionate burden on Fulton taxpayers.
The jury also commented on the Fulton ordinary's court which has been under fire for its practices in the appointment of appraisers, guardians and administrators and the awarding of fees and compensation.
Wards protected
The jury said it found the court has incorporated into its operating procedures the recommendations of two previous grand juries, the Atlanta Bar Association and an interim citizens committee.
These actions should serve to protect in fact and in effect the court's wards from undue costs and its appointed and elected servants from unmeritorious criticisms, the jury said.
Regarding Atlanta's new multi-million-dollar airport, the jury recommended that when the new management takes charge Jan. 1 the airport be operated in a manner that will eliminate political influences.
The jury did not elaborate, but it added that there should be periodic surveillance of the pricing practices of the concessionaires for the purpose of keeping the prices reasonable.
Ask jail deputies
On other matters, the jury recommended that: (1)
Four additional deputies be employed at the Fulton County Jail and a doctor, medical intern or extern be employed for night and weekend duty at the jail.
(2)
Fulton legislators work with city officials to pass enabling legislation that will permit the establishment of a fair and equitable pension plan for city employes.
The jury praised the administration and operation of the Atlanta Police Department, the Fulton Tax Commissioner's Office, the Bellwood and Alpharetta prison farms, Grady Hospital and the Fulton Health Department.
Mayor William B. Hartsfield filed suit for divorce from his wife, Pearl Williams Hartsfield, in Fulton Superior Court Friday.
His petition charged mental cruelty.
The couple was married Aug. 2, 1913.
They have a son, William Berry Jr., and a daughter, Mrs. J. M. Cheshire of Griffin.
Attorneys for the mayor said that an amicable property settlement has been agreed upon.
The petition listed the mayor's occupation as attorney and his age as 71.
It listed his wife's age as 74 and place of birth as Opelika, Ala..
The petition said that the couple has not lived together as man and wife for more than a year.
The Hartsfield home is at 637 E. Pelham Rd. Aj.
Henry L. Bowden was listed on the petition as the mayor's attorney.
Hartsfield has been mayor of Atlanta, with exception of one brief interlude, since 1937.
His political career goes back to his election to city council in 1923.
The mayor's present term of office expires Jan. 1.
He will be succeeded by Ivan Allen Jr., who became a candidate in the Sept. 13 primary after Mayor Hartsfield announced that he would not run for reelection.
Georgia Republicans are getting strong encouragement to enter a candidate in the 1962 governor's race, a top official said Wednesday.
Robert Snodgrass, state GOP chairman, said a meeting held Tuesday night in Blue Ridge brought enthusiastic responses from the audience.
State Party Chairman James W. Dorsey added that enthusiasm was picking up for a state rally to be held Sept. 8 in Savannah at which newly elected Texas Sen. John Tower will be the featured speaker.
In the Blue Ridge meeting, the audience was warned that entering a candidate for governor would force it to take petitions out into voting precincts to obtain the signatures of registered voters.
Despite the warning, there was a unanimous vote to enter a candidate, according to Republicans who attended.
When the crowd was asked whether it wanted to wait one more term to make the race, it voted no--and there were no dissents.
The largest hurdle the Republicans would have to face is a state law which says that before making a first race, one of two alternative courses must be taken: 1
Five per cent of the voters in each county must sign petitions requesting that the Republicans be allowed to place names of candidates on the general election ballot, or 2
The Republicans must hold a primary under the county unit system--a system which the party opposes in its platform.
Sam Caldwell, State Highway Department public relations director, resigned Tuesday to work for Lt. Gov. Garland Byrd's campaign.
Caldwell's resignation had been expected for some time.
He will be succeeded by Rob Ledford of Gainesville, who has been an assistant more than three years.
When the gubernatorial campaign starts, Caldwell is expected to become a campaign coordinator for Byrd.
The Georgia Legislature will wind up its 1961 session Monday and head for home--where some of the highway bond money it approved will follow shortly.
Before adjournment Monday afternoon, the Senate is expected to approve a study of the number of legislators allotted to rural and urban areas to determine what adjustments should be made.
Gov. Vandiver is expected to make the traditional visit to both chambers as they work toward adjournment.
Vandiver likely will mention the $100 million highway bond issue approved earlier in the session as his first priority item.
Construction bonds
Meanwhile, it was learned the State Highway Department is very near being ready to issue the first $30 million worth of highway reconstruction bonds.
The bond issue will go to the state courts for a friendly test suit to test the validity of the act, and then the sales will begin and contracts let for repair work on some of Georgia's most heavily traveled highways.
A Highway Department source said there also is a plan there to issue some $3 million to $4 million worth of Rural Roads Authority bonds for rural road construction work.
A revolving fund
The department apparently intends to make the Rural Roads Authority a revolving fund under which new bonds would be issued every time a portion of the old ones are paid off by tax authorities.
Vandiver opened his race for governor in 1958 with a battle in the Legislature against the issuance of $50 million worth of additional rural roads bonds proposed by then Gov. Marvin Griffin.
The Highway Department source told The Constitution, however, that Vandiver has not been consulted yet about the plans to issue the new rural roads bonds.
Schley County Rep. B. D. Pelham will offer a resolution Monday in the House to rescind the body's action of Friday in voting itself a $10 per day increase in expense allowances.
Pelham said Sunday night there was research being done on whether the quickie vote on the increase can be repealed outright or whether notice would have to first be given that reconsideration of the action would be sought.
While emphasizing that technical details were not fully worked out, Pelham said his resolution would seek to set aside the privilege resolution which the House voted through 87-31.
A similar resolution passed in the Senate by a vote of 29-5.
As of Sunday night, there was no word of a resolution being offered there to rescind the action.
Pelham pointed out that Georgia voters last November rejected a constitutional amendment to allow legislators to vote on pay raises for future Legislature sessions.
A veteran Jackson County legislator will ask the Georgia House Monday to back federal aid to education, something it has consistently opposed in the past.
Rep. Mac Barber of Commerce is asking the House in a privilege resolution to endorse increased federal support for public education, provided that such funds be received and expended as state funds.
Barber, who is in his 13th year as a legislator, said there are some members of our congressional delegation in Washington who would like to see it (the resolution) passed.
But he added that none of Georgia's congressmen specifically asked him to offer the resolution.
The resolution, which Barber tossed into the House hopper Friday, will be formally read Monday.
It says that in the event Congress does provide this increase in federal funds, the State Board of Education should be directed to give priority to teacher pay raises.
Colquitt
-- After a long, hot controversy, Miller County has a new school superintendent, elected, as a policeman put it, in the coolest election I ever saw in this county.
The new school superintendent is Harry Davis, a veteran agriculture teacher, who defeated Felix Bush, a school principal and chairman of the Miller County Democratic Executive Committee.
Davis received 1,119 votes in Saturday's election, and Bush got 402.
Ordinary Carey Williams, armed with a pistol, stood by at the polls to insure order.
This was the coolest, calmest election I ever saw, Colquitt Policeman Tom Williams said.
Being at the polls was just like being at church.
I didn't smell a drop of liquor, and we didn't have a bit of trouble.
The campaign leading to the election was not so quiet, however.
It was marked by controversy, anonymous midnight phone calls and veiled threats of violence.
The former county school superintendent, George P. Callan, shot himself to death March 18, four days after he resigned his post in a dispute with the county school board.
During the election campaign, both candidates, Davis and Bush, reportedly received anonymous telephone calls.
Ordinary Williams said he, too, was subjected to anonymous calls soon after he scheduled the election.
Many local citizens feared that there would be irregularities at the polls, and Williams got himself a permit to carry a gun and promised an orderly election.
Sheriff Felix Tabb said the ordinary apparently made good his promise.
Everything went real smooth, the sheriff said.
There wasn't a bit of trouble.
Austin, Texas
-- Committee approval of Gov. Price Daniel's abandoned property act seemed certain Thursday despite the adamant protests of Texas bankers.
Daniel personally led the fight for the measure, which he had watered down considerably since its rejection by two previous Legislatures, in a public hearing before the House Committee on Revenue and Taxation.
Under committee rules, it went automatically to a subcommittee for one week.
But questions with which committee members taunted bankers appearing as witnesses left little doubt that they will recommend passage of it.
Daniel termed extremely conservative his estimate that it would produce 17 million dollars to help erase an anticipated deficit of 63 million dollars at the end of the current fiscal year next Aug. 31.
He told the committee the measure would merely provide means of enforcing the escheat law which has been on the books since Texas was a republic.
It permits the state to take over bank accounts, stocks and other personal property of persons missing for seven years or more.
The bill, which Daniel said he drafted personally, would force banks, insurance firms, pipeline companies and other corporations to report such property to the state treasurer.
The escheat law cannot be enforced now because it is almost impossible to locate such property, Daniel declared.
Dewey Lawrence, a Tyler lawyer representing the Texas Bankers Association, sounded the opposition keynote when he said it would force banks to violate their contractual obligations with depositors and undermine the confidence of bank customers.
If you destroy confidence in banks, you do something to the economy, he said.
You take out of circulation many millions of dollars.
Rep. Charles E. Hughes of Sherman, sponsor of the bill, said a failure to enact it would amount to making a gift out of the taxpayers' pockets to banks, insurance and pipeline companies.
His contention was denied by several bankers, including Scott Hudson of Sherman, Gaynor B. Jones of Houston, J. B. Brady of Harlingen and Howard Cox of Austin.
Cox argued that the bill is probably unconstitutional since, he said, it would impair contracts.
He also complained that not enough notice was given on the hearing, since the bill was introduced only last Monday.
Austin, Texas
-- Senators unanimously approved Thursday the bill of Sen. George Parkhouse of Dallas authorizing establishment of day schools for the deaf in Dallas and the four other largest counties.
The bill is designed to provide special schooling for more deaf students in the scholastic age at a reduced cost to the state.
There was no debate as the Senate passed the bill on to the House.
Operating budget for the day schools in the five counties of Dallas, Harris, Bexar, Tarrant and El Paso would be $451,500, which would be a savings of $157,460 yearly after the first year's capital outlay of $88,000 was absorbed, Parkhouse told the Senate.
The TEA estimated there would be 182 scholastics to attend the day school in Dallas County, saving them from coming to Austin to live in the state deaf school.
Dallas may get to hear a debate on horse race parimutuels soon between Reps. V. E. (Red) Berry and Joe Ratcliff.
While details are still to be worked out, Ratcliff said he expects to tell home folks in Dallas why he thinks Berry's proposed constitutional amendment should be rejected.
We're getting more'pro'letters than'con'on horse race betting, said Ratcliff.
But I believe if people were better informed on this question, most of them would oppose it also.
I'm willing to stake my political career on it.
Rep. Berry, an ex-gambler from San Antonio, got elected on his advocacy of betting on the ponies.
A House committee which heard his local option proposal is expected to give it a favorable report, although the resolution faces hard sledding later.
The house passed finally, and sent to the Senate, a bill extending the State Health Department's authority to give planning assistance to cities.
The senate quickly whipped through its meager fare of House bills approved by committees, passing the three on the calendar.
One validated acts of school districts.
Another enlarged authority of the Beaumont Navigation District.
The third amended the enabling act for creation of the Lamar county Hospital District, for which a special constitutional amendment previously was adopted.
Without dissent, senators passed a bill by Sen. A. R. Schwartz of Galveston authorizing establishment in the future of a school for the mentally retarded in the Gulf Coast district.
Money for its construction will be sought later on but in the meantime the State Hospital board can accept gifts and donations of a site.
Two tax revision bills were passed.
One, by Sen. Louis Crump of San Saba, would aid more than 17,000 retailers who pay a group of miscellaneous excise taxes by eliminating the requirement that each return be notarized.
Instead, retailers would sign a certificate of correctness, violation of which would carry a penalty of one to five years in prison, plus a $1,000 fine.
It was one of a series of recommendations by the Texas Research League.
The other bill, by Sen. A. M. Aikin Jr. of Paris, would relieve real estate brokers, who pay their own annual licensing fee, from the $12 annual occupation license on brokers in such as stocks and bonds.
Natural gas public utility companies would be given the right of eminent domain, under a bill by Sen. Frank Owen 3, of El Paso, to acquire sites for underground storage reservoirs for gas.
Marshall Formby of Plainview, former chairman of the Texas Highway Commission, suggested a plan to fill by appointment future vacancies in the Legislature and Congress, eliminating the need for costly special elections.
Under Formby's plan, an appointee would be selected by a board composed of the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the House, attorney general and chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
Austin, Texas
-- State representatives decided Thursday against taking a poll on what kind of taxes Texans would prefer to pay.
An adverse vote of 81 to 65 kept in the State Affairs Committee a bill which would order the referendum on the April 4 ballot, when Texas votes on a U.S. senator.
Rep. Wesley Roberts of Seminole, sponsor of the poll idea, said that further delay in the committee can kill the bill.
The West Texan reported that he had finally gotten Chairman Bill Hollowell of the committee to set it for public hearing on Feb. 22.
The proposal would have to receive final legislative approval, by two-thirds majorities, before March 1 to be printed on the April 4 ballot, Roberts said.
Opponents generally argued that the ballot couldn't give enough information about tax proposals for the voters to make an intelligent choice.
All Dallas members voted with Roberts, except Rep. Bill Jones, who was absent.
Austin, Texas
-- Paradise lost to the alleged water needs of Texas' big cities Thursday.
Rep. James Cotten of Weatherford insisted that a water development bill passed by the Texas House of Representatives was an effort by big cities like Dallas and Fort Worth to cover up places like Paradise, a Wise County hamlet of 250 people.
When the shouting ended, the bill passed, 114 to 4, sending it to the Senate, where a similar proposal is being sponsored by Sen. George Parkhouse of Dallas.
Most of the fire was directed by Cotten against Dallas and Sen. Parkhouse.
The bill would increase from $5,000,000 to $15,000,000 the maximum loan the state could make to a local water project.
Cotten construed this as a veiled effort by Parkhouse to help Dallas and other large cities get money which Cotten felt could better be spent providing water for rural Texas.
Statements by other legislators that Dallas is paying for all its water program by local bonds, and that less populous places would benefit most by the pending bill, did not sway Cotten's attack.
The bill's defenders were mostly small-town legislators like J. W. Buchanan of Dumas, Eligio (Kika) De La Garza of Mission, Sam F. Collins of Newton and Joe Chapman of Sulphur Springs.
This is a poor boy's bill, said Chapman.
Dallas and Fort Worth can vote bonds.
This would help the little peanut districts.
Austin, Texas
-- A Houston teacher, now serving in the Legislature, proposed Thursday a law reducing the time spent learning educational methods.
Rep. Henry C. Grover, who teaches history in the Houston public schools, would reduce from 24 to 12 semester hours the so-called teaching methods courses required to obtain a junior or senior high school teaching certificate.
A normal year's work in college is 30 semester hours.
Grover also would require junior-senior high teachers to have at least 24 semester hours credit in the subject they are teaching.
The remainder of the 4-year college requirement would be in general subjects.
A person with a master's degree in physics, chemistry, math or English, yet who has not taken Education courses, is not permitted to teach in the public schools, said Grover.
College teachers in Texas are not required to have the Education courses.
Fifty-three of the 150 representatives immediately joined Grover as co-signers of the proposal.
Paris, Texas (sp.)
-- The board of regents of Paris Junior College has named Dr. Clarence Charles Clark of Hays, Kan. as the school's new president.
Dr. Clark will succeed Dr. J. R. McLemore, who will retire at the close of the present school term.
Dr. Clark holds an earned Doctor of Education degree from the University of Oklahoma.
He also received a Master of Science degree from Texas A & I College and a Bachelor of Science degree from Southwestern State College, Weatherford, Okla..
In addition, Dr. Clark has studied at Rhode Island State College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During his college career, Dr. Clark was captain of his basketball team and was a football letterman.
Dr. Clark has served as teacher and principal in Oklahoma high schools, as teacher and athletic director at Raymondville, Texas, High School, as an instructor at the University of Oklahoma, and as an associate professor of education at Fort Hays, Kan., State College.
He has served as a border patrolman and was in the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army.
Denton, Texas (sp.)
-- Principals of the 13 schools in the Denton Independent School District have been re-elected for the 1961-62 session upon the recommendation of Supt. Chester O. Strickland.
State and federal legislation against racial discrimination in employment was called for yesterday in a report of a blue ribbon citizens committee on the aid to dependent children program.
The report, culminating a year long study of the ADC program in Cook county by a New York City welfare consulting firm, listed 10 long range recommendations designed to reduce the soaring ADC case load.
The report called racial discrimination in employment one of the most serious causes of family breakdown, desertion, and ADC dependency.
Must solve problem
The monthly cost of ADC to more than 100,000 recipients in the county is 4.4 million dollars, said C. Virgil Martin, president of Carson Pirie Scott & Co., committee chairman.
We must solve the problems which have forced these people to depend upon ADC for subsistence, Martin said.
The volume of ADC cases will decrease, Martin reported, when the community is able to deal effectively with two problems: Relatively limited skills and discrimination in employment because of color.
These, he said, are two of the principal underlying causes for family breakups leading to ADC.
Calls for extension
Other recommendations made by the committee are:
Extension of the ADC program to all children in need living with any relatives, including both parents, as a means of preserving family unity.
Research projects as soon as possible on the causes and prevention of dependency and illegitimacy.
Several defendants in the Summerdale police burglary trial made statements indicating their guilt at the time of their arrest, Judge James B. Parsons was told in Criminal court yesterday.
The disclosure by Charles Bellows, chief defense counsel, startled observers and was viewed as the prelude to a quarrel between the six attorneys representing the eight former policemen now on trial.
Bellows made the disclosure when he asked Judge Parsons to grant his client, Alan Clements, 30, a separate trial.
Bellows made the request while the all-woman jury was out of the courtroom.
Fears prejudicial aspects
The statements may be highly prejudicial to my client, Bellows told the court.
Some of the defendants strongly indicated they knew they were receiving stolen property.
It is impossible to get a fair trial when some of the defendants made statements involving themselves and others.
Judge Parsons leaned over the bench and inquired, You mean some of the defendants made statements admitting this?
Yes, your honor, replied Bellows.
What this amounts to, if true, is that there will be a free-for-all fight in this case.
There is a conflict among the defendants.
Washington, July 24
-- President Kennedy today pushed aside other White House business to devote all his time and attention to working on the Berlin crisis address he will deliver tomorrow night to the American people over nationwide television and radio.
The President spent much of the week-end at his summer home on Cape Cod writing the first drafts of portions of the address with the help of White House aids in Washington with whom he talked by telephone.
Shortly after the Chief Executive returned to Washington in midmorning from Hyannis Port, Mass., a White House spokesman said the address text still had quite a way to go toward completion.
Decisions are made
Asked to elaborate, Pierre Salinger, White House press secretary, replied, I would say it's got to go thru several more drafts.
The last 10 cases in the investigation of the Nov. 8 election were dismissed yesterday by Acting Judge John M. Karns, who charged that the prosecution obtained evidence by unfair and fundamentally illegal means.
Karns said that the cases involved a matter of even greater significance than the guilt or innocence of the 50 persons.
He said evidence was obtained in violation of the legal rights of citizens.
Karns' ruling pertained to eight of the 10 cases.
In the two other cases he ruled that the state had been unable to make a case.
Contempt proceedings originally had been brought against 677 persons in 133 precincts by Morris J. Wexler, special prosecutor.
Issue jury subpoenas
Wexler admitted in earlier court hearings that he issued grand jury subpenas to about 200 persons involved in the election investigation, questioned the individuals in the Criminal courts building, but did not take them before the grand jury.
Mayer Goldberg, attorney for election judges in the 58th precinct of the 23d ward, argued this procedure constituted intimidation.
Wexler has denied repeatedly that coercion was used in questioning.
Karns said it was a wrongful act for Wexler to take statements privately and outside of the grand jury room.
He said this constituted a very serious misuse of the Criminal court processes.
Actually, the abuse of the process may have constituted a contempt of the Criminal court of Cook county, altho vindication of the authority of that court is not the function of this court, said Karns, who is a City judge in East St. Louis sitting in Cook County court.
Faced seven cases
Karns had been scheduled this week to hear seven cases involving 35 persons.
Wexler had charged the precinct judges in these cases with complementary miscount of the vote, in which votes would be taken from one candidate and given to another.
The cases involved judges in the 33d, 24th, and 42d precincts of the 31st ward, the 21st and 28th precincts of the 29th ward, the 18th precinct of the 4th ward, and the 9th precinct of the 23d ward.
The case of the judges in the 58th precinct of the 23d ward had been heard previously and taken under advisement by Karns.
Two other cases also were under advisement.
Claims precedent lacking
After reading his statement discharging the 23d ward case, Karns told Wexler that if the seven cases scheduled for trial also involved persons who had been subpenaed, he would dismiss them.
Washington, Feb. 9
The President, in a special message to Congress, tied in with his aged care plan requests for large federal grants to finance medical and dental scholarships, build 20 new medical and 20 new dental schools, and expand child health care and general medical research.
The aged care plan, similar to one the President sponsored last year as a senator, a fight on Capitol hill.
It was defeated in Congress last year.
Cost up to $37 a year
It would be financed by boosting the social security payroll tax by as much as $37 a year for each of the workers now paying such taxes.
The social security payroll tax is now 6 per cent--3 per cent on each worker and employer--on the first $4,800 of pay per year.
The Kennedy plan alone would boost the base to $5,000 a year and the payroll tax to 6.5 per cent--3.25 per cent each.
Similar payroll tax boosts would be imposed on those under the railroad retirement system.
The payroll tax would actually rise to 7.5 per cent starting Jan. 1, 1963, if the plan is approved, because the levy is already scheduled to go up by 1 per cent on that date to pay for other social security costs.
Outlays would increase
Officials estimated the annual tax boost for the medical plan would amount to 1.5 billion dollars and that medical benefits paid out would run 1 billion or more in the first year, 1963.
Both figures would go higher in later years.
Other parts of the Kennedy health plan would entail federal grants of 750 million to 1 billion dollars over the next 10 years.
These would be paid for out of general, not payroll, taxes.
Nursing home care
The aged care plan carries these benefits for persons over 65 who are under the social security and railroad retirement systems: 1
Full payment of hospital bills for stays up to 90 days for each illness, except that the patient would pay $10 a day of the cost for the first nine days.
Full payment of nursing home bills for up to 180 days following discharge from a hospital.
A patient could receive up to 300 days paid-for nursing home care under a unit formula allowing more of such care for those who use none or only part of the hospital-care credit.
Hospital outpatient clinic diagnostic service for all costs in excess of $20 a patient.
Community visiting nurse services at home for up to 240 days an illness.
The President noted that Congress last year passed a law providing grants to states to help pay medical bills of the needy aged.
Calls proposal modest
He said his plan is designed to meet the needs of those millions who have no wish to receive care at the taxpayers' expense, but who are nevertheless staggered by the drain on their savings--or those of their children--caused by an extended hospital stay.
This is a very modest proposal cut to meet absolutely essential needs, he said, and with sufficient'deductible'requirements to discourage any malingering or unnecessary overcrowding of our hospitals.
This is not a program of socialized medicine.
It is a program of prepayment of health costs with absolute freedom of choice guaranteed.
Every person will choose his own doctor and hospital.
Wouldn't pay doctors
The plan does not cover doctor bills.
They would still be paid by the patient.
Apart from the aged care plan the President's most ambitious and costly proposals were for federal scholarships, and grants to build or enlarge medical and dental schools.
The President said the nation's 92 medical and 47 dental schools cannot now handle the student load needed to meet the rising need for health care.
Moreover, he said, many qualified young people are not going into medicine and dentistry because they can't afford the schooling costs.
Contributions to schools
The scholarship plan would provide federal contributions to each medical and dental school equal to $1,500 a year for one-fourth of the first year students.
The schools could use the money to pay 4-year scholarships, based on need, of up to $2,000 a year per student.
In addition, the government would pay a $1,000 cost of education grant to the schools for each $1,500 in scholarship grants.
Officials estimated the combined programs would cost 5.1 million dollars the first year and would go up to 21 millions by 1966.
The President recommended federal matching grants totaling 700 million dollars in 10 years for constructing new medical and dental schools or enlarging the capacity of existing ones.
More for nursing homes
In the area of community health services, the President called for doubling the present 10 million dollar a year federal grants for nursing home construction.
He asked for another 10 million dollar initial appropriation for stimulatory grants to states to improve nursing homes.
He further proposed grants of an unspecified sum for experimental hospitals.
In the child health field, the President said he will recommend later an increase in funds for programs under the children's bureau.
He also asked Congress to approve establishment of a national child health institute.
Asks research funds
The President said he will ask Congress to increase grants to states for vocational rehabilitation.
He did not say by how much.
For medical research he asked a 20 million dollar a year increase, from 30 to 50 millions, in matching grants for building research facilities.
The President said he will also propose increasing, by an unspecified amount, the 540 million dollars in the 1961-62 budget for direct government research in medicine.
The President said his proposals combine the indispensable elements in a sound health program--people, knowledge, services, facilities, and the means to pay for them.
Reaction as expected
Congressional reaction to the message was along expected lines.
Legislators who last year opposed placing aged-care under the social security system criticized the President's plan.
Those who backed a similar plan last year hailed the message.
Senate Republican Leader Dirksen (Ill.) and House Republican Leader Charles Halleck (Ind.) said the message did not persuade them to change their opposition to compulsory medical insurance.
Halleck said the voluntary care plan enacted last year should be given a fair trial first.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D., Tex.) called the Kennedy program a mighty fine thing, but made no prediction on its fate in the House.
Washington, Feb. 9
-- Acting hastily under White House pressure, the Senate tonight confirmed Robert C. Weaver as the nation's federal housing chief.
Only 11 senators were on the floor and there was no record vote.
A number of scattered ayes and noes was heard.
Customary Senate rules were ignored in order to speed approval of the Negro leader as administrator of the housing and home finance agency.
In the last eight years, all Presidential appointments, including those of cabinet rank, have been denied immediate action because of a Senate rule requiring at least a 24 hour delay after they are reported to the floor.
Enforce by demand
The rule was enforced by demand of Sen. Wayne Morse (D., Ore.) in connection with President Eisenhower's cabinet selections in 1953 and President Kennedy's in 1961.
Oslo
The most positive element to emerge from the Oslo meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization Foreign Ministers has been the freer, franker, and wider discussions, animated by much better mutual understanding than in past meetings.
This has been a working session of an organization that, by its very nature, can only proceed along its route step by step and without dramatic changes.
In Oslo, the ministers have met in a climate of candor, and made a genuine attempt to get information and understanding one another's problems.
This atmosphere of understanding has been particularly noticeable where relations are concerned between the colonialist powers and those who have never, or not for a long time, had such problems.
Explosion avoided
In the case of Portugal, which a few weeks ago was rumored ready to walk out of the NATO Council should critics of its Angola policy prove harsh, there has been a noticeable relaxation of tension.
The general, remarkably courteous, explanation has left basic positions unchanged, but there has been no explosion in the council.
There should even be no more bitter surprises in the UN General Assembly as to NATO members' votes, since a new ad hoc NATO committee has been set up so that in the future such topics as Angola will be discussed in advance.
Canada alone has been somewhat out of step with the Oslo attempt to get all the allied cars back on the track behind the NATO locomotive.
Even Norway, despite daily but limited manifestations against atomic arms in the heart of this northernmost capital of the alliance, is today closer to the NATO line.
On the negative side of the balance sheet must be set some disappointment that the United States leadership has not been as much in evidence as hoped for.
One diplomat described the tenor of Secretary of State Dean Rusk's speeches as inconclusive.
But he hastened to add that, if United States policies were not always clear, despite Mr. Rusk's analysis of the various global danger points and setbacks for the West, this may merely mean the new administration has not yet firmly fixed its policy.
Exploratory mood
A certain vagueness may also be caused by tactical appreciation of the fact that the present council meeting is a semipublic affair, with no fewer than six Soviet correspondents accredited.
The Secretary of State himself, in his first speech, gave some idea of the tremendous march of events inside and outside the United States that has preoccupied the new administration in the past four months.
The Secretary of State has also solemnly repeated a warning to the Soviet Union that the United States will not stand for another setback in Berlin, an affirmation once again taken up by the council as a whole.
Conflict surveyed
This increase in the threshold, as the conventional forces strengthening is called, will prove one of the alliance's most difficult problems in the months to come.
Each ally will have to carry out obligations long since laid down, but never completely fulfilled.
Washington
The Kennedy administration moves haltingly toward a Geneva conference on Laos just as serious debate over its foreign policy erupts for the first time.
There is little optimism here that the Communists will be any more docile at the conference table than they were in military actions on the ground in Laos.
The United States, State Department officials explain, now is mainly interested in setting up an international inspection system which will prevent Laos from being used as a base for Communist attacks on neighboring Thailand and South Viet Nam.
They count on the aid of the neutral countries attending the Geneva conference to achieve this.
The United States hopes that any future Lao Cabinet would not become Communist dominated.
But it is apparent that no acceptable formula has been found to prevent such a possibility.
Policies modified
The inclination here is to accept a de facto cease-fire in Laos, rather than continue to insist on a verification of the cease-fire by the international control commission before participating in the Geneva conference.
This is another of the modifications of policy on Laos that the Kennedy administration has felt compelled to make.
It excuses these actions as being the chain reaction to basic errors made in the previous administration.
Its spokesmen insist that there has not been time enough to institute reforms in military and economic aid policies in the critical areas.
But with the months moving on--and the immediate confrontations with the Communists showing no gain for the free world--the question arises:
How effective have Kennedy administration first foreign policy decisions been in dealing with Communist aggression?
Former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon in Detroit called for a firmer and tougher policy toward the Soviet Union.
He was critical of what he feels is President Kennedy's tendency to be too conciliatory.
GOP restrained
It does not take a Gallup poll to find out that most Republicans in Congress feel this understates the situation as Republicans see it.
They can hardly restrain themselves from raising the question of whether Republicans, if they had been in power, would have made amateurish and monumental blunders in Cuba.
One Republican senator told this correspondent that he was constantly being asked why he didn't attack the Kennedy administration on this score.
His reply, he said, was that he agreed to the need for unity in the country now.
But he further said that it was better politics to let others question the wisdom of administration policies first.
Kennedy administration policies also have been assailed now from another direction by 70 Harvard, Boston University, Brandeis, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology educators.
Detente urged
This group pleads with the administration to give no further support for the invasion of Cuba by exile groups.
It recommends that the United States seek instead to detach the Castro regime from the Communist bloc by working for a diplomatic detente and a resumption of trade relations;
and concentrate its constructive efforts on eliminating in other parts of Latin America the social conditions on which totalitarian nationalism feeds.
Mr. Nixon, for his part, would oppose intervention in Cuba without specific provocation.
But he did recommend that President Kennedy state clearly that if Communist countries shipped any further arms to Cuba that it would not be tolerated.
Until the Cuban fiasco and the Communist military victories in Laos, almost any observer would have said that President Kennedy had blended a program that respected, generally, the opinions voiced both by Mr. Nixon and the professors.
Aid plans revamped
Very early in his administration he informed the Kremlin through diplomatic channels, a high official source disclosed, that the new administration would react even tougher than the Eisenhower administration would during the formative period of the administration.
Strenuous efforts were made to remove pin pricking from administration statements.
Policies on nuclear test ban negotiations were reviewed and changed.
But thus far there has been no response in kind.
Foreign aid programs were revamped to give greater emphasis to economic aid and to encourage political reform in recipient nations.
In Laos, the administration looked at the Eisenhower administration efforts to show determination by sailing a naval fleet into Southeast Asian waters as a useless gesture.
Again and again it asked the Communists to freeze the military situation in Laos.
But the Communists aided the Pathet Lao at an even faster rate.
And after several correspondents went into Pathet Lao territory and exposed the huge build-up, administration spokesmen acclaimed them for performing a great service and laid the matter before the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
SEATO was steamed up and prepared contingency plans for coping with the military losses in Laos.
But the Communists never gave sufficient provocation at any one time for the United States to want to risk a limited or an all-out war over Laos.
(Some SEATO nations disagreed, however.
There was the further complication that the administration had very early concluded that Laos was ill suited to be an ally, unlike its more determined neighbors, Thailand and South Viet Nam.
The administration declared itself in favor of a neutralized Laos.
The pro-Western government, which the United States had helped in a revolt against the Souvanna Phouma neutralist government, never did appear to spark much fighting spirit in the Royal Lao Army.
There certainly was not any more energy displayed after it was clear the United States would not back the pro-Western government to the hilt.
If the administration ever had any ideas that it could find an acceptable alternative to Prince Souvanna Phouma, whom it felt was too trusting of Communists, it gradually had to relinquish them.
One factor was the statement of Senator J. W. Fulbright (D) of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He declared on March 25 that the United States had erred a year and a half ago by encouraging the removal of Prince Souvanna.
Washington
The White House is taking extraordinary steps to check the rapid growth of juvenile delinquency in the United States.
The President is deeply concerned over this problem and its effect upon the vitality of the nation.
The President asks the support and cooperation of Congress in his efforts through the enactment of legislation to provide federal grants to states for specified efforts in combating this disturbing crime trend.
Offenses multiply
Simultaneously the President announced Thursday the appointment of David L. Hackett, a special assistant to the Attorney General, as executive director of the new Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime.
His sense of urgency in this matter stems from the fact that court cases and juvenile arrests have more than doubled since 1948, each year showing an increase in offenders.
Among arrests reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1959, about half for burglary and larceny involved persons under 18 years of age.
East Providence should organize its civil defense setup and begin by appointing a full-time director, Raymond H. Hawksley, the present city CD head, believes.
Mr. Hawksley said yesterday he would be willing to go before the city council or anyone else locally to outline his proposal at the earliest possible time.
East Providence now has no civil defense program.
Mr. Hawksley, the state's general treasurer, has been a part-time CD director in the city for the last nine years.
He is not interested in being named a full-time director.
Noting that President Kennedy has handed the Defense Department the major responsibility for the nation's civil defense program, Mr. Hawksley said the federal government would pay half the salary of a full-time local director.
He expressed the opinion the city could hire a CD director for about $3,500 a year and would only have to put up half that amount on a matching fund basis to defray the salary costs.
Mr. Hawksley said he believed there are a number of qualified city residents who would be willing to take the full-time CD job.
One of these men is former Fire Chief John A. Laughlin, he said.
Along with a director, the city should provide a CD headquarters so that pertinent information about the local organization would be centralized.
Mr. Hawksley said.
One advantage that would come to the city in having a full-time director, he said, is that East Providence would become eligible to apply to the federal government for financial aid in purchasing equipment needed for a sound civil defense program.
Matching funds also can be obtained for procurement of such items as radios, sirens and rescue trucks, he said.
Mr. Hawksley believes that East Providence could use two more rescue trucks, similar to the CD vehicle obtained several years ago and now detailed to the Central Fire Station.
He would assign one of the rescue trucks to the Riverside section of the city and the other to the Rumford area.
Speaking of the present status of civil defense in the city, Mr. Hawksley said he would be willing to bet that not more than one person in a hundred would know what to do or where to go in the event of an enemy attack.
The Narragansett Race Track grounds is one assembly point, he said, and a drive-in theater in Seekonk would be another.
Riverside residents would go to the Seekonk assembly point.
Mr. Hawksley said he was not critical of city residents for not knowing what to do or where to assemble in case of an air attack.
Such vital information, he said, has to be made available to the public frequently and at regular intervals for residents to know.
If the city council fails to consider appointment of a full-time CD director, Mr. Hawksley said, then he plans to call a meeting early in September so that a civil defense organization will be developed locally.
One of the first things he would do, he said, would be to organize classes in first aid.
Other steps would be developed after information drifts down to the local level from the federal government.
Rhode Island is going to examine its Sunday sales law with possible revisions in mind.
Governor Notte said last night he plans to name a committee to make the study and come up with recommendations for possible changes in time for the next session of the General Assembly.
The governor's move into the so-called blue law controversy came in the form of a letter to Miss Mary R. Grant, deputy city clerk of Central Falls.
A copy was released to the press.
Mr. Notte was responding to a resolution adopted by the Central Falls City Council on July 10 and sent to the state house by Miss Grant.
The resolution urges the governor to have a complete study of the Sunday sales laws made with an eye to their revision at the next session of the legislature.
While the city council suggested that the Legislative Council might perform the review, Mr. Notte said that instead he will take up the matter with Atty. Gen. J. Joseph Nugent to get the benefit of his views.
He will then appoint the study committee with Mr. Nugent's cooperation, the governor said.
I would expect the proposed committee to hold public hearings, Mr. Notte said, to obtain the views of the general public and religious, labor and special-interest groups affected by these laws.
The governor wrote Miss Grant that he has been concerned for some time with the continuous problem which confronts our local and state law enforcement officers as a result of the laws regulating Sunday sales.
The attorney general has advised local police that it is their duty to enforce the blue laws.
Should there be evidence they are shirking, he has said, the state police will step into the situation.
There has been more activity across the state line in Massachusetts than in Rhode Island in recent weeks toward enforcement of the Sunday sales laws.
The statutes, similar in both the Bay State and Rhode Island and dating back in some instances to colonial times, severely limit the types of merchandise that may be sold on the Sabbath.
The Central Falls City Council expressed concern especially that more foods be placed on the eligible list and that neighborhood grocery and variety stores be allowed to do business on Sunday.
The only day they have a chance to compete with large supermarkets is on Sunday, the council's resolution said.
The small shops must be retained, for they provide essential service to the community, according to the resolution, which added that they also are the source of livelihood for thousands of our neighbors.
It declares that Sunday sales licenses provide great revenue to the local government.
The council advised the governor that large supermarkets, factory outlets and department stores not be allowed to do business on Sunday.
They operate on a volume basis, it was contended, and are not essential to provide the more limited but vital shopping needs of the community.
Liberals and conservatives in both parties--Democratic and Republican--should divorce themselves and form two independent parties, George H. Reama, nationally known labor-management expert, said here yesterday.
Mr. Reama told the Rotary Club of Providence at its luncheon at the Sheraton-Biltmore Hotel that about half of the people in the country want the welfare type of government and the other half want a free enterprise system.
He suggested that a regrouping of forces might allow the average voter a better pull at the right lever for him on election day.
He said he was confessing that I was a member of the Socialist Party in 1910.
That, he added, was when he was a very young man, a machinist and toolmaker by trade.
That was before I studied law.
Some of my fellow workers were grooming me for an office in the Socialist Party.
The lawyer with whom I studied law steered me off the Socialist track.
He steered me to the right track--the free enterprise track.
He said that when he was a Socialist in 1910, the party called for government operation of all utilities and the pooling of all resources.
He suggested that without the Socialist Party ever gaining a national victory, most of its original program has come to pass under both major parties.
Mr. Reama, who retired as vice president of the American Screw Co. in 1955 said, Both parties in the last election told us that we need a five per cent growth in the gross national product--but neither told us how to achieve it.
He said he favors wage increases for workers--but manufacturers are caught in a profit squeeze--and raises should only come when the public is conditioned to higher prices, he added.
Indicating the way in which he has turned his back on his 1910 philosophy, Mr. Reama said: A Socialist is a person who believes in dividing everything he does not own.
Mr. Reama, far from really being retired, is engaged in industrial relations counseling.
A petition bearing the signatures of more than 1,700 Johnston taxpayers was presented to the town council last night as what is hoped will be the first step in obtaining a home rule charter for the town.
William A. Martinelli, chairman of the Citizens Group of Johnston, transferred the petitions from his left hand to his right hand after the council voted to accept them at the suggestion of Council President Raymond Fortin Sr..
The law which governs home rule charter petitions states that they must be referred to the chairman of the board of canvassers for verification of the signatures within 10 days and Mr. Martinelli happens to hold that post.
Mr. Martinelli explained that there should be more than enough signatures to assure the scheduling of a vote on the home rule charter and possible election of a nine member charter commission within 70 days.
He explained that by law the council must establish procedures for a vote on the issue within 60 days after the board of canvassers completes its work.
A difference of opinion arose between Mr. Martinelli and John P. Bourcier, town solicitor, over the exact manner in which the vote is handled.
Mr. Martinelli has, in recent weeks, been of the opinion that a special town meeting would be called for the vote, while Mr. Bourcier said that a special election might be called instead.
Mr. Bourcier said that he had consulted several Superior Court justices in the last week and received opinions favoring both procedures.
He assured Mr. Martinelli and the council that he would study the correct method and report back to the council as soon as possible.
Mr. Martinelli said yesterday that the Citizens Group of Johnston will meet again July 24 to plan further strategy in the charter movement.
He said that the group has no candidates for the charter commission in mind at present, but that it will undoubtedly endorse candidates when the time comes.
After inspiring this, I think we should certainly follow through on it, he declared.
It has become our responsibility and I hope that the Citizens Group will spearhead the movement.
He said he would not be surprised if some of the more than 30 members of the group are interested in running on the required non-partisan ballot for posts on the charter commission.
Our most immediate goal is to increase public awareness of the movement, he indicated, and to tell them what this will mean for the town.
He expects that if the present timetable is followed a vote will be scheduled during the last week in September.
Some opposition to the home rule movement started to be heard yesterday, with spokesmen for the town's insurgent Democratic leadership speaking out against the home rule charter in favor of the model municipal league charter.
Increasing opposition can be expected in coming weeks, it was indicated.
Misunderstanding of the real meaning of a home rule charter was cited as a factor which has caused the Citizens Group to obtain signatures under what were termed false pretenses.
Several signers affixed their names, it was learned, after being told that no tax increase would be possible without consent of the General Assembly and that a provision could be included in the charter to have the town take over the Johnston Sanitary District sewer system.
Action on a new ordinance permitting motorists who plead guilty to minor traffic offenses to pay fines at the local police station may be taken at Monday's special North Providence Town Council meeting.
Council president Frank SanAntonio said yesterday he may ask the council to formally request Town Solicitor Michael A. Abatuno to draft the ordinance.
At the last session of the General Assembly, the town was authorized to adopt such an ordinance as a means of making enforcement of minor offenses more effective.
Nothing has been done yet to take advantage of the enabling legislation.
At present all offenses must be taken to Sixth District Court for disposition.
Local police have hesitated to prosecute them because of the heavy court costs involved even for the simplest offense.
Plainfield
-- James P. Mitchell and Sen. Walter H. Jones R-Bergen, last night disagreed on the value of using as a campaign issue a remark by Richard J. Hughes, Democratic gubernatorial candidate, that the GOP is Campaigning on the carcass of Eisenhower Republicanism.
Mitchell was for using it, Jones against, and Sen. Wayne Dumont Jr. R-Warren did not mention it when the three Republican gubernatorial candidates spoke at staggered intervals before 100 persons at the Park Hotel.
The controversial remark was first made Sunday by Hughes at a Westfield Young Democratic Club cocktail party at the Scotch Plains Country Club.
It was greeted with a chorus of boos by 500 women in Trenton Monday at a forum of the State Federation of Women's Clubs.
Hughes said Monday, It is the apparent intention of the Republican Party to campaign on the carcass of what they call Eisenhower Republicanism, but the heart stopped beating and the lifeblood congealed after Eisenhower retired.
Now he's gone, the Republican Party is not going to be able to sell the tattered remains to the people of the state.
Sunday he had added, We can love Eisenhower the man, even if we considered him a mediocre president but there is nothing left of the Republican Party without his leadership.
Mitchell said the statement should become a major issue in the primary and the fall campaign.
How can a man with any degree of common decency charge this?
He asked.
The former secretary of labor said he was proud to be an Eisenhower Republican and proud to have absorbed his philosophy while working in his adminstration.
Mitchell said the closeness of the outcome in last fall's Presidential election did not mean that Eisenhower Republicanism was a dead issue.
Regrets attack
Jones said he regretted Hughes had made a personal attack on a past president.
He is wrong to inject Eisenhower into this campaign, he said, because the primary is being waged on state issues and I will not be forced into re-arguing an old national campaign.
The audience last night did not respond with either applause or boos to mention of Hughes' remark.
Dumont spoke on the merit of having an open primary.
He then launched into what the issues should be in the campaign.
State aid to schools, the continuance of railroad passenger service, the proper uses of surplus funds of the Port of New York Authority, and making New Jersey attractive to new industry.
Decries joblessness
Mitchell decried the high rate of unemployment in the state and said the Meyner administration and the Republican-controlled State Senate Must share the blame for this.
Noting that Plainfield last year had lost the Mack Truck Co. plant, he said industry will not come into this state until there is tax reform.
But I am not in favor of a sales or state income tax at this time, Mitchell said.
Jones, unhappy that the candidates were limited to eight minutes for a speech and no audience questions, saved his barbs for Mitchell.
He said Mitchell is against the centralization of government in Washington but looks to the Kennedy Administration for aid to meet New Jersey school and transportation crises.
He calls for help while saying he is against centralization, but you can't have it both ways, Jones said.
The state is now faced with the immediate question of raising new taxes whether on utilities, real estate or motor vehicles, he said, and I challenge Mitchell to tell the people where he stands on the tax issue.
Defends Ike
Earlier, Mitchell said in a statement:
I think that all Americans will resent deeply the statements made about President Eisenhower by Richard J. Hughes.
I find it hard to understand how anyone seeking a position in public life could demonstrate such poor judgment and bad taste.
Such a vicious statement can only have its origin in the desire of a new political candidate to try to make his name known by condemning a man of world stature.
It can only rebound to Mr. Hughes' discredit.
Sees Jones ahead
Sen. Charles W. Sandman, R-Cape May, said today Jones will run well ahead of his GOP opponents for the gubernatorial nomination.
Sandman, state campaign chairman for Jones, was addressing a meeting in the Military Park Hotel, Newark, of Essex County leaders and campaign managers for Jones.
Sandman told the gathering that reports from workers on a local level all over the state indicate that Jones will be chosen the Republican Party's nominee with the largest majority given a candidate in recent years.
Sandman said: The announcement that Sen. Clifford Case Aj, has decided to spend all his available time campaigning for Mr. Mitchell is a dead giveaway.
It is a desperate effort to prop up a sagging candidate who has proven he cannot answer any questions about New Jersey's problems.
We have witnessed in this campaign the effort to project Mr. Mitchell as the image of a unity candidate from Washington.
That failed.
We are now witnessing an effort to transfer to Mr. Mitchell some of the glow of Sen. Case's candidacy of last year.
That, too, will fail.
Sandman announced the appointment of Mrs. Harriet Copeland Greenfield of 330 Woodland Ave., Westfield, as state chairman of the Republican Women for Jones Committee.
Mrs. Greenfield is president of the Westfield Women's Republican Club and is a Westfield county committeewoman.
County Supervisor Weldon R. Sheets, who is a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, today called for an end to paper ballots in those counties in the state which still use them.
The proposal, Sheets said, represents part of his program for election reforms necessary to make democracy in New Jersey more than a lip service word.
Sheets said that his proposed law would offer state financing aid for the purchase of voting machines, enabling counties to repay the loan over a 10-year period without interest or charge.
Sheets added that he would ask for exclusive use of voting machines in the state by January, 1964.
Although he pointed out that mandatory legislation impinging on home rule is basically distasteful, he added that the vital interest in election results transcended county lines.
The candidacy of Mayor James J. Sheeran of West Orange, for the Republican nomination for sheriff of Essex County, was supported today by Edward W. Roos, West Orange public safety commissioner.
Sheeran, a lawyer and former FBI man is running against the Republican organization's candidate, Freeholder William MacDonald, for the vacancy left by the resignation of Neil Duffy, now a member of the State Board of Tax Appeals.
My experience as public safety commissioner, Roos said, has shown me that the office of sheriff is best filled by a man with law enforcement experience, and preferably one who is a lawyer.
Jim Sheeran fits that description.
Trenton
-- William J. Seidel, state fire warden in the Department of Conservation and Economic Development, has retired after 36 years of service.
A citation from Conservation Commissioner Salvatore A. Bontempo credits his supervision with a reduction in the number of forest fires in the state.
Seidel joined the department in 1925 as a division fire warden after graduation in 1921 from the University of Michigan with a degree in forestry and employment with private lumber companies.
In October 1944, he was appointed state warden and chief of the Forest Fire Section.
Under his supervision, the state fire-fighting agency developed such techniques as plowing of fire lines and established a fleet of tractor plows and tractor units for fire fighting.
He also expanded and modernized the radio system with a central control station.
He introduced regular briefing sessions for district fire wardens and first aid training for section wardens.
He is credited with setting up an annual co-operative fire prevention program in co-operation with the Red Cross and State Department of Education.
Boonton
-- Richard J. Hughes made his Morris County debut in his bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination here last night with a pledge to carry the issues to every corner of the state.
He promised nearly 200 Democratic county committee members at the meeting in the Puddingstone Inn: When I come back here after the November election you'll think,'You're my man--you're the kind of governor we're glad we elected'''.
He said, We Democrats must resolve our issues on the test of what is right and just, and not what is expedient at the time.
Attacks Republicans
In his only attack on the Republicans, Hughes said, The three Republican candidates for governor are tripping over their feet for popular slogans to win the primary.
But we'll have a liberal, well planned, forward looking, honest platform.
We'll not talk out of one side of our mouth in Morris County and out of the other side in Hudson.
We'll take the truth to the people, and the people will like the truth and elect their candidate and party in November.
He said, You can see signs of the Republicans' feeble attack on the Meyner administration.
But I shall campaign on the Meyner record to meet the needs of the years ahead.
He urged New Jersey to become a full partner in the courageous actions of President Kennedy.
He called for a greater attraction of industry and a stop to the piracy of industry by Southern states, and a strong fight against discrimination in business and industry.
We must keep the bloodstream of New Jersey clean, the former Superior Court judge said.
To prevent hoodlums from infiltrating the state as they did in the Republican administration in the early 1940s.
Calling the Democrats the party that lives, breathes and thinks for the good of the people, Hughes asked, a representative Democratic vote in the primary for a springboard toward victory in November.
Hughes supported Gov. Meyner's Green Acres plan for saving large tracts of open land from the onrush of urban development.
He said legislation for a $60 million bond issue to underwrite the program is expected to be introduced Monday.
Conservation plan
The plan will provide $45 million for purchase of open land by the state.
The other $15 million is to be alloted to municipalities on a matching fund basis.
Hughes said, This is not a plan to conquer space--but to conserve it, pointing out the state population has increased 125,000 each year since 1950.
He said Morris County is rapidly changing and unless steps are taken to preserve the green areas, there will be no land left to preserve.
Hughes would not comment on tax reforms or other issues in which the Republican candidates are involved.
He said no matter what stand he takes it would be misconstrued that he was sympathetic to one or the other of the Republicans.
After the primary, he promised, I'll be explicit on where I stand to bring you a strong, dynamic administration.
I'm not afraid to tangle with the Republican nominee.
Trenton
-- Fifteen members of the Republican State Committee who are retiring--voluntarily--this year were honored yesterday by their colleagues.
The outgoing members, whose four-year terms will expire a week after the April 18 primary election, received carved wooden elephants, complete with ivory tusks, to remember the state committee by.
There may be other 1961 state committee retirements come April 18, but they will be leaving by choice of the Republican voters.
A special presentation was made to Mrs. Geraldine Thompson of Red Bank, who is stepping down after 35 years on the committee.
She also was the original GOP national committeewoman from New Jersey in the early 1920s following adoption of the women's suffrage amendment.
She served one four-year term on the national committee.
Resentment welled up yesterday among Democratic district leaders and some county leaders at reports that Mayor Wagner had decided to seek a third term with Paul R. Screvane and Abraham D. Beame as running mates.
At the same time reaction among anti-organization Democratic leaders and in the Liberal party to the Mayor's reported plan was generally favorable.
Some anti-organization Democrats saw in the program an opportunity to end the bitter internal fight within the Democratic party that has been going on for the last three years.
The resentment among Democratic organization leaders to the reported Wagner plan was directed particularly at the Mayor's efforts to name his own running mates without consulting the leaders.
Some viewed this attempt as evidence that Mr. Wagner regarded himself as bigger than the party.
Opposition reported
Some Democratic district and county leaders are reported trying to induce State Controller Arthur Levitt of Brooklyn to oppose Mr. Wagner for the Mayoral nomination in the Sept. 7 Democratic primary.
These contend there is a serious question as to whether Mr. Wagner has the confidence of the Democratic rank and file in the city.
Their view is that last-minute changes the Mayor is proposing to make in the Democratic ticket only emphasize the weakness of his performance as Mayor.
In an apparent effort to head off such a rival primary slate, Mr. Wagner talked by telephone yesterday with Representative Charles A. Buckley, the Bronx Democratic leader, and with Joseph T. Sharkey, the Brooklyn Democratic leader.
Mayor visits Buckley
As usual, he made no attempt to get in touch with Carmine G. De Sapio, the Manhattan leader.
He is publicly on record as believing Mr. De Sapio should be replaced for the good of the party.
Last night the Mayor visited Mr. Buckley at the Bronx leader's home for a discussion of the situation.
Apparently he believes Mr. Buckley holds the key to the Democratic organization's acceptance of his choices for running mates without a struggle.
In talks with Mr. Buckley last week in Washington, the Mayor apparently received the Bronx leader's assent to dropping Controller Lawrence E. Gerosa, who lives in the Bronx, from this year's ticket.
But Mr. Buckley seems to have assumed he would be given the right to pick Mr. Gerosa's successor.
Screvane and Beame hailed
The Mayor spoke yesterday at the United Irish Counties Feis on the Hunter College Campus in the Bronx.
After his speech, reporters asked him about the report of his political intentions, published in yesterday's New York Times.
The Mayor said:
It didn't come from me.
But as I have said before, if I announce my candidacy, I will have something definite to say about running mates.
Boston, June 16
-- A wave of public resentment against corruption in government is rising in Massachusetts.
There is a tangible feeling in the air of revulsion toward politics.
The taxi driver taking the visitor from the airport remarks that politicians in the state are all the same.
It's'See Joe, see Jim''', he says.
The hand is out.
A political scientist writes of the growth of alienated voters, who believe that voting is useless because politicians or those who influence politicians are corrupt, selfish and beyond popular control.
These voters view the political process as a secret conspiracy, the object of which is to plunder them.
Corruption is hardly a recent development in the city and state that were widely identified as the locale of Edwin O'Connor's novel, The Last Hurrah.
But there are reasons for the current spotlight on the subject.
A succession of highly publicized scandals has aroused the public within the last year.
Graft in the construction of highways and other public works has brought on state and Federal investigations.
And the election of President Kennedy has attracted new attention to the ethical climate of his home state.
A reader of the Boston newspapers can hardly escape the impression that petty chicanery, or worse, is the norm in Massachusetts public life.
Day after day some new episode is reported.
The state Public Works Department is accused of having spent $8,555 to build a private beach for a state judge on his waterfront property.
An assistant attorney general is directed to investigate.
Washington, June 18
-- Congress starts another week tomorrow with sharply contrasting forecasts for the two chambers.
In the Senate, several bills are expected to pass without any major conflict or opposition.
In the House, the Southern-Republican coalition is expected to make another major stand in opposition to the Administration's housing bill, while more jockeying is expected in an attempt to advance the aid-to-education bill.
The housing bill is now in the House Rules Committee.
It is expected to be reported out Tuesday, but this is a little uncertain.
The panel's action depends on the return of Representative James W. Trimble, Democrat of Arkansas, who has been siding with Speaker Sam Rayburn's forces in the Rules Committee in moving bills to the floor.
Mr. Trimble has been in the hospital but is expected back Tuesday.
Leadership is hopeful
The housing bill is expected to encounter strong opposition by the coalition of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans.
The Democratic leadership, however, hopes to pass it sometime this week.
The $6,100,000,000 measure, which was passed last Monday by the Senate, provides for forty-year mortgages at low down-payments for moderate-income families.
It also provides for funds to clear slums and help colleges build dormitories.
The education bill appears to be temporarily stalled in the Rules Committee, where two Northern Democratic members who usually vote with the Administration are balking because of the religious controversy.
They are James J. Delaney of Queens and Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. of Massachusetts.
Three groups to meet
What could rescue the bill would be some quick progress on a bill amending the National Defense Education Act of 1958.
This would provide for long-term Federal loans for construction of parochial and other private-school facilities for teaching science, languages and mathematics.
Mr. Delaney and Mr. O'Neill are not willing to vote on the public-school measure until the defense education bill clears the House Education and Labor Committee.
About half of all Peace Corps projects assigned to voluntary agencies will be carried out by religious groups, according to an official of the corps.
In the $40,000,000 budget that has been submitted for Congressional approval, $26,000,000 would be spent through universities and private voluntary agencies.
Twelve projects proposed by private groups are at the contract-negotiation stage, Gordon Boyce, director of relations with the voluntary agencies, said in a Washington interview.
Six of these were proposed by religious groups.
They will be for teaching, agriculture and community development in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Question raised
Interviews with several church leaders have disclosed that this development has raised the question whether the Peace Corps will be able to prevent confusion for church and state over methods, means and goals.
There are a number of ways this could happen, the churchmen pointed out, and here is an example:
Last month in Ghana an American missionary discovered when he came to pay his hotel bill that the usual rate had been doubled.
When he protested, the hotel owner said:
Why do you worry?
The U. S. Government is paying for it.
The U. S. Government pays for all its overseas workers.
Missionary explains
I don't work for the Government, the American said.
I'm a missionary.
The hotel owner shrugged.
Same thing, he said.
And then, some churchmen remarked, there is a more classical church-state problem:
Can religious agencies use Government funds and Peace Corps personnel in their projects and still preserve the constitutional requirement on separation of church and state?
R. Sargent Shriver Jr., director of the corps, is certain that they can.
No religious group, he declared in an interview, will receive Peace Corps funds unless it forswears all proselytizing on the project it proposes.
Moscow, June 18
-- At a gay party in the Kremlin for President Sukarno of Indonesia, Premier Khrushchev pulled out his pockets and said, beaming: Look, he took everything I had!
Mr. Khrushchev was jesting in the expansive mood of the successful banker.
Indonesia is one of the twenty under-developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America that are receiving Soviet aid.
The Soviet Union and other members of the Communist bloc are rapidly expanding their economic, technical and military assistance to the uncommitted nations.
The Communist countries allocated more than $1,000,000,000 in economic aid alone last year, according to Western estimates.
This was the biggest annual outlay since the Communist program for the under-developed countries made its modest beginning in 1954.
In 1960 more than 6,000 Communist technicians were present in those countries.
United Nations, N. Y., June 18
-- A committee of experts has recommended that a country's population be considered in the distribution of professional posts at the United Nations.
This was disclosed today by a responsible source amid intensified efforts by the Soviet Union to gain a greater role in the staff and operation of the United Nations.
One effect of the proposal, which puts a premium on population instead of economic strength, as in the past, would be to take jobs from European nations and give more to such countries as India.
India is the most populous United Nations member with more than 400,000,000 inhabitants.
The new formula for filling staff positions in the Secretariat is one of a number of recommendations made by a panel of eight in a long and detailed report.
The report was completed after nearly eighteen months of work on the question of the organization of the United Nations.
Formula is due this week
The Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions is expected to receive the report this week.
The jobs formula is understood to follow these lines:
Each of the organization's ninety-nine members would get two professional posts, such as political affairs officer, a department head or an economist, to start.
Each member would get one post for each 10,000,000 people in its population up to 150,000,000 people or a maximum of fifteen posts.
Each member with a population above 150,000,000 would get one additional post for each additional 30,000,000 people up to an unspecified cut-off point.
Geneva, June 18
-- The three leaders of Laos agreed today to begin negotiations tomorrow on forming a coalition government that would unite the war-ridden kingdom.
The decision was made in Zurich by Prince Boun Oum, Premier of the pro-Western royal Government;
Prince Souvanna Phouma, leader of the nation's neutralists and recognized as Premier by the Communist bloc, and Prince Souphanouvong, head of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao forces.
The latter two are half-brothers.
Their joint statement was welcomed by the Western delegations who will attend tomorrow the nineteenth plenary session of the fourteen-nation conference on the future of Laos.
An agreement among the Princes on a coalition government would ease their task, diplomats conceded.
But no one was overly optimistic.
Tactics studied in Geneva
W. Averell Harriman of the United States, Malcolm MacDonald of Britain, Maurice Couve De Murville, France's Foreign Minister, and Howard C. Green, Canada's Minister of External Affairs, concluded, meanwhile, a round of consultations here on future tactics in the conference.
The pace of the talks has slowed with each passing week.
Princess Moune, Prince Souvanna Phouma's young daughter, read the Princes' statement.
They had a two-hour luncheon together in an atmosphere of cordial understanding and relaxation, she said.
The three Laotians agreed upon a six-point agenda for their talks, which are to last three days.
The Princess said it was too early to say what would be decided if no agreement was reached after three days.
To deal with principles
The meetings in Zurich, the statement said, would deal only with principles that would guide the three factors in their search for a coalition Government.
Appointment of William S. Pfaff Jr., 41, as promotion manager of The Times-Picayune Publishing Company was announced Saturday by John F. Tims, president of the company.
Pfaff succeeds Martin Burke, who resigned.
The new promotion manager has been employed by the company since January, 1946, as a commercial artist in the advertising department.
He is a native of New Orleans and attended Allen Elementary school, Fortier High school and Soule business college.
From June, 1942, until December, 1945, Pfaff served in the Army Air Corps.
While in the service he attended radio school at Scott Field in Belleville, Ill..
Before entering the service, Pfaff for five years did clerical work with a general merchandising and wholesale firm in New Orleans.
He is married to the former Audrey Knecht and has a daughter, Karol, 13.
They reside at 4911 Miles Dr..
Washington
-- Thousands of bleacher-type seats are being erected along Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the White House for the big inaugural parade on Jan. 20.
Pennsylvania Avenue, named for one of the original 13 states, perhaps is not the most impressive street in the District of Columbia from a commercial standpoint.
But from a historic viewpoint none can approach it.
Many buildings
Within view of the avenue are some of the United States government's tremendous buildings, plus shrines and monuments.
Of course, 1600 Pennsylvania, the White House, is the most famous address of the free world.
Within an easy walk from Capitol Hill where Pennsylvania Avenue comes together with Constitution Avenue, begins a series of great federal buildings, some a block long and all about seven-stories high.
Great chapters of history have been recorded along the avenue, now about 169 years old.
In the early spring of 1913 a few hundred thousand persons turned out to watch 5000 women parade.
They were the suffragettes and they wanted to vote.
In the 1920 presidential election they had that right and many of them did vote for the first time.
Seats on square
Along this avenue which saw marching soldiers from the War Between the States returning in 1865 is the National Archives building where hundreds of thousands of this country's most valuable records are kept.
Also the department of justice building is located where J. Edgar Hoover presides over the federal bureau of investigation.
Street car tracks run down the center of Pennsylvania, powered with lines that are underground.
Many spectators will be occupying seats and vantage points bordering Lafayette Square, opposite the White House.
In this historic square are several statues, but the one that stands out over the others is that of Gen. Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans.
Moving past the presidential viewing stand and Lafayette Square will be at least 40 marching units.
About 16,000 military members of all branches of the armed forces will take part in the parade.
Division one of the parade will be the service academies.
Division two will include the representations of Massachusetts and Texas, the respective states of the President and of Vice-President L. B. Johnson.
Then will come nine other states in the order of their admission to the union.
Division three will be headed by the Marines followed by 12 states;
division four will be headed by the Navy, followed by 11 states;
division five, by the Air Force followed by 11 states.
Division six will be headed by the Coast Guard, followed by the reserve forces of all services, five states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the trust territories and the Canal Zone.
Jackson, Miss.
-- What does 1961 offer in political and governmental developments in Mississippi?
Even for those who have been observing the political scene a long time, no script from the past is worth very much in gazing into the state's immediate political future.
This is largely because of the unpredictability of the man who operates the helm of the state government and is the elected leader of its two million inhabitants--Gov. Ross Barnett.
Barnett, who came into office with no previous experience in public administration, has surrounded himself with confusion which not only keeps his foes guessing but his friends as well.
Consequently, it is uncertain after nearly 12 months in office just which direction the Barnett administration will take in the coming year.
Could be scramble
Some predict the administration will settle down during 1961 and iron out the rough edges which it has had thus far.
The builtin headache of the Barnett regime thus far has been the steady stream of job-seekers and others who feel they were given commitments by Barnett at some stage of his eight-year quest for the governor's office.
There are many who predict that should Barnett decide to call the Legislature back into special session, it will really throw his administration into a scramble.
Certainly nobody will predict that the next time the lawmakers come back together Barnett will be able to enjoy a re-enactment of the strange but successful honeymoon he had in the 1960 legislative session.
If Barnett doesn't call a special session in 1961, it will be the first year in the last decade that the Legislature has not met in regular or special session.
The odds favor a special session, more than likely early in the year.
Districts issue
Legislators always get restless for a special session (whether for the companionship or the $22.50 per diem is not certain) and if they start agitating.
Barnett is not expected to be able to withstand the pressure.
The issue which may make it necessary to have a session is the highly sensitive problem of cutting the state's congressional districts from six to five to eliminate one congressional seat.
With eyes focused on the third congressional district, the historic Delta district, and Congressman Frank E. Smith as the one most likely to go, the redistricting battle will put to a test the longstanding power which lawmakers from the Delta have held in the Legislature.
Mississippi's relations with the national Democratic party will be at a crossroads during 1961, with the first Democratic president in eight years in the White House.
Split badly during the recent presidential election into almost equally divided camps of party loyalists and independents, the Democratic party in Mississippi is currently a wreck.
And there has been no effort since the election to pull it back together.
Future clouded
Barnett, as the titular head of the Democratic party, apparently must make the move to reestablish relations with the national Democratic party or see a movement come from the loyalist ranks to completely bypass him as a party functionary.
With a Democratic administration, party patronage would normally begin to flow to Mississippi if it had held its Democratic solidarity in the November election.
Now, the picture is clouded, and even US Sens. James O. Eastland and John C. Stennis, who remained loyal to the ticket, are uncertain of their status.
Reports are that it is more than probable that the four congressmen from Mississippi who did not support the party ticket will be stripped of the usual patronage which flows to congressmen.
Baton Rouge, La.
-- The Gov. Jimmie H. Davis administration appears to face a difficult year in 1961, with the governor's theme of peace and harmony subjected to severe stresses.
The year will probably start out with segregation still the most troublesome issue.
But it might give way shortly to another vexing issue--that of finances in state government.
The transition from segregation to finances might already be in progress, in the form of an administration proposal to hike the state sales tax from 2 per cent to 3 per cent.
The administration has said the sales tax proposal is merely part of the segregation strategy, since the revenues from the increase would be dedicated to a grant in aid program.
But the tardiness of the administration in making the dedication has caused legislators to suspect the tax bill was related more directly to an over-all shortage of cash than to segregation.
Legislators weary
Indeed, the administration's curious position on the sales tax was a major factor in contributing to its defeat.
The administration could not say why $28 million was needed for a grant-in-aid program.
The effectiveness of the governor in clearing up some of the inconsistencies revolving about the sales tax bill may play a part in determining whether it can muster the required two-thirds vote.
The tax bill will be up for reconsideration Wednesday in the House when the Legislature reconvenes.
Davis may use the tax bill as a means to effect a transition from special sessions of the Legislature to normalcy.
If it fails to pass, he can throw up his hands and say the Legislature would not support him in his efforts to prevent integration.
He could terminate special sessions of the Legislature.
Actually, Davis would have to toss in the towel soon anyway.
Many legislators are already weary and frustrated over the so-far losing battle to block token integration.
This is not the sort of thing most politicos would care to acknowledge publicly.
They would like to convey the notion something is being done, even though it is something they know to be ineffectual.
Underlying concern
Passage of the sales tax measure would also give Davis the means to effect a transition.
He could tell the Legislature they had provided the needed funds to carry on the battle.
Then he could tell them to go home, while the administration continued to wage the battle with the $28 million in extra revenues the sales tax measure would bring in over an eight months period.
It is difficult to be certain how the administration views that $28 million, since the views of one leader may not be the same as the views of another one.
But if the administration should find it does not need the $28 million for a grant-in-aid program, a not unlikely conclusion, it could very well seek a way to use the money for other purposes.
This would be in perfect consonance with the underlying concern in the administration--the shortage of cash.
It could become an acute problem in the coming fiscal year.
If the administration does not succeed in passing the sales tax bill, or any other tax bill, it could very well be faced this spring at the fiscal session of the Legislature with an interesting dilemma.
Since the constitution forbids introduction of a tax bill at a fiscal session, the administration will either have to cut down expenses or inflate its estimates of anticipated revenues.
Constant problem
In either case, it could call a special session of the Legislature later in 1961 to make another stab at raising additional revenues through a tax raiser.
The prospect of cutting back spending is an unpleasant one for any governor.
It is one that most try to avoid, as long as they can see an alternative approach to the problem.
But if all alternatives should be clearly blocked off, it can be expected the Davis administration will take steps to trim spending at the spring session of the state Legislature.
This might be done to arouse those who have been squeezed out by the trims to exert pressure on the Legislature, so it would be more receptive to a tax proposal later in the year.
A constant problem confronting Davis on any proposals for new taxes will be the charge by his foes that he has not tried to economize.
Any tax bill also will revive allegations that some of his followers have been using their administration affiliations imprudently to profit themselves.
The new year might see some house-cleaning, either genuine or token, depending upon developments, to give Davis an opportunity to combat some of these criticisms.
City Controller Alexander Hemphill charged Tuesday that the bids on the Frankford Elevated repair project were rigged to the advantage of a private contracting company which had an inside track with the city.
Estimates of the city's loss in the $344,000 job have ranged as high as $200,000.
Shortcuts unnoticed
Hemphill said that the Hughes Steel Erection Co. contracted to do the work at an impossibly low cost with a bid that was far less than the legitimate bids of competing contractors.
The Hughes concern then took shortcuts on the project but got paid anyway, Hemphill said.
The Controller's charge of rigging was the latest development in an investigation which also brought these disclosures Tuesday:
The city has sued for the full amount of the $172,400 performance bond covering the contract.
The Philadelphia Transportation Co. is investigating the part its organization played in reviewing the project.
The signature of Harold V. Varani, former director of architecture and engineering in the Department of Public Property, appeared on payment vouchers certifying work on the project.
Varani has been fired on charges of accepting gifts from the contractor.
Managing Director Donald C. Wagner has agreed to cooperate fully with Hemphill after a period of sharp disagreement on the matter.
Concern bankrupt
The Hughes company and the Consolidated Industries, Inc., both of 3646 N. 2d St., filed for reorganization under the Federal bankruptcy law.
On Monday, the Hughes concern was formally declared bankrupt after its directors indicated they could not draw up a plan for reorganization.
Business relations between the companies and city have been under investigation by Hemphill and District Attorney James C. Crumlish, Jr..
Intervenes in case
The suit was filed later in the day in Common Pleas Court 7 against the Hughes company and two bonding firms.
Travelers Indemnity Co. and the Continental Casualty Co..
At Berger's direction, the city also intervened in the Hughes bankruptcy case in U. S. District Court in a move preliminary to filing a claim there.
I am taking the position that the contract was clearly violated, Berger said.
The contract violations mostly involve failure to perform rehabilitation work on expansion joints along the El track.
The contract called for overhauling of 102 joints.
The city paid for work on 75, of which no more than 21 were repaired, Hemphill charged.
Wide range in bids
Hemphill said the Hughes concern contracted to do the repairs at a cost of $500 for each joint.
The bid from A. Belanger and Sons of Cambridge, Mass., which listed the same officers as Hughes, was $600 per joint.
But, Hemphill added, bids from other contractors ranged from $2400 to $3100 per joint.
Berger's decision to sue for the full amount of the performance bond was questioned by Wagner in the morning press conference.
Wagner said the city paid only $37,500 to the Hughes company.
We won't know the full amount until we get a full report, Wagner said.
We can claim on the maximum amount of the bond, Berger said.
Wagner replied, Can't you just see the headline:'City Hooked for $172,000'''?
' know enough to sue '
Berger insisted that we know enough to sue for the full amount.
Douglas M. Pratt, president of the PTC, who attended the meeting, said the transit company is reviewing the work on the El.
We want to find out who knew about it, Pratt said.
Certain people must have known about it.
The PTC is investigating the whole matter, Pratt said.
Samuel D. Goodis, representing the Philadelphia Hotel Association, objected on Tuesday to a proposed boost by the city in licensing fees, saying that occupancy rates in major hotels here ranged from 48 to 74 percent last year.
Goodis voiced his objection before City Council's Finance Committee.
For hotels with 1000 rooms, the increased license fee would mean an expense of $5000 a year, Goodis said.
Testifies at hearing
His testimony came during a hearing on a bill raising fees for a wide variety of licenses, permits and city services.
The new fees are expected to raise an additional $740,000 in the remainder of 1961 and $2,330,000 more a year after that.
The ordinance would increase the fee for rooming houses, hotels and multi-family dwellings to $5 a room.
The cost of a license now is $2, with an annual renewal fee of $1.
Goodis said that single rooms account for 95 percent of the accomodations in some hotels.
Revenue estimated
The city expects the higher rooming house, hotel and apartment house fees to bring in an additional $457,000 a year.
The increase also was opposed by Leonard Kaplan, spokesman for the Home Builders Association of Philadelphia, on behalf of association members who operate apartment houses.
A proposal to raise dog license fees drew an objection from Councilwoman Virginia Knauer, who formerly raised pedigreed dogs.
The ordinance would increase fees from $1 for males and $2 for females to a flat $5 a dog.
Commissioner replies
Mrs. Knauer said she did not think dog owners should be penalized for the city's services to animal care.
In reply, Deputy Police Commissioner Howard R. Leary said that the city spends more than $115,000 annually to license and regulate dogs but collects only $43,000 in fees.
He reported that the city's contributions for animal care included $67,000 to the Women's S.P.C.A.;
$15,000 to pay six policemen assigned as dog catchers and $15,000 to investigate dog bites.
Backs higher fees
City Finance Director Richard J. McConnell indorsed the higher fees, which, he said, had been under study for more than a year.
The city is not adequately compensated for the services covered by the fees, he said.
The new fee schedule also was supported by Commissioner of Licenses and Inspections Barnet Lieberman and Health Commissioner Eugene A. Gillis.
Petitions asking for a jail term for Norristown attorney Julian W. Barnard will be presented to the Montgomery County Court Friday, it was disclosed Tuesday by Horace A. Davenport, counsel for the widow of the man killed last Nov. 1 by Barnard's hit-run car.
The petitions will be presented in open court to President Judge William F. Dannehower, Davenport said.
Barnard, who pleaded no defense to manslaughter and hit-run charges, was fined $500 by Judge Warren K. Hess, and placed on two years' probation providing he does not drive during that time.
He was caught driving the day after the sentence was pronounced and given a warning.
Victim of the accident was Robert Lee Stansbery, 39.
His widow started the circulation of petitions after Barnard was reprimanded for violating the probation.
The City Planning Commission on Tuesday approved agreements between two redevelopers and the Redevelopment Authority for the purchase of land in the $300,000,000 Eastwick Redevelopment Area project.
The commission also approved a novel plan that would eliminate traffic hazards for pedestrians in the project.
One of the agreements calls for the New Eastwick Corp. to purchase a 1311 acre tract for $12,192,865.
The tract is bounded by Island Ave., Dicks Ave., 61st St., and Eastwick Ave..
Four parks planned
It is designated as Stage 1 Residential on the Redevelopment Authority's master plan and will feature row houses, garden apartments, four small parks, schools, churches, a shopping center and several small clusters of stores.
The corporation was formed by the Reynolds Metal Co. and the Samuel A. and Henry A. Berger firm, a Philadelphia builder, for work in the project.
The second agreement permits the authority to sell a 520-acre tract west of Stage 1 Residential to Philadelphia Builders Eastwick Corp., a firm composed of 10 Philadelphia area builders, which is interested in developing part of the project.
Would bar vehicles
The plan for eliminating traffic hazards for pedestrians was developed by Dr. Constantinos A. Doxiadis, former Minister of Reconstruction in Greece and a consulting planner for the New Eastwick Corp..
The plan calls for dividing the project into 16 sectors which would be barred to vehicular traffic.
It provides for a series of landscaped walkways and a central esplanade that would eventually run through the center of the entire two-and-a-half-mile length of the project.
The esplanade eliminates Grovers Ave., which on original plans ran through the center of the development.
The esplanade would feature pedestrian bridges over roads in the project.
Kansas City, Mo., Feb. 9 (UPI)
-- The president of the Kansas City local of the International Association of Fire Fighters was severly injured today when a bomb tore his car apart as he left home for work.
Battalion Chief Stanton M. Gladden, 42, the central figure in a representation dispute between the fire fighters association and the teamsters union, suffered multiple fractures of both ankles.
He was in Baptist Memorial hospital.
Ignition sets off blast
The battalion chief said he had just gotten into his 1958 model automobile to move it from the driveway of his home so that he could take his other car to work.
I'd just turned on the ignition when there was a big flash and I was lying on the driveway, he said.
Gladden's wife and two of his sons, John, 17, and Jim, 13, were inside the house.
The younger boy said the blast knocked him out of bed and against the wall.
Hood flies over house
The explosion sent the hood of the car flying over the roof of the house.
The left front wheel landed 100 feet away.
Police laboratory technicians said the explosive device, containing either TNT or nitroglycerine, was apparently placed under the left front wheel.
It was first believed the bomb was rigged to the car's starter.
Gladden had been the target of threatening telephone calls in recent months and reportedly received one last night.
The fire department here has been torn for months by dissension involving top personnel and the fight between the fire fighters association and the teamsters union.
Led fight on teamsters
Gladden has been an outspoken critic of the present city administration and led his union's battle against the teamsters, which began organizing city firemen in 1959.
The fire fighters association here offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the bombing.
A $500 reward was offered by the association's local in Kansas City, Kas..
The association said it would post 24 hour guards at Gladden's home and at those of James Mining and Eugene Shiflett.
Mining is secretary-treasurer of the local and Shiflett is a member of its executive committee.
Both have been active in the association.
Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 24 (AP)
-- Turkish political leaders bowed today to military pressure and agreed to form an emergency national front government with Gen. Cemal Gursel as president.
An agreement between the leaders of four parties which contested indecisive elections on Oct. 15 was reached after almost 18 hours of political bargaining under the threat of an army coup d'etat.
By-passing the military junta which has ruled Turkey since the overthrow of Premier Adnan Menderes 17 months ago, the army general staff, led by Gen. Cedvet Sunay, had set a deadline for the parties to join in a national coalition government.
The army leaders threatened to form a new military government if the parties failed to sign an eight point protocol agreeing on Gen. Gursel as president.
Gen. Gursel has headed the military junta the last 17 months.
The military also had demanded pledges that there would be no changes in the laws passed by the junta and no leaders of the Menderes regime now in prison would be pardoned.
Party leaders came out of the final meeting apparently satisfied and stated that complete agreement had been reached on a solution to the crisis created by the elections which left no party with enough strength to form a government on its own.
Vincent G. Ierulli has been appointed temporary assistant district attorney, it was announced Monday by Charles E. Raymond, District Attorney.
Ierulli will replace Desmond D. Connall who has been called to active military service but is expected back on the job by March 31.
Ierulli, 29, has been practicing in Portland since November, 1959.
He is a graduate of Portland University and the Northwestern College of Law.
He is married and the father of three children.
Helping foreign countries to build a sound political structure is more important than aiding them economically, E. M. Martin, assistant secretary of state for economic affairs told members of the World Affairs Council Monday night.
Martin, who has been in office in Washington, D. C., for 13 months spoke at the council's annual meeting at the Multnomah Hotel.
He told some 350 persons that the United States' challenge was to help countries build their own societies their own ways, following their own paths.
We must persuade them to enjoy a way of life which, if not identical, is congenial with ours, he said but adding that if they do not develop the kind of society they themselves want it will lack ritiuality and loyalty.
Patience needed
Insuring that the countries have a freedom of choice, he said, was the biggest detriment to the Soviet Union.
He cited East Germany where after 15 years of Soviet rule it has become necessary to build a wall to keep the people in, and added, so long as people rebel, we must not give up.
Martin called for patience on the part of Americans.
The countries are trying to build in a decade the kind of society we took a century to build, he said.
By leaving our doors open the United States gives other peoples the opportunity to see us and to compare, he said.
Individual help best
We have no reason to fear failure, but we must be extraordinarily patient, the assistant secretary said.
Economically, Martin said, the United States could best help foreign countries by helping them help themselves.
Private business is more effective than government aid, he explained, because individuals are able to work with the people themselves.
The United States must plan to absorb the exported goods of the country, at what he termed a social cost.
Martin said the government has been working to establish firmer prices on primary products which may involve the total income of one country.
The Portland school board was asked Monday to take a positive stand towards developing and coordinating with Portland's civil defense more plans for the city's schools in event of attack.
But there seemed to be some difference of opinion as to how far the board should go, and whose advice it should follow.
The board members, after hearing the coordination plea from Mrs. Ralph H. Molvar, 1409 SW Maplecrest Dr., said they thought they had already been cooperating.
Chairman C. Richard Mears pointed out that perhaps this was not strictly a school board problem, in case of atomic attack, but that the board would cooperate so far as possible to get the children to where the parents wanted them to go.
Los Angeles has said they would send the children to their homes in case of disaster, he said.
Nobody really expects to evacuate.
I think everybody is agreed that we need to hear some voice on the national level that would make some sense and in which we would have some confidence in following.
Mrs. Molvar, who kept reiterating her request that they please take a stand, said, We must have faith in somebody--on the local level, and it wouldn't be possible for everyone to rush to a school to get their children.
Dr. Barnes said that there seemed to be feeling that evacuation plans, even for a high school where there were lots of cars might not be realistic and would not work.
Mrs. Molvar asked again that the board join in taking a stand in keeping with Jack Lowe's program.
The board said it thought it had gone as far as instructed so far and asked for more information to be brought at the next meeting.
It was generally agreed that the subject was important and the board should be informed on what was done, is going to be done and what it thought should be done.
Salem (AP)
-- The statewide meeting of war mothers Tuesday in Salem will hear a greeting from Gov. Mark Hatfield.
Hatfield also is scheduled to hold a public United Nations Day reception in the state capitol on Tuesday.
His schedule calls for a noon speech Monday in Eugene at the Emerald Empire Kiwanis Club.
He will speak to Willamette University Young Republicans Thursday night in Salem.
On Friday he will go to Portland for the swearing in of Dean Bryson as Multnomah County Circuit Judge.
He will attend a meeting of the Republican State Central Committee Saturday in Portland and see the Washington-Oregon football game.
Beaverton School District No. 48 board members examined blueprints and specifications for two proposed junior high schools at a Monday night workshop session.
A bond issue which would have provided some $3.5 million for construction of the two 900-student schools was defeated by district voters in January.
Last week the board, by a 4 to 3 vote, decided to ask voters whether they prefer the 6-3-3 (junior high school) system or the 8-4 system.
Board members indicated Monday night this would be done by an advisory poll to be taken on Nov. 15, the same date as a $581,000 bond election for the construction of three new elementary schools.
Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg will speak Sunday night at the Masonic Temple at a $25-a-plate dinner honoring Sen. Wayne L. Morse, Aj.
The dinner is sponsored by organized labor and is scheduled for 7 p.m..
Secretary Goldberg and Sen. Morse will hold a joint press conference at the Roosevelt Hotel at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Blaine Whipple, executive secretary of the Democratic Party of Oregon, reported Tuesday.
Other speakers for the fund-raising dinner include Reps. Edith Green and Al Ullman, Labor Commissioner Norman Nilsen and Mayor Terry Schrunk, all Democrats.
Oak Grove (special)
-- Three positions on the Oak Lodge Water district board of directors have attracted 11 candidates.
The election will be Dec. 4 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m..
Polls will be in the water office.
Incumbent Richard Salter seeks re-election and is opposed by Donald Huffman for the five-year term.
Incumbent William Brod is opposed in his re-election bid by Barbara Njust, Miles C. Bubenik and Frank Lee.
Five candidates seek the place vacated by Secretary Hugh G. Stout.
Seeking this two-year term are James Culbertson, Dwight M. Steeves, James C. Piersee, W.M. Sexton and Theodore W. Heitschmidt.
A stronger stand on their beliefs and a firmer grasp on their future were taken Friday by delegates to the 29th general council of the Assemblies of God, in session at the Memorial Coliseum.
The council revised, in an effort to strengthen, the denomination's 16 basic beliefs adopted in 1966.
The changes, unanimously adopted, were felt necessary in the face of modern trends away from the Bible.
The council agreed it should more firmly state its belief in and dependence on the Bible.
New point added
Many changes involved minor editing and clarification;
however, the first belief stood for entire revision with a new third point added to the list.
The first of 16 beliefs of the denomination, now reads:
The scriptures, both Old and New Testament, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.
The third belief, in six points, emphasizes the Diety of the Lord Jesus Christ, and:
-- emphasizes the Virgin birth
-- the sinless life of Christ
-- His miracles
-- His substitutionary work on the cross
-- His bodily resurrection from the dead
-- and His exaltation to the right hand of God.
Super again elected
Friday afternoon the Rev. T. F. Zimmerman was reelected for his second consecutive two-year term as general superintendent of Assemblies of God.
His offices are in Springfield, Mo..
Election came on the nominating ballot.
Friday night the delegates heard the need for their forthcoming program, Breakthrough scheduled to fill the churches for the next two years.
In his opening address Wednesday the Rev. Mr. Zimmerman, urged the delegates to consider a 10-year expansion program, with Breakthrough the theme for the first two years.
The Rev. R. L. Brandt, national secretary of the home missions department, stressed the need for the first two years' work.
Surveys show that one out of three Americans has vital contact with the church.
This means that more than 100 million have no vital touch with the church or religious life, he told delegates Friday.
Church loses pace
Talking of the rapid population growth (upwards of 12,000 babies born daily) with an immigrant entering the United States every 1-1/2 minutes, he said our organization has not been keeping pace with this challenge.
In 35 years we have opened 7,000 churches, the Rev. Mr. Brandt said, adding that the denomination had a national goal of one church for every 10,000 persons.
In this light we need 1,000 churches in Illinois, where we have 200;
800 in Southern New England, we have 60;
we need 100 in Rhode Island, we have none, he said.
To step up the denomination's program, the Rev. Mr. Brandt suggested the vision of 8,000 new Assemblies of God churches in the next 10 years.
To accomplish this would necessitate some changes in methods, he said.
' church meets change '
The church's ability to change her methods is going to determine her ability to meet the challenge of this hour.
A capsule view of proposed plans includes:
-- Encouraging by every means, all existing Assemblies of God churches to start new churches.
-- Engaging mature, experienced men to pioneer or open new churches in strategic population centers.
-- Surrounding pioneer pastors with vocational volunteers (laymen, who will be urged to move into the area of new churches in the interest of lending their support to the new project).
-- Arranging for ministerial graduates to spend from 6-12 months as apprentices in well-established churches.
U.S. Dist. Judge Charles L. Powell denied all motions made by defense attorneys Monday in Portland's insurance fraud trial.
Denials were of motions of dismissal, continuance, mistrial, separate trial, acquittal, striking of testimony and directed verdict.
In denying motions for dismissal, Judge Powell stated that mass trials have been upheld as proper in other courts and that a person may join a conspiracy without knowing who all of the conspirators are.
Attorney Dwight L. Schwab, in behalf of defendant Philip Weinstein, argued there is no evidence linking Weinstein to the conspiracy, but Judge Powell declared this is a matter for the jury to decide.
Proof lack charged
Schwab also declared there is no proof of Weinstein's entering a conspiracy to use the U.S. mails to defraud, to which federal prosecutor A. Lawrence Burbank replied:
It is not necessary that a defendant actually have conpired to use the U.S. mails to defraud as long as there is evidence of a conspiracy, and the mails were then used to carry it out.
In the afternoon, defense attorneys began the presentation of their cases with opening statements, some of which had been deferred until after the government had called witnesses and presented its case.
Miami, Fla., March 17
-- The Orioles tonight retained the distinction of being the only winless team among the eighteen Major-League clubs as they dropped their sixth straight spring exhibition decision, this one to the Kansas City Athletics by a score of 5 to 3.
Indications as late as the top of the sixth were that the Birds were to end their victory draught as they coasted along with a 3-to-o advantage.
Siebern hits homer
Over the first five frames, Jack Fisher, the big righthander who figures to be in the middle of Oriole plans for a drive on the 1961 American League pennant, held the A's scoreless while yielding three scattered hits.
Then Dick Hyde, submarine-ball hurler, entered the contest and only five batters needed to face him before there existed a 3-to-3 deadlock.
A two-run homer by Norm Siebern and a solo blast by Bill Tuttle tied the game, and single runs in the eighth and ninth gave the Athletics their fifth victory in eight starts.
House throws wild
With one down in the eighth, Marv Throneberry drew a walk and stole second as Hyde fanned Tuttle.
Catcher Frank House's throw in an effort to nab Throneberry was wide and in the dirt.
Then Heywood Sullivan, Kansas City catcher, singled up the middle and Throneberry was across with what proved to be the winning run.
Rookie southpaw George Stepanovich relieved Hyde at the start of the ninth and gave up the A's fifth tally on a walk to second baseman Dick Howser, a wild pitch, and Frank Cipriani's single under Shortstop Jerry Adair's glove into center.
The Orioles once again performed at the plate in powderpuff fashion, gathering only seven blows off the offerings of three Kansas City pitchers.
Three were doubles, Brooks Robinson getting a pair and Marv Breeding one.
Hartman impressive
Bill Kunkel, Bob Hartman and Ed Keegan did the mound chores for the club down from West Palm Beach to play the game before 767 paying customers in Miami Stadium.
The Birds got five hits and all three of their runs off Kunkel before Hartman took over in the top of the fourth.
Hartman, purchased by the A's from the Milwaukee Braves last fall, allowed no hits in his scoreless three-inning appearance, and merited the triumph.
Keegan, a 6-foot-3-inch 158-pounder, gave up the Orioles' last two safeties over the final three frames, escaping a load of trouble in the ninth when the Birds threatened but failed to tally.
Robinson doubles again
In the ninth, Robinson led off with his second double of the night, a blast off the fence 375 feet deep into left.
Whitey Herzog, performing in right as the Orioles fielded possibly their strongest team of the spring, worked Keegan for a base on balls.
Then three consecutive pinch-hitters failed to produce.
Pete Ward was sent in for House and, after failing in a bunt attempt, popped to Howser on the grass back of short.
John Powell, batting for Adair, fanned after fouling off two 2-and-2 pitches, and Buddy Barker, up for Stepanovich, bounced out sharply to Jerry Lumpe at second to end the 2-hour-and-27-minute contest.
The Orioles got a run in the first inning when Breeding, along with Robinson, the two Birds who got a pair of hits, doubled to right center, moved to third on Russ Snyder's single to right and crossed on Kunkel's wild pitch into the dirt in front of the plate.
The Flock added a pair of tallies in the third on three straight hits after two were out.
Jackie Brandt singled deep into the hole at short to start the rally.
Lumpe errs
Jim Gentile bounced a hard shot off Kunkel's glove and beat it out for a single, and when Lumpe grabbed the ball and threw it over first baseman Throneberry's head Brandt took third and Gentile second on the error.
Then Robinson slammed a long double to left center to score both runners.
When Robinson tried to stretch his blow into a triple, he was cut down in a close play at third, Tuttle to Andy Carey.
The detailed rundown on the Kansas City scoring in the sixth went like this:
Lumpe worked a walk as the first batter to face Hyde and romped around as Siebern blasted Hyde's next toss 415 feet over the scoreboard in right center.
Carey Singles
Carey singled on a slow-bouncing ball to short which Robinson cut across to field and threw wide to first.
It was ruled a difficult chance and a hit.
Then Throneberry rapped into a fast double play.
Breeding to Adair to Gentile, setting up Tuttle's 390-foot homer over the wall in left center.
If the Orioles are to break their losing streak within the next two days, it will have to be at the expense of the American League champion New York Yankees, who come in here tomorrow for a night game and a single test Sunday afternoon.
Miami, Fla., March 17
-- The flavor of Baltimore's Florida Grapefruit League news ripened considerably late today when the Orioles were advised that Ron Hansen has fulfilled his obligations under the Army's military training program and is ready for belated spring training.
Hansen, who slugged the 1960 Oriole high of 22 homers and drove in 86 runs on a
freshman average, completes the Birds' spring squad at 49 players.
The big, 22-year-old shortstop, the 1960 American league rookie-of-the-year, flew here late this afternoon from Baltimore, signed his contract for an estimated $15,000 and was a spectator at tonight's 5-to-3 loss to Kansas City--the winless Birds' sixth setback in a row.
15 pounds lighter
The 6-foot 3-inch Hansen checked in close to 200 pounds, 15 pounds lighter than his reporting weight last spring.
He hopes to melt off an additional eight pounds before the Flock breaks camp three weeks hence.
When he was inducted into the Army at Fort Knox, Ky., Hansen's weight had dropped to 180--too light for me to be at my best he said.
I feel good physically, Hansen added, but I think I'll move better carrying a little less weight than I'm carrying now.
Seeks improved fielding
The rangy, Albany (Cal.) native, a surprise slugging sensation for the Flock last year as well as a defensive whiz, set improved fielding as his 1961 goal.
I think I can do a better job with the glove, now that I know the hitters around the league a little better, he said.
Hansen will engage in his first workout at Miami Stadium prior to the opening tomorrow night of a two-game weekend series with the New York Yankees.
Skinny Brown and Hoyt Wilhelm, the Flock's veteran knuckleball specialists, are slated to oppose the American League champions in tomorrow's 8 P.M. contest.
Duren, Sheldon on hill
Ryne Duren and Roland Sheldon, a rookie righthander who posted a 15-1 record last year for the Yanks' Auburn (N.Y.) farm club of the Class-D New York-Pennsylvania League, are the probable rival pitchers.
Twenty-one-year-old Milt Pappas and Jerry Walker, 22, are scheduled to share the Oriole mound chores against the Bombers' Art Ditmar in Sunday's 2 P.M. encounter.
Ralph Houk, successor to Casey Stengel at the Yankee helm, plans to bring the entire New York squad here from St. Petersburg, including Joe Dimaggio and large crowds are anticipated for both weekend games.
The famed Yankee Clipper, now retired, has been assisting as a batting coach.
Squad cut near
Pitcher Steve Barber joined the club one week ago after completing his hitch under the Army's accelerated wintertime military course, also at Fort Knox, Ky..
The 22-year-old southpaw enlisted earlier last fall than did Hansen.
Baltimore's bulky spring-training contingent now gradually will be reduced as Manager Paul Richards and his coaches seek to trim it down to a more streamlined and workable unit.
Take a ride on this one, Brooks Robinson greeted Hansen as the Bird third sacker grabbed a bat, headed for the plate and bounced a third-inning two-run double off the left-centerfield wall tonight.
It was the first of two doubles by Robinson, who was in a mood to celebrate.
Just before game time, Robinson's pretty wife, Connie informed him that an addition to the family can be expected late next summer.
Unfortunately, Brooks's teammates were not in such festive mood as the Orioles expired before the seven-hit pitching of three Kansas City rookie hurlers.
Hansen arrived just before nightfall, two hours late, in company with Lee MacPhail;
J. A. W. Iglehart, chairman of the Oriole board of directors, and Public Relations Director Jack Dunn.
Their flight was delayed, Dunn said, when a boarding ramp inflicted some minor damage to the wing of the plane.
Ex-Oriole Clint Courtney, now catching for the A's is all for the American League's 1961 expansion to the West Coast.
But they shouldda brought in Tokyo, too, added Old Scrapiron.
Then we'd really have someplace to go.
Bowie, Md., March 17
-- Gaining her second straight victory, Norman B., Small, Jr.'s Garden Fresh, a 3-year-old filly, downed promising colts in the $4,500 St. Patrick's Day Purse, featured seventh race here today, and paid $7.20 straight.
Toying with her field in the early stages, Garden Fresh was asked for top speed only in the stretch by Jockey Philip Grimm and won by a length and a half in 1.24 3-5 for the 7 furlongs.
8,280 attend races
Richard M. Forbes's Paget, which had what seemed to be a substantial lead in the early stages, tired rapidly nearing the wire and was able to save place money only a head in front of Glen T. Hallowell's Milties Miss.
A bright sun and brisk wind had the track in a fast condition for the first time this week and 8,280 St. Patty Day celebrants bet $842,617 on the well-prepared program.
Prior to the featured race, the stewards announced that apprentice James P. Verrone is suspended ten days for crowding horses and crossing the field sharply in two races on Wednesday.
Culmone gets first win
Garden Fresh, the result of a mating of Better Self and Rosy Fingered, seems to improve with each start and appeared to win the St. Patrick's Day Purse with some speed in reserve.
She was moving up to the allowance department after winning a $10,000 claiming event.
Cleveland, March 17 (AP)
-- George Kerr, the swift-striding Jamaican, set a meet record in the 600-yard run in the Knights of Columbus track meet tonight, beating Purdue's Dave Mills in a hot duel in 1.10.1.
Kerr, who set the world record earlier this month in New York with a clocking of 1.09.3, wiped out Mills's early pace and beat the young Big 10 quarter-mile king by 5 yards.
Both were under the meet mark of 1.10.8 set in 1950 by Mal Whitfield.
Mills shot out in front and kept the lead through two thirds of the race.
Then Kerr, a graduate student from Illinois, moved past him on a straightaway and held off Mills's challenge on the final turn.
Mills was timed in 1.10.4.
The crowd at the twenty-first annual K. of C. Games, final indoor meet of the season, got a thrill a few minutes earlier when a slender, bespectacled woman broke the one-week-old world record in the half-mile run.
Mrs. Grace Butcher, of nearby Chardon, a 27-year-old housewife who has two children, finished in 2.21.6.
She snapped five tenths of a second off the mark set by Helen Shipley, of Wellsley College, in the National A.A.U. meet in Columbus, Ohio.
San Francisco, March 17 (AP)
-- Bobby Waters of Sylvania, Ga., relief quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League, will undergo a knee operation tomorrow at Franklin Hospital here.
Waters injured his left knee in the last game of the 1960 season.
While working out in Sylvania a swelling developed in the knee and he came here to consult the team physician.
St. Petersburg, Fla., March 17 (AP)
-- Two errors by New York Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek in the eleventh inning donated four unearned runs and a 5-to-2 victory to the Chicago White Sox today.
Austin, Texas
-- A Texas halfback who doesn't even know the team's plays, Eldon Moritz, ranks fourth in Southwest Conference scoring after three games.
Time stands still every time Moritz, a 26-year-old Army Signal Corps veteran, goes into the field.
Although he never gets to play while the clock is running, he gets a big kick--several every Saturday, in fact--out of football.
Moritz doesn't even have a nose guard or hip pads but he's one of the most valuable members of the Longhorn team that will be heavily favored Saturday over Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.
That's because he already has kicked 14 extra points in 15 tries.
He ran his string of successful conversions this season to 13 straight before one went astray last Saturday night in the 41-8 slaughter of Washington State.
Moritz is listed on the Longhorn roster as a right halfback, the position at which he lettered on the 1956 team.
But ask coach Darrell Royal what position he plays and you'll get the quick response, place-kicker.
A 208-pound, 6-foot 1-inch senior from Stamford, Moritz practices nothing but place-kicking.
Last year, when he worked out at halfback all season, he didn't get into a single game.
This year, coach Royal told me if I'd work on my place-kicking he thought he could use me, said Moritz.
So I started practicing on it in spring training.
Moritz was bothered during the first two games this year by a pulled muscle in the thigh of his right (kicking) leg and, as a result, several of his successful conversions have gone barely far enough.
Moritz said Monday his leg feels fine and, as a result, he hopes to start practicing field goals this week.
He kicked several while playing at Stamford High School, including one that beat Anson, 3-0, in a 1953 district game.
I kicked about 110 extra points in 135 tries during three years in high school, he said, and made 26 in a row at one time.
I never did miss one in a playoff game--I kicked about 20 in the five playoff games my last two years.
Moritz came to Texas in 1954 but his freshman football efforts were hampered by a knee injury.
He missed the 1955 season because of an operation on the ailing knee, then played 77 minutes in 1956.
His statistical record that year, when Texas won only one game and lost nine, was far from impressive: he carried the ball three times for a net gain of 10 yards, punted once for 39 yards and caught one pass for 13 yards.
He went into the Army in March, 1957, and returned two years later.
But he was scholastically ineligible in 1959 and merely present last season.
Place kicking is largely a matter of timing, Moritz declared.
Once you get the feel of it, there's not much to it.
I've tried to teach some of the other boys to kick and some of them can't seem to get the feel.
Practice helps you to get your timing down.
It's kind of like golf--if you don't swing a club very often, your timing gets off.
Moritz, however, kicks only about 10 or 12 extra points during each practice session.
If you kick too much, your leg gets kinda dead, he explained.
Footnotes:
In their first three games, the Longhorns have had the ball 41 times and scored 16 times, or 40 per cent;
their total passing yardage in three games, 447 on 30 completions in 56 attempts, is only 22 yards short of their total passing yardage in 1959, when they made 469 on 37 completions in 86 tries.
Tailback James Saxton already has surpassed his rushing total for his brilliant sophomore season, when he netted 271 yards on 55 carries;
he now has 273 yards in 22 tries during three games.
Saxton has made only one second-half appearance this season and that was in the Washington State game, for four plays: he returned the kickoff 30 yards, gained five yards through the line and then uncorked a 56-yard touchdown run before retiring to the bench.
Wingback Jack Collins injured a knee in the Washington State game but insists he'll be ready for Oklahoma.
Last week, when Royal was informed that three Longhorns were among the conference's top four in rushing, he said: That won't last long.
It didn't;
Monday, he had four Longhorns in the top four.
A good feeling prevailed on the SMU coaching staff Monday, but attention quickly turned from Saturday's victory to next week's problem: Rice University.
The Mustangs don't play this week.
We're just real happy for the players, Coach Bill Meek said of the 9-7 victory over the Air Force Academy.
I think the big thing about the game was that our kids for the third straight week stayed in there pitching and kept the pressure on.
It was the first time we've been ahead this season (when John Richey kicked what proved to be the winning field goal).
Assistant coach John Cudmore described victory as a good feeling, I think, on the part of the coaches and the players.
We needed it and we got it.
Meek expressed particular gratification at the defensive performances of end Happy Nelson and halfback Billy Gannon.
Both turned in top jobs for the second straight game.
Nelson played magnificent football, Meek praised.
He knocked down the interference and made key stops lots of times.
And he caused the fumble that set up our touchdown.
He broke that boy (Air Force fullback Nick Arshinkoff) in two and knocked him loose from the football.
Gannon contributed saving plays on the Falcons' aerial thrusts in the late stages.
One was on a fourth-down screen pass from the Mustang 21 after an incomplete pass into Gannon's territory.
As soon as it started to form, Gannon spotted it, Meek said.
He timed it just right and broke through there before the boy (halfback Terry Isaacson) had time to turn around.
He really crucified him he nailed it for a yard loss.
The Air Force's, and the game's, final play, was a long pass by quarterback Bob McNaughton which Gannon intercepted on his own 44 and returned 22 yards.
He just lay back there and waited for it, Meek said.
He almost brought it back all the way.
Except for sophomore center Mike Kelsey and fullback Mike Rice, Meek expects the squad to be physically sound for Rice.
Kelsey is very doubtful for the Rice game, Meek said.
He'll be out of action all this week.
He got hit from the blind side by the split end coming back on the second play of the game.
There is definitely some ligament damage in his knee.
Rice has not played since injuring a knee in the opener with Maryland.
He's looking a lot better, and he's able to run, Meek explained.
We'll let him do a lot of running this week, but I don't know if he'll be able to play.
The game players saw the Air Force film Monday, ran for 30 minutes, then went in, while the reserves scrimmaged for 45 minutes.
We'll work hard Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Meek said, and probably will have a good scrimmage Friday.
We'll work out about an hour on Saturday, then we'll work Monday and Tuesday of next week, then taper off.
SMU will play the Owls at Rice Stadium in Houston in a night game Saturday, Oct. 21.
Huddle hearsay
End Gene Raesz, who broke a hand in the Owl's game with LSU, was back working out with Rice Monday, and John Nichols, sophomore guard, moved back into action after a week's idleness with an ankle injury.
The Texas Aggies got a day off Monday--a special gift from Coach Jim Myers for its conference victory last Saturday night, but Myers announced that halfback George Hargett, shaken up in the Tech game, would not play against Trinity Saturday.
Halfback Bud Priddy, slowed for almost a month by a slowly-mending sprained ankle, joined TCU's workout Monday.
The Dallas Texans were back home Monday with their third victory in four American Football League starts--a 19-12 triumph over the Denver Broncos--but their visit will be a short one.
The Texans have two more road games--at Buffalo and Houston--before they play for the home folks again, and it looks as if coach Hank Stram's men will meet the Bills just as they are developing into the kind of team they were expected to be in pre-season reckonings.
Buffalo coach Buster Ramsey, who has become one of the game's greatest collectors of quarterbacks, apparently now has found a productive pair in two ex-National Football Leaguers, M. C. Reynolds and Warren Rabb.
Rabb, the former Louisiana State field general, came off the bench for his debut with the Bills Sunday and directed his new team to a 22-12 upset victory over the Houston Oilers, defending league champions.
Just our luck!
Exclaimed Stram.
Buster would solve that quarterback problem just as we head that way.
Our interior line and out linebackers played exceptionally well, said Stram Monday after he and his staff reviewed movies of the game.
In fact our whole defensive unit did a good job.
The Texans won the game through ball control, with Quarterback Cotton Davidson throwing only 17 passes.
We always like to keep the ball as much as we can against Denver because they have such an explosive attack, explained Stram.
They can be going along, doing little damage, then bang, bang--they can hit a couple of passes on you for touchdowns and put you in trouble.
The Broncs did hit two quick strikes in the final period against the Texans, but Dallas had enough of a lead to hold them off.
The principal tactic in controlling the ball was giving it to Abner Haynes, the flashy halfback.
He was called upon 26 times--more than all of the other ball-carriers combined--and delivered 145 yards.
The Texans made themselves a comforting break on the opening kickoff when Denver's Al Carmichael was jarred loose from the ball when Dave Grayson, the speedy halfback, hit him and Guard Al Reynolds claimed it for Dallas.
A quick touchdown resulted.
That permitted us to start controlling the ball right away, said Stram, quipping, I think I'll put that play in the book.
The early Southwest Conference football leaders--Texas, Arkansas and Texas A & M--made a big dent in the statistics last week.
Texas' 545-yard spree against Washington State gave the Longhorns a 3-game total offense of 1,512 yards (1,065 rushing and 447 passing) a new SWC high.
Arkansas combined 280 yards rushing with 64 yards passing (on 5 completions in 7 tosses) and a tough defense to whip TCU, and A & M, with a 38-point bulge against Texas Tech ran up its biggest total loop play since 1950.
Completing 12 of 15 passes for 174 yards, the Aggies had a total offense of 361 yards.
Texas leads in per-game rushing averages, 355 yards, and passing 149 (to Baylor's 126), but idle Baylor has the best defensive record (187.5 yards per game to Texas' 189).
A & M has the best defense against passes, 34.7 yards per game.
Not satisfied with various unofficial checks on the liveliness of baseballs currently in use, the major leagues have ordered their own tests, which are in progress at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rookie Ron Nischwitz continued his pinpoint pitching Monday night as the Bears made it two straight over Indianapolis, 5-3.
The husky 6-3, 205-pound lefthander, was in command all the way before an on-the-scene audience of only 949 and countless of television viewers in the Denver area.
It was Nischwitz' third straight victory of the new season and ran the Grizzlies' winning streak to four straight.
They now lead Louisville by a full game on top of the American Association pack.
Nischwitz fanned six and walked only Charley Hinton in the third inning.
He has given only the one pass in his 27 innings, an unusual characteristic for a southpaw.
The Bears took the lead in the first inning, as they did in Sunday's opener, and never lagged.
Dick McAuliffe cracked the first of his two doubles against Lefty Don Rudolph to open the Bear's attack.
After Al Paschal gruonded out, Jay Cooke walked and Jim McDaniel singled home McAuliffe.
Alusik then moved Cooke across with a line drive to left.
Jay Porter drew a base on balls to fill the bases but Don Wert's smash was knocked down by Rudolph for the putout.
The Bears added two more in the fifth when McAuliffe dropped a double into the leftfield corner, Paschal doubled down the rightfield line and Cooke singled off Phil Shartzer's glove.
Nischwitz was working on a 3-hitter when the Indians bunched three of their eight hits for two runs in the sixth.
Chuck Hinton tripled to the rightfield corner, Cliff Cook and Dan Pavletich singled and Gaines' infield roller accounted for the tallies.
The Bears added their last run in the sixth on Alusik's double and outfield flies by Porter and Wert.
Gaines hammered the ball over the left fence for the third Indianapolis run in the ninth.
Despite the 45-degree weather the game was clicked off in 1:48, thanks to only three bases on balls and some good infield play.
Chico Ruiz made a spectacular play on Alusik's grounder in the hole in the fourth and Wert came up with some good stops and showed a strong arm at third base.
Bingles and bobbles:
Cliff Cook accounted for three of the Tribe's eight hits.
It was the season's first night game and an obvious refocusing of the lights are in order.
The infield was well flooded but the expanded outfield was much too dark.
Mary Dobbs Tuttle was back at the organ.
Among the spectators was the noted exotic dancer, Patti Waggin who is Mrs. Don Rudolph when off the stage.
Lefty Wyman Carey, another Denver rookie, will be on the mound against veteran John Tsitouris at 8 o'clock Tuesday night.
Ed Donnelly is still bothered by a side injury and will miss his starting turn.
Dallas, Tex., May 1--(AP)
-- Kenny Lane of Muskegon, Mich., world's seventh ranked lightweight, had little trouble in taking a unanimous decision over Rip Randall of Tyler, Tex., here Monday night.
St. Paul-Minneapolis, May 1--(AP)
-- Billy Gardner's line double, which just eluded the diving Minnie Minoso in left field, drove in Jim Lemon with the winning run with two out in the last of the ninth to give the Minnesota Twins a 6-5 victory over the Chicago White Sox Monday.
Lemon was on with his fourth single of the game, a liner to center.
He came all the way around on Gardner's hit before 5777 fans.
It was Gardner's second run batted in of the game and his only ones of the year.
Turk Lown was tagged with the loss, his second against no victories, while Ray Moore won his second game against a single loss.
The Twins tied the score in the sixth inning when Reno Bertoia beat out a high chopper to third base and scored on Lenny Green's double to left.
The White Sox had taken a 5-4 lead in the top of the sixth on a pair of pop fly hits--a triple by Roy Sievers and single by Camilo Carreon--a walk and a sacrifice fly.
Jim Landis' 380-foot home run over left in the first inning gave the Sox a 1-0 lead, but Harmon Killebrew came back in the bottom of the first with his second homer in two days with the walking Bob Allison aboard.
Al Smith's 340-blast over left in the fourth--his fourth homer of the campaign--tied the score and Carreon's first major league home run in the fifth put the Sox back in front.
A double by Green, Allison's run-scoring 2-baser, an infield single by Lemon and Gardner's solid single to center put the Twins back in front in the last of the fifth.
Ogden, Utah, May 1--(AP)
-- Boston Red Sox Outfielder Jackie Jensen said Monday night he was through playing baseball.
I've had it, he told a newsman.
I know when my reflexes are gone and I'm not going to be any 25th man on the ball club.
This was the first word from Jensen on his sudden walkout.
Jensen got only six hits in 46 at-bats for a batting average in the first 12 games.
He took a midnight train out of Cleveland Saturday, without an official word to anybody, and has stayed away from newsmen on his train trip across the nation to Reno, Nev., where his wife, former Olympic Diving Champion Zoe Ann Olsen, awaited.
She said, when she learned Jackie was heading home: I'm just speculating, but I have to think Jack feels he's hurting Boston's chances.
The Union Pacific Railroad streamliner, City of San Francisco, stopped in Ogden, Utah, for a few minutes.
Sports Writer Ensign Ritchie of the Ogden Standard Examiner went to his compartment to talk with him.
The conductor said to Ritchie: I don't think you want to talk to him.
You'll probably get a ball bat on the head.
He's mad at the world.
But Jackie had gone into the station.
Ritchie walked up to him at the magazine stand.
I told him who I was and he was quite cold.
But he warmed up after a while.
I told him what Liston had said and he said Liston was a double-crosser and said anything he (Liston) got was through a keyhole.
He said he had never talked to Liston.
Liston is Bill Liston, baseball writer for the Boston Traveler, who quoted Jensen as saying:
I can't hit anymore.
I can't run.
I can't throw.
Suddenly my reflexes are gone.
Just when it seems baseball might be losing its grip on the masses up pops heroics to start millions of tongues to wagging.
And so it was over the weekend what with 40-year-old Warren Spahn pitching his no-hit masterpiece against the Giants and the Giants' Willie Mays retaliating with a record-tying 4-homer spree Sunday.
Both, of course, were remarkable feats and further embossed the fact that baseball rightfully is the national pastime.
Of the two cherished achievements the elderly Spahn's hitless pitching probably reached the most hearts.
It was a real stimulant to a lot of guys I know who have moved past the 2-score-year milestone.
And one of the Milwaukee rookies sighed and remarked, Wish I was 40, and a top-grade big leaguer.
The modest and happy Spahn waved off his new laurels as one of those good days.
But there surely can be no doubt about the slender southpaw belonging with the all-time great lefthanders in the game's history.
Yes, with Bob Grove, Carl Hubbell, Herb Pennock, Art Nehf, Vernon Gomez, et al.
Spahn not only is a superior pitcher but a gentlemanly fine fellow, a ball player's ball player, as they say in the trade.
I remember his beardown performance in a meaningless exhibition game at Bears Stadium Oct. 14, 1951, before a new record crowd for the period of 18,792.
Spahnie doesn't know how to merely go through the motions, remarked Enos Slaughter, another all-out guy, who played rightfield that day and popped one over the clubhouse.
The spectacular Mays, who reaches a decade in the big leagues come May 25, joined six other sluggers who walloped four home runs in a span of nine innings.
Incidentally, only two did it before a home audience.
Bobby Lowe of Boston was the first to hit four at home and Gil Hodges turned the trick in Brooklyn's Ebbetts Field.
Ed Delahanty and Chuck Klein of the Phillies, the Braves' Joe Adcock, Lou Gehrig of the Yankees, Pat Seerey of the White Sox and Rocky Colavito, then with Cleveland, made their history on the road.
Willie's big day revived the running argument about the relative merits of Mays and Mickey Mantle.
This is an issue which boils down to a matter of opinion, depending on whether you're an American or National fan and anti or pro-Yankee.
The record books, however, would favor the Giants' ace.
In four of his nine previous seasons Mays hit as many as 25 home runs and stole as many as 25 bases.
Once the figure was 30-30.
Willie's lifetime batting average of is 11 points beyond Mickey's.
The Giants who had been anemic with the bat in their windy Candlestick Park suddenly found the formula in Milwaukee's park.
It will forever be a baseball mystery how a team will suddenly start hitting after a distressing slump.
The Denver-area TV audience was privileged to see Mays' four home runs, thanks to a new arrangement made by Bob Howsam that the games are not to be blacked out when his Bears are playing at home.
This rule providing for a blackout of televised baseball 30 minutes before the start of a major or minor league game in any area comes from the game's top rulers.
The last couple of years the Bears management got the business from the Living Room Athletic Club when games were cut off.
Actually they were helpless to do anything about the nationwide policy.
This year, I am told, the CBS network will continue to abide by the rule but NBC will play to a conclusion here.
There are two more Sunday afternoons when the situation will arise.
It is an irritable rule that does baseball more harm than good, especially at the minor league level.
You would be surprised how many fans purposely stayed away from Bears Stadium last year because of the television policy.
This dissatisfaction led to Howsam's request that the video not be terminated before the end of the game.
Cincinnati, Ohio (AP)
-- The powerful New York Yankees won their 19th world series in a 5-game romp over outclassed Cincinnati, crushing the Reds in a humiliating 13-5 barrage Monday in the loosely played finale.
With Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra both out of action due to injuries, the American League champs still mounted a 15-hit attack against a parade of eight Cincinnati pitchers, the most ever used by one team in a series game.
Johnny Blanchard, Mantle's replacement, slammed a 2-run homer as the Yankees routed loser Joey Jay in a 5-run first inning.
Hector Lopez, subbing for Berra, smashed a 3-run homer off Bill Henry during another 5-run explosion in the fourth.
The Yanks also took advantage of three Cincinnati errors.
The crowd of 32,589 had only two chances to applaud.
In the third Frank Robinson hammered a long home run deep into the corner of the bleachers in right center, about 400 feet away, with two men on.
Momentarily the Reds were back in the ball game, trailing only 6-3, but the drive fizzled when John Edwards fouled out with men on second and third and two out.
In the fifth, Wally Post slashed a 2-run homer off Bud Daley, but by that time the score was 11-5 and it really didn't matter.
The Yankee triumph made Ralph Houk only the third man to lead a team to both a pennant and a World Series victory in his first year as a manager.
Only Bucky Harris, the boy-manager of Washington in 1924, and Eddie Dyer of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946 had accomplished the feat.
Philadelphia, Jan. 23
-- Nick Skorich, the line coach for the football champion Philadelphia Eagles, was elevated today to head coach.
Skorich received a three-year contract at a salary believed to be between $20,000 and $25,000 a year.
He succeeds Buck Shaw, who retired at the end of last season.
The appointment was announced at a news conference at which Skorich said he would retain two members of Shaw's staff--Jerry Williams and Charlie Gauer.
Williams is a defensive coach.
Gauer works with the ends.
Choice was expected
The selection had been expected.
Skorich was considered the logical choice after the club gave Norm Van Brocklin permission to seek the head coaching job with the Minnesota Vikings, the newest National Football League entry.
Van Brocklin, the quarterback who led the Eagles to the title, was signed by the Vikings last Wednesday.
Philadelphia permitted him to seek a better connection after he had refused to reconsider his decision to end his career as a player.
With Skorich at the helm, the Eagles are expected to put more emphasis on running, rather than passing.
In the past the club depended largely on Van Brocklin's aerials.
Skorich, however, is a strong advocate of a balanced attack--split between running and passing.
Coach played 3 years
Skorich, who is 39 years old, played football at Cincinnati University and then had a three-year professional career as a lineman under Jock Sutherland with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
An injury forced Skorich to quit after the 1948 season.
He began his coaching career at Pittsburgh Central Catholic High School in 1949.
He remained there for four years before moving to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N. Y..
He was there one season before rejoining the Steelers as an assistant coach.
Four years later he resigned to take a similar job with the Green Bay Packers.
The Eagles signed him for Shaw's staff in 1959.
Skorich began his new job auspiciously today.
At a ceremony in the reception room of Mayor Richardson Dilworth, the Eagles were honored for winning the championship.
Shaw and Skorich headed a group of players, coaches and team officials who received an engrossed copy of an official city citation and a pair of silver cufflinks shaped like a football.
With the announcement of a special achievement award to William A. ((Bill) Shea, the awards list was completed yesterday for Sunday night's thirty-eighth annual dinner and show of the New York Chapter, Baseball Writers' Association of America, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Shea, the chairman of Mayor Wagner's Baseball Committee, will be joined on the dais by Warren Spahn, the southpaw pitching ace of the Milwaukee Braves;
Frank Graham, the Journal-American sports columnist;
Bill Mazeroski, the World Series hero of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Casey Stengel, the former manager of the Yankees.
Stengel will receive the Ben Epstein Good Guy Award.
Mazeroski, whose homer beat the Yankees in the final series game, will receive the Babe Ruth Award as the outstanding player in the 1960 world series.
Graham will be recognized for his meritorious service to baseball and will get the William J. Slocum Memorial Award.
To Spahn will go the Sid Mercer Memorial Award as the chapter's player of the year.
Show follows ceremonies
A crowd of 1,400 is expected for the ceremonies, which will be followed by the show in which the writers will lampoon baseball personalities in skit, dance and song.
The 53-year-old Shea, a prominent corporation lawyer with a sports background, is generally recognized as the man most responsible for the imminent return of a National League club to New York.
Named by Mayor Wagner three years ago to head a committee that included James A. Farley, Bernard Gimbel and Clint Blume, Shea worked relentlessly.
His goal was to obtain a National League team for this city.
The departure of the Giants and the Dodgers to California left New York with only the Yankees.
Despite countless barriers and disappointments, Shea moved forward.
When he was unable to bring about immediate expansion, he sought to convince another National League club to move here.
When that failed, he enlisted Branch Rickey's aid in the formation of a third major league, the Continental, with New York as the key franchise.
The Continental League never got off the ground, but after two years it forced the existing majors to expand.
Flushing stadium in works
The New York franchise is headed by Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson.
A big-league municipal stadium at Flushing Meadow Park is in the works, and once the lease is signed the local club will be formally recognized by Commissioner Ford C. Frick.
Shea's efforts figure prominently in the new stadium.
Shea and his wife, Nori, make their home at Sands Point, L. I..
Bill Jr., 20, Kathy, 15, and Patricia, 9, round out the Shea family.
Shea was born in Manhattan.
He attended New York University before switching to Georgetown University in Washington.
He played basketball there while working toward a law degree.
Later, Shea owned and operated the Long Island Indians, a minor league professional football team.
He was the lawyer for Ted Collins' old Boston Yankees in the National Football League.
All was quiet in the office of the Yankees and the local National Leaguers yesterday.
On Friday, Roger Maris, the Yankee outfielder and winner of the American League's most-valuable-player award, will meet with Roy Hamey, the general manager.
Maris is in line for a big raise.
Arnold Palmer and Sam Snead will be among those honored at the national awards dinner of the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association tonight.
The dinner will be held at the Hotel Pierre.
Palmer, golf's leading money-winner in 1960, and Snead will be saluted as the winning team in the Canada Cup matches last June in Dublin.
Deane Beman, the National Amateur champion, and all the metropolitan district champions, including Bob Gardner, the amateur title-holder, also will receive awards.
The writers' Gold Tee Award will go to John McAuliffe of Plainfield, N. J., and Palm Beach, Fla., for his sponsorship of charity tournaments.
Horton Smith of Detroit, a former president of the Professional Golfers Association, will receive the Ben Hogan Trophy for his comeback following a recent illness.
The principal speaker will be Senator Stuart Symington, Democrat of Missouri.
Golf's golden boy
Arnold Palmer has been a blazing figure in golf over the past twelve months.
He won the Masters, the United States Open and a record $80,738 in prize money.
He was heralded as Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, and last night was acclaimed in Rochester as the Professional Athlete of the Year, a distinction that earned for him the $10,000 diamond-studded Hickok Belt.
But he also achieved something that endeared him to every duffer who ever flubbed a shot.
A couple of weeks ago, he scored a monstrous 12 on a par-5 hole.
It made him human.
And it also stayed the hands of thousands of brooding incompetents who were meditating the abandonment of a sport whose frustrations were driving them to despair.
If such a paragon of perfection as Palmer could commit such a scoring sacrilege, there was hope left for all.
It was neither a spirit of self-sacrifice nor a yen to encourage the downtrodden that motivated Arnold.
He merely became victimized by a form of athletics that respects no one and aggravates all.
The world's best golfer, shooting below par, came to the last hole of the opening round of the Los Angeles open with every intention of delivering a final crusher.
He boomed a 280-yard drive.
Then the pixies and the zombies took over while the banshees wailed in the distance.
No margin for error
On the narrow fairway of a 508-yard hole, Arnold whipped into his second shot.
The ball went off in a majestic arc, an out-of-bounds slice.
He tried again and once more sliced out of bounds.
He hooked the next two out of bounds on the opposite side.
It is possible that I over-corrected, he said ruefully.
Each of the four wayward shots cost him two strokes.
So he wound up with a dozen.
It was a nice round figure, that 12, he said as he headed for the clubhouse, not too much perturbed.
From the standpoint of the army of duffers, however, this was easily the most heartening exhibition they had had since Ben Hogan fell upon evil ways during his heyday and scored an 11 in the Texas open.
The idol of the hackers, of course, is Ray Ainsley, who achieved a 19 in the United States Open.
Their secondary hero is another pro, Willie Chisholm, who drank his lunch during another Open and tried to blast his way out of a rock-strewn gully.
Willie's partner was Long Jim Barnes, who tried to keep count.
Stickler for rules
How many is that, Jim?
Asked Willie at one stage of his excavation project.
Thirteen, said Long Jim.
Nae, man, said Willie, ye must be countin' the echoes.
He had a 16.
Palmer's dozen were honestly earned.
Nor were there any rules to save him.
If there had been, he would have found a loophole, because Arnold is one golfer who knows the code as thoroughly as the man who wrote the book.
This knowledge has come in handy, too.
His first shot in the Open last year landed in a brook that flowed along the right side of the fairway.
The ball floated downstream.
A spectator picked up the ball and handed it to a small boy, who dropped this suddenly hot potato in a very playable lie.
Arnold sent for Joe Dey, the executive secretary of the golf association.
Joe naturally ruled that a ball be dropped from alongside the spot where it had originally entered the stream.
I knew it all along, confessed Arnold with a grin, but I just happened to think how much nicer it would be to drop one way up there.
For a serious young man who plays golf with a serious intensity, Palmer has such an inherent sense of humor that it relieves the strain and keeps his nerves from jangling like banjo strings.
Yet he remains the fiercest of competitors.
He'll even bull head-on into the rules when he is sure he's right.
That's how he first won the Masters in 1958.
It happened on the twelfth hole, a 155-yarder.
Arnold's iron shot from the tee burrowed into the bunker guarding the green, an embankment that had become soft and spongy from the rains, thereby bringing local rules into force.
Ruling from on high
I can remove the ball, can't I?
Asked Palmer of an official.
No, said the official.
You must play it where it lies.
You're wrong, said Arnold, a man who knows the rules.
I'll do as you say, but I'll also play a provisional ball and get a ruling.
He scored a 4 for the embedded ball, a 3 with the provisional one.
The golfing fathers ruled in his favor.
So he picked up a stroke with the provisional ball and won the tournament by the margin of that stroke.
Until a few weeks ago, however, Arnold Palmer was some god-like creature who had nothing in common with the duffers.
But after that 12 at Los Angeles he became one of the boys, a bigger hero than he ever had been before.
A formula to supply players for the new Minneapolis Vikings and the problem of increasing the 1961 schedule to fourteen games will be discussed by National Football League owners at a meeting at the Hotel Warwick today.
Other items on the agenda during the meetings, which are expected to continue through Saturday, concern television, rules changes, professional football's hall of fame, players' benefits and constitutional amendments.
The owners would like each club in the fourteen-team league to play a home-and-home series with teams in its division, plus two games against teams in the other division.
However, this would require a lengthening of the season from thirteen to fourteen weeks.
Pete Rozelle, the league commissioner, pointed out:
We'll have the problem of baseball at one end and weather at the other.
Nine of the league's teams play in baseball parks and therefore face an early-season conflict in dates.
If the Cardinals heed Manager Gene Mauch of the Phillies, they won't be misled by the Pirates' slower start this season.
Pittsburgh definitely is the team to beat, Mauch said here the other day.
The Pirates showed they could outclass the field last year.
They have the same men, no age problem, no injuries and they also have Vinegar Bend Mizell for the full season, along with Bobby Shantz.
Tonight at 8 o'clock the Cardinals, who gave the Pirates as much trouble as anyone did in 1960, breaking even with them, will get their first 1961 shot at baseball's world champions.
The Pirates have a 9-6 record this year and the Redbirds are 7-9.
Change in pitchers.
Solly Hemus announced a switch in his starting pitcher, from Bob Gibson to Ernie Broglio, for several reasons: 1 Broglio's 4-0 won-lost record and 1.24 earned-run mark against Pittsburgh a year ago;
2 The desire to give Broglio as many starts as possible;
3 The Redbirds' disheartening 11-7 collapse against the Phillies Sunday.
Manager Hemus, eager to end a pitching slump that has brought four losses in the five games on the current home stand, moved Gibson to the Wednesday night starting assignment.
After Thursday's open date, Solly plans to open with Larry Jackson against the Cubs here Friday night.
Harvey Haddix, set back by the flu this season, will start against his former Cardinal mates, who might be playing without captain Kenny Boyer in tonight's game at Busch Stadium.
Boyer is suffering from a stiff neck.
Haddix has a 13-8 record against the Redbirds, despite only a 1-3 mark in 1960.
Pirate Manager Danny Murtaugh said he hadn't decided between Mizell and Vern Law for Wednesday's game.
Mizell has won both of his starts.
Nieman kept in lineup.
After a lengthy workout yesterday, an open date, Hemus said that Bob Nieman definitely would stay in the lineup.
That means Stan Musial probably will ride the bench on the seventh anniversary of his record five-home run day against the Giants.
I have to stay with Nieman for a while, Hemus said.
Bill White (sore ankles) should be ready.
With a lefthander going for Pittsburgh, I may use Don Taussig in center.
Lindy McDaniel threw batting practice about 25 minutes, and he looked good, Hemus said.
He should be getting back in the groove before long.
Our pitching is much better than it has shown.
The statistics hardly indicated that the Pirates needed extra batting practice, but Murtaugh also turned his men loose at Busch Stadium yesterday.
Six Bucks over.
Until the Bucs' bats quieted down a bit in Cincinnati over the weekend, the champions had eight men hitting over.
Despite the recession, Pittsburgh came into town with this imposing list of averages: Smoky Burgess, Gino Cimoli, Bill Virdon, Bob Clemente and Dick Groat, each
, Dick Stuart, Don Hoak
and Bob Skinner
Bill Mazeroski with and Hal Smith with were the only Pirates dragging their feet.
Perhaps the Pirate who will be the unhappiest over the news that Musial probably will sit out most of the series is Bob Friend, who was beaten by The Man twice last season on dramatic home runs.
Friend is off to a great start with a 4-0 record but isn't likely to see action here this week.
We're getting Friend some runs for a change, and he has been pitching good, Murtaugh said.
Virdon has been blasting the ball.
No plunkers for him.
Six Bucs over.
The Pirates jumped off to an 11-3 start by May 1 last year, when the Redbirds as well as the Dodgers held them even over the season.
On last May 1, the Cardinals stood at 7-6, ending a two-season fall-off on that milestone.
In 1958, the Birds were 3-10 on May 1.
A year later they were 4-13.
Since 1949, the St. Louis club has been below on May 1 just four times.
The '49 team was off to a so-so 5-5 beginning, then fell as low as 12-17 on May 23 before finishing with 96 victories.
The '52 Cards were 6-7 on May 1 but ended with 88 triumphs, the club's top since 1949.
Then last season the Birds tumbled as low as 11-18 on May 19 before recovering to make a race of it and total 86 victories.
Since 1949, the only National League club that got off to a hot start and made a runaway of the race was the '55 Dodger team.
Those Dodgers won their first 10 games and owned a 21-2 mark and a nine-game lead by May 8.
The club that overcame the worst start in a comparable period to win the pennant was New York's '51 Giants, who dropped 11 of their first 13.
They honored the battling Billikens last night.
Speakers at a Tipoff Club dinner dealt lavish praise to a group of St. Louis University players who, in the words of Coach John Benington, had more confidence in themselves than I did.
The most valuable player award was split three ways, among Glen Mankowski, Gordon Hartweger and Tom Kieffer.
In addition, a special award was given to Bob (Bevo) Nordmann, the 6-foot-10 center who missed much of the season because of a knee injury.
You often hear people talk about team spirit and that sort of thing, Benington said in a conversation after the ceremonies, but what this team had was a little different.
The boys had a tremendous respect for each other's ability.
They knew what they could do and it was often a little more than I thought they could do.
Several times I found the players pepping me up, where it usually is the coach who is supposed to deliver the fight talk.
We'd be losing at halftime to a good team and Hartweger would say,'Don't worry, Coach--we'll get 'em all right'''.
The trio who shared the most-valuable honors were introduced by Bob Broeg, sports editor of the Post-Dispatch.
Kieffer, the only junior in the group, was commended for his ability to hit in the clutch, as well as his all-round excellent play.
Mankowski, the ball-hawking defensive expert, was cited for his performance against Bradley in St. Louis U.'s nationally televised victory.
Benington said, I've never seen a player have a game as great as Mankowski did against Bradley that day.
Benington recalled that he once told Hartweger that he doubted Gordon would ever play much for him because he seemed to be lacking in all of the accepted basketball skills.
After the coach listed all the boy's faults, Hartweger said, Coach before I leave here, you'll get to like me.
Mrs. Benington admired Gordon's spirit and did what she could to persuade her husband that the boy might help the team.
As Hartweger accepted his silver bowl, he said, I want to thank coach's wife for talking him into letting me play.
Bob Burnes, sports editor of the Globe-Democrat, presented Bob Nordmann with his award.
Bevo was congratulated for his efforts to stay in shape so that he could help the team if his knee healed in time.
Within a week after the injury, suffered in St. Louis's victory in the final game of the Kentucky tournament, Nordmann was sitting on the Bill's bench doing what he could to help Benington.
On the clock given him was the inscription, For Outstanding Contribution to Billiken Basketball, 1960-61.
Other lettermen from the team that compiled a 21-9 record and finished as runner-up in the National Invitation Tournament were: Art Hambric, Donnell Reid, Bill Nordmann, Dave Harris, Dave Luechtefeld and George Latinovich.
This team set a precedent that could be valuable in the future, Benington pointed out.
By winning against Bradley, Kentucky and Notre Dame on those teams' home courts, they showed that the home court advantage can be overcome anywhere and that it doesn't take a super team to do it.
St. Louis University found a way to win a baseball game.
Larry Scherer last night pitched a no-hit game, said to be the first in Billiken baseball history, as the Blue and White beat Southeast Missouri State College, 5-1, at Crystal City.
The victory was the first of the season for the Billikens after nine defeats and a tie.
The tie was against Southeast Missouri last Friday.
Scherer also had a big night at bat with four hits in five trips including a double, Len Boehmer also was 4-for-5 with two doubles and Dave Ritchie had a home run and a triple.
St. Louis U. was to be in action again today with a game scheduled at 4 against Washington University at Ligget Field.
The game opened a busy week for Washington.
The Bears are set to play at Harris Teachers College at 3:30 tomorrow and have a doubleheader at Quincy, Ill., Saturday.
Happy hitting
If it's true that contented cows give more milk, why shouldn't happy ball players produce more base hits?
The two top talents of the time, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, have hit the ball harder and more successfully so far this early season than at any period in careers which, to be frank about it, never have quite reached expectations.
And that's meant as a boost, not a knock.
Mays and Mantle, both 10-year men at 30, have so much ability that, baseball men agree, they've never hit the heights.
Their heights, that is.
Mantle, the bull-necked blond switch-hitter, had one sensational triple-crown season, 1959, when he batted and also led the American League in home runs, 52, and rbi's, 130.
Like the Yankees' slugger, Mays, the terror of the Giants, has had seasons that would be considered the ultimate by most players, but not by--or for--Willie.
His best years were 1954 when he hit with 41 homers and '55 when he belted 51 home runs, drove in 127 and stole 24 bases.
Now, apparently happier under new managers, Mays and Mantle, the perfect players, are behaving as though they're going to pass those previous peaks.
Labor relations
Yes, we know, they're professionals, men paid to play, and they shouldn't care how they're handled, just as long as their names are spelled correctly on the first and fifteenth of each month.
The truth is, though, that men react differently to different treatment.
For that matter, Stan Musial is rare, possessing the disposition that enabled him to put out the same for seven managers, reserving his opinions, but not his effort.
Mantle, it's apparent, resented Casey Stengel's attempts to push and prod him into the perfection the veteran manager saw as a thrilling possibility.
The old man was almost too possessive.
Stengel inherited DiMaggio, Rizzuto, but he brought up Mantle from Class C to the majors, from Joplin to New York.
With the speed and power of the body beautiful he saw before him, Ol' Case wanted No. 7 to be not only the best homerun hitter, but also the best bunter, base-runner and outfielder.
Stengel probably preached too much in the early days when the kid wanted to pop his bubble gum and sow his oats.
Inheriting a more mature Mantle, who now has seen the sights on and off Broadway, Ralph Houk quietly bestowed, no pun intended, the mantle of authority on Mickey.
The Major decided that, rather than be led, the slugger could lead.
And what leadership a proud Mantle has given so far.
The opinion continues here that with a 162-game schedule, pitching spread thin through a 10-team league and a most inviting target in Los Angeles' Wrigley Field Jr., Mantle just might break the most glamorous record on the books, Babe Ruth's 60 homers of 1927.
Four for Alvin
Mays' day came a day earlier for Willie than for the kids and Commies this year.
Willie's wonderful walloping Sunday--four home runs--served merely to emphasize how happy he is to be playing for Alvin Dark.
Next to Leo Durocher, Dark taught Mays the most when he was a grass-green rookie rushed up to the Polo Grounds 10 years ago this month, to help the Giants win a dramatic pennant.
Romantic news concerns Mrs. Joan Monroe Armour and F. Lee H. Wendell, who are to be married at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow in the Lake Forest home of her brother, J. Hampton Monroe, and Mrs. Monroe.
Only the families and a dozen close friends will be present.
The bride's brother, Walter D. Monroe Jr., will give her in marriage.
In the small group will be the junior and senior Mrs. Walter Monroe;
the bridegroom's parents, the Barrett Wendells, who are returning from a winter holiday in Sarasota, Fla., for the occasion;
and his brother, Mr. Wendell Jr., and his wife, who will arrive from Boston.
Mr. Wendell Jr. will be best man.
Also present will be the bride's children, Joan, 13, and Kirkland, 11.
Their father is Charles B. Armour.
The bridegroom's children were here for the Christmas holidays and can't return.
Young Peter Wendell, a student at the Westminster school, has measles, and his sister, Mrs. Andrew Thomas, and her husband, who live in Missoula, Mont., have a new baby.
Their mother is Mrs. Camilla Alsop Wendell.
Mr. Wendell and his bride will live in his Lake Forest house.
They will take a wedding trip later.
' back with the Met
We are back with the'Met'again now that the'Met'is back in Chicago, bulletins Mrs. Frank S. Sims, president of the women's board of the University of Chicago Cancer Research Foundation.
The New York Metropolitan Opera Company will be here in May, and the board will sponsor the Saturday night, May 13, performance of Turandot as a benefit.
Birgit Nilsson will be starred.
Housed in the new McCormick Place theater, this should prove to be an exciting evening, adds Mrs. Sims.
The board's last money raising event was a performance by Harry Belafonte--quite off-beat for this group, decided some of the members.
Mrs. Henry T. Sulcer of Winnetka, a new board member, will be chairman of publicity for the benefit.
Her husband recently was appointed vice president of the university, bringing them back here from the east.
Parichy-Hamm
Because of the recent death of the bride's father, Frederick B. Hamm, the marriage of Miss Terry Hamm to John Bruce Parichy will be a small one at noon tomorrow in St. Bernadine's church, Forest Park.
A small reception will follow in the Oak Park Arms hotel.
Mrs. Hamm will not come from Vero Beach, Fla., for the wedding.
However, Mr. Parichy and his bride will go to Vero Beach on their wedding trip, and will stay in the John G. Beadles' beach house.
The Beadles formerly lived in Lake Forest.
Harvey B. Stevens of Kenilworth will give his niece in marriage.
Mr. and Mrs. Stevens and the bride's other uncles and aunts, the Rush C. Butlers, the Homer E. Robertsons, and the David Q. Porters, will give the bridal dinner tonight in the Stevenses' home.
Here and there
The Chicago Press club will fete George E. Barnes, president of the United States Lawn Tennis association, at a cocktail party and buffet supper beginning at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow.
Later, a bus will carry members to the Chicago Stadium to see Jack Kramer's professional tennis matches at 8 p.m..
Armed with letters from embassies to ministers of countries, especially those in the near and far east, Mrs. Geraghty will beat the bushes for oriental talent.
We (the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry) expect to establish closer relations with nations and their cultural activities, and it will be easy as a member of the fair staff to bring in acts, explains Mrs. Geraghty.
For instance, Djakarta, Indonesia, has three groups of dancers interested in coming here.
I'm even going to try to get the whirling dervishes of Damascus!
First, Honolulu
Honolulu will be Mrs. Geraghty's first stop.
Then Japan, Hong Kong, Manila, India, Pakistan, Damascus, Beirut, and to Rome, London, and Paris to look over wonderful talent.
Dec. 22 is the deadline for Mrs. Geraghty's return;
the Geraghtys' youngest daughter, Molly, bows in the Passavant Debutante Cotillion the next night.
Molly already has her cotillion gown, and it's fitted, says her mother.
Also, invitations have been addressed to Molly's debut tea the afternoon of Dec. 29 in the Arts club.
It won't be a tea, however, but more of an international folk song festival, with singers from Chicago's foreign groups to sing Christmas songs from around the world.
The international theme will be continued with the Balkan strings playing for a dinner the Byron Harveys will give in the Racquet club after the tea.
Miss Abra Prentice's debut supper dance in the Casino will wind up the day.
Burke-Rostagno
The Richard S. Burkes' home in Wayne may be the setting for the wedding reception for their daughter, Helen Lambert, and the young Italian she met last year while studying in Florence during her junior year at Smith college.
He is Aldo Rostagno, son of the Guglielmo Rostagnos of Florence whom the Burkes met last year in Europe.
The Burkes, who now live in Kankakee, are telling friends of the engagement.
Miss Burke, a graduate of Miss Hall's school, stayed on in Florence as a career girl.
Her fiance, who is with a publishing firm, translates many books from English into Italian.
He will be coming here on business in December, when the wedding is to take place in Wayne.
Miss Burke will arrive in December also.
Here and there
A farewell supper Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Sethness Jr. planned Sunday for Italian Consul General and Mrs. Giacomo Profili has been canceled because Mr. Sethness is in Illinois Masonic hospital for surgery.
Mrs. William Odell, Mrs. Clinton B. King, John Holabird Jr., Norman Boothby, and Actress Maureen O'Sullivan will judge the costumes in the grand march at the Affaire Old Towne Bal Masque tomorrow in the Germania club.
The party is to raise money for the Old Town Art center and to plant more crabapple trees along the streets of Old Town.
Lyon around: Columnist Walter Winchell, well and rat-a-tat-tatty again, wheeled thru town between trains yesterday en route to his Phoenix, Ariz., rancho, portable typewriter in hand.
If W. W.'s retiring soon, as hinted, he ain't talking--yet.
Pretty Sunny Ainsworth, the ex-Mrs. Tommy Manville and the ex-Mrs. Bud Arvey, joined Playboy-Show-Biz Illustrated, as a promotional copy writer.
She's a whiz.
You can get into an argument about fallout shelters at the drop of a beer stein in clubs and pubs these nights.
Everybody has a different idea on the ethics and morals of driving away neighbors, when and if.
Comic Gary Morton signed to play the Living Room here Dec. 18, because that's the only time his heart, Lucille Ball, can come along.
And watch for a headline from this pair any time now.
The Living Room has another scoop: Jane Russell will make one of her rare night club singing appearances there, opening Jan. 22.
La Russell's run in Skylark, debuting next week at Drury Lane, already is a sellout.
Johnny Ray, at the same L. R., has something to cry about.
He's been warbling in severe pain;
a medico's injection inflamed a nerve, and Johnny can barely walk.
Charley Simonelli, top Universal-International film studio exec, makes an honest man out of this column.
As we bulletin'd way back, he'll wed pretty Rosemary Strafaci, of the Golf Mag staff, in N. Y. C. today.
Handsome bachelor Charley was a favorite date of many of Hollywood's glamor gals for years.
George Simon, exec director of Danny Thomas A. L. S. A. C. (Aiding Leukemia Stricken American Children) fund raising group, filled me in on the low-down phonies who are using phones to solicit funds for Danny's St. Jude hospital in Memphis.
There is no such thing as an emergency telephone building fund drive.
The only current event they're staging is the big show at the Stadium Nov. 25, when Danny will entertain thousands of underprivileged kids.
You can mail contribs to Danny Thomas, Post Office Box 7599, Chicago.
So, if anybody solicits by phone, make sure you mail the dough to the above.
Olivia De Havilland signed to do a Broadway play for Garson Kanin this season, A Gift of Time.
She'll move to Gotham after years in Paris.
Gorgeous Doris Day and her producer-hubby, Marty Melcher, drive in today from a motor tour thru New England.
D. D. will pop up with U-I Chief Milt Rackmil at the Carnegie theater tomorrow to toast 300 movie exhibitors.
It'll be an all day affair with screenings of Doris' new one, Lover Come Back, and Flower Drum Song.
Whee the People: Lovely Thrush Annamorena gave up a promising show biz career to apply glamor touches to her hubby, Ray Lenobel's fur firm here.
Typical touch: She sold a $10,000 morning light mink to Sportsman Freddie Wacker for his frau, Jana Mason, also an ex-singer.
In honor of the Wackers' new baby.
Fur goodness sake!
Emcee Jack Herbert insists Dick Nixon's campaign slogan for governor of California is, Knight Must Fall!
Give generously when you buy candy today for the Brain Research Foundation.
It's one of our town's worthiest charities.
Best Bet for Tonight: That darlin' dazzler from Paree, Genevieve, opening in the Empire room.
Dave Trager, who is quite a showman and boss of Chicago's new pro basketball Packers, is debuting a new International club, for the exclusive use of season ticket holders, in the Stock Yards Inn.
Jump off is tomorrow night when the Packs meet St. Louis in their season home opener.
Nobody's mentioned it, but when ol' Casey Stengel takes over as boss of the New York Mets, he'll be the only baseballight ever to wear the uniform of all New York area clubs, past and present: Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, and now the Mets.
And Bernie Kriss calls the bayonet clashes at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, The Battle of the Sentry!
The jotted Lyon: This mad world dept.: Khrush and the Kremlin crowd are confident all right.
They're contaminating the earth's atmosphere including their own via mighty megaton bombs but their own peasants still don't know about it!
More: On the free world side.
Albert John Luthuli, awarded a Nobel prize for his South African integration struggles, has to get permission to fly to collect his honor.
Hmpf But on to the frothier side Johnny Weissmuller, the only real Tarzan, telephoned Maureen O'Sullivan, his first Jane (now at Drury Lane) and muttered, Me Tarzan, this Jane?
Snapped Maureen, Me Jane!
Actually Johnny is a glib, garrulous guy, with a rare sense of humor.
Everywhere he went in town, people sidled up, gave him the guttural bit or broke into a frightening Tarzan yodel.
He kids his Tarzan roles more than anyone.
La Dolce Vita, the dynamite Italian flicker, opens at popular prices at the Loop theater Nov. 2.
My idea of masterful movie making.
Bill Veeck's health is back to the dynamo stage, but his medics insist he rest for several more months before getting back into the baseball swim.
William keeps up with our town's doings daily, via the Tribune, and he tells me he never misses the Ticker.
That's our boy Bill.
Jean Fardulli's Blue Angel is the first top local club to import that crazy new dance, the Twist.
They'll start lessons, too, pronto.
A cheer here for Francis Lorenz, state treasurer, who will meet with the probate advisory board of the Chicago Bar association, for suggestions on how to handle the opening of safety deposit boxes after somebody dies.
After being closed for seven months, the Garden of the Gods Club will have its gala summer opening Saturday, June 3.
Music for dancing will be furnished by Allen Uhles and his orchestra, who will play each Saturday during June.
Members and guests will be in for an added surprise with the new wing containing 40 rooms and suites, each with its own private patio.
Gene Marshall, genial manager of the club, has announced that the Garden of the Gods will open to members Thursday, June 1.
Beginning July 4, there will be an orchestra playing nightly except Sunday and Monday for the summer season.
Mrs. J. Edward Hackstaff and Mrs. Paul Luette are planning a luncheon next week in honor of Mrs. J. Clinton Bowman, who celebrates her birthday on Tuesday.
Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Chase announce the birth of a daughter, Sheila, on Wednesday in Mercy Hospital.
Grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Chase and Mr. and Mrs. Guy Mullenax of Kittredge.
Mrs. Chase is the former Miss Mary Mullenax.
Back to w. coast
Mrs. McIntosh Buell will leave Sunday to return to her home in Santa Barbara, Calif., after spending a week in her Polo Grounds home.
Mrs. John C. Vroman Jr. of Manzanola is spending several days in her Sherman Plaza apartment.
Mr. and Mrs. Merrill Shoup have returned to their home in Colorado Springs after spending a few days at the Brown Palace Hotel.
Brig. Gen. and Mrs. Robert F. McDermott will entertain at a black tie dinner Wednesday, May 3, in the Officers' Club at the Air Force Academy.
Cocktail party
Mr. and Mrs. Piero De Luise will honor Italian Consul and Mrs. Emilio Bassi at a cocktail party Tuesday, May 2, from 6 to 8 p.m. in their home.
The Bassis are leaving soon for their new post.
There will be a stag dinner Friday evening at the Denver Country Club which will precede the opening of the 1961 golf season.
Cocktails will be served from 6 to 7 p.m., with dinner at 7 and entertainment in the main dining room immediately following.
Miss Betsy Parker was one of the speakers on the panel of the Eastern Women's Liberal Arts College panel on Wednesday evening in the Security Life Bldg..
Guests were juniors in the public high schools.
Fashion show
The committee for the annual Central City fashion show has been announced by Mrs. D. W. Moore, chairman.
The event, staged yearly by Neusteters, will be held in the Opera House Wednesday, Aug. 16.
It will be preceded by luncheon in the Teter House.
Mrs. Roger Mead is head of the luncheon table decorations.
Mrs. Stanley Wright is ticket chairman and Mrs. Theodore Pate is in charge of publicity.
The first committee meeting will be held on May 19.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrew S. Kelsey of Washington, D.C., announce the birth of a daughter, Kira Ann Kelsey, on Monday in Washington, D.C..
Grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. R.L. Rickenbaugh and Mr. and Mrs. E.O. Kelsey of Scarsdale, N.Y..
Mrs. Kelsey is the former Miss Ann Rickenbaugh.
A cheery smile, a compassionate interest in others and a practical down-to-earth approach.
Those qualities make Esther Marr a popular asset at the Salvation Army's Social Center at 1200 Larimer St..
The pert, gray-haired woman who came to Denver three years ago from Buffalo, N.Y., is a civilian with the Army.
Her position covers a number of daily tasks common to any social director.
The job also covers a number of other items.
Mom Marr, as the more than 80 men at the center call her, is the link that helps to bridge the gulf between alcoholics and the outside world and between parolees and society.
Her day starts early, but no matter how many pressing letters there are to be written (and during May, which is National Salvation Army Week, there are plenty), schedules to be made or problems to be solved, Mrs. Marr's office is always open and the welcome mat is out.
Mrs. Marr is the first contact a Skid Row figure talks to after he decides he wants to pick himself up.
She sees that there is a cup of steaming hot coffee awaiting him and the two chat informally as she presents the rules of the center and explains procedures.
Usually at this point a man is withdrawn from society and one of my jobs is to see that he relearns to mingle with his fellow men, Mrs. Marr explained.
The Denverite has worked out an entire program to achieve this using the facilities of the center.
And I bum tickets to everything I can, she said.
I've become the greatest beggar in the world.
In addition to the tickets to the movies, sporting events and concerts, Mrs. Marr lines up candy and cookies because alcoholics require a lot of sweets to replace the sugar in their system.
Mrs. Marr also has a number of parolees to mother, watching to see that they do not break their parole and that they also learn to readjust to society.
By mid-June, millions of Americans will take to the road on vacation trips up and down and back and forth across this vast and lovely land.
In another four weeks, with schools closed across the nation, the great all-American summer safari will be under way.
By July 1, six weeks from now, motel-keepers all over the nation will, by 6 p.m., be switching on that bleak--to motorists--sign, No Vacancy.
No matter how many Americans go abroad in summer, probably a hundred times as many gas up the family car, throw suitcases, kids and comic books in the back seat, and head for home.
And where is home, that magic place of the heart?
Ah, that is simple.
Home is where a man was born, reared, went to school and, most particularly, where grandma is.
That is where we turn in the good old summertime.
The land lies ready for the coming onslaught.
My husband and I, a month ahead of the rush, have just finished a 7-day motor journey of 2809 miles from Tucson, Ariz., to New York City:
set for influx
I can testify that motels, service and comfort stations (they go together like Scots and heather), dog wagons, roadside restaurants, souvenir stands and snake farms are braced and waiting.
I hope it can be said without boasting that no other nation offers its vacationing motorists such variety and beauty of scene, such an excellent network of roads on which to enjoy it and such decent, far-flung over-night accommodations.
Maybe motel-keeping isn't the nation's biggest industry, but it certainly looks that way from the highway.
There are motels for all purposes and all tastes.
There are even motels for local weather peculiarities in Shamrock, Tex., as I discovered.
There the Royal Motel advertises all facilities, vented heat, air conditioned, carpeted, free TV, storm cellar.
Many with pools
Innumerable motels from Tucson to New York boast swimming pools (swim at your own risk is the hospitable sign poised at the brink of most pools).
Some even boast two pools, one for adults and one for children.
But the Royal Motel in Shamrock was the only one that offered the comfort and security of a storm cellar.
Motorists like myself who can remember the old tourists accommodated signs on farm houses and village homes before World War 2, can only marvel at the great size and the luxury of the relatively new and fast-grossing motel business.
All for $14!
At the Boxwood Motel in Winchester, Va., we accidentally drew the honeymoon suite, an elegant affair with wall-to-wall carpeting, gold and white furniture, pink satin brocade chairs, 24-inch TV and a pink tile bath with masses of pink towels.
All for $14.
That made up for the best motel in Norman, Okla., where the proprietor knocked $2 off the $8.50 tab when we found ants in the pressed-paper furniture.
Oxnard, Calif., will be the home of the Rev. Robert D. Howard and his bride, the former Miss Judith Ellen Gay, who were married Saturday at the Munger Place Methodist Church.
Parents of the bride are Mr. and Mrs. Ferris M. Gay, 7034 Coronado.
The bridegroom is the son of Mrs. James Baines of Los Angeles, Calif., and Carl E. Howard of Santa Monica, Calif..
He is a graduate of UCLA and Perkins School of Theology, Aj.
Dr. W. B. I. Martin officiated, and the bride was given in marriage by her father.
Honor attendants for the couple were Miss Sandra Branum and Warren V. McRoberts.
The couple will honeymoon in Sequoia National Park, Calif..
Miss Joan Frances Baker, a graduate of SMU, was married Saturday to Elvis Leonard Mason, an honor graduate of Lamar State College of Technology, in the chapel of the First Presbyterian Church of Houston.
The bride, daughter of Rhodes Semmes Baker Jr. of Houston and the late Mrs. Baker, was president of Kappa Kappa Gamma and a member of Mortar Board at Aj.
The Rev. Richard Freeman of Texas City officiated and Charles Pabor and Mrs. Marvin Hand presented music.
The bride was given in marriage by her father.
She wore a court-length gown of organdy designed with bateau neckline and princesse skirt accented by lace appliques.
Her veil was caught to a crown, and she carried gardenias and stephanotis.
Miss Mary Ross of Baird was maid of honor, and bridesmaids were Miss Pat Dawson of Austin, Mrs. Howard M. Dean of Hinsdale, Ill., and Mrs. James A. Reeder of Shreveport, La..
Cecil Mason of Hartford, Conn., was best man for his brother, and groomsmen were Rhodes S. Baker 3, of Houston, Dr. James Carter of Houston and Conrad McEachern of New Orleans, La..
Lee Jackson and Ken Smith, both of Houston, and Alfred Neumann of Beaumont seated guests.
After a reception at The Mayfair, the newlyweds left for a wedding trip to New Orleans, La..
They will live in Corpus Christi.
Miss Shirley Joan Meredith, a former student of North Texas State University, was married Saturday to Larry W. Mills, who has attended Arlington State College.
They will live at 2705 Fitzhugh after a wedding trip to Corpus Christi.
Parents of the couple are Ray Meredith of Denton and the late Mrs. Meredith and Mrs. Hardy P. Mills of Floresville and the late Mr. Mills.
The Rev. Melvin Carter officiated at the ceremony in Slaughter Chapel of the First Baptist Church.
Dan Beam presented music and the bride was given in marriage by her father.
She wore a gown of satin designed along princesse lines and featuring a flared skirt and lace jacket with bateau neckline.
Her veil was caught to a pearl headdress, and she carried stephanotis and orchids.
Miss Glenda Kay Meredith of Denton was her sister's maid of honor, and Vernon Lewelleyn of San Angelo was best man.
Robert Lovelace and Cedric Burgher Jr. seated guests.
A reception was held at the church.
The First Christian Church of Pampa was the setting for the wedding last Sunday of Miss Marcile Marie Glison and Thomas Earl Loving Jr., who will live at 8861 Gaston after a wedding trip to New Orleans, La.
The bride, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ervin Glison of Pampa, has attended Texas Woman's University and will continue her studies at Aj.
A Night in New Orleans is the gayety planned by members of the Thrift Shop Committee for May 6 at Philmont Country Club.
The women have a reputation for giving parties that are different and are fun and this year's promises to follow in this fine tradition.
Mrs. H. J. Grinsfelder is chairman.
The Louisiana city is known, of course, for its fine food, good music and its colorful hospitality and, when guests arrive at Philmont that night, says Mrs. Grinsfelder, that is exactly what we expect to offer them.
We've been working for weeks.
The prospects look great.
We are keeping a number of surprises under our hats.
But we can't tell it all now and then have no new excitement later.
Basin Street Beat
But she does indicate festivities will start early, that a jazz combo will give with the Basin Street beat during the cocktail and dinner hours and that Lester Lanin's orchestra will take over during the dancing.
As for food, Mrs. Henry Louchheim, chairman of this phase, is a globetrotter who knows good food.
New Orleans?
She says, of course I've had the best.
It is just bad luck that we are having the party in a month with no R's, so no oysters.
But we have lots of other New Orleans specialties.
I know they will be good.
We've tried them out on the club chef--or say, he has tried them out on us and we have selected the best.
Scenic effects
Guests will be treated to Gulf Coast scenic effects.
There will be masses of flowers, reproductions of the handsome old buildings with their grillwork and other things that are typical of New Orleans.
Mrs. Harry K. Cohen is chairman of this phase and she is getting an artistic assist from A. Van Hollander, display director of Gimbel Brothers.
Bundle centers
For the convenience of guests bundle centers have been established throughout the city and suburbs where the donations may be deposited between now and the date of the big event.
In addition to the bundles, guests pay the cost of their dinners.
Members of the young set who would like to come to the party only during the dancing time are welcomed.
The Thrift Shop, with Mrs. Bernhard S. Blumenthal as president, is one of the city's most successful fund-raisers for the Federation of Jewish Agencies.
Some idea of the competence of the women is indicated in the contribution made by them during the past 25 years that totals $840,000.
It's big business
Big business, this little Thrift Shop business, say the members.
For most of the 25 years the operation was under feminine direction.
In the past few years the men, mostly husbands of members, have taken an interest.
Louis Glazer is chairman of the men's committee that, among other jobs, takes over part of the responsibility for staffing the shop during its evening hours.
Mrs. Theodore Kapnek is vice chairman of the committee for the gala.
Mrs. Richard Newburger is chairman of hostesses.
Mrs. Arthur Loeb is making arrangements for a reception;
Mrs. Joan Lichtenstein, for publicity;
Mrs. Harry M. Rose, Jr., for secretarial duties;
Mrs. Ralph Taussig, for junior aides;
Mr. and Mrs. B. Lewis Kaufnabb, for senior aides, and Mrs. Samuel P. Weinberg, for the bundles.
In addition, Mr. and Mrs. Allan Goodman are controllers, Mrs. Paul Stone is treasurer and Mrs. Albert Quell is in charge of admittance for the dancing at 9 P.m..
Besides the bundle centers where contributions may be made there will be facilities at Philmont Country Club for those who would like to bring the bundles on the night of the party.
The women's committee of St. David's Church will hold its annual pre-Fair pink parade, a dessert bridge and fashion show at 1 p.m. on Monday, April 17, in the chapel assembly room, Wayne.
The fashion show, by Natalie Collett will have Mrs. John Newbold as commentator.
Models will be Mrs. Samuel B. D. Baird, Mrs. William H. Meyle, Jr., Mrs. Richard W. Hole, Mrs. William F. Harrity, Mrs. Robert O. Spurdle, Mrs. E. H. Kloman, Mrs. Robert W. Wolcott, Jr., Mrs. Frederick C. Wheeler, Jr., Mrs. William A Boyd, Mrs F. Vernon Putt.
Col. Clifton Lisle, of Chester Springs, who headed the Troop Committee for much of its second and third decades, is now an honorary member.
Each year he invites the boys to camp out on his estate for one of their big week ends of the year.
The Troop is proud of its camping-out program--on year-round schedule and was continued even when sub-zero temperatures were registered during the past winter.
We worry, say the mothers.
But there never is any need.
The boys love it.
Mrs. John Charles Cotty is chairman of publicity for the country fair and Mrs. Francis G. Felske and Mrs. Francis Smythe, of posters.
They all are of Wayne.
Meet the Artist is the invitation issued by members of the Greater Philadelphia Section of the National Council of Jewish Women as they arrange for an annual exhibit and sale of paintings and sculpture at the Philmont Country Club on April 8 and 9.
A preview party for sponsors of the event and for the artists is set for April 8.
The event will be open to the public the following day.
Proceeds will be used by the section to further its program in science, education and social action on local, national and international levels.
Noted artist
Mrs. Monte Tyson, chairman, says the work of 100 artists well known in the Delaware Valley area will be included in the exhibition and sale.
Among them will be Marc Shoettle, Ben Shahn, Nicholas Marsicano, Alfred Van Loen and Milton Avery.
Mr. Shoettle has agreed to do a portrait of the family of the person who wins the door prize.
The event is the sixth on the annual calendar of the local members of the National Council of Jewish Women.
It originated with the Wissahickon Section.
When this and other units combined to form the present group, it was taken on as a continuing fund-raiser.
Others assisting
Mrs. Jerome Blum and Mrs. Meyer Schultz are co-chairmen this year.
Assisting as chairmen of various committees are Mrs. Alvin Blum, Mrs. Leonard Malmud, Mrs. Edward Fernberger, Mrs. Robert Cushman.
Also Mrs. Berton Korman, Mrs. Morton Rosen, Mrs. Jacques Zinman, Mrs. Evelyn Rosen, Mrs. Henry Schultz, Mr. and Mrs. I. S. Kamens, Mrs. Jack Langsdorf, Mrs. Leonard Liss, Mrs. Gordon Blumberg, Mrs. Oscar Bregman, Mrs. Alfred Kershbaum and Mrs. Edward Sabol.
Dr. and Mrs. N. Volney Ludwick have had as guests Mr. and Mrs. John J. Evans, Jr., of Kimbolton House, Rockhall, Md..
Mrs. Edward App will entertain the members of her Book Club on Tuesday.
Mrs. A. Voorhees Anderson entertained at a luncheon at her home, on Monday.
Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were entertained at dinner on Sunday by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Coulson, of Fairless Hills.
Mr. and Mrs. Major Morris and their son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Glennon, and their children will spend several days in Brigantine, N. J..
Mr. and Mrs. James Janssen announce the birth of a daughter, Patricia Lynn Janssen, on March 2.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Marella announce the engagement of their daughter, Miss Mary Ann Marella, to Mr. Robert L. Orcutt, son of Mr. and Mrs. Donald R. Orcutt, of Drexel Hill.
Miss Eileen Grant is spending several weeks visiting in Florida.
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Heinze are entertaining Mr. Walter Lehner, of Vienna;
Mr. Ingo Dussa, of Dusseldorf, Germany, and Mr. Bietnar Haaek, of Brelin.
Mr. and Mrs. Harry D. Hoaps, Jr. have returned to their home in Drexel Park, after spending some time in Delray Beach Fla..
Mr. and Mrs. James F. Mitchell, with their daughter, Anne, and son, James, Jr. are spending several weeks in Florida, and will visit in Clearwater.
Cmdr. Warren Taylor, USN., and Mrs. Taylor, of E. Greenwich, R. I., will have with them for the Easter holidays the latter's parents, Mr. and Mrs. John B. Walbridge, of Drexel Hill.
Mr. and Mrs. L. DeForest Emmert, formerly of Drexel Hill, and now of Newtown Square, are entertaining Mr. and Mrs. Ashman E. Emmert, of Temple, Pa..
Mrs. William H. Merner, of Drexel Park, entertained at a luncheon at her home on Wednesday.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Brown will return next week from Bermuda.
Mrs. H. E. Godwin will entertain the members of her Book Club at her home on Tuesday.
Dr. and Mrs. Richard Peter Vieth announce the engagement of their daughter, Miss Susan Ann Vieth, to Mr. Conrad Wall 3, son of Dr. Conrad Wall 2, and Mrs. Nell Kennedy Wall.
The marriage will be quietly celebrated in early February.
Miss Vieth was graduated from the Louise S. McGehee school and is attending Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass..
Her mother is the former Miss Stella Hayward.
Mr. Wall is a student at Tulane university, where he is a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
Their Majesties, The Queen of Carnival and The Queen of Comus, have jointly issued invitations for Shrove Tuesday evening at midnight at which time they will entertain in the grand ballroom of a downtown hotel following the balls of Rex and Comus.
Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. McConnell and their son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond B. Walker will be hosts this Tuesday evening at dinner at the State St. home of the Walkers honoring Mrs. McConnell's debutante niece, Miss Barbara Williams.
Debutante Miss Lady Helen Hardy will be feted at luncheon this Tuesday at which the hostess will be Mrs. Edwin Socola of Waveland, Miss..
She will entertain at a Vieux Carre restaurant at 1 o'clock in the early afternoon.
Another debutante, Miss Virginia Richmond, will also be the honoree this Wednesday at luncheon at which Mrs. John Dane, will be hostess entertaining at a downtown hotel.
Miss Katherine Vickery, who attends Sweet Briar College in Virginia, will rejoin her father, Dr. Eugene Vickery, at the family home in Richmond pl. Wednesday for part of the Carnival festivities.
The large municipal hall was ablaze with color, which shown out from the bright array of chic ballgowns worn by those participating in the maskers' dances.
The mother of young queen, Mrs. G. Henry Pierson Jr. chose a white brocade gown made on slim lines with panels of tomato-red and bright green satin extending down the back.
Mrs. Thomas Jordan selected a black taffeta frock made with a skirt of fringed tiers and worn with crimson silk slippers.
Mrs. Clayton Nairne, whose daughter, was among the court maids, chose a deep greenish blue lace gown.
Mrs. Fenwick Eustis, whose daughter was also a maid to the queen, wore an ashes of roses slipper satin gown.
Mrs. Peter Feringa Jr., last year's Achaeans' queen, chose an eggshell white filmy lace short dress made with a wide decolletage trimmed with an edging of tulle.
Mrs. Eustis Reily's olive-green street length silk taffeta dress was embroidered on the bodice with gold threads and golden sequins and beads.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad announced yesterday it would reduce the total amount of its payroll by 10 per cent through salary cuts and lay-offs effective at 12:01 A.M. next Saturday.
The current monthly payroll comes to about $15,000,000.
Howard E. Simpson, the railroad's president, said, A drastic decline in freight loading due principally to the severe slump in the movement of heavy goods has necessitated this regrettable action.
The reduction in expenses will affect employees in the thirteen states in which the B. & O. operates.
Salary cut and lay-offs
It will be accomplished in two ways: 1
A flat reduction of 10 per cent in the salary of all officers, supervisors and other employees not belonging to unions.
There are about 3,325 officers and employees in this class.
Sufficient lay-offs of union employees to bring about a 10 per cent cut in the union payroll expense.
Since the railroad cannot reduce the salary of individual union members under contract, it must accomplish its payroll reduction by placing some of the men on furlough, a B. & O. spokesman said.
Those union members kept on their jobs, therefore, will not take a cut in their wages.
The spokesman said the number to be furloughed cannot be estimated since the lay-offs must be carried out in each area depending on what men are most needed on the job.
A thug struck a cab driver in the face with a pistol last night after robbing him of $18 at Franklin and Mount Streets.
The victim, Norman B. Wiley, 38, of the 900 block North Charles Street, was treated for cuts at Franklin Square Hospital after the robbery.
The driver told police he followed as the Negro man got out of the cab with his money.
The victim was beaten when he attempted to stop the bandit.
He said the assailant, who was armed with a automatic, entered the taxi at Pennsylvania Avenue and Gold Street.
In another attack, Samuel Verstandig, 41, proprietor of a food store in the 2100 block Aiken Street, told police two Negroes assaulted him in his store and stole $150 from the cash register after choking and beating him.
A baby was burned to death and two other children were seriously injured last night in a fire which damaged their one-room Anne Arundel county home.
The victim Darnell Somerville, Negro, 1, was pronounced dead on arrival at Anne Arundel General Hospital in Annapolis.
His sister and brother, Marie Louise, 3, and John Raymond, Jr. 22 months, were admitted to the hospital.
The girl was in critical condition with burns over 90 per cent of her body.
Boy in fair condition
The boy received second-degree burns of the face, neck and back.
His condition was reported to be fair.
Police said the children's mother, Mrs. Eleanor Somerville, was visiting next door when the fire occurred.
The house is on Old Annapolis road a mile south of Severna Park, at Jones Station, police said.
Annapolis, Jan. 7
-- The Anne Arundel county school superintendent has asked that the Board of Education return to the practice of recording its proceedings mechanically so that there will be no more question about who said what.
The proposal was made by Dr. David S. Jenkins after he and Mrs. D. Ellwood Williams, Jr., a board member and long-time critic of the superintendent, argued for about fifteen minutes at this week's meeting.
The disagreement was over what Dr. Jenkins had said at a previous session and how his remarks appeared in the minutes presented at the following meeting.
Cites discrepancies
Mrs. Williams had a list which she said contained about nine or ten discrepancies between her memory of Dr. Jenkins's conversation and how they were written up for the board's approval.
I hate to have these things come up again and again, Dr. Jenkins commented as he made his suggestion.
These are the board's minutes.
I'll write what you tell me to.
For a number of years the board used a machine to keep a permanent record but abandoned the practice about two years ago.
It was about that time, a board member said later, that Dr. Thomas G. Pullen, Jr., State superintendent of schools, told Dr. Jenkins and a number of other education officials that he would not talk to them with a recording machine sitting in front of him.
Dr. Jenkins notes, however, that most of the school boards in the State do not do so.
State Senator Joseph A. Bertorelli (D., First Baltimore) had a stroke yesterday while in his automobile in the 200 block of West Pratt Street.
He was taken to University Hospital in a municipal ambulance.
Doctors at the hospital said he was partially paralyzed on the right side.
His condition was said to be, fair.
Police said he became ill while parked in front of a barber shop at 229 West Pratt Street.
Barber summoned
He called Vincent L. Piraro, proprietor of the shop, who summoned police and an ambulance.
The vice president of the City Council complained yesterday that there are deficiencies in the city's snow clearing program which should be corrected as soon as possible.
Councilman William D. Schaefer (D., Fifth) said in a letter to Mayor Grady that plowing and salting crews should be dispatched earlier in storms and should be kept on the job longer than they were last month.
Werner criticized
Conceding that several cities to the north were in worse shape than Baltimore after the last storm, Mr. Schaefer listed several improvements he said should be made in the snow plan here.
He said the snow plan was put in effect too slowly in December.
Equipment should be in operation almost immediately after the first snowfall, Mr. Schaefer said.
The Councilman, who is the Administration floor leader, also criticized Bernard L. Werner, public works director, for halting snow operations on Tuesday night after the Sunday storm.
Sent home for rest
Mr. Werner said yesterday that operations continued through the week.
What he did, Mr. Werner said, was let manual laborers go home Tuesday night for some rest.
Work resumed Wednesday, he said.
Mr. Schaefer also recommended that the snow emergency route plan, under which parking is banned on key streets and cars are required to use snow tires or chains on them, should be strictly enforced.
Admitting that main streets and the central business district should have priority, the Councilman said it is also essential that small shopping areas not be overlooked if our small merchants are to survive.
Recounting personal observations of clearance work, the Councilman cited instances of inefficient use of equipment or supplies by poorly trained workers and urged that plow blades be set so they do not leave behind a thin layer of snow which eventually freezes.
Annapolis, Jan. 7 (special)
-- The 15-year-old adopted son of a Washington attorney and his wife, who were murdered early today in their Chesapeake Bay-front home, has been sent to Spring Grove State Hospital for detention.
The victims were H. Malone Dresbach, 47, and his wife, Shirley, 46.
Each had been shot in the back several times with a
automatic rifle, according to Capt. Elmer Hagner, chief of Anne Arundel detectives.
Judge Benjamin Michaelson signed the order remanding the boy to the hospital because of the lack of juvenile accommodations at the Anne Arundel County Jail.
The Circuit Court jurist said the boy will have a hearing in Juvenile Court.
Younger son calls police
Soon after 10 A.M., when police reached the 1-1/2-story brick home in the Franklin Manor section, 15 miles south of here on the bay, in response to a call from the Dresbach's other son, Lee, 14, they found Mrs. Dresbach's body on the first-floor bedroom floor.
Her husband was lying on the kitchen floor, police said.
The younger son told police his brother had run from the house after the shootings and had driven away in their mother's car.
The description of the car was immediately broadcast throughout Southern Maryland on police radio.
Two brothers adopted
Police said the boys are natural brothers and were adopted as small children by the Dresbachs.
Trooper J. A. Grzesiak spotted the wanted car, with three boys, at a Route 2 service station, just outside Annapolis.
The driver admitted he was the Dresbachs' son and all three were taken to the Edgewater Station, police said.
Annapolis, Jan. 7
-- Governor Tawes today appointed Lloyd L. Simpkins, his administrative assistant, as Maryland's Secretary of State.
Mr. Simpkins will move into the post being vacated by Thomas B. Finan, earlier named Attorney General to succeed C. Ferdinand Sybert, who will be elevated to an associate judgeship on the Maryland Court of Appeals.
Governor Tawes announced that a triple swearing-in ceremony will be held in his office next Friday.
Simpkins from Somerset
Mr. Simpkins is a resident of Somerset county, and he and the Governor, also a Somerset countian, have been friends since Mr. Simpkins was a child.
Now 38, Mr. Simpkins was graduated from the University of Maryland's College of Agriculture in 1947.
Five years later, he was awarded the university's degree in law.
Mr. Simpkins made a name for himself as a member of the House of Delegates from 1951 through 1958.
From the outset of his first term, he established himself as one of the guiding spirits of the House of Delegates.
Maryland contracts for future construction during October totaled $77,389,000, up to 10 per cent compared to October, 1960, F. W. Dodge, Dodge Corporation, reported.
Dodge reported the following breakdown:
Nonresidential at $20,447,000, down 28 per cent;
residential at $47,101,000, up 100 per cent;
and heavy engineering at $9,841,000, down 45 per cent.
The cumulative total of construction contracts for the first ten months of 1961 amounted to $634,517,000, a 4 per cent increase compared to the corresponding period of last year.
A breakdown of the ten-month total showed:
Nonresidential at $253,355,000, up 22 per cent;
residential at $278,877,000, up 12 per cent;
and heavy engineering at $102,285,000, down 33 per cent.
Residential building consists of houses, apartments, hotels, dormitories and other buildings designed for shelter.
The share of the new housing market enjoyed by apartments, which began about six years ago, has more than tripled within that span of time.
In 1961, it is estimated that multiple unit dwellings will account for nearly 30 per cent of the starts in residential construction.
Convenience held key
Convenience is therefore the key to the housing market today.
Trouble-free, long-life, quality components will play an increasingly important part in the merchandising of new housing in 1960, Pantas predicted.
Sixty-seven living units are being added to the 165-unit Harbor View Apartments in the Cherry Hill section.
Ultimately the development will comprise 300 units, in two-story and three-story structures.
Various of the apartments are of the terrace type, being on the ground floor so that entrance is direct.
Others, which are reached by walking up a single flight of stairs, have balconies.
The structures housing the apartments are of masonry and frame construction.
Heating is by individual gas-fired, forced warm air systems.
Construction in 1962 will account for about 15 per cent of the gross national product, according to a study by Johns-Manville Corporation.
London, Feb. 9
-- Vital secrets of Britain's first atomic submarine, the Dreadnought, and, by implication, of the entire United States navy's still-building nuclear sub fleet, were stolen by a London-based soviet spy ring, secret service agents testified today.
The Dreadnought was built on designs supplied by the United States in 1959 and was launched last year.
It is a killer sub--that is, a hunter of enemy subs.
It has a hull patterned on that of the United States navy's Nautilus, the world's first atomic submarine.
Its power unit, however, was derived from the reactor of the more modern American nuclear submarine Skipjack.
Five held for trial
The announcement that the secrets of the Dreadnought had been stolen was made in Bow St. police court here at the end of a three day hearing.
A full trial was ordered for:
Two British civil servants, Miss Ethel Gee, 46, and her newly devoted friend, Harry Houghton, 55, and divorced.
They are accused of whisking secrets out of naval strongrooms over which they kept guard.
Gordon A. Lonsdale, 37, a mystery man presumed to be Russian although he carries a Canadian passport.
When arrested, he had the submarine secrets on a roll of candid camera film as well as anti-submarine secrets in Christmas gift wrapping, it was testified.
Flashed to Moscow
A shadowy couple who call themselves Peter Kroger, bookseller, and wife, Joyce.
(In Washington, the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified the Krogers as Morris and Lola Cohen, an American couple formerly of New York City)
Each dot on magnification resumed its original condition as a drawing, a printed page, or a manuscript.
All five pleaded innocent.
Only Miss Gee asked for bail.
Her young British lawyer, James Dunlop, pleaded that she was sorely needed at her Portland home by her widowed mother, 80, her maiden aunt, also 80 and bedridden for 20 years, and her uncle, 76, who once ran a candy shop.
Refuses to grant bail
I am not prepared to grant bail to any of them, said the magistrate, K.J.P. Baraclough.
Fourteen years is the maximum penalty now faced by the new five, who may have altered history in the 1960s.
Fuchs, after nine and a half years, was released, being given time off for good behavior.
He promptly went to communist East Germany.
The magistrate tonight refused to return to the five $29,000 in American and British currency, mostly $20 bills, and in British government bonds and stocks.
This is Russian money, said Mervin Griffith-Jones for the attorney general's office.
He asserted that the Krogers were the bankers for Moscow, Lonsdale the Red paymaster, and the two civil servants the recipients for selling their country's secrets.
Of highest value
The fact that secrets of the Dreadnought, and thereby of the American undersea fleet, were involved in the spy case had been hinted at earlier.
But just before luncheon today the fact was announced grimly by the British navy's chief adviser to the cabinet on underwater warfare, Capt. George Symonds.
He said that drawings of the Dreadnought and printed details about the ship were found reproduced in an undeveloped roll of film taken from Lonsdale when he was arrested with the two civil servants outside the Old Vic theater Saturday afternoon, Jan. 7.
The information, he said, would have been of the highest value to a potential enemy.
Court cleared
Just how many sub secrets were being handed over when the ring, watched for six months, was broken remained untold.
The British defending lawyers, who today increased from three to four, demanded to know if they could make the information involved seem of little value to a jury, the chances of their clients would improve.
So in the name of justice the magistrate cleared the court of all except officials to allow the captain to elaborate for almost an hour.
Almost any information about the Dreadnought would also reveal secrets about the American underwater fleet.
Britain began designing the ship in 1956 but got nowhere until the American government decided to end a ban on sharing military secrets with Britain that had been imposed after Fuchs blabbed.
The United States offered to supply a complete set of propelling equipment like that used in the Skipjack.
With the machinery went a complete design for the hull.
The Skipjack was a second generation atomic sub, much advanced on the Nautilus and the other four which preceded it.
Navy's future involved
Much of the navy's future depends upon her, an American naval announcement said on the Skipjack's first arrival in British waters in August, 1959, for exhibition to selected high officers at Portland underwater research station.
It was there that the two accused civil servants were at work.
Her basic hull form (a teardrop) and her nuclear power plant will be used for almost all new submarines, including the potent Polaris missile submarines, the statement went on.
The atom reactor, water cooled, was the result of almost a decade of research at the naval reactors branch of the atomic energy commission and Westinghouse Electric Corp..
Thru development, the reactor and its steam turbines had been reduced greatly in size, and also in complexity, allowing a single propeller to be used, the navy said.
The hull was also a result of almost a decade of work.
It was first tried out on a conventional submarine, the Albacore, in 1954.
The Skipjack became the fastest submarine ever built.
Reputedly it could outrun, underwater, the fastest destroyers.
It could, reputedly, go 70,000 miles without refueling and stay down more than a month.
It was of the hunter-killer type, designed to seek out ships and other submarines with its most advanced gear and destroy them with torpedoes.
Interested in detector
The spy ring also was particularly interested in ASDIC, the underwater equipment for detecting submarines, it was testified.
Range was a vital detail.
Designs of parts were sought.
Oddly, the calls were still heard 11 days after the five were arrested.
The three--Miles J. Cooperman, Sheldon Teller, and Richard Austin--and eight other defendants are charged in six indictments with conspiracy to violate federal narcotic laws.
In his opening statement to a jury of eight women and four men, Bernard H. Sokol, attorney for the detectives, said that evidence would show that his clients were entirely innocent.
' had to know peddlers '
When they became members of the city police narcotics unit, Sokol said, they were told they would have to get to know certain areas of Chicago in which narcotics were sold and they would have to get to know people in the narcotics racket.
They, on occasion, posed as addicts and peddlers.
Although federal and city narcotic agents sometimes worked together, Sokol continued, rivalries developed when they were aiming at the same criminals.
This, he added, brought about petty jealousies and petty personal grievances.
No comments by U.S.
In opening, D. Arthur Connelly, assistant United States attorney, read the indictment, but made no comments.
Attorneys for the eight other defendants said only that there was no proof of their clients' guilt.
Cooperman and Teller are accused of selling $4,700 worth of heroin to a convicted narcotics peddler, Otis Sears, 45, of 6934 Indiana Av..
Among other acts, Teller and Austin are accused of paying $800 to Sears.
The first witness, Moses Winston Mardis, 5835 Michigan Av., a real estate agent and former bail bondsman, took the stand after opening statements had been made.
But court adjourned after he testified he introduced James White and Jeremiah Hope Pullings, two of the defendants, and also introduced Pullings to Jessy Maroy, a man mentioned in the indictment but not indicted.
Buaford Robinson, 23, of 7026 Stewart Av., a CTA bus driver, was slugged and robbed last night by a group of youths at 51st Street and South Park Way.
Robinson was treated at a physician's office for a cut over his left eyebrow and a possible sprained knee.
His losses included his money bag, containing $40 to $50 and his $214 paycheck.
Robinson told Policemen James Jones and Morgan Lloyd of the Wabash Avenue district that 10 youths boarded his south bound express bus in front of Dunbar Vocational High School, 30th Street and South Park Way, and began skylarking.
When 51st Street was reached, Robinson related, he stopped the bus and told the youths he was going to call the CTA supervisor.
As he left the bus with his money bag, Robinson added, the largest youth accosted him, a quarrel ensued, and the youth knocked him down.
Then the youths fled with his money.
She had been sentenced to 180 years in prison, but former Gov. Stratton commuted her term to 75 years, making her eligible for parole, as one of his last acts in office.
Mrs. Dunkel admitted the slaying and said that the son-in-law became her lover after the death of her daughter in 1934.
It was when he attempted to end the relationship that the murder took place.
The son of a wealthy Evanston executive was fined $100 yesterday and forbidden to drive for 60 days for leading an Evanston policeman on a high speed chase over icy Evanston and Wilmette streets Jan. 20.
The defendant, William L. Stickney 3, 23, of 3211 Park pl., Evanston, who pleaded guilty to reckless driving, also was ordered by Judge James Corcoran to attend the Evanston traffic school each Tuesday night for one month.
Stickney is a salesman for Plee-Zing, Inc., 2544 Green Bay Rd., Evanston, a food brokerage and grocery chain firm, of which his father, William L. Jr., is president.
Patrolman James F. Simms said he started in pursuit when he saw young Stickney speeding north in Stewart Avenue at Central Street.
At Jenks Street, Simms said, the car skidded completely around, just missed two parked cars, and sped east in Jenks.
The car spun around again, Simms said, before Stickney could turn north in Prairie Avenue, and then violated two stop lights as he traveled north into Wilmette in Prairie.
St. Johns, Mich., April 19.
-- A jury of seven men and five women found 21-year-old Richard Pohl guilty of manslaughter yesterday in the bludgeon slaying of Mrs. Anna Hengesbach.
Pohl received the verdict without visible emotion.
He returned to his cell in the county jail, where he has been held since his arrest last July, without a word to his court-appointed attorney, Jack Walker, or his guard.
Stepson vindicated
The verdict brought vindication to the dead woman's stepson, Vincent Hengesbach, 54, who was tried for the same crime in December, 1958, and released when the jury failed to reach a verdict.
Mrs. Hengesbach was killed on Aug. 31, 1958.
Hengesbach has been living under a cloud ever since.
When the verdict came in against his young neighbor, Hengesbach said:
I am very pleased to have the doubt of suspicion removed.
Still, I don't wish to appear happy at somebody else's misfortune.
Lives on welfare
Hengesbach, who has been living on welfare recently, said he hopes to rebuild the farm which was settled by his grandfather in Westphalia, 27 miles southwest of here.
Hengesbach has been living in Grand Ledge since his house and barn were burned down after his release in 1958.
Pohl confessed the arson while being questioned about several fires in the Westphalia area by State Police.
He also admitted killing Mrs. Hengesbach.
However, the confession, which was the only evidence against him, was retracted before the trial.
Charges in doubt
Assistant Prosecutor Fred Lewis, who tried both the Hengesbach and Pohl cases, said he did not know what would be done about two arson charges pending against Pohl.
Circuit Judge Paul R. Cash did not set a date for sentencing.
Pohl could receive from 1 to 15 years in prison or probation.
Walker said he was considering filing a motion for a new trial which would contend that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence and that there were several errors in trial procedure.
Locked in motel
A verdict against Pohl came at 4:05 p.m. after almost 13-1/2 hours of deliberation.
The jury, which was locked up in a motel overnight, was canvassed at the request of Walker after the verdict was announced.
The jury foreman, Mrs. Olive Heideman, of rural Elsie, said that a ballot was not even taken until yesterday morning and that the first day of deliberation was spent in going over the evidence.
She said the jurors agreed that Pohl's confession was valid.
The jury asked Judge Cash to send in his written definition of the difference between first and second-degree murder and manslaughter.
The verdict came three hours later.
Some 30 spectators remained in the court during the day and were on hand to hear the verdict read.
The trial had packed the large courtroom for more than a week.
A Sterling Township family of six surviving children, whose mother died yesterday as the aftermath to a fire that also killed one of the children, found today they had the help of hundreds of neighbors and school friends.
While neighbor women assumed some of the dead mother's duties, fund-raising events were being planned by a homeowners association and a student council for the hard-hit Henry Kowalski family, 34220 Viceroy.
Mrs. Eleanor Kowalski, 42, died yesterday afternoon in Holy Cross Hospital of burns suffered in a fire that followed a bottled gas explosion Saturday night at the flat of her widowed mother, Mrs. Mary Pankowski, in the adjoining suburb of Warren.
Services tomorrow
Funeral services for Mrs. Kowalski and her daughter, Christine, 11, who died of burns at the same hospital Monday, have been scheduled for 10 a.m. tomorrow in St. Anne's Catholic Church, 31978 Mound, in Warren.
The mother and daughter, who will be buried side by side in Mt. Olivet Cemetery, rested together today in closed caskets at the Lyle Elliott Funeral Home, 31730 Mound, Warren.
Mrs. Pankowski, 61, remained in Holy Cross Hospital as a result of the explosion, which occurred while Mrs. Kowalski fueled a cook stove in the grandmother's small upstairs flat at 2274 Eight Mile Road East.
Held candle
Assistant Fire Chief Chester Cornell said gas fumes apparently were ignited by a candle which one of the three Kowalski girls present held for her mother, because the flat lacked electricity.
Christine's twin sister, Patricia, and Darlene Kowalski, 8, escaped with minor burns.
They are home now with the other Kowalski children, Vicky, 14;
Dennis, 6;
Eleanor, 2;
and Bernardine, 1.
All we have left in the world is one another, and we must stay together the way Mother wanted, Kowalski said in telling his children of their mother's death yesterday afternoon.
Kowalski, a roofer who seldom worked last winter, already was in arrears on their recently purchased split-level home when the tragedy staggered him with medical and funeral bills.
A135 donated
Neighbor women, such as Mrs. Sidney Baker, 2269 Serra, Sterling Township, have been supplying the family with meals and handling household chores with Kowalski's sister-in-law, Mrs. Anna Kowalski, 22111 David, East Detroit.
Another neighbor, Mrs. Frank C. Smith, 2731 Pall Mall, Sterling Township, surprised Kowalski by coming to the home yesterday with $135 collected locally toward the $400 funeral costs.
John C. Houghton, president of the Tareytown Acres Homeowners Association, followed that by announcing plans last night for a door-to-door fund drive throughout their subdivision on behalf of the Kowalski family.
Students help out
Houghton said 6 p.m. Friday had been set for a canvass of all 480 homes in the subdivision, which is located northeast of Dequindre and 14 Mile Road East.
He said contributions also could be mailed to Post Office Box 553, Warren Village Station.
Vicky Kowalski meanwhile learned that several of her fellow students had collected almost $25 for her family during the lunch hour yesterday at Fuhrmann Junior High School, 5155 Fourteen Mile road east.
Principal Clayton W. Pohly said he would allow a further collection between classes today, and revealed that Y-Teen Club past surpluses had been used to provide a private hospital nurse Monday for Mrs. Kowalski.
Funds from dances
Student Council officers announced today the Kowalski family would be given the combined proceeds from a school dance held two weeks ago, and another dance for Fuhrmann's 770 students this Friday night.
Furhmann's faculty is proud that this has been a spontaneous effort, started largely among the students themselves, because of fondness for Vicky and sympathy for her entire family, Pohly said.
There also were reports of a collection at the County Line Elementary School, 3505o Dequindre, which has been attended this year by four of the Kowalski children including Christine.
Expresses thanks
Kowalski has spoken but little since the fire last Saturday.
But today he wanted to make a public statement.
I never knew there were such neighbors and friends around me and my family.
I wasn't sure there were such people anywhere in the world.
I'll need more than a single day to find the words to properly express my thanks to them.
An alert 10-year-old safety patrol boy was congratulated by police today for his part in obtaining a reckless driving conviction against a youthful motorist.
Patrolman George Kimmell, of McClellan Station, said he would recommend a special safety citation for Ralph Sisk, 9230 Vernor east, a third grader at the Scripps School, for his assistance in the case.
Kimmell said he and Ralph were helping children across Belvidere at Kercheval Monday afternoon when a car heading north on Belvidere stopped belatedly inside the pedestrian crosswalk.
Gets car number
Kimmell ordered the driver to back up, watched the children safely across and was approaching the car when it suddenly took off at high speed, he said, narrowly missing him.
Commandeering a passing car, Kimmell pursued the fleeing vehicle, but lost it in traffic.
Returning to the school crossing, the officer was informed by the Sisk boy that he recognized the driver, a neighbor, and had obtained the license number.
The motorist later was identified as Richard Sarkees, 17, of 2433 McClellan, currently on probation and under court order not to drive.
Given 15 days
He was found guilty of reckless driving yesterday by Traffic Judge George T. Murphy, who continued his no-driving probation for another year and ordered him to spend 15 days in the Detroit House of Correction.
The jail sentence is to begin the day after Sarkees graduates from Eastern High School in June.
The long crisis in Laos appeared nearing a showdown today.
Britain announced that it is asking the Soviet Union to agree tomorrow to an immediate cease-fire.
Help asked
In Vientiane, the royal Laotian government decided today to ask its friends and neighbors for help in fighting what it called a new rebel offensive threatening the southeast Asian kingdom.
Britain's plans to press Russia for a definite cease-fire timetable was announced in London by Foreign Secretary Lord Home.
He said Britain also proposed that the international truce commission should be reconvened, sent to New Delhi and from there to Laos to verify the cease-fire.
A 14-power conference on Laos should then meet on May 5, he said.
Plea for arms
The Laos government plea for help was made by Foreign Minister Tiao Sopsaisana.
He indicated that requests would be made for more U.S. arms and more U.S. military advisers.
He declared the government is thinking of asking for foreign troops if the situation worsens.
One of the first moves made after a cabinet decision was to request the United States to establish a full-fledged military assistance group instead of the current civilian body.
A note making the request was handed to U.S. Ambassador Winthrop G. Brown.
Heavy support
The Laos government said four major Pathet Lao rebel attacks had been launched, heavily supported by troops from Communist North Viet Nam.
The minister, describing the attacks which led up to the appeal, said that 60,000 Communist North Vietnamese were fighting royal army troops on one front--near Thakhek, in southern-central Laos.
There was no confirmation of such massive assaults from independent sources.
In the past such government claims have been found exaggerated.
Havana, April 19.
-- Two Americans and seven Cubans were executed by firing squads today as Castro military tribunals began decreeing the death penalty for captured invasion forces and suspected collaborators.
A Havana radio broadcast identified the Americans as Howard Anderson and August Jack McNair.
The executions took place at dawn only a few hours after Havana radio announced their conviction by a revolutionary tribunal at Pinar Del Rio, where the executions took place.
Arms plot charged
The broadcast said Anderson, a Seattle ex-marine and Havana businessman, and McNair, of Miami, were condemned on charges of smuggling arms to Cuban rebels.
Anderson operated three Havana automobile service stations and was commander of the Havana American Legion post before it disbanded since the start of Fidel Castro's regime.
Anderson's wife and four children live in Miami.
McNair, 25, was seized March 20 with four Cubans and accused of trying to land a boatload of rifles in Pinar Del Rio, about 35 miles from Havana.
Report others held
At least 20 other Americans were reported to have been arrested in a mass political roundup.
Among them were a number of newsmen, including Henry Raymont, of United Press International, and Robert Berrellez, of Associated Press.
So many Cubans were reported being swept into the Castro dragnet that the massive Sports Palace auditorium and at least one hotel were converted into makeshift jails.
More than 1,000 were said to have been arrested--100 of them Roman Catholic priests.
Of the millions who have served time in concentration camps in Siberia as political prisoners of the Soviet state, few emerge in the West to tell about it.
M. Kegham--the name is a pseudynom--was a teacher in Bucharest and a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF)--two reasons the Communists put him away when they arrived in 1945.
Today, M. Kegham was in Detroit, en route to join his wife and children in California.
Emory University's Board of Trustees announced Friday that it was prepared to accept students of any race as soon as the state's tax laws made such a step possible.
Emory University's charter and by-laws have never required admission or rejection of students on the basis of race, board chairman Henry L. Bowden stated.
But an official statement adopted by the 33-man Emory board at its annual meeting Friday noted that state taxing requirements at present are a roadblock to accepting Negroes.
The statement explained that under the Georgia Constitution and state law, tax-exempt status is granted to educational institutions only if they are segregated.
The statement did not mention what steps might be taken to overcome the legal obstacles to desegregation.
An Emory spokesman indicated, however, that the university itself did not intend to make any test of the laws.
At least two private colleges in the Atlanta area now or in the past have had integrated student bodies, but their tax-exempt status never has been challenged by the state.
Emory is affiliated with the Methodist Church.
Some church leaders, both clerical and lay, have criticized the university for not taking the lead in desegregation.
Urged in 1954
The student newspaper, The Emory Wheel, as early as the fall of 1954 called for desegregation.
From its beginning, the trustees' statement said Friday, Emory University has assumed as its primary commitment a dedication to excellence in Christian higher learning.
Teaching, research and study, according to highest standards, under Christian influence, are paramount in the Emory University policy.
As a private institution, supported by generous individuals, Emory University will recognize no obligation and will adopt no policy that would conflict with its purpose to promote excellence in scholarship and Christian education.
There is not now, nor has there ever been in Emory University's charter or by-laws any requirement that students be admitted or rejected on the basis of race, color or creed.
Corporate existence
On the other hand, Emory University derives its corporate existence from the State of Georgia.
A young man was killed and two others injured at midnight Friday when the car they were riding slid into a utility pole on Lake Avenue near Waddell Street, NE, police said.
The dead youth was identified as Robert E. Sims, 19, of 1688 Oak Knoll Cir., Aj.
Patrolman G. E. Hammons said the car evidently slid out of control on rain-slick streets and slammed into the pole.
The other occupants were James Willard Olvey, 18, of 963 Ponce De Leon Ave., NE, and Larry Coleman Barnett, 19, of 704 Hill St., SE, both of whom were treated at Grady Hospital for severe lacerations and bruises.
The Atlanta Negro student movement renewed its demands for movie theater integration Friday and threatened picketing and stand-ins if negotiations failed.
The demands were set forth in letters to seven owners of first-run theaters by the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights.
' intend to attend '
We intend to attend the downtown theaters before the first of the year, the identically worded letters said.
The letters set a Nov. 15 deadline for the start of negotiations.
They indicated that stand-ins and picketing would be started if theater owners failed to cooperate.
Downtown and art theater managers and owners, contacted Friday night for comment on the COAHR request, said they had no knowledge of such a letter, and that it was not in the Friday mail.
However, three of the managers did say that they would agree to attend the proposed meeting if all of the other managers decided to attend.
Gather here
The COAHR letter comes on the eve of a large gathering of theater managers and owners scheduled to begin here Sunday.
Several theater operators said, however, that there is little likelihood of the subject being discussed during the three-day affair.
Student leaders began sporadic efforts to negotiate theater integration several months ago.
Charles A. Black, COAHR chairman, said Friday that three theater representatives had agreed to meet with the students on Oct. 31 but had failed to show up.
He declined to name the three.
Friday's letters asked for a Nov. 15 meeting.
Failure to attend the meeting or explain inability to attend, the letters said, would be considered a sign of indifference.
Black said COAHR hoped to be able to integrate the theaters without taking direct action, but we are pledged to using every legal and nonviolent means at our disposal
A prepared statement released by the student group Friday stated that extensive research by COAHR into techniques and methods of theater integration in other cities indicated that the presence of picket lines and stand-ins before segregated theaters causes a drop in profits
Besides managers of downtown theaters, the students sent letters to owners of art theaters in the uptown area and Buckhead.
R. E. Killingsworth
Raymond E. Killingsworth, 72, died Sunday at his home at 357 Venable St., Aj.
Mr. Kililngsworth was a foreman with S and W Cafeteria.
He was born in Pittsboro, Miss., and was a veteran of World War 1.
He was a member of the Baptist church.
Survivors include two brothers, C. E. Killingsworth, Atlanta, and John Killingsworth, Warren, Ohio;
and two sisters, Miss Minnie Kililngsworth and Mrs. Bessie Bloom, both of Gettysburg, Pa..
John W. Ball
John William Ball, 68, of 133 Marietta St. NW, Apartment 101b, died Sunday at his home.
Mr. Ball was a house painter.
He was a member of the Oakland City Methodist Church and a native of Atlanta.
Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Blanchard's Chapel with the Rev. J. H. Hearn officiating.
Survivors include his sister, Mrs. Emma B. Odom of Atlanta.
Mrs. Lola Harris
Mrs. Lola M. Harris, a native of Atlanta, died Sunday at her home in Garland, Tex..
Survivors include a son, Charles R. Fergeson, Memphis, Tenn.;
two daughters, Mrs. Gene F. Stoll and Miss Nancy Harris, both of Garland;
her father, H. T. Simpson, Greenville, S.C., and three sisters, Mrs. W. E. Little and Mrs. Hal B. Wansley, both of Atlanta, and Mrs. Bill Wallace, Wilmington, N.C..
A 24-year-old Atlanta man was arrested Sunday after breaking into the home of relatives in search of his wife, hitting his uncle with a rock and assaulting two police officers who tried to subdue him, police said.
Patrolmen J. W. Slate and A. L. Crawford Jr. said they arrested Ronald M. Thomas, of 1671 Nakoma St., NW, after he assaulted the officers.
Police account
The officers gave this account:
Thomas early Sunday went to the home of his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Thomas, 511 Blanche St., NW, looking for his wife, Margaret Lou Thomas, 18, and their 11-month-old baby.
The younger Thomas ripped a screen door, breaking the latch, and after an argument struck his uncle with a rock, scratching his face.
He also struck his aunt and wife, and during the melee the baby also suffered scratches.
When police arrived the man was still violent, Slate said.
Attacks officer
He attacked one of the officers and was restrained.
About five minutes later he jumped up, Slate said, and struck the two policemen again.
He was then subdued and placed in the police car to be taken to Grady Hospital for treatment of scratches received in the melee.
Then he attacked the two officers again and was again restrained, Slate related.
Slate said he and Crawford received cuts and scratches and their uniforms were badly torn.
Thomas was charged with four counts of assault and battery.
Two counts of assault on an officer, resisting arrest, disturbance and cursing, police said.
A hearing was set for 30 a.m. Tuesday.
Mrs. Mary Self, who knows more than any other person about the 5,000 city employes for whom she has kept personnel records over the years, has closed her desk and retired.
Over the weekend, Mrs. Self, personnel clerk, was a feted and honored guest of the Atlanta Club, organization of women employes at City Hall.
After 18 years in the personnel office, she has taken a disability pension on advice of her doctors.
As personnel clerk, she handled thousands of entries, ranging from appointments to jobs, to transfers to other employments, to pensions.
I have enjoyed it and will feel a bit lost at least for a while, she said wistfully Friday.
One of the largest crowds in the club's history turned out to pay tribute to Mrs. Self and her service.
Georgia's Department of Agriculture is intensifying its fire ant eradication program in an effort to stay ahead of the fast-spreading pest.
The department is planning to expand its eradication program soon to four additional counties--Troup, Pierce, Bryan and Bulloch--to treat 132,000 acres infested by the ants, according to W. E. Blasingame state entomologist.
Low-flying planes will spread a granular-type chemical, heptachlor, over 30,000 acres in Troup, 37,000 acres in Pierce and 65,000 acres in Bulloch and Bryan counties.
The eradication effort is being pushed in Bibb and Jones counties, over 37,679 acres.
The department has just finished treating 20,000 acres in urban areas of Macon.
Also being treated are Houston, Bleckley, Tift, Turner and Dodge counties, Blasingame said.
The fire ant is thought to infest approximately two million acres of land in Georgia, attacking crops, young wildlife and livestock and can be a serious health menace to humans who are allergic to its venom, Blasingame said.
The north-bound entrance to the Expressway at 14th Street will be closed during the afternoon rush traffic hours this week.
This is being done so that Georgia Tech can complete the final phase of a traffic survey on the North Expressway.
Students have been using electric computers and high speed movie cameras during the study.
Perhaps the engineers can find out what causes all the congestion and suggest methods to eliminate it.
Incidentally, 14th Street and the Expressway is the high accident intersection during daylight hours.
It is followed by Cain Street and Piedmont Avenue, NE;
the junction of the Northeast and Northwest Expressways and Jones Avenue and Marietta Street, Aj.
Four persons died in Georgia weekend traffic crashes, two of them in a fiery crash near Snellville, the State Patrol said Sunday.
The latest death reported was that of 4-year-old Claude Douglas Maynor of Calvary.
Troopers said the child ran into the path of a passing car a half-mile north of Calvary on Georgia 111 in Grady County.
That death occurred at 50 p.m. Friday and was reported Sunday, the patrol said.
Bursts into flames
An auto overturned, skidding into a stopped tractor-trailer and burst into flames near Snellville, the patrol said.
Bobby Bester Hammett, 21, of Rte. 3, Lawrenceville, and Mrs. Lucille Herrington Jones, 23, of Lawrenceville, died in the flaming car, the patrol said.
Salem (special)
-- For a second month in a row, Multnomah County may be short of general assistance money in its budget to handle an unusually high summer month's need, the state public welfare commission was told Friday.
It is the only county in the state so far this month reporting a possible shortage in GA category, for which emergency allotment can be given by the state if necessary.
William Smythe, director of field service, told the commissioners that Multnomah, as of Aug. 22, had spent $58,918 out of its budgeted $66,000 in the category, leaving only $7,082 for the rest of the month.
At the rate of need indicated in the early weeks of the month, this could mean a shortage of as high as $17,000.
But it probably will be less because of a usual slackening during the last weeks of each month, Smythe said.
No request for emergency allotment had yet been received, however.
Board oks pact
The contract with Ray Field, who has been converting the agencies electronic data processing program to magnetic tape, would renew his present salary of $8 an hour up to a maximum of 200 hours a month.
Field does the planning for the machine operations and fiscal processes and the adapting of the data processing system to new programs as they are made necessary by legislative and policy changes.
Acting Administrator Andrew F. Juras said that because of Field's unique position and knowledge in the program, the agency now would be seriously handicapped if he was not continued for a period.
But he emphasized that the agency must train people within its own employ to fulfill what Field handles, and he said he personally regrets very much that the agency has not done this in the past.
He pointed out to the commissioners that the agency was literally dependent now on the machine processing, and the whole wheels of the agency would stop if it broke down or the three or four persons directing it were to leave.
Salary termed modest
Juras said he insisted Field be continued on a consultant basis only and be answerable directly to the administrator of the agency and not to other agencies of the government.
He also said that the salary, in terms of going rates in the field, was modest in terms of the man's responsibility.
The conversion to magnetic tape is not yet completed, he said, and added Field's long service in state government and welfare employ gave him familiarity with the welfare program.
Do you feel you can stand up to the next legislative session and defend this contract?
Asked Mrs. Grace O. Peck, representative from Multnomah County, of the commission chairman, Joseph E. Harvey Jr..
My feeling at the moment, he said, is that we have no alternative, irrespective of some of the arguments about him.
The continued operation of this program depends on having his service.
Harvey criticized
Mrs. Peck, later joined by the commission's vice-chairman, Mrs. Lee Patterson, took Harvey to task for comments he had made to the North Portland Rotary Club Tuesday.
I rather resent, she said, you speaking to those groups in Portland as though just the move accomplished this.
I think you fell short of the real truth in the matter: That the move is working out through the fine cooperation of the staff and all the people.
The staff deserves a lot of credit working down here under real obstacles.
Harvey said his objective was to create a better public image for welfare.
The wife of convicted bank robber Lawrence G. Huntley was arrested in Phoenix, Ariz., last week and will be returned to Portland to face charges of assault and robbery, Portland detectives said Friday.
Mrs. Lavaughn Huntley is accused of driving the getaway car used in a robbery of the Woodyard Bros.' Grocery, 2825 E. Burnside St., in April of 1959.
Her husband, who was sentenced to 15 years in the federal prison at McNeil Island last April for robbery of the Hillsdale branch of Multnomah Bank, also was charged with the store holdup.
Secret Grand Jury indictments were returned against the pair last week, Detective Murray Logan reported.
The Phoenix arrest culminates more than a year's investigation by Detective William Taylor and other officers.
Taylor said Mrs. Huntley and her husband also will be questioned about a series of 15 Portland robberies in spring of 1959 in which the holdup men bound their victims with tape before fleeing.
Mrs. Huntley was held on $20,000 bond in Phoenix.
She was arrested by Phoenix Police after they received the indictment papers from Portland detectives.
A 12-year-old girl, Susan Elaine Smith, 9329 NE Schuyler St. was in serious condition Friday at Bess Kaiser Hospital, victim of a bicycle-auto collision in the Gateway Shopping Center, parking area, Deputy Sheriff W. H. Forsyth reported.
Funeral for William Joseph Brett, 1926 NE 50th Ave., who died Thursday in Portland, will be Monday 1 p.m. at the Riverview Abbey.
Mr. Brett, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Dec. 15, 1886, came to Portland in 1920.
He owned a logging equipment business here from 1923 to 1928, and later became Northwest district manager for Macwhyte Co..
He retired in 1958.
Survivors are his widow, Alice;
a son, William, Seattle, Wash.;
three sisters, Mrs. Eugene Horstman, Los Angeles, Mrs. Lucy Brett Andrew, New York City, and Mrs. Beatrice Kiefferm, New York City, and five grandchildren.
Employes of Montgomery Ward & Co. at The Dalles, in a National Labor Relations Board election Thursday voted to decertify Local 1565, Retail Clerks International Association, AFL-CIO, as their collective bargaining agent.
The NLRB said that of 11 potentially eligible voters eight voted against the union, two voted for it, and one vote was challenged.
Monte Brooks, 67, theatrical producer and band leader, collapsed and died Thursday in a Lloyd Center restaurant.
He lived at 6124 N. Willamette Blvd..
For many years he had provided music and entertainment for functions throughout the Northwest.
These included Oregon State Fair, for which he had been booked on and off, for 30 years.
He collaborated with many of the big name entertainers visiting Portland, among the most recent being Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers.
He had conducted the 20-piece band in a series of concerts at Blue Lake park during the summer months.
Mr. Brooks was born in New York, and came to Portland in 1920.
He planned at one time to enter the legal profession, but gave up the plan in favor of the entertainment field.
He was a member of Harmony lodge, No. 12, AF & AM, Scottish Rite;
Al Kader Temple of the Shrine;
Order of Elks, Lodge No. 142;
40 & 8 Voiture, No. 25, Musician's Union, Local 99.
He was a former commander of Willamette Heights, Post, and a member of Nevah Sholom Congregation.
Survivors are his widow, Tearle;
a son, Sheldon Brooks;
a daughter, Mrs. Sidney S. Stein Jr., Dorenzo, Calif.;
a sister, Mrs. Birdie Gevurtz;
two brothers, Charley and Aaron Cohn, San Francisco;
and five grandchildren.
Services will be at 30 p.m. Monday at Holman & Son Funeral Home, with interment in Neveh Zebek cemetery.
The family requests that flowers be omitted.
A 16-year-old Portland businessman and his Junior Achievement company, have been judged the Company of the Year in national competition completed this week at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
Tim Larson, a junior at Wilson High School and president of Spice-Nice, is the young executive who guided his firm to the top-ranking position over the 4,500 other Junior Achievement companies in the United States and Canada.
The award is the first such honor in the 11-year history of JA activities in Portland, according to Ralph Scolatti, local executive director for Junior Achievement.
Spice-Nice, counseled by Georgia-Pacific Corp., had previously taken first-place honors in both local competition and the regional conference at San Francisco.
The pocket-size company set records with $2,170 in sales of its products, a selection of barbecue spices, and paid stockholders a 20 per cent dividend on their investment.
Youngsters do business
The Junior Achievement program is designed to give teenagers practical experience in business by allowing them actually to form small companies, under the guidance and sponsorship of business firms.
The youngsters sell stock, produce and sell a product, pay taxes, and show a profit or loss just like full-scale businesses.
National competition was the culmination of work which began with the school year last fall and continued until just before summer vacation.
Participants in the 27 Portland companies worked one night a week through the school year, guided and counseled by adult advisors drawn from local business and industry.
Over 400 Portland firms contributed funds for the maintenance of Junior Achievement headquarters here.
For winning Larson will receive a $100 U.S. Savings Bond from the Junior Achievement national organization.
His company, Spice-Nice, will receive a $250 award, which will be distributed among the 16 charter members.
g-p men served
Advisors for the national champion company were John K. Morgan, William H. Baker, Leonard Breuer and William F. Stephenson, all of Georgia-Pacific Corp..
Young Larson is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Larson, 5847 SW Nevada Ct., Portland.
Other members of the Portland delegation attending the conference in Columbus are: Kathleen Mason, Jefferson high school;
Phil Reifenrath, Madison high school;
Ann Wegener, Madison;
Richard E. Cohn, Grant;
Karen Kolb, Franklin;
and Shelby Carlson, Cleveland.
Hillsboro (special)
-- Washington County's 36th annual fair will close Saturday evening with 4-H and FFA awards program at 7, public dance at 8 and variety show at 8:30.
On the day's schedule are a flower show, 4-H horsemanship contest and clown shows, the latter at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m..
Attendance continued to run ahead of last year's during the five-day show, with clear skies helping attract fairgoers.
Exhibition ballroom dancers from the studio of Helen Wick Walters of Hillsboro won the all-county talent contest.
Bill Davis quartet of Hillsboro was second and baton twirler Sue Ann Nuttall of Reedville third.
Finalists from the county's east end failed to place.
Results:
Janet Jossy of North Plains won grand champion honors of the 4-H sheep showman contest.
Blue ribbons went to Stephanie Shaw of Hillsboro, Larry Hinton of Beaverton.
Joan Zurcher of Hillsboro, Phyllis Jossy of North Plains, Jane Cox of North Plains.
Kathy Jossy of Hillsboro, Carol Jossy of North Plains and Lorlyn and Tom Zurcher of Hillsboro.
Tom Day of Beaverton exhibited the grand champion 4-H market hog, a Chester White.
Also winning blue ribbons were Bob Day of Beaverton, Tony Traxel of Beaverton and Steve Hutchins of Banks.
Swine showmanship championship went to Bob Day, with Tom Day and Hutchins winning other blues.
Charles Reynolds of Pumpkin Ridge was rabbit showmanship champion.
In poultry judging, blues were won by John Nyberg of Tualatin, Anne Batchelder of Hillsboro, Jim Shaw of Hillsboro, Stephanie Shaw of Hillsboro and Lynn Robinson of Tigard.
Blue ribbon for one dozen white eggs was taken by Nyberg.
In open class poultry, Donald Wacklin of Sherwood had the champion male and female bird and grand champion bird.
John Haase & Son of Corneilus was the only entrant in open class swine and swept all championships.
Carol Strong, 13, of Cedar Mill cooked the championship junior dollar dinner.
Millie Jansen, high school senior from Verboort, had the championship dollar dinner, and Jody Jaross of Hillsboro also won a blue ribbon.
Barbara Borland of Tigard took top senior individual home economics honors with a demonstration called filbert hats.
About 70 North Providence taxpayers made appeals to the board of tax assessors for a review of their 1961 tax assessments during the last two days at the town hall in Centredale.
These were the last two days set aside by the board for hearing appeals.
Appeals were heard for two days two weeks ago.
About 75 persons appeared at that time.
Louis H. Grenier, clerk of the board, said that the appeals will be reviewed in December at the time the board is visiting new construction sites in the town for assessment purposes.
They also will visit properties on which appeals have been made.
Any adjustments which are made, Mr. Grenier said earlier this month, will appear on the balance of the tax bill since most of the town's taxpayers take the option of paying quarterly with the balance due next year.
John Pezza, 69, of 734 Hartford Avenue, Providence, complained of shoulder pains after an accident in which a car he was driving collided with a car driven by Antonio Giorgio, 25, of 12 DeSoto St., Providence, on Greenville Avenue and Cherry Hill Road in Johnston yesterday.
Mr. Giorgio had started to turn left off Greenville Avenue onto Cherry Hill Road when his car was struck by the Pezza car, police said.
Both cars were slightly damaged.
Mr. Pezza was taken to a nearby Johnston physician, Dr. Allan A. DiSimone, who treated him.
Mr. Giorgio was uninjured.
Thieves yesterday ransacked a home in the Garden Hills section of Cranston and stole an estimated $3,675 worth of furs, jewels, foreign coins and American dollars.
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen M. Kochanek reported the theft at their home on 41 Garden Hills Drive at about 6 last night.
They told police the intruders took a mink coat worth $700, a black Persian lamb jacket worth $450;
a wallet with $450 in it;
a collection of English, French and German coins, valued at $500;
four rings, a watch and a set of pearl earrings.
One of the rings was a white gold band with a diamond setting, valued at $900.
The others were valued at $325, $75 and $65.
The watch was valued at $125 and the earrings at $85.
The Kochaneks told police they left home at 8 a.m. and returned about 45 p.m. and found the house had been entered.
Patrolman Robert J. Nunes, who investigated, said the thieves broke in through the back door.
Drawers and cabinets in two bedrooms and a sewing room were ransacked.
The city sewer maintenance division said efforts will be made Sunday to clear a stoppage in a sewer connection at Eddy and Elm Streets responsible for dumping raw sewage into the Providence River.
The division said it would be impossible to work on the line until then because of the large amount of acid sewage from jewelry plants in the area flowing through the line, heavy vehicle traffic on Eddy Street and tide conditions.
A two-family house at 255 Brook Street has been purchased by Brown University from Lawrence J. Sullivan, according to a deed filed Monday at City Hall.
F. Morris Cochran, university vice president and business manager, said the house has been bought to provide rental housing for faculty families, particularly for those here for a limited time.
Employes of Pawtucket's garbage and rubbish collection contractor picketed the firm's incinerator site yesterday in the second day of a strike for improved wages and working conditions.
Thomas Rotelli, head of Rhode Island Incinerator Service, Inc., said four of the company's eight trucks were making collections with both newly hired and regular workers.
Sydney Larson, a staff representative for the United Steel Workers, which the firm's 25 workers joined before striking, said the state Labor Relations Board has been asked to set up an election to pick a bargaining agent.
Mr. Stone suffered fractured ribs and chest cuts, hospital authorities said.
He was taken to the hospital by the North Providence ambulance.
Before hitting the pole, Mr. Stone's car brushed against a car driven by Alva W. Vernava, 21, of 23 Maple Ave., North Providence, tearing away the rear bumper and denting the left rear fender of the Vernava car, police said.
Mr. Vernava was uninjured.
The impact with the utility pole caused a brief power failure in the immediate area of the accident.
One house was without power for about half an hour, a Narragansett Electric Co. spokesman said.
The power was off for about five minutes in houses along Smith Street as far away as Fruit Hill Avenue shortly before 5 p.m. when the accident occurred.
The fight over the Warwick School Committee's appointment of a coordinator of audio-visual education may go to the state Supreme Court, it appeared last night.
Supt. Clarence S. Taylor had recommended Roger I. Vermeersch for the post.
Milton and Rosella Lovett of Cranston were awarded $55,000 damages from the state in Superior Court yesterday for industrial property which they owned at 83 Atwells Ave., Providence, and which was condemned for use in construction of Interstate Route 95.
The award was made by Judge Fred B. Perkins who heard their petition without a jury by agreement of the parties.
The award, without interest, compared with a valuation of $57,500 placed on the property by the property owners' real estate expert, and a valuation of $52,500 placed on it by the state's expert.
The property included a one-story brick manufacturing building on 8,293 square feet of land.
Saul Hodosh represented the owners.
Atty. Gen. J. Joseph Nugent appeared for the state.
Santa's lieutenants in charge of the Journal-Bulletin Santa Claus Fund are looking for the usual generous response this year from Cranston residents.
Persons who find it convenient may send their contributions to the Journal-Bulletin's Cranston office at 823 Park Avenue.
All contributed will be acknowledged.
The fund's statewide quota this year is $8,250 to provide Christmas gifts for needy youngsters.
Scores of Cranston children will be remembered.
Cranston residents have been generous contributors to the fund over the years.
Public school children have adopted the fund as one of their favorite Christmas charities and their pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters aid greatly in helping Santa to reach the fund's goal.
Bernard Parrillo, 20, of 19 Fletcher Ave., Cranston, was admitted to Roger Williams Hospital shortly before 11:30 a.m. yesterday after a hunting accident in which a shotgun he was carrying discharged against his heel.
Mr. Parrillo was given first aid at Johnston Hose 1.
(Thornton) where he had been driven by a companion.
The two had been hunting in the Simmonsville area of town and Mr. Parrillo dropped the gun which fired as it struck the ground.
Hospital officials said the injury was severe but the youth was in good condition last night.
A check for $4,177.37 representing the last payment of a $50,000 federal grant to Rhode Island Hospital was presented to the hospital administrator, Oliver G. Pratt, yesterday by Governor Notte.
The hospital has used the money to assist in alterations on the fifth floor of the Jane Brown Hospital, part of Rhode Island Hospital.
The work added eight beds to the hospital, giving it a total capacity of 646 general beds.
Vincent Sorrentino, founder and board chairman of the Uncas Mfg. Co., has been designated a Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy.
The decoration will be presented by A. Trichieri, Italian consul general in Boston, at a ceremony at 30 p.m. on Dec. 7 at the plant, which this year is celebrating its golden anniversary.
About 500 employes of the firm will be on hand to witness bestowal of the honor upon Mr. Sorrentino.
Mr. Sorrentino will be honored on the evening of Dec. 7 at a dinner to be given by the Aurora Club at the Sheraton-Biltmore Hotel.
The Newport-based destroyer picket escort Kretchmer has arrived back at Newport after three months' patrol in North Atlantic waters marked by mercy jobs afloat and ashore.
On Sept. 6, the Kretchmer rescued the crew of a trawler they found drifting on a life raft after they had abandoned a sinking ship.
In August while stopping in Greenock, Scotland, three members of the crew on liberty rendered first aid to a girl who fell from a train.
Local authorities credited the men with saving the girl's life.
Birmingham, Ala.--(AP)
-- The FBI yesterday arrested on a perjury charge one of the members of the jury that failed to reach a verdict in the Freedom Rider bus burning trial four weeks ago.
U.S. Attorney Macon Weaver said the federal complaint, charged that the juror gave false information when asked about Ku Klux Klan membership during selection of jury.
He identified the man as Lewis Martin Parker, 59, a farmer of Hartselle, Ala..
Eight men were tried together in U.S. District Court in Anniston, Ala., on charges of interfering with interstate transportation and conspiracy growing out of a white mob's attack on a Greyhound bus carrying the first of the Freedom Riders.
The bus was burned outside Anniston.
One of the eight defendants was freed on a directed verdict of acquittal.
A mistrial was declared in the case against the other seven when the jury was unable to agree on a verdict.
The arrest of Mr. Parker marks the third charge of wrongdoing involving the jury that heard the case.
The first incident occurred before the trial got under way when Judge H. Hobart Grooms told the jury panel he had heard reports of jury-tampering efforts.
He asked members of the panel to tell him if anyone outside the court had spoken to them about the case.
Two members of the panel later told in court about receiving telephone calls at their homes from anonymous persons expressing interest in the trial.
Neither was seated on the jury.
Then, when the case went to the jury, the judge excused one of the jurors, saying the juror had told him he had been accosted by masked men at his motel the night before the trial opened.
The juror said the masked men had advised him to be lenient.
The judge replaced the juror with an alternate.
No formal charges have been filed as a result of either of the two reported incidents.
At the opening of the trial, the jury panel was questioned as a group by Mr. Weaver about Ku Klux Klan connections.
One member of the panel--not Mr. Parker--indicated he had been a member of the KKK at one time.
He was not seated on the jury.
The perjury charge against Mr. Parker carries a maximum penalty of $2,000 fine and five years imprisonment on conviction.
New York--(UPI)
-- The New York University Board of Trustees has elected the youngest president in the 130-year history of NYU, it was announced yesterday.
The new president is 37-year-old Dr. James McN. Hester, currently dean of the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
He will take over his new post Jan. 1.
Dr. Hester, also one of the youngest men ever to head a major American university, succeeds Dr. Carroll V. Newsom who resigned last September to join Prentice-Hall Inc. publishing firm.
Dr. Hester, of Princeton, N.J., is a native of Chester, Pa. He joined NYU in September, 1960.
Prior to that he was associated with Long Island University in Brooklyn.
Asilomar, March 26
Vast spraying programs conducted by technicians with narrow training and little wisdom are endangering crops and wildlife, Carl W. Buchheister, president of the National Audubon Society, said today.
It is like handing a loaded automatic to an 8-year-old and telling him to run out and play, he commented.
Buchheister told delegates to the West Coast Audubon Convention that aerial spraying in Louisiana failed to destroy its target, the fire ant.
But it did destroy the natural controls of a borer and released a new plague that wrecked a sugar cane crop, he said.
The conservation leader said other mistakes in spraying had caused serious damage in Ohio and Wyoming.
There have even been serious errors in the U. S. Forest Service, whose officials pride themselves in their scientific training, he added.
In addition to urging greater restrictions on aerial spraying, Buchheister called for support of the Wilderness bill, creation of national seashore parks, including Point Reyes;
preservation of the wetlands where birds breed;
a pesticides co-ordination act;
stronger water pollution control programs, and Federal ratification of an international convention to halt pollution of the sea by oil.
The Reed Rogers Da Fonta Wild Life Sanctuary in Marin county on Friday officially became the property of the National Audubon Society.
Mrs. Norman Livermore, president of the Marin Conservation League, handed over the deed to the 645-acre tidelands tract south of Greenwood Beach to Carl W. Buchheister, president of the Society.
The presentation was made before several hundred persons at the annual meeting of the League at Olney Hall, College of Marin, Kentfield.
Buchheister pledged the land would be an inviolate sanctuary for all birds, animals and plants.
Seventeen years ago today, German scientist Willy Fiedler climbed into a makeshift cockpit installed in a V-1 rocket-bomb that was attached to the underbelly of a Heinkel bomber.
The World War 2, German bomber rolled down a runway and took off.
The only way Fiedler could get back to earth alive was to fly the pulse jet missile and land it on the airstrip.
This had never been done before.
Now a quiet-spoken, middle-aged man, Fiedler is an aeronautical engineer for Lockheed's Missiles and Space Division at Sunnyvale, where he played a key role in the development of the Navy's Polaris missile.
He sat in his office yesterday and recalled that historic flight in 1944.
The first two pilots had crashed, he said.
I had developed the machines and therefore knew them.
It was time to go up myself.
Fiedler was then technical director of Hitler's super-secret Reichenberg project, which remained unknown to the Allies until after the war.
About 200 of the special V-1 rocket-bombs were to be made ready for manned flight with an explosive warhead.
The target was Allied shipping--a desperate effort to stave off the Allied invasion of Europe.
The success of the project depended upon Fiedler's flight.
Squeezed into the few cubic feet normally filled by the rocket's automatic guidance mechanism, the scientist waited while the bomber gained altitude.
At 12,000 feet, Fiedler signaled release, and started the roaring pulse-jet engine--then streaked away from beneath the Heinkel.
To the German pilot in the bomber the rocket became a faint black speck, hurtling through the sky at the then incredible speed of 420 m.p.h..
It was probably man's first successful flight in a missile.
She flew beautifully, said Fiedler.
There was only one power control--a valve to adjust the fuel flow.
I had exactly 20 minutes to get down to the test strip.
Using a steering system that controlled the modified rocket's tail surfaces and wings equipped with ailerons, Fiedler was to land the missile on a skid especially bolted under the fuselage.
He managed to maneuver the missile to a landing speed of 200 m.p.h.--fast even for a modern jet plane touchdown--and banked into the airfield.
Moments later the V-1 skimmed across the landing strip, edging closer and closer to a touchdown--then in a streamer of dust it landed.
Fiedler went on to make several other test flights before German pilots took over the Reichenberg missiles.
The missiles were to be armed with an underwater bomb.
Pilots would steer them in a suicide dive into the water, striking below the waterline of individual ships.
A crack corps of 50 pilots was formed from the ranks of volunteers, but the project was halted before the end of the war, and the missiles later fell into Allied hands.
Now a family man with three children, Fiedler lives in a quiet residential area near the Lockheed plant at Sunnyvale.
His spare time is spent in soaring gliders.
It's so quiet, he said, so slow, serene--and so challenging.
John Di Massimo has been elected president of the 1961 Columbus Day Celebration Committee, it was announced yesterday.
Other officers are Angelo J. Scampini, vice president, Joseph V. Arata, treasurer, and Fred J. Casassa, secretary.
Judge John B. Molinari was named chairman of the executive committee.
Elected to the board of directors were:
Elios P. Anderlini, Attilio Beronio, Leo M. Bianco, Frederic Campagnoli, Joseph Cervetto, Armond J. De Martini, Grace Duhagon, John P. Figone, John P. Figone Jr., Stephen Mana, John Moscone, Calude Perasso, Angelo Petrini, Frank Ratto, and George R. Reilly.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, world-famous theologian and medical missionary, has endorsed an Easter March for Disarmament which begins tomorrow in Sunnyvale.
Members of the San Francisco American Friends Service, a Quaker organization, will march to San Francisco for a rally in Union Square at 2 p.m. Saturday.
In a letter to the American Friends Service, Dr. Schweitzer wrote:
Leading Nations of the West and of the East keep busy making newer nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event the constantly threatening nuclear war should break out.
They cannot do otherwise than live in dread of each other since these weapons imply the possibility of such grisly surprise attack.
The only way out of this state of affairs is agreement to abolish nuclear weapons;
otherwise no peace is possible.
Governments apparently do not feel obligated to make the people adequately aware of this danger;
therefore we need guardians to demonstrate against the ghastly stupidity of nuclear weapons and jolt the people out of their complacency.
A federal grand jury called 10 witnesses yesterday in an investigation of the affairs of Ben Stein, 47, who collected big fees as a labor consultant and operator of a janitors' service.
Before he testified for 20 minutes, Stein, who lives at 3300 Lake Shore Dr., admitted to reporters that he had a wide acquaintance with crime syndicate hoodlums.
Glimco a buddy
Among his gangland buddies, he said, were Joseph (Joey) Glimco, a mob labor racketeer, and four gang gambling chiefs, Gus (Slim) Alex, Ralph Pierce, Joe (Caesar) DiVarco, and Jimmy (Monk) Allegretti.
Another hoodlum, Louis Arger, drew $39,000 from Stein's janitor firm, the National Maintenance company, in three years ending in 1959, Stein disclosed in an interview.
I put Arger on the payroll because he promised to get my firm the stevedore account at Navy pier, Stein said.
But Arger never was able to produce it, so I cut him off my payroll.
Connection is sought
Other witnesses, after appearances before the jury, which reportedly is probing into possible income tax violations, disclosed that government prosecutors were attempting to connect Stein and his company with a number of gangsters, including Glimco and Alex.
The federal lawyers, according to their witnesses, also were tracing Stein's fees as a labor consultant.
Under scrutiny, two of the witnesses said, were payments and loans to Stein's National Maintenance company at 543 Madison St..
The company supplies janitors and workmen for McCormick Place and factories, liquor firms, and other businesses.
Lee a witness
Among the witnesses were Ed J. Lee, director of McCormick Place;
Jerome Leavitt, a partner in the Union Liquor company, 3247 S. Kedzie Av., Dominic Senese, a teamster union slugger who is a buddy of Stein and a cousin of Tony Accardo, onetime gang chief;
and Frank W. Pesce, operator of a Glimco dominated deodorant firm, the Best Sanitation and Supply company, 1215 Blue Island Av..
Lee said he had told the jury that he made an agreement in April with Stein to supply and supervise janitors in McCormick Place.
Stein's fee, Lee said, was 10 per cent of the janitors' pay.
Stein estimated this amount at about $1,500 or $1,600 a month.
A $12,500 payment
Leavitt, as he entered the jury room, said he was prepared to answer questions about the $12,500 his liquor firm paid to Stein for labor consultant work with five unions which organized Leavitt's workers.
Leavitt identified the unions as a warehouseman's local, the teamsters union, a salesman's union, the janitors' union, and a bottling workers' union.
Government attorneys, Leavitt said, have questioned him closely about five or six loans totaling about $40,000 which the liquor company made to Stein in the last year.
All of the loans, in amounts up to $5,000 each, have been repaid by Stein, according to Leavitt.
Stein said he needed the money, Leavitt said, to meet the payroll at National Maintenance company.
The deodorant firm run by Pesce has offices in the headquarters of Glimco's discredited taxi drivers' union at 1213-15 Blue Island Av..
The radiation station of the Chicago board of health recorded a reading of 1 micro-microcurie of radiation per cubic meter of air over Chicago yesterday.
The reading, which has been watched with interest since Russia's detonation of a super bomb Monday, was 4 on Tuesday and 7 last Saturday, a level far below the danger point, according to the board of health.
The weather bureau has estimated that radioactive fallout from the test might arrive here next week.
A board of health spokesman said there is no reason to believe that an increase in the level here will occur as a result of the detonation.
Federal prosecutors estimated that the amount may total $20,000, altho a spokesman for the association estimated its loss at approximately $10,000.
Lien payments involved
Huff's attorney, Antone F. Gregorio, quoted his client as saying that part of the embezzlement represented money paid to Huff, as attorney for the loan association, in satisfaction of mechanic's liens on property on which the association held mortgages.
Huff told Gregorio that he took the money to pay the ordinary bills and expenses of suburban living.
Huff, who received a salary of $109 a week from the loan association from October of 1955 until September of this year, said that his private practice was not lucrative.
Huff lives with his wife, Sue, and their four children, 6 to 10 years old, in a $25,000 home with a $17,000 mortgage.
Charge lists 3 checks
The complaint on which the warrant was issued was filed by Leo Blaber, an attorney for the association.
The shortage was discovered after Huff failed to report for work on Sept. 18.
On that date, according to Gregorio, Huff left his home and took a room in the New Lawrence hotel at 1020 Lawrence Av..
There, Gregorio said, Huff wrote a complete statement of his offense.
Later, Huff cashed three checks for $100 each at the Sherman House, using a credit card.
All bounced.
When Huff attempted to cash another $100 check there Monday, hotel officials called police.
Bonn, Oct. 24 (UPI)
-- Greece and West Germany have ratified an agreement under which Germany will pay $28,700,000 to Greek victims of Nazi persecution, it was announced today.
Probably the hottest thing that has hit the Dallas investment community in years was the Morton Foods stock issue, which was sold to the public during the past week.
For many reasons, the demand to buy shares in the Dallas-headquartered company was tremendous.
It was not a case of the investment bankers having to sell the stock;
it was more one of allotting a few shares to a number of customers and explaining to others why they had no more to sell.
Investors who wanted 100 shares in many cases ended up with 25, and customers who had put in a bid to buy 400 shares found themselves with 100 and counted themselves lucky to get that many.
In fact, very few customers, anywhere in the nation, were able to get more than 100 shares.
Some Dallas investment firms got only 100 shares, for all of their customers.
A measure of how hot the stock was, can be found in what happened to it on the market as soon as trading began.
The stock was sold in the underwriting at a price of $12.50 a share.
The first over-the-counter trade Wednesday afternoon at Eppler, Guerin & Turner, the managing underwriter, was at $17 a share.
And from that the stock moved right on up until it was trading Thursday morning at around $22 a share.
But the Morton Foods issue was hot long before it was on the market.
Indeed, from the moment the reports of the coming issue first started circulating in Dallas last January, the inquiries and demand for the stock started building up.
Letters by the reams came in from investment firms all over the nation, all of them wanting to get a part of the shares that would be sold (185,000 to the public at $12.50, with another 5,000 reserved for Morton Foods employes at $11.50 a share).
There was even a cable in French from a bank in Switzerland that had somehow learned about the Dallas stock offering.
We subscribe 500 shares of Morton Foods of Texas.
Cable confirmation, it said translated.
But E.G.T. could not let the Swiss bank have even 10 shares.
After it allotted shares to 41 underwriters and 52 selling group members from coast to coast there were not many shares for anyone.
But the result of it all was, E.G.T. partner Dean Guerin believes, an effective distribution of the stock to owners all over the nation.
I feel confident the stock will qualify for the'national list''', he said, meaning its market price would be quoted regularly in newspapers all over the country.
He was also pleased with the wide distribution because he thought it proved again his argument that Dallas investment men can do just as good a job as the big New York investment bankers claim only they can do.
But what made the Morton Foods stock issue such a hot one?
The answer is that it was a combination of circumstances.
First, the general stock market has been boiling upward for the last few months, driving stocks of all kinds up.
As a result, it is not easy to find a stock priced as the Morton issue was priced (at roughly 10 times 1960 earnings, to yield a little over 5 per cent on the 64-cent anticipated dividend).
Second, the potato chip industry has caught the fancy of investors lately, and until Morton Foods came along there were only two potato chip stocks--Frito and H. W. Lay--on the market.
Both of those have had dynamic run-ups in price on the market in recent months, both were selling at higher price-earnings and yield bases than Morton was coming to market at, and everyone who knew anything about it expected the Morton stock to have a fast run-up.
And third, the potato chip industry has taken on the flavor of a growth industry in the public mind of late.
Foods, which long had been considered recession resistant but hardly dynamic stocks, have been acting like growth stocks, going to higher price-earnings ratios.
The potato chip industry these days is growing, not only as a result of population increase and public acceptance of convenience foods, but also because of a combination of circumstances that has led to growth by merger.
The history of the U.S. potato chip industry is that many of today's successful companies got started during the deep depression days.
Those that remain are those that were headed by strong executives, men with the abilities to last almost 30 years in the competitive survival of the fittest.
But today many of those men are reaching retirement age and suddenly realizing that they face an estate tax problem with their closely held companies and also that they have no second-echelon management in their firms.
So they go looking for mergers with other firms that have publicly quoted stock, and almost daily they pound on the doors of firms like Frito.
All those things combined to make the Morton Foods stock the hot issue that it was and is.
Now, if Morton's newest product, a corn chip known as Chip-o's, turns out to sell as well as its stock did, the stock may turn out to be worth every cent of the prices that the avid buyers bid it up to.
Dallas and North Texas is known world-wide as the manufacturing and distribution center of cotton gin machinery and supplies, valued in the millions of dollars.
More than 10 companies maintain facilities in Dallas and one large manufacturer is located to the north at Sherman.
It is no coincidence that the Texas Cotton Ginner's Association is meeting here this week for the 46th time in their 52-year history.
The exhibition of cotton ginning machinery at the State Fair grounds is valued at more than a million dollars.
It weighs in the tons, so the proximity of factory and exhibition area makes it possible for an outstanding exhibit each year.
A modern cotton gin plant costs in the neighborhood of $250,000, and it's a safe assumption that a large percentage of new gins in the U.S. and foreign countries contain machinery made in this area.
The Murray Co. of Texas, Inc., originated in Dallas in 1896.
They've occupied a 22-acre site since the early 1900's.
More than 700 employees make gin machinery that's sold anywhere cotton is grown.
Murray makes a complete line of ginning equipment except for driers and cleaners, and this machinery is purchased from a Dallas-based firm.
The Continental Gin Co. began operations in Dallas in 1899.
The present company is a combination of several smaller ones that date back to 1834.
Headquarters is in Birmingham, Ala..
Factories are located here and in Prattville, Ala..
About 40 per cent of the manufacturing is done at the Dallas plant by more than 200 employes.
The company sells a complete line of gin machinery all over the cotton-growing world.
Hardwicke-Etter Co. of Sherman makes a full line of gin machinery and equipment.
The firm recently expanded domestic sales into the Southeastern states as a result of an agreement with Cen-Tennial Gin Co..
They export also.
The company began operation in 1900 with hardware and oil mill supplies.
In 1930, they began making cotton processing equipment.
Presently, Hardwicke-Etter employs 300-450 people, depending on the season of the year.
The Lummus Cotton Gin Co. has had a sales and service office in Dallas since 1912.
Factory operations are in Columbus, Ga..
The district office here employs about 65.
The Moss Gordin Lint Cleaner Co. and Gordin Unit System of Ginning have joint headquarters here.
The cleaner equipment firm began operations in 1953 and the unit system, which turns out a complete ginning system, began operations in 1959.
Gordin manufacturing operations are in Lubbock.
The John E. Mitchell Co. began work in Dallas in 1928.
The firm is prominent in making equipment for cleaning seed cotton, driers, and heaters, and they lay claim to being the first maker (1910) of boil extraction equipment.
The increase in mechanical harvesting of cotton makes cleaning and drying equipment a must for modern gin operation.
Mitchell employs a total of about 400 people.
They export cotton ginning machinery.
The Hinckley Gin Supply Co. is a maker of overhead equipment.
This includes driers, cleaners, burr extractors, separators and piping that's located above gin stands in a complete gin.
The firm began operations back in 1925 and sells equipment in the central cotton belt, including the Mississippi Delta.
The Cen-Tennial Gin Supply Co. has home offices and factory facilities here.
They make gin saws and deal in parts, supplies and some used gin machinery.
The Stacy Co. makes cleaning and drying equipment for sale largely in Texas.
They've been in Dallas since 1921.
Cotton Belt Gin Service, Inc. of Dallas makes gin saws and started here 14 years ago.
They distribute equipment in 11 states.
The firm also handles gin and oil mill supplies such as belting, bearings, etc..
Cotton processing equipment is a sizable segment of Dallas business economy.
New car sales in Dallas County during March showed slight signs of recovering from the doldrums which have characterized sales this year.
Registrations of new cars in Dallas County cracked the 3,000 mark in March for the first time this year.
Totaling 3,399, sales jumped 14 per cent over February's 2,963.
However, compared with March 1960 new car sales of 4,441, this March was off 23 per cent.
On a quarter-to-quarter comparison, the first quarter of 1961 total of 9,273 cars was 21 per cent behind the previous year's 3-month total of 11,744.
This year-to-year decline for Dallas County closely follows the national trend--estimated sales of domestic cars in the U.S. for first three months of 1961 were about 1,212,000 or 80 per cent of the total in the first quarter a year earlier.
With the March pickup, dealers are optimistic that the April-June quarter will equal or top last year.
The March gain plus this optimism has been encouraging enough to prompt auto makers to boost production schedules for the next quarter.
On the local level, compacts continue to grab a larger share of the market at the expense of lower-priced standard models and foreign cars.
Only three standard models--Buick, Chrysler, and Mercury--had slight year-to-year gains in March sales in the county.
The top 3 students from 11 participating Dallas County high schools will be honored by the Dallas Sales Executives Club at a banquet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Sam Houston Room of the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel as the club winds up its annual Distributive Education project.
Now in its third year, the program is designed to provide a laboratory for those youngsters seeking careers in marketing and salesmanship.
Business firms provide 20 weeks of practical employment to supplement classroom instruction in these fields.
More than 500 juniors and seniors are taking part in the program and 100 firms offer jobs on an educational rather than a need basis.
Principal address will be delivered by Gerald T. Owens, national sales manager for Isodine Pharmical Corp. of New York.
The 33 honored students are: Mike Trigg, Raymond Arrington, and Ronald Kaminsky of Bryan Adams, Janice Whitney, Fil Terral, and Carl David Page of W. H. Adamson;
Bill Burke, Tommie Freeman, and Lawrence Paschall of N. R. Crozier Tech. Paulah Thompson, Gerald Kestner, and Nancy Stephenson of Hillcrest;
Arnold Hayes, Mary Ann Shay, and Lloyd Satterfield of Thomas Jefferson;
William Cluck, Deloris Carrel Carty, and Edna Earl Eaton of North Dallas;
Patricia Ann Neal, Johnny Carruthers, and David McLauchlin of Rylie of Seagoville;
David Wolverton, Sharon Flanagan, and James Weaver of W. W. Samuels;
William Austin, Gary Hammond, and Ronnie Davis of South Oak Cliff;
Bill Eaton, Carolyn Milton, and Ronnie Bert Stone of Sunset;
and Charles Potter, Ronnie Moore, and Robert Bailey of Woodrow Wilson.
The Kennedy administration's new housing and urban renewal proposals, particularly their effect on the Federal Housing Administration, came under fire in Dallas last week.
The Administration's proposals, complex and sweeping as they are, all deal with fringe areas of the housing market rather than its core, stated Caron S. Stallard, first vice-president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.
Santa Barbara
He urged support for President Kennedy's requests for both defense and foreign aid appropriations.
' not flash in pan '
In view of the current expansion, which promises to be substantial he said the odds appear to favor rising interest rates in coming months, but there is reason to believe the change will not be as abrupt as in 1958 nor as severe as in late 1959 and 1960.
Thesis refuted
Sprinkel strongly refuted the current neo-stagnationist thesis that we are facing a future of limited and slow growth, declaring that this pessimism is based on very limited and questionable evidence.
Rather than viewing the abortive recovery in 1959-60 as a reason for believing we have lost prospects for growth, he said it should be viewed as a lesson well learned which will increase the probability of substantial improvement in this recovery.
Danger cited
He cautioned that the greater danger in this recovery may be excessive stimulation by government which could bring moderate inflation.
The economist does not look for a drastic switch in the budget during this recovery and believes it even more unlikely that the Federal Reserve will aggressively tighten monetary policy in the early phases of the upturn as was the case in 1958.
The unsatisfactory 1958-60 expansion, he said, was not due to inadequate growth forces inherent in our economy but rather to the adverse effect of inappropriate economic policies combined with retrenching decisions resulting from the steel strike.
Sacrifices needed
Draper declared, As I see it, this country has never faced such great dangers as threaten us today.
We must justify our heritage.
We must be ready for any needed sacrifice.
He said that from his experience of two years with Gen. Clay in West Berlin administration, that Russia respects our show of strength, but that presently we're not acting as we should and must.
He called the Cuban tractor plan an outright blackmail action, and noted that in war you can't buy yourself out and that's what we're trying to do.
While he declined to suggest, how, he said that sooner or later we must get rid of Castro, for unless we do we're liable to face similar situations in this hemisphere.
Its the start of a direct threat to our own security and I don't believe we can permit that.
New York (AP)
-- Stock market Tuesday staged a technical recovery, erasing all of Monday's losses in the Associated Press average and making the largest gain in about two weeks.
Analysts saw the move as a continuation of the recovery drive that got under way late Monday afternoon when the list sank to a hoped-for support level represented by around 675 in the Dow Jones industrial average.
It was a level at which some of the investors standing on the sidelines were thought likely to buy the pivotal issues represented in the averages.
Some good news
Although it looked like a routine technical snapback to Wall Streeters it was accompanied by some good news.
A substantial rise in new orders and sales of durable goods was reported for last month.
Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon said the economy is expected to advance by a whopping 8% next year, paving the way for lower taxes.
The Dow Jones industrial average advanced 7.19 to 687.87.
Of 1,253 issues traded, 695 advanced and 354 declined.
New highs for the year totaled nine and new lows 14.
Trading was comparatively dull throughout the day.
Volume dipped to 3.28 million shares from 3.98 million Monday.
A $25 billion advertising budget in an $800 billion economy was envisioned for the 1970s here Tuesday by Peter G. Peterson, head of one of the world's greatest camera firms, in a key address before the American Marketing Assn..
However, Peterson, president of Bell & Howell, warned 800 U.S. marketing leaders attending a national conference at the Ambassador, that the future will belong to the industrialist of creative and unconventional wisdom.
Creations needed
With this kind of new product log-jam, the premium for brilliant product planning will obviously go up geometrically.
Nothing to fear
Peterson said America has nothing to fear in world competition if it dares to be original in both marketing and product ideas.
He cited, as an example, how the American camera industry has been able to meet successfully the competition of Japan despite lower Japanese labor costs, by improving its production know-how and technology.
He also used as an example the manufacturer who introduced an all-automatic camera in Germany, with the result that it became the best selling camera in the German market.
Election of Howard L. Taylor to membership in Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, effective Tuesday, has been announced by Thomas P. Phelan, president of the exchange.
Taylor, president and voting stockholder of Taylor and Co., Beverly Hills, has been active in the securities business since 1925.
Union Oil Co. of California Tuesday offered $120 million in debentures to the public through a group of underwriters headed by Dillon, Read & Co., to raise money to retire a similar amount held by Gulf Oil Corp..
Gulf's holdings could have been converted into 2,700,877 shares of Union Oil common upon surrender of debentures plus cash, according to Union.
Under the new offering, only $60 million in debentures are convertible into 923,076 common shares.
Due in 1986
The new offering Tuesday consisted of $60 million worth of 4-7/8 debentures, due June 1, 1986, at 100%, and $60 million of 4-1/2% convertible subordinated debentures due June 1, 1991, at 100%.
The convertible debentures are convertible into common shares at $65 a share by June 1, 1966;
$70 by 1971;
$75 by 1976;
$80 by 1981;
$85 by 1986, and $90 thereafter.
New York (AP)
-- American Stock Exchange prices enjoyed a fairly solid rise but here also trading dwindled.
Volume was 1.23 million shares, down from Monday's 1.58 million.
Gains of 2-3/4 were posted for Teleprompter and Republic Foil.
Fairchild Camera and Kawecki Chemical gained 2-1/2 each.
Question
-- I bought 50 shares of Diversified Growth Stock Fund on Oct. 23, 1959, and 50 more shares of the same mutual fund on Feb. 8, 1960.
Something has gone wrong some place.
I am getting dividends on only 50 shares.
In other words, I am getting only half the dividends I should.
Answer
-- Write to the fund's custodian bank--the First National Bank of Jersey City, N.J..
That bank handles most of the paper work for Diversified Growth Stock Fund, Fundamental Investors, Diversified Investment Fund and Television-Electronics Fund.
The bank installed a magnetic tape electronic data processing system to handle things.
But it seems that this electronic brain wasn't programmed correctly.
This resulted in a great number of errors.
And letters began to come in to this column from irate shareholders.
I visited the bank in March and wrote a story about the situation.
At that time, the people at the bank said they felt that they had the situation in hand.
They indicated that no new errors were being made and that all old errors would be corrected within 60 days.
That 60-day period is over and letters are still coming in from shareholders of these four funds, complaining about mistakes in their accounts.
Maybe it's taking longer to get things squared away than the bankers expected.
Any shareholder of any of these funds who finds a mistake in his account certainly should get in touch with the bank.
Doyle cannot undertake to reply to inquiries.
He selects queries or general interest to answer.
Washington (AP)
-- Alfred Hayes, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said Tuesday there is no present need for far-reaching reforms which would basically alter the international financial system.
Hayes said that if a way can be found to deal effectively with short-term capital movements between nations, there is no reason, in my judgment why the international financial system cannot work satisfactorily for at least the foreseeable future.
Washington (UPI)
-- New York Central Railroad president Alfred E. Perlman said Tuesday his line would face the threat of bankruptcy if the Chesapeake & Ohio and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads merge.
Perlman said bankruptcy would not be an immediate effect of the merger, but could possibly be an ultimate effect.
The railroad president made the statement in an interview as the Interstate Commerce Commission opened Round 2 of its hearing into the C & O's request to control and then merge with the B & Aj.
All these kind of things weaken us, Perlman said.
Bad condition
Board Chairman Howard Simpson of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., testified the B & O was in its worst financial condition since the depression years and badly needed the economic lift it would get from consolidation with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.
The financial situation of the Baltimore & Ohio, has become precarious--much worse than at any time since the depression of the 1930s, he told the hearing.
C & O president Walter J. Tuohy was summoned back for cross-examination by New York Central attorneys before examiner John Bradford who is hearing the complex case.
The New York Central also has asked the ICC to permit it to gain control of the B & Aj.
Central was rebuffed by the other two railroads in previous attempts to make it a three-way merger.
The proposed C & O-B & O railroad would make it the hemisphere's second largest.
Washington (AP)
-- The government's short-term borrowing costs rose with Tuesday's weekly offering of Treasury bills.
On $1.1 billion of 90-day bills, the average yield was 2.325%.
The rate a week ago was 2.295%.
Washington, March 11 (UPI).
-- Consumer uncertain about economic conditions.
This was the chief reason for a so-so sales outlook given by two-thirds of 56 builders polled by the National Housing Center.
Other reasons mentioned by one-third or more of the builders were resistance to high interest rates, cost advantage of buying over renting has narrowed, shelter market nearing saturation and prospects unable to qualify.
Increase expected
The poll was taken at the Center's annual builders' intentions conference.
It disclosed that the builders:
Expect their own production volume, and presumably sales, to jump 30 percent in 1961.
Look for home building nationally to advance less than 10 percent this year from 1960's 1,257,700 non-farm housing starts.
The industry has said 1960 was a poor year.
Starts were down 20 percent from 1959.
Why the discrepancy between the builders' forecasts for themselves and for the industry?
Leaders of industry
The reason, says the Housing Center, is that the builders invited to the intentions conference are generally among the more successful businessmen, and usually do somewhat better than their fellow builders.
Elburn, Ill.
-- Farm machinery dealer Bob Houtz tilts back in a battered chair and tells of a sharp pickup in sales: We've sold four corn pickers since Labor Day and have good prospects for 10 more.
We sold only four pickers all last year.
Gus Ehlers, competitor of Mr. Houtz in this farm community, says his business since August 1 is running 50% above a year earlier.
Before then, my sales during much of the year had lagged behind 1960 by 20%, he says.
Though the sales gains these two dealers are experiencing are above average for their business, farm equipment sales are climbing in most rural areas.
Paradoxically, the sales rise is due in large measure to Government efforts to slash farm output.
Although the Administration's program cut crop acreage to the lowest point since 1934, farmers, with the help of extra fertilizer and good weather, are getting such high yields per acre that many are being forced to buy new harvesting machines.
Fields of corn and some other crops in many cases are so dense that older equipment cannot handle them efficiently.
The higher price supports provided by the new legislation, together with rising prices for farm products, are pushing up farm income, making it possible for farmers to afford the new machinery.
Seven of the eight companies that turn out full lines of farm machinery say sales by their dealers since the start of August have shown gains averaging nearly 10% above last year.
In August our dealers sold 13% more farm machinery than a year earlier and in September retail sales were 14% higher than last year, says Mark V. Keeler, farm equipment vice president of International Harvester Co..
For the year to date, sales of the company's farm equipment dealers still lag about 5% behind 1960.
Two of three report gains
Among individual dealers questioned in nearly a score of states, two out of three report their sales since August 1 show sizable gains from a year earlier, with the increases ranging from 5% to 50%.
Not all sections are showing an upswing, however;
the drought-seared North Central states are the most notable exceptions to the uptrend.
The significance of the pickup in farm machinery sales extends beyond the farm equipment industry.
The demand for farm machinery is regarded as a yardstick of rural buying generally.
Farmers spend more of their income on tractors and implements than on any other group of products.
More than 20 million people live on farms and they own a fourth of the nation's trucks, buy more gasoline than any other industry and provide a major market for home appliances, chemicals and other products.
Farmers are so eager for new machinery that they're haggling less over prices than they did a year ago, dealers report.
Farmers aren't as price conscious as last year so we can get more money on a sale, says Jack Martin, who sells J. I. Case tractors and implements in Sioux City, Iowa.
This morning, we allowed a farmer $600 on the old picker he traded in on a new $2,700 model.
Last year, we probably would have given him $700 for a comparable machine.
Mr. Martin sold 21 tractors in August;
in August of 1960, he sold seven.
Dealers' stocks down
With dealer stocks of new equipment averaging about 25% below a year ago, the affects of the rural recovery are being felt almost immediately by the country's farm equipment manufacturers.
For example, farm equipment shipments of International Harvester in August climbed about 5% above a year earlier, Mr. Keeler reports.
Tractor production at Massey-Ferguson, Ltd., of Toronto in July and August rose to 2,418 units from 869 in the like period a year earlier, says John Staiger, vice president.
With the lower dealer inventories and the stepped-up demand some manufacturers believe there could be shortages of some implements.
Merritt D. Hill, Ford Motor Co. vice president, says his company is starting to get calls daily from dealers demanding immediate delivery or wanting earlier shipping dates on orders for corn pickers.
Except for a few months in late 1960 and early 1961, retail farm equipment sales have trailed year-earlier levels since the latter part of 1959.
The rise in sales last winter was checked when the Government's new feed grain program was adopted;
the program resulted in a cutback of around 20% in planted acreage and, as a result, reduced the immediate need for machines.
Nearly all of the farm equipment manufacturers and dealers say the upturn in sales has resulted chiefly from the recent improvement in crop prospects.
Total farm output for this year is officially forecast at 129% of the 1947-49 average, three points higher than the July 1 estimate and exactly equal to the final figure for 1960.
The Government also is aiding farmers' income prospects.
Agriculture Department economists estimate the Government this year will hand farmers $1.4 billion in special subsidies and incentive payments, well above the record $1.1 billion of 1958 and about double the $639 million of 1960.
Price support loans may total another $1 billion this year.
With cash receipts from marketings expected to be slightly above 1960, farmers' gross income is estimated at $39.5 billion, $1.5 billion above 1960's record high.
Net income may reach $12.7 billion, up $1 billion from 1960 and the highest since 1953.
The Government reported last week that the index of prices received by farmers rose in the month ended at mid-September for the third consecutive month, reaching 242% of the 1910-14 average compared with 237% at mid-July.
Kennedy opposes any widespread relief from a High Court depletion ruling.
The Supreme Court decision in mid-1960 was in the case of a company making sewer pipe from clay which it mined.
The company, in figuring its taxable earnings, deducted a percentage of the revenue it received for its finished products.
Such depletion allowances, in the form of percentages of sales are authorized by tax law for specified raw materials producers using up their assets.
The High Court held that the company must apply its percentage allowance to the value of the raw materials removed from the ground, not to the revenue from finished products.
A measure passed by Congress just before adjourning softened the ruling's impact, on prior-year returns still under review, for clay-mining companies that make brick and tile products.
The measure allows such companies in those years to apply their mineral depletion allowances to 50% of the value of the finished products rather than the lower value of raw clay alone.
President Kennedy, in signing the relief measure into law, stressed he regarded it as an exception.
My approval of this bill should not be viewed as establishing a precedent for the enactment of similar legislation for other mineral industries, the President said.
Charitable deductions come in for closer scrutiny by the I.R.S..
The Service announced that taxpayers making such claims may be called on to furnish a statement from the recipient organization showing the date, purpose, amount and other particulars of the contribution.
Requests for substantiation, the Service indicated, can be especially expected in cases where it suspects the donor received some material benefit in return, such as tickets to a show.
In such an instance, revenuers stressed, the deduction must be reduced by the value of the benefit received.
A rule on the Federal deductibility of state taxes is contested.
A realty corporation in Louisiana owed no tax, under Federal law, on its gain from the sale of property disposed of in line with a plan of liquidation.
Louisiana, however, collected an income tax on the profits from the sale.
The corporation, in filing its final Federal income return, claimed the state tax payment as a deductible expense, as permitted under U.S. tax law.
The Revenue Service disallowed the claim, invoking a law provision that generally bars deductions for expenses incurred in connection with what it said was tax-exempt income.
The Tax Court rejected this view.
It said the tax-freedom of the gain in this case stemmed not from the exempt status of the income but from a special rule on corporate liquidations.
The Tax Court decision and a similar earlier finding by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenges a year-old I.R.S. ruling on the subject.
The Service has not said what its next step will be.
Peace Corps volunteers are assured a tax benefit under the law creating the agency.
It provides that the $1,800 termination payment each cadet is to get, after serving a two-year hitch without pay, will be spread over both years, not taxed in its entirety at a possibly higher rate in the year received.
The owner of a public relations firm owed no income tax on payments he received from a client company and kicked back to the company's advertising manager, the Tax Court ruled.
The taxpayer testified that in order to retain the account he had to pad his invoices and pay the excess to the manager.
The Court upheld the taxpayer's contention that these kickbacks were not his income though they passed through his hands.
The Court limited its decision to the tax issue involved, commenting: It is not our province to pass judgment on the morality of the transaction.
A portable kerosene range designed for use aboard boats is sold with a special railing to keep it from moving with the motion of the vessel.
The Revenue Service said the addition of the attachment does not keep the range from coming under the Federal manufacturers' excise tax on household-type appliances.
Hiring the wife for one's company may win her tax-aided retirement income.
A spouse employed by a corporation her husband controls, for example, may be entitled to distributions under the company's pension plan as well as to her own Social Security coverage.
She would be taxed on the pensions when received, of course, but the company's contributions would be tax-free.
A frequent pitfall in this sort of arrangement, experts warn, is a tendency to pay the wife more than her job is worth and to set aside an excessive amount for her as retirement income.
In that event, they note, the Revenue Service might declare the pension plan is discriminatory and deny it tax privileges under the law.
Possible upshots: The company could be denied a deduction for its pension payments, or those payments for the wife and other employes could be ruled taxable to them in the year made.
State briefs: Voters in four counties containing and bordering Denver authorized the imposition of an additional 2% sales tax within that area.
Colorado has a 2% sales tax.
Denver itself collects a 1% sales tax which is to be absorbed in the higher area tax.
The Washington state supreme court ruled that the state's occupation tax applied to sales, made at cost to an oil company, by a wholly-owned subsidiary set up to purchase certain supplies without divulging the identity of the parent.
The state's occupation tax is computed on gross sales.
The court held that the tax applied to non-profit sales because the corporations realized economic benefits by doing business as two separate entities.
Washington
-- Consumer spending edged down in April after rising for two consecutive months, the Government reported.
The Commerce Department said seasonally adjusted sales of retail stores dropped to slightly under $18 billion in April, down 1% from the March level of more than $18.2 billion.
April sales also were 5% below those of April last year, when volume reached a record for any month, $18.9 billion (see chart on Page One).
The seasonal adjustment takes into account such factors as Easter was on April 2 this year, two weeks earlier than in 1960, and pre-Easter buying was pushed into March.
Commerce Department officials were inclined to explain the April sales decline as a reaction from a surge of consumer buying in March.
Adjusted sales that month were up a relatively steep 2.5% from those of the month before, which in turn were slightly higher than the January low of $17.8 billion.
Greer Garson, world-famous star of stage, screen and television, will be honored for the high standard in tasteful sophisticated fashion with which she has created a high standard in her profession.
As a Neiman-Marcus award winner the titian-haired Miss Garson is a personification of the individual look so important to fashion this season.
She will receive the 1961 Oscar at the 24th annual Neiman-Marcus Exposition, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel.
The only woman recipient, Miss Garson will receive the award with Ferdinando Sarmi, creator of chic, beautiful women's fashions;
Harry Rolnick, president of the Byer-Rolnick Hat Corporation and designer of men's hats;
Sydney Wragge, creator of sophisticated casuals for women and Roger Vivier, designer of Christian Dior shoes Paris, France, whose squared toes and lowered heels have revolutionized the shoe industry.
The silver and ebony plaques will be presented at noon luncheons by Stanley Marcus, president of Neiman-Marcus, Beneficiary of the proceeds from the two showings will be the Dallas Society for Crippled Children Cerebral Palsy Treatment Center.
The attractive Greer Garson, who loves beautiful clothes and selects them as carefully as she does her professional roles, prefers timeless classical designs.
Occasionally she deserts the simple and elegant for a fun piece simply because It's unlike me.
In private life, Miss Garson is Mrs. E. E. Fogelson and on the go most of the time commuting from Dallas, where they maintain an apartment, to their California home in Los Angeles' suburban Bel-Air to their ranch in Pecos, New Mexico.
Therefore, her wardrobe is largely mobile, to be packed at a moment's notice and to shake out without a wrinkle.
Her creations in fashion are from many designers because she doesn't want a complete wardrobe from any one designer any more than she wants all of her pictures by one painter.
A favorite is Norman Norell, however.
She likes his classic chemise.
Her favorite cocktail dress is a Norell, a black and white organdy and silk jersey.
Irene suits rate high because they are designed for her long-bodied silhouette.
She also likes the femininity and charm of designs by Ceil Chapman and Helen Rose.
Balenciaga is her favorite European designer.
I bought my first dress from him when I was still a struggling young actress, she reminisces.
I like his clothes for their drama and simplicity and appreciate the great impact he has on fashion.
Black and white is her favorite color combination along with lively glowing pinks, reds, blues and greens.
Of Scotch-Irish-Scandinavian descent, Greer Garson was born in County Down, Ireland.
Her mother was a Greer and her father's family came from the Orkney Isles.
Reared in England, she studied to be a teacher, earned several scholarships and was graduated with honors from the University of London.
She took postgraduate work at the University of Grenoble in France and then returned to London to work on market research with an advertising firm.
Her acting began with the Birmingham Repertory Company and she soon became the toast of the West End.
Among stage performances was a starring role in Golden Arrow directed by Noel Coward.
It was during Old Music at the St. James Theater that Hollywood's Louis B. Mayer spotted her.
After signing a motion-picture contract, she came to America and had Goodbye, Mr. Chips as her first assignment after a year's wait.
Other triumphs include Random Harvest, Madame Curie, Pride and Prejudice, The Forsythe Saga and Mrs. Miniver (which won her the Academy Award in 1943).
Honors that have come to Greer Garson are countless.
Just this April she was nominated for the seventh time for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello.
She gave a fine portrayal of Auntie Mame on Broadway in 1958 and has appeared in live television from Captain Brassbound's Conversion to Camille.
She is in Madame Tussard's Waxworks in London, a princess of the Kiowa tribe and an honorary colonel in many states.
She is adept at skeet shooting, trout fishing, Afro-Cuban and Oriental dancing and Southwestern archaeology.
She now serves on the board of directors of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Dallas Theater Center and on the board of trustees of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
She is state chairman for the New Mexico Tuberculosis and Cancer Associations.
Both Miss Garson and her oilman-rancher husband are active supporters of Boys Clubs of America and patrons of the vivid art and opera colony that flourishes in New Mexico.
Back in college, today's handsome Gander was the only male member of a Texas Tech class on food.
The pretty coeds must have ogled him all day long--but he dutifully kept his eye on the gravy.
Last October he gave a public speech in Washington, D.C. entitled Are Women Here To Stay?
So you can see that Gerald G. Ramsey, director of SMU's food services, is not the ordinary type of craven, women-trodden chef.
He is apt to rear back and claim his rights.
Ramsey, as SMU's food wrangler, buys enough groceries to serve 32,000 meals a week.
Tell that to the little wife when she moans at the woman's burden!
He also dishes up 3,000 snacks.
And he operates three cafeterias in the Student Center, along with McElvaney Dining Hall and the athlete's tables.
Ramsey, 6-3, 195 and ruggedly slim, says, I can't remember when I didn't pester my mother to teach me to cook.
He was in charge of the Hockaday School meals from 1946 to 1950, before he moved to Aj.
And you'll notice that in both places, there are acres of charming young ladies who with little effort spice up any chow line.
What does he feed his SMU football mastodons at the training table?
Mostly meat and potatoes--they have to have that go-go-go without getting too fat, says Ramsey.
So he hides the mayonnaise.
And to keep athletes' stomachs from getting jumpy under physical duress, he bans all highly flavored condiments.
What do the pretty SMU girls like on their plates?
Pretty much hamburger, hotdogs, steak and, at night, maybe pizza, says the handsome food expert.
Unfortunately, there is still little demand for broccoli and cauliflower.
Ramsey has stoked up Harry Truman, Henry Cabot Lodge, the King of Morocco, Clement Atlee and other shiny characters.
Once four Tibetan monks, in their saffron robes, filed through the cafeteria line.
They aren't supposed to look at women, you know, Ramsey recalled.
What with all those pretty girls around, they had a hard time.
Chicken Cadillac
Use one 6-ounce chicken breast for each guest.
Salt and pepper each breast.
Dip in melted butter and roll in flour.
Place side by side in a 2-inch deep baking pan.
Bake slowly about one hour at 250-275 F. until lightly brown.
Add enough warmed cream, seasoned to taste with onion juice, to about half cover the chicken breasts.
Bake slowly at least one-half hour longer.
While this is baking, saute mushrooms, fresh or canned, in butter.
Sprinkle over top of chicken breasts.
Serve each breast on a thin slice of slow-baked ham and sprinkle with Thompson seedless grapes.
(Leave off the ham and you call it Chicken Pontiac, says Ramsey.
Contemporary furniture that is neither Danish nor straight-line modern but has sculptured pattern, many design facets, warmth, dignity and an effect of utter comfort and livability.
That is the goal of two new collections being introduced in Dallas this month.
Though there has been some avant garde indication that contemporary furniture might go back to the boxy look of the '20's and '40's, two manufacturers chose to take the approach of the sophisticated, but warm look in contemporary.
These two, Heritage and Drexel, chose too not to produce the exactly matching design for every piece, but a collection of correlated designs, each of which could stand alone.
The Heritage collection, to be shown by Sanger-Harris and Anderson's Studio, has perhaps more different types of woods and decorations than any one manufacturer ever assembled together at one time.
Called Perennian, to indicate its lasting, good today and tomorrow quality, the collection truly avoids the monotony of identical pieces.
It is a collection with a custom-design look, offering simplicity with warmth, variety and vitality.
The Drexel collection, called Composite, to be shown by Titche's offers a realistic approach to decorating, a mature modern that is a variation of many designs.
Rounded posts give a soft, sculptured look, paneled doors have decorative burl panels or cane insets plus softening arches, table tops are inlaid in Macassar ebony or acacia.
A high-legged buffet provides easy-to-reach serving, a cocktail table has small snack tables tucked under each end, recessed arched panels decorate a 60-inch long chest.
An interesting approach to the bedroom is presented, with a young, basic, functional group of chests, dressers and corner units and a canted headboard.
The other bedroom has heavier styling, door-fronted dressers with acacia panels, a poster bed or a bed with arched acacia panels and matching mirror.
Colorful, bright Eastman Chromspun fabrics, with the magenta, pink and white tones predominating as well as golden shades are used with Composite.
The fabrics have Scotchgard finish to resist soil and wrinkles.
Design elements closely rooted to traditional forms but wearing a definite contemporary label keynote Drexel's fall 1961 group, Composite.
The spider-leg pedestal table has a base finished in an ebony, to set off the lustrous brown of the walnut top.
See-through design of the chairs combines both the nostalgic ladder back and an Oriental shoji flavor.
To bring warmth to the dining area, golden orange tones are used in the fabrics.
Dignity and comfort, in a contemporary manner, reflecting the best aspects of today's design, with substance and maturity, keynote the Perennian collection from Heritage.
Center panel, hand-screened wood, actually is a back of one of the tall bookcases.
Mellow bronzy-green-gold fabrics and the gleam of copper and hand-crafted ceramic accessories reiterate the mood as does the Alexander Smith carpet in all wool loop pile.
The Vagabonds are on the road again.
Members are on their way to Saledo, not by stage coach, but in air-conditioned cars.
This coming weekend they have reserved the entire Stagecoach Inn and adjoining country club, Saledo, for festivities.
Invitations have been extended to some Austin dignitaries including Gov. and Mrs. Price Daniel.
Stagecoach Days is the theme for the weekend on the Old Chisholm Trail.
The get-together Friday night will be a banquet at the country club patio and pool, and an orchestra will play for dancing.
Guests will wear costumes typical of the Chisholm Trail Days.
Ginghams and calico will be popular dress for the women.
The men will be in western attire, including Stetsons and colored vests.
Decorating the ballroom will be the yellow rose of Texas, in tall bushes;
bluebonnets and stagecoach silhouettes.
There will be a large drawing of a sunbonnet girl with eyes that flash at the guests.
Mr. and Mrs. Phil G. Abell are chairmen for the Saledo trip.
Committee members aiding them in planning the entertainment are Messrs and Mmes Roy McKee, George McElyee, Jack Fanning, W. H. Roquemore and Joe Darrow.
The travel club is comprised of 75 fun-loving couples who have as their motto Go Somewhere, Anywhere, Everywhere.
Their activities will be climaxed in the spring of 1962 when they go to Europe.
In the past, the men and women have chartered planes to Las Vegas and Jamaica, buses to Mineral Wells and Kerrville and private railway coaches to Shreveport and Galveston.
Four parties are given a year.
Two of these are in or near Dallas and the others away from the vicinity.
Serving on the club's board are Mmes R. P. Anderson, president;
A. F. Schmalzried, secretary;
W. H. Roquemore, treasurer, and the following chairmen: Mmes McKee, publicity;
Lawrence B. Jones, yearbook, and Sam Laughlin, scrapbook.
A cookie with caramel filling and chocolate frosting won $25,000 for a Minneapolis housewife in the 13th annual Pillsbury Bake-Off Tuesday.
Mrs. Alice H. Reese, wife of an engineer and mother of a 23-year-old son, was awarded the top prize at a luncheon in the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Mrs. Reese entered 10 past bake-offs before she got into the finals.
Second grand prize of $5,000 went to Mrs. Clara L. Oliver for her Hawaiian coffee ring, a rich yeast bread with coconut filling and vanilla glaze.
Mother of five
Mrs. Oliver is mother of five children and wife of a machinist.
She lives in Wellsville, Mo..
Mrs. Reese baked her cookies for only the third time in the Bake-off finals.
And the third time was the charm.
She dreamed up the cookie recipe, tried it, liked it and entered it in the contest.
The second baking was for photographing when told she was a finalist.
The third time was on the floor of the Beverly Hilton ballroom and for the critical eyes and tongues of judges.
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph R. Bolker will give a dinner on Friday at their home in Beverly Hills to honor Mrs. Norman Chandler, chairman of the Music Center Building Fund Committee, and Mr. Chandler.
Mr. Bolker heads a group within the building and development industry to raise funds in support of this cultural center for the performing arts.
A feature of the party will be a presentation by Welton Becket, center architect, of color slides and renderings of the three-building complex.
Foliage will glow at formal fall party
Fall foliage and flowers will decorate Los Angeles Country Club for the annual formal party Saturday evening.
More than 200 are expected at the autumn event which is matched in the spring.
Among those with reservations are Messrs. and Mmes. William A. Thompson, Van Cott Niven, A. B. Cox, David Bricker, Samuel Perry and Robert D. Stetson.
Others are Drs. and Mmes. Alfred Robbins, and J. Lafe Ludwig and Gen. and Mrs. Leroy Watson.
Guests from across U.S. honor Dr. Swim
When Dr. W. A. Swim celebrated his 75th birthday at the Wilshire Country Club, guests came by chartered plane from all over the country.
A flight originating in Florida picked up guests on the East Coast and Midwest and a plane left from Seattle taking on passengers at West Coast points.
Cocktails and a buffet supper were served to more than 100 persons who had known Dr. Swim when he practiced in Los Angeles.
He started practice in 1917, and served on the State Board of Medical Examiners.
Giving up the violin opened a whole new career for Ilona Schmidl-Seeberg, a tiny Hungarian who Fritz Kreisler had predicted would have a promising career on the concert stage.
A heart attack when she was barely 20 put an end to the 10-hour daily practicing.
She put the violin away and took out some linen, needles and yarn to while away the long, idle days in Budapest.
Now her modern tapestries have been exhibited on two continents and, at 26, she feels she is on the threshold of a whole new life in Los Angeles.
Her days as an art student at the University of Budapest came to a sudden end during the Hungarian uprisings in 1957 and she and her husband Stephen fled to Vienna.
There they continued their studies at the university, she in art, he in architecture.
And there she had her first showing of tapestry work.
There's a lot of talk about the problem of education in America today.
What most people don't seem to realize, if they aren't tied up with the thing as I am, is that 90% of the problem is transportation.
I never dreamed of the logistical difficulties involved until, at long last, both of my boys got squeezed into high school.
It seems like only last year that we watched them set out up the hill hand in hand on a rainy day in their yellow raincoats to finger-paint at the grammar school.
Getting to and from school was no problem.
They either walked or were driven.
Now they go to a high school that is two miles away.
One might think the problem would be similar.
They could walk, ride on a bus or be driven.
It's much more complex than that.
Generally, they go to school with a girl named Gloriana, who lives down the block, and has a car.
This is a way of getting to school, but, I understand, it entails a certain loss of social status.
A young man doesn't like to be driven up in front of a school in a car driven by a girl who isn't even in a higher class than he is, and is also a girl.
Why don't you walk to school then?
I suggested.
My father walked, through two miles of snow, in Illinois.
Did you?
I was asked.
No, I said, I didn't happen to grow up in Illinois.
I explained, however, that I had my share of hardship in making my daily pilgrimage to the feet of wisdom.
I had to ride a streetcar two miles.
Sometimes the streetcar was late.
Sometimes there weren't even any seats.
I had to stand up, with the ladies.
Sometimes I got on the wrong car and didn't get to school at all, but wound up at the ocean, or some other dismal place, and had to spend the day there.
I've tried to compromise by letting them take the little car now and then.
When they do that my wife has to drive me to work in the big car.
She has to have at least one car herself.
I feel a certain loss of status when I am driven up in front of work in a car driven by my wife, who is only a woman.
Even that isn't satisfactory.
If they have to take any car, they'd rather take the big one.
They say that when they take a car, Gloriana doesn't take her car, but rides with them.
But when Gloriana rides with them they also have to take the two girls who usually ride with her, so the little car isn't big enough.
The logic of that is impeccable, of course, except that I feel like a fool being driven up to work in a little car, by my wife, when everybody knows I have a big car and am capable of driving myself.
The solution, naturally, is the bus.
However, it's a half-mile walk down a steep hill from our house to the bus, and it's too hard on my legs.
My wife could drive us down the hill and we could all walk from there.
But that's hardly realistic.
Nobody walks anymore but crackpots and Harry Truman, and he's already got an education.
Advance publicity on the Los Angeles Blue Book does not mention names dropped as did the notices for the New York Social Register which made news last week.
Published annually by William Hord Richardson, the 1962 edition, subtitled Society Register of Southern California, is scheduled to arrive with Monday morning's postman.
Publisher Richardson has updated the Blue Book but it still remains the compact reference book used by so many for those ever-changing telephone numbers, addresses, other residences, club affiliations and marriages.
Stars for marriage
Stars throughout the volume denote dates of marriages during the past year.
Last two to be added before the book went to press were the marriages of Meredith Jane Cooper, daughter of the Grant B. Coopers, to Robert Knox Worrell, and of Mary Alice Ghormley to Willard Pen Tudor.
Others are Carla Ruth Craig to Dan McFarland Chandler Jr.;
Joanne Curry, daughter of the Ellsworth Currys, to James Hartley Gregg, and Valerie Smith to James McAlister Duque.
Also noted are the marriages of Elizabeth Browning, daughter of the George L. Brownings, to Austin C. Smith Jr.;
Cynthia Flower, daughter of the Ludlow Flowers Jr., to Todd Huntington, son of the David Huntingtons.
Pasadena listings
Listed as newly wed in the Pasadena section of the new book are Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Moody Haskins 3.
She is the former Judy Chapman, daughter of John S. Chapman of this city.
The young couple live in Pasadena.
Another marriage of note is that of Jane McAlester and William Louis Pfau.
Changes in address are noted.
For instance, the Edwin Pauleys Jr., formerly of Chantilly Rd., are now at home on North Arden Dr. in Beverly Hills.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Moulton now live on Wilshire and the Franklin Moultons on S. Windsor Blvd..
The Richard Beesemyers, formerly of Connecticut, have returned to Southern California and are now residing on South Arden Blvd..
But the Raoul Esnards have exchanged their residence in Southern California for Mexico City.
More new addresses
Judge and Mrs. Julian Hazard are now at Laguna Beach, while the Frank Wangemans have moved from Beverly Hills to New York, where he is general manager of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
And Lawrence Chase, son of the Ransom Chases, is listed at his new address in Oxford, Eng..
Others listed at new addresses are the Richard T. Olerichs, the Joseph Aderholds Jr., the Henri De La Chapelles, the John Berteros and Dr. and Mrs. Egerton Crispin, the John Armisteads, the Allen Chases, the Howard Lockies, the Thomas Lockies, and Anthony Longinotti.
Newcomers of social note from other parts of the country are the Ray Carbones, formerly of Panama;
the Geddes MacGregors, formerly of Scotland, and Mr. and Mrs. Werner H. Althaus, formerly of Switzerland.
Here's an idea for a child's room that is easy to execute and is completely charming, using puppets for lamp bases.
Most children love the animated puppet faces and their flexible bodies, and they prefer to see them as though the puppets were in action, rather than put away in boxes.
Displayed as lamps, the puppets delight the children and are decorative accent.
To create such a lamp, order a wired pedestal from any lamp shop.
Measure the puppet to determine the height of the light socket, allowing three to four inches above the puppet's head.
Make sure that the metal tube through which the wire passes is in the shape of an inverted L, the foot of the L about three inches long, so that the puppet can hang directly under the light.
Pulling strings
Using the strings that manipulate the puppet, suspend him from the light fixture by tying the strings to the lamp base.
In this way, you can arrange his legs and arms in any desired position, with feet, or one foot, barely resting on the pedestal.
If the puppets are of uniform size, you can change them in accord with your child's whims.
Although a straight drum shade would be adequate and sufficiently neutral that the puppets could be changed without disharmony, it is far more fun to create shades in the gay spirit of a child's playtime.
Those illustrated are reminiscent of a circus top or a merry-go-round.
The scalloped edge is particularly appealing.
Today's trend toward furniture designs from America's past is teaching home-owners and decorators a renewed respect for the shrewd cabinetmakers of our Colonial era.
A generation ago there were plenty of people who appreciated antiques and fine reproductions.
In the background lurked the feeling, however, that these pieces, beautiful as they were, lacked the utilitarian touch.
So junior's bedroom was usually tricked out with heavy, nondescript pieces that supposedly could take the hard knocks, while the fine secretary was relegated to the parlor where it was for show only.
This isn't true of the many homemakers of the 1960's, according to decorator consultant, Leland Alden.
Housewives are finding literally hundreds of ways of getting the maximum use out of traditional designs, says Mr. Alden and they are doing it largely because Colonial craftsmen had an innate sense of the practical.
Solid investment
There are a number of reasons why the Eighteenth Century designer had to develop down to earth designs--or go out of business.
Hotel Escape's Bonanza room has a real bonanza in its new attraction, the versatile Kings 4, Plus Two.
This is the strongest act to hit the area in a long while--a well integrated, fast moving outfit specializing in skits, vocals, comedy and instrumentals all of it distinctly displaying the pro touch.
Show spotlights the Kings--George Worth, Bill Kay, Frank Ciciulla and Gene Wilson, flanked by Dave Grossman and Ron Stevens.
The Plus Two remain at a fixed position with drums and guitar but the quartet covers the stage with a batch of instruments ranging from tuba to tambourine, and the beat is solid.
In the comedy division, the Kings simply augment talent and imagination with a few props.
Net result is some crazy-wonderful nonsense, part of which can be classed as pure slapstick.
Kings 4, have rated as a popular act in Vegas and Western nightclubs.
If they can't chalk up big business here then let's stop this noise about how hip we are, and stick to our community singing,
elsewhere
Andy Bartha and his trio have booked into Oceania Lounge.
The Cumbancheros, Latin combo, open Tuesday at the Four O'Clock Club.
Flip Phillips for a return engagement at Fireside Steak Ranch Wednesday;
same date, Johnny LaSalle trio to the Jolly Roger.
Dick Carroll and his accordion (which we now refer to as Freida) held over at Bahia Cabana where Sir Judson Smith brings in his calypso capers Oct. 13.
Johnny Leighton picked up some new numbers out in Texas which he's springing on the ringsiders in the Rum House at Galt Ocean Mile Hotel.
Skip Hovarter back in town from a summer in the Reno-Lake Tahoe area where he ran into Rusty Warren, Kay Martin, the Marskmen and Tune Toppers--all pulling good biz, he says.
We like Fike
Al Fike, an ex-schoolteacher from Colorado, is currently pursuing the three R's--rhythm, reminiscence and repartee--in a return class session at the Trade Winds Hotel.
Al has added some sidemen to the act which makes for a smoother operation but it's substantially the same format heard last spring.
Newcomers are Ernie Kemm on piano, Wes Robbins, bass and trumpet, and Jack Kelly on drums.
It's a solid show but, except for some interim keyboarding by Ernie, it's Al's all the way.
Maestro's biggest stock in trade is his personality, and ability to establish a warm rapport with his audience.
He skips around from jazz, to blues to boogie--accompanying himself on piano and frequently pulling the customers in on the act.
This is a bouncy show which may get a little too frantic at times, but is nevertheless worth your appraisal.
New owners
Cafe Society opens formally this afternoon under its new ownership.
George Kissak is the bossman;
Terry Barnes has been named manager.
Spot retains the same decor although crystal chandeliers have been installed above the terrace dining area, and the kitchen has undergone a remodeling job.
Latter domain, under the guidance of Chef Tom Yokel, will specialize in steaks, chops, chicken and prime beef as well as Tom's favorite dish, stuffed shrimp.
Bandstand features Hal DeCicco, pianist, for both dinner hour and the late trade.
The Tic-Tac-Toe trio is the club's new show group which also plays for dancing.
Here and there
Herbert Heilman in town for a day.
Hubie's restaurant activities up in Lorain, Ohio, may preclude his return here until after Oct. 20, date set for reopening the Heilman Restaurant on Sunman Restaurant on Sunrise.
Louise Franklin cornering the gift shop market in Lauderdale.
Vivacious redhead debuts another shop, her sixth, in the Governor's Club Hotel this week.
Sunday New Orleans brunches continue at the Trade Winds but the daily French buffets have been called off.
Mackey Airline's new Sunshine Inn at Bimini set to open some time this month, according to Hank Johnson.
Student Prince Lounge on Atlantic Blvd. plotting a month-long festival throughout October, with special features.
Don Drinkhouse of Pal's Restaurant planning a reunion with the Miami Playboy Club's pianist, Julian Gould.
Two were in the same band 18 years ago;
Don, who played drums, hasn't seen his chum since.
Steak House has such a run on beer to wash down that Mexican food Tex Burgess had to call the draft man twice in one day.
(Which is understandable--if you've ever sampled the exotic, peppery fare.
faces in places
Pualani and Randy Avon, Dave Searles, George (Papa) Gill, Al Bandish, Jim Morgart, Bob Neil at the Mouse Trap.
Billy and Jean Moffett at the Rickshaw.
Bea Morley, Jimmy Fazio, Jim O'Hare, Ralph Michaels, Bill and Evelyn Perry at the Escape.
Murphy honors
hear that Patricia Murphy flies up to St. John's Newfoundland, next Sunday to attend the government's special ceremonies at Memorial University honoring distinguished sons and daughters of the island province.
Miss Murphy was born in Placentia, Newfoundland.
Her invitation from Premier Joseph Smallwood is reported to be the only one extended to a woman.
Fort Lauderdale
-- The first in a series of five productions will be held in War Memorial Auditorium Thursday, Oct. 26.
Le Theatre D'Art Du Ballet, of Monte Carlo, will present a program of four ballets including Francesca Da Rimini.
Performers include a company of 46 dancers and a symphony orchestra.
The series of ballets is sponsored by the Milenoff Ballet Foundation, Inc., a non-profit foundation with headquarters in Coral Gables.
Also set for appearances at the auditorium this season are: American Ballet Theatre on Jan. 27, Ximenez-Vargas Ballet Espagnol on Feb. 2;
Jorge Bolet, pianist, on Feb. 23;
and Dancers of Bali on March 8.
Hollywood
-- A Southeast Library Workshop will be held here Oct. 9, conducted by Mrs. Gretchen Schenk of Summerdale, Ala., author, lecturer and library leader.
The workshop will begin at 10 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. in the auditorium of the Library and Fine Arts Building.
There is no registration fee but there will be a charge of $2.50 for the luncheon to be held in the library and fine arts building.
Anyone interested in attending the meeting may have reservations with Mrs. John Whelan at the Hollywood Public Library.
At the workshop, Mrs. Schenk will discuss the board and the staff, librarian-board relationships, personnel policies, how good is our librarian and staff, how good am I as a library board member and how good is our library.
Other workshops will be in Tallahassee Oct. 5;
Jacksonville, Oct. 6;
Orlando, Oct. 10;
Plant City Oct. 11.
Fort Lauderdale
-- A series of high school assemblies to acquaint junior and senior students with the Junior Achievement program begins at St. Thomas Aquinas Monday.
Subsequent assemblies will be held at Stranahan High School Tuesday, at Pompano Beach High Wednesday, and at Fort Lauderdale high Thursday.
The business education program operates with the cooperation of local high schools and business firms.
Is there anything a frustrated individual can do about Communism's growing threat on our doorstep and around the world?
More than 300 teenagers last Sunday proved there is and as many more are expected to prove it again for Jim Kern and his wife Lynn from 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at First Presbyterian Church.
At that time the second half of the Christian Youth Crusade against Communism will be staged.
A young real estate salesman, Kern first got seriously interested in the problems posed by Communism when in the Navy Air Force.
He was particularly struck by a course on Communist brainwashing.
Kern began reading a lot about the history and philosophy of Communism, but never felt there was anything he, as an individual, could do about it.
When he attended the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade school here about six months ago, Jim became convinced that an individual can do something constructive in the ideological battle and set out to do it.
The best approach, he figured, was to try to influence young people like the high schoolers he and his wife serve as advisors at First Presbyterian Church.
And he wanted to be careful that the kids not only learn about Communist but also about what he feels is the only antidote--a Biblically strong Christianity.
So the Christian Youth Crusade against Communisn developed and more than 300 top teenagers and 65 adult advisers from Presbyterian churches of the area sat enthralled at the four-hour program.
This Sunday those attending the second session will hear a lecture by Kern on the world situation;
a review of the philosophy of Communist leaders by Ted Slack, another real estate agent who became interested as a philosophy major at the University of Miami;
and talks on how their Christian faith can guide them in learning about and fighting Communism during high school and college days, by Ted Place, director of Greater Miami Youth for Christ, and Jon Braun, director of Campus Crusade for Christ.
The second half of the film Communism on the Map and the movie Operation Abolition also will be shown.
Response to the program has been so encouraging, Kern said, that a city-wide youth school at Dade County Auditorium may be set up soon.
And to encourage other churches to try their own programs, Kern said this Sunday's sessions--including the free dinner--will be open to anyone who makes reservations.
The need for and the way to achieve a Christian home will be stressed in special services marking National Christian Family Week in Miami area churches next week.
Of particular meaning to the Charles MacWhorter family, 3181 SW 24th Ter., will be the Family Dedication Service planned for 10:50 a.m. Sunday at First Christian Church.
It will be the second time the assistant manager of a Coral Gables restaurant and his wife have taken part in the twice-a-year ceremonies for families with new babies.
The first one, two years ago, changed the routine of their home life.
Until that first dedication service, he and Lois felt their children were too young to take part in any religious life at home.
They have five daughters--Coral Lee, 5, Glenda Rae, 4, Pamela, 3, Karen, 2, and Shari, five months.
But after that service, they decided to try to let the girls say grace at the table, have bedtime prayers, and Bible stories.
To their surprise, the children all were eager and quite able to take part.
Even the two-year-old feels miffed if the family has a prayer-time without her.
Dade's chief probation officer, Jack Blanton, will lead a discussion on The Changes in the American Family at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Christ Lutheran Church.
Mr. and Mrs. George Treadwell will be honored at a Family Week supper and program at 6 p.m. Sunday at Trinity Methodist Church.
He is the sexton of the church.
A family worship service will follow the program at 7:45 p.m..
The outstanding family of Central Nazarene Church will be picked by ballot from among eight families during the 10:45 a.m. Sunday service marking National Family Week.
Every family of Riviera Presbyterian Church has been asked to read the Bible and pray together daily during National Christian Family Week and to undertake one project in which all members of the family participate.
To start the week of special programs at the church, the Rev. John D. Henderson will preach on A Successful Marriage at 9:40 and 11 a.m. Sunday.
New officers of the church will be ordained and installed at the 7:30 p.m. service.
A father and son dinner sponsored by the Men's Club will be held at 6:15 p.m. Monday and the annual church picnic at 4 p.m. next Saturday.
The week will end with the Rev. Mr. Henderson preaching on The Marriage Altar at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 14.
The resignation of the Rev. Warren I. Densmore, headmaster of St. Stephen's Episcopal Day School in Coconut Grove, becomes effective July 15.
Enrique Jorda, conductor and musical director of the San Francisco Symphony, will fulfill two more guest conducting engagements in Europe before returning home to open the symphony's Golden Anniversary season, it was announced.
The guest assignments are scheduled for November 14 and 18, with the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in Palermo and the Orchestra of Radio Cologne.
The season in San Francisco will open with a special Gala Concert on November 22.
During his five-month visit abroad, Jorda recently conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique De Bordeau in France, and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome.
In announcing Jorda's return, the orchestra also announced that the sale of single tickets for the 50th anniversary season will start at the Sherman Clay box office on Wednesday.
Guest performers and conductors during the coming season will include many renowned artists who began their careers playing with the orchestra, including violinists Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Ruggiero Ricci and David Abel;
pianists Leon Fleisher, Ruth Slenczynka and Stephen Bishop and conductor Earl Bernard Murray.
This work is no favorite of mine.
I am prepared to demonstrate at anytime that it represents the spirit of Imperial Russia in its most vulgar, infantile, and reactionary aspect;
that its persistent use by ballet companies of the Soviet regime indicates that that old spirit is just as stultifying alive today as it ever was;
that its presentation in this country is part of a capitalist plot to boobify the American people;
that its choreography is undistinguished and its score a shapeless assemblage of self-plagiarisms.
All of this is true and all of it is totally meaningless in the face of the Kirov's utterly captivating presentation.
Precise
The reasons for this enchantment are numerous, but most of them end in ova, eva, or aya.
In other words, no merely male creature can resist that corps de ballet.
It seems to have been chosen exclusively from the winners of beauty contests--Miss Omsk, Miss Pinsk, Miss Stalingr oops, skip it.
These qualities alone, however, would not account for their success, and it took me a while to discover the crowning virtue that completes this company's collective personality.
It is a kind of friendliness and frankness of address toward the audience which we have been led to believe was peculiar to the American ballet.
Oh-the-pain-of-it, that convention of Russian ballet whereby the girls convey the idea that they are all the daughters of impoverished Grand Dukes driven to the stage out of filial piety, is totally absent from the Kirov.
This is all the more remarkable because the Kirov is to ballet what Senator Goldwater is to American politics.
But, obviously, at least some things have changed for the better in Russia so far as the ballet is concerned.
Irina Kolpakova, the Princess Aurora of Friday's performance, would be a change for the better anywhere, at any time, no matter who had had the role before.
She is the most beautiful thing you ever laid eyes on, and her dancing has a feminine suavity, lightness, sparkle, and refinement which are simply incomparable.
Hit
Alla Sizova, who seems to have made a special hit in the East, was delightful as the lady Bluebird and her partner, Yuri Soloviev, was wonderfully virile, acrobatic, and poetic all at the same time, in a tradition not unlike that of Nijinsky.
Vladilen Semenov, a fine danseur noble;
Konstantin Shatilov, a great character dancer;
and Inna Zubkovskaya, an excellent Lilac Fairy, were other outstanding members of the cast, but every member of the cast was magnificent.
The production, designed by Simon Virsaladze, was completely traditional but traditional in the right way.
It was done with great taste, was big and spacious, sumptuous as the dreams of any peasant in its courtly costumes, but sumptuous in a muted, pastel-like style, with rich, quiet harmonies of color between the costumes themselves and between the costumes and the scenery.
Mail orders are now being received for the series of concerts to be given this season under the auspices of the San Francisco Chamber Music Society.
The season will open at the new Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park on November 20 at 8:30 p.m. with a concert by the Mills Chamber Players.
Sustaining members may sign up at $25 for the ten-concert season;
annual members may attend for $16.
Participating members may attend five of the concerts for $9 (not all ten concerts as was erroneously announced earlier in The Chronicle).
Mail orders for the season and orders for single tickets at $2, may be addressed to the society, 1044 Chestnut Street, San Francisco 9.
San Francisco firemen busied themselves last week with their annual voluntary task of fixing up toys for distribution to needy children.
Fire Fighters Local 798, which is sponsoring the toy program for the 12th straight year, issued a call for San Franciscans to turn in discarded toys, which will be repaired by off-duty firemen.
Toys will not be collected at firehouses this year.
They will be accepted at all branches of the Bay View Federal Savings and Loan Association, at a collection center in the center of the Stonestown mall, and at the Junior Museum, 16th Street and Roosevelt Way.
From the collection centers, toys will be taken to a warehouse at 198 Second street, where they will be repaired and made ready for distribution.
Any needy family living in San Francisco can obtain toys by writing to Christmas Toys, 676 Howard street, San Francisco 5, and listing the parent's name and address and the age and sex of each child in the family between the ages of 1 and 12.
Requests must be mailed in by December 5.
Famed cellist Pablo Casals took his instrument to the East Room of the White House yesterday and charmed the staff with a two-hour rehearsal.
He was getting the feel of the room for a concert tomorrow night for Puerto Rico Governor Luis Munoz Marin.
President Kennedy's invitation to the Spanish-born master said, We feel your performance as one of the world's greatest artists would lend distinction to the entertainment of our guests.
For A good many seasons I've been looking at the naughty stuff on television, so the other night I thought I ought to see how immorality is doing on the other side of the fence in movies.
After all, this year's movies are next year's television shows.
So I went to see La Dolce Vita.
It has been billed as a towering monument to immorality.
All the sins of ancient Rome are said to be collected into this three-hour film.
If that's all the Romans did, it's a surprise to me that Rome fell.
After television, La Dolce Vita seems as harmless as a Gray Line tour of North Beach at night.
I cannot imagine a single scene that isn't done in a far naughtier manner on TV every week.
I believe TV watchers will be bored.
La Dolce Vita has none of the senseless brutality or sadism of the average TV Western.
Week in, week out, there is more sex to be seen in The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet.
There is more decadence on 77 Sunset Strip.
There are more obvious nymphomaniacs on any private-eye series.
In another respect, television viewers will feel right at home because most of the actors are unknowns.
With the exception of Lex Barker and Anita Ekberg, the credits are as unfamiliar as you'll find on the Robert Herridge Theater.
Most of the emphasis has been placed on a wild party at a seaside villa.
Producer Fellini should have looked at some of the old silent films where they really had parties!
The Dolce Vita get-together boasted a strip tease (carried as far as a black slip);
a lady drunk on her hands and knees who carries the hero around on her back while he throws pillow feathers in her face;
a frigid beauty, and three silly fairies.
Put them all together and they spell out the only four-letter word I can think of: dull.
Apparently Fellini caught the crowd when its parties had begun to pall.
What a swinging group they must have been when they first started entertaining!
As A moral shocker it is a dud.
But this doesn't detract from its merit as an interesting, if not great, film.
The Chronicle's Paine Knickerbocker summed it up neatly:
This is a long picture and a controversial one, but basically it is a moral, enthralling and heartbreaking description of humans who have become unlinked from life as perhaps Rome has from her traditional political, cultural and religious glories.
And when they sell it to television in a couple of years, it can be shown without editing.
Tonight Atlantic Monthly editor Edward Weeks moderates a round table of four Russian writers in a discussion of Soviet literature.
Among the subjects discussed will be Russian restrictions on poets and writers in the USSR (Channel 9 at 9:30).
Person To Person ventilates the home lives of Johnny Mercer and Joan Collins--both in Southern California (Channel 5 at 10:30) KQED Summer Music Festival features a live concert by the Capello De Musica (Channel 9 at 8:30).
NBC plans a new series of three long programs exploring America's scientific plans titled Threshold, to start in the fall.
Science In Action, San Francisco's venerable television program, will be seen in Hong Kong this fall in four languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Chiuchow and English, according to a tip from Dr. Robert C. Miller.
And you think you have language problems.
The week went along briskly enough.
I bought a new little foreign bomb.
It is a British bomb.
Very austere yet racy.
It is very chic to drive foreign cars.
With a foreign car you must wear a cap--it has a leather band in the back.
You must also wear a car coat.
The wardrobe for a foreign bomb is a little expensive.
But we couldn't really get along without it.
Where do you put the lighter fluid, ha, ha?
Asked the gas station man.
The present crop of small cars is enriching American humor.
Gas station people are very debonair about small cars.
When I drove a car with tail fins, I had plenty status at the wind-and-water oases.
My car gulped 20 gallons without even wiping its mouth.
This excellent foreign bomb takes only six.
When I had my big job with the double headlights and yards of chrome, the gas people were happy to see me.
Tires OK?
Check the oil and water, sir?
They polished the windshield.
They had a loving touch.
The man stuck the nozzle in the gas tank.
What kind of car is it?
He asked gloomily.
It is a British Austin, the smallest they make.
Get much mileage?
About 35.
The gas station man sighed unhappily.
What I always say is what if somebody clobbers you in a little car like that?
Crunch, that's all she wrote.
I will die rich.
That will be $1.80, said the gas station man.
The windshield looks pretty clean.
Ah, the fair-weather friends of yesteryear!
When I wheeled about, finned fore and aft, I was the darling of the doormen.
Dollar bills skidded off my hands and they tipped their caps politely.
With a small bomb, I tuck it between Cadillacs.
(The last doorman that saw me do that should calm himself.
High blood pressure can get the best of any of us.
At last the White House is going to get some much-copied furniture by that master American craftsman, Duncan Phyfe, whose designs were snubbed in his lifetime when the U. S. Presidents of the 19th Century sent abroad for their furnishings.
The American Institute of Decorators has acquired a rare complete set of sofas and chairs which are to be placed in the Executive Mansion's library.
The suite has been in the same family since the early 1800's.
The gift is being presented by heirs and descendants of the Rutherford family of New Jersey, whose famous estate, Tranquility, was located near the Duncan Phyfe workshop at Andover, N. J..
Authenticated pieces of Duncan Phyfe furniture are uncommon, although millions of American homes today display pieces patterned after the style trends he set 150 years ago.
This acquisition is a matched, perfect set--consisting of two sofas six feet long, plus six sidechairs and two armchairs.
The AID has undertaken the redecoration of the White House library as a project in connection with the work being done by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's Fine Arts Advisory Committee to secure antiques for the presidential home.
It is the AID's intention to create in the library a miniature museum of Americana before completed refurbishing is unveiled early this fall.
The room will also feature another rarity many antiquarians would consider more important than the Duncan Phyfe furniture.
The AID has found a mantlepiece attributed to Samuel McIntyre of Salem, Mass., an architect and woodcarver who competed for the designing of the Capitol here in 1792.
The mantel was found in a recently demolished Salem house and is being fitted over the White House library fireplace.
It will be painted to match the paneling in the room.
The AID committee's chairman in charge of the redecoration, Mrs. Henry Francis Lenygon, was in town yesterday to consult with White House staff members on the project.
Mrs. Lenygon's committee associates, announced formally yesterday by the AID in New York, include Mrs. Allen Lehman McCluskey and Stephen J. Jussel, both wellknown Manhattan decorators.
Regional representatives appointed to serve from each section of the country include Frank E. Barnes of Boston.
President Kennedy couldn't stay away from his desk for the 75-minute young people's concert played on the White House lawn yesterday by the 85-piece Transylvania Symphony Orchestra from Brevard, N. C..
But he left the doors to his office open so he could hear the music.
It was the first in the series of Concerts for Young People by Young People to be sponsored by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at the White House.
She was not present yesterday, however, to enjoy the music or watch the faces of the delighted audience.
She is vacationing at the Kennedy summer home in Hyannis Port, Mass., and in his welcoming remarks, the President said he was representing her.
As he approached the open bandstand, erected facing the South entrance to the Executive Mansion, the band struck up the Star Spangled Banner and followed it with Hail To The Chief.
I think they played Hail To The Chief better than the Marine Corps Band, and we are grateful to them, President Kennedy remarked after mounting the bandstand and shaking hands with conductor James Christian Pfohl.
He added I think that sometimes in this country we are not aware as we should be of the extraordinary work that is being done in this field.
This is a great national cultural asset, and therefore it is a great source of satisfaction to me, representing as I do today my wife, to welcome all of you here today at the White House.
As he left the bandstand to return to his office, the slender, sun-tanned Chief Executive paused along the way to shake hands with the members of the audience in wheel chairs forming the first row under the field tent set up for the guests.
He expressed surprise to learn that pretty, blonde Patricia Holbrook, 16, of Mount Rainier, had attended the Joseph P. Kennedy School for the Handicapped in Boston.
The nuns there do a wonderful work, the President commented.
Patricia now attends the C. Melvin Sharpe Health School in the District.
Each of the children invited to the concert wore a name tag marked with a red, white and blue ribbon.
They enjoyed lemonade and cookies served before and during the concert by teenage sons and daughters of members of the White House staff.
Many of the music-loving members of the President's staff gathered around the tent listening and watching the rapt attention given by the young seated audience.
And it turned out to be more of a family affair than expected.
Henry Hall Wilson, a student at the music camp 25 years ago and now on the President's staff as liaison representative with the House of Representatives, turned guest conductor for a Sousa march, the Stars and Stripes Forever.
Transylvania Symphony Conductor Pfohl said yesterday that Mrs. Kennedy's Social Secretary, Letitia Baldrige, told about plans for White House youth concerts before the National Symphony Orchestra League in Philadelphia last spring.
He said he contacted a friend, Henry Hall Wilson, on the President's staff and asked whether his orchestra could play, in the series.
A flow of correspondence between Pfohl and Miss Baldrige resulted in an invitation to the 85-student North Carolina group to play the first concert.
One of the most interested students on the tour which the Brevard group took at the National Gallery yesterday following their concert at the White House, was Letitia Baldrige, social secretary to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
I was an art major in college, Miss Baldrige explained.
I've been here so many times I couldn't count them.
She turned out to be a fan, too, of Margaret Bouton, the Gallery's associate curator of education.
Miss Bouton headed up one of the four groups that went on simultaneous tours after the Gallery had closed at 5 p.m..
The Brevard group of 85 arrived at the Gallery at 6 p.m., remaining for about 45 minutes.
The Brevard visitors had very little to say at the beginning of the tour but warmed up later.
They decided that they thought Rembrandt's self-portrait made him look sad;
they noticed Roman buildings in the background of Raphael's Alba Madonna and texture in a Monet painting of Rheims Cathedral.
Everybody had heard of Van Gogh, the French impressionist.
Gallery Director John Walker greeted the group, standing on one of the benches in the downstairs lobby to speak to them.
He pointed out to the young musicians that the National Gallery is the only museum in the country to have a full-time music director, Richard Bales.
I'm sure you've heard of him and his record,'The Confederacy'''.
Along with the gallery aide who explained the various paintings and sculptures to each group, went one of the Gallery's blue-uniformed guards.
In 45 minutes, the Gallery leaders had given the students a quick rundown on art from the Renaissance to the late 19th Century.
A few of them said they preferred contemporary art.
Among the other artists, whose paintings were discussed were Boucher, Courbet, Fra Angelico.
The thing that impressed one of the visitors the most was the Gallery's rotunda fountain because it's on the second floor.
That imposing, somewhat austere, and seemingly remote collonaded building with the sphynxes perched on its threshold at 1733 16th St. nw. took on bustling life yesterday.
More than 250 Scottish Rite Masons and guests gathered in their House of the Temple to pay tribute to their most prominent leader, Albert Pike, who headed the Scottish Rite from 1859 to 1891.
They came together in the huge, high-ceilinged Council Chamber to hear the late leader eulogized.
C. Wheeler Barnes of Denver, head of the Scottish Rite in Colorado, praised Pike as a historian, author, poet, journalist, lawyer, jurist, soldier and musician, who devoted most of his mature years to the strengthening of the Masonic Order.
The ceremony ended with the laying of a wreath at the crypt of Pike in the House of the Temple.
A reception and tea followed.
About 1500 delegates are expected to register today for the biennial session of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States.
The opening session of the 5-day session will begin at 10 a.m. today.
There will be a pilgrimage to Mount Vernon at 2:30 p.m..
A wreath will be placed at the tomb of George Washington, one of this Nation's first Masons--a past master of Washington-Alexandria Lodge 22 in Alexandria.
The marriage of John and Mary Black had clearly reached the breaking point after eight years.
John had a job in a small firm where the work was dull and monotonous.
He would come home in the evening tired and discouraged--in no frame of mind to play with their three children, or spend much time chatting with his wife.
Hurt by his lack of interest and attention, Mary complained often that he didn't help around the house, and that he didn't really care about the family.
She accused him of ignoring her.
He in turn told her she demanded too much.
They were both discouraged, disgusted and miserable.
Mary decided she had had enough.
Without any definite plan in mind, she went to a judge to see what could be done.
The judge listened quietly as the young woman poured out her frustrations--then discussing with her the possibility of seeking aid from Family Service before going to a lawyer.
Family Service, sharing in UGF, has five agencies in the Washington area.
They offer to the people of this community case work service and counseling on a wide variety of family problems.
Because neither of them really wanted their marriage to break up, Mr. and Mrs. Black agreed to a series of interviews at Family Service of Northern Virginia, the agency nearest them.
For nearly a year, they have been receiving counseling, separately and together, in an effort to understand and overcome the antagonisms which had given rise to the possibility of divorce.
The interviews have led each of them to a new appreciation of the problems confronting the other.
They are now working together toward solving their difficulties.
John received a promotion in his firm.
He gives credit for the promotion to his new outlook on life.
Mary is cheery and gay when her husband comes home in the evenings, and the children's bed-time is frequently preceeded by a session of happy, family rough-housing.
To outsiders, the Blacks seem to be an ordinary, happy family, and they are--but with a difference.
They know the value of being just that--an ordinary, happy family.
Family Service has helped hundreds of families in this area.
Perhaps to some their work does not seem particularly vital.
But to the families it serves, their help cannot be measured.
Family Service could not open its doors to a single family without the financial support of the United Givers Fund.
Anticipated heavy traffic along the Skyline Drive failed to materialize yesterday, park rangers said, and those who made the trip got a leisurely view of the fall colors through skies swept clear of haze.
For crucial encounter
One of the initial questions put to President Kennedy at his first news conference last January was about his attitude toward a meeting with Premier Khrushchev.
Mr. Kennedy replied:
I'm hopeful that from more traditional exchanges we can perhaps find greater common ground.
The President knew that a confrontation with Mr. Khrushchev sooner or later probably was inevitable and even desirable.
But he was convinced that the realities of power--military, economic and ideological--were the decisive factors in the struggle with the Communists and that these could not be talked away at a heads of government meeting.
He wanted to buy time to strengthen the U. S. and its allies and to define and begin to implement his foreign policy.
Last Friday the White House announced:
President Kennedy will meet with Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in Vienna June 3 and 4.
The announcement came after a period of sharp deterioration in East-West relations.
The heightened tension, in fact, had been a major factor in the President's change of view about the urgency of a meeting with the Soviet leader.
He was not going to Vienna to negotiate--the simultaneous announcements in Washington and Moscow last week stressed that no formal negotiations were planned.
But Mr. Kennedy had become convinced that a personal confrontation with Mr. Khrushchev might be the only way to prevent catastrophe.
That objective set the high stakes and drama of the Vienna meeting.
Despite efforts by Washington last week to play down the significance of the meeting, it clearly was going to be one of the crucial encounters of the cold war.
Road to Vienna
The U. S. and Soviet heads of Government have met three times since Sir Winston Churchill in 1953 introduced a new word into international diplomacy with his call for a fresh approach to the problem of peace at the summit of the nations.
The first time was in 1955 when a full-dress Big Four summit meeting produced the spirit of Geneva.
The spirit served chiefly to lull the West while Moscow made inroads into the Middle East.
In 1959 President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev held an informal session in the U. S..
That meeting produced the spirit of Camp David--a spirit, it later turned out, that masked a basic misunderstanding about progress toward a Berlin settlement.
On the third occasion--another Big Four summit session at Paris a year ago--there was no problem of an illusory spirit.
Premier Khrushchev wrecked the conference at its initial session with a bitter denunciation of the U. S. for the U-2 incident.
The episode tended to confirm the U. S. belief that propaganda, the hope of one-sided concessions, and the chance to split the Allies, rather than genuine negotiation, were the Soviet leader's real aims in summitry.
Pre-inaugural position
Thus when Premier Khrushchev intimated even before inauguration that he hoped for an early meeting with the new President, Mr. Kennedy was confronted with a delicate problem.
Shortly before his nomination he had set forth his basic view about the problem of negotiations with the Soviet leader in these words:
As long as Mr. Khrushchev is convinced that the balance of world power is shifting his way, no amount of either smiles or toughness, neither Camp David talks nor kitchen debates, can compel him to enter fruitful negotiations.
The President had set for himself the task, which he believed vital, of awakening the U. S. and its allies to the hard and complex effort necessary to shift that balance.
He did not want the effort weakened by any illusion that summit magic might make it unnecessary.
He wanted time, too, to review the United States' global commitments and to test both the policies he had inherited and new ones he was formulating.
Above all, he did not want to appear to be running hat in hand to Premier Khrushchev's doorstep.
Attitude flexible
At the same time the President took pains not to rule out an eventual meeting with the Soviet leader.
Ideally, he knew, it should be preceded by concrete progress at lower levels.
But Mr. Kennedy saw value even in an informal meeting, provided that undue hopes were not raised in connection with it.
It would give him an opportunity to take the measure of his chief adversary in the cold war, to try to probe Mr. Khrushchev's intentions and to make clear his own views.
Moreover, an eventual meeting was desirable if for no other reason than to satisfy world opinion that the U. S. was not inflexible and was sparing no effort to ease international tensions.
Both elements--the caution about a meeting, the willingness eventually to hold one--were reflected in a letter from the President which Ambassador Llewellyn E. Thompson brought back to Russia late in February.
The letter, dated Feb. 22, was delivered to Premier Khrushchev in Novosibirsk, Siberia, on March 9.
It dealt mainly with a broad range of East-West issues.
But it also briefly suggested the possibility of a meeting with Mr. Khrushchev before the end of the year if the international climate were favorable and schedules permitted.
Developments over the next two months, however, caused the President to reconsider the question of the timing.
There were intense discussions in the inner councils of the White House about the advisability of an early meeting, not because the international climate was improving, but precisely because it was deteriorating alarmingly.
Deadlock on tests
The President was especially concerned about the deadlock in the nuclear test ban negotiations at Geneva.
The deadlock has been caused by the Russians' new demand for a three-man (East, West and neutral) directorate, and thus a veto, over the control machinery.
In the U. S., strong pressures have been building up for a resumption of tests on grounds that the Russians may be secretly testing.
Mr. Kennedy was less troubled by that possibility than by the belief that a Geneva breakdown, or even continued stalemate, would mean an unchecked spread of nuclear weapons to other countries as well as a fatal blow to any hope for disarmament.
There was reason to believe that Premier Khrushchev was also concerned about a possible spread of nuclear weapons, particularly to Communist China.
The question arose as to whether a frank discussion of that danger with the Soviet leader had not become urgent.
Moreover, Moscow appeared determined to apply the tripartite veto principle to the executive organs of all international bodies, including the U. N. Secretariat and the International Control Commission for Laos.
Mr. Kennedy was convinced that insistence on the demand would make international agreements, or even negotiations, impossible.
Developments in Cuba and Laos also suggested the advisability of an early summit meeting.
Initially the White House reaction was that the bitter exchanges with Moscow over Cuba and the conflict in Laos had dampened prospects for a meeting.
At the same time, there was increased reason for a quick meeting lest the Soviet leader, as a result of those episodes, come to a dangerously erroneous conclusion about the West's ability and determination to resist Communist pressure.
In Cuba, the U. S. had blundered badly and created the impression of impotency against Communist penetration even on its own doorstep.
In Laos, the picture was almost equally bad.
U. S. willingness to accept a neutral Laos may have led Premier Khrushchev to believe that other areas could be neutralized on Soviet terms.
Beyond that, Allied disagreement about military intervention in Laos--despite warnings that they might do so--allowed Moscow to carry out with impunity a series of military and diplomatic moves that greatly strengthened the pro-Communist forces.
As a result, the West is in a poor bargaining position at the current Geneva negotiations on Laos, and South Vietnam and other nations in Southeast Asia are under increased pressure.
In the light of those events, there appeared to be a real danger that Premier Khrushchev might overreach himself.
Ambassador Thompson reported from Moscow that the Soviet leader's mood was cocky and aggressive.
He has indicated that he plans new moves on Berlin before the year is out.
The President and his advisers felt that the time might have come to warn Premier Khrushchev against a grave miscalculation in areas such as Berlin, Iran or Latin America from which there would be no turning back.
It was in the midst of such White House deliberations that Premier Khrushchev on May 4 made new inquiries through the U. S. Embassy in Moscow about a meeting with the President in the near future.
Mr. Kennedy told Moscow he would give his answer by May 20 after consultation with the Allies.
The response from London, Paris and Bonn was favorable.
Firm arrangements for the meeting in Vienna were worked out in a final exchange between Moscow and Washington last week.
Apparently at the insistence of the U. S., the simultaneous announcements issued in Washington and Moscow last Friday emphasized the informal nature of the meeting.
The Washington announcement said:
The President and Chairman Khrushchev understand that this meeting is not for the purpose of negotiating or reaching agreement on the major international problems that involve the interest of many other countries.
The meeting will, however, afford a timely and convenient opportunity for the first personal contact between them and a general exchange of views on the major issues which affect the relationships between the two countries.
The outlook
The announcement last week of the forthcoming encounter produced strong reactions in the U. S. of both approval and disapproval.
The approval did not arise from an expectation of far-reaching agreements at Vienna.
The inclination was to accept the statement that there would be no formal negotiations.
But those who were in favor of the meeting felt that a frank exchange between the two men and an opportunity to size one another up would prove salutary.
Mr. Khrushchev is known to rely heavily on his instincts about his adversaries and to be a shrewd judge of men.
The feeling was that he would sense an inner core of toughness and determination in the President and that plain talk by Mr. Kennedy would give him pause.
Apart from the personal equation, another reason advanced in favor of the meeting was that too often in the past the U.S. appeared to have been dragged reluctantly to the summit.
Premier Khrushchev has made propaganda capital out of that fact and in the end got his summit meeting anyway.
This time the initiative came, in part at least, from Washington.
Other allies consulted
There was also the fact that by the time he meets Mr. Khrushchev, the President will have completed conversations with all the other principal Allied leaders.
Thus he will be in a position to disabuse the Soviet leader of any notions he may have about grave Allied disunity.
Finally, there was a wide area of agreement on the value of the President's making a final effort in the summit spotlight for a nuclear test accord.
There is no single issue that has aroused stronger feelings throughout the world.
If tests are to be resumed, the argument went, it is vital that the U. S. make plain that the onus belongs to the Soviet Union.
Disapproval of the meeting was based largely on the belief that the timing could hardly be worse.
After Cuba and Laos, it was argued, Mr. Khrushchev will interpret the President's consent to the meeting as further evidence of Western weakness--perhaps even panic--and is certain to try to exploit the advantage he now believes he holds.
Moreover, the President is meeting the Soviet leader at a time when the Administration has still not decided on the scope of America's firm foreign policy commitments.
The question was raised, for example, as to what attitude the President would take if Mr. Khrushchev proposes a broad neutral belt extending from Southeast Asia to the Middle East.
There are, so my biologist friends tell me, mechanisms of adaptation and defense that are just too complete and too satisfactory.
Mollusks are a case in point.
The shell, which served the strain so well at a relatively early stage in the evolutionary scheme, tended to cancel out the possibility of future development.
Though this may or may not be good biology, it does aptly illustrate the strength and the weakness of American Catholic higher education.
There can be no doubt that the American Catholic accomplishment in the field of higher education is most impressive: our European brethren never cease to marvel at the number and the size of our colleges and universities.
The deeper wonder is how this miracle was accomplished in decades, rather than in centuries and by immigrant minorities at that.
By way of explanation we ourselves are prone to imagine that this achievement stems from the same American Catholic zeal and generosity which brought the parochial school system into existence.
There is, however, one curious discrepancy in this broad and flattering picture.
Viewing the American Catholic educational achievement in retrospect, we may indeed see it as a unified whole extending from grade school to university.
But the simple truth is that higher education has never really been an official American Catholic project;
certainly not in the same sense that the establishment of a parochial school system has been a matter of official policy.
Official encouragement is one thing, but the down-to-earth test is the allocation of diocesan and parochial funds.
American Catholics have responded generously to bishops' and pastors' appeals for the support necessary to create parochial schools but they have not contributed in a similar fashion to the establishment of institutions of higher learning.
They have not done so for the simple reason that such appeals have hardly ever been made.
Diocesan authorities generally have not regarded this as their direct responsibility.
All of this may be understandable enough: it is, however, in fact difficult to see how diocesan authorities could have acted otherwise.
Yet for better or for worse, the truth of the matter is that most American Catholic colleges do not owe their existence to general Catholic support but rather to the initiative, resourcefulness and sacrifices of individual religious communities.
Community esprit de corps has been the protective shell which has made the achievement possible.
To understand the past history--and the future potential--of American Catholic higher education, it is necessary to appreciate the special character of the esprit de corps of the religious community.
It is something more than the arithmetical sum of individual totals of piety and detachment.
A religious community with a vital sense of mission achieves a degree of group orientation and group identification seldom found elsewhere.
The fact that the group orientation and group identification are founded on supernatural principles and nourished by the well-springs of devotion simply give them a deeper and more satisfying dimension.
The net result is a uniquely satisfying sense of comradeship, the kind of comradeship which sparks enthusiasm and blunts the cutting edge of sacrifice and hardship.
American Catholic colleges and universities are, in a very real sense, the product of private enterprise--the private enterprise of religious communities.
Had it not been for such private enterprise, diocesan authorities might of course have been goaded into establishing institutions subsidized by diocesan funds and parish collections and staffed by religious as paid employees.
There is however no point in speculating about such a possibility: the fact of the matter is that our institutions of higher learning owe their existence to a spirit not unlike that which produces the family business.
This family-community spirit is the real explanation of the marvel of our achievement.
It is this spirit which explains some of the anomalies of American Catholic higher education, in particular the wasteful duplication apparent in some areas.
I think for example of three women's colleges with pitifully small enrollments, clustered within a few miles of a major Catholic university, which is also co-educational.
This is not an isolated example;
this aspect of the total picture has been commented upon often enough.
It would seem to represent esprit de corps run riot.
Apart, however, from the question of wasteful duplication, there is another aspect of the family business spirit in American Catholic higher education which deserves closer scrutiny.
At the earlier pre-academic excellence stage of Catholic education, the operation could be conducted on an intra-mural community basis.
But with today's demand for professional qualifications and specialized training, the need for outsiders becomes more pressing.
The problem is not merely that more outside teachers are needed but that a different brand is called for.
Today however, the outsider is likely to have professional qualifications of the highest order (otherwise the college would not be interested in hiring him) and to be acclimatized to the democratic processes of the secular or state university.
And while no one expects total democracy on the academic scene, the scholar will be particularly sensitive to a line between first and second class citizenship drawn on any basis other than that of academic rank or professional achievement.
It is particularly interesting that those who framed the report should refer to the organization which actually owns the university: this seems to show an awareness of the fact that there is more to the problem than the ordinary issue of clerical-lay tension.
But in any case, one does not have to read very closely between the lines to realize that the situation is not regarded as a particularly happy one.
Outside faculty members want to be considered partners in the academic enterprise and not merely paid employees of a family business.
There are two reasons why failure to come to grips with this demand could be fatal to the future of the Catholic university.
In the first place there is the obvious problem of recruiting high caliber personnel.
Word spreads rapidly in the tightly knit academic profession, much given to attending meetings and conferences.
Expressions of even low-key dissatisfaction by a Catholic college faculty member has the effect of confirming the already existing stereotype.
To appreciate the nature of the gamble, it should be realized that while college teaching is almost a public symbol of security, that security does not come as quickly or as automatically as it does in an elementary school system or in the Civil Service.
Much has been made of the fact that major Catholic institutions now guarantee firm tenure.
This is a significant advance but its import should not be exaggerated.
When a man invests a block of his years at a university without gaining the coveted promotion, not only is he faced with the problem of starting over but there is also a certain depreciation in the market value of his services.
A man does not make that kind of gamble if he suspects that one or more of the limited number of tenure positions is being reserved for members of the family.
Just as it is possible to exaggerate the drawing power of the new tenure practices, it is also possible to exaggerate the significance of the now relatively adequate salaries paid by major Catholic institutions.
Adequate compensation is indispensable.
Yet adequate compensation--and particularly merely adequate compensation is no substitute for those intangibles which cause a man to sacrifice part of his earning potential by taking up college teaching in the first place.
Broadly speaking the total Catholic atmosphere is such an intangible but the larger demand is for a sense of creative participation and mature responsibility in the total work of the university.
Religious who derive their own sense of purpose through identification with the religious community rather than the academic community are prone to underestimate both the layman's reservoir of idealism and his need for this identification.
There is no need here to spell out the conditions of creative teaching except to point out that, at the college level, the sense of community and of community responsibility is even more necessary than it is at other levels.
The college teacher needs the stimulus of communication with other faculty members but he also needs to feel that such communication, even informal debates over the luncheon table, are a contribution to the total good of the institution.
But this in turn means that decisions are not merely imposed from the top but that there be some actual mechanism of faculty participation.
The second reason for being concerned with the dichotomy between faculty members who are part of the in-group that owns and operates the institution and those who are merely paid employees, is, therefore, the baneful effect on the caliber of the teaching itself.
This is a problem that goes considerably beyond questions of salary and tenure.
Yet though it may seem difficult to envision any definitive resolution of the problem of ownership and control, there are nevertheless certain suggestions which seem to be in order.
The first is a negative warning: there is no point in the creation of faculty committees and advisory boards with high-sounding titles but no real authority.
In the case of academic personnel the feeling of participation can hardly be faked.
Competent teachers are well versed in the technique of leading students to pre-set conclusions without destroying the students' illusion that they are making their own decisions.
Those who have served as faculty advisers are too familiar with the useful but artificial mechanisms of student government to be taken in by busy-work and ersatz decision making.
In any case it is by no means clear that formally structured organs of participation are what is called for at all.
In the Notre Dame report, reference was made to the fact that faculty members were reduced to luncheon-table communication.
Sen. John L. McClellan of Arkansas and Rep. David Martin of Nebraska are again beating the drums to place the unions under the anti-monopoly laws.
Once more the fallacious equation is advanced to argue that since business is restricted under the anti-monopoly laws, there must be a corresponding restriction against labor unions: the law must treat everybody equally.
Or, in the words of Anatole France, The law in its majestic equality must forbid the rich, as well as the poor, from begging in the streets and sleeping under bridges.
The Senator was shocked by stoppages over allegedly trivial disputes that delayed our missile program.
In addition, disclosures that missile workers were earning sums far in excess of what is paid for equivalent work elsewhere provoked his indignation on behalf of the American taxpayer who was footing the bill.
It is now disclosed that the taxpayer not only pays for high wages, but he pays the employers' strike expenses when the latter undertakes to fight a strike.
Business Week (Aug. 9, 1961) reports that the United Aircraft Company, against which the International Association of Machinists had undertaken a strike, decided to keep its plants operating.
The company incurred some $10 million of expenses attributable to four factors: advertising to attract new employees, hiring and training them, extra overtime, and defective work performed by the new workers.
The company has billed the United States Government for $7,500,000 of these expenses under the Defense Department regulation allowing costs of a type generally recognized as ordinary and necessary for the conduct of the contractor's business.
Rep. Frank Kowalski of Connecticut has brought this problem to the attention of the Armed Services Committee.
The committee remains unresponsive.
Neither has Congressman Martin nor Senator McClellan been heard from on the matter;
they are preoccupied with ending labor abuses by extending the anti-monopoly laws to the unions.
The recent publicity attending the successful federal prosecution of a conspiracy indictment against a number of electrical manufacturers has evoked a new respect for the anti-trust laws that is justified neither by their rationale nor by the results they have obtained.
The anti-trust laws inform a business that it must compete, but along completely undefined lines;
it must play a game in which there never is a winner.
The fact is that any business that wants to operate successfully cannot follow the law.
Hypocrisy thus becomes the answer to a foolish public policy.
Let us look at the heavy-electrical-goods industry in which General Electric, Westinghouse and a number of other manufacturers were recently convicted of engaging in a conspiracy to rig prices and allocate the market.
The industry is so structured that price-setting by a multi-product company will vary with the way overhead charges are allocated--whether marginal or average pricing is applied.
The problem becomes even more complex where an enterprise is engaged in the manufacture of a wide variety of other goods in addition to the heavy electrical equipment.
Accounting procedures can be varied to provide a rationale for almost any price.
Naturally, enterprises of the size of General Electric are in a position to structure their prices in such a way that the relatively small competitors can be forced to the wall in a very short time.
Should these giants really flex their competitive muscles, they would become the only survivors in the industry.
Uncle Sam would then accuse them of creating a monopoly by unfair competition.
But if they show self-restraint, they don't get the orders.
Under the circumstances, the only protection for the relatively small manufacturers is to engage in exactly the kind of conspiracy with the giants for which the latter were convicted.
Engaging in such a conspiracy was an act of mercy by the giants.
The paradox implicit in the whole affair is shown by the demand of the government, after the conviction, that General Electric sign a wide-open consent decree that it would not reduce prices so low as to compete seriously with its fellows.
In other words, the anti-trust laws, designed to reduce prices to the consumer on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, become a tool to protect the marginal manufacturer on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
And which theory would govern the enforcers of the law on Sunday?
The question might be asked: Don't the managements of the heavy-electrical-goods manufacturers know these facts?
Why did they engage in a flood of mea culpas, throw a few scapegoats to the dogs and promise to be good boys thereafter, expressing their complete confidence in the laws?
The past usefulness of the anti-trust laws to management was explained by Thurman Arnold, in The Folklore of Capitalism, back in 1937.
He wrote: (P. 211) the anti-trust laws were the answer of a society which unconsciously felt the need of great organizations, and at the same time had to deny them a place in the moral and logical ideology of the social structure.
(P. 214) anti-trust laws became the greatest protection to uncontrolled business dictatorship.
(P. 215) when corporate abuses were attacked, it was done on the theory that criminal penalties would be invoked rather than control.
In this manner, every scheme for direct control broke to pieces on the great protective rock of the anti-trust laws.
This escape from control has led to management's evaluating the risk of occasional irrational prosecution as worth while.
A plea of nolo contendere, followed by a nominal fine, after all is a small price to pay for this untrammeled license.
(The penalties handed out in the electrical case, which included jail sentences, were unprecedented in anti-trust prosecutions, perhaps because the conspirators had displayed unusual ineptness in their pricing activities.
If a substitute mechanism is needed for the control of a fictitious impersonal market, quite obviously some method must be devised for representing the public interest.
A secret conspiracy of manufacturers is hardly such a vehicle.
However, one can argue that no such control is necessary as long as one pretends that the anti-trust laws are effective and rational.
Quite clearly the anti-trust laws are neither effective nor rational--and yet the argument goes that they should be extended to the labor union.
Those who favor placing trade unions under anti-trust laws imply that they are advocating a brand new reform.
Before 1933, individuals who opposed trade unions and collective bargaining said so in plain English.
The acceptance of collective bargaining as a national policy in 1934, implicit in the writing of Section 7A of the National Industrial Recovery Act, has made it impolitic to oppose collective bargaining in principle.
The Wagner Act, the Taft-Hartley Act and the Landrum-Griffin Act all endorse the principle of collective bargaining.
The basic purpose of an effective collective-bargaining system is the removal of wages from competition.
If a union cannot perform this function, then collective bargaining is being palmed off by organizers as a gigantic fraud.
The tortured reasoning that unions use to deny their ambition to exercise monopoly power over the supply and price of labor is one of the things that create a legal profession.
The problem must be faced squarely.
Human labor was exactly that--a commodity--in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America.
As early as 1776, Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth Of Nations: We have no acts of Parliament against combining to lower the price of work;
but many against combining to raise it.
Eighteenth-century England, upon whose customs our common law was built, had outlawed unions as monopolies and conspiracies.
In 1825, the Boston house carpenters' strike for a ten-hour day was denounced by the organized employers, who declared: It is considered that all combinations by any classes of citizens intended to effect the value of labor tend to convert all its branches into monopolies.
There were no pious hypocrisies then about being for collective bargaining, but against labor monopoly.
The courts shared the opinion of the employers.
In People vs. Fisher, Justice Savage of the New York Supreme Court declared:
Without any officious and improper interference on the subject, the price of labor or the wages of mechanics will be regulated by the demand for the manufactured article and the value of that which is paid for it;
but the right does not exist to raise the wages of the mechanic by any forced and artificial means.
Senator McClellan is proposing the application of anti-trust measures to unions in transportation.
Indeed, it is in the field of transportation that Congress has most frequently granted employers exemption from the anti-trust laws;
for example, the organization of steamship conferences to set freight rates and the encouragement of railroads to seek mergers.
The passage of the Sherman Act was aimed at giant monopolies.
It was most effective against trade unions.
In the famous Danbury Hatters case, a suit was brought against the union by the Loewe Company for monopolistic practices, e.g., trying to persuade consumers not to purchase the product of the struck manufacturer.
The suit against the union was successful and many workers lost their homes to pay off the judgment.
In 1914, the Clayton Act attempted to take labor out from under the anti-trust legislation by stating that human labor was not to be considered a commodity.
The law could not suspend economics.
Labor remained a commodity--but presumably a privileged one granted immunization from the anti-trust laws.
The courts, by interpretation, emasculated the act.
In 1922, the United Mine Workers struck the Coronado Coal Company.
The company sued under the anti-trust laws, alleging that the union's activity interfered with the movement of interstate commerce.
(What other purpose could a striking union have but to interrupt the flow of commerce from the struck enterprise?
) The court first ruled that the strike constituted only an indirect interference with commerce.
The nation
the three-front war
At a closed-door session on Capitol Hill last week, Secretary of State Christian Herter made his final report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on U.S. affairs abroad.
Afterward, Tennessee's Democratic Senator Albert Gore summed it up for newsmen.
What Herter presented, said Gore, was not a very encouraging review.
That was something of an understatement in a week when the underlying conflict between the West and Communism erupted on three fronts.
While Communists were undermining United Nations efforts to rescue the Congo from chaos, two other Communist offensives stirred the Eisenhower Administration into emergency conferences and serious decisions.
1) Cuba.
President Eisenhower held an 8:30 a.m. meeting with top military and foreign-policy advisers, decided to break off diplomatic relations immediately.
There is a limit to what the United States in self-respect can endure, said the President.
That limit has now been reached.
Through Secretary Herter, Ike offered President-elect Kennedy an opportunity to associate his new Administration with the breakoff decision.
Kennedy, through Secretary-designate of State Dean Rusk, declined.
He thus kept his hands free for any action after Jan. 20, although reaction to the break was generally favorable in the U.S. and Latin America (see the hemisphere).
2) Laos.
After a White House huddle between the President and top lieutenants, the Defense Department reacted sharply to a cry from the pro-Western government of Laos that several battalions of Communist troops had invaded Laos from North Viet Nam.
In view of the present situation in Laos, said the Pentagon's announcement, we are taking normal precautionary actions to increase the readiness of our forces in the Pacific.
Cutting short a holiday at Hong Kong, the aircraft carriers Lexington and Bennington steamed off into the South China Sea, accompanied by a swarm of destroyers, plus troopships loaded with marines.
On the U.S.'s island base of Okinawa, Task Force 116, made up of Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force units, got braced to move southward on signal.
But by week's end the Laotian cry of invasion was read as an exaggeration (see foreign news), and the U.S. was agreeing with its cautious British and French allies that a neutralist--rather than a pro-Western--government might be best for Laos.
French & Indians.
There was a moral of sorts in the Laotian situation that said much about all other cold-war fronts.
Political, economic and military experts were all agreed that chaotic, mountainous little Laos was the last place in the world to fight a war--and they were probably right.
It would be like fighting the French and Indian War all over again, said one military man.
But why was Laos the new Southeast Asian battleground?
The late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles considered the 1954 Geneva agreement a specimen of appeasement, saw that resolution would be needed to keep it from becoming a calamity for the West.
He began the diplomatic discussions that resulted in the establishment of Aj.
The important thing from now on, he said, is not to mourn the past but to seize the future opportunity to prevent the loss in northern Viet Nam from leading to the extension of Communism throughout Southeast Asia.
Soviet Premier Khrushchev sent New Year's hopes for peace to President-elect Kennedy, and got a cool acknowledgment in reply.
Considering the state of the whole world, the cold war's three exposed fronts did not seem terribly ominous;
but, in Senator Gore's words, it was not a very encouraging situation that would confront John F. Kennedy on Inauguration Day.
The Congress
turmoil in the House
As the 87th Congress began its sessions last week, liberal Democrats were ready for a finish fight to open the sluice gates controlled by the House Rules Committee and permit the free flow of liberal legislation to the floor.
The liberal pressure bloc (which coyly masquerades under the name Democratic Study Group) had fought the committee before, and had always lost.
This time, they were much better prepared and organized, and the political climate was favorable.
They had the unspoken support of President-elect Kennedy, whose own legislative program was menaced by the Rules Committee bottleneck.
And counting noses, they seemed to have the votes to work their will.
Deadly deadlock.
Caucusing, the liberals decided to go after Colmer, which actually was the more drastic course, since seniority in the House is next to godliness.
A dour, gangling man with a choppy gait, Colmer looks younger than his 70 years, has gradually swung from a moderate, internationalist position to that of a diehard conservative.
He is generally and initially suspicious of any federal project, unless it happens to benefit his Gulf Coast constituents.
He is, of course, a segregationist, but he says he has never made an anti-Negro speech.
For 20 years he has enjoyed his power on the Rules Committee.
Equal treatment.
There was sufficient pretext to demand Colmer's ouster: he had given his lukewarm support to the anti-Kennedy electors in Mississippi.
Reprisals are not unheard of in such situations, but the recent tendency has been for the Congress to forgive its prodigal sons.
(In the heat of the anti-Colmer drive last week, Judge Smith threatened reprisal against Powell.
Said he: We will see whether whites and Negroes are treated the same around here.
) But Speaker Sam Rayburn, after huddling in Palm Beach with President-elect Kennedy, decided that this year something had to be done about the Rules Committee--and that he was the only man who could do anything effective.
In a tense, closed-door session with Judge Smith, Rayburn attempted to work out a compromise: to add three new members to the Rules Committee (two Democrats, including one Southerner, and one Republican).
Smith flatly rejected the offer, and Mister Sam thereupon decided to join the rebels.
The next morning he summoned a group of top Democrats to his private office and broke the news: he would lead the fight to oust Colmer, whom he is said to regard as an inferior man.
News of Rayburn's commitment soon leaked out.
When Missouri's Clarence Cannon got the word, he turned purple.
Unconscionable!
He shouted, and rushed off to the Speaker's Room to object: A dangerous precedent!
Cannon, a powerful, conservative man, brought welcome support to the Smith-Colmer forces: as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he holds over each member the dreadful threat of excluding this or that congressional district from federal pork-barrel projects.
Sitting quietly on an equally big pork barrel was another Judge Smith ally, Georgia's Carl Vinson, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Threat of war.
As the battle raged in the cloakrooms and caucuses, it became clear that Judge Smith could lose.
His highest count of supporters numbered 72--and he needed nearly twice that number to control the 260-member Democratic caucus.
The liberals, smelling blood, were faced with the necessity of winning three big votes--in the Democratic Committee on Committees, in the full party caucus, and on the floor of the House--before they could oust Colmer.
(One big question: If Colmer was to be purged, what should the House do about the other three senior Mississippians who supported the maverick electors?
) In all three arenas, they seemed certain of victory--especially with Sam Rayburn applying his whiplash.
But in the prospect of winning the battle loomed the specter of losing a costlier war.
If the Southerners were sufficiently aroused, they could very well cut the Kennedy legislative program to ribbons from their vantage point of committee chairmanships, leaving Sam Rayburn leading a truncated, unworkable party.
With that possibility in mind, Arkansas' Wilbur Mills deliberately delayed calling a meeting of the Committee on Committees, and coolheaded Democrats sought to bring Rayburn and Smith together again to work out some sort of face-saving compromise.
Here are two old men, mad at each other and too proud to pick up the phone, said a House Democratic leader.
One wants a little more power, and the other doesn't want to give up any.
Battle in the senate
The Senate launched the 87th Congress with its own version of an ancient liberal-conservative battle, but in contrast with the House's guerrilla war it seemed as pro forma as a Capitol guide's speech.
Question at issue: How big a vote should be necessary to restrict Senate debate--and thereby cut off legislation-delaying filibusters?
A wide-ranging, bipartisan force--from Minnesota's Democratic Hubert Humphrey to Massachusetts' Republican Leverett Saltonstall--was drawn up against a solid phalanx of Southern Democrats, who have traditionally used the filibuster to stop civil rights bills.
New Mexico's Clint Anderson offered a resolution to change the Senate's notorious Rule 22 to allow three-fifths of the Senators present and voting to cut off debate, instead of the current hard-to-get two-thirds.
Fair Dealer Humphrey upped the ante, asked cloture power for a mere majority of Senators.
Georgia's Dick Russell objected politely, and the battle was joined.
Privately, the liberals admitted that the Humphrey amendment had no chance of passage.
Privately, they also admitted that their hopes for Clint Anderson's three-fifths modification depended on none other than Republican Richard Nixon.
In 1957 Nixon delivered a significant opinion that a majority of Senators had the power to adopt new rules at the beginning of each new Congress, and that any rules laid down by previous Congresses were not binding.
Armed with the Nixon opinion, the Senate liberals rounded up their slim majority and prepared to choke off debate on the filibuster battle this week.
Hopefully, the perennial battle of Rule 22 then would be fought to a settlement once and for all.
Republicans
last act
Since Election Day, Vice President Richard Nixon had virtually retired--by his own wish--from public view.
But with the convening of the new Congress, he was the public man again, presiding over the Senate until John Kennedy's Inauguration.
Nixon fulfilled his assignment with grace, then went beyond the required sufficient declaration.
This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated, he said.
The Masters golf tournament proved last Monday what it can do to the strongest men and the staunchest nerves.
Gary Player, the small, trim South African, was the eventual winner, but in all his 25 years he never spent a more harrowing afternoon as he waited for the victory to drop in his lap.
Arnold Palmer, the defending champion, lost his title on the 72nd hole after a few minutes of misfortune that left even his fellow pros gaping in disbelief.
Just when you think you have it licked, this golf course can get up and bite you, Player had said one afternoon midway through the tournament.
And that is just what happened on the last few holes.
The Augusta National Golf Club Course got up and bit both Player and Palmer.
Player was the first to feel its teeth.
After playing a splendid first nine holes in 34--two strokes under par--on this fifth and final day of the tournament (Sunday's fourth round had been washed out by a violent rainstorm when it was only half completed), Player's game rapidly fell to pieces.
He bogeyed the 10th.
After a journey through woods and stream he double-bogeyed the 13th.
He bogeyed the 15th by missing a short putt and finally scrambled through the last three holes without further mishap for a 2-over-par 74 and a 72-hole total of 280.
As he signed his scorecard and walked off the course, Player was almost in tears.
He could read on the nearby scoreboard that Palmer, by then playing the 15th hole, was leading him by a stroke.
Palmer had started the round four strokes behind Player, and at one point in the afternoon had trailed by as many as six strokes.
Now all he had to do was finish in even par to collect the trophy and the biggest single paycheck in golf.
When Palmer hit a good straight drive up the fairway on the 72nd hole, he seemed to have the championship won.
But the seven-iron shot he used to approach the green strayed into a bunker and lodged in a slight depression.
In trying to hit it out with a sand wedge Palmer bounced the ball over the green, past spectators and down the slope toward a TV tower.
Afterwards, Palmer told Charlie Coe, his last-round partner, that he simply played the hole too fast.
He did seem hasty on his second and third shots, but then there was an agonizing wait of several minutes while Coe graciously putted out, giving Palmer a chance to recover his composure, which he had quite visibly lost.
When the shaken Palmer finally did hit his fourth shot, he overshot the hole by 15 feet.
Palmer was now putting merely for a tie, and Player, who was sitting beside his wife and watching it all on television in Tournament Chairman Clifford Roberts' clubhouse apartment, stared in amazement when Palmer missed the putt.
Palmer's 281 for the four rounds at Augusta was a comfortable four strokes ahead of the next closest pro, but it was barely good enough for a second-place tie with Coe.
The lean and leathery Oklahoma amateur, who has been playing topnotch tournament golf for many years, refused to let the Masters jitters overtake him and closed the tournament with his second straight 69.
End at seven
Until late last Saturday afternoon Palmer had played seven consecutive rounds of golf at the Masters--four last year and three this--without ever being out of first place.
As evening approached and Palmer finished his Saturday round with a disappointing one-over-par 73, this remarkable record was still intact, thanks to his Thursday and Friday rounds of 68 and 69.
His three-round total of 210 was three strokes better than the next best score, a 213 by Bill Collins, the tall and deliberate Baltimorean who had been playing very well all winter long.
But Palmer knew, as did everybody else at Augusta, that his streak was about to be broken.
Half an hour after he finished his round, Player holed out at the 18th green with a 69 and a three-round total of 206, four strokes ahead of Palmer.
More than a streak had ended.
Long after the erratic climate and the washed-out final round on Sunday have become meteorological footnotes, the 1961 Masters will be remembered as the scene of the mano a mano between Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.
Unlike most such sports rivalries, it appeared to have developed almost spontaneously, although this was not exactly the case.
When the winter tour began at Los Angeles last January there was no one in sight to challenge Palmer's towering prestige.
As if to confirm his stature, he quickly won three of the first eight tournaments.
Player won only one.
But as the tour reached Pensacola a month ago, Player was leading Palmer in official winnings by a few hundred dollars, and the rest of the field was somewhere off in nowhere.
On that final Sunday at Pensacola neither Palmer nor Player was leading the tournament and, as it turned out, neither won it.
But whichever of these two finished ahead of the other would be the undisputed financial leader of the tour.
Player immediately proved he was not in the least awed by the dramatic proximity of Palmer.
He outplayed Palmer all around the course and finished with a tremendous 65 to Palmer's 71.
Thereafter, until the Masters, Player gradually increased his lead over Palmer in winnings and added one more tournament victory at Miami.
When they reached Augusta last week, together they had won five of the 13 tournaments to date.
Instant rivalry
On Thursday, the first day of the Masters, the contest between Palmer and Player developed instantly.
It was a dismal, drizzly day but a good one on which to score over the Augusta National course.
The usually skiddy greens were moist and soft, so the golfers were able to strike their approach shots boldly at the flag-stick and putt firmly toward the hole without too much worry about the consequences.
Palmer's 4-under-par 68 got him off to an early lead, which he shared with Bob Rosburg.
But Player was only one stroke back, with a 69.
Even so, it was still not clear to many in the enormous horde of spectators--unquestionably the largest golf crowd ever--that this tournament was to be, essentially, a match between Palmer and Player.
A lot of people were still thinking about Jack Nicklaus, the spectacular young amateur, who had a 70;
or Ken Venturi, who had a somewhat shaky 72 but was bound to do better;
or Rosburg, whose accurate short game and supersensitive putter can overcome so many of Augusta's treacheries;
or even old Byron Nelson, whose excellent 71 made one wonder if he had solved the geriatric aspects of golf.
(On Thursday nobody except Charlie Coe was thinking of Charlie Coe.
On Friday, a day as cloudless and lovely as Thursday had been gray and ugly, the plot of the tournament came clearly into focus.
As Player began his second round in a twosome with amateur Bill Hyndman, his share of the gallery was not conspicuously large for a contender.
Player began with a birdie on the first hole, added five straight pars and then another birdie at the 9th.
On the back nine he began to acquire the tidal wave of a gallery that stayed with him the rest of the tournament.
He birdied the 13th, the 15th and the 18th--five birdies, one bogey and 12 pars for a 68.
Starting half an hour behind Player in company with British Open Champion Kel Nagle, Palmer birdied the 2nd, the 9th, the 13th and the 16th--four birdies, one bogey and 13 pars for a 69.
The roar of Palmer's gallery as he sank a thrilling putt would roll out across the parklike landscape of Augusta, only to be answered moments later by the roar of Player's gallery for a similar triumph.
At one point late in the day, when Palmer was lining up a 25-foot putt on the 16th, a thunderous cheer from the direction of the 18th green unmistakably announced that Player had birdied the final hole.
Without so much as a grimace or a gesture to show that he had noticed (although he later admitted that he had) Palmer proceeded to sink his 25-footer, and his gallery sent its explosive vocalization rolling back along the intervening fairways in reply.
The boldness of champions
Anyone who now doubted that a personal duel was under way had only to watch how these exceptionally gifted golfers were playing this most difficult golf course.
It is almost axiomatic that golfers who dominate the game of golf for any period of time attack their shots with a vehemence bordering on violence.
The bad luck that can so often mar a well-played round of golf is simply overpowered and obliterated by the contemptuous boldness of these champions.
Bob Jones played that way.
Byron Nelson did, Hogan did.
And last week at the Masters Palmer and Player did.
As the third round of the tournament began on Saturday and the duel was resumed in earnest, it was Player's superior aggressiveness that carried him into the lead.
This day Palmer had started first.
As Player stepped on the first tee he knew that Palmer had birdied the first two holes and already was 2 under par for the day.
Player immediately proceeded to follow suit.
In fact, he went on to birdie the 6th and 8th as well, to go 4 under par for the first eight holes.
But Player's real test came on the ninth hole, a downhill dogleg to the left measuring 420 yards.
He hit a poor tee shot, pulling it off into the pine woods separating the 9th and first fairways.
Having hit one of the trees, the ball came to rest not more than 160 yards out.
Player then had the choice of punching the ball safely out of the woods to the 9th fairway and settling for a bogey 5, or gambling.
The latter involved hitting a full four-wood out to the first fairway and toward the clubhouse, hoping to slice it back to the deeply bunkered 9th green.
I was hitting the ball well, Player said later, and I felt strong.
When you're playing like that you'd better attack.
Player attacked with his four-wood and hit a shot that few who saw it will ever forget.
It struck the 9th green on the fly and stopped just off the edge.
From there he chipped back and sank his putt for a par 4.
Palmer, meanwhile, had been having his troubles.
They started on the 4th hole, a 220-yard par-3.
On this day the wind had switched 180-degrees from the northwest to the southeast, and nearly every shot on the course was different from the previous few days.
At the 4th tee Palmer chose to hit a one-iron when a three-wood was the proper club, so he put the ball in a bunker in front of the green.
His bogey 4 on this hole and subsequent bogeys at 5 and 7 along with a birdie at 8 brought him back to even par.
Starting the second nine, Palmer was already four strokes behind Player and knew it.
When Mickey Charles Mantle, the New York Yankees' man of muscle, drives a home run 450 feet into the bleachers, his feat touches upon the sublime.
When Roger Eugene Maris, Mantle's muscular teammate, powers four home runs in a double-header, his performance merits awe.
This is Baseball 1961.
This is the year home runs ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.
It is the year when (1) amiable Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles ambled to the plate in consecutive innings with the bases loaded and, in unprecedented style, delivered consecutive grand-slam home runs;
(2) Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants borrowed a teammate's bat and became the ninth big leaguer to stroke four home runs in a game;
(3) the Milwaukee Braves tied a major-league record with fourteen home runs in three games and lost two of them;
and (4) catcher Johnny Blanchard of the New York Yankees matched a record with home runs in four successive times at bat, two of them as a pinch-hitter.
Pitchers grumble about lively balls and lively bats, the shrinking strike zone, and the fact that the knock-down pitch is now illegal.
Experts point to the thinning of pitching talent in the American League caused by expansion.
Whatever the reasons, not in 30 years has a single season produced such thunderous assaults upon the bureau of baseball records, home-run division.
Of all the records in peril, one stands apart, dramatic in its making, dramatic in its endurance, and now, doubly dramatic in its jeopardy.
This, of course, is baseball's most remarkable mark: The 60 home runs hit in 1927 by the incorrigible epicure, the incredible athlete, George Herman (Babe) Ruth of the Yankees.
Since 1927, fewer than a dozen men have made serious runs at Babe Ruth's record and each, in turn, has been thwarted.
What ultimately frustrated every challenger was Ruth's amazing September surge.
In the final month of the 1927 season, he hit seventeen home runs, a closing spurt never matched.
Double threat:
Always, in the abortive attacks upon Ruth's record, one man alone--a Jimmy Foxx (58 in 1932) or a Hank Greenberg (58 in 1938) or a Hack Wilson (56 in 1930)--made the bid.
But now, for the first time since Lou Gehrig (with 47 home runs) spurred Ruth on in 1927, two men playing for the same team have zeroed in on 60.
Their names are Mantle and Maris, their team is the Yankees, and their threat is real.
After 108 games in 1927, Ruth had 35 home runs.
After 108 games in 1961, Mickey Mantle has 43, Roger Maris 41.
Extend Mantle's and Maris's present paces over the full 1961 schedule of 162 games, and, mathematically, each will hit more than 60 home runs.
This is the great edge the two Yankees have going for them.
To better Ruth's mark, neither needs a spectacular September flourish.
All Mantle needs is eight more home runs in August and ten in September, and he will establish a new record.
In Ruth's day--and until this year--the schedule was 154 games.
Baseball commissioner Ford Frick has ruled that Ruth's record will remain official unless it is broken in 154 games.
Even on the basis of 154 games, this is the ideal situation, insists Hank Greenberg, now vice-president of the Chicago White Sox.
It has to be easier with two of them.
How can you walk Maris to get to Mantle?
Roommates:
Neither Mantle nor Maris, understandably, will predict 60 home runs for himself.
Although both concede they would like to hit 60, they stick primarily to the baseball player's standard quote: The important thing is to win the pennant.
But one thing is for certain: There is no dissension between Mantle, the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1956 and 1957, and Maris, the MVP in 1960.
Each enjoys seeing the other hit home runs (I hope Roger hits 80, Mantle says), and each enjoys even more seeing himself hit home runs (and I hope I hit 81).
The sluggers get along so well in fact, that with their families at home for the summer (Mantle's in Dallas, Maris's in Kansas City), they are rooming together.
Mantle, Maris, and Bob Cerv, a utility outfielder, share an apartment in Jamaica, Long Island, not far from New York International Airport.
The three pay $251 a month for four rooms (kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom), with air-conditioning and new modern furniture.
Mantle and Cerv use the twin beds in the bedroom;
Maris sleeps on a green studio couch in the living room.
They divide up the household chores: Cerv does most of the cooking (breakfast and sandwich snacks, with dinner out), Mantle supplies the transportation (a white 1961 Oldsmobile convertible), and Maris drives the 25-minute course from the apartment house to Yankee Stadium.
Mantle, Maris, and Cerv probably share one major-league record already: Among them, they have fifteen children--eight for Cerv, four for Mantle, and three for Maris.
As roommates, teammates, and home-run mates, Mantle, 29, who broke in with the Yankees ten years ago, and Maris, 26, who came to the Yankees from Kansas City two years ago, have strikingly similar backgrounds.
Both were scholastic stars in football, basketball, and baseball (Mantle in Commerce, Okla., Maris in Fargo, N.D.);
as halfbacks, both came close to playing football at the University of Oklahoma (Sometimes in the minors, Maris recalls, I wished I had gone to Oklahoma).
To an extent, the two even look alike.
Both have blue eyes and short blond hair.
Both are 6 feet tall and weigh between 195 and 200 pounds, but Mantle, incredibly muscular (he has a 17-1/2-inch neck), looks bigger.
With their huge backs and overdeveloped shoulders, both must have their clothes made to order.
Maris purchases $100 suits from Simpson's in New York.
Mantle, more concerned with dress, buys his suits four at a time at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas and pays as much as $250 each.
Light reading:
Neither Mantle nor Maris need fear being classified an intellectual, but lately Mantle has shown unusual devotion to an intellectual opus, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.
Mantle so appreciated Miller's delicate literary style that he broadened teammates' minds by reading sensitive passages aloud during road trips.
Mantle is not normally given to public speaking--or, for that matter, to private speaking.
What do you and Mickey talk about at home?
A reporter asked Maris recently.
To tell you the truth, Maris said, Mickey don't talk much.
This is no surprising trait for a ballplayer.
What is surprising and pleasant is that Mantle and Maris, under constant pressure from writers and photographers, are trying to be cooperative.
Of the two, Mantle is by nature the less outgoing, Maris the more outspoken.
But last week, when a reporter was standing near Mantle's locker, Mickey walked up and volunteered an anecdote.
See that kid?
He said, pointing to a dark-haired 11-year-old boy.
That's (Yogi) Berra's.
I'll never forget one time I struck out three times, dropped a fly ball, and we lost the game.
I came back, sitting by my locker, feeling real low, and the kid walks over to me, looks up, and says:'You stunk'''.
Maris, in talking to reporters, tries to answer all questions candidly and fully, but on rare occasions, he shuns newsmen.
When I've made a dumb play, he says, I don't want to talk to anyone.
I'm angry.
By his own confession, Maris is an angry young man.
Benched at Tulsa in 1955, he told manager Dutch Meyer: I can't play for you.
Send me where I can play.
(Meyer sent him to Reading, Pa..
) Benched at Indianapolis in 1956, he told manager Kerby Farrell: I'm not learning anything on the bench.
Play me.
(Farrell did--and Maris led the team to victory in the Little World Series.
) That's the way I am, he says.
I tell people what I think.
If you're a good ballplayer, you've got to get mad.
Give me a team of nine angry men and I'll give you a team of nine gentlemen and we'll beat you nine out of ten times.
Idols' idols:
One good indication of the two men's personalities is the way they reacted to meeting their own heroes.
Maris's was Ted Williams.
When I was a kid, Maris told a sportswriter last week, I used to follow Williams every day in the box score, just to see whether he got a hit or not.
When you came up to the majors, did you seek out Williams for advice?
Are you kidding?
Said Maris.
You're afraid to talk to a guy you idolize.
Mantle's hero was Joe DiMaggio.
When Mickey went to the Yankees, says Mark Freeman, an ex-Yankee pitcher who sells mutual funds in Denver, DiMaggio still was playing and every day Mickey would go by his locker, just aching for some word of encouragement from this great man, this hero of his.
But DiMaggio never said a word.
It crushed Mickey.
He told me he vowed right then that if he ever got to be a star, this never would be said of him.
Mantle has kept the vow.
Among all the Yankees, he is the veteran most friendly to rookies.
Neither Mantle nor Maris is totally devoted to baseball above all else.
If laying ties on a railroad track, which he once did for $1 an hour, paid more than playing right field for the Yankees, Maris would lay ties on a railroad track.
If working in a zinc mine, which he once did for 87-1/2 cents an hour, paid more than playing center field for the Yankees, Mantle would work in a zinc mine.
But since railroading and mining are not the highest paid arts, Mantle and Maris concentrate on baseball.
They try to play baseball the best they can.
Each is a complete ballplayer.
Mantle, beyond any question, can do more things well.
(One of the reasons they get along fine, says a sportswriter who is friendly with the two men, is that both realize Mantle is head-and-shoulders above Maris.
) Hitting, Mantle has an immediate advantage because he bats both left-handed and right-handed, Maris only left-handed.
They both possess near classic stances, dug in firmly, arms high, set for fierce swings.
Mantle is considerably better hitting for average (
, fourth in the league, to
for Maris so far this year).
Both are good bunters: Maris once beat out eighteen of nineteen in the minor leagues;
Mantle is a master at dragging a bunt toward first base.
Both have brilliant speed: Mantle was timed from home plate (batting left-handed) to first base in 3.1 seconds, faster than any other major leaguer;
Maris ran the 100-yard dash in ten seconds in high school and once won a race against Luis Aparicio, the swift, base-stealing shortstop of the White Sox.
Both are good, daring fielders: Mantle covers more ground;
Maris's throwing arm is stronger.
Yet with all their skills, the appeal of Mantle and Maris in 1961 comes down to one basic: The home run.
With this ultimate weapon, the two Yankees may have saved baseball from its dullest season.
(American League expansion created, inevitably, weaker teams.
Only two teams in each league (the Yankees and Detroit, the Dodgers and Cincinnati) are battling for first place.
Appropriately, the emphasis on the home run, at a peak this year, came into being at baseball's lowest moment.
In 1920, as the startling news that the 1919 White Sox had conspired to lose the World Series leaked out, fans grew disillusioned and disinterested in baseball.
Something was needed to revive interest;
the something was the home run.
Into Washington on President-elect John F. Kennedy's Convair, the Caroline, winged Actor-Crooner Frank Sinatra and his close Hollywood pal, Cinemactor Peter Lawford, Jack Kennedy's brother-in-law.
Also included in the entourage: a dog in a black sweater, Frankie and Peter had an urgent mission: to stage a mammoth Inauguration Eve entertainment gala in the capital's National Guard Armory.
Frankie was fairly glutted with ideas, as he had hinted upon his arrival: It's really tremendous when you think Ella Fitzgerald is coming from Australia.
I could talk to you for three hours and still not be able to give you all of our plans!
As the plans were laid, some several thousand fat cats were to be ensconced in the armory's $100 seats and in 68 ringside boxes priced at $10,000 each.
The biggest single act would doubtless be staged by Frankie himself: his Inaugural wardrobe had been designed by Hollywood Couturier Don Loper, who regularly makes up ladies' ensembles.
Soon after Loper leaked the news that Frankie had ordered two of everything just in case he spills anything, Frankie got so mad at the chic designer that he vowed he would not wear a stitch of Loper clothing.
A year after he was catapulted over nine officers senior to him and made commandant of the Marine Corps, General David M. Shoup delivered a peppery annual report in the form of a happy, warless New Year greeting to his Pentagon staff.
Said Leatherneck Shoup: A year ago I took the grips of the plow in my hands.
After pushing an accumulation of vines and weeds from the moldboard, I lifted the lines from the dust and found hitched to that plow the finest team I ever held a rein on.
Little geeing and hawing have been necessary.
But Shoup also gave the Corps a tilling in spots.
Speaking of pride, he deplored the noncommissioned officer whose uniform looks like it belonged to someone who retired in 1940;
the officer with the yellow socks or the bay window.
A few of these people are still around.
Old and new briefly crossed paths in the U.S. Senate, then went their respective ways.
At a reception for new members of Congress, Oregon Democrat Maurine Neuberger, taking the Senate seat held by her husband Richard until his death last March, got a brotherly buss from Democratic Elder Statesman Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador-designate to the U.N..
The most famous undergraduate of South Philadelphia High School is a current bobby-sox idol, Dreamboat Cacophonist Fabian (real name: Fabian Forte), 17, and last week it developed that he will remain an undergraduate for a while.
The principal of the school announced that--despite the help of private tutors in Hollywood and Philadelphia--Fabian is a 10-o'clock scholar in English and mathematics.
Lacking his needed credits in those subjects, Fabian will not graduate with his old classmates next week.
South Philadelphia High's principal added that the current delay was caused by the pressure of a movie that the toneless lad was making.
To Decathlon Man Rafer Johnson (Time cover, Aug. 29), whose gold medal in last summer's Olympic Games was won as much on gumption as talent, went the A.A.U.'s James E. Sullivan Memorial Trophy as the outstanding U.S. amateur athlete of 1960.
As the world's top sportsman--pro or amateur--Sports Illustrated tapped golf's confident Arnold Palmer (Time cover, May 2), who staged two cliffhanging rallies to win both the Masters and U.S. Open crowns, went on to win a record $80,738 for the year.
Tooling through Sydney on his way to race in the New Zealand Grand Prix, Britain's balding Ace Driver Stirling Moss, 31, all but smothered himself in his own exhaust of self-crimination.
I'm a slob, he announced.
My taste is gaudy.
I'm useless for anything but racing cars.
I'm ruddy lazy, and I'm getting on in years.
It gets so frustrating, but then again I don't know what I could do if I gave up racing.
Has Moss no stirling virtues?
I appreciate beauty.
One of Nikita Khrushchev's most enthusiastic eulogizers, the U.S.S.R.'s daily Izvestia, enterprisingly interviewed Red-prone Comedian Charlie Chaplin at his Swiss villa, where he has been in self-exile since 1952.
Chaplin, 71, who met K. when the Soviet boss visited England in 1956, confided that he hopes to visit Russia some time this summer because I have marveled at your grandiose experiment and I believe in your future.
Then Charlie spooned out some quick impressions of the Nikita he had glimpsed: I was captivated by his humor, frankness and good nature and by his kind, strong and somewhat sly face.
G. David Thompson is one of those names known to the stewards of transatlantic jetliners and to doormen in Europe's best hotels, but he is somewhat of an enigma to most people in his own home town of Pittsburgh.
There the name vaguely connotes new-rich wealth, a reputation for eccentricity, and an ardor for collecting art.
Last week, in the German city of Dusseldorf, G. David Thompson was making headlines that could well give Pittsburgh pause.
On display were 343 first-class paintings and sculptures from his fabled collection--and every single one of them was up for sale.
Like Philadelphia's late Dr. Albert C. Barnes who kept his own great collection closed to the general public (Time, Jan. 2), Thompson, at 61, is something of a legend in his own lifetime.
He made his fortune during World War 2, when he took over a number of dying steel plants and kept them alive until the boom.
Even before he hit big money, he had begun buying modern paintings.
He gave the impression of never having read a word about art, but there was no doubt that he had an eye for the best.
He was able to smell a bargain--and a masterpiece--a continent away, and the Museum of Modern Art's Alfred Barr said of him: I have never mentioned a new artist that Thompson didn't know about.
He might barge into a gallery, start haggling over prices without so much as a word of greeting.
He could be lavishly generous with friends, cab drivers and bellboys, but with dealers he was tough.
He bought up Cezannes, Braques, Matisses, Legers, a splendid Picasso series, more than 70 Giacometti sculptures.
He gathered one of the biggest collections of Paul Klees in the world.
All these he hung in his burglarproof home called Stone's Throw, outside Pittsburgh, and only people he liked and trusted ever got to see them.
Two years ago Thompson offered his collection to the city.
But he insisted that it be housed in a special museum.
Pittsburgh turned him down, just as Pittsburgh society had been snubbing him for years.
He went then to a 40-year-old Basel art dealer named Ernst Beyeler, with whom he had long been trading pictures.
Last year Beyeler arranged to sell $1,500,000 worth of Klees to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which will house them in a museum that is yet to be built.
Last week most of the other prizes, once offered to Pittsburgh, went on the block.
At the opening of the Dusseldorf show, Thompson himself scarcely glanced at the treasures that he was seeing together for the last time.
In fact he seemed delighted to get rid of them.
Some observers speculated that this might be his revenge on his home town.
Thompson himself said: I want to enjoy once more the pleasure of bare walls waiting for new pictures.
Break in Georgia
The University of Georgia has long claimed that it does not discriminate against any applicant on the basis of race or color.
But in all its 175 years, not a single Negro student has entered its classrooms.
Last week Federal District Judge William A. Bootle ordered the university to admit immediately a qualified Negro boy and girl.
Their entry will crack the total segregation of all public education, from kindergarten through graduate school, in Georgia--and in Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina as well.
For 18 months, Hamilton Holmes, 19, and Charlayne Hunter, 18, had tried to get into the university.
They graduated together from Atlanta's Turner High School, where Valedictorian Holmes was first in the class and Charlayne third.
The university rejected them on a variety of pretexts, but was careful never to mention the color of their skins.
Holmes went to Atlanta's Morehouse (Negro) College, where he is a B student and star halfback.
Charlayne studied journalism at Detroit's Wayne State University.
Last fall, after they took their hopes for entering Georgia to court, Judge Bootle ordered them to apply again.
Charlayne was tentatively admitted for next fall, after state investigators questioned her white roommate at Wayne State.
But Holmes was rejected again on the basis of his record and interview.
The evidence in court was testimony about the interview, which for Holmes lasted an hour, although at least one white student at Georgia got through this ritual by a simple phone conversation.
Holmes was asked if he had ever visited a house of prostitution, or a beatnik parlor or teahouse.
No, said he, but officials still called him evasive.
They also said he lied in saying that he had never been arrested.
Their reason: Holmes once paid a $20 speeding fine, had his license suspended.
Negro lawyers dug into the records of 300 white students, found that many were hardly interviewed at all--and few had academic records as good as Hamilton Holmes.
The real reason for his rejection, they argued, is the fact that Georgia law automatically cuts off funds for any desegregated school.
Judge Bootle's decision: The two plaintiffs are qualified for admission to said university and would already have been admitted had it not been for their race and color.
The state will appeal--but few think it will actually try to close the university.
Surprised and pleased, Students Holmes and Hunter may enter the University of Georgia this week.
Catch for Chicago
When the University of Chicago's Chancellor Lawrence A. Kimpton submitted his resignation last March, a mighty talent hunt gripped the Midway.
Out went letters to 60,000 old grads, asking for suggestions.
Such academic statesmen as James B. Conant were consulted.
Two committees pondered 375 possible Kimpton successors, including Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon, and Harvard's Dean McGeorge Bundy.
The debate led to a decision that Chicago needed neither a big name nor an experienced academic administrator, but rather, as Trustee Chairman Glen A. Lloyd put it, a top scholar in his own right--a bright light to lure other top scholars to Chicago.
It fell to Chancellor Kimpton, now a Standard Oil (Indiana) executive, to spend his nine-year reign tidying up Chicago after the 21-year typhoon of Idealist Robert Maynard Hutchins.
He threw out some of Hutchins' more wildly experimental courses, raised sagging undergraduate enrollment to 2,100, nearly doubled endowment to $139.3 million.
But though Kimpton put Chicago in what he felt was working order, some old grads feel that it still needs the kind of lively teachers who filled it in the heady Hutchins era.
At Caltech, Geneticist Beadle has stuck close to his research as head of the school's famous biology division since 1946.
But he has shown a sixth-sense ability to spot, recruit and excite able researchers, and has developed unexpected talents in fund raising and speech-making.
Beadle is even that rare scientist who takes an interest in money matters;
he avidly reads the Wall Street Journal, and took delight in driving a $250 model A Ford for 22 years, then selling it for $300.
A philosopher may point out that the troubles of the Congo began with the old Adam and consequently will never end.
But a historian might put his finger on a specific man and date, and hold out the hope that the troubles will sometime pass away.
The man was King Leopold 2, of the Belgians, who in 1885 concluded that he had better grab a colony while the grabbing was still good.
By force, he took under his protection, or stole, 900,000 square miles of wilderness in Central Africa.
This is an area nearly as large as Western Europe;
and it was filled then as now by quarreling tribes with no political or historical unity.
Its boundaries had nothing to do with geography or ethnic groupings;
they were determined by the points at which Leopold's explorers and gunmen got tired of walking.
The population of the Congo is 13.5 million, divided into at least seven major culture clusters and innumerable tribes speaking 400 separate dialects.
The religions of the people include Christianity, Mohammedanism, paganism, ancestor worship and animism.
The climate ranges from the steamily equatorial to the temperate.
The hospitals contain patients trampled by elephants or run over by sports cars.
To make one nation out of these disparities would be a problem large enough in any case;
it has been made far more difficult by what the Belgians have done, or failed to do, in the Congo since 1885.
At first the Belgian royal family administered the Congo as its own private property.
But by 1908 its record of brutality had touched the national conscience.
The Belgian government itself took over administration, commencing a program of paternalism unmatched in the history of colonialism.
One definition of paternalism is The principle or practice, on the part of a government, of managing the affairs of a country in the manner of a father dealing with his children.
The honor of the Belgians in this matter is not to be questioned--only their judgment.
Ordinarily a father permits his children to grow up in due time--but when the colony received independence in 1960 the Congolese child, if one imagines him to have been born in 1908, was 52 and had until then been treated as an infant.
The Belgians were interested primarily in the economic development of the Congo, which is rich in copper, tin, cobalt, manganese, zinc, and uranium, and cotton and palm oil.
The colony was administered from Brussels, with neither the Congolese nor the resident Belgians having any vote.
The beneficiaries of this administration were a number of huge cartels in which both individuals and the Belgian government itself held stock.
Had they been truly ruthless, the Belgians might have exploited the Congolese without compassion.
But they were not.
They provided a social security system which covered all their African employes;
their program of mass medical care was doubtless the best on the continent;
they put much effort into public housing.
They also instituted a ration system under which all employers in the Congo were required to furnish their employes with clothing and adequate food.
But instead of delivering the ration--either in actual commodities or in cash--at intervals of perhaps two weeks or a month, the Belgians felt obliged to dole it out more often.
Would not the children, if they received all their food on the first day of the month, eat it up immediately, and later go hungry?
The Belgians also placed great emphasis on education.
During the 1950s there were as many as 25,000 schools in the Congo.
But almost all the schools were primary.
The average Congolese can do little more than puzzle out the meaning of la chatte and le chien and write his name.
Some schools were technical--the Belgians needed carpenters and mechanics to help exploit the land, and trained many.
But they did not believe in widespread secondary education, much less in college.
It was their conviction that the people should be brought up together, a grade at a time, until in some indefinite future some might be ready to tackle history, economics and political science.
Indeed, the Belgians discouraged higher education, fearing the creation of a native intellectual elite which might cause unrest.
When the Congo received its independence in 1960 there were, among its 13.5 million people, exactly 14 university graduates.
Why did the Belgians grant independence to a colony so manifestly unprepared to accept it?
In one large oversimplification, it might be said that the Belgians felt, far too late, the gale of nationalism sweeping Africa.
They lacked time to prepare the Congo, as the British and French had prepared their colonies.
The Congolese were clamoring for their independence, even though most were unsure what it meant;
and in Brussels, street crowds shouted, Pas une goutte de sang!
(Not one drop of blood!
The Belgians would not fight for the privilege of being the detested pedagogue;
rather than teach where teaching was not wanted, they would wash their hands of the mess.
It is hard to blame them for this.
Yet there were other motivations and actions which the Belgians took after independence for which history may not find them guiltless.
As the time for independence approached there were in the Congo no fewer than 120 political parties, or approximately eight for each university graduate.
There were four principal ones.
First, there were those Congolese (among them Joseph Kasavubu) who favored splitting the country into small independent states, Balkanizing it.
Second, there were those (Moise Tshombe) who favored near-Balkanization, a loose federalism having a central government of limited authority, with much power residing in the states.
Third, there were those (notably Patrice Lumumba) who favored a unified Congo with a very strong central government.
And fourth, there were moderates who were in no hurry for independence and wished to wait until the Congo grew up.
However, the positions of all parties and leaders were constantly shifting.
A final factor which contributed greatly to the fragmentation of the Congo, immediately after independence, was the provincial structure that had been established by the Belgians for convenience in administration.
They had divided the Congo into six provinces--Leopoldville, Kasai, Kivu, Katanga, Equator and Eastern--unfortunately with little regard for ethnic groupings.
Thus some provinces contained tribes which detested each other, and to them independence meant an opportunity for war.
The Belgian Congo was granted its independence with what seemed a workable Western-style form of government: there were to be a president and a premier, and a bicameral legislature elected by universal suffrage in the provinces.
Well-wishers around the world hoped that the Congo would quickly assume a respectable position in the society of nations.
If internal frictions arose, they could be handled by the 25,000-man Congolese army, the Force Publique, which had been trained and was still officered by white Belgians.
The president, Joseph Kasavubu, seemed an able administrator and the premier, Patrice Lumumba, a reasonable man.
Twenty-four hours after independence the wild tribesmen commenced fighting each other.
Presently the well-armed members of the Force Publique--many of them drawn from savage and even cannibalistic tribes, erupted in mutiny, rioting, raping and looting.
Terror engulfed the thousands of Belgian civilians who had remained in the country.
The Belgian government decided to act, and on July 10 dispatched paratroops to the Congo.
On July 11 the head of the mineral-rich province of Katanga, Moise Tshombe, announced that his province had seceded from the country.
Confusion became chaos;
each succeeding day brought new acts of violence.
Lumumba and Kasavubu blamed it all on the military intervention by the Belgians, and appealed to the United Nations to send troops to oust them.
On July 14 the Security Council--with France and Great Britain abstaining--voted the resolution which drew the U.N. into the Congo.
Secretary-General Hammarskjold decided that it would be preferable if the U.N. troops sent into the Congo were to come from African, or at least nonwhite, nations--certainly not from the U.S., Russia, Great Britain or France.
He quickly called on Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, Guinea and Mali, which dispatched troops within hours.
Ultimately the U.N. army in the Congo reached a top strength of 19,000, including about 5,000 from India and a few soldiers from Eire and Sweden, who were the only whites.
It took the U.N. three months to bring a modest form of order to the Congo.
The Belgians were reluctant to withdraw their troops and often obstructed U.N. efforts.
The wildly erratic nature of Patrice Lumumba caused constant problems--he frequently announced that he wanted the U.N. to get out of the Congo along with the Belgians, and appealed to Russia for help.
(However, there is little evidence that the late Lumumba was a Communist.
Before appealing to the U.N. or to Russia, he first appealed to the U.S. for military help, and was rejected.
) Lumumba further complicated the U.N.'s mission by initiating small wars with the secessionist province of Katanga and with South Kasai which, under Albert Kalonji, wanted to secede as well.
Meanwhile Russia took every opportunity to meddle in the Congo, sending Lumumba equipment for his wars, dispatching technicians and even threatening, on occasion, to intervene openly.
But by the end of the three-month period, in October 1960, something approaching calm settled on the Congo.
President Kasavubu became exasperated with Lumumba and fired him.
Lumumba fired Kasavubu.
Control of the government--such control as there was and such government as there was--passed into the hands of Joseph Mobutu, chief of staff of the Congolese army.
Mobutu promptly flung out the Russians, who have not since played any significant part on the local scene, although they have redoubled their obstructionist efforts at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The Belgians--at least officially--departed from the Congo as well, withdrawing all of their uniformed troops.
But they left behind them large numbers of officers, variously called volunteers or mercenaries, who now staff the army of Moise Tshombe in Katanga, the seceded province which, according to Tshombe, holds 65% of the mineral wealth of the entire country.
From October 1960 to February 1961, the U.N. forces in the Congo took little action.
There was no directive for it--the Security Council's resolution had not mentioned political matters, and in any case the United Nations by the terms of its charter may not interfere in the political affairs of any nation, whether to unify it, federalize it or Balkanize it.
During the five-month lull, civil war smoldered and flickered throughout the Congo.
In February the murder of Patrice Lumumba, who had been kidnaped into Katanga and executed on order of Tshombe, again stirred the U.N. to action.
On Feb. 21 the council passed another resolution urging the taking of all appropriate measures to prevent the occurrence of civil war in the Congo, including the use of force, if necessary, in the last resort.
Although the resolution might have been far more specific, it was considerably tougher than the earlier one.
It also urged that the U.N. eject, and prevent the return of, all Belgian and other foreign military and political advisers;
ordered an investigation of Lumumba's death;
urged the reconvention of the Congolese Parliament and the reorganization of the army.
The presidency: talking and listening
High up on the President's priority list was the thorny question of Bizerte.
On this issue, the President received a detailed report from his U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who had just returned from Paris, and Mr. Kennedy asked Stevenson to search for a face-saving way--for both Paris and Tunis--out of the imbroglio.
Ideally, the President would like the French to agree on a status quo ante on Bizerte, and accept a new timetable for withdrawing their forces from the Mediterranean base.
To continue their important conversations about the Tunisian issue and the whole range of other problems, Mr. Kennedy invited Stevenson to Cape Cod for the weekend.
The President also discussed the Bizerte deadlock with the No. 2 man in the Tunisian Government, Defense Minister Bahi Ladgham, who flew to Washington last week to seek U.S. support.
The conversation apparently convinced Mr. Kennedy that the positions of France and Tunisia were not irreconcilable.
Through Ladgham, Mr. Kennedy sent a message along those lines to Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba;
and one U.S. official said: The key question now is which side picks up the phone first.
On the Latin American front, the President held talks with Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon before sending him to Uruguay and the Inter-American Economic and Social Council (which the President himself had originally hoped to attend).
Main purpose of the meeting: To discuss President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress.
And that was not all.
In conferences with Nationalist China's dapper, diminutive Vice President Chen Cheng, Mr. Kennedy assured Chiang Kai-shek's emissary that the U.S. is as firmly opposed as ever to the admission of Red China to the United Nations.
Chen was equally adamant in his opposition to the admission of Outer Mongolia;
however the President, who would like to woo the former Chinese province away from both Peking and Moscow, would promise Chen nothing more than an abstention by the U.S. if Outer Mongolia's admission comes to a vote.
The President also conferred with emissaries from Guatemala and Nepal who are seeking more foreign aid.
To Africa, he sent his most trusted adviser, his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, on a good-will mission to the Ivory Coast.
All week long the President clearly was playing a larger personal role in foreign affairs;
in effect, he was practicing what he preached in his Berlin message two weeks ago when he declared: We shall always be prepared to discuss international problems with any and all nations that are willing to talk, and listen, with reason.
Crime:'skyjacked '
From International Airport in Los Angeles to International Airport in Houston, as the great four-jet Boeing 707 flies, is a routine five hours and 25 minutes, including stopovers at Phoenix, El Paso, and San Antonio.
When Continental Airlines night-coach Flight 54 took off at 11:30 one night last week, there was no reason to think it would take any longer.
The plane put down on schedule at 1:35 a.m. in Phoenix.
Thirty-one minutes later, when it took off for El Paso, hardly anyone of the crew of six or the 65 other passengers paid any attention to the man and teen-age boy who had come aboard.
At 3:57 a.m., with the plane about twenty minutes out of El Paso, passenger Robert Berry, a San Antonio advertising man, glanced up and saw the man and boy, accompanied by a stewardess, walking up the aisle toward the cockpit.
The man was bent over with his hand on his stomach, Berry said.
I figured he was sick.
John Salvador, a farmer from Palm Desert, Calif., was sitting up front and could see through the door as the trio entered the cockpit.
The kid had a automatic, like they issue in the Army, he said.
The other fellow had a.
Salvador saw the youth hold his against the head of stewardess Lois Carnegey;
the man put his at the head of Capt. Byron D. Rickards.
To Rickards, a 52-year-old veteran 30 years in the air, it was an old story: His plane was being hijacked in mid-flight again much as it had happened in 1930, when Peruvian rebels made him land a Ford tri-motor at Arequipa.
But last week's pirates, like the Cuban-American who recently hijacked an Eastern Airlines Electra (Newsweek, Aug. 7), wanted to go to Havana.
Stalling:
Tell your company there are four of us here with guns, the elder man told Rickards.
The pilot radioed El Paso International Airport with just that message.
But, he told the skyjackers, the 707 didn't carry enough fuel to reach Havana;
they would have to refuel at El Paso.
Most passengers didn't know what had happened until they got on the ground.
Jerry McCauley of Sacramento, Calif., one of some twenty Air Force recruits on board, awoke from a nap in confusion.
The old man came from the front of the plane and said he wanted four volunteers to go to Cuba, McCauley said, and like a nut I raised my hand.
I thought he was the Air Force recruiter.
What the man wanted was four persons to volunteer as hostages, along with the crew.
They chose four: Jack Casey, who works for Continental Airlines in Houston;
Fred Mullen from Mercer Island, Wash.;
Pfc. Truman Cleveland of St. Augustine.
Fla., and Leonard Gilman, a former college boxer and veteran of the U.S. Immigration Service Border Patrol.
Everybody else was allowed to file off the plane after it touched down at El Paso at 4:18 a.m..
They found a large welcoming group--El Paso policemen, Border Patrol, sheriff's deputies, and FBI men, who surged around the plane with rifles and submachine guns.
Other FBI men, talking with the pilot from the tower, conspired with him to delay the proposed flight to Havana.
The ground crew, which ordinarily fuels a 707 in twenty minutes, took fully three hours.
Still more time was consumed while the pilot, at the radioed suggestion of Continental president Robert Six, tried to persuade the armed pair to swap the Boeing jet for a propeller-driven Douglas Aj.
Actually, the officers on the ground had no intention of letting the hijackers get away with any kind of an airplane;
they had orders to that effect straight from President Kennedy, who thought at first, as did most others, that it was four followers of Cuba's Fidel Castro who had taken over the 707.
Mr. Kennedy had been informed early in the day of the attempt to steal the plane, kept in touch throughout by telephone.
At one time, while still under the impression that he was dealing with a Cuban plot, the President talked about invoking a total embargo on trade with Cuba.
As the morning wore on and a blazing West Texas sun wiped the shadows off the Franklin Mountains, police got close enough to the plane to pry into the baggage compartment.
From the luggage, they learned that the two air pirates, far from being Cubans, were native Americans, subsequently identified as Leon Bearden, 50-year-old ex-convict from Coolidge, Ariz., and his son, Cody, 16, a high-school junior.
Tension
The heat and strain began to tell on the Beardens.
The father, by accident or perhaps to show, as he said, we mean business, took the and fired a slug between the legs of Second Officer Norman Simmons.
At 7:30 a.m., more than three hours after landing, the Beardens gave an ultimatum:
Take off or see the hostages killed.
The tower cleared the plane for take-off at 8 a.m., and Captain Rickards began taxiing toward the runway.
Several police cars, loaded with armed officers, raced alongside, blazing away at the tires of the big jet.
The slugs flattened ten tires and silenced one of the inboard engines;
the plane slowed to a halt.
Ambulances, baggage trucks, and cars surrounded it.
The day wore on.
At 12:50 p.m. a ramp was rolled up to the plane.
A few minutes later, FBI agent Francis Crosby, talking fast, eased up the ramp to the plane, unarmed.
While Crosby distracted the Beardens, stewardesses Carnegey and Toni Besset dropped out of a rear door.
So did hostages Casey, Cleveland, and Mullen.
That left only the four crew members, Crosby, and Border Patrolman Gilman, all unarmed, with the Beardens.
The elder Bearden had one pistol in his hand, the other in a hip pocket.
Gilman started talking to him until he saw his chance.
He caught officer Simmons' eye, nodded toward young Bearden, and--I swung my right as hard as I could.
Simmons and Crosby jumped the boy and it was all over.
Frog-marched off the airplane at 1:48 p.m., the Beardens were held in bail of $100,000 each on charges of kidnapping and transporting a stolen plane across state lines.
(Bearden reportedly hoped to peddle the plane to Castro, and live high in Cuba.
) Back home in Coolidge, Ariz., his 36-year-old wife, Mary, said: I thought they were going to Phoenix to look for jobs.
Congress: more muscle
Taking precedence over all other legislation on Capitol Hill last week was the military strength of the nation.
The Senate put other business aside as it moved with unaccustomed speed and unanimity to pass--85 to 0--the largest peacetime defense budget in U.S. history.
With the money all but in hand, however, the Administration indicated that, instead of the 225,000 more men in uniform that President Kennedy had requested, the armed forces would be increased by only 160,000.
The hold-back, as Pentagon mutterers labeled it, apparently was a temporary expedient intended to insure that the army services are built up gradually and, thus, the new funds spent prudently.
In all, the Senate signed a check for $46.7 billion, which not only included the extra $3.5 billion requested the week before by President Kennedy, but tacked on $754 million more than the President had asked for.
(The Senate, on its own, decided to provide additional B-52 and other long-range bombers for the Strategic Air Command.
) The House, which had passed its smaller appropriation before the President's urgent call for more, was expected to go along with the increased defense budget in short order.
In other areas, Congressional action last week included:
The Senate (by voice vote) and the House (by 224-170) passed and sent to the White House the compromise farm bill which the President is expected to sign, not too unhappily.
The Senate also voted $5.2 billion to finance the government's health, welfare, and labor activities.
Debate on the all-important foreign-aid bill, with its controversial long-range proposals, had just begun on the Senate floor at the weekend.
White House legislative aides were still confident the bill would pass intact.
Food: stew a la Mulligatawny
Most members of the U.S. Senate, because they are human, like to eat as high on the hog as they can.
But, because they are politicians, they like to talk as poor-mouth as the lowliest voter.
As a result, ever since 1851 when the Senate restaurant opened in the new wing of the Capitol Building, the senators have never ceased to grumble about the food--even while they opposed every move that might improve it.
Over the years, enlivened chiefly by disputes about the relative merits of Maine and Idaho potatoes, the menu has pursued its drab all-American course.
Individual senators, with an eye to the voters back home, occasionally introduced smelts from Michigan, soft-shell crabs from Maryland, oysters from Washington, grapefruit from Florida.
But plain old bean soup, served daily since the turn of the century (at the insistence of the late Sen. Fred Dubois of Idaho), made clear to the citizenry that the Senate's stomach was in the right place.
In a daring stroke, the Senate ventured forth last week into the world of haute cuisine and hired a $10,000-per-year French-born maitre d'hotel.
Holders of toll-road bonds are finding improvements in monthly reports on operation of the turnpikes.
Long-term trend of traffic on these roads seems clearly upward.
Higher toll rates also are helping boost revenues.
Result is a better prospect for a full payoff by bonds that once were regarded as highly speculative.
Things are looking up these days for many of the State turnpikes on which investors depend for income from their toll-road bonds.
Traffic on nearly all the turnpikes has been growing.
That added traffic means rising streams of dimes and quarters at toll gates.
As a result of the new outlook for turnpikes, investors who bought toll-road bonds when these securities ranked as outright speculations are now finding new hope for their investments.
Another result is that buyers are tending to bid up the prices of these tax-exempt bonds.
Other tax-exempt bonds of State and local governments hit a price peak on February 21, according to Standard & Poor's average.
On balance, prices of those bonds have slipped a bit since then.
However, in the same three-month period, toll-road bonds, as a group, have bucked this trend.
On these bonds, price rises since February 21 easily outnumber price declines.
Tax-free returns.
Investors, however, still see an element of more-than-ordinary risk in the toll-road bonds.
You find the evidence of that in the chart on this page.
Many of the toll-road bonds still are selling at prices that offer the prospect of an annual yield of 4 per cent, or very close to that.
And this is true in the case of some turnpikes on which revenues have risen close to, or beyond, the point at which the roads start to pay all operating costs plus annual interest on the bonds.
That 4 per cent yield is well below the return to be had on good corporation bonds.
It's not much more, in fact, than the return that is offered on U. S. Treasury bonds.
For investors whose income is taxed at high rates, though, a tax-free yield of 4 per cent is high.
It is the equivalent of 8 per cent for an unmarried investor with more than $16,000 of income to be taxed, or for a married couple with more than $32,000 of taxed income.
Swelling traffic.
A new report on the earnings records of toll roads in the most recent 12-month period--ending in February or March--shows what is happening.
The report is based on a survey by Blyth & Company, investment bankers.
Nearly all the turnpikes show gains in net revenues during the period.
And there is the bright note: The gains were achieved in the face of temporary traffic lags late in 1960 and early in 1961 as a result of business recession.
Many of the roads also were hit by an unusually severe winter.
Indication: The long-term trend of turnpike traffic is upward.
Look, for example, at the Ohio Turnpike.
Traffic on that road slumped sharply in January and February, as compared with those same months in 1960.
Then March brought an 18 per cent rise in net revenues--after operating costs.
As a result, the road's net revenues in the 12 months ending March 31 were 186 per cent of the annual interest payments on the turnpike bonds.
That was up from 173 per cent in the preceding 12 months.
That same pattern of earnings shows up on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Operating revenues were off in the first three months of 1961, but up for the 12 months ending in March.
Costs were held down, despite a bitter winter.
For the year, the road earned 133 per cent of its interest costs, against 121 per cent in the preceding period.
The road's engineers look for further improvement when the turnpike is extended into Boston.
Slow successes.
Some turnpikes have not been in full operation long enough to prove what they can do.
The 187-mile Illinois State Toll Highway, for example, was not opened over its entire length until December, 1958.
In the 12 months ended in February, 1960, the highway earned enough to cover 64 per cent of its interest load--with the remainder paid out of initial reserves.
In the 12 months ended in February, 1961, this highway earned 93 per cent of its interest.
That improvement is continuing.
In the first two months of 1961, earnings of the Illinois highway available for interest payments were up 55 per cent from early 1960.
Success, for many turnpikes, has come hard.
Traffic frequently has failed to measure up to engineers' rosy estimates.
In these cases, the turnpike managements have had to turn to toll-rate increases, or to costly improvements such as extensions or better connections with other highways.
Many rate increases already have been put into effect.
Higher tolls are planned for July 1, 1961, on the Richmond-Petersburg, Va., Turnpike, and proposals for increased tolls on the Texas Turnpike are under study.
Easier access.
Progress is being made, too, in improving motorists' access to many turnpikes.
The Kansas Turnpike offers an illustration.
Net earnings of that road rose from 62 per cent of interest requirements in calendar 1957 to 86 per cent in the 12 months ended Feb. 28, 1961.
Further improvements in earnings of the Kansas Turnpike are expected late in 1961, with the opening of a new bypass at Wichita, and still later when the turnpike gets downtown connections in both Kansas City, Kans., and Kansas City, Mo..
Meanwhile, there appears to be enough money in the road's reserve fund to cover the interest deficiency for eight more years.
For some roads, troubles.
Investors studying the toll-road bonds for opportunities find that not all roads are nearing their goals.
Traffic and revenues on the Chicago Skyway have been a great disappointment to planners and investors alike.
If nothing is done, the prospect is that that road will be in default of interest in 1962.
West Virginia toll bonds have defaulted in interest for months, and, despite recent improvement in revenues, holders of the bonds are faced with more of the same.
These, however, are exceptions.
The typical picture at this time is one of steady improvement.
It's going to take time for investors to learn how many of the toll-road bonds will pay out in full.
Already, however, several of the turnpikes are earning enough to cover interest requirements by comfortable margins.
Many others are attracting the traffic needed to push revenues up to the break-even point.
A top American official, after a look at Europe's factories, thinks the U.S. is in a very serious situation competitively.
Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges, accompanied by a member of our staff, on May 10 toured plants of two of Italy's biggest companies--Fiat, the auto producer, and Olivetti, maker of typewriters and calculating machines.
Our staff man cabled from Turin as follows --
Follow Secretary Hodges through the Fiat plant, and you learn this:
One, modern equipment--much of it supplied under the Marshall Plan--enables Fiat to turn out 2,100 cars a day.
About half of these are exported.
Two, wage costs are a fraction of the U.S. costs.
A skilled worker on the assembly line, for example, earns $37 a week.
Three, labor troubles are infrequent.
Fiat officials say they have had no strikes for more than six years.
Said Secretary Hodges:'It's a tough combination for the U.S. to face.
Olivetti had a special interest for Hodges.
Olivetti took over Underwood, the U.S. typewriter maker, in late 1959.
Within a year, without reducing wages, Underwood's production costs were cut one third, prices were slashed.
The result has been that exports of Underwood products have doubled.
The Olivetti plant near Turin has modern layout, modern machinery.
The firm is design-conscious, sales-conscious, advertising-conscious.
Hodges is trying to get more foreign business to go to the U.S..
The inflow of foreign capital would help the U.S. balance of payments.
Hodges predicted:'I think we will see more foreign firms coming to the U.S..
There are many places where we can use their vigor and new ideas'''.
Foreign competition has become so severe in certain textiles that Washington is exploring new ways of handling competitive imports.
The recently unveiled Kennedy moves to control the international textile market can be significant for American businessmen in many lines.
Important aspects of the Kennedy textile plans are these:
An international conference of the big textile-importing and textile-exporting countries will be called shortly by President Kennedy.
Chief aims of the proposed conference are worth noting.
The U.S. will try to get agreement among the industrialized countries to take more textile imports from the less-developed countries over the years.
Point is that developing countries often build up a textile industry first, need encouragement to get on their feet.
If they have trouble exporting, international bill for their support will grow larger than it otherwise would.
Idea is to let these countries earn their way as much as possible.
At the same time, another purpose of the conference will be to get certain low-wage countries to control textile exports--especially dumping of specific products--to high-wage textile-producing countries.
Japan, since 1957, has been voluntarily curbing exports of textiles to the U.S..
Hong Kong, India and Pakistan have been limiting exports of certain types of textiles to Britain for several years under the Lancashire Pact.
None of these countries is happy with these arrangements.
The Japanese want to increase exports to the U.S. While they have been curbing shipments, they have watched Hong Kong step in and capture an expanding share of the big U.S. market.
Hong Kong interests loudly protest limiting their exports to Britain, while Spanish and Portuguese textiles pour into British market unrestrictedly.
The Indians and Pakistanis are chafing under similar restrictions on the British market for similar reasons.
The Kennedy hope is that, at the conference or through bilateral talks, the low-wage textile-producing countries in Asia and Europe will see that dumping practices cause friction all around and may result in import quotas.
Gradual, controlled expansion of the world's textile trade is what President Kennedy wants.
This may point the way toward international stabilization agreements in other products.
It's an important clue to Washington thinking.
Note, too, that the Kennedy textile plan looks toward modernization or shrinkage of the U.S. textile industry.
Get competitive or get out.
In veiled terms, that's what the Kennedy Administration is saying to the American textile industry.
The Government will help in transferring companies and workers into new lines, where modernization doesn't seem feasible.
Special depreciation on new textile machinery may be allowed.
Government research will look into new products and methods.
Import quotas aren't ruled out where the national interest is involved.
But the Kennedy Administration doesn't favor import quotas.
Rather, they are impressed with the British Government's success in forcing--and helping--the British textile industry to shrink and to change over to other products.
What's happening in textiles can be handwriting on the wall for other lines having difficulty competing with imports from low-wage countries.
Among the highest-paid workers in the world are U.S. coal miners.
Yet U.S. coal is cheap enough to make foreign steelmakers' mouths water.
Steel Company of Wales, a British steelmaker, wants to bring in Virginia coal, cut down on its takings of Welsh coal in order to be able to compete more effectively--especially in foreign markets.
Virginia coal, delivered by ship in Wales, will be about $2.80 a ton cheaper than Welsh coal delivered by rail from nearby mines.
U.S. coal is cheap, despite high wages, because of widespread mechanization of mines, wide coal seams, attactive rates on ocean freight.
Many of the coal seams in the nationalized British mines are twisting, narrow and very deep.
Productivity of U.S. miners is twice that of the British.
Welsh coal miners, Communist-led, are up in arms at the suggestion that the steel company bring in American coal.
They threaten to strike.
The British Government will have to decide whether to let U.S. coal in.
The British coal industry is unprofitable, has large coal stocks it can't sell.
Every library borrower, or at least those whose taste goes beyond the five-cent fiction rentals, knows what it is to hear the librarian say apologetically, I'm sorry, but we don't have that book.
There wouldn't be much demand for it, I'm afraid.
Behind this reply, and its many variations, is the ever-present budget problem all libraries must face, from the largest to the smallest.
What to buy out of the year's grist of nearly 15,000 book titles?
What to buy for adult and child readers, for lovers of fiction and nonfiction, for a clientele whose wants are incredibly diversified, when your budget is pitifully small?
Most library budgets are hopelessly inadequate.
A startlingly high percentage do not exceed $500 annually, which includes the librarian's salary, and not even the New York Public has enough money to meet its needs--this in the world's richest city.
The plight of a small community library is proportionately worse.
Confronted with this situation, most libraries either endure the severe limitations of their budgets and do what they can with what they have, or else depend on the bounty of patrons and local governments to supplement their annual funds.
In some parts of the country, however, a co-operative movement has begun to grow, under the wing of state governments, whereby, with the financial help of the state, libraries share their book resources on a county-wide or regional basis.
New York State has what is probably the most advanced of these co-operative systems, so well developed that it has become a model for others to follow.
Because it is so large a state, with marked contrasts in population density, the organization of the New York co-operative offers a cross-section of how the plan works.
At one extreme are the systems of upper New York State, where libraries in two or more counties combine to serve a large, sparsely populated area.
At the other are organizations like the newly formed Nassau Library System, in a high-density area, with ample resources and a rapidly growing territory to serve.
Both these types, and those in between, are in existence by reason of a legislative interest in libraries that began at Albany as early as 1950, with the creation by the legislature of county library systems financed by county governments with matching funds from the state.
It was a step in the right direction, but it took an additional act passed in 1958 to establish fully the thriving systems of today.
Under this law annual grants are given to systems in substantial amounts.
An earlier difficulty was overcome by making it clear that individual libraries in any area might join or not, as they saw fit.
Some library boards are wary of the plan.
A large, well-stocked library, surrounded in a county by smaller ones, may feel that the demands on its resources are likely to be too great.
A small library may cherish its independence and established ways, and resist joining in a cooperative movement that sometimes seems radical to older members of the board.
Within a system, however, the autonomy of each member library is preserved.
The local community maintains responsibility for the financial support of its own library program, facilities, and services, but wider resources and additional services become available through membership in a system.
All services are given without cost to members.
So obvious are these advantages that nearly 95 per cent of the population of New York State now has access to a system, and enthusiastic librarians foresee the day, not too distant, when all the libraries in the state will belong to a co-op.
To set up a co-operative library system, the law requires a central book collection of 100,000 nonfiction volumes as the nucleus, and the system is organized around it.
The collection may be in an existing library, or it may be built up in a central collection.
Each system develops differently, according to the area it serves, but the universal goal is to pool the resources of a given area for maximum efficiency.
The basic state grant is thirty cents for each person served, and there is a further book incentive grant that provides an extra twenty cents up to fifty cents per capita, if a library spends a certain number of dollars.
In Nassau County, for example, the heavily settled Long Island suburb of New York City, the system is credited by the state with serving one million persons, a figure that has doubled since 1950.
This system, by virtue of its variety and size, offers an inclusive view of the plan in operation.
The Nassau system recognizes that its major task it to broaden reference service, what with the constant expansion of education and knowledge, and the pressure of population growth in a metropolitan area.
The need is for reference works of a more specialized nature than individual libraries, adequate to satisfy everyday needs, could afford.
Nassau is currently building a central collection of reference materials in its Hempstead headquarters, which will reach its goal of 100,000 volumes by 1965.
The major part of this collection is in the central headquarters building, and the remainder is divided among five libraries in the system designated as subject centers.
Basic reference tools are the backbone of the collection, but there is also specialization in science and technology, an indicated weakness in local libraries.
On microfilm, headquarters also has a file of the New York Times from its founding in 1851 to the present day, as well as bound volumes of important periodicals.
The entire headquarters collection is available to the patrons of all members on interlibrary loans.
Headquarters gets about 100 requests every day.
It is connected by teletype with the State Library in Albany, which will supply any book to a system that the system itself cannot provide.
The books are carried around by truck in canvas bags from headquarters to the other libraries.
Each subject center library was chosen because of its demonstrated strength in a particular area, which headquarters could then build upon.
East Meadow has philosophy, psychology, and religion;
Freeport houses social science, pure science, and language;
history, biography, and education are centered in Hempstead;
Levittown has applied science, business, and literature;
while Hewlett-Woodmere is the repository of art, music, and foreign languages.
The reference coordinator at headquarters also serves as a consultant, and is available to work with the local librarian in helping to strengthen local reference service.
This kind of cooperation is not wholly new, of course.
Public libraries in Nassau County have been lending books to each other by mail for a quarter-century, but the system enables this process to operate on an organized and far more comprehensive basis.
Local libraries find, too, that the new plan saves tax dollars because books can be bought through the system, and since the system buys in bulk it is able to obtain larger discounts than would be available to an individual library.
The system passes on these savings to its members.
Further money is saved through economy in bookkeeping and clerical detail as the result of central billing.
Books are not the only resource of the system.
Schools and community groups turn to the headquarters film library for documentary, art, and experimental films to show at libraries that sponsor local programs, and to organizations in member communities.
The most recent film catalogue, available at each library, lists 110 titles presently in the collection, any of which may be borrowed without charge.
This catalogue lists separately films suitable for children, young adults, or adults, although some classics cut across age groups, such as Nanook Of The North, The Emperor's Nightingale, and The Red Balloon.
Workshops are conducted by the system's audio-visual consultant for the staffs of member libraries, teaching them the effective use of film as a library service.
The system well understands that one of its primary responsibilities is to bring children and books together;
Headquarters has also set up a central juvenile book-review and book-selection center, to provide better methods of purchasing and selection.
Sample copies of new books are on display at headquarters, where librarians may evaluate them by themselves or in workshop groups.
Story hours, pre-school programs, activities with community agencies, and lists of recommended reading are all in the province of the children's consultant.
Headquarters of the Nassau system is an increasingly busy place these days, threatening to expand beyond its boundaries.
In addition to the interlibrary loan service and the children's program, headquarters has a public relations director who seeks to get wider grassroots support for quality library service in the county;
it prepares cooperative displays (posters, booklists, brochures, and other promotional material) for use in member libraries;
it maintains a central exhibit collection to share displays already created and used;
and it publishes Sum And Substance, a monthly newsletter, which reports the system's activities to the staffs and trustees of member libraries.
The system itself is governed by a board of trustees, geographically representing its membership.
In Nassau, as in other systems, the long-range objective is to bring the maximum service of libraries to bear on the schools, and on adult education in general.
Librarians, a patient breed of men and women who have borne much with dedication, can begin to see results today.
Library use is multiplying daily, and the bulk of the newcomers are those maligned Americans, the teen-agers.
To them especially the librarians, with the help of co-ops, hope they will never have to say, I'm sorry, we don't have that book.
Today, more than ever before, the survival of our free society depends upon the citizen who is both informed and concerned.
The great advances made in recent years in Communist strength and in our own capacity to destroy require an educated citizenry in the Western world.
The need for lifetime reading is apparent.
Education must not be limited to our youth but must be a continuing process through our entire lives, for it is only through knowledge that we, as a nation, can cope with the dangers that threaten our society.
The desire and ability to read are important aspects of our cultural life.
We cannot consider ourselves educated if we do not read;
if we are not discriminating in our reading;
if we do not know how to use what we do read.
We must not permit our society to become a slave to the scientific age, as might well happen without the cultural and spiritual restraint that comes from the development of the human mind through wisdom absorbed from the written word.
A fundamental source of knowledge in the world today is the book found in our libraries.
Although progress has been made in America's system of libraries it still falls short of what is required if we are to maintain the standards that are needed for an informed America.
The problem grows in intensity each year as man's knowledge, and his capacity to translate such knowledge to the written word, continue to expand.
The inadequacy of our library system will become critical unless we act vigorously to correct this condition.
There are, for example, approximately 25,000,000 people in this country with no public library service and about 50,000,000 with inadequate service.
In college libraries, 57 per cent of the total number of books are owned by 124 of 1,509 institutions surveyed last year by the U.S. Office of Education.
And over 66 per cent of the elementary schools with 150 or more pupils do not have any library at all.
In every aspect of service--to the public, to children in schools, to colleges and universities--the library of today is failing to render vitally needed services.
Only public understanding and support can provide that service.
This is one of the main reasons for National Library Week, April 16-22, and for its theme: For a richer, fuller life, read!
Assembly session brought much good
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.
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.
League regularly stands on the side of right
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.
Look to Coosa Valley for industrial progress
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.
Rusk idea strengthens United States defense
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 budget shows county is on beam
DeKalb's budget for 1961 is a record one and carries with it the promise of no tax increase to make it balance.
Somewhere, somebody is bound to love us
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.
Power company backs confidence with dollars
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.
The end of Trujillo
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.
Start on rapid transit
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.
Must Berlin remain divided?
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.
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.
Prairie National Park
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.
Whisky on the air
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.
A law is needed.
New York: Democrats' choice
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.
Little war, big test
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.
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.
A vote for educational TV
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.
A good man departs.
Goodby, Mr. Sam
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.
un off the Congo track
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.
Featherbed reversal
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.
Meditations from a fallout shelter
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?
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.
The contents were highly embarrassing to American spokesmen, who were on hand to promise Latin Americans a 20 billion dollar foreign aid millennium.
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 customer loses again
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.
A shock wave from Africa
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.
Monument to togetherness
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.
A short report and a good one
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 remains Western
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.
Better ask before joining
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?
Does it attack other traditional American institutions with unsupportable and wild charges?
Does it put the label of un-American or subversive on everyone with whom it disagrees politically?
Does it attempt to rewrite modern history by blaming American statesmen for wars, Communism, depression, and other troubles of the world?
Does it employ crude pressure tactics with such means as anonymous telephone calls and letter writing campaigns?
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.
Closed doors in city hall
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.
Help when needed
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.
Matter of survival
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.
Deterrent
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.
What's wrong at state
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.
Betting men
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.
Little resistance
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.
Bottom sighted
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.
In New Jersey, too
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.
No joyride
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.
An excess of zeal
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 Faget case
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.
Mr. Eisenhower, politician
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.
Queen of the seas
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.
Mission to Viet Nam
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.
The U.N.'s'gravest crisis '
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.
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.
What the new charter does
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.
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.
Inter-american Press
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.
Meeting in Moscow
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.
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.
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.
Dr. Conant's call to action
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.
And now--more junk mail
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.
Our creditors do not forget us
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!
Why, he's so darling and
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.
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.
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.
Dallas
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.
Played mostly on the freeways around Los Angeles, it goes like this:
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.
Miami, Fla., March 17.
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.
Two spots open
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.
Robby could be better
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.
Breeding might move up
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.
She wrote:
total disinterest
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.
What future holds
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.
Single-color use
question
-- 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?
Answer
-- 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.
Chinese influence
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.
Out of this session may come: 1
-- 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.
Much of its strength stems from the comfortable knowledge that every volunteer Democratic organization of any consequence belongs to the Aj.
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.
Hence the attention they're lavishing on the Aj.
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.
This bodes heated contests in several districts where claims have already been staked out by Democratic hopefuls who don't see eye-to-eye with the Aj.
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.
Now listen closely:
Moscow radio from the Literary Gazette in English to England:
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.
The Soviet news agency TASS datelined from New York in English to Europe:
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.
TASS datelined Los Angeles, in English to Europe:
Former Vice President Nixon came out in support of President Kennedy's program for stepping up the arms race.
TASS from Moscow in English to Europe:
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.
And now, for Communist listeners and readers:
Moscow Radio in Russian to the USSR:
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.
Moscow Novosti article in Russian, datelined London:
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.
East Berlin (Communist) radio in German to Germany:
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.
Moscow TASS in Russian datelined Sochi:
Chairman Khrushchev received the U.S. President's disarmament adviser, John McCloy.
Their conversation and dinner passed in a warm and friendly atmosphere.
Now, to translate from the Communese, this means:
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.
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.
Specific broadening of travel rights.
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.
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.
No warden or guard to touch lock, key or doorknob except when accompanied by a prisoners' committee with powers of veto.
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.
Washington
-- 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.
In addition Rep. Frelinghuysen's brother Harry was on the Korean desk of the State Department in World War 2.
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.
On the job
A top official of the New Frontier who kept a record of his first weeks on the job here gives this report of his experiences:
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.
Sen. Case Aj, has received a nice thank you note from a youngster he appointed to the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
Air Force life is great, the cadet wrote, though the fourth-class system is no fun.
He invited Mr. Case to stop by to say hello if he ever visited the academy and then added that he was on the managerial staff of the freshman football team
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.
Kind Mr. Sam
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.
Not rival
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.
For example, in the third chapter of Matthew, verses 13-16, describing the baptism of Jesus, the 1611 version reads:
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.
Clearer meaning
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.
Mostly contemporary
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.
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.
Coolest shade
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 ease
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.
Turn over
writes: Does numbness in the left hand at night, which awakens the person, indicate brain tumor?
Reply:
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.
Steam baths
writes: Do steam baths have any health value?
Reply:
No, other than cleaning out the pores and making the sweat glands work harder.
An ordinary hot bath or shower will do the same.
Sewing brings numbness
writes: What makes my hands numb when sewing?
Reply:
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.
Brace for sciatica
writes: Does a brace help in sciatica?
Reply:
A back brace might help, depending upon the cause of sciatica.
Cholesterol and thyroid
writes: Does the cholesterol go down when most of the thyroid gland is removed?
Reply:
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.
Undergraduates
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.
Middle-aged spread
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.
It is, if anything, worse on the old player
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.
' task force '
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.
Errors repeated
The present Republican leadership as practiced by Mundt, Goldwater, Bridges, Dirksen, et al, is repeating the errors of the party leadership of the 1930s.
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.
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.
There are other dangers:
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.
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.
The East Greenwich Fire District services parts of Warwick as well as East Greenwich.
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.
The East Greenwich Free Library receives financial support from the town of East Greenwich and the City of Warwick to supplement its endowment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A lousy job
Chicago, Aug. 9
-- 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.
Questions shelters
Evansville, Ind., Aug. 5
-- 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.
Let us prepare for peace, instead of for a war which would mean the end of civilization.
Short shorts on the campus
Chicago, Aug. 4
-- 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.
Masaryk award
Chicago, Aug. 9
-- 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.).
Subsidies from CTA
Oak Park, Aug. 8
-- 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?
The welfare of citizens, old and young, is the responsibility of the community, not only of that part of it that rides the Aj.
CTA regulars already subsidize transportation for school children, policemen, and firemen.
Marketing meat
Chicago, Aug. 9
-- 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.
The Legion Convention and Sidney Holzman
Chicago, Aug. 9
-- 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.
Teaching the handicapped
Chicago, Aug. 7
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.
From Candlelight Club
Minneapolis, Aug. 7
-- 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.
More school, less pay
Chicago, Aug. 7
-- 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?
The Dupont case
(Editorial comment on this letter appears elsewhere on this page).
Washington, Aug. 4
-- 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.
Congresswoman Church
Wilmette, Aug. 7
-- 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.
Harmful drinks
Downers Grove, Aug. 8
-- 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.
Toward socialism
Providence, Aug. 5
-- 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.
Workers of the party
to the editor:
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.
Plus-one shelters
to the editor:
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.
Escape
to the editor:
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.
Supports Katanga
to the editor:
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.
County college costs
to the editor:
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.
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.
Taxing improvements
to the editor:
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.
Natural causes
to the editor:
Sir--An old man is kicked to death by muggers.
The medical examiner states that death was due to natural causes.
I once heard a comedian say that if you are killed by a taxicab in New York, it is listed as death due to natural causes.
Praises exhibit
to the editor:
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.
Parkway courtesy
to the editor:
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.
Deep Peep Show
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.
Working for peace
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
Pets in apartments
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.
Sidewalk cafes
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.
Dissenting views of senators
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 a neutral Germany
Soviets said to fear resurgence of German militarism
to the editor of the New York Times:
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.
Probable agreement
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.
Meeting U.N. obligations
to the editor of the New York Times:
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.
I would like to quote from the Charter of the United Nations:
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::
The U.S.S.R. and her followers are careful in paying their obligations to the regular budget.
To aid international law
Connally amendment's repeal held step toward world order
to the editor of the New York Times:
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.
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.
For better subway services
to the editor of the New York Times:
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.
Phone service criticized
to the editor of the New York Times:
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.
Fair-priced funeral
to the editor:
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.
Helping retarded children
to the editor:
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.
Jobs for Cavanagh
to the editor:
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.
Church finds news features are helpful
to the editor:
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.
Rude youngsters
to the editor:
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.
Dunes park advocate
to the editor:
I commend Senator Hart for his brave fight to establish a national park in the dunes area.
Ghost town?
To the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
Defends big trucks
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
Out of school at 14
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
Two wrongs
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
' we tremble not '
to the editor of the Inquirer:
Everyone should take time to read Martin Luther's Hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.
Especially the first half of the third verse:
out of the race
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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!
Why trust Jagan?
To the editor of the Inquirer:
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?
Russia and U.N.
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.?
Belated tribute
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
' people to people '
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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!
Expressway answer: East River Drive
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
This can be accomplished by several logical steps: (1)
Widen the East River Drive at least one lane.
(2)
So widen it as to minimize the present curves and eliminate drainage problems.
(3)
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.
(4)
This could be accomplished without the tremendous expenditures necessitated by the Schuylkill Expressway and without destroying the natural beauty of the East River Drive.
Shadow over Washington Square
to the editor of the Inquirer:
I wish to advocate two drastic changes in Washington Square: 1.
Take away George Washington's statue.
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 matter may seem a small thing to some people, I know, but it's a very good start on the road to Totalitarianism The Commission has posted signs in Washington Square saying:
The Feeding of Birds is Prohibited in This square.
Fairmount Park Commission
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.
We will know, and He will know, to whom it is rendered, what the birds would ask:
not push-ups but stand-ups
to the editor of the Inquirer:
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.
America doesn't need to push-up, she needs to stand up!
Disputes Stans column business scandal views
to the editor:
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.
Escalation unto death
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.
The tide turns
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 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.
Vacancy
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.
U Thant of Burma
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.
To the hills, girls
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How much fallout will we get?
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.
Resuming atmospheric tests
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.
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.
Ecumenical hopes
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 budget deficit
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.
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.
Ethics and peace
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.
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.
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.
What the moments reveal
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.
Key to the puzzles
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.
Broadway
the unoriginals
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.
Best from abroad.
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).
Dry of life.
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.
Nightclubs
the Cooch Terpers
He: Come with me to the Casbah.
She: By subway or cab?
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.
Continuum of mankind.
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.
The melting pot.
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.
Some Manhattan examples:
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.
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?
A short, tormented span
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 devil himself.
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.
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.
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;
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.
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.
The whole problem of peaceful coexistence and peaceful competition with the capitalist world is in the very center of this Congress.
Mikoyan declared:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tenure as criterion
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.
Loss of initiative
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.
A brief for the negative
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.
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.
A professor and the army
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.
Mercenary: term of honor?
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.
Modern postal slogan
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!
The impending death of Pope
In the issue of March 5, 1960 you had an excellent editorial which said:
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.
I found recently a very small article in the New York Times:
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?
An analogy
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.
Louis 14,--Aj.
With no strong men and no parliament to dispute his will, he was the government.
Regency--Truman.
A'dust-settling'period of decadence and decline.
Louis 15,--Eisenhower.
He opened his mouth, said little, and thought not at all.
Louis 16,--Kennedy.
Not completely virtuous, but completely incompetent.
And Marie Antoinette--Jacqueline Bouvier.
The beautiful and light-hearted.
French Revolution--Conservative Revolution?
In defeating Louis Capet, John Tower's victory in Texas signals, once again, the end of the divine right of Liberalism.
Confrontation
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.
Improper Bostonian?
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.
Facts in focus
Lester Markel is on the right track in his article Interpretation Of Interpretation (SR, Mar. 11).
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.
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.
Southern California blackout
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.
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?
For a college of propaganda
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.
Let the media clean house, too
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.
Snow storm
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.
It is not news that Nathan Milstein is a wizard of the violin.
There was about that song something incandescent, for this Brahms was Milstein at white heat.
Not the noblest performance we have heard him play, or the most spacious, or even the most eloquent.
Those would be reserved for the orchestra's great nights when the soloist can surpass himself.
This time the orchestra gave him some superb support fired by response to his own high mood.
But he had in Walter Hendl a willing conductor able only up to a point.
That is, when Mr. Milstein thrust straight to the core of the music, sparks flying, bow shredding, violin singing, glittering and sometimes spitting, Mr. Hendl could go along.
But Mr. Hendl does not go straight to any point.
He flounders and lets music sprawl.
There was in the Brahms none of the mysterious and marvelous alchemy by which a great conductor can bring soloist, orchestra and music to ultimate fusion.
So we had some dazzling and memorable Milstein, but not great Brahms.
The concert opened with another big romantic score, Schumann's Overture to Manfred, which suffered fate, this time with orchestral thrusts to the Byronic point to keep it afloat.
Hindemith's joust with Weber tunes was a considerably more serious misfortune, for it demands transluscent textures, buoyant rhythms, and astringent wit.
It got the kind of scrambled, coarsened performance that can happen to best of orchestras when the man with the baton lacks technique and style.
Bayreuth next summer
The Bayreuth Festival opens July 23 with a new production of Tannhaeuser staged by Wieland Wagner, who is doing all the operas this time, and conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch.
Sawalisch also conducts The Flying Dutch, opening July 24.
Parsifal follows July 25, with Hans Knappertsbusch conducting, and he also conducts Die Meistersinger, to be presented Aug. 8 and 12.
The Ring cycles are July 26, 27, 28 and 30, and Aug. 21, 22, 23 and 25.
Rudolf Kempe conducts.
No casts are listed, but Lotte Lehmann sent word that the Negro soprano, Grace Bumbry, will sing Venus in Tannhaeuser.
Remember how by a series of booking absurdities Chicago missed seeing the Bolshoi Ballet?
Remember how by lack of two big theaters Chicago missed the first visit of the Royal Danish Ballet?
Well, now we have two big theaters.
But barring a miracle, and don't hold your breath for it, Chicago will not see the Leningrad-Kirov Ballet, which stems from the ballet cradle of the Maryinsky and is one of the great companies of the world.
Before you let loose a howl saying we announced its coming, not once but several times, indeed we did.
The engagement was supposed to be all set for the big theater in McCormick Place, which Sol Hurok, ballet booker extraordinary, considers the finest house of its kind in the country--and of course he doesn't weep at the capacity, either.
It was all set.
Allied Arts Corporation first listed the Chicago dates as Dec. 4 thru 10.
Later the Hurok office made it Dec. 8 thru 17, a nice, long booking for the full repertory.
But if you keep a calendar of events, as we do, you noticed a conflict.
Allied Arts had booked Marlene Dietrich into McCormick Place Dec. 8 and 9.
Something had to give.
Not La Dietrich.
Allied Arts then notified us that the Kirov would cut short its Los Angeles booking, fly here to open Nov. 28, and close Dec. 2.
Shorter booking, but still a booking.
We printed it.
A couple of days later a balletomane told me he had telephoned Allied Arts for ticket information and was told the newspapers had made a mistake.
So I started making some calls of my own.
These are the results.
The Kirov Ballet is firmly booked into the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, Nov. 21 thru Dec. 4.
Not a chance of opening here Nov. 28--barring that miracle.
Then why not the juicy booking Hurok had held for us?
Well, Dietrich won't budge from McCormick Place.
Then how about the Civic Opera House?
Well, Allied Arts has booked Lena Horne there for a week starting Dec. 4.
Queried about the impasse, Allied Arts said: Better cancel the Kirov for the time being.
It's all up in the air again.
So the Kirov will fly back to Russia, minus a Chicago engagement, a serious loss for dance fans--and for the frustrated bookers, cancellation of one of the richest bookings in the country.
Will somebody please reopen the Auditorium?
Paintings and drawings by Marie Moore of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, are shown thru Nov. 5 at the Meadows Gallery, 3211 Ellis Av., week days, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., Sundays 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., closed Mondays.
An exhibition of Evelyn Cibula's paintings will open with a reception Nov. 5 at the Evanston Community center, 828 Davis St..
It will continue all month.
Abstractions and semi-abstractions by Everett McNear are being exhibited by the University Gallery of Notre Dame until Nov. 5.
H E. Bates has scribbled a farce called Hark, Hark, The Lark!
It is one of the most entertaining and irresponsible novels of the season.
If there is a moral lurking among the shenanigans, it is hard to find.
Perhaps the lesson we should take from these pages is that the welfare state in England still allows wild scope for all kinds of rugged eccentrics.
Anyway, a number of them meet here in devastating collisions.
One is an imperial London stockbroker called Jerebohm.
Another is a wily countryman called Larkin, whose blandly boisterous progress has been chronicled, I believe, in earlier volumes of Mr. Bates' comedie humaine.
What's up now?
Well, Jerebohm and his wife Pinkie have reached the stage of affluence that stirs a longing for the more atrociously expensive rustic simplicities.
They want to own a junior-grade castle, or a manor house, or some modest little place where Shakespeare might once have staged a pageant for Great Elizabeth and all her bearded courtiers.
They are willing to settle, however, in anything that offers pheasants to shoot at and peasants to work at.
And of course Larkin has just the thing they want.
Splendor by sorcery
It's a horror.
The name of it is Gore Court, and it is surrounded by a wasteland that would impress T. S. Eliot.
That's not precisely the way Larkin urges them to look at it, though.
He conjures herds of deer, and wild birds crowding the air.
He suggests that Gore Court embodies all the glories of Tudor splendor.
The stained-glass windows may have developed unpremeditated patinas, the paneling may be no more durable than the planks in a political platform.
The vast, dungeon kitchens may seem hardly worth using except on occasions when one is faced with a thousand unexpected guests for lunch.
Larkin has an answer to all that.
The spaciousness of the Tudor cooking areas, for example, will provide needed space for the extra television sets required by modern butlers, cooks and maids.
Also, perhaps, table-tennis and other indoor sports to keep them fit and contented.
It's a wonder, really, to how much mendacious trouble Larkin puts himself to sell the Jerebohms that preposterous manse.
He doesn't really need the immense sum of money (probably converted from American gold on the London Exchange) he makes them pay.
For Larkin is already wonderfully contented with his lot.
He has a glorious wife and many children.
When he needs money to buy something like, say, the Rolls-Royce he keeps near his vegetable patch, he takes a flyer in the sale of surplus army supplies.
One of those capital-gains ventures, in fact, has saddled him with Gore Court.
He is willing to sell it just to get it off his hands.
And the Jerebohms are more than willing to buy it.
They plan to become county people who know the proper way to terminate a fox's life on earth.
First one, then the other
If, in Larkin's eyes, they are nothing but Piccadilly farmers, he has as much to learn about them as they have to learn about the ways of truly rural living.
Mr. Bates shows us how this mutual education spreads its inevitable havoc.
Oneupmanship is practiced by both sides in a total war.
First the Larkins are ahead, then the Jerebohms.
After Larkin has been persuaded to restock his tangled acres with pheasants, he poaches only what he needs for the nourishment of his family and local callers.
One of the local callers, a retired brigadier apparently left over from Kipling's tales of India, does not approve of the way Larkin gets his birds.
He doesn't think that potting them from a deck chair on the south side of the house with a quart glass of beer for sustenance is entirely sporting.
But the brigadier dines on the birds with relish.
It is truly odd and ironic that the most handsome and impressive film yet made from Miguel De Cervantes' Don Quixote is the brilliant Russian spectacle, done in wide screen and color, which opened yesterday at the Fifty-fifth Street and Sixty-eighth Street Playhouses.
Nikolai Cherkasov, the Russian actor who has played such heroic roles as Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, performs the lanky Don Quixote, and does so with a simple dignity that bridges the inner nobility and the surface absurdity of this poignant man.
Cherkasov does not caricature him, as some actors have been inclined to do.
He treats this deep-eyed, bearded, bony crackpot with tangible affection and respect.
Directed by Grigory Kozintsev in a tempo that is studiously slow, he develops a sense of a high tradition shining brightly and passing gravely through an impious world.
The complexities of communication have been considerably abetted in this case by appropriately stilted English language that has been excellently dubbed in place of the Russian dialogue.
The voices of all the characters, including that of Cherkasov, have richness, roughness or color to conform with the personalities.
And the subtleties of the dialogue are most helpfully conveyed.
Since Russian was being spoken instead of Spanish, there is no violation of artistry or logic here.
Splendid, too, is the performance of Yuri Tolubeyev, one of Russia's leading comedians, as Sancho Panza, the fat, grotesque squire.
Though his character is broader and more comically rounded than the don, he gives it a firmness and toughness--a sort of peasant dignity--too.
It is really as though the Russians have seen in this character the oftentimes underlying vitality and courage of supposed buffoons.
The episode in which Sancho Panza concludes the joke that is played on him when he is facetiously put in command of an island is one of the best in the film.
True, the pattern and flow of the drama have strong literary qualities that are a bit wearisome in the first half, before Don Quixote goes to the duke's court.
But strength and poignancy develop thenceforth, and the windmill and deathbed episodes gather the threads of realization of the wonderfulness of the old boy.
There are other good representations of peasants and people of the court by actors who are finely costumed and magnificently photographed in this last of the Russian films to reach this country in the program of joint cultural exchange.
Also on the bill at the Fifty-fifth Street is a nice ten-minute color film called Sunday In Greenwich Village, a tour of the haunts and joints.
Television has yet to work out a living arrangement with jazz, which comes to the medium more as an uneasy guest than as a relaxed member of the family.
There seems to be an unfortunate assumption that an hour of Chicago-style jazz in prime evening time, for example, could not be justified without the trimmings of a portentous documentary.
At least this seemed to be the working hypothesis for Chicago And All That Jazz, presented on NBC-TV Nov. 26.
The program came out of the NBC Special Projects department, and was slotted in the Du Pont Show Of The Week series.
Perhaps Special Projects necessarily thinks along documentary lines.
If so, it might be worth while to assign a future jazz show to a different department--one with enough confidence in the musical material to cut down on the number of performers and give them a little room to display their talents.
As a matter of fact, this latter approach has already been tried, and with pleasing results.
A few years ago a Timex All-Star Jazz Show offered a broad range of styles, ranging from Lionel Hampton's big band to the free-wheeling Dukes Of Dixieland.
An enthusiastic audience confirmed the live character of the hour, and provided the interaction between musician and hearer which almost always seems to improve the quality of performance.
About that same time John Crosby's TV series on the popular arts proved again that giving jazz ample breathing space is one of the most sensible things a producer can do.
In an hour remembered for its almost rudderless movement, a score of jazz luminaries went before the cameras for lengthy periods.
The program had been arranged to permit the establishment of a mood of intense concentration on the music.
Cameras stared at soloists' faces in extreme closeups, then considerately pulled back for full views of ensemble work.
Chicago And All That Jazz could not be faulted on the choice of artists.
Some of the in-person performers were Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa, Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, Johnny St. Cyr, Joe Sullivan, Red Allen, Lil Armstrong, Blossom Seeley.
The jazz buff could hardly ask for more.
Furthermore, Garry Moore makes an ideal master of ceremonies.
(He played host at the Timex show already mentioned.
One of the script's big problems was how to blend pictures and music of the past with live performances by musicians of today.
NBC had gathered a lot of historical material which it was eager to share.
For example, there was sheet music with the word jazz in the title, to illustrate how a word of uncertain origin took hold.
Samples zoomed into closeup range in regular succession, like telephone poles passing on the highway, while representative music reinforced the mood of the late teens and 1920's.
Another source of NBC pride was its rare film clip of Bix Beiderbecke, but this view of the great trumpeter flew by so fast that a prolonged wink would have blotted out the entire glimpse.
Similarly, in presenting still photographs of early jazz groups, the program allowed no time for a close perusal.
Chicago And All That Jazz may have wound up satisfying neither the confirmed fan nor the inquisitive newcomer.
By trying to be both a serious survey of a bygone era and a showcase for today's artists, the program turned out to be a not-quite-perfect example of either.
Still, the network's willingness to experiment in this musical field is to be commended, and future essays happily anticipated.
Even Joan Sutherland may not have anticipated the tremendous reception she received from the Metropolitan Opera audience attending her debut as Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor Sunday night.
The crowd staged its own mad scene in salvos of cheers and applause and finally a standing ovation as Miss Sutherland took curtain call after curtain call following a fantastic Mad Scene created on her own and with the help of the composer and the other performers.
Her entrance in Scene 2, Act 1, brought some disconcerting applause even before she had sung a note.
Thereafter the audience waxed applause-happy, but discriminating operagoers reserved judgment as her singing showed signs of strain, her musicianship some questionable procedure and her acting uncomfortable stylization.
As she gained composure during the second act, her technical resourcefulness emerged stronger, though she had already revealed a trill almost unprecedented in years of performances of Lucia.
She topped the sextet brilliantly.
Each high note had the crowd in ecstasy so that it stopped the show midway in the Mad Scene, but the real reason was a realization of the extraordinary performance unfolding at the moment.
Miss Sutherland appeared almost as another person in this scene: A much more girlish Lucia, a sensational coloratura who ran across stage while singing, and an actress immersed in her role.
What followed the outburst brought almost breathless silence as Miss Sutherland revealed her mastery of a voice probably unique among sopranos today.
This big, flexible voice with uncommon range has been superbly disciplined.
Nervousness at the start must have caused the blemishes of her first scene, or she may warm up slowly.
In the fullness of her vocal splendor, however, she could sing the famous scene magnificently.
Technically it was fascinating, aurally spell-binding, and dramatically quite realistic.
Many years have passed since a Metropolitan audience heard anything comparable.
Her debut over, perhaps the earlier scenes will emerge equally fine.
The performance also marked the debut of a most promising young conductor, Silvio Varviso.
He injected more vitality into the score than it has revealed in many years.
He may respect too much the Italian tradition of letting singers hold on to their notes, but to restrain them in a singers' opera may be quite difficult.
Richard Tucker sang Edgardo in glorious voice.
His bel canto style gave the performance a special distinction.
The remainder of the cast fulfilled its assignments no more than satisfactorily just as the old production and limited stage direction proved only serviceable.
Miss Sutherland first sang Lucia at Covent Garden in 1959.
(The first Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Dec. 9 will introduce her as Lucia.
) She has since turned to Bellini, whose opera Beatrice Di Tenda in a concert version with the American Opera Society introduced her to New York last season.
She will sing La Sonambula with it here next week.
Anyone for musical Ping-pong?
It's really quite fun--as long as you like games.
You will need a stereo music system, with speakers preferably placed at least seven or eight feet apart, and one or more of the new London Phase 4 records.
There are 12 of these to choose from, all of them of popular music except for the star release, Pass In Review (SP-44001).
This features the marching songs of several nations, recorded as though the various national bands were marching by your reviewing stand.
Complete with crowd effects, interruptions by jet planes, and sundry other touches of realism, this disc displays London's new technique to the best effect.
All of the jackets carry a fairly technical and detailed explanation of this new recording program.
No reference is made to the possibility of recording other than popular music in this manner, and it would not seem to lend itself well to serious music.
Directionality is greatly exaggerated most of the time;
but when the sounds of the two speakers are allowed to mix, there is excellent depth and dimension to the music.
You definitely hear some of the instruments close up and others farther back, with the difference in placement apparently more distinct than would result from the nearer instruments merely being louder than the ones farther back.
This is a characteristic of good stereo recording and one of its tremendous advantages over monaural sound.
London explains that the very distinct directional effect in the Phase 4 series is due in large part to their novel methods of microphoning and recording the music on a number of separate tape channels.
These are then mixed by their sound engineers with the active co-operation of the musical staff and combined into the final two channels which are impressed on the record.
In some of the numbers the instrumental parts have even been recorded at different times and then later combined on the master tape to produce special effects.
Some clue to the character of London's approach in these discs may be gained immediately from the fact that ten of the 12 titles include the word percussion or percussive.
Drums, xylophones, castanets, and other percussive instruments are reproduced remarkably well.
Only too often, however, you have the feeling that you are sitting in a room with some of the instruments lined up on one wall to your left and others facing them on the wall to your right.
They are definitely in the same room with you, but your head starts to swing as though you were sitting on the very edge of a tennis court watching a spirited volley.
The Percussive Twenties (SP-44006) stirs pleasant memories with well-known songs of that day, and Johnny Keating's Kombo gives forth with tingling jazz in Percussive Moods (SP-44005).
Big Band Percussion (SP-44002) seemed one of the least attractive discs--the arrangements just didn't have so much character as the others.
There is an extraordinary sense of presence in all of these recordings, apparently obtained at least in part by emphasizing the middle and high frequencies.
The penalty for this is noticeable in the big, bold, brilliant, but brassy piano sounds in Melody And Percussion For Two Pianos (SP-44007).
All of the releases, however, are recorded at a gratifyingly high level, with resultant masking of any surface noise.
Pass In Review practically guarantees enjoyment, and is a dramatic demonstration of the potentialities of any stereo music system.
Many Hollywood films manage somehow to be authentic, but not realistic.
Strange, but true--authenticity and realism often aren't related at all.
Almost every film bearing the imprimatur of Hollywood is physically authentic--in fact, impeccably so.
In any given period piece the costumes, bric-a-brac, vehicles, and decor, bear the stamp of unimpeachable authenticity.
The major studios maintain a cadre of film librarians and research specialists who look to this matter.
During the making recently of an important Biblical film, some 40 volumes of research material and sketches not only of costumes and interiors, but of architectural developments, sports arenas, vehicles, and other paraphernalia were compiled, consulted, and complied with.
But, alas, the authenticity seems to stop at the set's edge.
The drama itself--and this seems to be lavishly true of Biblical drama--often has hardly any relationship with authenticity at all.
The storyline, in sort, is wildly unrealistic.
Thus, in The Story Of Ruth we have Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz and sets that are meticulously authentic.
But except for a vague adherence to the basic storyline--i.e., that Ruth remained with Naomi and finally wound up with Boaz--the film version has little to do with the Bible.
And in the new King Of Kings the plot involves intrigues and twists and turns that cannot be traced to the Gospels.
Earlier this month Edward R. Murrow, director of the United States Information Agency, came to Hollywood and had dinner with more than 100 leaders of the motion picture industry.
He talked about unauthentic storylines too.
He intimated that they weren't doing the country much good in the Cold War.
And to an industry that prides itself on authenticity, he urged greater realism.
In many corners of the globe, he said, the major source of impressions about this country are in the movies they meet.
Would we want a future-day Gibbon or Macaulay recounting the saga of America with movies as his prime source of knowledge?
Yet for much of the globe, Hollywood is just that--prime, if not sole, source of knowledge.
If a man totally ignorant of America were to judge our land and its civilization based on Hollywood alone, what conclusions do you think he might come to?
Francois D'Albert, Hungarian-born violinist who made his New York debut three years ago, played a return engagement last night in Judson Hall.
He is now president of the Chicago Conservatory College.
His pianist was Donald Jenni, a faculty member at DePaul University.
The acoustics of the small hall had been misgauged by the artists, so that for the first half of the program, when the piano was partially open, Mr. Jenni's playing was too loud.
In vying with him, Mr. D'Albert also seemed to be overdriving his tone.
This was not an overriding drawback to enjoyment of the performances, however, except in the case of the opening work, Mozart's Sonata in A (K. 526), which clattered along noisily in an unrelieved fashion.
Brahm's Sonata in A, although also vigorous, stood up well under the two artists' strong, large-scale treatment.
Mr. D'Albert has a firm, attractive tone, which eschews an overly sweet vibrato.
He made the most of the long Brahmsian phrases, and by the directness and drive of his playing gave the work a handsome performance.
A Sonata For Violin And Piano, called Bella Bella, by Robert Fleming, was given its first United States performance.
The title refers to the nickname given his wife by the composer, who is also a member of the National Film Board of Canada.
The work's two movements, one melodically sentimental, the other brightly capricious, are clever enough in a Ravel-like style, but they rehash a wornout idiom.
They might well indicate conjugal felicity, but in musical terms that smack of Hollywood.
Works by Dohnanyi, Hubay, Mr. D'Albert himself and Paganini, indicated that the violinist had some virtuoso fireworks up his sleeve as well as a reserved attitude toward a lyric phrase.
Standard items by Sarasate and Saint-Saens completed the program.
In recent years Anna Xydis has played with the New York Philharmonic and at Lewisohn Stadium, but her program last night at Town Hall was the Greek-born pianist's first New York recital since 1948.
Miss Xydis has a natural affinity for the keyboard, and in the twenty years since her debut here she has gained the authority and inner assurance that lead to audience control.
And the tone she commands is always beautiful in sound.
Since she also has considerable technical virtuosity and a feeling for music in the romantic tradition, Miss Xydis gave her listeners a good deal of pleasure.
She played with style and a touch of the grand manner, and every piece she performed was especially effective in its closing measures.
The second half of her program was devoted to Russian composers of this century.
It was in them that Miss Xydis was at her best.
The Rachmaninoff Prelude No. 12, Op. 32, for instance, gave her an opportunity to exploit one of her special facilities--the ability to produce fine deep-sounding bass tones while contrasting them simultaneously with fine silver filagree in the treble.
The four Kabalevsky Preludes were also assured, rich in color and songful.
And the Prokofieff Seventh Sonata had the combination of romanticism and modern bravura that Prokofieff needs.
Miss Xydis' earlier selections were Mendelssohn's Variations Serieuses, in which each variation was nicely set off from the others;
Haydn's Sonata in E minor, which was unfailingly pleasant in sound, and Chopin's Sonata in B flat minor.
A memory lapse in the last somewhat marred the pianist's performance.
So, what was the deepest music on her program had the poorest showing.
Miss Xydis was best when she did not need to be too probing.
All the generals who held important commands in World War 2, did not write books.
It only seems as if they did.
And the best books by generals were not necessarily the first ones written.
One of the very best is only now published in this country, five years after its first publication in England.
It is Defeat Into Victory, by Field Marshal Viscount Slim.
A long book heavily weighted with military technicalities, in this edition it is neither so long nor so technical as it was originally.
Field Marshal Slim has abridged it for the benefit of those who, finding not so great an attraction in accounts of military moves and counter-moves, are more interested in men and their reactions to stress, hardship and danger.
The man whose reactions and conclusions get the most space is, of course, the Field Marshal himself.
William Joseph Slim, First Viscount Slim, former Governor General of Australia, was the principal British commander in the field during the Burma War.
He had been a corps commander during the disastrous defeat and retreat of 1942 when the ill-prepared, ill-equipped British forces were outmaneuvered, outfought and outgeneraled.
He returned in command of an international army of Gurkhas, Indians, Africans, Chinese and British.
And in a series of bitterly fought battles in the jungles and hills and along the great rivers of Burma he waged one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war.
The Forgotten War his soldiers called the Burma fighting because the war in Africa and Europe enjoyed priorities in equipment and in headlines.
Parts of Defeat Into Victory are a tangle of Burmese place names and military units, but a little application makes everything clear enough.
On the whole this is an interesting and exceptionally well-written book.
Field Marshal Slim is striking in description, amusing in many anecdotes.
He has a pleasant sense of humor and is modest enough to admit mistakes and even a cardinal error.
He praises many individuals generously.
He himself seems to be tough, tireless, able and intelligent, more intellectual and self-critical than most soldiers.
Remaking an army to win
Defeat Into Victory is a dramatic and lively military narrative.
But it is most interesting in its account of the unending problems of high command, of decisions and their reasons, of the myriad matters that demand attention in addition to battle action.
Before he could return to Burma, Field Marshal Slim had to rally the defeated remnants of a discouraged army and unite them with fresh recruits.
His remarks about training, discipline, morale, leadership and command are enlightening.
He believed in making inspiring speeches and he made a great many.
He believed in being seen near the front lines and he was there.
For general morale reasons and to encourage the efforts of his supply officers, when food was short for combat troops he cut the rations of his headquarters staff accordingly.
Other crucial matters required constant supervision: labor and all noncombatant troops, whose morale was vital, too;
administrative organization and delicate diplomatic relations with Top Brass--British, American and Chinese;
health, hygiene, medical aid and preventive medicine;
hospitals (inadequate) and nurses (scanty);
food and military supplies;
logistics and transport;
airdrops and airstrips;
roads and river barges to be built.
Expected of a commander
Commenting on these and other matters, Field Marshal Slim makes many frank and provocative remarks:
When in doubt as to two courses of action, a general should choose the bolder.
The commander has failed in his duty if he has not won victory--for that is his duty.
It only does harm to talk to troops about new and desirable equipment which others may have but which you cannot give them.
It depresses them.
So I made no mention of air transport until we could get at least some of it.
Field Marshal Slim is more impressed by the courage of Japanese soldiers than he is by the ability of their commanders.
Of the Japanese private he says: He fought and marched till he died.
If 500 Japanese were ordered to hold a position, we had to kill 495 before it was ours--and then the last five killed themselves.
He is, by background and living standards, better fitted to endure hardship uncomplainingly, to demand less in the way of subsistence or comfort, and to look after himself when thrown on his own resources.
A bunch of young buckaroos from out West, who go by the name of Texas Boys Choir, loped into Town Hall last night and succeeded in corralling the hearts of a sizable audience.
Actually, the program they sang was at least two-thirds serious and high-minded, and they sang it beautifully.
Under the capable direction of the choir's founder, Geroge Bragg, the twenty-six boys made some lovely sounds in an opening group of Renaissance and Baroque madrigals and motets, excerpts from Pergolesi's Stabat Mater and all of the Britten Ceremonial Of Carols.
Their singing was well-balanced, clear and, within obvious limitations, extremely pleasing.
The limitations are those one expects from untrained and unsettled voices--an occasional shrillness of almost earsplitting intensity, an occasional waver and now and then a bleat.
But Mr. Bragg is a remarkably gifted conductor, and the results he has produced with his boys are generally superior.
Most surprising of all, he has accomplished some prodigies in training for the production of words.
The Latin, for example, was not only clear;
it was even beautiful.
Furthermore, there were solid musical virtues in the interpretation of the music.
Lines came out neatly and in good balance.
Tempos were lively.
The piano accompaniments by Istvan Szelenyi were stylish.
A boy soprano named Dixon Boyd sang a Durante solo motet and a few other passages enchantingly.
Other capable soloists included David Clifton, Joseph Schockler and Pat Thompson.
The final group included folk songs from back home, stomped out, shouted and chanted with irresistible spirit and in cowboy costume.
Boys will be boys, and Texans will be Texans.
The combination proved quite irresistible last night.
The Polish song and dance company called Mazowsze, after the region of Poland, where it has its headquarters, opened a three-week engagement at the City Center last night.
A thoroughly ingratiating company it is, and when the final curtain falls you may suddenly realize that you have been sitting with a broad grin on your face all evening.
Not that it is all funny, by any means, though some of it is definitely so, but simply that the dancers are young and handsome, high-spirited and communicative, and the program itself is as vivacious as it is varied.
There is no use at all in trying to follow it dance by dance and title by title, for it has a kind of nonstop format, and moves along in an admirable continuity that demands no pauses for identification.
The material is all basically of folk origin, gleaned from every section of Poland.
Under the surface of the wide range of folk movements is apparent a sound technical ballet training, and an equally professional sense of performing.
Since the organization was created thirteen years ago, it is obvious that this is not the original company;
it is more likely the sons and daughters of that company.
The girls are charming children and the men are wonderfully vital and engaging youngsters.
The stage is constantly full of them;
indeed, there are never fewer than eight of them on stage, and that is only for the more intimate numbers.
They can be exuberant or sentimental, flirtatious or funny, but the only thing they seem unable to be is dull.
To pick out particular numbers is something of a problem, but one or two identifiable items are too conspicuously excellent to be missed.
There is, for example, a stunning Krakowiak that closes the first act;
the mazurka choreographed by Witold Zapala to music from Moniuszko's opera, Strasny Dwor', may be the most beautiful mazurka you are likely ever to see;
there is an enchanting polonaise;
and the dances and songs from the Tatras contain a magnificent dance for the men.
Everywhere there are little touches of humor, and the leader of the on-stage band of musicians is an ebullient comedian who plays all sorts of odd instruments with winning warmth.
The Theatre-by-the-Sea, Matunuck, presents King Of Hearts by Jean Kerr and Eleanor Brooke.
Directed by Michael Murray;
settings by William David Roberts.
The cast:
Producer John Holmes has chosen a delightful comedy for his season's opener at Matunuck in Jean Kerr's King Of Hearts.
The dialogue is sharp, witty and candid--typical don't eat the daisies material--which has stamped the author throughout her books and plays, and it was obvious that the Theatre-by-the-Sea audience liked it.
The story is of a famous strip cartoonist, an arty individual, whose specialty is the American boy and who adopts a 10-year-old to provide him with fresh idea material.
This is when his troubles begin, not to mention a fledgling artist who he hires, and who turns out to have ideas of his own, with particular respect to the hero's sweetheart-secretary.
John Heffernan, playing Larry Larkin, the cartoonist, carries the show in marvelous fashion.
His portrayal of an edgy head-in-the-clouds artist is virtually flawless.
This may be unfortunate, perhaps, from the standpoint of David Hedison, Providence's contribution to Hollywood, who is appearing by special arrangement with 20th Century-Fox.
Not that Mr. Hedison does not make the most of his role.
He does, and more.
But the book is written around a somewhat dizzy cartoonist, and it has to be that way.
A word should be said for Gary Morgan, a Broadway youngster who, as the adopted son, makes life miserable for nearly everybody and Larkin in particular.
And for his playmate, Francis Coletta of West Warwick, who has a bit part, Billy.
On the whole, audiences will like this performance.
It is a tremendous book, lively, constantly moving, and the Matunuck cast does well by it.
The Newport Playhouse presents Epitaph For George Dillon by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton, directed by Wallace Gray.
The cast:
The angriest young man in Newport last night was at the Playhouse, where Epitaph For George Dillon opened as the jazz festival closed.
For the hero of this work by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton is a chap embittered by more than the lack of beer during a jam session.
He's mad at a world he did not make.
Furthermore, he's something of a scoundrel, an artist whose mind and feelings are all finger-tips.
This is in contrast to the family with whom he boards.
They not only think and feel cliches but live cliches as well.
It is into this household, one eroded by irritations that have tortured the souls out of its people, that George Dillon enters at the beginning of the play.
An unsuccessful playwright and actor, he has faith only in himself and in a talent he is not sure exists.
By the end of the third act, the artist is dead but the body lingers on, a shell among other shells.
Not altogether a successful play, Epitaph For George Dillon overcomes through sheer vitality and power what in a lesser work might be crippling.
It is awfully talky, for instance, and not all of the talk is terribly impressive.
But it strikes sparks on occasion and their light causes all else to be forgotten.
There is a fine second act, as an example, one in which Samuel Groom, as Dillon, has an opportunity to blaze away in one impassioned passage after another.
This is an exciting young actor to watch.
Just as exciting but in a more technically proficient way is Laura Stuart, whose complete control of her every movement is lovely to watch.
Miss Stuart is as intensely vibrant as one could wish, almost an icy shriek threatening to explode at any moment.
Also fine are Sue Lawless, as a mother more protective and belligerent than a female spider and just as destructive, Harold Cherry, as her scratchy spouse, and Hildy Weissman, as a vegetable in human form.
Wallace Gray has directed a difficult play here, usually well, but with just a bit too much physical movement in the first act for my taste.
Still, his finale is put together with taste and a most sensitive projection of that pale sustenance, despair.
The Warwick Musical Theater presents Where's Charley?
With music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, directed by Christopher Hewett, choreography by Peter Conlow, musical direction by Samuel Matlowsky.
The cast:
Everybody fell in love with Amy again last night at the Warwick Musical Theater, and Shelley Berman was to blame.
One of the finest soft shoe tunes ever invented, Once In Love With Amy is also, of course, one of the most tantalizingly persistent of light love lyrics to come out of American musical comedy in our era.
So the audience last night was all ears and eyes just after Act 2, got a rousing opening chorus, Where's Charley?
'', and Berman sifted out all alone on the stage with the ambling chords and beat of the song just whispering into being.
It is greatly to Berman's credit that he made no attempt to outdo Ray Bolger.
He dropped his earlier and delightful hamming, which is about the only way to handle the old war horse called Charley's Aunt, and let himself go with as appealing an Amy as anybody could ask.
In brief, Berman played himself and not Bolger.
The big audience started applauding even before he had finished.
The whole production this week is fresh and lively.
The costumes are stunning evocations of the voluminous gowns and picture hats of the Gibson Girl days.
The ballet work is on the nose, especially in the opening number by The New Ashmolean Marching Society and Students' Conservatory Band, along with a fiery and sultry Brazilian fantasia later.
Berman, whose fame has rested in recent years on his skills as a night club monologist, proved himself very much at home in musical comedy.
Sparrow-size Virginia Gibson, with sparkling blue eyes and a cheerful smile, made a suitably perky Amy, while Melisande Congdon, as the real aunt, was positively monumental in the very best Gibson Girl manner.
All told, Where's Charley?
Ought not to be missed.
It has a fast pace, excellent music, expert direction, and not only a good comedian, but an appealing person in his own right, Mr. Berman.
The Broadway Theater League of Rhode Island presents C. Edwin Knill's and Martin Tahse's production of Fiorello!
At Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
The book is by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, choreography by Peter Gennaro, scenery, costumes and lighting by William and Jean Eckart, musical direction by Jack Elliott, and the production was directed by Mr. Abbott.
The cast:
This is one of the happier events of the season.
The company which performed the Pulitzer Prize musical here last night and will repeat it twice today is full of bounce, the politicians are in fine voice, the chorines evoke happy memories, and the Little Flower rides to break a lance again.
I saw Fiorello!
Performed in New York by the original cast and I think this company is every bit as good, and perhaps better.
Certainly in the matter of principals there is nothing lacking.
Then Rudy Bond was simply grand as Ben, the distraught Republican Party district chieftain.
And Paul Lipson, as Morris, the faithful one who never gets home to his Shirley's dinner, was fine, too.
As for the ladies, they were full of charm, and sincerity, and deep and abiding affection for this hurrying driving, honest, little man.
Charlotte Fairchild was excellent as the loyal Marie, who became the second Mrs. LaGuardia, singing and acting with remarkable conviction.
Jen Nelson, as Thea, his first wife, managed to make that short role impressive.
And little Zeme North, a Dora with real spirit and verve, was fascinating whether she was singing of her love for Floyd, the cop who becomes sewer commissioner and then is promoted into garbage, or just dancing to display her exuberant feelings.
Such fascinating novelties in the score as the fugual treatment of On The Side Of The Angels and Politics And Poker were handled splendidly, and I thought Rudy Bond and his band of tuneful ward-heelers made Little Tin Box even better than it was done by the New York cast;
all the words of its clever lyrics came through with perfect clarity.
The party at Floyd's penthouse gave the chorines a chance for a nostalgic frolic through all those hackneyed routines which have become a classic choreographic statement of the era's nonsense.
LaGuardia's multi-lingual rallies, when he is running for Congress, are well staged, and wind up in a wild Jewish folk-dance that is really great musical theater.
Martin Tahse has established quite a reputation for himself as a successful stager of touring productions.
Not a corner has been visibly cut in this one.
The sets are remarkably elaborate for a road-show that doesn't pause long in any one place, and they are devised so that they shift with a minimum of interruption or obtrusiveness.
(Several times recently I have wondered whether shows were being staged for the sake of the script or just to entertain the audience with the spectacle of scenery being shifted right in front of their eyes.
I'm glad to say there's none of that distraction in this Fiorello!
'')
It has all been done in superb style, and the result is a show which deserves the support of every person hereabouts who enjoys good musical theater.
Loew's theater presents Where The Boys Are, an MGM picture produced by Joe Pasternak and directed by Henry Levin from a screenplay by George Wells.
The cast:
Since the hero, a sterling and upright fellow, is a rich Brown senior, while two Yalies are cast as virtual rapists, I suppose I should disqualify myself from sitting in judgment on Where The Boys Are, but I shall do nothing of the sort.
The answers the girls give struck me as reasonably varied and healthily individual.
If most of them weren't exactly specific--well, that's the way it is in life, I guess.
But at least it's reassuring to see some teenagers who don't profess to know all the answers and are thinking about their problems instead.
Where The Boys Are also has a juvenile bounce that makes for a refreshing venture in comedy.
There are some sharp and whipping lines and some hilariously funny situations--the best of the latter being a mass impromptu plunge into a nightclub tank where a mermaid is performing.
Most of the female faces are new, or at least not too familiar.
Dolores Hart, is charming in a leading role, and quite believable.
I was delighted with Paula Prentiss' comedy performance, which was as fresh and unstilted as one's highest hopes might ask.
A couple of the males made good comedy, too--Jim Hutton and Frank Gorshin.
The only performance which was too soft for me was that of Yvette Mimieux, but since someone had to become the victim of despoilers, just to emphasize that such things do happen at these fracases, I suppose this was the attitude the part called for.
I must say, however, that I preferred the acting that had something of a biting edge to it.
To anyone who remembers Newport at its less than maximum violence, this view of what the boys and girls do in the springtime before they wing north for the Jazz Festival ought to prove entertaining.
The second feature, The Price Of Silence, is a British detective story that will talk your head off.
The superb intellectual and spiritual vitality of William James was never more evident than in his letters.
Here was a man with an enormous gift for living as well as thinking.
To both persons and ideas he brought the same delighted interest, the same open-minded relish for what was unique in each, the same discriminating sensibility and quicksilver intelligence, the same gallantry of judgment.
For this latest addition to the Great Letters Series, under the general editorship of Louis Kronenberger, Miss Hardwick has made a selection which admirably displays the variety of James's genius, not to mention the felicities of his style.
And how he could write!
His famous criticism of brother Henry's third style is surely as subtly, even elegantly, worded an analysis of the latter's intricate air castles as Henry himself could ever have produced.
His letter to his daughter on the pains of growing up is surely as trenchant, forthright, and warmly understanding a piece of advice as ever a grown-up penned to a sensitive child, and with just the right tone of unpatronizing good humor.
Most of all, his letters to his philosophic colleagues show a magnanimity as well as an honesty which help to explain Whitehead's reference to James as that adorable genius.
Miss Hardwick speaks of his superb gift for intellectual friendship, and it is certainly a joy to see the intellectual life lived so free from either academic aridity or passionate dogmatism.
This is a virtue of which we have great need in a society where there seems to be an increasing lack of communication--or even desire for communication--between differing schools of thought.
It holds an equally valuable lesson for a society where the word intellectual has become a term of opprobrium to millions of well-meaning people who somehow imagine that it must be destructive of the simpler human virtues.
Of another colleague, George Santayana, he could write: The great event in my life recently has been the reading of Santayana's book.
Although I absolutely reject the Platonism of it, I have literally squealed with delight at the imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down on page after page.
The best condition of it would be an open conflict and rivalry of the diverse systems.
The world might ring with the struggle, if we devoted ourselves exclusively to belaboring each other.
The belaboring is of course jocular, yet James was not lacking in fundamental seriousness--unless we measure him by that ultimate seriousness of the great religious leader or thinker who stakes all on his vision of God.
To James this vision never quite came, despite his appreciation of it in others.
But there is a dignity and even a hint of the inspired prophet in his words to one correspondent: You ask what I am going to'reply'to Bradley.
But why need one reply to everything and everybody?
I think that readers generally hate minute polemics and recriminations.
All polemic of ours should, I believe, be either very broad statements of contrast, or fine points treated singly, and as far as possible impersonally.
As far as the rising generation goes, why not simply express ourselves positively, and trust that the truer view quietly will displace the other.
Here again'God will know his own'''.
The collected works of James Thurber, now numbering 25 volumes (including the present exhibit) represent a high standard of literary excellence, as every schoolboy knows.
The primitive-eclogue quality of his drawings, akin to that of graffiti scratched on a cave wall, is equally well known.
About all that remains to be said is that the present selection, most of which appeared first in The New Yorker, comprises (as usual) a slightly unstrung necklace, held together by little more than a slender thread cunningly inserted in the spine of the book.
The one unifying note, if any, is sounded in the initial article entitled: How To Get Through The Day.
It is repeated at intervals in some rather sadly desperate word-games for insomniacs, the hospitalized, and others forced to rely on inner resources, including (in the P's alone) palindromes, paraphrases, and parodies.
The Tyranny Of Trivia suggests arbitrary alphabetical associations to induce slumber.
And new vistas of hairshirt asceticism are opened by scholarly monographs entitled: Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ear-Muffs, Such a Phrase as Drifts Through Dream, and The New Vocabularianism.
Some of Thurber's curative methods involve strong potions of mixed metaphor, malapropism, and gobbledygook and are recommended for use only in extreme cases.
A burlesque paean entitled: Hark The Herald Tribune, Times, And All The Other Angels Sing brilliantly succeeds in exaggerating even motion-picture ballyhooey.
How The Kooks Crumble features an amusingly accurate take-off on sneaky announcers who attempt to homogenize radio-TV commercials, and The Watchers Of The Night is a veritable waking nightmare.
A semi-serious literary document entitled The Wings Of Henry James is noteworthy, if only for a keenly trenchant though little-known comment on the master's difficult later period by modest Owen Wister, author of The Virginian.
James, he remarks in a letter to a friend, is attempting the impossible namely, to produce upon the reader, as a painting produces upon the gazer, a number of superimposed, simultaneous impressions.
He would like to put several sentences on top of each other so that you could read them all at once, and get all at once, the various shadings and complexities.
Equally penetrating in its fashion is the following remark by a lady in the course of a literary conversation: So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.
Or the mildly epigrammatic utterance (also a quotation): Woman's place is in the wrong.
Who but Thurber can be counted on to glean such nectareous essences?
A tribute to midsummer bang-sashes seems terribly funny, though it would be hard to explain why.
One of them banged the sash of the window nearest my bed around midnight in July and I leaped out of sleep and out of bed.
' It's just a bat ', said my wife reassuringly, and I sighed with relief.
' Thank God for that ', I said;
' I thought it was a human being'''.
In a sense, perhaps, Thurber is indebted artistically to the surrealist painter (was it Salvador Dali?
) who first conceived the startling fancy of a picture window in the abdomen.
That is, it is literally a picture window: you don't see into the viscera;
you see a picture--trees, or flowers.
This is something like what Thurber's best effects are like, if I am not mistaken.
Though no longer able to turn out his protoplasmic pen-and-ink sketches (several old favorites are scattered through the present volume) Thurber has retained unimpaired his vision of humor as a thing of simple, unaffected humanness.
In his concluding paragraph he writes: The devoted writer of humor will continue to try to come as close to truth as he can.
For many readers Thurber comes closer than anyone else in sight.
The latest Low is a puzzler.
The master's hand has lost none of its craft.
He is at his usual best in exposing the shams and self-deceptions of political and diplomatic life in the fifties.
The reader meets a few old friends like Blimp and the TUC horse, and becomes better acquainted with new members of the cast of characters like the bomb itself, and civilization in her classic robe watching the nuclear arms race, her hair standing straight out.
But there is a difference between the present volume and the early Low.
There is fear in the fifties as his title suggests and as his competent drawings show.
But there was terror in the thirties when the Nazis were on the loose and in those days Low struck like lightning.
Anyone can draw his own conclusions from this difference.
It might be argued that the Communists are less inhuman than the Nazis and furnish the artist with drama in a lower key.
But this argument cannot be pushed very far because the Communist system makes up for any shortcomings of its leaders in respect to corrosion.
The Communists wield a power unknown to Hitler.
And the leading issue, that of piecemeal aggression, remains the same.
This is drama enough.
Do we ourselves offer Mr. Low less of a crusade?
In the thirties we would not face our enemy;
that was a nightmarish situation and Low was in his element.
Now we have stood up to the Communists;
we are stronger and more self-confident--and Low cannot so easily put us to rights.
Or does the reason for less Jovian drawings lie elsewhere?
It might be that Low has seen too many stupidities and that they do not outrage him now.
He writes, Confucius held that in times of stress one should take short views--only up to lunchtime.
Whatever the cause, his mood in the fifties rarely rises above the level of the capably sardonic.
Dulles?
He does not seem to have caught the subtleties of the man.
McCarthy?
The skies turn dark but the clouds do not loose their wrath.
Suez?
Low seems to have supported Eden at first and then relented because things worked out differently, so there is no fire in his eye.
Stalin's death, Churchill's farewell to public life, Hillary and Tensing on Everest, Quemoy and Matsu--all subjects for a noble anger or an accolade.
Instead the cartoons seem to deal with foibles.
Their Eisenhower is insubstantial.
Did Low decide to let well enough alone when he made his selections?
He often drew the bomb.
He showed puny men attacked by splendidly tyrannical machines.
And Khrushchev turned out to be prime copy for the most witty caricaturist of them all.
But, but and but.
Look in this book for weak mortals and only on occasion for virtues and vices on the heroic scale.
Read the moderately brief text, not for captions, sometimes for tart epigrams, once in a while for an explosion in the middle of your fixed ideas.
A gray fox with a patch on one eye--confidence man, city slicker, lebensraum specialist--tries to take over Catfish Bend in this third relaxed allegory from Mr. Burman's refreshing Louisiana animal community.
The fox is all ingratiating smiles when he arrives from New Orleans, accompanied by one wharf rat.
But like all despots, as he builds his following from among the gullible, he grows more threatening toward those who won't follow--such solid citizens as Doc Raccoon;
Judge Black, the vegetarian black snake;
and the eagle, who leads the bird community when he is not too busy in Washington posing for fifty-cent pieces.
As soon as the fox has taken hold on most of the populace he imports more wharf rats, who, of course, say they are the aggrieved victims of an extermination campaign in the city.
(The followers of bullies invariably are aggrieved about the very things they plan to do to others.
) They train the mink and other animals to fight.
And pretty soon gray fox is announcing that he won't have anyone around that's against him, and setting out to break his second territorial treaty with the birds.
Robert Hillyer, the poet, writes in his introduction to this brief animal fable that Mr. Burman ought to win a Nobel Prize for the Catfish Bend series.
He may have a point in urging that decadent themes be given fewer prizes.
But it's hard to imagine Mr. Burman as a Nobel laureate on the basis of these charming but not really momentous fables.
In substance they lie somewhere between the Southern dialect animal stories of Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus) and the polished, witty fables of James Thurber.
George Kennan's account of relations between Russia and the West from the fall of Tsarism to the end of World War 2, is the finest piece of diplomatic history that has appeared in many years.
It combines qualities that are seldom found in one work: Scrupulous scholarship, a fund of personal experience, a sense of drama and characterization and a broad grasp of the era's great historical issues.
In short, the book, based largely on lectures delivered at Harvard University, is both reliable and readable;
the author possesses an uncommonly fine English style, and he is dealing with subjects of vast importance that are highly topical for our time.
If Mr. Kennan is sometimes a little somber in his appraisals, if his analysis of how Western diplomacy met the challenge of an era of great wars and social revolutions is often critical and pessimistic--well, the record itself is not too encouraging.
Mr. Kennan takes careful account of every mitigating circumstance in recalling the historical atmosphere in which mistaken decisions were taken.
But he rejects, perhaps a little too sweepingly, the theory that disloyal and pro-Communist influences may have contributed to the policy of appeasing Stalin which persisted until after the end of the war and reached its high point at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945.
After all, Alger Hiss, subsequently convicted of perjury in denying that he gave secret State Department documents to Soviet agents, was at Yalta.
And Harry Dexter White, implicated in F.B.I. reports in Communist associations, was one of the architects of the Morgenthau Plan, which had it ever been put into full operation, would have simply handed Germany to Stalin.
One item in this unhappy scheme was to have Germany policed exclusively by its continental neighbors, among whom only the Soviet Union possessed real military strength.
It is quite probable, however, that stupidity, inexperience and childish adherence to slogans like unconditional surrender had more to do with the unsatisfactory settlements at the end of the war than treason or sympathy with Communism.
Mr. Kennan sums up his judgment of what went wrong this way:
dashed hope
Recognizing that there could have been no effective negotiated peace with Hitler, he points out the shocking failure to give support to the anti-Nazi underground, which very nearly eliminated Hitler in 1944.
The hope was vain.
He also speaks of Franklin D. Roosevelt's puerile assumption that if only he (Stalin) could be exposed to the persuasive charm of someone like F.D.R. himself, ideological preconceptions would melt and Russia's co-operation with the West could be easily arranged.
No wonder Khrushchev's first message to President Kennedy was a wistful desire for the return of the good old days of Roosevelt.
This fascinating story begins with a sketch, rich in personal detail, of the glancing mutual impact of World War 1, and the two instalments of the Russian Revolution.
The first of these involved the replacement of the Tsar by a liberal Provisional Government in March, 1917;
the second, the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks (who later called themselves Communists) in November of the same year.
As Kennan shows, the judgment of the Allied governments about what was happening in Russia was warped by the obsession of defeating Germany.
They were blind to the evidence that nothing could keep the Russian people fighting.
They attributed everything that went wrong in Russia to German influence and intrigue.
This, more than any other factor, led to the fiasco of Allied intervention.
As the author very justly says:
Had a world war not been in progress, there would never, under any conceivable stretch of the imagination, have been an Allied intervention in North Russia.
The scope and significance of this intervention have been grossly exaggerated by Communist propaganda;
here Kennan, operating with precise facts and figures, performs an excellent job of debunking.
Plebian dictators
Of many passages in the book that exemplify the author's vivid style, the characterizations of the two plebeian dictators whose crimes make those of crowned autocrats pale by comparison may be selected.
On Stalin:
This was a man of incredible criminality, of a criminality effectively without limits;
a man apparently foreign to the very experience of love, without mercy or pity;
a man in whose entourage none was ever safe;
a man whose hand was set against all that could not be useful to him at the moment;
a man who was most dangerous of all to those who were his closest collaborators in crime.
And here is Kennan's image of Hitler, Stalin's temporary collaborator in the subjugation and oppression of weaker peoples, and his later enemy:
Two criticisms of this generally admirable and fascinating book involve the treatment of wartime diplomacy which is jagged at the edges--there is no mention of the Potsdam Conference or the Morgenthau Plan.
And in a concluding chapter about America's stance in the contemporary world, one senses certain misplacements of emphasis and a failure to come to grips with the baffling riddle of our time: How to deal with a wily and aggressive enemy without appeasement and without war.
But one should not ask for everything.
Mr. Kennan, who has recently abandoned authorship for a new round of diplomacy as the recently appointed American ambassador to Yugoslavia, is not the only man who finds it easier to portray the past than to prescribe for the future.
The story of a quarter of a century of Soviet-Western relations is vitally important, and it is told with the fire of a first-rate historical narrator.
The Ireland we usually hear about in the theater is a place of bitter political or domestic unrest, lightened occasionally with flashes of native wit and charm.
In Donnybrook, there is quite a different Eire, a rural land where singing, dancing, fist-fighting and romancing are the thing.
There is plenty of violence, to be sure, but it is a nice violence and no one gets killed.
By and large, Robert McEnroe's adaptation of Maurice Walsh's film, The Quiet Man, provides the entertainment it set out to, and we have a lively musical show if not a superlative one.
This is the tale of one John Enright, an American who has accidentally killed a man in the prize ring and is now trying to forget about it in a quiet place where he may become a quiet man.
But Innesfree, where Ellen Roe Danaher and her bullying brother, Will, live, is no place for a man who will not use his fists.
So Enright's courting of the mettlesome Ellen is impeded considerably, thereby providing the tale which is told.
You may be sure he marries her in the end and has a fine old knockdown fight with the brother, and that there are plenty of minor scraps along the way to ensure that you understand what the word Donnybrook means.
Then there is a matchmaker, one Mikeen Flynn, a role for which Eddie Foy was happily selected.
Now there is no reason in the world why a matchmaker in Ireland should happen also to be a talented soft-shoe dancer and gifted improviser of movements of the limbs, torso and neck, except that these talents add immensely to the enjoyment of the play.
Mr. Foy is a joy, having learned his dancing by practicing it until he is practically perfect.
His matchmaking is, naturally, incidental, and it only serves Flynn right when a determined widow takes him by the ear and leads him off to matrimony.
Art Lund, a fine big actor with a great head of blond hair and a good voice, impersonates Enright.
Although he is not graced with the subtleties of romantic technique, that's not what an ex-prize fighter is supposed to have, anyway.
Joan Fagan, a fiery redhead who can impress you that she has a temper whether she really has one or not, plays Ellen, and sings the role very well, too.
If the mettle which Ellen exhibits has a bit of theatrical dross in it, never mind;
she fits into the general scheme well enough.
Susan Johnson, as the widow, spends the first half of the play running a bar and singing about the unlamented death of her late husband and the second half trying to acquire a new one.
She has a good, firm delivery of songs and adds to the solid virtues of the evening.
Then there are a pair of old biddies played by Grace Carney and Sibly Bowan who may be right off the shelf of stock Irish characters, but they put such a combination of good will and malevolence into their parts that they're quite entertaining.
And in the role of Will Danaher, Philip Bosco roars and sneers sufficiently to intimidate not only one American but the whole British army, if he chose.
Donnybrook is no Brigadoon, but it does have some very nice romantic background touches and some excellent dancing.
The ballads are sweet and sad, and the music generally competent.
It sometimes threatens to linger in the memory after the final curtain, and some of it, such as the catchy Sez I, does.
A Toast To The Bride, sung by Clarence Nordstrom, playing a character called Old Man Toomey, is quite simple, direct and touching.
The men of Innesfree are got up authentically in cloth caps and sweaters, and their dancing and singing is fine.
So is that of the limber company of lasses who whirl and glide and quickstep under Jack Cole's expert choreographic direction.
The male dancers sometimes wear kilts and their performance in them is spirited and stimulating.
Rouben Ter-Arutunian, in his stage settings, often uses the scrim curtain behind which Mr. Cole has placed couples or groups who sing and set the mood for the scenes which are to follow.
There is no reason why most theatergoers should not have a pretty good time at Donnybrook, unless they are permanently in the mood of Enright when he sings about how easily he could hate the lovable Irish.
We can all breathe more easily this morning--more easily and joyously, too--because Joshua Logan has turned the stage show, Fanny, into a delightful and heart-warming film.
The task of taking the raw material of Marcel Pagnol's original trio of French films about people of the waterfront in Marseilles and putting them again on the screen, after their passage through the Broadway musical idiom, was a delicate and perilous one, indeed.
More than the fans of Pagnol's old films and of their heroic star, the great Raimu, were looking askance at the project.
The fans of the musical were, too.
But now the task is completed and the uncertainty resolved with the opening of the English-dialogue picture at the Music Hall yesterday.
Whether fan of the Pagnol films or stage show, whether partial to music or not, you can't help but derive joy from this picture if you have a sense of humor and a heart.
Some of the New York Philharmonic musicians who live in the suburbs spent yesterday morning digging themselves free from snow.
A tiny handful never did make the concert.
But, after a fifteen-minute delay, the substantially complete Philharmonic assembled on stage for the afternoon's proceedings.
They faced a rather small audience, as quite a few subscribers apparently had decided to forego the pleasures of the afternoon.
It was an excellent concert.
Paul Paray, rounding out his current stint with the orchestra, is a solid musician, and the Philharmonic plays for him.
Their collaboration in the Beethoven Second Symphony was lucid, intelligent and natural sounding.
It was not a heavy, ponderous Beethoven.
The music sang nicely, sprinted evenly when necessary, was properly accented and balanced.
The Franck symphonic poem, Psyche, is a lush, sweet-sounding affair that was pleasant to encounter once again.
Fortunate for the music itself, it is not too frequent a visitor;
if it were, its heavily chromatic harmonies would soon become cloying.
Mr. Paray resisted the temptation to over-emphasize the melodic elements of the score.
He did not let the strings, for instance, weep, whine or get hysterical.
His interpretation was a model of refinement and accuracy.
And in the Prokofieff C major Piano Concerto, with Zadel Skolovsky as soloist, he was an admirable partner.
Mr. Skolovsky's approach to the concerto was bold, sweeping and tonally percussive.
He swept through the music with ease, in a non-sentimental and ultra-efficient manner.
An impressive technician, Mr. Skolovsky has fine rhythm, to boot.
His tone is the weakest part of his equipment;
it tends to be hard and colorless.
A school of thought has it that those attributes are exactly what this concerto needs.
It is, after all, a non-romantic work (even with the big, juicy melody of the second movement);
and the composer himself was called the age of steel pianist.
But granted all this, one still would have liked to have heard a little more tonal nuance than Mr. Skolovsky supplied.
Taken as a whole, though, it was a strong performance from both pianist and orchestra.
Mr. Skolovsky fully deserved the warm reception he received.
A new work on the program was Nikolai Lopatnikoff's Festival Overture, receiving its first New York hearing.
This was composed last year as a salute to the automobile industry.
It is not program music, though.
It runs a little more than ten minutes, is workmanlike, busy, methodical and featureless.
La Gioconda, like it or not, is a singer's opera.
And so, of course, it is a fan's opera as well.
Snow or no, the fans were present in force at the Metropolitan Opera last night for a performance of the Ponchielli work.
So the plot creaks, the sets are decaying, the costumes are pre-historic, the orchestra was sloppy and not very well connected with what the singers were doing.
After all, the opera has juicy music to sing and the goodies are well distributed, with no less than six leading parts.
One of those parts is that of evil, evil Barnaba, the spy.
His wicked deeds were carried on by Anselmo Colzani, who was taking the part for the first time with the company.
He has the temperament and the stage presence for a rousing villain and he sang with character and strong tone.
What was lacking was a real sense of phrase, the kind of legato singing that would have added a dimension of smoothness to what is, after all, a very oily character.
Regina Resnik as Laura and Cesare Siepi as Alvise also were new to the cast, but only with respect to this season;
they have both sung these parts here before.
Laura is a good role for Miss Resnik, and she gave it force, dramatic color and passion.
Mr. Siepi was, as always, a consummate actor;
with a few telling strokes he characterized Alvise magnificently.
Part of this characterization was, of course, accomplished with the vocal chords.
His singing was strong and musical;
unfortunately his voice was out of focus and often spread in quality.
Eileen Farrell in the title role, Mignon Dunn as La Cieca and Richard Tucker as Enzo were holdovers from earlier performances this season, and all contributed to a vigorous performance.
If only they and Fausto Cleva in the pit had got together a bit more.
Melodious birds sing madrigals saith the poet and no better description of the madrigaling of the Deller Consort could be imagined.
Their Vanguard album Madrigal Masterpieces (BG 609;
stereo BGS 5031) is a good sample of the special, elegant art of English madrigal singing.
It also makes a fine introduction to the international art form with good examples of Italian and English madrigals plus several French chansons.
The English have managed to hold onto their madrigal tradition better than anyone else.
The original impulses came to England late (in the sixteenth century) and continue strong long after everyone else had gone on to the baroque basso continuo, sonatas, operas and the like.
Even after Elizabethan traditions were weakened by the Cromwellian interregnum, the practice of singing together--choruses, catches and glees--always flourished.
The English never again developed a strong native music that could obliterate the traces of an earlier great age the way, say, the opera in Italy blotted out the Italian madrigal.
Early interest
Latter-day interest in Elizabethan singing dates well back into the nineteenth century in England, much ahead of similar revivals in other countries.
As a result no comparable literature of the period is better known and better studied nor more often performed than the English madrigal.
Naturally, Mr. Deller and the other singers in his troupe are most charming and elegant when they are squarely in their tradition and singing music by their countrymen: William Byrd, Thomas Morley and Thomas Tomkins.
There is an almost instrumental quality to their singing, with a tendency to lift out important lines and make them lead the musical texture.
Both techniques give the music purity and clarity.
Claude Jannequin's vocal description of a battle (the French equivalents of tarantara, rum-tum-tum, and boom-boom-boom are very picturesque) is lots of fun, and the singers get a sense of grace and shape into other chansons by Jannequin and Lassus.
Only with the more sensual, intense and baroque expressions of Marenzio, Monteverdi and Gesualdo does the singing seem a little superficial.
Nevertheless, the musicality, accuracy and infectious charm of these performances, excellently reproduced, make it an attractive look-see at the period.
The works are presented chronologically.
Texts and translations are provided.
Elegance and color
The elements of elegance and color in Jannequin are strong French characteristics.
Baroque instrumental music in Italy and Germany tends to be strong, lively, intense, controlled and quite abstract.
In France, it remained always more picturesque, more dancelike, more full of flavor.
Couperin and Rameau gave titles to nearly everything they wrote, not in the later sense of program music but as a kind of nonmusical reference for the close, clear musical forms filled with keen wit and precise utterance.
Both composers turn up on new imports from France.
BAM is the unlikely name of a French recording company whose full label is Editions De La boite A Musique.
They specialize in out-of-the-way items and old French music naturally occupies a good deal of their attention.
Sonates et Concerts Royaux of Couperin Le Grand occupy two disks (LD056 and LD060) and reveal the impeccable taste and workmanship of this master--delicate, flexible and gemlike.
The Concerts--nos. 2, 6, 9, 10 and 14 are represented--are really closer to chamber suites than to concertos in the Italian sense.
The sonatas, La Francaise, La Sultane, L'Astree and L'Imperiale, are often more elaborately worked out and, in fact, show a strong Italian influence.
Couperin also turns up along with some lesser-known contemporaries on a disk called Musique Francaise Du 18e Siecle (BAM LD 060).
Jean-Marie LeClair still is remembered a bit, but Bodin De Beismortier, Corrette and Mondonville are hardly household words.
What is interesting about these chamber works here is how they all reveal the aspect of French music that was moving toward the rococo.
The Couperin La Steinkerque, with its battle music, brevity, wit and refined simplicity, already shakes off Corelli and points towards the mid-century elegances that ended the baroque era.
If Couperin shows the fashionable trend, the others do so all the more.
All these records have close, attractive sound and the performances by a variety of instrumentalists is characteristic.
Rameau's Six Concerts En Sextuor, recorded by L'orchestre De Chambre Pierre Menet (BAM LD 046), turn out to be harpsichord pieces arranged for strings apparently by the composer himself.
The strange, delightful little character pieces with their odd and sometimes inexplicable titles are still evocative and gracious.
Maitres Allemands Des 17e et 18e Siecles contains music by Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Rosenmueller and Telemann, well performed by the Ensemble Instrumental Sylvie Spycket (BAM LD 035).
Rococo music--a lot of it--was played in Carnegie Recital Hall on Saturday night in the first of four concerts being sponsored this season by a new organization known as Globe Concert Arts.
Works by J. C. Bach, Anton Craft, Joseph Haydn, Giuseppe Sammartini, Comenico Dragonetti and J. G. Janitsch were performed by seven instrumentalists including Anabel Brieff, flutist, Josef Marx, oboist, and Robert Conant, pianist and harpsichordist.
Since rococo music tends to be pretty and elegant above all, it can seem rather vacuous to twentieth-century ears that have grown accustomed to the stress and dissonances of composers from Beethoven to Boulez.
Thus there was really an excess of eighteenth-century charm as one of these light-weight pieces followed another on Saturday night.
Each might find a useful place in a varied musical program, but taken together they grew quite tiresome.
The performances were variable, those of the full ensemble being generally satisfying, some by soloists proving rather trying.
Ellie Mao, soprano, and Frederick Fuller, baritone, presented a program of folksongs entitled East Meets West in Carnegie Recital Hall last night.
They were accompanied by Anna Mi Lee, pianist.
Selections from fifteen countries were sung as solos and duets in a broad range of languages.
Songs from China and Japan were reserved exclusively for Miss Mao, who is a native of China, and those of the British Isles were sung by Mr. Fuller, who is English by birth.
This was not a program intended to illustrate authentic folk styles.
On the contrary, Miss Mao and Mr. Fuller chose many of their arrangements from the works of composers such as Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Canteloube, Copland and Britten.
There was, therefore, more musical substance in the concert than might have been the case otherwise.
The performances were assured, communicative and pleasingly informal.
What was omitted from A Neglected Education were those essentials known as the facts of life.
Chabrier's little one-act operetta, presented yesterday afternoon at Town Hall, is a fragile, precious little piece, very French, not without wit and charm.
The poor uneducated newlywed, a certain Gontran De Boismassif, has his problems in getting the necessary information.
The humor of the situation can be imagined.
It all takes place in the eighteenth century.
What a silly, artificial way of life, Chabrier and his librettists chuckle.
But they wish they could bring it back.
Chabrier's delightful music stands just at the point where the classical, rationalist tradition, (handed down to Chabrier largely in the form of operetta and salon music) becomes virtually neo-classicism.
The musical cleverness and spirit plus a strong sense of taste and measure save a wry little joke from becoming either bawdy or mawkish.
The simple, clever production was also able to tread the thin line between those extremes.
Arlene Saunders was charming as poor Gontran.
Yes, Arlene is her name;
the work uses the old eighteenth-century tradition of giving the part of a young inexperienced youth to a soprano.
Benita Valente was delightful as the young wife and John Parella was amusing as the tutor who failed to do all his tutoring.
The work was presented as the final event in the Town Hall Festival of Music.
It was paired with a Darius Milhaud opera, The Poor Sailor, set to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, a kind of Grand Guignol by the sea, a sailor returns, unrecognized, and gets done in by his wife.
With the exception of a few spots, Milhaud's music mostly churns away with his usual collection of ditties, odd harmonies, and lumbering, satiric orchestration.
Had a funny experience at Newport yesterday afternoon.
Sat there and as a woman sang, she kept getting thinner and thinner, right before my eyes, and the eyes of some 5,500 other people.
I make this observation about the lady, Miss Judy Garland, because she brought up the subject herself in telling a story about a British female reporter who flattered her terribly in London recently and then wrote in the paper the next day:
Judy Garland has arrived in London.
She's not chubby.
She's not plump.
She's fat.
But who cares, when the lady sings?
Certainly not the largest afternoon audience Newport has ever had at a jazz concert and the most attentive and quiet.
They applauded every number, not only at its conclusion but also at the first statement of the theme--sometimes at the first chord.
And Judy sang the lovely old familiar things which seemed, at times, a blessed relief from the way-out compositions of the progressive jazzmen who have dominated these proceedings.
Things like When You're Smiling, Almost Like Being In Love, Do It Again, Born To Wander, Alone Together, Who Cares?
'', Puttin' On The Ritz, How Long Has This Been Going On?
And her own personal songs like The Man That Got Away, and the inevitable Over The Rainbow.
Miss Garland is not only one of the great singers of our time but she is one of the superb showmen.
At the start of her program there were evidences of pique.
She had held to the letter of her contract and didn't come onto the stage until well after 4 p.m., the appointed hour, although the Music at Newport people had tried to get the program underway at 3.
Then there was a bad delay in getting Mort Lindsey's 30-piece orchestra wedged into its chairs.
Along about 4:30, just when it was getting to be about time to turn the audience over and toast them on the other side, Judy came on singing, in a short-skirted blue dress with a blue and white jacket that flapped in the wind.
Her bouffant coiffure was fortunately combed on the left which happened to be the direction from which a brisk breeze was blowing.
In her first song she waved away one encroaching photographer who dared approach the throne unbidden and thereafter the boys with the cameras had to unsheathe their 300 mm. lenses and shoot at extreme range.
There also came a brief contretemps with the sound mixers who made the mistake of being overheard during a quiet moment near the conclusion of Do It Again, and she made the tart observation that I never saw so much moving about in an audience.
But it didn't take Judy Garland, showman, long to realize that this sort of thing was par for the course at Newport and that you have to learn to live with it.
Before her chore was finished she was rescuing wind-blown sheets of music, trundling microphones about the stage, helping to move the piano and otherwise joining in the informal atmosphere.
And time after time she really belted out her songs.
Sometimes they struck me as horribly over-arranged--which was the way I felt about her Come Rain or Come Shine--and sometimes they were just plain magnificent, like her shatteringly beautiful Beautiful Weather.
To her partisan audience, such picayune haggling would have seemed nothing more than a critic striving to hold his franchise;
they just sat back on their haunches and cried for more, as though they could never get enough.
They were rewarded with splendid, exciting, singing.
Her Rockabye Your Baby was as good as it can be done, and her really personal songs, like The Man That Got Away were deeply moving.
The audience wouldn't let her leave until it had heard Over The Rainbow--although the fellow that kept crying for Get Happy had to go home unhappy, about that item anyway.
She was generous with her encores and the audience was equally so with its cheers and applause and flowers.
All went home happy except the Newport police, who feared that the throng departing at 6:35 might meet head-on the night crowd drawing nigh, and those deprived of their happy hour at the cocktail bar.
In Newport last night there were flashes of distant lightning in the northern skies.
This was perhaps symbolic of the jazz of the evening--flashes in the distance, but no storm.
Several times it came near breaking, and there were in fact some lovely peals of thunder from Jerry Mulligan's big band, which is about as fine an aggregation as has come along in the jazz business since John Hammond found Count Basie working in a Kansas City trap.
Mulligan's band has been infected with his solid sense of swing, and what it does seems far more meaningful than most of the noise generated by the big concert aggregations.
But what is equally impressive is the delicacy and wonderful lyric quality of both the band and Mulligan's baritone sax in a fragile ballad like Bob Brookmeyer's arrangement of Django's Castle.
For subtle swinging rhythms, I could admire intensely Mulligan's version of Weep, and the fireworks went on display in 18 Carrots For Robert, a sax tribute to Johnny Hodges.
There was considerable contrast between this Mulligan performance and that of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, who are able to generate a tremendous sound for such a small group.
Unfortunately, Blakey doesn't choose to work much of the time in this vein.
He prefers to have his soloist performing and thus we get only brief glimpses of what his ensemble work is like.
What we did get, however, was impressive.
A few drops of rain just before midnight, when Sarah Vaughan was in the midst of her first number, scattered the more timid members of the audience briefly, but at this hour and with Sarah on the stand, most of the listeners didn't care whether they got wet.
Miss Vaughan was back in top form, somehow mellowed and improved with the passage of time--like a fine wine.
After the spate of female vocalists we have been having, all of whom took Sarah as a point of departure and then tried to see what they could do that might make her seem old hat, it seemed that all that has happened is to make the real thing seem better than ever.
Jazz Three open program
The evening program was opened by the Jazz Three, a Newport group consisting of Steve Budieshein on bass, Jack Warner, drums, and Don Cook, piano.
This was a continuation of a good idea which was first tried out Saturday night when the Eddie Stack group, also local talent, went on first.
Putting on local musicians at this place in the program serves a triple purpose: it saves the top flight jazz men from being wasted in this unenviable spot, when the audience is cold, restless, and in flux;
it prevents late-comers from missing some of the people they have come a long way to hear, and it gives the resident musicians a chance to perform before the famous Newport audience.
Julie Wilson sings
Julie Wilson, a vigorous vocalist without many wild twists, sang a set, a large part of which consisted of such seldom heard old oldies as Hard-Hearted Hannah, The Vamp Of Savannah, and the delightful Sunday.
She frosted the cake with the always reliable Bill Bailey.
From this taste of the 1920s, we leaped way out to Stan Getz's private brand of progressive jazz, which did lovely, subtle things for Baubles, Bangles And Beads, and a couple of ballards.
Getz is a difficult musician to categorize.
He plays his sax principally for beauty of tone, rather than for scintillating flights of meaningless improvisations, and he has a quiet way of getting back and restating the melody after the improvising is over.
In this he is sticking with tradition, however far removed from it he may seem to be.
Shearing takes over
George Shearing took over with his well disciplined group, a sextet consisting of vibes, guitar, bass, drums, Shearing's piano and a bongo drummer.
He met with enthusiastic audience approval, especially when he swung from jazz to Latin American things like the Mambo.
Shearing, himself, seemed to me to be playing better piano than in his recent Newport appearances.
Divided almost equally into two parts, it consisted of The Evolution Of The Blues, narrated by Jon Hendricks, who had presented it last year at the Monterey, Calif., Jazz Festival, and an hour-long session of Maynard Ferguson and his orchestra, a blasting big band.
Hendricks' story was designed for children and he had a small audience of small children right on stage with him.
Tracing the blues from its African roots among the slaves who were brought to this country and the West Indies, he stressed the close relationship between the early jazz forms and the music of the Negro churches.
Surprise addition
Demonstrating the primitive African rhythmic backgrounds of the Blues was Michael Babatunde Olatunji, who plays such native drums as the konga and even does a resounding job slapping his own chest.
He has been on previous Newport programs and was one of the sensations of last year's afternoon concerts.
Hendricks had Billy Mitchell, tenor sax;
Pony Poindexter, alto sax;
Jimmy Witherspoon, Blues singer (and a good one), and the Ike Isaacs Trio, which has done such wonderful work for two afternoons now, helping him with the musical examples.
It all went very well.
Pianists who are serious about their work are likely to know the interesting material contained in Schubert's Sonatas.
Music lovers who are not familiar with this literature may hear an excellent example, played for RCA by Emil Gilels.
He has chosen Sonata Op. 53 in Aj.
The playing takes both sides of the disc.
Perhaps one of the reasons these Sonatas are not programmed more often is their great length.
Rhythmic interest, melodic beauty and the expansiveness of the writing are all qualities which hold one's attention with the Gilels playing.
His technique is ample and his musical ideas are projected beautifully.
The male chorus of the Robert Shaw Chorale sings Sea Shanties in fine style.
The group is superbly trained.
What a discussion can ensue when the title of this type of song is in question.
Do you say chantey, as if the word were derived from the French word chanter, to sing, or do you say shanty and think of a roughly built cabin, which derives its name from the French-Canadian use of the word chantier, with one of its meanings given as a boat-yard?
I say chantey.
Either way, the Robert Shaw chorus sings them in fine style with every colorful word and its musical frame spelled out in terms of agreeable listening.
If your favorite song is not here it must be an unfamiliar one.
The London label offers an operatic recital by Ettore Bastianini, a baritone whose fame is international.
Murray Louis and his dance company appeared at the Henry Street Playhouse on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons in the premiere of his latest work, Signal, and the repetition of an earlier one, Journal.
Signal is choreographed for three male dancers to an electronic score by Alwin Nikolais.
Its abstract decor is by John Hultberg.
Program note reads as follows:
Take hands;
this urgent visage beckons us.
Here, as in Journal, Mr. Louis has given himself the lion's share of the dancing, and there is no doubt that he is capable of conceiving and executing a wide variety of difficult and arresting physical movements.
Indeed, both Journal and Signal qualify as instructive catalogues of modern-dance calisthenics.
But chains of movements are not necessarily communicative, and it is in the realm of communication that the works prove disappointing.
One frequently has the feeling that the order of their movement combinations could be transposed without notable loss of effect, there is too little suggestion of organic relationship and development.
It may be, of course, that Mr. Louis is consciously trying to create works that anticipate an age of total automation.
But it may be, also, that he is merely more mindful of athletics than of esthetics at the present time.
One thing is certain, however, and that is that he is far more slavish to the detailed accents, phrasings and contours of the music he deals with than a confident dance creator need be.
' an American journey '
A brisk, satirical spoof of contemporary American mores entitled An American Journey was given its first New York performance at Hunter College Playhouse last night by the Helen Tamiris-Daniel Nagrin Dance Company.
Choreographed by Mr. Nagrin, the work filled the second half of a program that also offered the first New York showing of Miss Tamiris' Once Upon A Time as well as her Women's Song and Mr. Nagrin's Indeterminate Figure.
Eugene Lester assembled a witty and explicit score for An American Journey, and Malcolm McCormick gave it sprightly imaginative costumes.
Mr. Nagrin has described four places, each with its scenery and people, added two diversions, and concluded with A Toccata for the Young, a refreshingly underplayed interpretation of rock'n'roll dancing.
The places could be anywhere, the idiosyncrasies and foibles observed there could be anybody's, and the laugh is on us all.
But we need not mind too much, because Mr. Nagrin has expressed it through movement that is diverting and clever almost all the way.
Miss Tamiris' Once Upon A Time is a problem piece about a man and a woman and the three figures that bother them somehow.
Unfortunately, the man and woman were not made to appear very interesting at the outset and the menacing figures failed to make them any more so.
Nor did the dancing involved really seize the attention at any time.
The music here, Russell Smith's Tetrameron, sounded good.
All the performances of the evening were smooth and assured, and the sizable company, with Mr. Nagrin and Marion Scott as its leading dancers, seemed to be fine shape.
The Symphony Of The Air, greatly assisted by Van Cliburn, last night got its seven-concert Beethoven cycle at Carnegie Hall off to a good start.
At the same time the orchestra announced that next season it would be giving twenty-five programs at Carnegie, and that it would be taking these concerts to the suburbs, repeating each of them in five different communities.
This news, announced by Jerome Toobin, the orchestra's administrative director, brought applause from the 2,800 persons who filled the hall.
They showed they were glad that Carnegie would have a major orchestra playing there so often next season to take up the slack with the departure to Lincoln Center of the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Symphony.
This season the orchestra has already taken a step toward the suburbs in that it is giving six subscription concerts for the Orchestral Society of Westchester in the County Center in White Plains.
The details of the suburban concerts next season, and the centers in which they will be given, will be announced later, Mr. Toobin said.
The concertos that Van Cliburn has been associated with in New York since his triumphant return from Russia in 1958 have been the Tchaikovsky, the Rachmaninoff Third, and the Prokofieff Third.
It was pleasant last night, therefore, to hear him do something else: a concerto he has recently recorded, The Emperor.
The young Texas pianist can make great chords ring out as well as anyone, so last night the massive sonorities of this challenging concerto were no hazard to him.
But they were not what distinguished his performance.
The elements that did were the introspective slow movement, the beautiful transition to the third movement, and the passages of filigree that laced through the bigger moments of the opening movement and the final Rondo.
Mr. Cliburn gave the slow movement some of the quality of a Chopin Nocturne.
Alfred Wallenstein, the conductor, sensitive accompanist that he is, picked up the idea and led the orchestra here with a sense of brooding, poetic mystery.
The collaboration was remarkable, as it was in both the other movements, too.
Mr. Wallenstein, who will lead all of the concerts in the cycle, also conducted the Leonore Overture No. 3 and the Fourth Symphony.
The orchestra was obviously on its mettle and it played most responsively.
And although there was plenty of vigor in the performance, the ensemble was at its best when the playing was soft and lyrical, yet full of the suppressed tension that is one of the hallmarks of Beethoven.
Igor Oistrakh will be the next soloist on Feb. 4.
There are times when one suspects that the songs that are dropped from musical shows before they reach Broadway may really be better than many of those that are left in.
In the more casually constructed musicals of the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties there would seem to have been less reason for eliminating a song of merit.
Yet there is the classic case of the Gershwins' The Man I Love.
Deemed too static when it was first heard in Lady Be Good in Philadelphia in 1924, it was dropped from the score.
It was heard again in Philadelphia in 1927 in the first version of Strike Up The Band and again abandoned shortly before the entire show was given up.
It finally reached Broadway in the second and successful version of Strike Up The Band in 1929.
(Still another song in Strike Up The Band--I've Got A Crush On You--was retrieved from a 1928 failure, Treasure Girl.
second chance
Like the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were loath to let a good song get away from them.
If one of Mr. Rodgers' melodies seemed to deserve a better fate than interment in Boston or the obscurity of a Broadway failure, Mr. Hart was likely to deck it out with new lyrics to give it a second chance in another show.
Among the particular gems in this collection is the impudent opening song of The Garrick Gaieties, an impressive forecast of the wit and melody that were to come from Rodgers and Hart in the years that followed;
Dorothy Loudon's raucous listing of the attractions At The Roxy Music Hall from I Married An Angel;
and the incisive style with which Charlotte Rae delivers the top-drawer Hart lyrics of I Blush, a song that was cut from A Connecticut Yankee.
Altogether fifteen virtually unknown Rodgers and Hart songs are sung by a quintet of able vocalists.
Norman Paris has provided them with extremely effective orchestral accompaniment
Turning to the current musical season on Broadway, the most widely acclaimed of the new arrivals, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, has been transferred to an original cast album (R. C. A. Victor LOC 1066;
stereo LSO 1066) that has some entertaining moments, although it is scarcely as inventive as the praise elicited by the show might lead one to expect.
Robert Morse, singing with comically plaintive earnestness, carries most of the burden and is responsible for the high spots in Frank Loesser's score.
Rudy Vallee, who shares star billing with Mr. Morse, makes only two appearances.
He shares with Mr. Morse a parody of the college anthems he once sang while his second song is whisked away from him by Virginia Martin, a girl with a remarkably expressive yip in her voice.
In general, Mr. Loesser has done a more consistent job as lyricist than he has as composer.
Like Mr. Loesser, Jerry Herman is both composer and lyriist for Milk And Honey (R. C. A. Victor LOC 1065;
stereo LSO 1065), but in this case it is the music that stands above the lyrics.
For this story of an American couple who meet and fall in love in Israel, Mr. Herman has written songs that are warmly melodious and dance music that sparkles.
Resourceful voices
There are the full-bodied, resourceful voices of Robert Weede, Mimi Benzell and Tommy Rall to make the most of Mr. Herman's lilting melodies and, for an occasional change of pace, the bright humor of Molly Picon.
Mr. Herman has managed to mix musical ideas drawn from Israel and the standard American ballad style in a manner that stresses the basic tunefulness of both idioms.
Not content to create only the music and lyrics, Noel Coward also wrote the book and directed Sail Away (Capitol WAO 1643;
stereo SWAO 1643), a saga of life on a cruise ship that is not apt to be included among Mr. Coward's more memorable works.
The melodies flow along pleasantly, as Mr. Coward's songs usually do, but his lyrics have a tired, cut-to-a-familiar-pattern quality.
Elaine Stritch, who sings with a persuasively warm huskiness, belts some life into most of her songs, but the other members of the cast sound as lukewarm as Mr. Coward's songs.
With three fine Russian films in recent months on World War 2,--The House I Live In, The Cranes Are Flying and Ballad Of A Soldier--we had every right to expect a real Soviet block-buster in The Day The War Ended.
It simply isn't, not by a long shot.
The Artkino presentation, with English titles, opened on Saturday at the Cameo Theatre.
Make no mistake, this Gorky Studio drama is a respectable import--aptly grave, carefully written, performed and directed.
In describing the initial Allied occupation of a middle-sized German city, the picture has color, pictorial pull and genuinely moving moments.
Told strictly from the viewpoint of the Russian conquerors, the film compassionately peers over the shoulders of a smitten Soviet couple, at both sides of the conflict's aftermath.
Unfortunately, the whole picture hinges on this romance, at the expense of everything else.
Tenderly and rather tediously, the camera rivets on the abrupt, deep love of a pretty nurse and a uniformed teacher, complicated by nothing more than a friend they don't want to hurt.
It's the old story, war or no war, and more than one viewer may recall Hollywood's Titanic, several seasons back, when the paramount concern was for the marital discord of a society dilettante.
Not that the picture is superficial.
Under Yakov Segal's direction, it begins stirringly, as crouching Soviet and Nazi troops silently scan each other, waiting for the first surrender gesture.
One high-up camera shot is magnificent, as the Germans straggle from a cathedral, dotting a huge, cobblestone square, and drop their weapons.
Ring Of Bright Water, by Gavin Maxwell.
211 pages.
Dutton.
A5.
Only once in a very long while comes a book that gives the reader a magic sense of sharing a rare experience.
Ring Of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell is just that--a haunting, warmly personal chronicle of a man, an otter, and a remote cottage in the Scottish West Highlands.
He has married me with a ring of bright water, begins the Kathleen Raine poem from which Maxwell takes his title, and it is this mystic bond between the human and natural world that the author conveys.
The place is Camusfearna, the site of a long-vanished sea-village opposite the isle of Skye.
It is a land of long fjords, few people, a single-lane road miles away--and of wild stags, Greylag geese, wild swans, dolphins and porpoises playing in the waters.
How Maxwell recounts his first coming to Camusfearna, his furnishing the empty house with beach-drift, the subtle changes in season over ten years, is a moving experience.
Just the evocations of time and place, of passionate encounter between man and a natural world which today seems almost lost, would be enough.
But it isn't.
There is Mijbil, an otter who travelled with Maxwell--and gave Maxwell's name to a new species--from the Tigris marshes to his London flat.
It may sound extravagant to say that there has never been a more engaging animal in all literature.
Mij, as his owner was soon to learn, had strange, inexplicable habits.
He liked to nip ear lobes of unsuspecting visitors with his needle-sharp teeth.
He preferred sleeping in bed with his head on a pillow.
Systematically he would open and ransack drawers.
Given a small ball or marbles, he would invent games and play by himself for hours.
With curiosity and elan, he explored every inch of glen, beach and burn, once stranding himself for hours on a ledge high up a sheer seventy-foot cliff and waiting with calm faith to be rescued by Maxwell, who nearly lost his life in doing so.
A year and a day of this idyll is described for the reader, one in which not only discovery of a new world of personality is charted, but self-discovery as well.
In the solitude of Camusfearna there had been no loneliness.
To be quite alone where there are no other human beings is sharply exhilarating;
it is as though some pressure had suddenly been lifted, allowing an intense awareness a sharpening of the senses.
Now, with the increasing interdependence between himself and Mij came a knowledge of an obscure need, that of being trusted implicitly by some creature.
Two other people in time shared Mijbil's love: it remained around us three that his orb revolved when he was not away in his own imponderable world of wave and water;
we were his Trinity, and he behaved towards us with a mixture of trust and abuse, passion and irritation.
In turn each of us in our own way depended, as gods do, upon his worship.
Yet the idyll ended.
The brief details of Mijbil's death lend depth to the story, give it an edge of ironic tragedy.
Man, to whom Mij gave endless affection and fealty, was responsible in the form of a road worker with a pickaxe who somehow becomes an abstract symbol of the savage in man.
But then, through a strange coincidence, Maxwell manages to acquire Idal, a female otter, and the fascinating story starts once more.
This reviewer read the book when it was first brought out in England with a sense of discovery and excitement.
Now Gavin Maxwell's Ring Of Bright Water has widened to enchant the world.
New York
-- The performances of the Comedie Francaise are the most important recent events in the New York theater.
They serve to contradict a popular notion that the Comedie merely repeats, as accurately as possible, the techniques of acting the classics that prevailed in the 17th century.
On the contrary, the old plays are continually being reinterpreted, and each new production of a classic has only a brief history at the Comedie.
Of course, the well-received revivals last longer than the others, and that further reminds us that the Comedie is not insensitive to criticism.
The directors of the Comedie do not respond to adverse notices in as docile and subservient a manner as the Broadway producers who, in two instances this season, closed their plays after one performance.
But they are aware of the world outside, they court public approval, they delight in full houses, and they occasionally dare to experiment in interpreting a dramatic classic.
In France, novel approaches to the classic French plays are frequently attempted.
The government pays a subsidy for revival of the classics, and this policy attracts experimenters who sometimes put Moliere's characters in modern dress and often achieve interesting results.
So far as I know, the Comedie has never put Moliere's people in the costumes of the 20th century, but they do reinterpret plays and characters.
Last season, the Comedie's two principal experiments came to grief, and, in consequence, we can expect fairly soon to see still newer productions of Racine's Phedre and Moliere's School For Wives.
The new Phedre was done in 17th century setting, instead of ancient Greek;
perhaps that is the Comedie's equivalent for thrusting this play's characters into our own time.
The speaking of the lines seemed excessively slow and stately, possibly in an effort to capture the spirit of 17th century elegance.
A few literary men defended what they took to be an emphasis on the poetry at the expense of the drama, but the response was mainly hostile and quite violent.
The new School For Wives was interpreted according to a principle that is becoming increasingly common in the playing of classic comedy--the idea of turning some obviously ludicrous figure into a tragic character.
Among the Moliere specialists of some years ago, Louis Jouvet tried to humanize some of the clowns, while Fernand Ledoux, often performing at the Comedie, made them more gross than Moliere may have intended.
Apparently, Jouvet and Ledoux attempted just these dissimilar approaches in the role of Arnolphe in The School For Wives.
I say apparently although I saw Jouvet as Arnolphe when he visited this country shortly before his death;
by that time, he seemed to have dropped the tragic playing of the last moments of the comedy.
Arnolphe, it will be recalled, is a man of mature years who tries to preserve the innocence of his youthful wife-to-be.
The part can lend itself to serious treatment;
one influential French critic remarked: Pity for Arnolphe comes with age.
Accordingly, at the Comedie last year, Jean Meyer played a sympathetic Arnolphe and drew criticism for turning the comedy into a tragedy.
But the stuff of tragedy was not truly present and the play became only comedy acted rather slowly.
Wisely, the Comedie has brought Moliere's Tartuffe on its tour and has left The School For Wives at home.
Tartuffe is the religious hypocrite who courts his benefactor's wife.
Jouvet played him as a sincere zealot, and Ledoux, at the Comedie, made him a gross buffoon, or so the historians tell us.
Louis Seigner, who formerly played the deluded benefactor opposite Ledoux, is the Tartuffe of the present production, which he himself directed.
His Tartuffe observes the golden mean.
His red face, his coarse gestures, and his lustful stares bespeak his sensuality.
But his heavenward glances and his pious speeches are not merely perfunctory;
of course, they do not reflect sincerity, but they exhibit a concern to make a good job out of his pious impersonation.
Occasionally, Seigner draws some justly deserved laughs by his quick shifts from one personality to another.
The whole role, by the way, is a considerable transformation for anyone who has seen Seigner in his other parts.
His normal specialty is playing the good-natured old man, frequently stupid or deluded but never mean or sly.
Here, he is, quite persuasively, the very embodiment of meanness and slyness.
Seigner is the dean of the company, the oldest actor in point of continuous service.
In that function, he helps to rebut another legend about the Comedie.
We are often told that the Comedie has, unfortunately, life-contracts with old actors who are both mediocre and lazy, drawing their pay without much acting but probably doing real service to the Comedie by staying off the stage.
Seigner, however, is a fine actor and probably the busiest man in the company;
among his other parts are the leads in The Bourgeois Gentleman and The Imaginary Invalid.
In Moliere's farce, The Tricks Of Scapin, Robert Hirsch undertakes another of the great roles.
Here some innovation is attempted.
To begin with, Scapin is a trickster in the old tradition of the clever servant who plots the strategy of courtship for his master.
Hirsch's Scapin is healthy, cheerful, energetic, revelling in his physical agility and his obvious superiority to the young gentlemen whom he serves.
Hirsch says that he has given the role certain qualities he has observed in the city toughs of the real world.
And surely his Scapin has a fresh directness, a no-nonsense quality that seems to make him his own master and nobody's servant.
Django Reinhardt, the ill-fated gypsy, was a true artist, one who demonstrated conclusively the power of art to renew itself and flow into many channels.
There is hardly a jazz guitarist in the business today who doesn't owe something to Django.
And Django owed much to Louis Armstrong.
He told once of how he switched his style of playing to jazz after listening to two old Armstrong records he bought in the Flea Market in Paris.
It was the first jazz he had heard.
Django, who was born Jean Baptiste Reinhardt in Belgium and who died in 1953 in France, was an extraordinary man.
Most of the fingers on his left hand were burned off when he fell asleep with a cigarette.
And this was before he began to play his startlingly beautiful jazz.
You can catch up with him--if you haven't already--on RCA-Victor's album.
Djangology, made up of tracks he recorded with Stephane Grappelly and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France.
This is a choice item and Grappely deserves mention too, of course.
He is one of the few men in history who plays jazz on a violin.
They play: Minor Swing, Honeysuckle Rose, Beyond The Sea, Bricktop, Heavy Artillery, Djangology, After You've Gone, Where Are You, My Love?
I Saw Stars, Lover Man, Menilmontant and Swing 42.
All this is great proceedings--get the minutes.
Kid Ory, the trombonist chicken farmer, is also one of the solid anchor points of jazz.
He dates back to the days before the first sailing ship pulled into New Orleans.
His horn has blown loud and clear across the land for more years than he cares to remember.
Good Time Jazz has released a nice two-record album which he made.
He is starred against Alvin Alcorn, trumpet;
Phil Gomez, clarinet;
Cedric Haywood, piano;
Julian Davidson, guitar;
Wellman Braud, bass, and Minor Hall, drums.
All this will serve to show off the Ory style in fine fashion and is a must for those who want to collect elements of the old-time jazz before it is too late to lay hands on the gems.
Mischa Elman shared last night's Lewisohn Stadium concert with three American composers.
His portion of the program--and a big portion it was--consisted of half the major nineteenth-century concertos for the violin: to wit, the Mendelssohn and the Tchaikovsky.
That is an evening of music-making that would faze many a younger man;
Mr. Elman is 70 years old.
There were 8,000 persons at the Stadium who can tell their grandchildren that they heard Elman.
But, with all due respects and allowances, it must truthfully be said that what they heard was more syrupy than sweet, more mannered than musical.
The occasion was sentimental;
so was the playing.
The American part of the evening consisted of Paul Creston's Dance Overture, William Schuman's Chester From New England Triptych and two works of Wallingford Riegger, Dance Rhythms, Op. 58, and a Romanza For Strings, Op. 56A.
The Creston is purely a potboiler, with Spanish, English, French and American dances mixed into the stew.
The Riegger, with its Latin hesitation bounce, is just this side of the pale;
like his sweet, attractive Romanza, it belongs to what the composer called his Non-Dissonant (Mostly) category of works.
The Schuman Chester takes off from an old William Billings tune with rousing woodwind and brass effect.
All these--potboilers or no--provided a welcome breath of fresh air in the form of lively, colorful, unstuffy works well suited for the great out-of-doors.
It was nice to have something a little up-to-date for a change.
We have Alfredo Antonini to thank for this healthy change of diet as well as the lively performances of the Stadium Symphony.
A woman who undergoes artificial insemination against the wishes of her husband is the unlikely heroine of A Question Of Adultery, yesterday's new British import at the Apollo.
Since an objective viewer might well conclude that this is not a situation that would often arise, the film's extensive discussion of the problem seems, at best, superfluous.
In its present artless, low-budget form, the subject matter seems designed to invite censorial wrath.
With Julie London enacting the central role with husky-voiced sincerity, the longsuffering heroine is at least attractive.
The explanation offered for her conduct is a misguided attempt to save her marriage to a neurotic husband left sterile as a result of an automobile accident.
Anthony Steel, as the husband, is a jealous type who argues against her course and sues for divorce, labeling her action adulterous.
The actor plays his role glumly under the lurid direction of Don Chaffey, as do Basil Sydney as his unsympathetic father and Anton Diffring as an innocent bystander.
After a protracted, hysterical trial scene more notable for the frankness of its language than for dramatic credibility, the jury, to no one's surprise, leaves the legal question unresolved.
When the husband drops the case and returns to his wife, both seem sorry they brought the matter up in the first place.
So was the audience.
London, July 4
-- For its final change of bill in its London season, the Leningrad State Kirov Ballet chose tonight to give one of those choreographic miscellanies known as a gala program at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
No doubt the underlying idea was to show that for all the elegance and artistry that have distinguished its presentations thus far, it too could give a circus if it pleased.
And please it did, in every sense of the word, for it had the audience shouting much of the time in a manner far from typical of London audiences.
At the end of the program, indeed, there was a demonstration that lasted for forty-five minutes, and nothing could stop it.
Alexandre Livshitz repeated a fantastic technical bit from the closing number, Taras Bulba, but even then there was a substantial number of diehards who seemed determined not to go home at all.
Only a plea from the house manager, John Collins, finally broke up the party.
But for all the manifest intention to show off, this was a circus with a difference, for instead of descending in quality to what is known as a popular level, it added further to the evidence that this is a very great dancing company.
The Taras Bulba excerpt is a rousing version of Gogol's Ukrainian folk-tale choreographed by Bo Fenster to music of Soloviev-Sedoi.
It is danced by some thirty-five men and no women, and it contains everything in the books--lusty comedy, gregarious cavorting, and tricks that only madmen or Russians would attempt to make the human body perform.
Yuri Soloviev, Oleg Sokolov, Alexei Zhitkov, Lev Sokolov, Yuri Korneyev and Mr. Livshitz were the chief soloists, but everybody on stage was magnificent.
At the other extreme in character was the half-hour excerpt from the Petipa-Minkus ballet Bayaderka, which opened the evening.
What a man this Petipa was!
And why do we in the West know so few of his ballets?
This scene is a white ballet in which a lovelorn hero searches for his departed love's spirit among twenty-eight extraordinarily beautiful shadows who can all dance like nothing human--which, of course, is altogether fitting.
The ensemble enters in a long adagio passage that is of fantastic difficulty, as well as loveliness, and adagio is the general medium of the piece.
Its ballerina, Olga Moiseyeva, performs simple miracles of beauty, and Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Inna Korneyeva and Gabrielle Komleva make up a threesome of exquisite accomplishments.
Sergei Vikulov, as the lone male, meets the competition well with some brilliant hits, but the work is designed to belong to the ladies.
The middle section of the program was made up of short numbers, naturally enough of unequal merit, but all of them pretty good at that.
They consisted of a new arrangement of Nutcracker excerpts danced stunningly by Irina Kolpakova and Mr. Sokolev, with a large ensemble;
a winning little Snow Maiden variation by the adorable Galina Kekisheva;
two of those poetic adagios in Greek veils (and superb esthetic acrobacy) by Alla Osipenko and Igor Chernishev in one case and Inna Zubkovskaya and Yuri Kornevey in the other;
an amusing character pas de cinq called Gossiping Women;
a stirring Flames Of Paris pas de deux by Xenia Ter-Stepanova and Alexandre Pavlovsky, and a lovely version of Fokine's Le Cygne by Olga Moiseyeva, which had to be repeated.
Vadim Kalentiev was the conductor.
It was quite an evening!
As the pace of the quadrennial American political festival accelerated, Mr. White took more notes.
He traveled alternately with Mr. Kennedy and with Richard M. Nixon.
He asked intimate questions and got frank answers from the members of what he calls the candidates' in-groups.
He assembled quantities of facts about the nature of American politics in general, as well as about the day-to-day course of the closest Presidential election in American history.
Those of us who read the papers may think we know a good deal about that election;
how little we know of what there is to be known is made humiliatingly clear by Mr. White in The Making Of The President 1960.
This is a remarkable book and an astonishingly interesting one.
What might have been only warmed-over topical journalism turns out to be an eyewitness contribution to history.
Mr. White, who is only a competent novelist, is a brilliant reporter.
His zest for specific detail, his sensitivity to emotional atmosphere, his tireless industry and his crisply turned prose all contribute to the effectiveness of his book.
A lesson in politics
As a dramatic narrative The Making Of The President 1960 is continuously engrossing.
And as an introduction to American politics it is highly educational.
The author begins this volume with a close-up of Mr. Kennedy, his family and his entourage waiting for the returns.
Then, in chronological order, Mr. White covers the primary campaigns, the conventions and the Presidential campaign itself.
In the process he writes at length about many related matters: the importance of race, religion, local tradition, bosses, organizations, zealous volunteers and television.
Mr. White is bluntly frank in his personal opinions.
He frequently cites intimate details that seem to come straight from the horse's mouth, from numerous insiders and from Mr. Kennedy himself;
but never from Mr. Nixon, who looked on reporters with suspicion and distrust.
Rarely in American history has there been a political campaign that discussed issues less or clarified them less, says Mr. White.
Mr. Nixon, he believes, has no particular political philosophy and mismanaged his own campaign.
Although a skillful politician and a courageous and honest man, Mr. Nixon, Mr. White believes, ignored his own top-level planners, wasted time and effort in the wrong regions, missed opportunities through indecision and damaged his chances on television.
Mr. Nixon is a broody, moody man, given to long stretches of introspection;
he trusts only himself and his wife.
He is a man of major talent--but a man of solitary, uncertain impulses.
He was above all a friend seeker, almost pathetic in his eagerness to be liked.
He wanted to identify with people and have a connection with them;
the least inspiring candidate since Alfred M. Landon.
Mr. Kennedy, Mr. White believes, had mastered politics on so many different levels that no other American could match him.
Calm, dignified, composed, superbly eloquent, Mr. Kennedy always knew everything about everybody.
He enlisted a staff of loyal experts and of many zealous volunteers.
Every decision was made quickly on sound grounds.
Efficiency was enforced and nothing was left to chance.
Mr. Kennedy did not neglect to cultivate the personal friendship of reporters.
Mr. White admires him profoundly and leaves no doubt that he is a Democrat himself who expects Mr. Kennedy to be a fine President.
Pressures portrayed
Throughout The Making Of A President Mr. White shows wonderfully well how the pressures pile up on candidates, how decisions have constantly to be made, how fatigue and illness and nervous strain wear candidates down, how subordinates play key roles.
And he makes many interesting comments.
Here are several:
The root question in American politics is always: Who's the Man to See?
To understand American politics is, simply, to know people, to know the relative weight of names--who are heroes, who are straw men, who controls, who does not.
But to operate in American politics one must go a step further--one must build a bridge to such names, establish a warmth, a personal connection.
In the hard life of politics it is well known that no platform nor any program advanced by either major American party has any purpose beyond expressing emotion.
All platforms are meaningless: the program of either party is what lies in the vision and conscience of the candidate the party chooses to lead it.
Nostalgia week at Lewisohn Stadium, which had begun with the appearance of the 70-year-old Mischa Elman on Tuesday night, continued last night as Lily Pons led the list of celebrities in an evening of French operatic excerpts.
Miss Pons is certainly not 70--no singer ever is--and yet the rewards of the evening again lay more in paying tribute to a great figure of times gone by than in present accomplishments.
The better part of gallantry might be, perhaps, to honor her perennial good looks and her gorgeous rainbow-hued gown, and to chide the orchestra for not playing in the same keys in which she had chosen to sing.
No orchestra, however, could be expected to follow a singer through quite as many adventures with pitch as Miss Pons encountered last night.
In all fairness, there were flashes of the great stylist of yesteryear, flashes even of the old consummate vocalism.
One such moment came in the breathtaking way Miss Pons sang the cadenza to Meyerbeer's Shadow Song.
The years suddenly fell away at this point.
On the whole, however, one must wonder at just what it is that forces a beloved artist to besmirch her own reputation as time marches inexorably on.
Sharing the program was the young French-Canadian tenor Richard Verreau, making his stadium debut on this occasion.
Mr. Verreau began shakily, with a voice that tended toward an unpleasant whiteness when pushed beyond middle volume.
Later on this problem vanished, and the Flower Song from Bizet's Carmen was beautifully and intelligently projected.
Radio is easily outdistancing television in its strides to reach the minority listener.
Lower costs and a larger number of stations are the key factors making such specialization possible.
The mushrooming of FM outlets, offering concerts (both jazz and classical), lectures, and other special events, is a phenomenon which has had a fair amount of publicity.
Not so well known is the growth of broadcasting operations aimed wholly or partly at Negro listeners--an audience which, in the United States, comprises some 19,000,000 people with $20,000,000,000 to spend each year.
Of course, the nonwhite listener does his share of television watching.
He even buys a lot of the products he sees advertised--despite the fact that the copy makes no special bid for his favor and sponsors rarely use any but white models in commercials.
But the growing number of Negro-appeal radio stations, plus evidence of strong listener support of their advertisers, give time salesmen an impressive argument as they approach new prospects.
It is estimated that more than 600 stations (of a total of 3,400) do a significant amount of programing for the Negro.
At least 60 stations devote all of their time to reaching this audience in about half of the 50 states.
These and other figures and comments have been reported in a special supplement of Sponsor magazine, a trade publication for radio and TV advertisers.
For 10 years Sponsor has issued an annual survey of the size and characteristics of the Negro market and of successful techniques for reaching this market through radio.
In the past 10 years, Sponsor observes, these trends have become apparent:
Negro population in the U.S. has increased 25 per cent while the white population was growing by 18 per cent.
The forgotten 15 million--as Sponsor tagged the Negro market in its first survey--has become a better-remembered 19 million.
Advertisers are changing their attitudes, both as to the significance of this market and the ways of speaking to it.
Stations programing to Negro listeners are having to upgrade their shows in order to keep pace with rising educational, economic, and cultural levels.
Futhermore, the station which wants real prestige must lead or participate in community improvement projects, not simply serve on the air.
In the last decade the number of Negro-appeal radio program hours has risen at least 15 per cent, and the number of Negro-appeal stations has increased 30 per cent, according to a research man quoted by Sponsor.
A year ago the Negro Radio Association was formed to spur research which the 30-odd member stations are sure will bring in more business.
The 1960 census underscored the explosive character of the population growth.
It also brought home proof of something a casual observer might have missed: that more than half of the U.S. Negroes live outside the southeastern states.
Also, the state with the largest number of Negroes is New York--not in the South at all.
In New York City, WLIB boasts more community service programs than any other Negro station and one of the largest Negro news staffs in America.
And WWRL's colorful mobile unit, cruising predominately Negro neighborhoods, is a frequent reminder of that station's round-the-clock dedication to nonwhite interests.
Recently, WWRL won praise for its expose of particular cases of employment agency deceit.
A half-dozen other stations in the New York area also bid for attention of the city's Negro population, up about 50 per cent in the past decade.
In all big cities outside the South, and even in small towns within the South, radio stations can be found beaming some or all of their programs at Negro listeners.
The Keystone Broadcasting System's Negro network includes 360 affiliated stations, whose signals reach more than half the total U.S. Negro population.
One question which inevitably crops up is whether such stations have a future in a nation where the Negro is moving into a fully integrated status.
Whatever the long-range impact of integration, the owners of Negro-appeal radio stations these days know they have an audience and that it is loyal.
Advertisers have discovered the tendency of Negroes to shop for brand names they have heard on stations catering to their special interests.
And many advertisers have been happy with the results of letting a Negro disc jockey phrase the commercial in his own words, working only from a fact sheet.
What sets Negro-appeal programing apart from other radio shows?
Sponsor magazine notes the stress on popular Negro bands and singers;
rhythm-and-blues mood music;
race music, folk songs and melodies, and gospel programs.
Furthermore, news and special presentations inform the listener about groups, projects, and personalities rarely mentioned on a general-appeal station.
Advertising copy frequently takes into account matters of special Negro concern.
Sponsor quotes John McLendon of the McLendon-Ebony station group as saying that the Southern Negro is becoming conscious of quality and does not wish to be associated with radio which is any way degrading to his race;
he tends to shy away from the hooting and hollering personalities that originally made Negro radio programs famous.
The sociological impact is perhaps most eloquently summed up in this quotation of J. Walter Carroll of KSAN, San Francisco:
Negro-appeal radio is more important to the Negro today, because it provides a direct and powerful mirror in which the Negro can hear and see his ambitions, achievements and desires.
It will continue to be important as a means of orientation to the Negro, seeking to become urbanized, as he tries to make adjustment to the urban life.
Negro radio is vitally necessary during the process of assimilation.
Presentation of The Life And Times Of John Sloan in the Delaware Art Center here suggests a current nostalgia for human values in art.
Staged by way of announcing the gift of a large and intimate Sloan collection by the artist's widow, Helen Farr Sloan, to the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, the exhibition presents a survey of Sloan's work.
From early family portraits, painted before he entered the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the chronology extends to a group of paintings executed in his last year (1951) and still part of his estate.
Few artists have left a life work so eloquent of the period in which they lived.
Few who have painted the scenes around them have done so with so little bitterness.
The paintings, drawings, prints, and illustrations all reflect the manners, costumes, and mores of America in the first half of the present century.
Obviously Sloan's early years were influenced by his close friend Robert Henri.
As early as 1928, however, the Sloan style began to change.
The dark pigments of the early work were superseded by a brighter palette.
The solidity of brush stroke yielded to a hatching technique that finally led to virtual abandonment of American genres in favor of single figure studies and studio nudes.
The exhibition presents all phases of Sloan's many-sided art.
In addition to the paintings are drawings, prints, and illustrations.
Sloan created such works for newspaper supplements before syndication threw him out of a job and sent him to roam the streets of New York, thereby building for America an incomparable city survey from paintings of McSorley's Saloon to breezy clotheslines on city roofs.
One of the most appealing of the rooftop canvases is Sun And Wind On The Roof, with a woman and child bracing themselves against flapping clothes and flying birds.
Although there are landscapes in the show (one of the strongest is a vista of Gloucester Harbor in 1915), the human element was the compelling factor in Sloan's art.
Significant are such canvases as Bleeker Street, Saturday Night, with its typically American crowd (Sloan never went abroad);
the multifigure Traveling Carnival, in which action is vivified by lighting;
or Carmine Theater, 1912, the only canvas with an ash can (and foraging dog), although Sloan was a member of the famous Eight, and of the so-called Ash-Can School, a term he resented.
Not all the paintings, however, are of cities.
The exhibition touches briefly on his sojourn in the Southwest (Koshare in the Dust, a vigorous Indian dance, and landscapes suggest the influence of western color on his palette).
The fact that Sloan was an extrovert, concerned primarily with what he saw, adds greatly to the value of his art as a human chronicle.
There are 151 items in the Wilmington show, including one painting by each member of the Eight, as well as work by Sloan's friends and students.
Supplementing the actual art are memorabilia--correspondence, diaries, books from the artist's library, etc..
All belong to the collection being given to Wilmington over a period of years by Mrs. Sloan, who has cherished such revelatory items ever since she first studied with Sloan at the Art Students League, New York, in the 1920's.
To enable students and the public to spot Sloan forgeries, the Delaware Art Center (according to its director, Bruce St. John) will maintain a complete file of photographs of all Sloan works, as well as a card index file.
The entire Sloan collection will be made available at the center to all serious art students and historians.
The current exhibition, which remains on view through Oct. 29, has tapped 14 major collections and many private sources.
Any musician playing Beethoven here, where Beethoven was born, is likely to examine his own interpretations with special care.
In a sense, he is offering Bonn what its famous son (who left as a youth) never did--the sound of the composer's mature style.
Robert Riefling, who gave the only piano recital of the recently concluded 23rd Beethoven Festival, penetrated deep into the spirit of the style.
His readings were careful without being fussy, and they were authoritative without being presumptuous.
The 32 C Minor Variations with which he opened moved fluently yet logically from one to another, leaving the right impression of abundance under discipline.
The D Minor Sonata, Op. 31 No. 2, introduced by dynamically shaped arpeggios, was most engaging in its moments of quasi-recitative--single lines in which the fingers seemed to be feeling their way toward the idea to come.
These inwardly dramatic moments showed the kind of opera style of which Beethoven was genuinely capable, but which did not take so kindly to the mechanics of staging.
Two late Sonatas, Op. 110 and 111, were played with similar insight, the disarming simplicities of the Op. 111 Adagio made plain without ever becoming obvious.
The two were separated from each other by the Six Bagatelles of Op. 126.
Herr Riefling, in everything he gave his large Beethoven Hall audience, proved himself as an interpreter of unobtrusive authority.
Volker Wangenheim, who conducted Bonn's Stadtisches Orchester on the following evening, made one more conscious of the process of interpretation.
Herr Wangenheim has only recently become the city's music director, and is a young man with a clear flair for the podium.
But he weighted the Eighth Symphony, at times, with a shuddering subjectivity which seemed considerably at odds with the music.
He might have been hoping, to all appearances, that this relatively sunny symphony, in conjunction with the Choral Fantasy at the end of the program, could amount to something like the Ninth;
but no amount of head-tossing could make it so.
The concerto's soloist, Hans Richter-Haaser, played with compensatory ease and economy, though without the consummate plasticity to which we had been treated on the previous evening by Herr Riefling.
His was a burgomaster's Beethoven, solid and sensible.
Everybody returned after intermission for the miscellaneous sweepings of the Fantasy For Piano, Chorus, And Orchestra In C Minor, made up by its composer to fill out one of his programs.
The entrance of the Stadtisches Gesangverein (Bonn's civic chorus) was worth all the waiting, however, as the young Rhenish voices finally brought the music to life.
The last program of this festival, which during two weeks had sampled most compositional categories, brought the Cologne Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester and Rundfunkchor to Bonn's gold-filled hall for a performance of the Missa Solemnis.
A tribe in ancient India believed the earth was a huge tea tray resting on the backs of three giant elephants, which in turn stood on the shell of a great tortoise.
This theory eventually proved inexact.
But the primitive method of explaining the unknown with what is known bears at least a symbolic resemblance to the methods of modern science.
It is the business of cosmologists, the scientists who study the nature and structure of the universe, to try to solve the great cosmic mysteries by using keys that have clicked open other doors.
These keys are the working principles of physics, mathematics and astronomy, principles which are then extrapolated, or projected, to explain phenomena of which we have little or no direct knowledge.
In the autumn of 1959, the British Broadcasting Corporation presented a series of talks by four scientists competent in cosmology.
Three of these men discussed major theories of the universe while the other acted as a moderator.
The participants were Professor H. Bondi, professor of mathematics at King's College, London;
Dr. W. B. Bonnor, reader in mathematics at Queen Elizabeth College, London;
Dr. R. A. Lyttleton, a lecturer at St. John's College, Cambridge, and a reader in theoretical astronomy at the University of Cambridge;
and Dr. G. J. Whitrow, reader in applied mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London.
Dr. Whitrow functioned as moderator.
The programs were so well received by the British public that the arguments have been published in a totally engrossing little book called, Rival Theories Of Cosmology.
Dr. Bonnor begins with a discussion of the relativistic theories of the universe, based on the general theory of relativity.
First of all, and this has been calculated by observation, the universe is expanding--that is, the galaxies are receding from each other at immense speeds.
Because of this Dr. Bonnor holds that the universe is becoming more thinly populated by stars and whatever else is there.
This expansion has been going on for an estimated eight billion years.
Expands and contracts
Dr. Bonnor supports the idea that the universe both expands and contracts, that in several billion years the expansion will slow up and reverse itself and that the contraction will set in.
Then, after many more billions of years, when all the galaxies are whistling toward a common center, this movement will slow down and reverse itself again.
Professor Bondi disagrees with the expansion-contraction theory.
He supports the steady-state theory which holds that matter is continually being created in space.
For this reason, he says, the density of the universe always remains the same even though the galaxies are zooming away in all directions.
New galaxies are forever being formed to fill in the gaps left by the receding galaxies.
If this is true, then the universe today looks just as it did millions of years ago and as it will look millions of years hence, even though the universe is expanding.
For new galaxies to be created, Professor Bondi declares, it would only be necessary for a single hydrogen atom to be created in an area the size of your living room once every few million years.
He contends this idea doesn't conflict with experiments on which the principle of conservation of matter and energy is based because some slight error must be assumed in such experiments.
Dr. Lyttleton backs the theory that we live in an electric universe and this theory starts with the behavior of protons and electrons.
Protons and electrons bear opposite electrical charges which make them attract each other, and when they are joined they make up an atom of hydrogen--the basic building block of matter.
The charges of the electron and proton are believed to be exactly equal and opposite, but Dr. Lyttleton is not so sure.
Suppose, says Dr. Lyttleton, the proton has a slightly greater charge than the electron (so slight it is presently immeasurable).
This would give the hydrogen atom a slight charge-excess.
Now if one hydrogen atom were placed at the surface of a large sphere of hydrogen atoms, it would be subject both to the gravitation of the sphere and the charge-excess of all those atoms in the sphere.
Because electrical forces (the charge-excess) are far more powerful than gravitation, the surface hydrogen atoms would shoot away from the sphere.
Dr. Lyttleton then imagines the universe as a large hydrogen sphere with surface atoms shooting away from it.
This, he claims, would reasonably account for the expansion of the universe.
Fleeting glimpse
This slim book, while giving the reader only a fleeting glimpse of the scientific mind confronting the universe, has the appeal that informed conversation always has.
Several photographs and charts of galaxies help the non-scientist keep up with the discussion, and the smooth language indicates the contributors were determined to avoid the jargon that seems to work its way into almost every field.
It is clear from this discussion that cosmologists of every persuasion look hopefully toward the day when a man-made satellite can be equipped with optical devices which will open up new vistas to science.
Presently, the intense absorption of ultra-violet rays in the earth's atmosphere seriously hinders ground observation.
These scientists are convinced that a telescope unclouded by the earth's gases will go a long way toward bolstering or destroying cosmic theories.
There would seem to be some small solace in the prospect that the missile race between nations is at the same time accelerating the study of the space around us, giving us a long-sought ladder from which to peer at alien regions.
In doing away with the tea tray, the elephants and the giant tortoise, science has developed a series of rationally defensible explanations of the cosmos.
And although the universe may forever defy understanding, it might even now be finding its match in the imagination of man.
Roots, the new play at the brand-new Mayfair Theater on 46th St. which has been made over from a night club, is about the intellectual and spiritual awakening of an English farm girl.
Highly successful in England before its transfer to New York, most of Roots is as relentlessly dour as the trappings of the small new theater are gaudy.
The burden of Mr. Wesker's message is that people living close to the soil (at least in England) are not the happy, fine, strong, natural, earthy people city-bred intellectuals imagine.
Rather they are genuine clods, proud of their cloddishness and openly antagonistic to the illuminating influences of aesthetics or thought.
They care no more for politics, says Mr. Wesker, than they do for a symphony.
Seeming to have roots in the soil, they actually have none in life.
They dwell, in short, in the doltish twilight in which peasants and serfs of the past are commonly reported to have lived.
But this is a theme which does not take so much time to state as Mr. Wesker dedicates to it.
So much untidiness of mind and household does not attract the interest of the theatergoer (unless he has been living in a gilded palace, perhaps, and wants a real big heap of contrast).
The messy meals, the washing of dishes, the drying of clothes may be realism, but there is such a thing as redundancy.
Now for the good points.
Miss Doyle as Beatie has a great fund of animal spirits, a strong voice and a warm smile.
She is just home from a sojourn in London where she has become the sweetheart of a young fellow named Ronnie (we never do see him) and has been subjected to a first course in thinking and appreciating, including a dose of good British socialism.
But while she is able to tell her retarded family about the new world she has seen open before her, Ronnie has not been able to observe her progress, and instead of appearing at a family party to be looked over like a new bull, he sends Beatie a letter of dismissal.
Beatie, getting no sympathy for her misfortune, soon rallies and finds that although she has lost a lover she has gained her freedom.
Despite a too long sustained declamatory flight, this final speech is convincing, and we see why British audiences apparently were impressed by Roots.
But I am afraid Mr. Wesker's meat and potatoes dish isn't well seasoned enough for local audiences.
Shakespeare had a word for everything, even for the rain that disrupted Wednesday night's Much Ado About Nothing opening the season of free theatre in Central Park.
The New York Shakespeare Festival, which is using the Wollman Memorial Skating Rink while its theatre near the Belvedere is being completed, began bravely.
Joseph Papp, impassioned founder of the festival and director of Much Ado, had a vibrant, colorful production under way.
Using a wide stage resourcefully he mingled music and dance with Shakespeare's words in a spirited mixture.
The audience filled all the seats inside the Wollman enclosure and overflowed onto the lawns outside the fence.
The barbed sallies of Beatrice and Benedick, so contemporary to a public inured to the humor of insult, raised chuckles.
The simple-minded comedy of Dogberry and Verges, also familiar in a day that responds easily to jokes skimmed off the top of writers' heads, evoked laughter.
The vivacity of the masquers' party at Leonato's palace, with the Spanish motif in the music and dancing in honor of the visiting Prince of Arragon, cast a spell of delight.
As Much Ado turned serious while the insipid Claudio rejected Hero at the altar, a sprinkle began to fall.
At first hardly a person in the audience moved, although some umbrellas were opened.
But the rain came more heavily, and men and women in light summer clothes began to depart.
The grieving Hero and her father, Leonato, followed by the Friar, left the stage.
A voice on the loudspeaker system announced that if the rain let up the performance would resume in ten minutes.
More than half the audience departed.
Some remained in the Wollman enclosure, fortified with raincoats or with newspapers to cover their heads.
Others huddled under the trees outside the fence.
Twenty minutes after the interruption, although it was still raining, the play was resumed at the point in the fourth act where it had been stopped.
Beatrice (Nan Martin) and Benedick (J. D. Cannon) took their places on the stage.
In their very first speeches it was clear that Shakespeare, like a Nostradamus, had foreseen this moment.
Said Benedick: Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?
Replied Beatrice: Yea, and I will weep a while longer.
The heavens refused to give up their weeping.
The gallant company completed Act 4, and got through part of Act 5.
But the final scenes could not be played.
If any among the hardy hundreds who sat in the downpour are in doubt about how it comes out, let them take comfort.
Much Ado ends happily.
The Parks Department has done an admirable job of preparing the Wollman Rink for Shakespeare.
Eldon Elder, who designed the stage, also created a gay, spacious set that blended attractively with the park background and Shakespeare's lighthearted mood.
Mr. Papp has directed a performance that has verve and pace, although he has tolerated obvious business to garner easy laughs where elegance and consistency of style would be preferable.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sang so magnificently Saturday night at Hunter College that it seems a pity to have to register any complaints.
Still a demurrer or two must be entered.
Schwarzkopf is, of course, Schwarzkopf.
For style and assurance, for a supreme and regal bearing there is still no one who can touch her.
If the voice is just a shade less glorious than it used to be, it is still a beautiful instrument, controlled and flexible.
Put to the service of lieder of Schubert, Brahms, Strauss and Wolf in a dramatical and musical way, it made its effect with ease and precision.
But what has been happening recently might be described as creeping mannerism.
The symptoms Saturday night were unmistakable.
Clever light songs were overly coy, tragic songs a little too melodramatic.
There was an extra pause here, a gasp or a sigh there, here and there an extra little twist of a word or note, all in the interest of effect.
The result was like that of a beautiful painting with some of the highlights touched up almost to the point of garishness.
There were stunning musical phrases too, and sometimes the deepest kind of musical and poetic absorption and communication.
Miss Schwarzkopf and her excellent pianist, John Wustman, often achieved the highest lyrical ideals of the lieder tradition.
All the more reason why there should have been no place for the frills;
Miss Schwarzkopf is too great an artist to need them.
The dance, dancers and dance enthusiasts (8,500 of them) had a much better time of it at Lewisohn Stadium on Saturday night than all had had two nights earlier, when Stadium Concerts presented the first of two dance programs.
On Saturday, the orchestra was sensibly situated down on the field, the stage floor was apparently in decent condition for dancing, and the order of the program improved.
There was, additionally, a bonus for the Saturday-night patrons.
Alvin Ailey and Carmen De Lavallade appeared in the first New York performance of Mr. Ailey's Roots Of The Blues, a work given its premiere three weeks ago at the Boston Arts Festival.
Otherwise, the program included, as on Thursday, the Taras-Tchaikovsky Design For Strings, the Dollar-Britten Divertimento, the Dollar-De Banfield The Duel and the pas de deux from The Nutcracker.
Maria Tallchief and Erik Bruhn, who danced the Nutcracker pas de deux, were also seen in the Petipa-Minkus pas de deux from Don Quixote, another brilliant showpiece that displayed their technical prowess handsomely.
Among the other solo ballet dancers of the evening, Elisabeth Carroll and Ivan Allen were particularly impressive in their roles in The Duel, a work that depends so much upon the precision and incisiveness of the two principal combatants.
Mr. Ailey's Roots Of The Blues, an earthy and very human modern dance work, provided strong contrast to the ballet selections of the evening.
As Brother John Sellers sang five blues to the guitar and drum accompaniments of Bruce Langhorne and Shep Shepard, Mr. Ailey and Miss De Lavallade went through volatile dances that were by turns insinuating, threatening, contemptuous and ecstatic.
Their props were two stepladders, a chair and a palm fan.
He wore the clothes of a laborer, and she was wondrously seductive in a yellow and orange dress.
The cat-like sinuousness and agility of both dancers were exploited in leaps, lifts, crawls and slides that were almost invariably compelling in a work of strong, sometimes almost frightening, tensions.
Roots Of The Blues may not be for gentle souls, but others should welcome its super-charged impact.
Perhaps it is better to stay at home.
The armchair traveler preserves his illusions.
This somewhat cynical comment may be found in Blue Skies, Brown Studies, a collection of travel essays by William Sansom, who would never consider staying home for long.
Mr. Sansom is English, bearded, formidably cultivated, the versatile author of numerous volumes of short stories, of novels and of pieces that are neither short stories nor travel articles but something midway between.
The result is rather wonderful, but so rich as to be indigestible if taken in too thick slices.
There are sixteen essays in Blue Skies, Brown Studies.
Most of them were written between 1953 and 1960 and originally appeared in various magazines.
All are well written and are overwritten.
But, even if Mr. Sansom labors too hard to extract more refinements of meaning and feeling from his travel experiences than the limits of language allow, he still can charm and astound.
Too many books and articles are just assembled by putting one word after another.
Mr. Sansom actually writes his with a nice ear for a gracefully composed sentence, with an intense relish in all the metaphorical resources of English, with a thick shower of sophisticated, cultural references.
A contemplative connoisseur
I like to sniff a place, and reproduce what it really smells and looks like, its color, its particular kind of life.
This is an exact description of what Mr. Sansom does.
He ignores guidebook facts.
He only rarely tells a personal anecdote and hardly ever sketches an individual or quotes his opinions.
It is an over-all impression Mr. Sansom strives for, an impression compounded of visual details, of a savory mixture of smells, of much loving attention to architecture and scenery, of lights and shadows, of intangibles of atmosphere and of echoes of the past.
William Sansom writes only about Europe in this book and frequently of such familiar places as London, Vienna, the French Riviera and the Norwegian fjords.
But no matter what he writes about he brings to his subject his own original mind and his own sensitive reactions.
A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment, he says.
Beneath any feeling he has of the good or the evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all.
To transmit that feeling he writes.
This may not be true of many writers, but it certainly is true of Mr. Sansom.
So in these pages one can share his wonder at the traditional fiesta of St. Torpetius that still persists in St. Tropez;
at the sun and the heat of Mediterranean lands, always much brighter and hotter to an Englishman than to an American used to summers in New York or Kansas City;
at the supreme delights to be found in one of the world's finest restaurants, La Bonne Auberge, which is situated on the seacoast twenty miles west of the Nice airport;
and at the infinite variety of London.
Mr. Sansom can be eloquent in a spectacular way which recalls (to those who recall easily) the statues of Bernini and the gigantic paintings of Tintoretto.
He can coin a neat phrase: a street spattered with an invigoration of people;
tulips with petals wide and shaggy as a spaniel's ears;
after a snowstorm a landscape smelling of woodsmoke and clarity.
And, for all his lacquered, almost Byzantine self-consciousness, he can make one recognize the aptness of an unexpected comparison.
Beauty borrowed from afar
In one of his best essays Mr. Sansom expresses his enthusiasm for the many country mansions designed by Andrea Palladio himself that dot the environs of Vicenza.
How far that pedimented and pillared style has shed its influence Mr. Sansom reminds us thus:
Nice, even if a trifle gaudy.
Blue Skies, Brown Studies is illustrated with numerous excellent photographs.
In recent days there have been extensive lamentations over the absence of original drama on television, but not for years have many regretted the passing of new plays on radio.
WBAI, the listener-supported outlet on the frequency-modulation band, has decided to do what it can to correct this aural void.
Yesterday it offered Poised For Violence, by Jean Reavey.
WBAI is on the right track: in the sound medium there has been excessive emphasis on music and news and there could and should be a place for theatre, as the Canadian and British Broadcasting Corporations continue to demonstrate.
Unfortunately, Poised For Violence was not the happiest vehicle with which to make the point.
Mrs. Reavey's work is written for the stage--it is mentioned for an off-Broadway production in the fall--and, in addition, employs an avant-garde structure that particularly needs to be seen if comprehension is to be encouraged.
The play's device is to explore society's obsession with disaster and violence through the eyes of a group of artist's models who remain part of someone else's painting rather than just be themselves.
In a succession of scenes they appear in different guises--patrons of a cafe, performers in a circus and participants in a family picnic--but in each instance they inevitably put ugliness before beauty.
Somewhere in Mrs. Reavey's play there is both protest and aspiration of merit.
But its relentless discursiveness and determined complexity are so overwhelming that after an hour and a half a listener's stamina begins to wilt.
Moreover, her central figures are so busily fulfilling their multitudinous assignments that none emerges as an arresting individual in his own right or as a provocative symbol of mankind's ills.
But quite conceivably an altogether different impression will obtain when the work is offered in the theatre and there can be other effects to relieve the burden on the author's words.
Which in itself is an immediate reward of the WBAI experiment;
good radio drama has its own special demands that badly need reinvigoration.
A weekly showcase for contemporary music, from the austere archaism of Stravinsky to the bleeps and bloops of electronic music, is celebrating its fourth anniversary this month.
Titled What's New In Music?
The enterprising program is heard Saturday afternoons on radio station Aj.
The brief notes introducing each work offer salient historical or technical points, and many listeners are probably grateful for being intelligently taken by the hand through an often difficult maze.
The show is programed and written by the station's assistant continuity editor, Chuck Briefer.
The first Saturday in each month is set aside for new recordings.
Last Saturday's interesting melange included Ernst Toch, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Richard Yardumian and a brief excerpt from a new space opera by the Swedish composer, Karl-Birger Blomdahl.
Other Saturdays are devoted to studies of a selected American composer, a particular type of music or the music of a given country.
It is commendable that a regularly scheduled hour is set aside for an introduction to the contemporary musical scene.
The Moiseyev Dance Company dropped in at Madison Square Garden last night for the first of four farewell performances before it brings its long American tour to a close.
It is not simply giving a repetition of the program it gave during its New York engagement earlier this season, but has brought back many of the numbers that were on the bill when it paid us its first visit and won everybody's heart.
It is good to see those numbers again.
The Suite Of Old Russian Dances that opened that inaugural program with the slow and modest entrance of the maidens and built steadily into typical Moiseyev vigor and warmth;
the amusing Yurochka, in which a hard-to-please young man is given his come-uppance;
the lovely (and of course vigorous) Polyanka or The Meadow;
the three Moldavian dances entitled Zhok;
the sweet and funny little dance about potato planting called Bul'ba;
and the hilarious picture of social life in an earlier day called City Quadrille are all just as good as one remembers them to have been, and they are welcome back.
As autumn starts its annual sweep, few Americans and Canadians realize how fortunate they are in having the world's finest fall coloring.
Spectacular displays of this sort are relatively rare in the entire land surface of the earth.
The only other regions so blessed are the British Isles, western Europe, eastern China, southern Chile and parts of Japan, New Zealand and Tasmania.
Their autumn tints are all fairly low keyed compared with the fiery stabs of crimson, gold, purple, bronze, blue and vermilion that flame up in North America.
Jack Frost is not really responsible for this great seasonal spectacle;
in fact, a freezing autumn dulls the blaze.
The best effects come from a combination of temperate climate and plenty of late-summer rain, followed by sunny days and cool nights.
Foliage pilgrimages, either organized or individual, are becoming an autumn item for more and more Americans each year.
Below is a specific guide, keyed to the calendar.
Nature
Canada.
Late September finds Quebec's color at its peak, especially in the Laurentian hills and in the area south of the St. Lawrence River.
In the Maritime provinces farther east, the tones are a little quieter.
Ontario's foliage is most vivid from about Sept. 23 to Oct. 10, with both Muskoka (100 miles north of Toronto) and Haliburton (125 miles northwest of Toronto) holding color cavalcades starting Sept. 23.
In the Canadian Rockies, great groves of aspen are already glinting gold.
New England.
Vermont's sugar maples are scarlet from Sept. 25 to Oct. 15, and often hit a height in early October.
New Hampshire figures its peak around Columbus Day and boasts of all its hardwoods including the yellow of the birches.
The shades tend to be a little softer in the forests that blanket so much of Maine.
In western Massachusetts and northwest Connecticut, the Berkshires are at their vibrant prime the first week of October.
Middle Atlantic states.
The Adirondacks blaze brightest in early October, choice routes being 9N from Saratoga up to Lake George and 73 and 86 in the Lake Placid area.
Farther south in New York there is a heavy haze of color over the Catskills in mid-October, notably along routes 23 and 23A.
About the same time the Alleghenies and Poconos in Pennsylvania are magnificent--Renovo holds its annual Flaming Foliage Festival on Oct. 14, 15.
New Jersey's color varies from staccato to pastel all the way from the Delaware Water Gap to Cape May.
Southeast.
During the first half of October the Blue Ridge and other parts of the Appalachians provide a spectacle stretching from Maryland and West Virginia to Georgia.
The most brilliant displays are along the Skyline Drive above Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and throughout the Great Smokies between North Carolina and Tennessee.
Midwest.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota have many superb stretches of color which reach their height from the last few days of September well into October, especially in their northern sections, e.g., Wisconsin's Vilas County whose Colorama celebration is Sept. 29-Oct. 8.
In Wisconsin, take route 55 north of Shawano or routes 78 and 60 from Portage to Prairie Du Chien.
In Michigan, there is fine color on route 27 up to the Mackinac Straits, while the views around Marquette and Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula are spectacular.
In Minnesota, Arrowhead County and route 53 north to International Falls are outstanding.
Farther south, there are attractive patches all the way to the Ozarks, with some seasonal peaks as late as early November.
Illinois' Shawnee National Forest, Missouri's Iron County and the maples of Hiawatha, Kan. should be at their best in mid-October.
The West.
The Rockies have many Aspencades, which are organized tours of the aspen areas with frequent stops at vantage points for viewing the golden panoramas.
In Colorado, Ouray has its Fall Color Week Sept. 22-29, Rye and Salida both sponsor Aspencades Sept. 24, and Steamboat Springs has a week-long Aspencade Sept. 25-30.
New Mexico's biggest is at Ruidoso Oct. 7, 8, while Alamogordo and Cloudcroft cooperate in similar trips Oct. 1.
Americana
pleasure domes.
Two sharply contrasting places designed for public enjoyment are now on display.
The Corn Palace at Mitchell, S. Dak., the world's corniest building, has a carnival through Sept. 23 headlining the Three Stooges and Pee Wee Hunt.
Since 1892 ears of red, yellow, purple and white corn have annually been nailed to 11 big picture panels to create huge paintings.
The 1961 theme is the Dakota Territorial Centennial, with the pictures including the Lewis and Clark expedition, the first river steamboat, the 1876 gold rush, a little red schoolhouse on the prairie, and today's construction of large Missouri River reservoirs.
The panels will stay up until they are replaced next summer.
Longwood Gardens, near Kennett Square, Pa. (about 12 miles from Wilmington, Del.), was developed and heavily endowed by the late Pierre S. Du Pont.
Every Wednesday night through Oct. 11 there will be an elaborate colored fountain display, with 229 nozzles throwing jets of water up to 130 feet.
The peacock tail nozzle throws a giant fan of water 100 feet wide and 40 feet high.
The gardens themselves are open free of charge the year round, and the 192 permanent employes make sure that not a dead or wilted flower is ever seen indoors or out by any visitor.
The greenhouses alone cover 3-1/2 acres.
Books
clock without hands.
Carson McCullers, after a long, painful illness that might have crushed a less-indomitable soul, has come back with an absolute gem of a novel which jumped high on best-seller lists even before official publication.
Though the subject--segregation in her native South--has been thoroughly worked, Miss McCullers uses her poet's instinct and storyteller's skill to reaffirm her place at the very top of modern American writing.
Franny and Zooey.
With an art that almost conceals art, J. D. Salinger can create a fictional world so authentic that it hurts.
Here, in the most eagerly awaited novel of the season (his first since The Catcher In The Rye,) he tells of a college girl in flight from the life around her and the tart but sympathetic help she gets from her 25-year-old brother.
The Head Of Monsieur M.,
Althea Urn.
A deft, hilarious satire on very high French society involving a statesman with two enviable possessions, a lovely young bride and a head containing such weighty thoughts that he has occasionally to remove it for greater comfort.
There is probably a moral in all this about mind vs. heart.
A Matter Of Life And Death.
Virgilia Peterson, a critic by trade, has turned her critical eye pitilessly and honestly on herself in an autobiography more of the mind and heart than of specific events.
It is an engrossing commentary on a repressive, upper-middle-class New York way of life in the first part of this century.
Dark Rider.
This retelling by Louis Zara of the brief, anguished life of Stephen Crane--poet and master novelist at 23, dead at 28--is in novelized form but does not abuse its tragic subject.
Rural Free,
Rachel Peden.
Subtitled A Farmwife's Almanac Of Country Living, this is a gentle and nostalgic chronicle of the changing seasons seen through the clear, humorous eye of a Hoosier housewife and popular columnist.
Dance
Russians, Filipinos.
Two noted troupes from overseas will get the fall dance season off to a sparkling start.
Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, famous for classic purity of technique, begins its first U.S. tour in New York (through Sept. 30).
The Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company, with music and dances that depict the many facets of Filipino culture, opens its 60-city U.S. tour in San Francisco (through Sept. 24) then, via one-night stands, moves on to Los Angeles (Sept. 29 thru Oct. 1).
Festivals
across the land.
The mule is honored at Benson, N.C. (Sept. 22, 23) and at Boron, Calif. (Sept. 24 thru Oct. 1), while the legend of the Maid of the Mist is celebrated at Niagara Falls through the 24th.
The fine old mansions of U.S. Grant's old home town of Galena, Ill. are open for inspection (Sept. 23, 24).
An archery tournament will be held at North Falmouth, Mass. (Sept. 23, 24).
The 300th anniversaries of Staten Island (through Sept. 23) and of Mamaroneck, N.Y. (through Sept. 24) will both include parades and pageants.
Movies
Purple Noon:
This French film, set in Italy, is a summertime splurge in shock and terror all shot in lovely sunny scenery--so breath-taking that at times you almost forget the horrors the movie is dealing with.
Records
Norma.
Callas devotees will have good reason to do their customary cart wheels over a new and complete stereo version of the Bellini opera.
Maria goes all out as a Druid princess who gets two-timed by a Roman big shot.
By turns, her beautifully sung Norma is fierce, tender, venomous and pitiful.
The tenor lead, Franco Corelli, and La Scala cast under Maestro Tullio Serafin are all first rate.
Jeremiah Peabody's polyunsaturated quick dissolving fast acting pleasant tasting green and purple pills.
In a raucous take-off on radio commercials, Singer Ray Stevens hawks a cure-all for neuritis, neuralgia, head-cold distress, beriberi, overweight, fungus, mungus and water on the knee.
Of the nation's eight million pleasure-boat owners a sizable number have learned that late autumn is one of the loveliest seasons to be afloat--at least in that broad balmy region that lies below America's belt line.
Waterways are busy right now from the Virginia capes to the Texas coast.
There true yachtsmen often find November winds steadier, the waters cooler, the fish hungrier, and rivers more pleasant--less turbulence and mud, and fewer floating logs.
More and more boats move overland on wheels (1.8 million trailers are now in use) and Midwesterners taking long weekends can travel south with their craft.
In the Southwest, the fall brings out flotillas of boatsmen who find the summer too hot for comfort.
And on northern shores indomitable sailors from Long Island to Lake Michigan will beat around the buoys in dozens of frostbite races.
Some pleasant fall cruising country is mapped out below.
Boating
west coast.
Pleasure boating is just scooting into its best months in California as crisp breezes bring out craft of every size on every kind of water--ocean, lake and reservoir.
Shore facilities are enormous--Los Angeles harbors 5,000 boats, and Long Beach 3,000--but marinas are crowded everywhere.
New docks and ramps are being rushed at Playa Del Rey, Ventura, Dana Point, Oceanside and Mission Bay.
Inland, outboard motorists welcome cooler weather and the chance to buzz over Colorado River sandbars and Lake Mead.
Newest small-boat playground is the Salton Sea, a once-dry desert sinkhole which is now a salty lake 42 miles long and 235 feet below sea level.
On Nov. 11, 12, racers will drive their flying shingles in 5-mile laps over its 500-mile speedboat course.
In San Francisco Bay, winds are gusty and undependable during this season.
A sailboat may have a bone in her teeth one minute and lie becalmed the next.
But regattas are scheduled right up to Christmas.
The Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon launches its winter races Nov. 5.
Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Carla damaged 70% of the marinas in the Galveston-Port Aransas area but fuel service is back to normal, and explorers can roam as far west as Port Isabel on the Mexican border.
Sailing activity is slowed down by Texas northers, but power cruisers can move freely, poking into the San Jacinto, Trinity and Brazos rivers (fine tarpon fishing in the Brazos) or pushing eastward to the pirate country of Barataria.
Off Grand Isle, yachters often visit the towering oil rigs.
The Mississippi Sound leads into a protected waterway running about 200 miles from Pascagoula to Apalachicola.
Lower Mississippi.
Memphis stinkpotters like McKellar Lake, inside the city limits, and sailors look for autumn winds at Arkabutla Lake where fall racing is now in progress.
River cruising for small craft is ideal in November.
At New Orleans, 25-mile-square Lake Pontchartrain has few squalls and year-long boating.
Marinas are less plush than the Florida type but service is good and Creole cooking better.
tva lakes.
Ten thousand twisty miles of shoreline frame the 30-odd lakes in the vast Tennessee River system that loops in and out of seven states.
When dam construction began in 1933, fewer than 600 boats used these waters;
today there are 48,500.
A year ago it was bruited that the primary character in Erich Maria Remarque's new novel was based on the Marquis Alfonso De Portago, the Spanish nobleman who died driving in the Mille Miglia automobile race of 1957.
If this was in fact Mr. Remarque's intention he has achieved a notable failure.
Clerfayt of Heaven Has No Favorites resembles Portago only in that he is male and a race-driver--quite a bad race-driver, whereas Portago was a good one.
He is a dull, unformed, and aimless person;
the twelfth Marquis De Portago was intelligent, purposeful, and passionate.
One looked forward to Mr. Remarque's ninth book if only because not even a reasonably good novel has yet been written grounded on automobile racing, as dramatic a sport as mankind has devised.
Unhappily, Heaven Has No Favorites does not alter the record except to add one more bad book to the list.
Mr. Remarque's conception of this novel was sound and perhaps even noble.
He proposed throwing together a man in an occupation of high hazard and a woman balanced on a knife-edge between death from tuberculosis and recovery.
His treatment of it is something else.
His heroine chooses to die--the price of recovery, years under the strict regimen of a sanatorium, being higher than she wishes to pay.
Her lover precedes her in death, at the wheel, and presumably he too has chosen.
The ramblings on life, death, and the wonder of it all are distressing;
the love-making, perhaps because it is pale and low-key when one has been conditioned to expect harsh colors and explicitness, is often charming;
the automobile racing bears little relation to reality.
This latter failure is more than merely bad reportage and it is distinctly more important than it would have been had the author drawn Clerfayt as, say, a tournament golfer.
Hazards to life and limb on the golf course, while existent, are actuarially insignificant.
He does not.
The jacket biography describes him as a former racing driver, and he may indeed have been, although I do not recall having encountered his name either in the records or the literature.
Perhaps he has only forgotten a great deal.
The book carries a disclaimer in which Remarque says it has been necessary for him to take minor liberties with some of the procedures and formalities of racing.
The necessity is not clear to me, and, in any case, to present a case-hardened race-driver as saying he has left his car, which, or whom, he calls Giuseppe, parked on the Place Vendome sneering at a dozen Bentleys and Rolls-Royces parked around him is not a liberty;
it is an absurdity.
But it is in the matter of preoccupation with death, which is the primary concern of the book, that Remarque's failure is plainest.
Clerfayt is neurotic, preoccupied, and passive.
To be human, he believes, is to seek one's own destruction: the Freudian death-wish cliche inevitably cited whenever laymen talk about auto race-drivers.
In point of fact, the race-drivers one knows are nearly always intelligent, healthy technicians who differ from other technicians only in the depth of the passion they feel for the work by which they live.
A Clerfayt may moon on about the face of Death in the cockpit;
a Portago could say, as he did say to me, If I die tomorrow, still I have had twenty-eight wonderful years;
but I shan't die tomorrow;
I'll live to be 105.
Clerfayt, transported, may think of the engine driving his car as a mystical beast under the hood.
The Italian master Piero Taruffi, no less sensitive, knows twice the ecstasy though he thinks of a car's adhesion to a wet two-lane road at 165 miles an hour as a matter best expressed in algebraic formulae.
Clerfayt, driving, sees himself a volcano whose cone funneled down to hell;
the Briton Stirling Moss, one of the greatest virtuosi of all time, believes that ultra-fast road-circuit driving is an art form related to ballet.
Errors in technical terminology suggest that the over-all translation from the German may not convey quite everything Mr. Remarque hoped to tell us.
However, my principal objection in this sort of novel is to the hackneyed treatment of race-drivers, pilots, submariners, atomic researchers, and all the machine-masters of our age as brooding mystics or hysterical fatalists.
The west is leaderless, according to this book.
In contrast, the East is ably led by such stalwart heroes as Khrushchev, Tito, and Mao.
Against this invincible determination to communize the whole world stands a group of nations unable to agree on fundamentals and each refusing to make any sacrifice of sovereignty for the common good of all.
It is Field Marshal Montgomery's belief that in most Western countries about 60 per cent of the people do not really care about democracy or Christianity;
about 30 per cent call themselves Christians in order to keep up appearances and be considered respectable, and only the last 10 per cent are genuine Christians and believers in democracy.
But these Western countries do care about themselves.
Each feels intensely national.
If, say, the Russians intended to stop Tom Jones' going to the pub, then Tom Jones would fight the Commies.
But he would fight for his own liberty rather than for any abstract principle connected with it--such as cause.
For all practical purposes, the West stands disunited, undedicated, and unprepared for the tasks of world leadership.
With this barrage, Montgomery of Alamein launches his attack upon the blunderings of the West.
Never given to mincing words, he places heavy blame upon the faulty, uncourageous leadership of Britain and particularly America.
At war's end leadership in Western Europe passed from Britain because the Labour Government devoted its attention to the creation of a welfare state.
With Britain looking inward, overseas problems were neglected and the baton was passed on to the United States.
Montgomery believes that she started well.
America gave generously in economic aid and military equipment to friend and foe alike.
She pushed wartorn and poverty-stricken nations into prosperity, but she failed to lead them into unity and world peace.
America has divided more than she has united the West.
The reasons are that America generally believes that she can buy anything with dollars, and that she compulsively strives to be liked.
However, she really does not know how to match the quantity of dollars given away by a quality of leadership that is basically needed.
But the greater reason for fumbling, stumbling American leadership is due to the shock her pride suffered when the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor.
The net result is that under American leadership the general world situation has become bad.
To Monty, the American people, who in two previous world wars were very reluctant to join the fight, now look like the nation most likely to lead us all into a third World War.
As faulty as has been our leadership clearly the United States must be relied upon to lead.
The path to leadership is made clear.
Montgomery calls for a leader who will first put the West's own house in order.
Such a man must be able and willing to give clear and sensible advice to the whole group, a person in whom all the member nations will have absolute confidence.
Such a leader must strengthen NATO politically, and establish that true unity about which it has always talked.
After drastically overhauling NATO, Western leadership should turn to reducing the suspicions that tear apart the East and West.
Major to this effort is to get all world powers to withdraw to their own territories, say by 1970.
The West should make the central proposal;
but the East would have to show sincerity in carrying it out.
But where is the leader who will handle all these things for us?
Montgomery knew all the national leaders up to the time of Kennedy.
The man whom he would select as our leader for this great task is De Gaulle.
He alone has the wisdom, the conviction, the tenacity, and the courage to reach a decision.
But De Gaulle is buried in the cause of restoring France's lost soul.
Whoever rises to the occasion walks a treacherous path to leadership.
All in all, Montgomery calls for a leader who will anticipate and dominate the events that surround him.
In looking as far back as Moses, thence to Cromwell, Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, and Nehru, Montgomery attempts to trace the stirrings and qualities of great men.
He believes that greatness is a marriage between the man and the times as was aptly represented by Churchill, who would very possibly have gone down in history as a political failure if it had not been for Hitler's war.
However, Montgomery makes little contribution to leadership theory and practice.
Most of what is said about his great men of history has already been said, and what has not is largely irrelevant to the contemporary scene.
Like Eisenhower, he holds the militarist's suspicion of politicians.
However, at the same time Montgomery selects as his hero De Gaulle, who is a militarist dominated by political ambitions.
Monty shows a remarkable capacity for the direct statement and an equally remarkable incapacity for giving adequate support.
For the most part, his writing rambles and jogs, preventing easy access by the reader to his true thoughts.
Nevertheless, Montgomery has stated courageously and wisely the crisis of the Western world.
It suffers from a lack of unity of purpose and respect for heroic leadership.
And it remains to be seen if the new frontier now taking form can produce the leadership and wisdom necessary to understand the current shape of events.
It is no common thing for a listener (critical or otherwise) to hear a singer live for the first time only after he has died.
But then, Mario Lanza was no common singer, and his whole career, public and non-public, was studded with the kind of unconventional happenings that terminate with the appearance of his first recital only when he has ceased to be a living voice.
It is a kind of justice, too, that it should originate in London's Royal Albert Hall, where, traditionally, the loudest, if not the greatest, performers have entertained the thousands it will accommodate (RCA Victor LM 2454, $4.98).
To be sure, Lanza made numerous concert tours, here and abroad, but these did not take him to New York where the carping critic might lurk.
The reading public, the theatergoing public, the skindiving public, the horse-playing public--all these and others fill substantial roles in U.S. life, but none is so varied, vast and vigilant as the eating public.
That mother hen of the weight-height tables, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., clucks that 48 million Americans are overweight.
Through previous centuries, eating changed by nearly imperceptible degrees, and mostly toward just getting enough.
Now big forces buffet food.
For the first time in history, the U.S. has produced a society in which less than one-tenth of the people turn out so much food that the Government's most embarrassing problem is how to dispose inconspicuously of 100 million tons of surplus farm produce.
In this same society, the plain citizen can with an average of only one-fifth his income buy more calories than he can consume.
Refrigeration, automated processing and packaging conspire to defy season and banish spoilage.
And in the wake of the new affluence and the new techniques of processing comes a new American interest in how what people eat affects their health.
To eat is human, the nation is learning to think, to survive divine.
Fads, facts
Not all the concern for health is well directed.
From the fusty panaceas of spinach, eggs and prunes, the U.S. has progressed to curds, concentrates and capsules.
Each year, reports the American Medical Association, ten million Americans spend $900 million on vitamins, tonics and other food supplements.
At juice bars in Los Angeles' 35 health stores, a new sensation is a pink, high-protein cocktail, concocted of dried eggs, powdered milk and cherry-flavored No-Cal, which sells for 59-cents per 8-oz. glass.
Grocery stores sell dozens of foods that boast of having almost no food value at all.
But a big part of the public wants to know facts about diet and health, and a big group of U.S. scientists wants to supply them.
The man most firmly at grips with the problem is the University of Minnesota's Physiologist Ancel Keys, 57, inventor of the wartime K (for Keys) ration and author of last year's bestselling Eat Well And Stay Well.
Pursuing it, he has logged 500,000 miles, suffered indescribable digestive indignities, and meticulously collected physiological data on the health and eating habits of 10,000 individuals, from Bantu tribesmen to Italian contadini.
He has measured the skinfolds (the fleshy areas under the shoulder blades) of Neapolitan firemen, studied the metabolism of Finnish woodcutters, analyzed the mealie-meal eaten by Capetown coloreds, and experimented on Minneapolis businessmen.
And fats.
Keys's findings, though far from complete, are likely to smash many an eating cliche.
Vitamins, eggs and milk begin to look like foods to hold down on (though mothers' milk is still the ticket).
Readings of the number of milligrams of cholesterol in the blood, which seem to have value in predicting heart attacks, are becoming as routine as the electrocardiogram, which can show that the heart has suffered a symptomatic attack.
Already many an American knows his count, and rejoices or worries depending on whether it is nearer 180 (safe) or 250 (dangerous).
Out of cholesterol come Keys's main messages so far:
Americans eat too much.
The typical U.S. daily menu, says Dr. Keys, contains 3,000 calories, should contain 2,300.
And extra weight increases the risk of cancer, diabetes, artery disease and heart attack.
Americans eat too much fat.
With meat, milk, butter and ice cream, the calorie-heavy U.S. diet is 40% fat, and most of that is saturated fat--the insidious kind, says Dr. Keys, that increases blood cholesterol, damages arteries, and leads to coronary disease.
Obesity: a malnutrition.
Throughout much of the world, food is still so scarce that half of the earth's population has trouble getting the 1,600 calories a day necessary to sustain life.
The deficiency diseases--scurvy, tropical sprue, pellagra--run rampant.
In the well-fed U.S., deficiency diseases have virtually vanished in the past 20 years.
Today, as Harrison's Principles Of Internal Medicine, a standard internist's text, puts it, The most common form of malnutrition is caloric excess or obesity.
Puritan New England regarded obesity as a flagrant symbol of intemperance, and thus a sin.
Says Keys: Maybe if the idea got around again that obesity is immoral, the fat man would start to think.
Morals aside, the fat man has plenty to worry about--over and above the fact that no one any longer loves him.
The simple mechanical strain of overweight, says New York's Dr. Norman Jolliffe, can overburden and damage the heart for much the same reason that a Chevrolet engine in a Cadillac body would wear out sooner than if it were in a body for which it was built.
The fat man has trouble buying life insurance or has to pay higher premiums.
He has--for unclear reasons--a 25% higher death rate from cancer.
He is particularly vulnerable to diabetes.
He may find even moderate physical exertion uncomfortable, because excess body fat hampers his breathing and restricts his muscular movement.
Physiologically, people overeat because what Dr. Jolliffe calls the appestat is set too high.
The appestat, which adjusts the appetite to keep weight constant, is located, says Jolliffe, in the hypothalamus--near the body's temperature, sleep and water-balance controls.
Physical exercise raises the appestat.
So does cold weather.
In moderate doses, alcohol narcotizes the appestat and enhances appetite (the original reason for the cocktail);
but because liquor has a high caloric value--100 calories per oz.--the heavy drinker is seldom hungry.
In rare cases, diseases such as encephalitis or a pituitary tumor may damage the appestat permanently, destroying nearly all sense of satiety.
Food for frustration.
Far more frequently, overeating is the result of a psychological compulsion.
It may be fostered by frustration, depression, insecurity--or, in children, simply by the desire to stop an anxious mother's nagging.
Some families place undue emphasis on food: conversations center on it, and rich delicacies are offered as rewards, withheld as punishment.
The result says Jolliffe: The child gains the feeling that food is the purpose of life.
Food may act as a sedative, giving temporary emotional solace, just as, for some people, alcohol does.
Reports Dr. Keys: A fairly common experience for us is the wife who finds her husband staying out more and more.
He may be interested in another woman, or just like being with the boys.
So she fishes around in the cupboard and hauls out a chocolate cake.
It's a matter of boredom, and the subconscious feeling that she is entitled to something, because she's being deprived of something else.
For the army of compulsive eaters--from the nibblers and the gobblers to the downright gluttons--reducing is a war with the will that is rarely won.
Physiologist Keys flatly dismisses such appetite depressants as the amphetamines (Benzedrine, Dexedrine) as dangerous crutches for a weak will.
Keys has no such objections to Metrecal, Quaker Oats's Quota and other 900-calorie milk formulas that are currently winning favor from dieters.
Metrecal is a pretty complete food, he says.
It contains large amounts of protein, vitamins and minerals.
In the quantity of 900 calories a day, anyone will lose weight on it--20, 30 or 40 lbs..
But Keys worries that the Metrecal drinker will never make either the psychological or physiological adjustment to the idea of eating smaller portions of food.
That remarkable cholesterol.
Despite his personal distaste for obesity (disgusting), Dr. Keys has only an incidental interest in how much Americans eat.
Cholesterol, the cornerstone of Dr. Keys's theory, is a mysterious yellowish, waxy substance, chemically a crystalline alcohol.
Scientists assume that cholesterol (from the Greek chole, meaning bile, and sterios, meaning solid) is somehow necessary for the formation of brain cells, since it accounts for about 2% of the brain's total solid weight.
They know it is the chief ingredient in gallstones.
They suspect it plays a role in the production of adrenal hormones, and they believe it is essential to the transport of fats throughout the circulatory system.
But they cannot fully explain the process of its manufacture by the human liver.
Although the fatty protein molecules, carried in the blood and partly composed of cholesterol, are water soluble, cholesterol itself is insoluble, and cannot be destroyed by the body.
A remarkable substance, says Dr. Keys, quite apart from its tendency to be deposited in the walls of arteries.
When thus deposited, Keys says that cholesterol is mainly responsible for the arterial blockages that culminate in heart attacks.
Explains Keys: As the fatty protein molecules travel in the bloodstream, they are deposited in the intima, or inner wall of a coronary artery.
The proteins and fats are burned off, and the cholesterol is left behind.
As cholesterol piles up, it narrows, irritates and damages the artery, encouraging formation of calcium deposits and slowing circulation.
Eventually, says Keys, one of two things happens.
A clot forms at the site, seals off the flow of blood to the heart and provokes a heart attack.
Or (more commonly, thinks Keys) the deposits themselves get so big that they choke off the artery's flow to the point that an infarct occurs: the heart muscle is suffocated, cells supplied by the artery die, and the heart is permanently, perhaps fatally injured.
Fats & coronaries.
Ordinarily, the human liver synthesizes only enough cholesterol to satisfy the body's needs--for transportation of fats and for production of bile.
Even eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods, eaten in normal amounts, says Dr. Keys, do not materially affect the amount of cholesterol in the blood.
But fatty foods do.
During World War 2, doctors in The Netherlands and Scandinavia noted a curious fact: despite the stresses of Nazi occupation, the death rate from coronary artery disease was slowly dropping.
Not until long after the war--1950, in fact--did they get a hint of the reason.
That year, Sweden's Haqvin Malmros showed that the sinking death rate neatly coincided with increasingly severe restrictions on fatty foods.
That same year the University of California's Dr. Laurance Kinsell, timing oxidation rates of blood fats, stumbled onto the discovery that many vegetable fats cause blood cholesterol levels to drop radically, while animal fats cause them to rise.
Here Keys and others, such as Dr. A. E. Ahrens of the Rockefeller Institute, took over to demonstrate the chemical difference between vegetable and animal fats--and even between different varieties of each.
All natural food fats fall into one of three categories--saturated, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated.
The degree of saturation depends on the number of hydrogen atoms on the fat molecule.
Saturated fats can accommodate no more hydrogens.
Mono-unsaturated fats have room for two more hydrogens on each molecule, and the poly-unsaturated fat molecule has room for at least four hydrogens.
The three fats have similar caloric values (about 265 calories per oz.), but each exerts a radically different influence on blood cholesterol.
As a result, although we still make use of this distinction, there is much confusion as to the meaning of the basic terms employed.
Just what is meant by spirit and by matter?
The terms are generally taken for granted as though they referred to direct and axiomatic elements in the common experience of all.
Yet in the contemporary context this is precisely what one must not do.
For in the modern world neither spirit nor matter refer to any generally agreed-upon elements of experience.
We are in a transitional stage in which many of the connotations of former usage have had to be revised or rejected.
When the words are used, we are never sure which of the traditional meanings the user may have in mind, or to what extent his revisions and rejections of former understandings correspond to ours.
One of the most widespread features of contemporary thought is the almost universal disbelief in the reality of spirit.
Just a few centuries ago the world of spirits was as populous and real as the world of material entities.
Not only in popular thought but in that of the highly educated as well was this true.
Demons, fairies, angels, and a host of other spiritual beings were as much a part of the experiential world of western man as were rocks and trees and stars.
In such a world the words matter and spirit both referred to directly known realities in the common experience of all.
In it important elements of Christianity and of the Biblical view of reality in general, which now cause us much difficulty, could be responded to quite naturally and spontaneously.
The progress of science over these last few centuries and the gradual replacement of Biblical by scientific categories of reality have to a large extent emptied the spirit world of the entities which previously populated it.
In carrying out this program science has undoubtedly performed a very considerable service for which it can claim due credit.
The objectification of the world of spirit in popular superstition had certainly gone far beyond what the experience of spirit could justify or support.
Science is fully competent to deal with any element of experience which arises from an object in space and time.
When, therefore, it turned its attention to the concrete entities with which popular imagination had peopled the world of spirit, these entities soon lost whatever status they had enjoyed as actual elements of external reality.
In doing so science has unquestionably cleared up widespread misconceptions, removed extraneous and illusory sources of fear, and dispelled many undesirable popular superstitions.
There have been, indeed, many important and valuable gains from the development of our present scientific view of the world for which we may be rightly grateful.
All this has not, however, been an unmixed blessing.
The scientific debunking of the spirit world has been in a way too successful and too thorough.
The house has been swept so clean that contemporary man has been left with no means, or at best with wholly inadequate means, for dealing with his experience of spirit.
Although the particular form of conceptualization which popular imagination had made in response to the experience of spirit was undoubtedly defective, the raw experience itself which led to such excesses remains with us as vividly as ever.
We simply find ourselves in the position of having no means for inquiring into the structure and meaning of this range of our experience.
There is no framework or structure of thought with respect to which we can organize it and no part of reality, as we know and apprehend it, with respect to which we can refer this experience.
Science has simply left us helpless and powerless in this important sector of our lives.
The situation in which we find ourselves is brought out with dramatic force in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, which deals with the Salem witch trials.
As the play opens the audience is introduced to the community of Salem in Puritan America at the end of the eighteenth century.
Aside from a quaint concern with witches and devils which provides the immediate problem in the opening scene, it is a quite normal community.
The conversation of the characters creates an atmosphere suggesting the usual mixture of pleasures, foibles, irritations, and concerns which would characterize the common life of a normal village in any age.
There is no occasion to feel uneasy or disturbed about these people.
Instead, the audience can sit back at ease and, from the perspective of an enlightened time which no longer believes in such things, enjoy the dead seriousness with which the characters in the play take the witches and devils which are under discussion.
A teenage girl, Abigail Williams, is being sharply questioned by her minister uncle, the Reverend Samuel Parris, about a wild night affair in the woods in which she and some other girls had seemed to have had contact with these evil beings.
For all involved in this discussion the devil is a real entity who can really be confronted in the woods on a dark night, the demon world is populated with real creatures, and witches actually can be seen flying through the air.
As the play unfolds, however, the audience is subtly brought into the grip of an awful evil which grows with ominously gathering power and soon engulfs the community.
Everyone in Salem, saint and sinner alike, is swept up by it.
It is like a mysterious epidemic which, starting first with Abigail and Parris, spreads inexorably with a dreadfully growing virulence through the whole town until all have been infected by it.
It grows terribly and unavoidably in power and leaves in its wake a trail of misery, moral disintegration, and destruction.
The audience leaves the play under a spell, It is the kind of spell which the exposure to spirit in its living active manifestation always evokes.
If one asks about this play, what it is that comes upon this community and works within it with such terrible power, there is no better answer to give than spirit.
This is not to attempt to say what spirit is, but only to employ a commonly used word to designate or simply identify a common experience.
In the end the good man, John Proctor, expresses what the audience has already come to feel when he says, A fire, a fire is burning!
I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face!
The tragic irony of the play is that the very belief in and concern with a devil who could be met in the woods and combatted with formulae set out in books was the very thing that prevented them from detecting the real devil when he came among them.
We marvel at their blindness for not seeing this.
Yet are not we of the mid-twentieth century, who rightly do not believe there is any such thing as the devil, just as bad off as they--only in a different way?
In our disbelief we think that we can no longer even use the word and so are unable to even name the elemental power which is so vividly real in this play.
We are left helpless to cope with it because we do not dare speak of it as anything real for fear that to do so would imply a commitment to that which has already been discredited and proved false.
Even Mr. Miller himself seems uncertain on this score.
In a long commentary which he has inserted in the published text of the first act of the play, he says at one point: However, that experience never raised a doubt in his mind as to the reality of the underworld or the existence of Lucifer's many-faced lieutenants.
And his belief is not to his discredit.
Better minds than Hale's were--and still are--convinced that there is a society of spirits beyond our ken.
(page 33) On the other hand, a little later on he says: Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes.
(page 34)
Apparently he does not intend that those who read or view this play should think of the devil as being actually real.
Yet such is the dramatic power of his writing that the audience is nevertheless left in the grip of the terrible power and potency of that which came over Salem.
It casts a spell upon them so that they leave with a feeling of having been in the mysterious presence of an evil power.
It is not enough in accounting for this feeling to analyze it into the wickedness of individual people added together to produce a cumulative effect.
For this does not account for the integral, elemental power of that which grows with abounding vigor as the play unfolds, nor does it explain the strange numinous sense of presentness which comes over those who watch the play like a spell.
The reality of spirit emerges in this play in spite of the author's convictions to the contrary.
Spirit and community
There is nothing in the whole range of human experience more widely known and universally felt than spirit.
Apart from spirit there could be no community, for it is spirit which draws men into community and gives to any community its unity, cohesiveness, and permanence.
Think, for example, of the spirit of the Marine Corps.
Surely this is a reality we all acknowledge.
We cannot, of course, assign it any substance.
It is not material and is not a thing occupying space and time.
Yet it exists and has an objective reality which can be experienced and known.
So it is too with many other spirits which we all know: the spirit of Nazism or Communism, school spirit, the spirit of a street corner gang or a football team, the spirit of Rotary or the Ku Klux Klan.
Every community, if it is alive has a spirit, and that spirit is the center of its unity and identity.
In searching for clues which might lead us to a fresh apprehension of the reality of spirit, the close connection between spirit and community is likely to prove the most fruitful.
For it is primarily in community that we know and experience spirit.
It is spirit which gives life to a community and causes it to cohere.
It is the spirit which is the source of a community's drawing power by means of which others are drawn into it from the world outside so that the community grows and prospers.
Yet the spirit which lives in community is not identical with the community.
The idea of community and the idea of spirit are two distinct and separable ideas.
One characteristic of the spirit in community is its givenness.
The members of the community do not create the spirit but rather find it present and waiting for them.
It is for them a given which they and they alone possess.
The spirit of the Marine Corps was present and operative before any of the present members of it came into it.
It is they, of course, who keep it alive and preserve it so the same spirit will continue to be present in the Corps for future recruits to find as they come into it.
This does not mean that mythological language as such can no longer be used in theology and preaching.
The absurd notion that demythologization entails the expurgation of all mythological concepts completely misrepresents Bultmann's intention.
His point is not that mythology may not be used, but that it may no longer be regarded as the only or even the most appropriate conceptuality for expressing the Christian kerygma.
When we say that a mythological mode of thought must be completely abandoned, we mean it must be abandoned as the sole or proper means for presenting the Christian understanding of existence.
Mythological concepts may by all means still be used, but they can be used responsibly only as symbols or ciphers, that is, only if they are also constantly interpreted in nonmythological (or existential) terms.
The statement is often made that when Bultmann argues in this way, he overestimates the intellectual stumbling-block which myth is supposed to put in the way of accepting the Christian faith.
But this statement is completely unconvincing.
Nor is it necessary to look for such evidence in the great urban centers of our culture that are admittedly almost entirely secularized and so profoundly estranged from the conventional forms in which the gospel has been communicated.
On the contrary, even in the heart of the Bible belt itself, as can be attested by any one who is called to work there, the industrial and technological revolutions have long been under way, together with the corresponding changes in man's picture of himself and his world.
In fact, it is in just such a situation that the profundity of Bultmann's argument is disclosed.
Although the theological forms of the past continue to exist in a way they do not in a more secularized situation, the striking thing is the rapidity with which they are being reduced to a marginal existence.
This is especially in evidence among the present generation of the suburban middle class.
Time and again in counseling and teaching, one encounters members of this group whose attempts to bring into some kind of unity the insubstantial mythologies of their fundamentalist heritage and the stubborn reality of the modern world are only too painfully obvious.
The same thing is also evidenced by the extreme culture-Protestantism so often observed to characterize the preaching and teaching of the American churches.
In the absence of a truly adequate conceptuality in which the gospel can be expressed, the unavoidable need to demythologize it makes use of whatever resources are at hand--and this usually means one or another of the various forms of folk religion current in the situation.
This is not to say that the only explanation of the present infatuation with Norman Vincent Peale's cult of reassurance or the other types of a purely cultural Christianity is the ever-present need for a demythologized gospel.
But it is to say that this need is far more important for such infatuation than most of the pundits seem to have suspected.
However, even if the latent demand for demythologization is not nearly as widespread as we are claiming, at least among the cultured elements of the population there tends to be an almost complete indifference to the church and its traditional message of sin and grace.
To be sure, when this is pointed out, a common response among certain churchmen is to fulminate about the little flock and the great crowd and to take solace from Paul's castigation of the wisdom of the wise in the opening chapter of First Corinthians.
But can we any longer afford the luxury of such smug indigation?
Can the church risk assuming that the folly of men is as dear to God as their wisdom, or, as is also commonly implied, that the foolishness of God and the foolishness of men are simply two ways of talking about the same thing?
Can we continue to alienate precisely those whose gifts we so desperately need and apart from whose co-operation our mission in the world must become increasingly precarious?
There is an ancient and venerable tradition in the church (which derives, however, from the heritage of the Greeks rather than from the Bible) that God is completely independent of his creation and so has no need of men for accomplishing his work in the world.
By analogy, the church also has been regarded as entirely independent of the world in the sense of requiring nothing from it in order to be the church.
But, as Scripture everywhere reminds us, God does have need of his creatures, and the church, a fortiori, can ill afford to do without the talents with which the world, by God's providence, presents it.
And yet this is exactly the risk we run when we assume, as we too often do, that we can continue to preach the gospel in a form that makes it seem incredible and irrelevant to cultured men.
Until we translate this gospel into a language that enlightened men today can understand, we are depriving ourselves of the very resources on which the continued success of our witness most certainly depends.
In arguing in this way, we are obviously taking for granted that a demythologized restatement of the kerygma can be achieved;
and that we firmly believe this will presently become evident when we set forth reasons to justify such a conviction.
But the main point here is that even if such a restatement were not possible, the demand to demythologize the kerygma would still be unavoidable.
This is what we mean when we say this demand must be accepted without condition.
If to be a Christian means to say yes where I otherwise say no, or where I do not have the right to say anything at all, then my only choice is to refuse to be a Christian.
Expressed differently: if the price for becoming a faithful follower of Jesus Christ is some form of self-destruction, whether of the body or of the mind--sacrificium corporis, sacrificium intellectus--then there is no alternative but that the price remain unpaid.
This must be stressed because it is absolutely essential to the argument of this concluding chapter.
Modern man, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer has told us, has come of age;
and though this process by no means represents an unambiguous gain and is, in fact, marked by the estrangement from the depths that seems to be the cost of human maturation, it is still a positive step forward;
and those of us who so richly benefit from it should be the last to despise it.
In any event, it is an irreversible step, and if we are at all honest with ourselves, we will know we have no other alternative than to live in the world in which God has seen fit to place us.
To say this, of course, is to take up a position on one side of a controversy going on now for some two hundred years, or, at any rate, since the beginning of the distinctively modern period in theological thought.
It is to this same tradition that most of the creative figures in the last century and a half of American theology also belong.
For we must number here not only the names of Bushnell, Clarke, and Rauschenbusch, not to mention those of the Chicago School and Macintosh, but those of the brothers Niebuhr and (if America may claim him!
) Tillich as well.
Finally, we may also mention the several members of the self-consciously neoliberal movement that developed at the University of Chicago and is heavily indebted philosophically to the creative work of Alfred North Whitehead.
What makes this long and diverse tradition essentially one is that those who have belonged to it have been profoundly in earnest about being modern men in a distinctively modern world.
Although they have also been concerned to stand squarely within the tradition of the apostolic church, they have exhibited no willingness whatever to sacrifice their modernity to their Christianity.
They have insisted, rather, on living fully and completely within modern culture and, so far from considering this treason to God, have looked upon it as the only way they could be faithful to him.
When we say, then, that today, in our situation, the demand for demythologization must be accepted without condition, we are simply saying that at least this much of the liberal tradition is an enduring achievement.
However much we may have to criticize liberal theology's constructive formulations, the theology we ourselves must strive to formulate can only go beyond liberalism, not behind it.
In affirming this we have already taken the decisive step in breaking the deadlock into which Bultmann's attempt to formulate such a theology has led.
For we have said, in effect, that of the two alternatives to his position variously represented by the other participants in the demythologizing discussion, only one is really an alternative.
If the demand for demythologization is unavoidable and so must be accepted by theology unconditionally, the position of the right is clearly untenable.
In order to make the implications of our position as clear as possible, we may develop this argument at greater length.
We may show, first, that there cannot possibly be an alternative other than the three typically represented by Bultmann, Barth, and Buri.
To do this, it is sufficient to point out that if the principle in terms of which alternatives are to be conceived is such as to exclude more than two, then the question of a third possibility is a meaningless question.
Thus, if what is at issue is whether All S is P, it is indifferent whether Some S is not P or No S is P, since in either case the judgment in question is false.
Hence, if what is in question is whether in a given theology myth is or is not completely rejected, it is unimportant whether only a little bit of myth or a considerable quantity is accepted;
for, in either event, the first possibility is excluded.
A second point requires more extended comment.
(2) accepts instead a special biblical hermeneutics or method of interpretation;
and (3) in so doing, frees itself to give appropriate emphasis to the event Jesus Christ by means of statements that, from Bultmann's point of view, are mythological.
One hundred years ago there existed in England the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom.
Representing as it did the efforts of only unauthorized individuals of the Roman and Anglican Churches, and urging a communion of prayer unacceptable to Rome, this association produced little fruit, and, in fact, was condemned by the Holy Office in 1864.
Now again in 1961, in England, there is perhaps nothing in the religious sphere so popularly discussed as Christian unity.
The Church Unity Octave, January 18-25, was enthusiastically devoted to prayer and discussion by the various churches.
Many people seem hopeful, yet it is difficult to predict whether or not there will be any more real attainment of Christian unity in 1961 than there was in 1861.
But it must be readily seen that the religious picture in England has so greatly changed during these hundred years as to engender hope, at least on the Catholic side.
For the tide is well on the turn, as the London Catholic weekly Universe has written.
I came to England last summer to do research on the unpublished letters of Cardinal Newman.
As an American Catholic of Irish ancestry, I came with certain preconceptions and expectations;
being intellectually influenced by Newman and the general 19th-century literature of England, I knew only a Protestant-dominated country.
Since arriving here, however, I have formed a far different religious picture of present-day England.
In representing part of this new picture, I will be recounting some of my own personal experiences, reactions and judgments;
but my primary aim is to transcribe what Englishmen themselves are saying and writing and implying about the Roman and Anglican Churches and about the present religious state of England.
Since the Protestant clergy for the most part wear gray or some variant from the wholly black suit, my Roman collar and black garb usually identify me in England as a Roman Catholic cleric.
In any case, I have always been treated with the utmost courtesy by Englishmen, even in Devonshire and Cornwall, where anti-Catholic feeling has supposedly existed the strongest and longest.
Nowhere have I seen public expression of anti-Catholicism.
On my first Guy Fawkes Day here, I found Catholics as well as non-Catholics celebrating with the traditional fireworks and bonfires, and was told that most Englishmen either do not know or are not concerned with the historical significance of the day.
A Birmingham newspaper printed in a column for children an article entitled The True Story of Guy Fawkes, which began:
When you pile your guy on the bonfire tomorrow night, I wonder how much of the true story of Guy Fawkes you will remember?
In the 355 years since the first Guy Fawkes Night, much of the story has been forgotten, so here is a reminder.
The article proceeded to give an inaccurate account of a Catholic plot to kill King James 1.
The return of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850 was looked upon with indignant disapprobation and, in fact, was charged with being a gesture of disloyalty.
In 1864 Newman professedly had to write his Apologia with his keenest feelings in order to be believed and to command a fair hearing from English readers.
Now, in 1961, the Catholic population of England is still quite small (ten per cent, or 5 million);
yet it represents a very considerable percentage of the churchgoing population.
A Protestant woman marveled to me over the large crowds going in and out of the Birmingham Oratory (Catholic) Church on Sunday mornings.
She found this a marvel because, as she said, only six per cent of English people are churchgoers.
She may not have been exact on this number, but others here feel quite certain that the percentage would be less than ten.
From many sides come remarks that Protestant churches are badly attended and the large medieval cathedrals look all but empty during services.
A Catholic priest recently recounted how in the chapel of a large city university, following Anglican evensong, at which there was a congregation of twelve, he celebrated Mass before more than a hundred.
The Protestant themselves are the first to admit the great falling off in effective membership in their churches.
An amazing article in the Manchester Guardian of last November, entitled Fate Of Redundant Churches, states than an Archbishops' Commission reported last month that in the Church of England alone there are 790 churches which are redundant now, or will be in 20 years' time.
A further 260 Anglican churches have been demolished since 1948.
And in the last five years, the Methodist chapel committee has authorized the demolition or, more often, the sale of 764 chapels.
Most of these former churches are now used as warehouses, but neither Anglicans nor Nonconformists object to selling churches to Roman Catholics, and have done so.
While it must be said that these same Protestants have built some new churches during this period, and that religious population shifts have emptied churches, a principal reason for this phenomenon of redundancy is that fewer Protestants are going to church.
It should be admitted, too, that there is a good percentage of lapsed or nonchurchgoing Catholics (one paper writes 50 per cent).
Still, it is clear from such reports, and apparently clear from the remarks of many people, that Protestants are decreasing and Catholics increasing.
An Anglican clergyman in Oxford sadly but frankly acknowledged to me that this is true.
That day is perhaps today, 1961, and it seems no longer very meaningful to call England a Protestant country.
One of the ironies of the present crusade for Christian unity is that there are not, relatively speaking, many real Christians to unite.
Many English Catholics are proud of their Catholicism and know that they are in a new ascendancy.
The London Universe devoted its centenary issue last December 8 to mapping out various aspects of Catholic progress during the last one hundred years.
With traditional nationalistic spirit, some Englishmen claim that English Catholicism is Catholicism at its best.
I have found myself saying with other foreigners here that English Catholics are good Catholics.
It has been my experience to find as many men as women in church, and to hear almost everyone in church congregations reciting the Latin prayers and responses at Mass.
They hope, of course, to reclaim the non-Catholic population to the Catholic faith, and at every Sunday Benediction they recite by heart the Prayer for England:
O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our most gentle queen and mother, look down in mercy upon England, thy dowry, and upon us all who greatly hope and trust in thee.
Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the chief Shepherd, the vicar of thy Son.
A hymn often to be heard in Catholic churches is Faith Of Our Fathers, which glories in England's ancient faith that endured persecution, and which proclaims: Faith of our Fathers: Mary's prayers Shall win our country back to thee.
The English saints are widely venerated, quite naturally, and now there is great hope that the Forty Martyrs and Cardinal Newman will soon be canonized.
Because they have kept the faith of their medieval fathers, English Catholics have always strongly resented the charge of being un-English.
I have not seen this charge made during my stay here, but apparently it is still in the air.
For example, a writer in a recent number of The Queen hyperbolically states that of the myriad imprecations the only one which the English Catholics really resent is the suggestion that they are'un-English'''.
One of the more noteworthy changes that have taken place since the mid-19th century is the situation of Catholics at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
At Oxford one hundred years ago there were very few Catholics, partly because religious tests were removed only in 1854.
Moreover, for those few there was almost no ecclesiastical representation in the city to care for their religious needs.
Now, not only are there considerably more laity as students and professors at Oxford, but there are also numerous houses of religious orders existing in respectable and friendly relations with the non-Catholic members of the University.
Some Catholic priests lecture there;
Catholic seminarians attend tutorials and row on the Cherwell with non-Catholic students.
Further evidence that Roman Catholicism enjoys a more favorable position today than in 1861 is the respectful attention given to it in the mass media of England.
The general tone of articles appearing in such important newspapers as the Manchester Guardian and the Sunday Observer implies a kindly recognition that the Catholic Church is now at least of equal stature in England with the Protestant churches.
On successive Sundays during October, 1960, Paul Ferris (a non-Catholic) wrote articles in the Observer depicting clergymen of the Church of England, the Church of Rome and the Nonconformist Church.
The Catholic priest, though somewhat superficially drawn, easily came out the best.
There were many letters of strong protest against the portrait of the Anglican clergyman, who was indeed portrayed as a man not particularly concerned with religious matters and without really very much to do as clergyman.
Such a series of articles was certainly never printed in the public press of mid-Victorian England.
There was so much interest shown in this present-day venture that it was continued on B.B.C., where comments were equally made by an Anglican parson, a Free Church minister and a Catholic priest.
Catholic priests have frequently appeared on television programs, sometimes discussing the Christian faith on an equal footing with Protestant clergymen.
A notable example of this was the discussion of Christian unity by the Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Dr. Heenan, and the Anglican Archbishop of York, Dr. Ramsey, recently appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
The good feeling which exists between these two important church figures is now well known in England.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with commentary has been televised several times in recent months.
And it was interesting to observe that B.B.C.'s television film on Christmas Eve was The Bells Of St. Mary's.
Of course, the crowning event that has dramatically upset the traditional pattern of English religious history was the friendly visit paid by Dr. Fisher, then Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Vatican last December.
It was the first time an English Primate has done this since the 14th century.
English Catholics reacted to this event with moderate but real hope.
Almost daily something is reported which feeds this Catholic hope in England: statistics of the increasing numbers of converts and Irish Catholic immigrants;
news of a Protestant minister in Leamington who has offered to allow a Catholic priest to preach from his pulpit;
a report that a Catholic nun had been requested to teach in a non-Catholic secondary school during the sickness of one of its masters;
the startling statement in a respectable periodical that Catholics, if the present system is still in operation, will constitute almost one-third of the House of Lords in the next generation;
a report that 200 Protestant clergymen and laity attended a votive Mass offered for Christian unity at a Catholic church in Slough during the Church Unity Octave.
The death of a man is unique, and yet it is universal.
The straight line would symbolize its uniqueness, the circle its universality.
But how can one figure symbolize both?
Christianity declares that in the life and death of Jesus Christ the unique and the universal concur.
Perhaps no church father saw this concurrence of the unique and the universal as clearly, or formulated it as precisely, as Irenaeus.
To be the Savior and the Lord, Jesus Christ has to be a historical individual with a biography all his own;
he dare not be a cosmic aeon that swoops to earth for a while but never identifies itself with man's history.
Yet this utterly individual historical person must also contain within himself the common history of mankind.
His history is his alone, yet each man must recognize his own history in it.
His death is his alone, yet each man can see his own death in the crucifixion of Jesus.
Each man can identify himself with the history and the death of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ has identified himself with human history and human death, coming as the head of a new humanity.
Not a circle, then, nor a straight line, but a spiral represents the shape of death as Irenaeus sees it;
for a spiral has motion as well as recurrence.
As represented by a spiral, history may, in some sense, be said to repeat itself;
yet each historical event remains unique.
Christ is both unique and universal.
The first turn of the spiral is the primeval history of humanity in Adam.
As Origen interprets the end of history on the basis of its beginning, so Irenaeus portrays the story of Adam on the basis of the story of Christ.
Whence, then, comes the substance of the first man?
From God's Will and Wisdom, and from virgin earth.
For'God had not rained ', says the Scripture, before man was made, and there was no man to till the earth.
From this earth, then, while it was still virgin God took dust and fashioned the man, the beginning of humanity.
Irenaeus does not regard Adam and Eve merely as private individuals, but as universal human beings, who were and are all of humanity.
Adam and Eve were perfect, not in the sense that they possessed perfection, but in the sense that they were capable of development toward perfection.
They were, in fact, children.
Irenaeus does not claim pre-existence for the human soul;
therefore there is no need for him, as there is for Origen, to identify existence itself with the fall.
Existence is created and willed by God and is not the consequence of a pre-existent rebellion or of a cosmic descent from eternity into history.
Historical existence is a created good.
The biblical symbol for this affirmation is expressed in the words: So God created man in his own image;
in the similitude of God he created him.
There are some passages in the writings of Irenaeus where the image of God and the similitude are sharply distinguished, so most notably in the statement: If the (Holy) Spirit is absent from the soul, such a man is indeed of an animal nature;
and, being left carnal, he will be an imperfect being, possessing the image (of God) in his formation, but not receiving the similitude (of God) through the Spirit.
Thus the image of God is that which makes a man a man and not an oyster;
the similitude of God, by contrast, is that which makes a man a child of God and not merely a rational creature.
Recent research on Irenaeus, however, makes it evident that he does not consistently maintain this distinction.
He does not mean to say that Adam lost the similitude of God and his immortality through the fall;
for he was created not exactly immortal, nor yet exactly mortal, but capable of immortality as well as of mortality.
Therefore Irenaeus describes man's creation as follows:
And He laid down for him certain conditions: so that, if he kept the command of God, then he would always remain as he was, that is, immortal;
but if he did not, he would become mortal, melting into earth, whence his frame had been taken.
These conditions man did not keep, and thus he became mortal;
yet he did not stop being human as a result.
There is no justification for systematizing the random statements of Irenaeus about the image of God beyond this, nor for reading into his imprecise usage the later theological distinction between the image of God (humanity) and the similitude of God (immortality).
Man was created with the capacity for immortality, but the devil's promise of immortality in exchange for disobedience cost Adam his immortality.
He was, in the words of Irenaeus, beguiled by another under the pretext of immortality.
The true way to immortality lay through obedience, but man did not believe this.
Eve was disobedient;
for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin.
And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet a virgin, having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race;
so also did Mary, having a man betrothed (to her), and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.
Because he interprets the primitive state of man as one of mere potentiality or capacity and believes that Adam and Eve were created as children, Irenaeus often seems inclined to extenuate their disobedience as being due, no doubt, to carelessness, but still wicked.
His interpretation of the beginning on the basis of the end prompts him to draw these parallels between the Virgin Eve and the Virgin Mary.
That parallelism affects his picture of man's disobedience too;
for as it was Christ, the Word of God, who came to rescue man, so it was disobedience to the word of God in the beginning that brought death into the world, and all our woe.
With this act of disobedience, and not with the inception of his individual existence, man began the downward circuit on the spiral of history, descending from the created capacity for immortality to an inescapable mortality.
At the nadir of that circuit is death.
Along with the fruit they did also fall under the power of death, because they did eat in disobedience;
and disobedience to God entails death.
Wherefore, as they became forfeit to death, from that (moment) they were handed over to it.
This leads Irenaeus to the somewhat startling notion that Adam and Eve died on the same day that they disobeyed, namely, on a Friday, as a parallel to the death of Christ on Good Friday;
he sees a parallel also to the Jewish day of preparation for the Sabbath.
In any case, though they had been promised immortality if they ate of the tree, they obtained mortality instead.
The wages of sin is death.
Man's life, originally shaped for immortality and for communion with God, must now be conformed to the shape of death.
Nevertheless, even at the nadir of the circuit the spiral of history belongs to God, and he still rules.
Even death, therefore, has a providential as well as a punitive function.
But He set a bound to his (state of) sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live in sin, and dying to it, might live to God.
This idea, which occurs in both Tatian and Cyprian, fits especially well into the scheme of Irenaeus' theology;
for it prepares the way for the passage from life through death to life that is achieved in Christ.
As man can live only by dying, so it was only by his dying that Christ could bring many to life.
It is probably fair to say that the idea of death is more profound in Irenaeus than the idea of sin is.
This applies to his picture of Adam.
It is borne out also by the absence of any developed theory about how sin passes from one generation to the next.
It becomes most evident in his description of Christ as the second Adam, who does indeed come to destroy sin, but whose work culminates in the achievement of immortality.
This emphasis upon death rather than sin as man's fundamental problem Irenaeus shares with many early theologians, especially the Greek-speaking ones.
They speak of the work of Christ as the bestowal of incorruptibility, which can mean (though it does not have to mean) deliverance from time and history.
Death reminds man of his sin, but it reminds him also of his transience.
It represents a punishment that he knows he deserves, but it also symbolizes most dramatically that he lives his life within the process of time.
These two aspects of death cannot be successfully separated, but they dare not be confused or identified.
The repeated efforts in Christian history to describe death as altogether the consequence of human sin show that these two aspects of death cannot be separated.
Such efforts almost always find themselves compelled to ask whether Adam was created capable of growing old and then older and then still older, in short, whether Adam's life was intended to be part of the process of time.
If it was, then it must have been God's intention to translate him at a certain point from time to eternity.
One night, so some of these theories run, Adam would have fallen asleep, much as he fell asleep for the creation of Eve;
and thus he would have been carried over into the life eternal.
The embarrassment of these theories over the naturalness of death is an illustration of the thesis that death cannot be only a punishment, for some termination seems necessary in a life that is lived within the natural order of time and change.
On the other hand, Christian faith knows that death is more than the natural termination of temporal existence.
It is the wages of sin, and its sting is the law.
If this aspect of death as punishment is not distinguished from the idea of death as natural termination, the conclusion seems inevitable that temporal existence itself is a form of punishment rather than the state into which man is put by the will of the Creator.
This seems to have been the conclusion to which Origen was forced.
If death receives more than its share of attention from the theologian and if sin receives less than its share, the gift of the life eternal through Christ begins to look like the divinely appointed means of rescue from temporal, i.e., created, existence.
Such an interpretation of death radically alters the Christian view of creation;
for it teaches salvation from, not salvation in, time and history.
Because Christianity teaches not only salvation in history, but salvation by the history of Christ, such an interpretation of death would require a drastic revision of the Christian understanding of the work of Christ.
Furthermore, as an encouragement to revisionist thinking, it manifestly is fair to admit that any fraternity has a constitutional right to refuse to accept persons it dislikes.
The Unitarian clergy were an exclusive club of cultivated gentlemen--as the term was then understood in the Back Bay--and Parker was definitely not a gentleman, either in theology or in manners.
Ezra Stiles Gannett, an honorable representative of the sanhedrin, addressed himself frankly to the issue in 1845, insisting that Parker should not be persecuted or calumniated and that in this republic no power to restrain him by force could exist.
Even so, Gannett judiciously argued, the Association could legitimately decide that Parker should not be encouraged nor assisted in diffusing his opinions by those who differ from him in regard to their correctness.
We today are not entitled to excoriate honest men who believed Parker to be downright pernicious and who barred their pulpits against his demand to poison the minds of their congregations.
Finally, it did seem clear as day to these clergymen, as Gannett's son explained in the biography of his father, they had always contended for the propriety of their claim to the title of Christians.
Their demand against the Calvinist Orthodoxy for intellectual liberty had never meant that they would follow free inquiry to the extreme of proclaiming Christianity a natural religion.
Grant all this--still, when modern Unitarianism and the Harvard Divinity School recall with humorous affection the insults Parker lavished upon them, or else argue that after all Parker received the treatment he invited, they betray an uneasy conscience.
Had it done so, the blot on its escutcheon would have remained indelible, nor could the Harvard Divinity School assemble today to honor Parker's insurgence other than by getting down on its collective knees and crying peccavi.
Happily for posterity, then, the Boston Association did not actually command Parker to leave the room, though it came too close for comfort to what would have been an unforgivable brutality.
Fortunately, the honor of the denomination can attest that Cyrus Bartol defended Parker's sincerity, as did also Gannett and Chandler Robbins;
whereupon Parker broke down into convulsions of weeping and rushed out of the room, though not out of the Fellowship.
In the hall, after adjournment, Dr. Frothingham took him warmly by the hand and requested Parker to visit him--whereupon our burly Theodore again burst into tears.
All this near tragedy, which to us borders on comedy, enables us to tell the story over and over again, always warming ourselves with a glow of complacency.
It was indeed a near thing, but somehow the inherent decency of New England (which we inherit) did triumph.
Parker was never excommunicated.
To the extent that he was ostracized or even reviled, we solace ourselves by saying he asked for it.
In both cases the stubborn fact remains: liberalism gave birth to two brilliant apostates, both legitimate offspring of its loins, and when brought to the test, it behaved shabbily.
Suppose they both had ventured into realms which their colleagues thought infidel: is this the way gentlemen settle frank differences of opinion?
Is it after all possible that no matter how the liberals trumpet their confidence in human dignity they are exposed to a contagion of fear more insidious than any conservative has ever to worry about?
However, there is a crucial difference between the two histories.
Emerson evaded the problem by shoving it aside, or rather by leaving it behind him: he walked out of the Unitarian communion, so that it could lick the wound of his departure, preserve its self-respect and eventually accord him pious veneration.
Parker insisted upon not resigning, even when the majority wanted him to depart, upon daring the Fellowship to throw him out.
Hence he was in his lifetime, as is the memory of him afterwards, a canker within the liberal sensitivity.
He still points an accusing finger at all of us, telling us we have neither the courage to support him nor the energy to cut his throat.
Actually, the dispute between Parker and the society of his time, both ecclesiastical and social, was a real one, a bitter one.
It cannot be smoothed over by now cherishing his sarcasms as delightful bits of self-deprecation or by solemnly calling for a reconsideration of the justice of the objections to him.
Parker, along with Garrison and Charles Sumner, showed a magnificent moral bravery when facing mobs mobilized in defense of the Mexican War and slavery.
Nevertheless, we can find reasons for respecting even the bigotry of the populace;
their passions were genuine, and the division between them and the abolitionists is clear-cut.
But Parker as the ultra-liberal minister within the pale of a church which had proclaimed itself the repository of liberality poses a different problem, which is not to be resolved by holding him up as the champion of freedom.
Even though his theological theses have become, to us, commonplaces, the fundamental interrogation he phrased is very much with us.
It has been endlessly rephrased, but I may here put it thus: at what point do the tolerant find themselves obliged to become intolerant?
And then, as they become aware that they have reached the end of their patience, what do they, to their dismay, learn for the first time about themselves?
There can be no doubt, the Boston of that era could be exquisitely cruel in enforcing its canons of behavior.
We stand more in awe of one another than most people.
Opinion is less individual or runs more into masses, and often rules with a rod of iron.
Even more poignantly, and with the insight of a genius, Channing added--remember, this is Channing, not Parker!
-- that should a minister in Boston trust himself to his heart, should he speak without book, and consequently break some law of speech, or be hurried into some daring hyperbole, he should find little mercy.
Channing wrote this--in a letter!
I think it fair to say that he never quite reached such candor in his sermons.
An institutionalized liberalism proved itself fundamentally an institution, and only within those defined limits a license.
By reminding ourselves of these factors in the situation, we should, I am sure, come to a fresh realization, however painful it be, that the battle between Parker and his neighbors was fought in earnest.
He arraigned the citizens in language of so little courtesy that they had to respond with, at the least, resentment.
Reproach the Catholics for it!
You and I do the same thing.
There are a great many bishops who have never had a cross on their bosom, nor a mitre on their head, who appeal not to the authority of the Pope at Rome, but to the Almighty Dollar, a pope much nearer home.
Boston has been controlled by a few capitalists, lawyers and other managers, who told the editors what to say and the preachers what to think.
This was war.
Parker meant business.
And he took repeated care to let his colleagues know that he intended them: Even the Unitarian churches have caught the malaria, and are worse than those who deceived them--which implied that they were very bad indeed.
It was Duty he said that his parents had given him as a rule--beyond even the love that suffused his being and the sense of humor with which he was largely supplied--and it was duty he would perform, though it cost him acute pain and exhausted him by the age of fifty.
Parker could weep--and he wept astonishingly often and on the slightest provocation--but the psychology of those tears was entirely compatible with a remorseless readiness to massacre his opponents.
If it gave me pleasure to say hard things, he wrote, I would shut up forever.
We have to tell ourselves that when Parker spoke in this vein, he believed what he said, because he could continue, But the truth, which cost me bitter tears to say, I must speak, though it cost other tears hotter than fire.
Because he copiously shed his own tears, and yielded himself up as a living sacrifice to the impersonalized conscience of New England, he was not disturbed by the havoc he worked in other people's consciences.
It is idle to ask why we are no longer disturbed if somebody, professing the deepest piety, decides anew that it is of no importance whether or not Christ transformed the water into wine at eleven A.M. on the third of August, A.D. 32.
We have no answer as to why we are not alarmed.
So we are the more prepared to give Parker the credit for having taken the right side in an unnecessary controversy, to salute his courage, and to pass on, happily forgetting both him and the entire episode.
I have, within the past fifty years, come out of all uncertainty into a faith which is a dominating conviction of the Truth and about which I have not a shadow of doubt.
It has been my lot all through life to associate with eminent scientists and at times to discuss with them the deepest and most vital of all questions, the nature of the hope of a life beyond this.
I have also constantly engaged in scientific work and am fully aware of the value of opinions formed in science as well as in the religions in the world.
In an amateurish, yet in a very real sense, I have followed the developments of archaeology, geology, astronomy, herpetology, and mycology with a hearty appreciation of the advances being made in these fields.
Although still aware of a great light and glow of warmth in the Book, I stood outside shivering in the cold.
In one thing the higher critics, like the modernists, however, overreached themselves, in claiming that the Gospel of John was not written in John's time but well after the first century, perhaps as late as 150 A.D..
Now, if any part of the Bible is assuredly the very Word of God speaking through His servant, it is John's Gospel.
To ask me to believe that so inexpressibly marvelous a book was written long after all the events by some admiring follower, and was not inspired directly by the Spirit of God, is asking me to accept a miracle far greater than any of those recorded in the Bible.
Here I took my leave of my learned friends to step out on another path, to which we might give the modern name of Pragmatism, or the thing that works.
Test it, try it, and if it works, accept it as a guiding principle.
So, I put my Bible to the practical test of noting what it says about itself, and then tested it to see how it worked.
As a short, possibly not the best method, I looked up Word in the Concordance and noted that the Bible claims from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 to be God's personal message to man.
Nor can any man save himself by good works or by a commendable moral life, although such works are the natural fruits and evidences of a saving faith already received and naturally expressing itself through such avenues.
I now ever look for Christ according to His promises and those of the Old Testament as well, to appear again in glory to put away all sin and to reign in righteousness over the whole earth.
To state fully what the Bible means as my daily spiritual food is as intimate and difficult as to formulate the reasons for loving my nearest and dearest relatives and friends.
The Bible is as obviously and truly food for the spirit as bread is food for the body.
Again, as faith reveals God my Father and Christ my Saviour, I follow without question where He leads me daily by His Spirit of love, wisdom, power and prayer.
I place His precepts and His leadings above every seeming probability, dismissing cherished convictions and holding the wisdom of man as folly when opposed to Him.
I discern no limits to a faith vested in God and Christ, who is the sum of all wisdom and knowledge, and daring to trust Him even though called to stand alone before the world.
Our Lord's invitation with its implied promise to all is, Come and see.
I stood at the bedside of my patient one day and beheld a very sick man in terrible pain.
As I ministered to his needs, I noticed that his face was radiant in spite of his suffering and I learned that he was trusting not only in the skill of his doctor and nurse but also the Lord.
In his heart he had that peace of which the Lord spoke when He said, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
What a joy to realize that we, too, can claim this promise tendered by the Lord during His earthly ministry to a group of men who were very dear to Him.
He was about to leave them, to depart from this world, and return to His Father in Heaven.
Before He left them He promised that His peace would be their portion to abide in their hearts and minds.
I praise God for the privilege of being a nurse who has that peace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It makes my work a great deal easier to be able to pray for the Lord's guidance while ministering to the physical needs of my patients.
How often have I looked to Jesus when entering the sick room, asking for His presence and help in my professional duties as I give my talents not only as the world giveth but as one who loves the Saviour and His creatures.
Looking unto God, the Prophet Isaiah wrote these blessed words almost three thousand years ago: Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Are you longing for peace in your heart?
Such a calm and assuring peace can be yours.
As only a member of the family can share in the innermost joys of the family, likewise one must belong to the family of God in order to receive the benefits that are promised to those who are His own.
Perhaps you are not His child.
Perhaps you do not know if you belong to Him.
You may know that you are in God's family and be just as sure of it as you are that you belong to the family of your earthly father.
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life, and as many as received him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.
It is to those who believe on His name and belong to Him that He gives His peace;
not that empty peace the world offers, but a deep, abiding peace which nothing can destroy.
Why not open your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ now, accept Him as your Saviour and let Him fill you with peace that only He can give.
Then, with the hymn writer of old, you can say:
I am resting today in His wonderful peace,
Resting sweetly in Jesus' control.
I am kept from all danger by night and by day,
And His glory is flooding my soul.
Satellites, sputniks, rockets, balloons;
what next?
Our necks are stiff from gazing at the wonders of outer space, which have captured the imagination of the American public.
Cape Canaveral's achievements thunder forth from the radio, television, and newspaper.
While we are filling outer space with scientific successes, for many the inner space of their soul is an aching void.
Proof?
An average of 50 suicides are reported in America each day!
One out of every three or four marriages ends in divorce!
Over $200,000,000 is paid yearly to the 80,000 full-time fortune-tellers in the United States by fearful mankind who want to know what the future holds!
Delinquency, juvenile and adult, is at an all-time high!
Further proof?
Read your daily newspaper!
Unfortunately, in our rush to beat the Russians, we have forgotten these truth-packed words of Jesus Christ: What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world (that includes outer space), and lose his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
(Mark 36, 37).
Gaining outer space and losing inner space is bad business according to God's standards.
It is true that we must keep up our national defenses and scientific accomplishments;
only a fool would think otherwise.
But we must not forget man's soul.
Is putting a rocket in orbit half so significant as the good news that God put His Son, Jesus Christ, on earth to live and die to save our hell-bound souls?
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3::
16).
Never forget that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Your spiritual inner space helps determine the spirituality of America as a nation.
We trust you are not one of the 70,000,000 Americans who do not attend church, but who feel that various forms of recreation are more important than worshipping the God who made our country great.
Is forgiveness of past sins, assurance of present help, and hope of future bliss in your orbit?
Or are you trying the devil's substitutes to relieve that spiritual hunger you feel within?
Pleasure, fame and fortune, drowning your troubles with a drink, and living it up with the gang are like candy bars when you're hungry: they may ease your hunger temporarily, but they'll never take the place of a satisfying, mouth-watering steak.
So it is spiritually.
No amount of religious ceremonies or even joining a church will relieve the gnawing of your inner space.
Why?
Because your soul was made to be filled with God Himself, not religious functions about Him.
Only He can satisfy the deepest longings.
That is why the Bible commands you to Taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed (happy) is the man that trusteth in Him (Psalm 34: 8).
You can receive God into your heart and life by a step of personal faith.
Accept the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ, as your own personal Saviour.
As many as received Him (Jesus), to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
(Psalm 27: 1)
A certain teacher scheduled a Fear Party for her fourth grade pupils.
It was a session at which all the youngsters were told to express their fears, to get them out in the open where they could talk about them freely.
The teacher thought it was so successful that she asks: Wouldn't it be helpful to all age groups if they could participate in a similar confessional of their fears and worries?
Dr. George W. Crane, a medical columnist, thinks it would.
He says: That would reduce neurotic ailments tremendously.
Each week an estimated 20 million patients call upon us doctors.
Of this number, 50%, or 10 million patients have no diagnosable physical ailments whatever.
They are'worry warts.
Yet they keep running from one physician to another, largely to get a willing ear who will listen to their parade of troubles.
One of the most wholesome things you could schedule in your church would thus be a group confessional where people could admit of their inner tensions.
We are evidently trying hard to think of new ways to deal with the problem of fear these days.
It must be getting more serious.
People are giving their doctors a hard time.
One doctor made a careful survey of his patients and the reasons for their troubles, and he reported that 40% of them worried about things that never happened;
30% of them worried about past happenings which were completely beyond their control;
12% of them worried about their health, although their ailments were imaginary;
10% of them worried about their friends, neighbors, and relatives, most of whom were quite capable of taking care of themselves.
Only 8% of the worries had behind them real causes which demanded attention.
Well, most of our fears may be unfounded, but after you discover that fact, you have something else to worry about: Why then do we have these fears?
What is the real cause of them?
What is there about us that makes us so anxious?
Look at the things we do to escape our fears and to forget our worries.
We spend millions of dollars every year on fortune tellers and soothsayers.
We spend billions of dollars at the race tracks, and more billions on other forms of gambling.
We spend billions of dollars on liquor, and many more billions on various forms of escapist entertainment.
We consume tons of aspirin and tranquilizers and sleeping pills in order to get a moment's relief from the tensions that are tearing us apart.
A visitor from a more peaceful country across the sea was taken to one of our amusement parks, and after he had seen it all, he said to a friend: You must be a very sad people.
Sad was not the right word, of course.
He should have said jittery, for that's what we are.
And that's worse than sad.
In one of his writings Pascal speaks of this mania for diversion as being a sign of misery and fear which man cannot endure without such opiates.
Yes, and as tension mounts in this world, fear is increasing.
Does that explain why there is now such a big boom in the bomb shelter business?
We have so many new things to fear in this age of nuclear weapons, dreadful things which are too horrible to contemplate.
I doubt that fear parties and group confessionals will help very much.
Suppose we do get our fears out in the open, what then?
Isn't that where most of them are already--right out on the front page of our newspapers?
Maybe we are talking about them too much.
The question is: what are we going to do about them?
Meanwhile, the enemy will capitalize on our fears, if he can.
Hitler did just that 23 years ago, building up tensions that first led to a Munich and then to a world war.
The fear of war can make us either too weak to stand and too willing to compromise, or too reckless and too nervous to negotiate for peace as long as there is any chance to negotiate.
It is said that fear in human beings produces an odor that provokes animals to attack.
It could have the same effect on Communists.
The President of the United States has said: We will never negotiate out of fear, and we will never fear to negotiate.
That is a sound position, but it is important that Moscow shall recognize it not merely as the word of a president but as the mind of a free people who are not afraid.
And that's another reason why it is imperative for us these days to conquer our fears, to develop the poise that promotes peace.
Turning to the Word of God, we find the only sure way to do that.
In Psalm 27: 1 you read those beautiful words which you must have in your heart if you are to master the fears that surround you, or to drive them out if they have you in their grip: The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
Well, you say, those are beautiful words all right, but it was easy for the psalmist to sing them in his day.
He didn't live in a world of perpetual peril like ours.
He didn't know anything about the problems we face today.
No?
Read the next two verses: When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.
Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.
That is almost a perfect description of the predicament in which we find ourselves today, isn't it?
Our enemy is also threatening to devour us.
He has already devoured huge areas of the world, putting men behind concrete walls and iron curtains and barbed wire, reducing them to slavery, systematically crushing not only their bodies but their souls, and shooting them to death if they try to escape their prison.
Yes indeed, we too can see a warlike host of infidels encamped against us.
What a terrible thing, that wailing wall in Berlin!
A man with a baby in his arms stood there pleading for his wife who is on the other side with the rest of the family.
Another man tried to swim across the river from the East to the West, but was shot and killed.
A middle aged woman opened a window on the third floor of her house which was behind the wall, she threw out a few belongings and then jumped;
she was fatally injured.
The entrance to a church has been walled up, so that the congregation, most of which is in the western sector, cannot worship God there anymore.
Practically everybody in Berlin has relatives and friends that live in the opposite part of the city.
People stand at the wall giving vent to their feelings, weeping, pounding it with their fists, pleading for loved ones.
But the enemy answers them from loudspeakers that pour out Communist propaganda with a generous mixture of terrible profanity.
There is only one escape left, a tragic one, and too many people are taking it: suicide.
The normal rate of suicides in East Berlin was one a day, but since the border was closed on August 13 it has jumped to 25 a day!
These things may be happening many miles away from us but really they are right next door.
We are all involved in them, deeply involved.
And nobody knows what comes next.
We live from crisis to crisis.
And there is only one way for a man to conquer his fears in such a world.
He must learn to say with true faith what the psalmist said in a similar world: The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
Notice that this man had a threefold conception of God which is the secret of his faith.
First, the Lord is my light.
He lived in a very dark world, but he was not in the dark.
The same God who called this world into being when He said: Let there be light!
-- those were His very first creative words--He began the world with light--this God still gives light to a world which man has plunged into darkness.
For those who put their trust in Him He still says every day again: Let there be light!
And there is light!
In fact, He came into this world Himself, in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who stood here amid the darkness of human sin and said: I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
The psalmist could say that God was his light even though he could only anticipate the coming of Christ.
He lived in the dawn;
he could only see the light coming over the horizon.
We live in the bright daylight of that great event;
for us it is a fact in history.
Why should we not have the same faith, and an even greater experience of the light which it gives?
This is the faith that moved the psalmist to add his second conception of God: The Lord is my salvation.
He knew that his God would save him from his enemies because He had saved him from his sins.
If God could do that, He could do anything.
The enemies at his gate, threatening to eat up his flesh, were nothing compared with the enemy of sin within his own soul.
And God had conquered that one by His grace!
So why worry about all the others?
The apostle Paul said the same thing in the language and faith of the New Testament: He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?
If God be for us, who can be against us?
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
(Romans 31, 32, 35)
Salvation!
This is the key to the conquest of fear.
This gets down to the heart of our problem, for it reconciles us with God, whom we fear most of all because we have sinned against Him.
When that fear has been removed by faith in Jesus Christ, when we know that He is our Savior, that He has paid our debt with His blood, that He has met the demands of God's justice and thus has turned His wrath away--when we know that, we have peace with God in our hearts;
and then, with this God on our side, we can face the whole world without fear.
And so the psalmist gives us one more picture of God: The Lord is the strength of my life.
The word is really stronghold.
It recalls those words of another psalm: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made in the earth.
But, again, we have no real evidence on this from that quarter until the close of the ninth century A.D., when an Arabic scholar, Tabit Ibn Korra (836-901) is said to have discussed the magic square of three.
The Lo Shu square as an expression of centrality
The concept of the Middle Kingdom at peace, strong and united under a forceful ruler, which had been only a longed-for ideal in the time of the Warring States, was finally realized by the establishment of a Chinese Empire under the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B.C.).
But this was only accomplished by excessive cruelty and extremes of totalitarian despotism.
Among the many severe measures taken by the First Emperor, Shih Huang-ti, in his efforts to insure the continuation of this hard-won national unity, was the burning of the books in 213 B.C., with the expressed intention of removing possible sources for divergent thinking;
but, as he had a special fondness for magic and divination, he ordered that books on these subjects should be spared.
Many of the latter were destroyed in their turn, during the burning of the vast Ch'in palace some ten years later;
yet some must have survived, because the old interest in number symbolism, divination, and magic persisted on into the Han dynasty, which succeeded in reuniting China and keeping it together for a longer period (from 202 B.C. to A.D. 220).
However, the wei books were also destroyed in a series of Orthodox Confucian purges which culminated in a final proscription in 605.
After all this destruction of old literature, it should be obvious why we have so little information about the early history and development of the Lo Shu, which was already semisecret anyhow.
But, in spite of all this, enough evidence remains to show that the magic square of three must indeed have been the object of a rather extensive cult--or series of cults--reaching fullest expression in the Han period.
But, up to now, no one has attempted to analyze its inherent mathematical properties, or the numerical significance of its numbers--singly or in combination--and then tried to consider these in the light of Old Chinese cosmological concepts.
Such an analysis speedily reveals why the middle number of the Lo Shu, 5, was so vitally significant for the Chinese ever since the earliest hints that they had a knowledge of this diagram.
Indeed, mathematically speaking, it was both functionally and symbolically the most important number in the entire diagram.
If one takes the middle number, 5, and multiplies it by 3 (the base number of the magic square of three), the result is 15, which is also the constant sum of all the rows, columns, and two main diagonals.
Then, if the middle number is activated to its greatest potential in terms of this square, through multiplying it by the highest number, 9 (which is the square of the base number), the result is 45;
and the latter is the total sum of all the numbers in the square, by which all the other numbers are overshadowed and in which they may be said to be absorbed.
Furthermore, the middle number of the Lo Shu is not only the physical mean between every opposing pair of the other numbers, by reason of its central position;
it is also their mathematical mean, since it is equal to half the sum of every opposing pair, all of which equal 10.
In fact, the neat balance of these pairs, and their subtle equilibrium, would have had special meaning in the minds of the Old Chinese.
For they considered the odd numbers as male and the even ones as female, equating the two groups with the Yang and Yin principles in Nature;
and in this square, the respective pairs made up of large and small odd (Yang) numbers, and those composed of large and small even (Yin) numbers, were all equal to each other.
Thus all differences were leveled, and all contrasts erased, in a realm of no distinction, and the harmonious balance of the Lo Shu square could effectively symbolize the world in balanced harmony around a powerful central axis.
These twin tendencies seem to have reached their height in the Han dynasty.
His immediate motive for doing this may not have been directly inspired by the Lo Shu, but this measure must inevitably have increased the existing beliefs in the latter's efficacy.
After this time, inscriptions on the Han bronze mirrors, as well as other writings, emphasized the desirability of keeping one's self at the center of the universe, where cosmic forces were strongest.
Later, we shall see what happened when an emperor took this idea too literally.
We find, for example, such groupings as the Five Ancient Rulers, the Five Sacred Mountains, the Five Directions (with Center), the Five Metals, Five Colors, Five Tastes, Five Odors, Five Musical Notes, Five Bodily Functions, Five Viscera, and many others.
This trend has often been ascribed to the cult of the Five Elements itself, as though they had served as the base for all the rest;
but why did the Old Chinese postulate five elements, when the Ancient Near East--which may have initiated the idea that natural elements exerted influence in human life and activities--recognized only four?
And why did the Chinese suddenly begin to talk about the Five Directions, when the animals they used as symbols of the directions designated only the usual four?
Obviously, something suddenly caused them to start thinking in terms of fives, and that may have been the workings of the Lo Shu.
This whole tendency had an unfortunate effect on Chinese thinking.
Yin and Yang in the Lo Shu square
For the Lo Shu square was a remarkably complete compendium of most of the chief religious and philosophical ideas of its time.
As such, one cannot fully understand the thought of the pre-Han and Han periods without knowing the meanings inherent in the Lo Shu;
but, conversely, one cannot begin to understand the Lo Shu without knowing something about the world view of the Old Chinese, which they felt they saw expressed in it.
The Chinese world view during the Han dynasty, when the Lo Shu seems to have been at the height of its popularity, was based in large part on the teachings of the Yin-Yang and Five-Elements School, which was traditionally founded by Tsou Yen.
Heaven, acting through the Tao, expressed itself by means of the workings of two basic principles, the Yin and the Yang.
The Yang, or male principle, was the source of light, heat, and dynamic vitality, associated with the Sun;
while the Yin, or female principle, flourished in darkness, cold, and quiet inactivity, and was associated with the Moon.
Together these two principles influenced all things, and in varying combinations they were present in everything.
We have already seen that odd numbers were considered as being Yang, while the even numbers were Yin, so that the eight outer numbers of the Lo Shu represented these two principles in balanced equilibrium around the axial center.
During the Han dynasty, another Yin-Yang conception was applied to the Lo Shu, considering the latter as a plan of Ancient China.
Instead of linking the nine numbers of this diagram with the traditional Nine Provinces, as was usually done, this equated the odd, Yang numbers with mountains (firm and resistant, hence Yang) and the even numbers with rivers (sinuous and yielding, hence Yin);
taking the former from the Five Sacred Mountains of the Han period and the latter from the principal river systems of Old China.
Thus the middle number, 5, represented Sung-Shan in Honan, Central China;
the 3, T'ai-Shan in Shantung, East China;
the 7, Hwa-Shan in Shensi, West China;
the 1, Heng-Shan in Hopei, North China (or the mountain with the same name in neighboring Shansi);
and the 9, Huo-Shan in Anhwei, which was then the South Sacred Mountain.
For the rivers, the 4 represented the Huai, to the (then) Southeast;
the 2, the San Kiang (three rivers) in the (then) Southwest;
the 8, the Chi in the Northeast;
and the 6, the (upper) Yellow River in the Northwest.
Note that by Western standards this plan was upside down, as it put North at the bottom and South at the top, with the other directions correspondingly altered;
but in this respect it was merely following the accepted Chinese convention for all maps.
The same arrangement was used when the Lo Shu was equated with the Nine Provinces;
and whenever the Lo Shu involved directional symbolism, it was oriented in this same fashion.
Few persons who join the Church are insincere.
They earnestly desire to do the will of God.
When they fall by the wayside and fail to achieve Christian stature, it is an indictment of the Church.
These fatalities are dramatic evidence of halfway evangelism, a failure to follow through.
A program of Lay Visitation Evangelism can end in dismal defeat with half the new members drifting away unless practical plans and strenuous efforts are made to keep them in the active fellowship.
The work of Lay Visitation Evangelism is not completed when all of the persons on the Responsibility List have been interviewed.
In the average situation about one-third of those visited make commitments to Christ and the Church.
The pastor and the Membership Preparation and Assimilation Committee must follow through immediately with a carefully planned program.
The first thirty to sixty days after individuals make their decision will determine their interest and participation in the life of the Church.
Neglect means spiritual paralysis or death.
Preparation for membership
churches that have a carefully planned program of membership preparation and assimilation often keep 85 to 90 per cent of their new members loyal and active.
This is the answer to the problem of membership delinquency.
It is important that persons desiring to unite with the Church be prepared for this experience so that it may be meaningful and spiritually significant.
It is unfair and unchristian to ask a person to take the sacred vows of Church membership before he has been carefully instructed concerning their implications.
Preparation for Church membership begins immediately after the commitment is received.
The pastor writes a personal letter to each individual, expressing his joy over the decision, assuring him of a pastoral call at the earliest convenient time, and outlining the plan for membership preparation classes and Membership Sunday.
Some pastors write a letter the same night the decision is reported by the visitors.
It should not be postponed later than the next day.
A helpful leaflet may be enclosed in the letter.
The pastor calls in the home of each individual or family for a spiritual guidance conference.
If possible, he should make an appointment in order that all persons involved may be present.
This is not a social call.
It is definitely a spiritual guidance conference.
He will discuss the significance of Christian commitment, the necessity of family religion and private devotions, and the importance of the membership preparation sessions.
There may be problems of conduct or questions of belief which will require his counsel.
Each conference should be concluded naturally with prayer.
A piece of devotional material, such as The Upper Room, may be left in each home.
A minimum of four sessions of preparation for membership is necessary for adults.
Some churches require more.
None should ask less.
Those who join the Church need to be instructed in the faith and the meaning of Christian discipleship before they take the sacred vows.
They will have a greater appreciation for the Church and a deeper devotion to it if membership requires something of them.
Many churches find the Sunday school hour to be the most practical time for adult preparation classes.
Others meet on Sunday night, at the mid-week service, or for a series of four nights.
Some pastors have two sessions in one evening, with a refreshment period between.
The sessions should cover four major areas: A
-- The Christian Faith;
-- History of the Church;
-- Duties of Church Membership;
-- The Local Church and Its Program
Following each instruction period a piece of literature dealing with the topic should be handed each one for further reading during the week.
This procedure is much more effective than giving out a membership packet.
Fourth session important
most pastors find that the fourth session should take at least two hours and therefore hold it on a week night prior to Reception Sunday.
In this session the persons seeking membership are provided information concerning the work of the denomination as well as the program and activities of the local church.
The lay leadership of the church may be invited to speak on the various phases of church life, service opportunities, the church school, missions, men's work, women's work, youth program, social activities, and finances.
The budget of the church may be presented and pledges solicited at this session.
An interest finder or talent sheet may be filled out by each person.
(See sample on pp. 78-79.
) The fourth session may be concluded with a tour of the church facilities and refreshments.
The social time gives an opportunity for church leaders to become acquainted with the new members.
Additional suggestions for membership preparation
in conducting the Membership Preparation-Inquirers' Class, the pastor should plan a variety of teaching techniques in order to develop greater interest on the part of the class.
The following have been found effective.
Extend the number of classes.
Some churches have six or more training sessions of two hours each, generally held on Sunday night or during the week.
This gives greater opportunity for the learning process.
Use dramatization--for example, in discussing the Lord's Supper or church symbolism.
Use audio-visual aids.
Some excellent filmstrips with recordings and motion pictures may be secured from your denominational headquarters to enrich the class session.
Have a Question Box.
Some new members will hesitate to ask questions audibly.
Urge them to write out their questions for the box.
Use a textbook with assigned readings each week.
Select class members for reports on various phases of the study.
Conduct examinations, using a true-false check sheet.
Ask each member to write a statement on such topics as: What Christ Means To Me, What The Church Means To Me, Why Join The Church, The Duties Of Church Members, etc..
Assign a series of catechism questions to be memorized.
10)
Invite class members to share in an extra period of Bible study each week.
11)
Ask each new member to bring his Pledge of Loyalty to the Reception Service.
What about transfers?
There is A growing conviction among pastors and Church leaders that all those who come into the fellowship of the Church need preparatory training, including those coming by transfer of membership.
George E. Sweazey writes: There is danger in trying to make admission to the Church so easy and painless that people will scarcely know that anything has happened.
People appreciate experiences that demand something of them.
Those who transfer their membership are no exception to the rule.
For most of them, it will be their first experience in membership training, since this is a recent development in many churches.
Those coming from other denominations will welcome the opportunity to become informed.
The preparatory class is an introductory face-to-face group in which new members become acquainted with one another.
It provides a natural transition into the life of the local church and its organizations.
Reception into the Church Fellowship
the total process of evangelism reaches the crescendo when the group of new members stands before the congregation to declare publicly their faith and to be received into the fellowship of the Church.
This should be a high moment in their lives, a never-to-be-forgotten experience.
They should sense the tremendous significance of joining the spiritual succession reaching back to Christ our Lord and forward to an eternal fellowship with the saints of the ages.
Every detail of the service merits careful attention--the hymns, the sermon, the ritual, the right hand of fellowship, the introduction to the congregation, the welcome of the congregation.
This is a vital part of their spiritual growth and assimilation.
It will help to determine the attitude of the new members toward the Church.
It can mean the difference between participation and inaction, spiritual growth and decay.
The worship service is the natural and logical time to receive new members into the Church.
The atmosphere for this momentous experience can be created most effectively through the worship experience.
Psychologically the reception should be the climax, following the sermon.
Ask the new members to meet thirty minutes before the service to complete talent sheets and pledge cards.
Some denominations ask new members to sign personally the chronological membership register.
Provide a name card for each new member.
Outline plans for the entire service.
Arrange a reserved section in the sanctuary where all new members may sit together.
Sponsors may sit with them also.
Invite sponsors or Fellowship Friends to stand back of the new members in the reception service.
Give each new member a certificate of membership.
Introduce each new member to the congregation, asking him to face the congregation.
Lead the congregation in a response of welcome.
Have a reception for new members in the parlor or social hall immediately after the service.
Take a picture of the group of new members to be put in the church paper or placed on the bulletin board.
Have a fellowship luncheon or dinner with new members as guests.
Chapter 6 planning for the assimilation and growth of new members
the church is the family of God.
The members of the family are drawn together by a common love for Christ and a sincere devotion to His Kingdom.
Every member of the family must have a vital place in its life.
This is no spectator-type experience;
everyone is to be a participant.
Yet the most difficult problem in the Church's program of evangelism is right at this point--helping new members to become participating, growing parts of the fellowship.
Very easily they may be neglected and eventually join the ranks of the unconcerned and inactive.
A study of major denominational membership statistics over a twenty-year period revealed the appalling fact that nearly 40 per cent of those who joined the Church were lost to the Church within seven years.
One denomination had a membership of 1,419,833 at the beginning of the period under study, and twenty years later its membership stood at 1,541,991--a net growth of only 122,158.
Yet during the same period there were 1,080,062 additions.
Another major church body had 4,499,608 members and twenty years later its membership stood at 4,622,444.
During this time 4,122,354 new members were brought into the fellowship.
Still another denomination had 7,360,187 members twenty years ago.
During this period 7,484,268 members were received, yet the net membership now is only 9,910,741.
These figures indicate that we are losing almost as many as we are receiving into membership.
This problem is illustrated by the fact that many local churches drop from the active membership rolls each year as many as they receive into the fellowship.
Studies of membership trends, even in some areas where population is expanding, show that numbers of churches have had little net increase, though many new members were received.
Something is wrong when these things happen.
The local family of God has failed its new members through neglect and unconcern for their spiritual welfare.
Basic needs
new members can become participating, growing members.
But this will not happen merely through the natural process of social life.
It must be planned and carefully developed.
The entire membership of the local church must be alerted to their part in this dynamic process.
If the church has followed the plan of cultivation of prospects and carried through a program of membership preparation as outlined earlier in this book, the process of assimilation and growth will be well under way.
Those who enter the front door of the church intelligently and with Christian dedication will not so easily step through the back door because of lost interest.
However, it is not enough to bring persons to Christian commitment and train them in the meaning of Christian discipleship.
When they unite with the Church they must find in this fellowship the satisfaction of their basic spiritual needs or they will never mature into effective Christians.
The Church expects certain things of those who become members.
The new members justifiably expect some things from their church family:
-- Welcome into the fellowship
-- Sincere Christian love and understanding
-- Inspiring and challenging worship experiences
-- Social and recreational activities
-- Opportunities for Christian service
-- Opportunities for study of the Christian faith and the Bible
-- Creative prayer experiences
-- Guidance in Christian social concerns.
Men need unity and they need God.
Care must be taken neither to confuse unity with uniformity nor God with our parochial ideas about him, but with these two qualifications, the statement stands.
To be reminded of this we need only glance at the world map and note the extent to which religious divisions have compounded political ones, with a resultant fragmentation of the human race.
Massacres attending the partition of India and the establishment of the State of Israel are simply recent grim evidences of the hostility such divisions can engender.
The words of Cardinal Newman come forcibly to mind: Oh how we hate one another for the love of God!
The source of this paradox is not difficult to identify.
It lies in institutions.
Institutions require structure, form, and definition, and these in turn entail differentiation and exclusion.
A completely amorphous institution would be a contradiction in terms;
to escape this fate, it must rule some things out.
For every criterion which defines what something is, at the same time proclaims--implicitly if not openly--what that something is not.
Some persons are so sensitive to this truth as to propose that we do away with institutions altogether;
in the present context this amounts to the advice that while being religious may have a certain justification, we ought to dispense with churches.
The suggestion is naive.
Man is at once a gregarious animal and a form-creating being.
Having once committed himself to an ideal which he considers worthwhile, he inevitably creates forms for its expression and institutions for its continuance.
To propose that men be religious without having religious institutions is like proposing that they be learned without having schools.
Both eventualities are possible logically, but practically they are impossible.
As much as men intrinsically need the unity that is grounded in God, they instrumentally require the institutions that will direct their steps toward him.
Yet the fact remains that such institutions do set men at odds with their fellows.
Is there any way out of the predicament?
The only way that I can see is through communication.
Interfaith communication need not be regarded as an unfortunate burden visited upon us by the necessity of maintaining diplomatic relations with our adversaries.
Approached creatively, it is a high art.
It is the art of relating the finite to the infinite, of doing our best to insure that the particularistic requirements of religious institutions will not thwart God's intent of unity among men more than is minimally necessary.
In a certain sense, interfaith communication parallels diplomatic communication among the nation-states.
What are the pertinent facts affecting such communication at the present juncture of history?
I shall touch on three areas: personal, national, and theological.
By personal factors I mean those rooted in personality structure.
Some interfaith tensions are not occasioned by theological differences at all, but by the need of men to have persons they can blame, distrust, denounce, and even hate.
Such needs may rise to pathological proportions.
Fortunately the number of pathological bigots appears to be quite small, but it would be a mistake to think that more than a matter of degree separates them from the rest of us.
To some extent the personal inadequacies that prejudices attempt to compensate for are to be found in all of us.
Interfaith conflicts which spring from psychological deficiencies are the most unfortunate of all, for they have no redeeming features whatsoever.
While the personality factors that aggravate interfaith conflict may be perennial, nationalism is more variable.
The specific instance I have in mind is the Afro-Asian version which has gained prominence only in this second half of the twentieth century.
Emerging from the two centuries of colonial domination, the Afro-Asian world is aflame with a nationalism that has undone empires.
No less than twenty-two nations have already achieved independence since World War 2, and the number is growing by the year.
As an obvious consequence, obstacles to genuine interfaith communication have grown more formidable in one important area: relations between Christians and non-Christians in these lands.
Colonialism alone would have been able to make these difficulties serious, for Christianity is so closely tied to colonialism in the minds of these people that repudiation of the one has tended automatically toward the repudiation of the other.
Actually, however, this turns out to be only part of the picture.
Nationalism has abetted not only the repudiation of foreign religions but the revival of native ones, some of which had been lying in slumber for centuries.
The truth is that any revival of traditional and indigenous religion will serve to promote that sense of identity and Volksgeist which these young nations very much need.
All this works severely against the kind of cross-cultural communication for which Christian missions stand.
Africans and Asians tend to consider not only missions but the local churches they have produced as centers and agents of Western culture and ideology if not of direct political propaganda.
The people hardest hit by this suspicion are, of course, Christians on the mainland of China.
But the problem extends elsewhere.
For example, in Burma and Ceylon many Buddhists argue that Buddhism ought to be the official state religion.
In 1960 Ceylon nationalized its sectarian--preponderantly Christian--schools, to the rejoicing of most of its 7,000,000 Buddhists and the lament of its 800,000 Roman Catholics.
Again, India has imposed formidable barriers against the entrance of additional missionaries, and fanatical Hindu parties are expected to seek further action against Christians once the influence making for tolerance due to Nehru and his followers is gone.
The progressive closing of Afro-Asian ears to the Christian message is epitomized in a conversation I had three years ago while flying from Jerusalem to Cairo.
I was seated next to the director of the Seventh Day Adventists' world radio program.
He said that on his tour the preceding year a considerable number of hours would have been available to him on Japanese radio networks, but that he had then lacked the funds to contract for them.
After returning to the United States and raising the money, he discovered on getting back to Japan that the hours were no longer available.
It was not that they had been contracted for during the interval;
they simply could no longer be purchased for missionary purposes.
It is not unfair to add on the other side that the crude and almost vitriolic approach of certain fundamentalist sects toward the cultures and religions among which they work has contributed measurably to this heightening of anti-Christian sentiment.
Ironically, these are the groups which have doubled or tripled their missionary efforts since World War 2, while the more established denominations are barely maintaining pre-war staffs.
Although I have emphasized the barriers which an aroused nationalism has raised against relations between Christians and non-Christians in Asia, the fact is that this development has also widened the gulf between certain Afro-Asian religions themselves.
The partition of India has hardly improved relations between Hindus and Muslims;
neither has the establishment of the State of Israel fostered harmony between Muslims and Jews.
I turn finally to several theological developments.
Theocracy reconsidered.
The modern world has been marked by progressive disaffection with claims to divine sanction for the state, whatever its political form.
The American Constitution was historic at this point in providing that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
One of our foremost jurists, David Dudley Field, has gone so far as to call this provision the greatest achievement ever made in the course of human history.
The trend throughout the world's religions has been toward a recognition of at least the practical validity of this constitutional enactment.
What is the point, Charles Adams reports the Pakistanis as asking, in demanding an Islamic state and society if no one, not even the doctors of the sacred law themselves, can say clearly and succinctly what the nature of such a state and society is?
The current regime of President Mohammad Ayub Khan is determinedly secular.
And while the nation was formerly named The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, it is now simply The Republic of Pakistan.
Comparable trends can be noted elsewhere.
The new regime in Turkey is intentionally less Muslim than its predecessor.
The religious parties in Israel have experienced a great loss of prestige in recent months.
During the years when Israel was passing from crisis to crisis--the Sinai campaign, the infusion of multitudes of penniless immigrants--it was felt that the purpose of national unity could be best served if the secular majority were to yield to the religious parties.
Now that Israel enjoys relative prosperity and a reduction of tensions, the secularists are less disposed to compromise.
And in this country Gustave Weigel's delineation of the line between the sacral and secular orders during the last presidential campaign served to provide a most impressive Roman Catholic defense of the practical autonomy of both church and state.
The failure at that time of the Puerto Rican bishops to control the votes of their people added a ring of good sense to Father Weigel's theological argument.
Everywhere there seems to be a growing recognition of the fact that governments and religious institutions alike are too fallible and corruptible--in a word, too human--to warrant any claim of maintaining partnership with the divine.
Salvation reconsidered.
That mention of this should bring smiles to our lips today is as clear an indication as we could wish of the extent to which attitudes have changed.
I do not mean to imply that Christians have adopted the liberal assumption, so prevalent in Hinduism, that all religions are merely different paths to the same summit.
Leslie Newbiggin reflects the dominant position within the World Council of Churches when he says, We must claim absoluteness and finality for Christ and His finished work, but that very claim forbids us to claim absoluteness and finality for our understanding of it.
Newbiggin's qualification on the Christian claim is of considerable significance.
The Roman Catholic Church has excommunicated one of its priests, Father Feeney, for insisting that there is no salvation outside the visible church.
In mentioning this under salvation reconsidered I do not mean to imply that Roman Catholic doctrine has changed in this area but rather that it has become clearer to the world community what that doctrine is.
When they say that under no circumstances would it ever be right to permit the termination of the human race by human action, because there could not possibly be any proportionate grave reason to justify such a thing, they know exactly what they mean.
Of course, in prudential calculation, in balancing the good directly intended and done against the evil unintended and indirectly done, no greater precision can be forthcoming than the subject allows.
Yet it seems clear that there can be no good sufficiently great, or evil repelled sufficiently grave, to warrant the destruction of mankind by man's own action.
I mean, however, that the moral theologian knows what he means by permit.
He is not talking in the main about probabilities, risks and danger in general.
He is talking about an action which just as efficaciously does an evil thing (and is known certainly and unavoidably to lead to this evil result) as it efficaciously does some good.
He is talking about double effects, of which the specific action causes directly the one and indirectly the other, but causes both;
of which one is deliberately willed or intended and the other not intended or not directly intended, but still both are done, while the evil effect is, with equal consciousness on the part of the agent, foreknown to be among the consequences.
This is what, in a technical sense, to only permit an evil result means.
It means to do it and to know one is doing it, but as only a secondary if certain effect of the good one primarily does and intends.
Of course, grave guiltiness may be imputed to the military action of any nation, or to the action of any leader or leaders, which for any supposed good permits, in this sense, the termination of the human race by human action.
Certainly, in analyzing an action which truly faced such alternatives, it is never possible that no world would be preferable to some worlds, and there are in truth no circumstances in which the destruction of human life presents itself as a reasonable alternative.
Naturally, where one or the other of the effects of an action is uncertain, this has to be taken into account.
Especially is this true when, because the good effect is remote and speculative while the evil is certain and grave, the action is prohibited.
There must not only be greater good than evil objectively in view, but also greater probability of actually doing more good than harm.
Nevertheless, according to the traditional theory, a man begins in the midst of action and he analyzes its nature and immediate consequences before or while putting it forth and causing these consequences.
He does not expect to be able to trammel up all the future consequences of his action.
Above all, he does not debate mere contingencies, and therefore, if these are possibly dreadful, find himself forced into inaction.
He does what he can and may and must, without regarding himself as lord of the future or, on the other hand, as covered with guilt by accident or unforeseen consequences or by results he did not permit in the sense explained.
By contrast, a good deal of nuclear pacifism begins with the contingencies and the probabilities, and not with the moral nature of the action to be done;
Mr. Philip Toynbee writes, for example, that in terms of probability it is surely as likely as not that mutual fear will lead to accidental war in the near future if the present situation continues.
If it continues indefinitely it is nearly a statistical certainty that a mistake will be made and that the devastation will begin.
Against such a termination of human life on earth by human action, he then proposes as an alternative that we negotiate at once with the Russians and get the best terms which are available, that we deliberately negotiate from comparative weakness.
He bravely attempts to face this alternative realistically, i.e., by considering the worst possible outcome, namely, the total domination of the world by Russia within a few years.
This would be by far the better choice, when it is a question of allowing the human race to survive, possibly under the domination of a regime which most of us detest, or of allowing it to destroy itself in appalling and prolonged anguish.
Nevertheless, the consequence of the policy proposed is everywhere subtly qualified: it is a possible result, however improbable;
the worst, and least probable result;
if it didn't prevail mankind would still be given the opportunity of prevailing;
for surely anything is better than a policy which allows for the possibility of nuclear war.
If we have not thought and made a decision entirely in these terms, then we need to submit ourselves to the following simple test: Have we decided how we are to kill the other members of our household in the event of our being less injured than they are?
Thus, moral decision must be entirely deduced backward from the likely eventuality;
it is no longer to be formulated in terms of the nature of present action itself, its intention, and proximate effect or the thing to be done.
It is worse for a nation to give in to evil than to run the risk of annihilation.
I am consciously prepared to run the continued risk of'race suicide by accident'rather than accept the alternative certainty of race slavery by design.
But I can only make this choice because I believe that the risk need not increase, but may be deliberately reduced (by precautions against accidents or by limiting war?
) Quoting Mr. Kennan's phrase that anything would be better than a policy which led inevitably to nuclear war, he (Toynbee) says that anything is better than a policy which allows for the possibility of nuclear war.
If asked to choose between a terrible probability and a more terrible possibility, most men will choose the latter.
If Philip Toynbee is claiming that the choice lies between capitulation and the risk of nuclear war, I think he is right.
I do not accept that the choice is between capitulation and the certainty of nuclear war.
Even Professor Arnold Toynbee, agreeing with his son, does so in these terms: Compared to continuing to incur a constant risk of the destruction of the human race, all other evils are lesser evils.
Let us therefore put first things first, and make sure of preserving the human race at whatever the temporary price may be.
Even a nuclear holocaust is a little less frightful to contemplate than a race of dehumanised humans occupying the earth until doomsday.
No political order or economic system is so clearly contrary to nature.
On their way to the Heavenly City the children of God make use of the pax-ordo of the earthly city and acknowledge their share in responsibility for its preservation.
Not to repel injury and uphold and improve pax-ordo means not simply to accept the misshapen order and injustice that challenges it at the moment, but also to start down the steep slope along which justice can find no place whereon to stand.
Toynbee seems to think that there is some other way to give justice social embodiment.
I would far rather die after a Russian occupation of this country--by some deliberate act of refusal--than die uselessly by atomisation.
Would such an act of refusal be useful?
He does not mean, in fact he addresses himself specifically to reject the proposition, that if we took the risk of surrendering, a new generation in Britain would soon begin to amass its strength in secret in order to reverse the consequences of that surrender.
He wants to be brutally frank and say that these rebellions would be hopeless--far, far more hopeless than was the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
This is not a project for regaining the ground for limited war, by creating a monopoly in one power of the world's arsenal of unlimited weapons.
It is a proposal that justice now be served by means other than those that have ever preconditioned the search for it, or preconditioned more positive means for attaining it, in the past.
It is no good recommending surrender rather than nuclear warfare with the proviso that surrender could be followed by the effective military resistance by occupied peoples.
Hope for the future would lie in the natural longing of the human race for freedom and the right to develop.
This is to surrender in advance to whatever attack may yet be mounted, to the very last;
it is to stride along the steep slope downward.
The only contrary action, in the future as in the past, runs the risk of war;
For almost one-sixth of the national population discrimination in the free selection of residence casts a considerable shadow upon these values assumed as self-evident by most Americans.
Few business groups in recent years have come under heavier pressure to face these realities than real estate brokers and home builders.
This pressure has urged re-evaluation of the assumptions underlying their professional ethics;
it has sought new sympathy for the human aspirations of racial minority groups in this country.
It is not surprising that, as spokesman for real estate interests, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) and its local associations have sought to limit and often ignore much of this pressure.
How does the local realtor see himself in the context of housing restrictions based on race, religion or ethnic attachment?
What does he conceive his role to be in this area of social unrest?
What ought to be, what is his potential role as a force for constructive social change?
What social, ethical and theological insights can the church and university help him bring to bear upon his situation?
Recently, a group of the faculty at Wesleyan University's Public Affairs Center sought some answers to these questions.
Several New England realtors were invited to participate in a small colloquium of property lawyers, political scientists, economists, social psychologists, social ethicists and theologians.
Here, in an atmosphere of forthrightness and mutual criticism, each sought to bring his particular insights to bear upon the question of discrimination in housing and the part each man present played in it.
For a number of years, Wesleyan has been drawing varied groups of political and business leaders into these informal discussions with members of the faculty and student body, attempting to explore and clarify aspects of their responsibility for public policy.
This article presents our observations of that session, of the realtors as they saw themselves and as the faculty and students saw them.
Such conversation quickly reveals an ethically significant ambivalence in the self-images held by most realtors.
Within the membership of this group, as has been found true of men in other professional or trade associations, the most ready portrayal of oneself to the public is that of a neutral agent simply serving the interests of a seller or buyer and mediating between them.
Professional responsibility is seen to consist largely in serving the wishes of the client fairly and in an efficient manner.
But as conversation goes on, particularly among the realtors themselves, another image emerges, that of considerable power and influence in the community.
Obviously, much more than customer expectation is determining the realtor's role.
Judgments are continually rendered regarding the potential buyers' income, educational level and above all, racial extraction;
and whether these would qualify them for congenial, happy relations to other people in certain community areas.
A narrow professionalism
Though the reference to race was stricken by the association in 1950, being an agent of such detrimental influences still appears as the cardinal sin realtors see themselves committed to avoid.
The rationale for this avoidance was most frequently expressed in economic terms;
all feared the supposed stigma they believed would inevitably attach to any realtor who openly introduced non-white, particularly Negro, peoples into all-white, restricted areas.
They would become tagged as men not interested in being purely real estate professionals but agitators for some kind of cause or reform, and this was no longer to be a pro.
Obviously what we are confronted with here is the identification of professional with narrow skills and specialization, the effective servicing of a client, rather than responsiveness to the wider and deeper meaning and associations of one's work.
This narrow professionalism does not even fit the present realities of their situation, as the pressure of minorities and the power and respectability of the realtors increase.
As our discussion continued, the inadequacy of the client relationship as an interpretation of their way of operating became evident.
Realtors live in their communities as specialists in a given area of work, as members of social and professional organizations, as citizens and civic leaders, as church laymen, as university alumni, as newspaper readers, etc..
From such communal roles the realtor finds the substance that shapes his moral understanding.
It seems to us that choices exercised by realtors in moral situations center in at least three areas: (1) the various ways in which they interpret a particular social issue;
(2) their pattern of involvement in the regular legal and political processes;
and, most pervasively, (3) their interpretation of who is a real pro, of what it means to be a professional man in a technical, fragmented society.
(1) Most of the realtors minimized their own understanding of and role in the racial issue, pleading that they only reflect the attitudes and intentions of their society.
There is some reality to this;
the Commission on Race and Housing concluded that there is no reason to believe that real estate men are either more or less racially prejudiced, on the whole, than any other segment of the American population.
But such a reaction obscures the powerful efforts made in the past by both NAREB and its local boards for the maintenance of restrictive clauses and practices.
Also, it does not recognize the elements of choice and judgment continually employed.
Like business and university groups generally, these men had very limited knowledge of recent sociological and psychological studies and findings that might illumine the decisions they make.
Realtors, both generally and in this group, have invariably equated residential integration with a decline in property values, a circumstance viewed with considerable apprehension.
Recent studies by the Commission on Race and Housing and others, however, point to a vast complex of factors that often do not warrant this conclusion.
There are increasing numbers of neighborhoods that are integrated residentially without great loss of property values, the white population having taken the initiative in preparing the areas for an appreciation of the Negroes' desire for well-kept housing, privacy, etc..
Data on the decline of property values in an area after a new racial group enters it has to be assessed in terms of the trends in property values before the group comes in.
Often they are able to get in only because the area is declining economically.
Significantly, no realtor and few of the faculty present were familiar with any of the six volumes (published by the University of California Press) that present the commission's findings.
No one anticipates any radical shift in this situation, but questions concerning reading habits, the availability of such data and the places where it is discussed must surely be raised.
The role of both church and university as sources of information and settings within which the implications of such information may be explored needs consideration.
Relevant facts, however, extend beyond considerations of property values and maintenance of harmonious neighborhoods.
Against the grain of creation
On the positive side, recent Federal action has largely undermined the legal sanction so long enjoyed by the segregationist position;
anti-discriminatory statutes in housing have now been adopted by thirteen states and, while specific provisions have varied, the tendency is clearly toward expanding coverage.
Realtors in attendance at the colloquium expressed interest, for example, in Connecticut's new housing law as setting standards of equity that they would like to have to obey, but in support of which none had been willing to go on public record.
As far as they were aware, the Connecticut Association of Real Estate Boards had not officially opposed the bill's passage or lobbied in its support.
(This has not been the case everywhere.
In 1957, the Real Estate Boards of New York City actively opposed the then pending private housing anti-discrimination law.
Official reasoning: the bill was a wanton invasion of basic property rights.
There are sins of omission as well as commission;
the attitude adopted by realtors and their associations, either negative or positive, plays a large part in the public acceptance of such measures and the degree to which they may be effectively enforced.
Judicial opinion since the Supreme Court decision on Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) has rendered racial restrictive covenants unenforcible.
Such a decision should have placed a powerful weapon in the hands of the entire housing industry, but there is little evidence that realtors, or at least their associations, have repudiated the principle in such clauses.
But as yet, no real estate board has been willing officially to support such laws or to admit the permissibility of introducing minority buyers into all-white neighborhoods.
But responsiveness to these opportunities presumes that all of us judge the good as a human good and not simply as a professional, white, American good.
Such judgments are meaningful only in so far as persons are members of a world, let us say a community, that embraces Scarsdale or Yonkers, but is also infinitely richer since it is all-inclusive.
That community of all creation is, then, the ultimate object of our loyalty and the concrete norm of all moral judgment.
Racial discrimination is wrong, then, not because it goes against the grain of a faculty member trying to converse with a few realtors but because it goes against the grain of creation and against the will of the Creator.
Thus, moral issues concerning the nature of the legal and political processes take on theological dimensions.
A fragmented Society
(3) Over the years, individuals engaged in the sale of real estate have developed remarkable unity in the methods and practices employed.
Most realtors and real estate brokers talk of themselves as professional people with the cultural and moral values held by the traditional professions.
But what significance attaches to professional, beyond the narrow sense of skillfulness in meeting a client's stated needs as already noted?
Our faculty and students pressed this issue more than any other.
As a theologian in the group pointed out, a professional was, before the modern period of technical specialization, one who professed to be a bearer and critic of his culture in the use of his particular skills.
If we look about the world today, we can see clearly that there are two especially significant factors shaping the future of our civilization: science and religion.
Science is placing in our hands the ultimate power of the universe, the power of the atom.
Religion, or the lack of it, will decide whether we use this power to build a brave new world of peace and abundance for all mankind, or whether we misuse this power to leave a world utterly destroyed.
How can we have the wisdom to meet such a new and difficult challenge?
We may feel pessimistic at the outlook.
And yet there is a note of hope, because this same science that is giving us the power of the atom is also giving us atomic vision.
We are looking inside the atom and seeing there a universe which is not material but something beyond the material, a universe that in a word is not matter but music.
And it is in this new vision of the atom that we find an affirmation and an invigoration of our faith.
Atomic energy
To see this vision in perspective, we need first of all a clear idea of the magnitude of this new power from the atom.
You know that I could hold right here in my hand the little chunk of uranium metal that was the heart of the bomb that dropped on Hiroshima.
It was only about the size of a baseball;
but packed in that metallic ball there was the explosive force of 20,000 tons of Aj.
That is enough TNT to fill the tower of the Empire State Building;
and with the availability of bombs of that size, war became a new problem.
Now we might have restricted the use of uranium bombs by controlling the sources of uranium because it is found in only a few places in the world.
But we had hardly started to adjust our thinking to this new uranium weapon when we were faced with the hydrogen bomb.
Hydrogen is just as plentiful as uranium is scarce.
We know that we have hydrogen in water;
water is Af and the H stands for hydrogen;
there is also hydrogen in wood and hydrogen in our bodies.
I have calculated that if I could snap my fingers in one magic gesture to release the power of all the hydrogen in my body, I would explode with the force of a hundred bombs of the kind that fell on Hiroshima.
I won't try the experiment, but I think you can see that if we all knew the secret and we could all let ourselves go, there would be quite an explosion.
And then think how little hydrogen we have in us compared with the hydrogen in Delaware Bay or in the ocean beyond.
Salt water is still Af, the same hydrogen is there.
And the size of the ocean shows us the magnitude of the destructive power we hold in our hands today.
Of course, there is also an optimistic side to the picture.
For if I knew the secret of letting this power in my body change directly into electricity, I could rent myself out to the electric companies and with just the power in my body I could light all the lights and run all the factories in the entire United States for some days.
And think, if we all knew this secret and we could pool our power, what a wonderful public utility company we would make.
With just the hydrogen of our bodies, we could run the world for years.
Then think of Delaware Bay and the ocean and you see that we have a supply of power for millions of years to come.
It is power with which we can literally rebuild the world, provide adequate housing, food, education, abundant living for everyone everywhere.
An octillion atoms
Now let us see where this power comes from.
To grasp our new view of the atom, we have to appreciate first of all how small the atom is.
I have been trying to make this clear to my own class in chemistry.
One night there were some dried peas lying on our kitchen table, and these peas looked to me like a little group of atoms;
and I asked myself a question: Suppose I had the same number of peas as there are atoms in my body, how large an area would they cover?
I calculated first that there are about an octillion atoms in the average human body;
that is a figure one with 27 ciphers, quite a large number.
Then I calculated that a million peas would just about fill a household refrigerator;
a billion peas would fill a small house from cellar to attic;
a trillion peas would fill all the houses in a town of about ten thousand people;
and a quadrillion peas would fill all the buildings in the city of Philadelphia.
I saw that I would soon run out of buildings at this rate, so I decided to take another measure--the whole state of Pennsylvania.
Imagine that there is a blizzard over Pennsylvania, but instead of snowing snow, it snows peas;
so we get the whole state covered with peas, about four feet deep.
You can imagine what it would look like going out on the turnpike with the peas banked up against the houses and covering the cars;
Pennsylvania thus blanketed would contain about a quintillion peas.
But we still have a long way to go.
Next we imagine our blizzard raging over all the land areas of the entire globe--North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, all covered with peas four feet deep;
then we have sextillion peas.
Next we freeze over the oceans and cover the whole earth with peas, then we go out among the neighboring stars, collect 250 planets each the size of the earth, and also cover each of these with peas four feet deep;
and then we have septillion.
Finally we go into the farthest reaches of the Milky Way;
we get 250,000 planets;
we cover each of these with our blanket of peas and then at last we have octillion peas corresponding in number to the atoms in the body.
So you see how small an atom is and how complicated you are.
A speck--and space
Now although an atom is small, we can still in imagination have a look at it.
Let us focus on an atom of calcium from the tip of the bone of my finger and let us suppose that I swallow a magic Alice In Wonderland growing pill.
I start growing rapidly and this calcium atom grows along with me.
I shoot up through the roof, into the sky, past the clouds, through the stratosphere, out beyond the moon, out among the planets, until I am over a hundred and fifty million miles long.
Then this atom of calcium will swell to something like a great balloon a hundred yards across, a balloon big enough to put a football field inside.
And if you should step inside of such a magnified atom, according to the physics of forty years ago, you would see circulating over your head, down at the sides, and under your feet, some twenty luminous balls about the size of footballs.
Since these electrons are moving like planets, you may wonder whether there is an atomic sun at the center of the atom.
So you look down there and you see a tiny, whirling point about the size of the head of a pin.
This is the atomic sun, the atomic nucleus.
Even if the atom were big enough to hold a football field, this nucleus is still only about the size of a pinhead.
It is this atomic nucleus that contains the positive charge of electricity holding these negatively charged electrons in their orbits;
it also contains nearly all the mass, and the atomic energy.
You may ask what else there is, and the answer is nothing--nothing but empty space.
And since you are made of atoms, you are nothing much but empty space, too.
Someone has remarked that this is certainly the ultimate in reducing.
At any rate, it shows us how immaterial we are.
Music of the spheres
Now this 1920 view of the atom was on the whole a discouraging picture.
For we believed that the electrons obeyed the law of mechanics and electrodynamics;
and therefore the atom was really just a little machine;
and in mechanics the whole is no more than the sum of the parts.
So if you are made of atoms, you are just a big machine;
and since the universe is also made of atoms, it is just a supermachine.
And this would mean that we live in a mechanistic universe, governed by the laws of cause and effect, bound in chains of determinism that hold the universe on a completely predetermined course in which there is not room for soul or spirit or human freedom.
And this is why so many scientists a half a century ago were agnostics or atheists.
Then came the scientific revolution in the late 1920's.
A suggestion from Louis De Broglie, a physicist in France, showed us that these electrons are not point particles but waves.
And to see the meaning of this new picture, imagine that you can put on more powerful glasses and go back inside the atom and have a look at it in the way we view it today.
Now as you step inside, instead of seeing particles orbiting around like planets, you see waves and ripples very much like the ripples that you get on the surface of a pond when you drop a stone into it.
These ripples spread out in symmetrical patterns like the rose windows of a great cathedral.
And as the waves flow back and forth and merge with the waves from the neighboring atoms, you can put on a magic hearing aid and you hear music.
It is a music like the music from a great organ or a vast orchestra playing a symphony.
Harmony, melody, counterpoint symphonic structure are there;
and as this music ebbs and flows, there is an antiphonal chorus from all the atoms outside, in fact from the atoms of the entire universe.
And so today when we examine the structure of our knowledge of the atom and of the universe, we are forced to conclude that the best word to describe our universe is music.
The Island of Nantucket, part of the State of Massachusetts, lies about thirty-one miles southeast of its mother State.
Some of the Island is sand and is not suitable for living.
The Island folk have their living almost entirely from summer visitors;
the rest is obtained from harbor scallops.
During about three and a half months of the year, in the summer, there are three boats that run from the mainland to the Island carrying passengers, food, and cars;
but the rest of the year only one boat is needed, which ties up at the mainland nights and makes the trip down to Nantucket in the daytime.
This is a fine trip, too, on a good day.
With Martha's Vineyard on one side and the open sea on the other, it makes an excellent trip of about three hours.
To what extent and in what ways did Christianity affect the United States of America in the nineteenth century?
How far and in what fashion did it modify the new nation which was emerging in the midst of the forces shaping the revolutionary age?
To what extent did it mould the morals and the social, economic, and political life and institutions of the country?
A complete picture is impossible--partly because of the limitations of space, partly because for millions of individuals who professed allegiance to the Christian faith data are unobtainable.
Even more of an obstacle is the difficulty of separating the influence of Christianity from other factors.
Although a complete picture cannot be given, we can indicate some aspects of life into which the Christian faith entered as at least one creative factor.
At times we can say that it was the major factor.
What in some ways was the most important aspect was the impact individually on the millions who constituted the nation.
As we have seen, a growing proportion, although in 1914 still a minority, were members of churches.
Presumably those who did not have a formal church connexion had also felt the influence of Christianity to a greater or lesser extent.
Many of them had once been members of a church or at least had been given instruction in Christianity but for one or another reason had allowed the connexion to lapse.
The form of Christianity to which they were exposed was for some the Protestantism of the older stock, for others the Protestantism of the nineteenth-century immigration;
for still others, mostly of the nineteenth-century immigration, it was Roman Catholicism, and for a small minority it was Eastern Orthodoxy.
Upon all of them played the intellectual, social, political, and economic attitudes, institutions, and customs of the nation.
Upon most of these Christianity had left an impress and through them had had a share in making the individual what he was.
Yet to determine precisely to what extent and exactly in what ways any individual showed the effects of Christianity would be impossible.
At best only an approximation could be arrived at.
To generalize for the entire nation would be absurd.
For instance, we cannot know whether even for church members the degree of conformity to Christian standards of morality increased or declined as the proportion of church members in the population rose.
The temptation is to say that, as the percentage of church members mounted, the degree of discipline exercised by the churches lessened and the trend was towards conformity to the general level.
Yet this cannot be proved.
We know that in the early part of the century many Protestant congregations took positive action against members who transgressed the ethical codes to which the majority subscribed.
Thus Baptist churches on the frontier took cognizance of charges against their members of drunkenness, fighting, malicious gossip, lying, cheating, sexual irregularities, gambling, horse racing, and failure to pay just debts.
If guilty, the offender might be excluded from membership.
As church membership burgeoned, such measures faded into desuetude.
But whether this was accompanied by a general lowering of the moral life of the membership we do not know.
What we can attempt with some hope of dependable conclusions is to point out the manner in which Christianity entered into particular aspects of the life of the nation.
We have already hinted at the fashion in which Christianity contributed to education and so to intellectual life.
Throughout the nineteenth century Christianity exerted its influence on American society as a whole primarily through the Protestantism of the older stock.
By the end of the century the Roman Catholic Church was beginning to make itself felt, mainly through such institutions as hospitals but also through its attitude towards organized labour.
In the twentieth century its influence grew, as did that of the Protestantism of the nineteenth-century immigration.
The American dream
The ideals of the country were deeply indebted to the Protestantism of the older stock.
Thus America, the most widely sung of the patriotic songs, was written by a New England Baptist clergyman, Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895), while a student in Andover Theological Seminary.
With its zeal for liberty and its dependence on God it breathed the spirit which had been nourished on the Evangelical revivals.
The great seal of the United States was obviously inspired by the Christian faith.
Here was what was called the American dream, namely, the effort to build a structure which would be something new in history and to do so in such fashion that God could bless it.
America, America, God mend thy every flaw, confirm thy soul in self control, the liberty in law.
O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears.
America, America, God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
The American dream was compounded of many strains.
Some were clearly of Christian origin, among them the Great Awakening and other revivals which helped to make Christian liberty, Christian equality, and Christian fraternity the passion of the land.
Some have seen revivalism and the search for Christian perfection as the fountain-head of the American hope.
Here, too, must be placed Unitarianism and, less obviously from Christian inspiration, Emerson, Transcendentalism, and the idealism of Walt Whitman.
We must also remember those who reacted against the dream as a kind of myth--among them Melville, Hawthorne, and Henry James the elder, all of them out of a Christian background.
Reform movements
With such a dream arising, at least in part, from the Protestant heritage of the United States and built into the foundations of the nation, it is not surprising that many efforts were made to give it concrete expression.
A number were in the nature of movements to relieve or remove social ills.
Significantly, the initiation and leadership of a major proportion of the reform movements, especially those in the first half of the nineteenth century, came from men and women of New England birth or parentage and from either Trinitarian or Unitarian Congregationalism.
Several of the movements were given a marked impetus by revivalism.
Quakers, some from New England, had a larger share than their proportionate numerical strength would have warranted.
The atmosphere was one of optimism, of confidence in human progress, and of a determination to rid the world of its ills.
We cannot take the space to record all the efforts for the removal or alleviation of collective ills.
A few of the more prominent must serve as examples of what a complete listing and description would disclose.
Several were born in the early decades and persisted throughout the century.
Others were ephemeral.
Some disappeared with the attainment of their purpose.
Still others sprang up late in the century to meet conditions which arose from fresh stages of the revolutionary age.
The anti-slavery movement
The movement to end Negro slavery began before 1815 and mounted after that year until, as a result of the Civil War, emancipation was achieved.
Long before 1815 the Christian conscience was leading some to declare slavery wrong and to act accordingly.
For example, in 1693 the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends declared that its members should emancipate their slaves and in 1776 it determined to exclude from membership all who did not comply.
In the latter year Samuel Hopkins, from whom the Hopkinsian strain of New England theology took its name, asked the Continental Congress to abolish slavery.
As we have seen, Methodism early took a stand against slavery.
Beginning at least as far back as 1789 various Baptist bodies condemned slavery.
After 1815 anti-slavery sentiment mounted, chiefly among Protestants and those of Protestant background of the older stock.
The anti-slavery movement took many forms.
Benjamin Lundy (1789-1839), a Quaker, was a pioneer in preparing the way for anti-slavery societies.
It was he who turned the attention of William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) to the subject.
Garrison, Massachusetts born of Nova Scotian parentage, was by temperament and conviction a reformer.
Chiefly remembered because of his incessant advocacy of immediate and unconditional abolition, he also espoused a great variety of other causes--among them women's rights, prohibition, and justice to the Indians.
A marked impulse came to the anti-slavery movement through the Finney revivals.
Finney himself, while opposed to slavery, placed his chief emphasis on evangelism, but from his converts issued much of the leadership of the anti-slavery campaign.
Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895) was especially active.
Weld was the son and grandson of New England Congregational ministers.
As a youth he became one of Finney's band of evangelists and gave himself to winning young men.
A strong temperance advocate, through the influence of a favorite teacher, Charles Stewart, another Finney convert, he devoted himself to the anti-slavery cause.
A group of young men influenced by him enrolled in Lane Theological Seminary and had to leave because of their open anti-slavery position.
The majority then went to the infant Oberlin.
They and others employed some of Finney's techniques as they sought to win adherents to the cause.
Weld contributed to the anti-slavery convictions of such men as Joshua R. Giddings and Edwin M. Stanton, enlisted John Quincy Adams, and helped provide ideas which underlay Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
He shunned publicity for himself and sought to avoid fame.
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), from a prominent Massachusetts family, in his teens was converted under the preaching of Lyman Beecher.
Although he later broke with the churches because he believed that they were insufficiently outspoken against social evils, he remained a devout Christian.
He was remembered chiefly for his fearless advocacy of abolition, but he also stood for equal rights for women, for opportunity for the freedmen, and for prohibition.
The anti-slavery movement and other contemporary reforms and philanthropies were given leadership and financial undergirding by Arthur Tappan (1786-1865) and his younger brother, Lewis Tappan (1788-1873).
Individuals possessing unusual gifts and great personal power were transmuted at death into awesome spirits;
they were almost immediately worshipped for these newer, even more terrible abilities.
Their direct descendants inherited not only their worldly fortunes, but also the mandate of their newfound power as spirits in the other half of the universe.
Royal lineages could be based on extraordinary worldly achievements translated into eternal otherworldly power.
Thus, the emperor could draw on sources not available to those with less puissant ancestors.
But this eminence was not without its weighty responsibilities.
Since he possessed more power in an interdependent universe of living beings and dead spirits, the emperor had to use it for the benefit of the living.
The royal ritual generated power into the other world: it also provided the living with a way to control the spirits, and bring their powers directly to bear on the everyday affairs of the world.
Proper ritual observance at any level of society was capable of generating power for use in the spirit world;
but naturally, the royal ritual, which provided unusual control over already supremely powerful divine spirits, was held responsible for regulating the universe and insuring the welfare of the kingdom.
This is the familiar system of cosmic government.
The Chinese emperor, by proper observance of ritual, manifested divine powers.
He regulated the dualities of light and darkness, Yang and Yin, which are locked in eternal struggle.
By swaying the balance between them, he effected the alternation of the seasons.
His power was so great that he even promoted and demoted gods according to whether they had given ear or been deaf to petitions.
In this system, no man is exempt from obligations.
Failure in daily moral and ethical duties to one's family, outrages to community propriety, any departure from rigid standards of moral excellence were offenses against the dead.
And to offend the dead meant to incur their wrath, and thus provoke the unleashing of countrywide disasters.
The family home was, in fact, a temple;
and the daily duties of individuals were basically religious in nature.
The dead spirits occupied a prominent place in every hope and in every fear.
The common belief was that there existed one moral order, which included everything.
The dead controlled the material prosperity of the living, and the living adhered to strict codes of conduct in order not to weaken that control.
Men believed they could control nature by obeying a moral code.
If the moral code were flouted, the proper balance of the universe would be upset, and the disastrous result could be floods, plague, or famine.
Modern Westerners have difficulty comprehending this fusion of moral and material, largely because in the West the historical trend has been to deny the connection.
Basing action on the empirical determination of cause and effect provides a toughness and bravado that no powerful otherworldly ancestor could ever impart--plus the added liberation from the constraint of silent burial urns.
In China, the magical system par excellence was Taoism.
The Taoists were Quietist mystics, who saw an unchanging unity--the Tao--underlying all phenomena.
It was this timeless unity that was all-important, and not its temporary manifestations in the world of reality.
The Taoists believed the unity could be influenced by proper magical manipulation;
in other words, they were actually an organization of magicians.
Mahayana Buddhism was no exception to these prevailing magical concepts.
After this form of Indian Buddhism had been introduced into China, it underwent extensive changes.
During its flowering in the sixth to the eighth centuries, Mahayana offered a supernatural package to the Chinese which bears no resemblance to the highly digested philosophical Zen morsels offered to the modern Western reader.
Mahayana had gods, and magic, a pantheon, heavens and hells, and gorgeously appareled priests, monks, and nuns, all of whom wielded power over souls in the other world.
The self-realized Mahayana saint possessed superhuman powers and magic.
The Mahayana that developed in the north was a religion of idolatry and coarse magic, that made the world into a huge magical garden.
In its monastic form, Mahayana was merely an organization of magic-practicing monks (bonzes), who catered to the Chinese faith in the supernatural.
Nonmagical Confucianism was a secular, rational philosophy, but even with this different orientation it could not escape from the ethos of a cosmic government.
Confucianism had its own magic in the idea that virtue had power.
If a man lived a classical life, he need not fear the spirits--for only lack of virtue gave the spirits power over him.
But let us not be mistaken about Confucian virtue;
this was not virtue as we understand the word today, and it did not mean an abandonment of the belief in magic manipulation.
To the Confucian, virtue simply meant mastery and correct observance of three hundred major rules of ritual and three thousand minor ones.
Propriety was synonymous with ritual observance, the mark of a true gentleman.
To live correctly in an interdependent moral and material universe of living and dead was decisive for man's fate.
This, in brief, was the historical background out of which Zen emerged.
Promoters of Zen to the West record its ancestry, and recognize that Zen grew out of a combination of Taoism and Indian Mahayana Buddhism.
But the marvelous person that is supposed to result from Zen exhibits more Chinese practicality than Indian speculation--he possesses magical powers, and can use them to order nature and to redeem souls.
Proponents of Zen to the West emphasize disproportionately the amount of Mahayana Buddhism in Zen, probably in order to dignify the indisputably magical Taoist ideas with more respectable Buddhist metaphysic.
But in the Chinese mind, there was little difference between the two--the bonzes were no more metaphysical than a magician has to be.
Actually, Zen owes more to Chinese Quietism than it does to Mahayana Buddhism.
The Ch'an (Zen) sect may have derived its metaphysic from Mahayana, but its psychology was pure early Taoist.
In fact, the antipathy to outward ceremonies hailed by modern exponents as so uniquely characteristic of the direct thinking Zennist was a feature of Taoism.
Zen maintains that cognitive things are only the surface of experience.
One of its features attractive to the West is its irreverence for tradition and dogma and for sacred texts.
One patriarch is supposed to have relegated sacred scriptures for use in an outhouse.
But this is not the spirit of self-reliant freedom of action for which the Westerner mistakes it.
It is simply that in Taoist tradition--as in all good mysticisms--books, words, or any other manifestations that belong to the normal state of consciousness are considered only the surface of experience.
The truth--the Eternal Truth--is not transmittable by words.
Reality is considered not only irrelevant to the acquisition of higher knowledge, but a positive handicap.
The technique of reality confusion--the use of paradox and riddles to shake the mind's grip on reality--originated with fourth and third century B.C. Chinese Quietism: the koan is not basically a new device.
It is important for an understanding of Zen to realize that the esoteric preoccupations of the select few cannot be the doctrine of the common man.
In the supernatural atmosphere of cosmic government, only the ruling elite was ever concerned with a kingdom-wide ordering of nature: popular religion aimed at more personal benefits from magical powers.
And this is only natural--witness the haste with which modern man gobbles the latest wonder drug.
Early Chinese anchoritism was theoretically aimed at a mystic pantheist union with the divine, personal salvation being achieved when the mystical recluse united with divine essence.
But this esoteric doctrine was lost in the shuffle to acquire special powers.
The anchorite strove, in fact, to magically influence the world of spirits in the same way that the divine emperor manifested his power.
Thus, the Mahayana metaphysic of mystical union for salvation was distilled down to a bare self-seeking, and for this reason, the mystic in Asia did not long remain in isolated contemplation.
As the Zen literature reveals, as soon as an early Zen master attained fame in seclusion, he was called out into the world to exercise his powers.
The early Anchorite masters attracted disciples because of their presumed ability to perform miracles.
Exponents of Zen often insist that very early Zen doctrine opposed the rampant supernaturalism of China, and proposed instead a more mature, less credulous view of the universe.
In support of this, stories from the early literature are cited to show that Zen attacks the idea of supernatural power.
They went along the pass talking with each other for a short while until they came to a river roaring with torrent.
There being no bridge, the master had to stop at the shore;
but his companion crossed the river walking on the water and beckoned to Hwang Pah to follow him.
Thereupon Hwang Pah said: If I knew thou art an Arhat, I would have doubled you up before thou got over there!
The monk then understood the spiritual attainment of Hwang Pah, and praised him as a true Mahayanist.
(1)
A second tale shows still more clearly the kind of powers a truly spiritual monk could possess: On one occasion Yang Shan (Kyo-zan) saw a stranger monk flying through the air.
When that monk came down and approached him with a respectful salutation, he asked: Where art thou from?
Early this morning, replied the other, I set out from India.
Why, said the teacher, art thou so late?
I stopped, responded the man, several times to look at beautiful sceneries.
Thou mayst have supernatural powers, exclaimed Yang Shan, yet thou must give back the Spirit of Buddha to me.
Then the monk praised Yang Shan saying: I have come over to China in order to worship Manjucri, and met unexpectedly with Minor Shakya, and after giving the master some palm leaves he brought from India, went back through the air.
(2)
In the popular Chinese mind, Ch'an (Zen) was no exception to the ideas of coarse magic that dominated.
A closer look at modern Zen reveals many magical carryovers that are still part of popular Zen attitudes.
To the Zen monk the universe is still populated with spiritual beings who have to be appeased.
Part of the mealtime ritual in the Zendo consists in offerings of rice to the spiritual beings.
Modern Zen presentation to the West insists on the anti-authoritarian, highly pragmatic nature of the Zen belief--scriptures are burned to make fire, action is based on direct self-confidence, and so on.
(3)
Pope Leo 13, on the 13th day of December 1898, granted the following indulgences: An indulgence of three hundred days is granted to all the Faithful who read the Holy Gospels at least a quarter of an hour.
A Plenary Indulgence under the usual conditions is granted once a month for the daily reading.
The American Bishops assembled at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore urged the Catholic people to read the Holy Bible.
We hope, they said, that no family can be found amongst us without a correct version of the Holy Scriptures.
They recommended, also, that at a fixed hour, let the entire family be assembled for night prayers, followed by a short reading of the Holy Scriptures.
Since the Catholic Church expresses such desire that the Sacred Scriptures be read, the following taken from the Holy Bible (New Catholic Edition) will prove a means of grace and a source of great spiritual blessing.
The need of the new birth
Do not wonder that I said to thee, You must be born again.
St. John 3: 7.
The new birth is necessary because god is holy.
But as the One who called you is holy, be you also holy in all your behavior;
for it is written, You shall be holy, because I am holy.
1, St. Peter 15, 16.
Holiness without which no man will see God.
Hebrews 14.
The new birth is necessary because all have sinned.
As it is written, There is not one just man;
there is none who understands;
there is none who seeks after God.
All have gone astray together;
All have sinned and have need of the glory of God.
Romans 3: 10-12, 23.
The new birth is necessary because the natural man is spiritually dead and blind.
Therefore as through one man sin entered into the world and through sin death, and thus death has passed unto all men because all have sinned.
Romans 12.
You also, when you were dead by reason of your offenses and sins.
Ephesians 2: 1.
And if our gospel also is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
In their case, the god of this world (Satan) has blinded their unbelieving minds, that they should not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2, Corinthians 4: 3, 4.
For his workmanship we are, created in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 10.
The new birth is effected through the word of God
For you have been reborn, not from corruptible seed but from incorruptible, through the word of God.
1 St. Peter 23.
Of his own will he has begotten us by the word of truth.
St. James 18.
Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water (symbol of the Word of God, see Ephesians 26) and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
St. John 3: 5, 6.
Evidences of the new birth
if we are born of god we have faith in Christ as the only saviour.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.
1 St. John 5: 1.
As many as received him were born of God.
St. John 12, 13.
If we are born of God we do not practice sin as a habit.
Whoever is born of God does not commit sin (That is, he does not practice sin.
Cf. 1 St. John 2: 1).
1 St. John 3: 9.
We know that no one who is born of God commits sin.
1 St. John 18.
(The new nature, received at the time of regeneration, is divine and holy, and as the believer lives under the power of this new nature he does not practice sin.
) if we are born of god we practice righteousness.
If you know that he (God) is just (righteous), know that everyone also who does what is just (righteous) has been born of him.
1 St. John 29.
If we are born of God we love God.
Everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God.
1 St. John 4: 7.
If we are born of God we love the brethren.
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren.
He who does not love abides in death.
1 St. John 14.
If we are born of God we overcome the world.
All that is born of God overcomes the world;
and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.
1 St. John 5: 4.
If we are born of God we grow in (not into, but in) grace.
But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
2 St. Peter 18.
If we are born of God we persevere unto the end.
I am convinced of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to perfection until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1: 6.
St. Jude 24.
The new birth is necessary because the spiritual kingdom requires a spiritual nature.
Jesus answered and said to him (Nicodemus) Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not wonder that I said to thee,'You must be born again'''.
St. John 3: 3, 5-7.
The nature of the new birth
the new birth is a new creation.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision but a new creation is of any account.
Galatians 15.
If then any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (literally, He is a new creation), the former things have passed away;
behold, they are made new!
2 Corinthians 17.
For by grace you have been saved through faith;
and that not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God;
not as the outcome of works, lest anyone may boast.
For his workmanship we are, created in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2: 8-10.
The new birth is the implantation of a new life.
I came that they may have life.
St. John 10.
He who has the Son has the life.
He who has not the Son has not the life.
1 St. John 12.
He who believes in the Son (Jesus Christ, the Son of God), has everlasting life.
St. John 36.
The new birth is the impartation of the divine nature.
Through which he has granted us the very great and precious promises, so that through them you may become partaker of the divine nature.
2 St. Peter 1: 4.
The new birth is Christ living in you by faith.
Christ in you, your hope of glory.
Colossians 27.
It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me.
And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.
Galatians 20.
To have Christ dwelling through faith in your hearts.
Ephesians 17.
The new birth is miraculous and mysterious.
The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its sound but dost not know where it comes from or where it goes.
So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
St. John 3: 8.
The new birth is immediate and instantaneous.
Amen, amen, I say to you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has life everlasting, and does not come to judgment, but has passed from death to life.
St. John 24.
The means of the new birth
the new birth is a work of god.
But to as many as received him he gave the power of becoming sons of God;
to those who believe in his name: Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
St. John 12, 13.
A final word
You may be very religious, a good church member, an upright, honest and sincere person;
you may be baptized, confirmed, reverent and worshipful;
you may attend mass, do penance, say prayers and zealously keep all the sacraments and ceremonies of the church;
you may have the final and extreme unction but if you are not born again you are lost and headed for hell and eternal punishment.
You cannot be saved;
you cannot go to heaven unless you are born again.
Our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, who could not lie, said, Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God (St. John 3: 3).
You must be born again (St. John 3: 7).
You may do as you please with God now.
It is permitted.
God placed Himself in men's hands when He sent Jesus Christ into the world as perfect God and perfect Man in one Being.
He was then in man's hands.
They cursed Him.
It was permitted.
Men spit on Him.
God allowed it.
They called Him a devil.
God withheld His wrath.
Finally men arrested Him, gave Him a mock trial, flogged Him, nailed Him on a cross and hung Him between earth and heaven;
and God allowed it.
You can do likewise though Christ is not bodily present.
You can ignore Him.
You can ignore His Book, the Bible, and His church.
You can laugh at His blood-bought salvation, curse His followers, and laugh at hell.
It is permitted.
The eternal Christ may knock at your soul's door, calling you to give up sin and prepare for heaven.
You may refuse Him, spit on Him, call Him a devil, curse Him.
It is permitted.
You may take His name upon your lips in oaths and curses if you so choose.
He is in your hands--now.
On the other hand, you may seek His favor, humble yourself before Him and beg His mercy, implore His forgiveness, forsake your sins, and abandon your whole life to Him.
He has said, Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me (Revelation 3:20::
20).
The choice is up to you.
The latch is on your side of the door.
The choice is yours: the revellings and banquetings of this world or quiet communion with God;
the ever burning lusts of the flesh or the powerful victory of Holy Spirit discipline.
The choice is yours: God is in your hands, now.
God has already set the day when you will be in His hands.
What He does with you then depends on what you do with Him now.
Then it will be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God if you have abused Him in your hands.
I am a magazine;
my name is Guideposts;
this issue that you are reading marks my 15th anniversary.
When I came into being, 15 years ago, I had one primary purpose: to help men and women everywhere to know God better, and through knowing Him better to become happier and more effective people.
That purpose has never changed.
When you read me, you are holding in your hands the product of many minds and hearts.
Some of the people who speak through my pages are famous;
others unknown.
Some work with their hands.
Some have walked through pain and sorrow to bring you their message of hope.
Some are so filled with gratitude, for the gift of life and the love of God, that their joy spills out on the paper and brightens the lives of thousands whom they have never known, and will never see.
Fifteen years ago, there were no Guideposts at all.
This month a million Guideposts will circulate all over the world.
Experts in the publishing field consider this astounding.
They do not understand how a small magazine with no advertising and no newsstand sale could have achieved such a following.
To me, the explanation is very simple.
I am not doing anything, of myself.
I am merely a channel for something.
What is this something?
I cannot define it fully.
It is the force in the universe that makes men love goodness, even when they turn away from it.
It is the power that holds the stars in their orbits, but allows the wind to bend a blade of grass.
It is the whisper in the heart that urges each one to be better than he is.
It is mankind's wistful yearning for a world of justice and peace.
All things are possible to God, but He chooses--usually--to work through people.
Sometimes such people sense that they are being used;
sometimes not.
The businessman was Raymond Thornburg.
The minister was Norman Vincent Peale.
Neither had any publishing experience, but they had faith in their idea.
They borrowed a typewriter, raised about $2,000 in contributions, hired a secretary, persuaded a couple of young men to join them for almost no pay and began mailing out a collection of unstapled leaflets that they called Guideposts.
Compared to the big, established magazines, my first efforts seemed feeble indeed.
But from the start they had two important ingredients: sincerity and realism.
The people who told the stories were sincere.
And the stories they told were true.
For example, early in my life, when one of my editorial workers wanted to find out how churches and philanthropic organizations met the needs of New York's down-and-outers, he didn't just ask questions.
Len LeSourd went and lived in the slums as a sidewalk derelict for ten days.
That was nearly 13 years ago.
Len LeSourd is my executive editor today.
Many of you are familiar, I'm sure, with the story of my early struggles: the fire in January, 1947, that destroyed everything--even our precious list of subscribers.
The help and sympathy that were forthcoming from everywhere.
The crisis later on when debts seemed about to overwhelm me.
That was when a remarkable woman, Teresa Durlach, came to my aid--not so much with money, as with wisdom and courage.
You're not living up to your own principles, she told my discouraged people.
You're so preoccupied that you've let your faith grow dim.
What do you want--a hundred thousand subscribers?
Visualize them, then, believe you are getting them, and you will have them!
And the 100,000 subscribers became a reality.
And then 500,000.
And now a million January Guideposts are in circulation.
With our growth came expansion into new fields of service.
Today more than a thousand industries distribute me to their employees.
They say all personnel have spiritual needs which Guideposts helps to meet.
Hundreds of civic clubs, business firms and individuals make me available to school teachers throughout the land.
They say it helps them bring back into schools the spiritual and moral values on which this country was built.
Thousands of free copies are sent each month to chaplains in the Armed Forces, to prison libraries and to hospitals everywhere.
Bedridden people say I am easy to hold--and read.
Three years ago it became possible to finance a Braille edition for blind readers.
Throughout these exciting years I have been fortunate for, although I have never offered great financial inducements, talent has found its way to me: William Boal who so ably organizes business operations;
John Beach who guides circulation;
Irving Granville and Nelson Rector who travel widely calling on business firms.
Searching for the best in spiritual stories, my roving editors cover not only the country, but the whole world.
Glenn Kittler has been twice to Africa, once spending a week with Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
Last summer John and Elizabeth Sherrill were in Alaska.
Van Varner recently returned from Russia.
Twice a month the editorial staff meets in New York for an early supper, then a long evening of idea-exchange.
Around the table sit Protestant, Catholic, and Jew.
Each contributes something different, and something important: Ruth Peale, her wide experience in church work;
Sidney Fields, years of experience as a New York columnist;
Catherine Marshall LeSourd, the insight that has made her books world-famous and Norm Mullendore, the keen perception of an advertising executive.
There are people who travel long distances to assure my continued existence.
Elaine St. Johns may fly in from the West Coast for the editorial staff meetings.
Starr Jones gets up every morning at five o'clock, milks his family cow, attends to farm chores, and then takes a two-hour train trip to New York.
Arthur Gordon comes once a month all the way from Georgia.
We have also seen the power of faith at work among us.
Rose Weiss, who handles all the prayer-requests that we receive, answering each letter personally, has the serene selflessness that comes from suffering: she has had many major operations, and now gets about in a limited way on braces and crutches.
Recently, John Sherrill was stricken with one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
We prayed for John, during surgery, we asked others to pray;
all over the country a massive shield of prayer was thrown around him.
Today the cancer is gone.
Perhaps it is not fair to mention some people without mentioning all.
But, you see, those who are not mentioned will not resent it.
That is the kind of people they are.
Perhaps you think the editorial meetings are solemn affairs, a little sanctimonious?
Not so.
Serious, yes, but also much laughter.
Sharp division of opinion, too, and strenuous debate.
There are brain-wracking searches for the right word, the best phrase, the most helpful idea.
And there is also something intangible that hovers around the table.
A good word for it is fellowship.
A shorter word is.
Each meeting starts with a prayer, offered spontaneously by one member of the group.
It takes many forms, this prayer, but in essence it is always a request for guidance, for open minds and gentle hearts, for honesty and sincerity, for the wisdom and the insights that will help Guideposts' readers.
For you, readers, are an all-important part of the spiritual experiment that is Guideposts.
I need your support, your criticism, your encouragement, your prayers.
I am a magazine;
my name is Guideposts.
My message, today, is the same as it was 15 years ago: that there is goodness in people, and strength and love in God.
May He bless you all.
Havana was filled with an excitement which you could see in the brightness of men's eyes and hear in the pitch of their voices.
The hated dictator Batista had fled.
Rumors flew from lip to lip that Fidel Castro was on his way to Havana, coming from the mountains where he had fought Batista for five years.
Already the city was filled with Barbudos, the bearded, war-dirty Revolutionaries, carrying carbines, waving to the crowds that lined the Prado.
And then Castro himself did come, bearded, smiling;
yet if you looked closely you'd see that his eyes did not pick up the smile on his lips.
At first I was happy to throw the support of our newspaper behind this man.
I am sure that Castro was happy, too, about that support.
Diario De La Marina was the oldest and most influential paper in Cuba, with a reputation for speaking out against tyranny.
My grandfather had been stoned because of his editorials.
My own earliest memories are of exiles: my three brothers and I were taken often to the United States to visit relatives while my father stayed on to fight the dictator Machado.
When it was my turn, I, too, printed the truth as I knew it about Batista, and rejoiced to see his regime topple.
None of us was aware that the biggest fight was still ahead.
I was full of hope as Fidel Castro came into Havana.
Within a week, however, I began to suspect that something was wrong.
For Castro was bringing Cuba not freedom, but hatred.
He spent long hours before the TV spitting out promises of revenge.
He showed us how he dealt with his enemies: he executed them before TV cameras.
On home sets children were watching the death throes of men who were shot before the paredon, the firing wall.
Castro's reforms?
He seemed bent on coupling them with vengeance.
New schools were rising, but with this went a harsh proclamation: any academic degree earned during Batista's regime was invalid.
Economic aid?
He had promised cheaper housing: arbitrarily he cut all rents in half, whether the landlord was a millionaire speculator or a widow whose only income was the rental of a spare room.
Under another law, hundreds of farms were seized.
Farm workers had their wages cut almost in half.
Of this, only 50 cents a day was paid in cash, the rest in script usable only in People's Stores.
A suspicion was growing that Fidel Castro was a Communist.
In my mind, I began to review: his use of hate to gain support;
his People's Courts;
his division of society into two classes, one the hero, the other the villain.
But most disturbing of all were the advisers he called to sit with him in the Palace;
many came from Communist countries.
What should I do about it, I asked myself?
I had watched Castro handling his enemies before the paredon.
There was no doubt in my mind that if I crossed him, mobs would appear outside our windows shouting Paredon!
Paredon!
What should I do?
I was proud of the new buildings which housed Diario now: the rotogravures, gleaming behind glass doors;
the thump and whir of our new presses.
Here was a powerful, ready-made medium, but it could speak only if I told it to.
Then one day, early in January, 1960, I sat down at my desk, and suddenly I was aware of the crucifix.
It was a simple ivory crucifix which my mother had given me.
I had mounted it on velvet and hung it over my desk to remind me always to use the power of the paper in a Christian manner.
Now it seemed almost as if Jesus were looking down at me with sadness in His eyes, saying:
You will lose the paper.
You may lose your life.
But do you have any choice?
I knew in that moment that I did not have any choice.
From that day on I began to write editorials about the things I did not think correct in Fidel Castro's regime.
Too often a beginning bodybuilder has to do his training secretly either because his parents don't want sonny-boy to lift all those old barbell things because you'll stunt your growth or because childish taunts from his schoolmates, like Hey lookit Mr. America;
whaddya gonna do with all those muscles (of which he has none at the time)?
After all, a guy's gotta have a little ego!
Therefore it's a genuine pleasure to tell you about an entirely happy bodybuilder who has never had to train in secret has never heard one unkind word from his parents and never has been taunted by his schoolmates!
This happy, always smiling lad with the sunny disposition is our new Junior Mr. Canada--Henri De Courcy.
Far from discouraging Henri, his parents urge him on to greater and greater accomplishments.
Instead of admonishing him to let the weights alone they personally took him to that master Montreal bodybuilding authority, Professor Roland Claude.
That's because the good professor teaches only Weider methods at his famous Montreal Health Studio which is located at 1821 Mt. Royal East in Montreal.
Undoubtedly you have read the case histories of some of his prize-winning pupils (every pupil has a physique title of some kind or other).
There's Gaetan D'Amours who is our newest Mr. Canada;
Jean-Paul Senesac, whose story appeared here two issues ago;
Jack Boissoneault, who was with us last month;
Charles Harve, who recently won the Most Muscular Man subdivision award in the Mr. Canada event;
and a host of others.
Yesiree, the professor knows his muscles!
Now when Henri was just 12 he was only 4' 10tall and weighed an astounding 72 pounds, and his greatest desire was to pack on some weight.
About that time he began reading Mr. America and Muscle Builder and he learned of the famous Weider way to fast weight gaining.
Seeing so many illustrations and reading so many testimonials to the value of Quick-Wate and Super-Protein, those two wonder-working Weider food supplements, he decided to try them and see what they could do for him.
Well, sir they did real great!
For in almost less time than it takes to tell it, Henri's bodyweight was increasing rapidly.
Of course he did some exercising.
He's crazy about water skiing and swimming and this vigorous exercise in conjunction with the added food supplements packed pounds of solid muscle on his skinny frame.
Henri has always had shapely legs from swimming and water skiing and really doesn't have to work them very much.
But he was totally dissatisfied with his upper body.
It was muscular but it wasn't symmetrical.
A real'nothing'torso, says Henri.
It never seemed to widen.
It just got longer and longer.
That's when he went to Professor Claude.
And at once Claude saw what the trouble was and he knew just how to correct it.
In his gym the professor has some of the most knocked out equipment since Vic Tanny.
As you can see, in this Push-Pull Super Set the entire chest-back-shoulder area is vigorously exercised in alternate sectors by alternate exercises so the complete torso remains pumped-up all the time!
Now when Henri has completed four complete Push-Pull Super-Sets No. 1, the professor allows him about a five-minute rest period before starting him on four complete Push-Pull Super-Sets No. 2.
Super-Set No. 2 is made up of similar exercises, but this time done with dumbbells, and using both moon and flat benches.
The push exercise of this Push-Pull Super-Set is the Bench Press done with elbows well pulled back and with a greater downward stretch of the pectorals not possible with the barbell variation.
You need the barbell variation to build width and mass in the pecs.
The dumbbell variation develops a most classically sculptured outline to the Aj.
The pull exercise in this Super-Set is the one-dumbbell Bent-Arm Pullover.
(Note how strongly the upper lats and serratus are worked in this fine exercise because of the pin-point concentration of force which the dumbbell variation affords).
In the third Push-Pull Super-Set the push exercise is the widegrip Pushup Between Bars, while the pull exercise is the Moon Bench Lateral Raise with bent arms.
The Pushup done in this manner is the greatest pectoral-ribcage stretcher ever invented!
This is true only if a very wide grip is used and only when the greatest possible stretch is achieved.
You'll know when you've made the greatest stretch because your shoulder blades will touch!
As you see, the professor has designed a piece of apparatus that forces the bodybuilder to use a w-i-d-e grip.
He has to;
he just can't do anything about it at all!
But as you can also see, it's not a painful exercise at all, because Henri De Courcy--the happy bodybuilder--looks as though he were having the time of his life!
The last exercise of Roland Claude's prescribed program for Henri is a single exercise, done in individual sets with a bit longer pause between sets.
By this time Henri's entire chest-back-lat-shoulder area is pumped-up to almost bursting point, and Claude takes time to do a bit more pectoral-front deltoid shaping work.
He has Henri do from four to six sets of the Incline Bench Press (note the high incline).
This gives a wide flare to the pecs, causing them to flow dramatically upward into deltoids and dramatically downward into the serratus and Aj.
This is the kind of chest that invariably wins contests;
that steel-edged carved-out-of-solid rock looks of the great champions.
So with four complete Push-Pull Super-Sets No. 1, four of No. 2, four of No. 3 and four to six sets of the Incline Bench Press, you can see that Henri De Courcy has had a terrific mass-building, muscle-shaping, torso-defining workout that cannot be improved upon.
Physique contests are rarely won on muscle size alone.
Rarer still is a Mr. America or Mr. Universe of true Herculean build.
The aspects of physical development that catch the judges' eyes and which rightfully influence their decisions are symmetry and that hallmark of the true champion--superior definition of the muscles.
Now good definition is one thing that all of us can acquire with occasional high-set, high-rep, light-weight workouts.
But contest definition--that dramatic muscular separation of every muscle group that seems as though it must have been carved by a sculptor's chisel--is something quite different.
This comes not alone from high-set, high-rep training, but from certain definition-specialization exercises which the champion selects for himself with the knowledge of exactly what works best for him.
Often these exercises work well for some bodybuilders but less spectacularly for others.
Because they are minority exercises and have but a limited appeal they soon find themselves in the limbo of the forgotten.
Only when the newest Mr. America or Mr. Universe discovers them and puts them into practice are we reacquainted with them and once again see how effective they really are.
The exercise I shall discuss in this--the first of a new series of articles on muscle definition-specialization of a particular body part--is the One Leg Lunge.
Why it was ever forgotten for even a moment I cannot say because it works perfectly for everyone, no matter whether he has short or long thigh-bone lengths!
It is the one exercise that drastically influences the definition of the thighs at the hipline--that mark of the champion that sets him apart from all other bodybuilders;
a criterion of muscle drama that is unforgettable to judges and audiences alike;
the facet of muscular development that wins prizes.
Definition of the thighs at the uppermost part is quite commonly seen in most championship Olympic lifters which is easily understandable.
The One Leg Lunge is a split and all lifters practice this in their regular workouts.
But for purely definition purposes--used in conjunction with your regular Squatting, Leg Curling, Leg Extensor programs--a heavy weight is not needed.
Indeed, a lighter weight works much better because a greater, more extensive split can be performed.
Used in several sets of high reps once or twice each week it will not be long before your entire upper leg takes on a razor-sharp definition in which the muscles look like wire cables writhing and twisting under the skin!
Really there is no reason why this fine exercise should not find its way into your leg program at all times, for the following suggestions show why it is so effective: 1.
It's a complete thigh contraction-extension exercise.
It places terrific tension on the leg muscles from start to finish of each repetition.
It improves over-all balance and control for the bodybuilder, and helps to make Squats more easily and more correctly performed.
It increases flexibility of the legs.
It speeds muscle growth and power development even for the advanced bodybuilder because each hip and leg is exercised separately, thus enabling a massive, concentrated effort to be focused on each.
You'll need your Weider Power Stands for this fine exercise and here's the way it's done: 1.
Place your Power Stands in position and adjust their height so that this will correspond to the height of your shoulders when you are in a deep leg split as for a heavy Clean.
Place a suitably-loaded barbell across them;
grasp the bar (which will rest against the back of your neck);
extend your feet forward and backward until you are in a deep leg split.
Now raise the weight by straightening your front leg, without moving your feet.
When the front knee is straight and locked, allow it to bend again until you feel the bar come lightly into contact with the sides of the Power Stands.
After you have taken a breather, reverse the position of your legs so that the front thigh of the previous exercise is now to the rear, and the rear thigh now to the front, and perform the same movement in the same manner.
That's the One-Leg Lunge in a nutshell.
You should have a couple of training partners to stand by when you make your first experiments just for safety.
You should also begin this exercise with a very light barbell until you become accustomed to it balance-wise.
Oh, you'll wobble and weave quite a bit at first.
But don't worry.
Before your first training experiment has ended there will be a big improvement and almost before you know it you'll be raising and lowering yourself just like a veteran!
Although I suggested that you hold the bar at the back of the neck there's no reason why you shouldn't make some experiments with the bar held in front of the neck.
Squat-style lifters and leg-split lifters would both benefit enormously by practicing those variations providing that they remember to make alternate sets with the left and right leg to the front.
The most beautiful bed of pansies I've seen was in a South Dakota yard on a sizzling day.
Pansies are supposed to like it cool, but those great velvety flowers were healthy and perky in the glaring sun.
I sought out the gardener and asked him what he did to produce such beauties in that weather.
He seemed puzzled by my question.
I just love them, he said.
The more I talked with him, the more convinced I became that that was the secret of their riotous blooming.
Of course his love was expressed in intelligent care.
He planted the pansy seeds himself, buying them from a pansy specialist.
These specialists, I learned, have done a great deal of work to improve the size and health of the plants and the resulting flowers.
Their seeds produce vigorous blooming plants half again the size of the unimproved strains.
I asked him if he took seeds from his own plants.
Occasionally, when he had an unusual flower that he wanted more of he did;
but pansy seeds, he told me, soon run down.
It's best to buy them fresh from a dealer who is working to improve them.
His soil was nothing special, just prairie land, but he had harrowed in compost until it was loose, spongy and brown-black.
I fingered it and had the feeling of adequacy that comes with the right texture, tilth and body.
It isn't easy to describe it, but every gardener knows it when his fingers touch such soil.
Nothing is easier to grow from seed than pansies.
They germinate quickly, the tiny plants appearing in a week, and grow along lustily.
It doesn't really matter which month of the year you sow them, but they germinate best when they have a wide variation of temperature, very warm followed by cool in the same 24 hours.
I like to make a seedbed right in the open, though many people start them successfully in cold frames.
Pansies don't have to be coddled;
they'd rather have things rugged, with only moderate protection on the coldest days.
If you do use a cold frame be sure that its ventilation is adequate.
For my seedbed I use good garden soil with a little sand added to encourage rooting.
I dig it, rake it smooth, sow the seeds and wet them down with a fog spray.
Then I cover the sowing with a board.
This keeps it cool and moist and protects it from birds.
Ants carry away the seeds so better be sure that there are no ant hills nearby.
When the first sprinkling of green appears I remove the board.
A light, porous mulch applied now keeps the roots cool and the soil soft during these early days of growth.
I like sawdust for this, or hay.
When they have 4 to 6 leaves and are thrifty little plants, it's time to set them out where they are to remain.
Every time you transplant a pansy you cause its flowers to become smaller.
The moral is: don't transplant it any oftener than you must.
As soon as they are large enough to move, I put mine 9 inches apart where they are to bloom.
I put a little scoop of pulverized phosphate rock or steamed bone meal into each hole with the plant.
That encourages rooting, and the better developed the roots, the larger and more plentiful the flowers.
Pansies are gluttons.
I doubt if it is possible to overfeed them.
I spade lots of compost into their bed;
lacking that, decayed manure spread over the bed is fine.
One year I simply set the plants in the remains of a compost pile, to which a little sand had been added, and I had the most beautiful pansies in my, or any of my neighbors' experience.
In addition to the rich soil they benefit by feedings of manure water every other week, diluted to the color of weak tea.
As a substitute for this, organic fertilizer dissolved in water to half the strength in the directions, may be used.
They need mulch.
We put a light mulch over the seedlings;
now we must use a heavy one.
Three inches of porous material will do a good job of keeping weeds down and the soil moist and cool.
When winter comes be ready with additional mulch.
I like hay for this and apply it so that only the tops of the plants show right after a good frost.
That keeps in the cold, retains moisture and prevents the heaving of alternate freezing and thawing.
Don't miss the pansies that appear from time to time through the winter.
Whenever there is a thaw or a few sunny days, you'll be likely to find a brave little blossom or two.
If those aren't enough for you, why not grow some just for winter blooming?
The pansies I cherished most bloomed for me in February during a particularly cold winter.
I started the seed in a flat in June and set out the little pansies in a cold frame.
(An unheated greenhouse would have been better, if I had had one.
) The plants took zero nights in their stride, with nothing but a mat of straw over the glass to protect them.
In response to the lengthening days of February they budded, then bloomed their 4-inch velvety flowers.
That cold frame was my morale builder;
its mass of bright bloom set in a border of snow made my spirits rise every time I looked at it.
Like strawberries in December, pansies are far more exciting in February than in May.
Try that late winter pickup when you are so tired of cold and snow that you feel you just can't take another day of it.
The day will come, in midsummer, when you find your plants becoming leggy, running to tall-growing foliage at the expense of blossoms.
Try pegging down each separate branch to the earth, using a bobby pin to hold it there.
Pick the flowers, keep the soil dampened, and each of the pegged-down branches will take root and become a little plant and go on blooming for the rest of the season.
As soon as an experimental tug assures you that roots have taken over, cut it off from the mother plant.
A second and also good practice is to shear off the tops, leaving an inch high stub with just a leaf or two on each branch.
These cut-down plants will bud and blossom in record time and will behave just as they did in early spring.
I like to shear half my plants at a time, leaving one half of them to blossom while the second half is getting started on its new round of blooming.
Probably no one needs to tell you that the way to stop all bloom is to let the blossoms go to seed.
Nature's aim, different from ours, is to provide for the coming generation.
That done, her work is accomplished and she ignores the plant.
Here is a word of advice when you go shopping for your pansy seeds.
Go to a reputable grower, preferably a pansy specialist.
It is no harder to raise big, healthy, blooming plants than weak, sickly little things;
in fact it is easier.
But you will never get better flowers than the seed you grow.
Many people think that pansies last only a few weeks, then their period of growth and bloom is over.
That is not true.
If the plants are cared for and protected over the winter, the second year is more prolific than the first.
Would you like to grow exhibition pansies?
Remove about half the branches from each plant, leaving only the strongest with the largest buds.
The flowers will be huge.
Pansies have character.
They stick to their principles, insist upon their due, but grow and bloom with dependable regularity if given it.
Treat them right and they'll make a showing every month in the year except the frigid ones.
Give them food, some shade, mulch, water and more food, and they'll repay your solicitude with beauty.
A salad with greens and tomato is a popular and wonderfully healthful addition to a meal, but add an avocado and you have something really special.
This delightful tropical fruit has become well-known in the past thirty years because modern transportation methods have made it possible to ship avocados anywhere in the United States.
It has a great many assets to recommend it and if you haven't made avocado a part of your diet yet, you really should.
You will find that avocado is unlike any other fruit you have ever tasted.
It is roughly shaped like a large pear, and when properly ripened, its dark green skin covers a meaty, melon-like pulp that has about the consistency of a ripe Bartlett pear, but oily.
The avocado should have a give to it, as you hold it, when it is ripe.
The flavor is neither sweet, like a pear, nor tart like an orange;
it is subtle and rather bland, nut-like.
It is a flavor that might take a little getting used to--not because it is unpleasant, but because the flavor is hard to define in the light of our experience with other fruits.
Sometimes it takes several eatings of avocado to catch that delightful quality in taste that has made it such a favorite throughout the world.
Once you become an avocado fan, you will look forward to the season each year with eager anticipation.
Naturally dormant and no spray danger
Today, refrigerated carriers have made the shipping of avocados possible to any place in the world.
The fruit is allowed to mature on the tree, but it is still firm at this point.
It is brought to packing houses, cleaned and graded as to size and quality, and packed in protective excelsior.
The fruit is then cooled to 42-degrees-F., a temperature at which it lapses into a sort of dormant state.
This cooling does not change the avocado in any way, it just delays the natural softening of the fruit until a grovelike temperature (room temperature) is restored.
This happens on the grocer's shelf or in your kitchen.
One of the most attractive things about avocados is that they do not require processing of any kind.
There is no dyeing or waxing or gassing needed.
If the temperature is controlled properly, the avocado will delay its ripening until needed.
And unlike other fruits, one cannot eat the skin of the avocado.
It is thick, much like an egg plant's skin, so that poison sprays, if they are used, present no hazard to the consumer.
Nutritious and a cholesterol reducer
Good taste and versatility, plus safety from spray poisons would be enough to recommend the frequent use of such a fruit, even if its nutritional values were limited.
Avocados, however, are very rich in nutrients.
Their main asset is an abundance of unsaturated fatty acids, so necessary for maintaining the good health of the circulatory system.
Aside from this, the average portion contains some protein, an appreciable amount of vitamins A and C--about one-tenth of the minimum daily requirement, and about a third of the official vitamin E requirement.
The B vitamins are well represented, especially thiamin and riboflavin.
Calcium, phosphorus and iron are present in worthwhile amounts, and eleven other minerals also have been found in varying trace amounts.
None of these values is destroyed, not significantly altered by refrigeration storage.
The study comprised 16 male patients, ranging in age from 27 to 72.
They were put on control diets to determine as accurately as possible, the normal cholesterol level of their blood.
Then they were given 1/2 to 1-1/2 avocados per day as a substitute for part of their dietary fat consumption.
Five, four, three, two, one, fire!
The tremendous energy released by giant rocket engines perhaps can be felt much better than it can be heard.
The pulsating vibration of energy clutches at the pit of your stomach.
Never before has the introduction of a weapon caused so much apprehension and fear.
Nuclear weapons are fearsome, but the long-range ballistic missile gives them a stealth and merciless swiftness which is much more terrifying.
A great many writers are bewitched by the apparently overwhelming advantage an attacker would have if he were to strike with complete surprise using nuclear rockets.
It is relatively easy to go a step further and reason that an attacker, in possession of such absolute power, would simultaneously destroy his opponent's cities and people.
With a nation defenseless before it, why would the attacker spare the victim's people?
Wouldn't the wanton destruction of cities and people be the logical act of complete subjugation?
The nation would be utterly devastated.
The will of its people, so crucial in time of peril, would be broken.
Nuclear weapons have given the world the means for self-destruction in hours or days;
and now rockets have given it the means to destroy itself in minutes.
At this point it should be painfully obvious that cities, being soft, and the people within them are ideally suited to destruction by nuclear weapons.
However, because this vulnerability is mutual, it is to the advantage of neither side to destroy the opponent's cities, at least so long as the opponent has nuclear weapons with which to effect reprisal.
It should be appallingly apparent that city-trading is not a profitable military tactic.
ICBMs have given us a capability which could be used in two different ways.
They could be used to attack a nation's people (which would inevitably mean the loss of the attacker's own people), or they could be used with discrimination to destroy the enemy's military force.
If our national interest lies in being able to fight and win a war rather than committing national suicide, then we must take a much more penetrating look at ballistic missiles.
We must determine whether missiles can win a war all by themselves.
We must make certain that the aircraft is finished before we give the entire job to the missile.
Missiles are very valuable weapons, but they also have their too little known limitations.
Because of a missile's ballistic trajectory, the location of a fixed target must be known quite accurately.
One must first detect a fleeting mobile or moving target, decide that it is worthy of destruction, select the missile to be fired against the target, compute ballistics for the flight, and prepare the missile for firing.
Even if all these operations could be performed instantaneously, the ICBM still has a time of flight to the target of about 30 minutes.
Therefore, if the target can significantly change its location in something less than 30 minutes, the probability of having destroyed it is drastically lowered.
Because of this, it would appear inevitable that an increasing percentage of strategic missiles will seek self-protection in mobility--at least until missile defenses are perfected which have an exceedingly high kill probability.
In order to destroy the enemy's mobile, moving, or imprecisely located strategic forces, we must have a hunter-killer capability in addition to our missiles.
Until this hunter-killer operation can be performed by spacecraft, manned aircraft appear to be the only means available to us.
Let us suppose the Russians decide to build a rail-mobile ICBM force.
It is entirely feasible to employ aircraft such as the B-52 or B-70 in hunter-killer operations against Soviet railway-based missiles.
If we stop thinking in terms of tremendous multimegaton nuclear weapons and consider employing much smaller nuclear weapons which may be more appropriate for most important military targets, it would seem that the B-52 or B-70 could carry a great many small nuclear weapons.
The aircraft could be used to destroy other mobile, fleeting, and imprecisely located targets as well as the known, fixed and hardened targets which can also be destroyed by missile.
Why, then, aren't we planning a larger, more important role for manned military aircraft?
Is there any other way to do the job?
Survivability of our strategic forces (Polaris, mobile and hardened Minuteman, hardened Atlas and Titan, and airborne Skybolt) means that it will take some time, perhaps weeks, to destroy a strategic force.
War, under these circumstances, cannot be one massive exchange of nuclear devastation.
Forces will survive a surprise attack, and these forces will give depth, or considerable duration, to the conflict.
The forces which survive the initial attack must be found and destroyed.
Even mobile forces must be found and destroyed.
But, how does one go about the job of finding and destroying mobile forces?
They are not susceptible to wholesale destruction by ballistic missile.
Some day, many years in the future, true spacecraft will be able to find and destroy mobile targets.
But until we have an effective spacecraft, the answer to the hunter-killer problem is manned aircraft.
However, the aircraft which we have today are tied to large, soft airfields.
Nuclear rockets can destroy airfields with ease.
Here then is our problem: aircraft are vital to winning a war today because they can perform those missions which a missile is totally incapable of performing;
but the airfield, on which the aircraft is completely dependent, is doomed by the missile.
This makes today's aircraft a one-shot, or one mission, weapon.
Aircraft are mighty expensive if you can use them only once.
This is the point on which so many people have written off the aircraft in favor of the missile.
But remember this--it isn't the aircraft which is vulnerable to nuclear rockets, it is the airfield.
Eliminate the vulnerability of aircraft on the ground and you have essentially eliminated its vulnerability to long-range ballistic missiles.
There are four rather obvious ways to reduce or eliminate the vulnerability of aircraft on the ground:
Put aircraft in bomb-proof hangars when they are on the ground.
Build long-range aircraft which can take off from small (3,000-foot) airfields with runways.
If we could use all the small airfields we have in this country, we could disperse our strategic aircraft by a factor of 10 or more.
Use nuclear propulsions to keep our long-range military aircraft in the air for the majority of their useful life.
Using very high thrust-to-weight ratio engines, develop a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) long-range military aircraft.
We have the technology today with which to build aircraft shelters which could withstand at least 200 Aj.
We could put a portion of our strategic bombers in such shelters.
Large, long-range bombers can be developed which would have the capability to take off from 3,000-foot runways, but they would require more powerful engines than we have today.
There is little enthusiasm for spending money to develop more powerful engines because of the erroneous belief that the aircraft has been made obsolete by the missile.
This same preoccupation with missiles at the expense of aircraft has resulted in our half-hearted effort to develop nuclear propulsion for aircraft.
One seldom hears the analogy nuclear propulsion will do for the aircraft what it has already done for the submarine.
If, for some reason such as economy, we are not going to develop aircraft nuclear propulsion with a sense of national urgency, then we should turn our effort to developing jet engines with a thrust-to-weight ratio of 12 or 15 to one.
With powerplants such as these, vertical takeoff and landing combat aircraft could be built.
For example, a 12-to-one engine would power a supersonic VTOL fighter.
With a 15-to-one engine, a supersonic aircraft weighing 300,000 pounds could rise vertically.
The reason that we are not going ahead full speed to develop high thrust-to-weight engines is that it would cost perhaps a billion dollars--and you don't spend that sort of money if aircraft are obsolete.
When aircraft are no longer helpless on airfields, they are no longer vulnerable to Aj.
If our SAC bombers were, today, capable of surviving a surprise missile attack and because of infinite dispersion or long endurance had the capability to strike at Russia again, and again, and again, those bombers would unquestionably assure our military dominance.
We would have the means to seek out and destroy the enemy's force--whether it were fixed or mobile.
With such a force of manned bombers we could bring enormous pressure to bear on an enemy, and this pressure would be selective and extremely discriminating.
No need to kill an entire city and all its people because we lacked the precision and reconnaissance to selectively disarm the enemy's military force.
Our first necessity, at the very outset of war, is post-attack reconnaissance.
In a few years we will have SAMOS (semiautomatic missile observation system).
But in the case of moving targets, and targets which have limited mobility, what will their location be when it is time to destroy them?
What targets have we successfully knocked out?
A ballistic missile cannot, today, tell you if it was successful or unsuccessful.
What targets still remain to be hit?
These crucial questions must be answered by post-attack reconnaissance.
SAMOS will be hard put to see through clouds--and to see in the dark.
Even if this is some day possible, there remains the 30-minute time of flight of a missile to its overseas target.
If the target can change its position significantly during the 30 minutes the missile is in the air on its way, the probability of the missile destroying the target is drastically reduced.
Pre-attack reconnaissance is vital but only post-attack reconnaissance will allow us to terminate the war favorably.
It would be priceless to have an aircraft to gather that post-attack reconnaissance.
It could operate under the clouds and perform infrared photography through clouds and at night.
It would be even more valuable because that same aircraft could immediately destroy any targets it discovered--no need to wait for a missile to come all the way from the United States with the chance that the target, if it were mobile, would be gone.
A large aircraft, such as the B-52 or B-70, could carry perhaps 50 or 100 small nuclear weapons.
Few people realize that one kiloton of nuclear explosive power will create 1,000 psi overpressure at 100 feet.
Or put another way, the hardest missile site planned today could be destroyed by placing a one-kiloton warhead (1/20th the size of those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) within 100 to 200 feet of the target!
It is our lack of extreme accuracy which forces the use of very large yield nuclear weapons.
Today we have side-looking radar which has such high resolution that the radar picture clearly shows individual buildings, runways, taxi-ways, separate spans of bridges, etc..
With these keen eyes and small nuclear weapons delivered with accuracy, military forces can be directly attacked with minimum damage to urban areas.
If we fail to develop the means to hunt down and destroy the enemy's military force with extreme care and precision, and if war comes in spite of our most ardent desires for peace, our choice of alternatives will be truly frightening.
The lyric beauties of Schubert's Trout Quintet--its elemental rhythms and infectious melodies--make it a source of pure pleasure for almost all music listeners.
But for students of musical forms and would-be classifiers, the work presents its problems.
Since it requires only five players, it would seem to fall into the category of chamber music--yet it calls for a double bass, an instrument generally regarded as symphonic.
Moreover, the piece is written in five movements, rather than the conventional four of most quintets, and this gives the opus a serenade or divertimento flavor.
The many and frequent performances of the Trout serve to emphasize the dual nature of its writing.
Some renditions are of symphonic dimensions, with the contrabass given free rein.
Other interpretations present the music as an essentially intimate creation.
In these readings, the double bass is either kept discreetly in the background, or it is dressed in clown's attire--the musical equivalent of a bull in a china shop.
Recently I was struck anew by the divergent approaches, when in the course of one afternoon and evening I listened to no fewer than ten different performances.
The occasion for this marathon: Angel's long-awaited reissue in its Great Recordings Of The Century series of the Schnabel-Pro Arte version.
Let me say at the outset that the music sounded as sparkling on the last playing as it did on the first.
Whether considered alone or in relation to other editions, COLH 40 is a document of prime importance.
Artur Schnabel was one of the greatest Schubert-Beethoven-Mozart players of all time, and any commentary of his on this repertory is valuable.
Certain pianistic traits are common to all five Schnabelian renditions, most notably the Schnabel trill (which differs from the conventional trill in that the two notes are struck simultaneously).
But the most impressive testimony to Schnabel's distinction as a teacher is reflected by the individuality which marks each student's approach as distinctly his own.
Schnabel's emphasis on structural clarity, his innate rhythmic vibrancy, and impetuous intensity all tend to stamp his reading as a symphonic one.
Yet no detail was too small to receive attention from this master, and as a result the playing here has humor, delicacy, and radiant humanity.
This is a serious-minded interpretation, but it is never strait-laced.
And although Schnabel's pianism bristles with excitement, it is meticulously faithful to Schubert's dynamic markings and phrase indications.
The piano performance on this Trout is one that really demands a search for superlatives.
About the Pro Arte's contribution I am less happy.
I, for one, rather regret that Schnabel didn't collaborate with the Budapest Quartet, whose rugged, athletic playing was a good deal closer to this pianist's interpretative outlook than the style of the Belgian group.
From a technical standpoint, the string playing is good, but the Pro Arte people fail to enter into the spirit of things here.
The violinist, in particular, is very indulgent with swoops and slides, and his tone is pinched and edgy.
The twenty-five-year-old recording offers rather faded string tone, but the balance between the instruments is good and the transfer is very quiet.
There is a break in continuity just before the fourth variation in the Forellen movement, and I suspect that this is due to imperfect splicing between sides of the original Aj.
Turning to the more modern versions, Curzon's (London) offers the most sophisticated keyboard work.
Some of Curzon's playing strikes me as finicky, however.
Why, for example, does he favor two tempos, rather than one, for the third movement?
The assisting musicians from the Vienna Octet are somewhat lacking in expertise, but their contribution is rustic and appealing.
(Special compliments to the double bass playing of Johann Krumpp: his scrawny, tottering sound adds a delightful hilarity to the performance.
The Glazer-Fine Arts edition (Concert-Disc) is a model of lucidity and organization.
It is, moreover, a perfectly integrated ensemble effort.
But having lived with the disc for some time now, I find the performance less exciting than either Schnabel's or Fleisher's (whose superb performance with the Budapest Quartet has still to be recorded) and a good deal less filled with humor than Curzon's.
Aeschbacher's work is very much akin to Schnabel's, but the sound on his Decca disc is dated, and you will have a hard time locating a copy of it.
The Hephzibah Menuhin-Amadeus Quartet (Angel) and Victor Babin-Festival Quartet (RCA Victor) editions give us superlative string playing (both in symphonic style) crippled by unimaginative piano playing.
(Babin has acquired some of Schnabel's keyboard manner, but his playing is of limited insight.
) Badura-Skoda-Vienna Konzerthaus (Westminster) and Demus-Schubert Quartet (Deutsche Grammophon) are both warm-toned, pleasantly lyrical, but rather slack and tensionless.
Helmut Roloff, playing with a group of musicians from the Bayreuth Ensemble, gives a sturdy reading, in much the same vein as that of the last-mentioned pianists.
Telefunken has accorded him beautiful sound, and this bargain-priced disc (it sells for $2.98) is worthy of consideration.
Returning once again to the Schnabel reissue, I am beguiled anew by the magnificence of this pianist's musical penetration.
Here is truly a Great Recording of the Century, and its greatness is by no means diminished by the fact that it is not quite perfect.
This recording surely belongs in everyone's collection.
Must records always sound like records?
From the beginning of commercial recording, new discs purported to be indistinguishable from The Real Thing have regularly been put in circulation.
Seen in perspective, many of these releases have a genuine claim to be milestones.
Although lacking absolute verisimilitude, they supply the ear and the imagination with all necessary materials for re-creation of the original.
On the basis of what they give us we can know how the young Caruso sang, appreciate the distinctive qualities of Parsifal under Karl Muck's baton, or sense the type of ensemble Toscanini created in his years with the New York Philharmonic.
Since the concept of high fidelity became important some dozen years ago, the claims of technical improvements have multiplied tenfold.
In many cases the revolutionary production has offered no more than sensational effects: the first hearing was fascinating and the second disillusioning as the gap between sound and substance became clearer.
Other innovations with better claims to musical interest survived rehearing to acquire in time the status of classics.
If we return to them today, we have no difficulty spotting their weaknesses but we find them still pleasing.
Records sound like records because they provide a different sort of experience than live music.
This difference is made up of many factors.
Some of them are obvious, such as the fact that we associate recorded and live music with our responses and behavior in different types of environments and social settings.
(Music often sounds best to me when I can dress informally and sit in something more comfortable than a theatre seat.
) From the technical standpoint, records differ from live music to the degree that they fail to convey the true color, texture, complexity, range, intensity, pulse, and pitch of the original.
Any alteration of one of these factors is distortion, although we generally use that word only for effects so pronounced that they can be stated quantitatively on the basis of standard tests.
Yet it is the accumulation of distortion, the fitting together of fractional bits until the total reaches the threshold of our awareness, that makes records sound like records.
The sound may be good;
but if you know The Real Thing, you know that what you are hearing is only a clever imitation.
Command's new Brahms Second is a major effort to make a record that sounds like a real orchestra rather than a copy of one.
Like the recent Scheherazade from London (High Fidelity, Sept. 1961), it is successful because emphasis has been placed on good musical and engineering practices rather than on creating sensational effects.
Because of this, only those with truly fine equipment will be able to appreciate the exact degree of the engineers' triumph.
The easiest way to describe this release is to say that it reproduces an interesting and effective Steinberg performance with minimal alteration of its musical values.
The engineering as such never obtrudes upon your consciousness.
The effect of the recording is very open and natural, with the frequency emphasis exactly what you would expect from a live performance.
This absence of peaky highs and beefed-up bass not only produces greater fidelity, but it eliminates listener fatigue.
A contributing factor is the perspective, the uniform aesthetic distance which is maintained.
The orchestra is far enough away from you that you miss the bow scrapes, valve clicks, and other noises incidental to playing.
Yet you feel the orchestra is near at hand, and the individual instruments have the same firm presence associated with listening from a good seat in an acoustically perfect hall.
Command has achieved the ideal amount of reverberation.
The music is always allowed the living space needed to attain its full sonority;
yet the hall never intrudes as a quasi-performer.
The timbre remains that of the instruments unclouded by resonance.
All of this would be wasted, of course, if the performance lacked authority and musical distinction.
For me it has more of both elements than the majority of its competitors.
Steinberg seems to have gone directly back to the score, discounting tradition, and has built his performance on the intention to reproduce as faithfully as possible exactly what Brahms set down on paper.
Those accustomed to broader, more romantic statements of the symphony can be expected to react strongly when they hear this one.
Without losing the distinctive undertow of Brahmsian rhythm, the pacing is firm and the over-all performance has a tightly knit quality that makes for maximum cumulative effect.
The Presto Ma non assai of the first trio of the scherzo is taken literally and may shock you, as the real Allegro con Spirito of the finale is likely to bring you to your feet.
In the end, however, the thing about this performance that is most striking is the way it sings.
Steinberg obviously has concluded that it is the lyric element which must dominate in this score, and he manages at times to create the effect of the whole orchestra bursting into song.
The engineering provides exactly the support needed for such a result.
Too many records seem to reduce a work of symphonic complexity to a melody and its accompaniment.
The Command technique invites you to listen to the depth of the orchestration.
Your ear takes you into the ensemble, and you may well become aware of instrumental details which previously were apparent only in the score.
It is this sort of experience that makes the concept of high fidelity of real musical significance for the home music listener.
The first substantially complete stereo Giselle (and the only one of its scope since Feyer's four-sided LP edition of 1958 for Angel), this set is, I'm afraid, likely to provide more horrid fascination than enjoyment.
The already faded pastel charms of the naive music itself vanish entirely in Fistoulari's melodramatic contrasts between ultravehement brute power and chilly, if suave, sentimentality.
And in its engineers' frantic attempts to achieve maximum dynamic impact and earsplitting brilliance, the recording sounds as though it had been doctored for super-high fidelity.
The home listener is overpowered, all right, but the experience is a far from pleasant one.
As with the penultimate Giselle release (Wolff's abridgment for RCA Victor) I find the cleaner, less razor-edged monophonic version, for all its lack of big-stage spaciousness, the more aurally tolerable--but this may be the result of processing defects in my SD copies.
At the Westminster KC Dog Show in Madison Square Garden, New York on the second day, the Finals of the Junior Class brought out the most competitive competition in the history of this Class.
The Class had entries from as far west as Wisconsin and as far south as Kentucky.
This year several entries from Canada were entered which made the Junior Class International.
Forty-six of the 53 Juniors who mailed in entries were present.
It was interesting to note that many of these Juniors were showing dogs in various other classes at the show prior to the Finals of the Junior Class.
As has been the custom for the past several years, John Cross, Jr., Bench Show Chmn. of Westminster, arranged for the Juniors' meeting before the Class, and invited two speakers from the dog world to address them.
Over 60 Juniors, parents and guests attended.
Mrs. William H. Long, Jr. speaks
After the Juniors were welcomed and congratulated for qualifying for the Finals of the Junior Class, Mrs. William H. Long, Jr. was introduced as the first speaker.
In her opening remarks Mrs. Long also welcomed the Juniors and stated, There isn't any other show quite like Westminster.
I know because this is my 37th year with hardly a break.
Mrs. Long still feels the same unique spirit of Westminster which she stated the present Juniors will experience today but probably will not appreciate in full for a number of years.
Twenty years ago her daughter Betsey Long, then 13 years of age, won the Grand Challenge Trophy, Children's Handling Class (as they were called then) at Westminster.
No sooner had Betsey come out of the ring than Mrs. Long walked into the Working Competition with Ch. Cadet or Noranda, another home-bred product, and won!
Speaking from long years of experience, Mrs. Long advised the Juniors: When showing dogs ceases to be fun and excitement, stop!
Dogs have a way of sensing our feelings!
When you and your dog step into the Junior ring, it should be just what the dog wants to do as much as what you want him to do.
If you walk into the ring because it is fun to show your dog, he will feel it and give you a good performance!
He knows your signals, what is expected of him and the way the Class is conducted, right up through the flash-bulbs of the photographers.
Right attitude essential!
Take away your attitude, said Mrs. Long, and what have you left?
Either a nervous dog because you are livid with rage--a sure sign that you are taking things too seriously and had better stop!
Or a bored dog because you are more interested in something else--maybe the way you look, or the date you have after the Class, or you are just doing this to please the parents.
The reason you are in the ring today is to show your ability to present to any judge the most attractive picture of your dog that the skillful use of your aids can produce.
Aids sounds more like a Pony Club, or horsemanship classes--riding a horse and showing a dog are very similar!
Your aids are your attitude, which comes through your voice, your hands and legs--voice to encourage, discourage or whatever the need may be;
hands to guide or restrain;
legs to produce motion and rate of speed.
Without right attitude the other aids just do not work right.
Mrs. Long wished all the Juniors luck in the Class and stated, Have fun!
And may you all continue to show at Westminster in the years to come!
Harvey Barcus, second speaker
The second speaker was Harvey Barcus, President of the Dog Writers Ass'n of America.
Mr. Barcus spoke on the subject of scholarships for Juniors--with which he is very familiar.
Last year a boy he knows and helped in Journalism won the Thoroughbred Racing Ass'n Scholarship which is worth $10,000.
He gave a resume of the steps taken in order for the boy he sponsored to win the scholarship.
Junior Showmanship is an extremely worthy project and should be earnestly encouraged!
Is one of Mr. Barcus' strong beliefs.
He feels very forcibly that the American Kennel Club should take a more active part in encouraging the Junior Division!
In closing, Mr. Barcus also wished all the Juniors luck in their Class.
Westminster Show Notes
Instead of 3 a.m. in the past, the Juniors Class at Westminster was held at 4:45 p.m..
This gave the Juniors the use of the entire ring at the show--a great advantage to them!
Before the Juniors entered the ring the Steward announced that after all Juniors had moved their dogs around the ring and set them up, they could relax with their dogs.
From there on, each Junior was going to be judged individually.
This thoughtful gesture was well received by the Juniors as the Class had an entry of 46 Juniors and it took approximately one hour, 45 minutes to judge the Class.
Anne Hone Rogers judges 28th finals
This year Anne Hone Rogers, outstanding Handler, judged the Class.
This is the third time in 28 years of Junior Showmanship at Westminster that a lady Handler has judged the Class.
As the Juniors entered the ring, Mr. Spring, the announcer, stated over the public-address system that this was the 28th year that Westminster has held the Finals of the Junior Competition.
Juniors competed last year at American Kennel Club and Canadian Kennel Club, recognized shows to be eligible to compete in this Class--the Finals for the year.
A Junior who won two or more wins in the Open Class was eligible.
(The purpose of the Junior Showmanship Competition is to teach and encourage Juniors to become good sportsmen.
Many adults showing at Westminster today are products of this Class.
It seemed an almost impossible job for Miss Rogers to select 4 winners from the 46 Juniors entered.
A large number of these Juniors have 7 and 8 wins to their credit and are seasoned campaigners.
After the judge moved all the dogs individually, she selected several from the group and placed them in the center of the ring.
She then went over them thoroughly giving each a strenuous test in showmanship.
International Champion of the year
Betty Lou Ham, age 16, Holyoke, Mass., showing an Irish Setter, was chosen as International Champion of the year.
She was awarded the Professional Handlers' Ass'ns' Leonard Brumby, Sr. Memorial Trophy (named for the founder-originator of the Junior Classes.
Betty is 16 years of age and had several wins to her credit last year.
In addition to showing an Irish Setter throughout the year, she also scored with an Afghan.
Other winners
Sydney Le Blanc, age 15, Staten Island, N.Y., showing a Doberman Pinscher, was 2nd.
Susan Hackmann, age 14, from Baltimore, Md., showing a Dachshund, was 3rd.
Last year Susan also placed 3rd in the Finals at Westminster.
From the records we keep--Susan is the only Junior who has placed in the Junior Classes in both United States and Canada.
Karen Marcmann, age 16, Trapp, Penna., showing a Keeshond was 4th.
Most Juniors who were entered in the Finals are seasoned campaigners and not only show and win in Junior Classes but score in the Breed Classes as well.
Entries increasing--requirements raised
In 1960, there were 7287 entries in the Junior Classes.
Each year these shows have increased in entries.
Next year 1962, at Westminster, the Bench Show Committee has raised the requirements so that a junior must win 3 or more Junior Classes in the open division only to qualify for Westminster.
Percy Roberts, a leading judge will not be at the International Show this year for the Junior Judging Contest as he has been invited to judge in Australia in March.
Judging class for intermediates proposed
It has been suggested many times that a Class be set up for the Juniors who are overage and cannot enter the Junior Classes.
For some time this writer has been suggesting a Junior Judging Class for Intermediates over 16 and under 20 years of age who are ineligible to compete in the Junior Class.
Such a Class was tried out successfully at the Westchester KC Show recently.
Not only were the contestants pleased with the Class, but it aroused the interest of all in attendance that day.
The Intermediates in the Class with the Judge were asked to pick 4 winners and give their reasons but their decisions did not affect the choice of the Judge.
We suggested this Class in the horse world and it was accepted immediately and included in the programs of horse shows.
At the recent horse show convention in New York it was stated that this Intermediate Judging Class is meeting with great success and will be a great help to future judges in the horse world.
This Class can be just as successful in the dog world if it is given a chance.
Last year Robert Harris, a leading Junior Handler entered the Dog Judging Contest (Junior) at the International KC of Chicago show and had the highest score in judging of any Junior since the Class' inception.
Juniors who attend this Chicago show should make a point to enter this Class as it would be of great help to them.
More volunteer handlers needed to judge
Superintendents at dog shows state it is becoming more difficult to obtain a licensed Handler to Judge Junior Showmanship Competition.
Some years ago this Class was judged by celebrities who knew nothing of what was required of a Junior's ability to show a dog.
To overcome this unfair judging, the A.K.C. requires that a licensed Handler be present to judge the Class.
If the superintendents do not receive more cooperation from Handlers, it has been suggested that licensed Judges also be qualified to judge this Class.
By recognizing and helping Juniors get interested in the dog world, all will be helping to create future dog owners.
Other awards for Juniors
The Airedale Terrier Club of America and the Kerry Blue Terrier Club of America have under consideration donating trophies to the boys or girls who win with their breeds in Junior Showmanship Competition at any Show.
The Kansas City and the Topeka KCs are arranging that Juniors who win at their shows will be qualified to win points for Westminster.
The Rio Grande KC is also considering having their Junior Classes set up so that Juniors can qualify with points for Westminster.
The American Pointer Club is still continuing to donate trophies to Juniors who win at Junior Showmanship Classes with Pointers.
Traveling through the South--over 16,000 miles--with two Great Danes, an Afghan, and a Persian kitten, we've worked up a regular routine for acceptance at motels.
My husband enters the motel office, signs up for a room, and then solemnly asks the proprieter if he accepts pets.
Puppies?
Comes the suspicious question.
No, he replies, full grown, adult show dogs, housebroken, and obedience-trained.
We've never been refused!
Once settled, we're careful to walk the dogs in an out of the way spot, keep them under control in the room, and feed and bench them where they can't do any harm to the furnishings or the furniture.
In the morning we leave the room looking as neat as a pin!
Many a motel owner--when we've stopped there again--has remembered us and has said he preferred our dogs to most children.
So many times I have wondered why veterinarians do not wipe the table clean before each new canine patient is placed on it for examination.
Is it that they don't care?
Are they indifferent to the fact that the dog can easily pick up germs from the preceding patient?
At one time, to most Americans, unless they were fortunate enough to live near a body of navigable water, boats were considered the sole concern of fishermen, rich people, and the United States Navy.
Today the recreational boating scene is awash with heartening statistics which prove the enormous growth of that sport.
There are more than 8,000,000 recreational boats in use in the United States with almost 10,000,000 the prediction for within the next decade.
About 40,000,000 people participated in boating in 1960.
Boating has become a giant whose strides cover the entire nation from sea to shining sea.
Boats are operated in every state in the Union, with the heaviest concentrations along both coasts and in the Middle West.
The spectacular upsurge in pleasure boating is markedly evident, expectedly, in the areas where boats have always been found: the natural lakes, rivers, and along the nation's coastline.
But during the last several years boats were launched in areas where, a short time ago, the only water to be found was in wells and watering troughs for livestock.
Developed as a result of the multi-purpose resources control program of the government, vast, man-made bodies of water represent a kind of glorious fringe benefit, providing boating and fishing havens all over the country.
In 1959, according to the Engineers, Lake Texoma was only one of thirty-two artificial lakes and reservoirs which were used for recreation by over 1,000,000 persons.
Where an opportunity to enjoy boating has not been created by bringing bodies of water to the people, means have been found to take the people and their boats to the water.
Providing these means are about ninety companies which manufactured the estimated 1,800,000 boat trailers now in use.
It is a simple task to haul a boat fifty or one hundred miles to a lake or reservoir on the new, light, strong, easy-to-operate trailers which are built to accommodate almost any kind of small boat and retail from $100 to $2,000.
The sight of sleek inboards, outboards, and sailboats being wheeled smartly along highways many miles from any water is commonplace.
Boatmen lucky enough to have facilities for year-'round anchorage for their craft, will recall the tedious procedure of loading their gear into the car, driving to the water, and making trip after trip to transfer the gear to the boat.
Today, the boat, on its trailer, is brought to the gear and loaded at the door.
Arriving at the waterside, the boat is launched, the family taken aboard and, that easily, another day afloat is begun.
And trailers for boats are not what they started out to be ten years ago.
This year, Americans will discover previously unheard of refinements in trailers that will be exhibited in about one hundred of our nation's national, regional and local boat shows.
The boats of America's trailer sailors in 1961 will be coddled on clouds as they are hauled to new horizons.
The variety of craft on the country's waters today is overwhelming.
They range from an eight-foot pram, which you can build yourself for less than $50, to auxiliary sailboats which can cost over $100,000.
Boat prices vary according to the buyer's desires or needs.
In this respect, boats can be compared with houses.
There is no limit to what you can spend, yet it is easily possible to keep within a set budget.
There is no question as to just what is available.
You name it, our industry is producing it, and it probably is made in different models.
There are canoes ideal for fishing in protected waters or for camping trips.
There are houseboats which are literally homes afloat, accommodating whole families in comfort and convenience.
You can cross an ocean in a fully equipped craft, sail, power, or both, or laze away a fine day in a small dinghy on a local pond.
You may have your boat of wood, canvas, plywood, plastic, or metal.
You may order utility models, inboard or outboard, with or without toilets, galleys, and bunks.
You may dress it up with any number of accessories or keep it as simple as you choose.
You pay your money and you take your choice.
American technology in engine and hull design is largely responsible for the plentiful interest in American boating.
I wonder if anyone ever bothered to make the point that when it comes to boats and their motors, Americans excel over any country in the world in the long run.
Russia, whose technology is not quite primitive, is still in the dark ages when it comes to improving the outboard motor, for instance.
Now here is truly a marvel.
The outboard engine of today has a phenomenal range of one to 80 horsepower, unheard of a few years ago for a two cycle engine in quantity production.
These engines can be removed from a boat with relative ease, wherein lies their greatest advantage.
Their cost is not beyond the hopes of the American pocketbook, the range being about $150 to $1,000, depending on size.
Great thought has been given to making life easier for the growing boating population of the country;
and to making the owning of a boat simpler.
There was a time when, if a man wanted to purchase a boat, it was necessary for him to be able to produce a sizeable amount of cash before he could touch the tiller or wheel.
Having a boat financed through a local bank is done much the same way as an automobile loan is extended.
Marine dealers and even some manufacturers who sell direct in non-dealer areas cooperate in enabling you to launch now and pay later.
Terms range from one to five years and the interest rates and down payments run about the same as for automobiles.
Of course, individual financing arrangements depend a good deal on the purchaser's earning power, credit rating and local bank policy.
Outboard motors, insurance, and boat repairs may also be financed in the same way as boats.
Terms and rates of interest for motors generally follow those for home appliances.
When the automobile was in its embryonic stage, such roads as existed were pretty much open roads with the tacit understanding that horses should not be unduly terrified being about the only rule governing where, when and how fast a car could go.
When air travel was in its infancy, the sky was considered big enough and high enough for all.
Man had enough to worry about managing to get up there and stay without being burdened with rules once aloft.
It was much the same with pleasure boating at first.
Come one, come all, the water's fine!
As the ungoverned days of the automobile and the airplane are long since relegated to the past, so is the carefree attitude toward what a boatman may and may not do;
must and should do.
However, there is a minimum of legislative restriction on boating.
Laws on boating vary according to the state in which the craft is to be used and according to its horsepower.
What may be acceptable in one state may be strictly prohibited across the boundary line.
The main requirement is to be sure the boat is numbered according to the regulations of the state in which the boat will be principally used.
If your state has no provisions for the numbering of pleasure boats, you must apply for a number from the U.S. Coast Guard for any kind of boat with mechanical propulsion rated at more than 10 horsepower before it can be used on Federal waterways.
State numbering laws differ from each other in many ways.
Fees are not the same and some states do not require certain craft, such as sailboats with no power, to be registered at all.
Many states have laws regulating the use of boat trailers and some have restrictions regarding the age of motor boat operators.
Generally, states reserve for communities the right to have local ordinances regulating speed and other activities.
It is always wise to consult your marine dealer, local yacht or boat club secretary, or local law enforcement officers if you are not positive what the regulations are.
Ignorance of the law is no better excuse on the water than it is on land;
lack of ability and common sense can lead to just as much tragedy.
Hand in hand with the legislative program is the industry's self originated and directed safety program.
Foreseeing the possible threats to safety with the rapid growth of the sport, the industry has been supporting an intense, coordinated educational program with great success since 1947.
A primary factor in the success of the safety program has been the enthusiastic cooperation of the individual manufacturers.
The industry has been its own watch dog.
With U.S. Coast Guard cooperation, the American Boat and Yacht Council was formed to develop recommended practices and standards for boats and their equipment with reference to safety.
Industry interest in safety goes even farther.
In 1959, the Yacht Safety Bureau was reorganized by the National Association of Engine and Boat Manufacturers and a group of insurance underwriters to provide a testing laboratory and labeling service for boats and their equipment.
A new waterfront site for the bureau is now being built at Atlantic City, New Jersey, to provide the most modern marine testing facilities as a further tool to keep the sport safe.
In addition to these activities, the NAEBM, with headquarters at 420 Lexington Avenue, New York City, as well as other associations and individual manufacturers, provide and distribute films, booklets, and public services in regard to proper boat handling and safety afloat.
It is important to note the work of the United States Power Squadrons and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Each of these fine groups gives free boating classes in seamanship piloting and small boat handling.
These are not governmentally subsidized organizations.
This year, over 100,000 persons will receive this free instruction.
Instead of motels, for the boatman there are marinas.
The word marina was coined by NAEBM originally to describe a waterfront facility where recreational boats could find protection and basic needs to lay over in relative comfort.
Yachtel, a relatively new word, indicates a waterfront type of hotel where a yachtsman may dock and find overnight accommodations on the premises as well as other services.
Boatel has a similar meaning to yachtel.
It indicates the same thing but it is meant to pertain more specifically to establishments designed to cater to smaller type boats such as outboards.
Regardless of nomenclature, yachtels and boatels are marinas.
Boatyards which also provide some of the above facilities may rightfully be called marinas.
A recent survey disclosed there are about 4,000 commercially and municipally operated marinas and boatyards in the United States, the majority of which are equipped to handle outboard boats.
The design of a mechanical interlocking frame is much like a mechanical puzzle, but once understood, the principles can be applied to any track and signal arrangement.
In the frame are two sets of bars which interact with each other to prevent the operator from making dangerous moves.
The main set of bars are the tappets and one tappet is connected to each lever.
If the lever is pulled to clear a signal or move a switch, the tappet moves a short distance lengthwise at the same time.
Close behind the plane of the tappets are the locking bars.
These can also move a short distance but at right angles to the tappets.
The number of locking bars required depends on how many false moves must be prevented.
In the sides of the tappets are notches with sloping sides, and connection between the tappets and locking bars consist of cams called dogs.
Two or more dogs are mounted on each locking bar.
These slide into and out of the notches in the tappets as the tappets are moved, locking and unlocking them.
Here's how the scheme works: Suppose the operator pulls the lever to clear a particular signal.
This also pulls the tappet connected to the particular lever and forces any dogs seated in the notches to the side, thus moving one or more locking bars.
The dogs on the other ends of these locking bars are thus forced into notches in other tappets.
By this scheme, pulling one signal to clear locks all the other switch and signal levers in safe positions until the first signal is again restored to normal.
Interlocking signals are normally at stop or red position, and a lever must be pulled to clear the signal.
This is not necessarily to green, however, for in some situations only a yellow indication is given to a train to let it into the plant.
There are other basic rules.
A turnout may have two levers, one to actually move the switch points, the other to lock the points.
A signal cannot be cleared until all the related turnouts are properly thrown and locked.
Such locks are nearly always used where the switch points face oncoming traffic.
The lock insures that the points are thrown all the way with no chance that a wheel flange will snag on a partly thrown point.
If the points aren't thrown all the way, the Turnout cannot be locked, and in turn, the signal cannot be cleared.
Generally, these locks on turnouts are called facing point locks.
Figs. 1-6 show typical arrangements of track and signals.
Each diagram is accompanied by a dog chart, a list of the levers that show which other levers any particular lever will lock if pulled.
The lines connecting the wedge-shaped dogs represent the locking bars at right angles to the tappet bars.
By studying the track-signal diagrams you'll note several other details.
Derails--mechanical track devices that actually guide the wheels off the rails if a train passes a stop signal--are used in many instances.
Home signals have two blades.
The blacked-in blades indicate a fixed aspect--the blade does not move.
As an engineer approaches the plant the position of the home signal is seen in advance when he passes the distant signal located beyond the limits of the interlocking plant.
In some low-speed situations, the distant signal is fixed at caution.
In other instances where there is no automatic block signaling, the distant has only green and yellow aspects.
So much for the prototype.
The interlocking frame we built at the model railroader workshop and then installed on Paul Larson's railroad follows the Fig. 1 scheme and is shown beginning in Fig. 7, page 65, and in the photos.
Here's how it can be built.
Frame
The sizes of pieces needed for the interlocking frame are shown in the notes within Fig. 7, most of the bars being 1/8brass in 1/4and 1/2widths.
You may change the dimensions to suit a frame for more or fewer levers and locks as you wish.
Our instructions assume you are building this particular frame, which is for a junction.
When cutting the pieces, dress the ends smooth, and square with a smooth file or sanding disk.
Start with the right-hand piece B, Af, soldering it to the lower piece A of the same material but 12long.
Let exactly 1of A extend beyond B and use a square to check your angle to exactly 90 degrees.
Now lay 12 pieces of Af cut 5-3/4long side by side but separated by 12 pieces of the same material 1/2sq..
This gives you the spacing for locating the left-hand piece B.
Compress the assembly when you make the mark to show the location for B.
Solder this second B to A at right angles.
There should be 10between the two parallel members and each should be 1from an end of the long piece.
Cap this assembly (with spacing bars in place) with a Af bar.
Tack-solder all the 1/2sq. pieces to the 10and 12members.
These will be drilled and tapped later on.
Now cut five Af locking bar spacers (which run horizontally).
Position these using six intermediate temporary Af spacers and locate the upper 12bar A.
Solder it and the five locking bar spacers to the frame.
Now place 12 pieces 1/2sq. on this edge as we did before and space them with the 5-3/4long tappets, as they are called.
Cap with a Af bar and tack-solder in place.
Cap the locking bar spacers with two Af directly under the first two B pieces.
Remove all the loose spacing bars.
Mark and center-punch all the holes required for screws to hold this assembly together.
See Fig. 7.
Placement of these holes is not critical, but they should be located so that the centers are about 1/8from any edge.
Drill all No. 50 and counter-drill all except the A pieces size 43.
Tap the A pieces 2-56.
Now unsolder and disassemble the frame except for the two 12and the first two 3-3/4bars (A and B pieces), which are soldered together.
Either lay the components aside in proper order or code them with numbers and letters so they may be replaced in their proper positions.
Dress all surfaces with a file, cleaning off all solder and drilling burrs.
Drill 20 No. 47 holes in the upper piece A as shown in Fig. 7.
Tap these 3-48 for mounting the electrical contact later on.
Note, 6 and 8 lock levers don't require holes for contacts.
Now reassemble the frame, using Af roundhead steel screws and nuts.
Put the 12 tappets and some Af locking bar spacers in the frame to help align all the components before you tighten the screws.
Be sure the tappets are not pinched by a twisted 1/2sq. spacer.
As an anchor for the spring lock, insert a Af bar in the lower left corner of the frame as shown in Fig. 7.
Drill a No. 43 hole through the pieces and secure with a 2-56 nut and screw.
Drill two No. 50 holes, one in the insert and one in the locking bar spacer directly above it, and tap 2-56.
Number all the tappet bars before removing them so they can be replaced in the same slots.
Remove all other loose pieces and file the edges of the basic frame smooth.
Cut five pieces of Af brass bar stock 3-3/4long.
These are supporting members for the short locking bars.
Locate their positions in Fig. 7 and drill No. 43 to match the corresponding holes in the frame.
Cut off excess screw lengths and file flush with either frame or nut.
Drill four No. 19 and four No. 28 holes in the 12long A pieces.
Locate the position from Fig. 7.
Tappets and locking bars
Draw-file No. 1 tappet to a smooth fit in its respective slot and square the ends.
Break the end corners with a slight 45 degree chamfer.
Drill a No. 50 hole 1-1/4from one end and tap 2-56.
(See Fig. 7.
) Put a 2-56 roundhead screw into the hole, cut off the excess threads and file flush with the underside of the bar.
To find the other stop screw position, insert the tappet into the frame and hold the screw head tight against the frame edge.
Scribe a line across the bar on the other end of the tappet, 1/4plus half the diameter of the 2-56 screw head (about 5/64'') away from the frame edge.
Total distance is about 21/64''.
Tend to make this dimension slightly undersize so you can file the screw head to get exactly 1/4tappet movement.
Drill a No. 50 hole, tap 2-56 and insert a roundhead 2-56 screw as you did on the first end.
Drill a No. 47 hole crosswise through the tappet at the position shown in Figs. 7 and 8.
Repeat these drill and tap operations for each of the tappet bars.
To each tappet except 6 and 8, solder a Af piece of brass and file to the tapered shape shown in Figs. 6 and 8.
These will serve as lifting pads for the electrical contacts.
Fitting the locking bars and making the locking pieces is a rather tedious job since stop screws, tappets and locking bars must be removed and replaced many times.
As the work progresses the frame and moving parts become a sort of Chinese puzzle where several pieces must be removed before the part you are working on is accessible.
A little extra work here will pay off with a smooth, snug-fitting machine when you are finished.
Each completed locking bar should remain in place as the work progresses to insure snug fitting.
The order of fitting is not too important.
However, we started with the first row of bars and worked our way back.
Since the same method of shaping and fitting the dogs and notches is used throughout, we will only describe the construction of one locking bar.
Figs. 7 and 8 give all pertinent dimensions.
All the bars are cut from Af brass.
The lengths of each piece are listed at the bottom of Fig. 7.
Bar C is 2-3/4long.
Draw-file the edges, square up the ends and put a slight chamfer on the edges so they will not snag in the frame.
Fig. 8 gives the dimensions for locating the dog-pin holes.
Center-punch and drill the No. 31 hole 7/16from one end of the bar.
Chuck a length of 1/8dia. drill rod into a drill press or some similar turning device and while it is rotating file the end square and then file a slight taper 1/8long.
Cut the piece about 9/32or 5/16long and drive it into the No. 31 hole drilled in the locking bar.
File the bottom edge flush with the bar and the top 1/8above the bar.
This dog will engage a notch to be cut in tappet 3.
Place the locking bar in proper position and insert tappet 3.
Scribe a line through the center of the pin and across the face of tappet 3, parallel to piece A.
See the drawings for the shape of the notch.
Scribe V-shaped lines on the bar and rough out with either a hack saw or a cutting disk in a hand power tool.
We used the latter equipped with a carborundum disk about
thick and 1dia. fitted on a 1/8dia. mandrel.
Such disks are very handy for cutting and shaping small parts.
File to a smooth finish.
A Barrette Swiss pattern file is handy since its triangular shape with only one cutting face will allow you to work a surface without marring an adjoining one.
Endeavor to get the notches as much alike as possible.
The notch should have a smooth finish so that the steel dog will slide easily over it.
Assemble the parts in the frame and test the sliding action of the mating pieces.
All matching surfaces should be checked frequently and mated on a cut and fit basis.
Chuck a 2or 3piece of 1/8dia. drill rod in a drill press or electric hand tool.
Fashion a sharp scribing point about 3/64long on one end, using Swiss pattern files.
This tool can also be made with a lathe.
Scientists say that the world and everything in it are based on mathematics.
Without math the men who are continually seeking the causes of and the reasons for the many things that make the world go 'round would not have any means of analyzing, standardizing, and communicating the things they discover and learn.
Math and the formulas that allow it to be applied to different problems are, therefore, essential to any scientific endeavor.
Hot rodding is a science.
It's not a science as involved as determining what makes the earth rotate on its axis or building a rocket or putting a satellite into orbit but it is, nevertheless, a science.
But because science is based on mathematics doesn't mean that a hot rodder must necessarily be a mathematician.
A guy can be an active and successful hot rodder for years without becoming even remotely involved with mathematical problems;
however, he will have a clearer understanding of what he is doing and the chances are he will be more successful if he understands the few formulas that apply to rodding.
A mathematical formula is nothing more than a pattern for solving a specific problem.
It places the various factors involved in the problem in their correct order in relation to each other so that the influence of factors on each other can be computed.
The first step in using a formula is to insert the numerical values of the factors involved in their correct positions in the formula.
This changes the formula to an equation.
The equation is used for the mathematical process of solving the problem.
Equations for rodding formulas are not complicated.
They involve only simple mathematics that are taught in grammar school arithmetic classes.
However, it is essential that the various mathematical symbols used in the equations be understood so that the mathematical processes can be done properly and in their correct order.
They indicate simple division, multiplication, subtraction, and addition.
The symbol for division is a straight line that separates two numbers placed one above the other.
The lower number is always divided into the upper number: Af
The symbol for multiplication is **b.
It is used to separate two or more numbers in a row.
For example: Af.
Numbers to be multiplied together may be multiplied in any order.
The result will be the same regardless of the order used.
The symbol for subtraction is the standard minus sign.
This is nothing more than a dash.
It separates two or more numbers.
The number on the right of the symbol is always subtracted from the number on the left of the symbol.
For example: Af.
When more than two figures are separated by subtraction symbols the subtraction must be carried out from the left to right if the result is to be correct.
For example, for the problem Af, 10 from 25 equals 15, then 6 from 15 equals 9.
Addition is indicated by the + symbol.
The symbol is used to separate two or more numbers.
For example: Af.
Numbers separated by addition symbols may be placed in any order.
When solving an equation that involves division as well as other steps, do all the division steps first to reduce those parts of the equation to their numerical value.
Multiplication, subtraction, and addition can then be accomplished as they appear in the equation by starting at the left end of the equation and working toward the right.
Completing the division first also includes those division parts that require multiplication, subtraction, or addition steps: Af.
This would be reduced by multiplying 8 times 6 and then dividing the product by 12.
This part of the equation would then become 4.
For use in formulas, fractions should be converted to their decimal equivalents.
The easiest way to do this is with a conversion chart.
Charts for this purpose are available from many sources.
They are included in all types of mathematical handbooks and they are stamped on some types of precision measuring instruments.
The various mathematical processes can be simplified by carrying the results to only two or three decimal places.
Shortening the results in this manner will not have any detrimental effect on the accuracy of the final result.
Some formulas contain constants.
A constant is a number that remains the same regardless of the other numbers used in the formula and the resultant equation.
It is a number without which the equation cannot be solved correctly.
Rodding formulas apply to many phases of the sport.
The answers they give can often pave the way to performance increases and, quite often, are necessary for completing entry blanks for different events.
When it is needed, one formula is as important as another.
However, some formulas are used more than others.
We'll take them in the general order of their popularity.
Engine displacement
A rodder should be able to compute the displacement of his engine.
Displacement is sometimes referred to as swept volume.
Most entry blanks for competitive events require engine displacement information because of class restrictions.
It is good to be able to compute displacement so that changes in it resulting from boring and stroking can be computed.
Factors involved in the displacement formula are the bore diameter of the engine's cylinders, the length of the piston stroke, the number of cylinders in the engine, and a constant.
The constant is, which is one-quarter of 3.1416, another constant known as pi.
Pi is used in formulas concerned with the dimensions of circles.
Actually, the engine displacement formula is the standard formula for computing the volume of a cylinder of any type with an added factor that represents the number of cylinders in the engine.
The cross-sectional area of the cylinders is determined and then the volume of the individual cylinders is computed by multiplying the area by the stroke length, which is the equivalent of the length of the cylinders.
Multiplying the result by the number of cylinders in the engine gives the engine's total displacement.
The formula is: Af.
Dimensions in inches, and fractions of inches will give the displacement in cubic inches.
Dimensions in centimeters and fractions of centimeters will give the displacement in cubic centimeters (cc.).
One inch equals 2.54 centimeters: one cubic inch equals 16.38 cubic centimeters.
For example, let's consider a standard 283 cubic inch Chevy Aj.
These engines have a cylinder diameter of 3-7/8 inches and a stroke length of 3 inches.
The formula, with the fractions converted to decimals, becomes Af.
To arrive at the answer, multiply the numbers together by starting at the left of the group and working to the right.
The different steps will look like this: Af
Compression ratio
A cylinder's compression ratio is computed by comparing the cylinder's volume, or its displacement, with the total volume of the cylinder and its combustion chamber.
Cylinder volume can be determined mathematically but combustion chamber volume must be measured with a liquid.
Cylinder volume is determined in exactly the same manner as for the displacement formula: Af.
To measure the volume of one of the combustion chambers in the cylinder head, install the valves and spark plug in the chamber and support the head so that its gasket surface is level.
Then pour water or light oil from a graduated beaker into the chamber to fill the chamber to its gasket surface.
Do not overfill the chamber.
This is possible with water and other liquids that have a high surface tension.
Such liquids will rise to a considerable height above the surface around the chamber before they will flow out of the chamber.
The amount of liquid poured into the chamber is determined by subtracting the quantity still in the beaker when the chamber is full from the original quantity.
Most beakers are graduated in cubic centimeters (cc.), making it necessary to convert the result to cubic inches.
However, the displacement of the cylinder can be converted to cubic centimeters.
The compression ratio arrived at with the formula will be the same regardless of whether cubic inches or cubic centimeters are used.
The only precaution is that all volumes used in the formula be quoted in the same terms.
The volume of the cylinder opening in the head gasket must be computed by multiplying its area in square inches by the gasket's thickness in thousandths of an inch.
Sometimes it is necessary to roughly calculate the square inch area of the opening but the calculation can usually be made with sufficient accuracy that it won't affect the final computation.
The volume of the opening is added to the combustion chamber volume.
Another thing that must be taken into consideration is the volume of the area between the top of the piston and the top of the cylinder block when the piston is in top dead center position.
Compute this volume by measuring the distance from the top of the block to the piston head as accurately as possible with a depth micrometer or some other precision measuring device and then multiply the area of the cylinder by the depth.
The formula for this step is: Af.
This volume is added to the total volume of the combustion chamber and head gasket opening.
The total of these three volumes is the final combustion chamber volume.
After the factors just described have been computed, they are applied to the following formula: Af
For an example let's dream up an engine that has a final combustion chamber volume of 5 cubic inches and a cylinder volume of 45 cubic inches.
Applying these figures to the formula we get the equation: Af.
The compression ratio is 10 to 1.
This method of computing compression ratio cannot be used accurately for engines that have pistons with either domed or irregularly shaped heads.
Any irregularity on the piston heads will make it impossible, with normal means, to determine the final combustion chamber volume because the volume displaced by the piston heads cannot be readily computed.
The only way to determine the final combustion chamber volume when such pistons are used is by measuring it with liquid while the cylinder head is bolted to the cylinder block and the piston is in top dead center position.
Gear ratio--speed relationships
There are four versions of the formula that involves the relationships of car speed, engine speed, rear axle gear ratio, and rear tire size.
By using the appropriate version any one of these factors can be determined for any combination of the other three.
To simplify the formulas a representative symbol is substituted for each of the factors.
These are
MPH for Car speed
, for Engine crankshaft speed
, for Rear axle gear ratio
, for Tire size
Tire size can be determined in several ways but the one that is the easiest and as accurate as any is by measuring the effective radius of a wheel and tire assembly.
This is done by measuring the distance from the surface on which the tire is resting to the center of the rear axle shaft.
A tire must be inflated to its normal hot operating pressure and the car must be loaded to its operating weight when this measurement is made.
The measurement must be in inches.
Any fraction of an inch involved in the measurement must be converted to a decimal equivalent to simplify the mathematics.
When tire size is measured in this manner a constant of 168 is used in the formula.
To determine car speed for a given combination of engine speed, gear ratio, and tire size, the formula is: Af.
For an engine speed of 5000 rpm, a gear ratio of 4.00 to 1, and a tire radius of 13 inches, the equation would look like this: Af
To determine engine speed for a given combination of the other three factors the formula is: Af.
Using the same figures as for the previous example, the equation becomes: Af
To determine the rear axle gear ratio for a combination of the other three factors, the formula is: Af.
Using the figures from the previous examples, the equation becomes: Af.
Orlando, Fla., Feb. 2
-- The best 2-year-old pacing mile up to date at Ben White Raceway has been that of Mary Liner (Mainliner-Highland Ellen), a member of the Dick Williams stable, who was clocked 2:25.
She is owned by Ralph H. Kroening, Milwaukee, Wis., who, according to the railbirds, can feel justly proud of her.
Other good miles have been by Debonnie (Dale Frost-Debby Hanover) and Prompt Time (Adios-On Time) in 2:28-:36;
Kimberly Gal (Galophone-Kimberly Hanover) 2:26.2;
Laguerre Hanover (Tar Heel-Lotus Hanover) and Monel (Tar Heel-Miracle Byrd) in 2:34.
Laguerre Hanover is outstanding in type and conformation--good body, plenty of heart girth, stands straight on his legs on excellent feet--and has the smoothest gait.
This colt is behind most of the other 2-year-olds in the Simpson stable but can show about as much pace as any of them.
Monel shows improvement with each work-out and looks the makings of a good brood mare after winning her share of races.
Stardel (Star's Pride-Starlette Hanover), 2:34, looks quite promising.
Fury Hanover (Hoot Mon-Fay), Caper (Hoot Mon-Columbia Hanover) and Isaac (Hoot Mon-Goddess Hanover) has been working together but have not equalled their best work done some weeks ago.
Fury and Caper worked in 2:35 and did it with ease.
They are two good colts of different type.
Fury is upstanding and on the rangy side, and Caper is more the compact type.
I have never seen Caper off his feet--he seems to know nothing but'trot'and keeps trying a little harder if asked to do so.
Fury has made a few mistakes but looks like a wonderful prospect, with his impressive gait and stride which certainly make him cover the ground.
Trackdown (Torrid-Mighty Lady) has worked a mile in 2:33.3.
It took this colt several weeks to strike a pace.
Then, after emasculation, he was eased up for a couple of weeks.
He has thrived on all he has gone through and looks the makings of a good little race horse.
Thor Hanover (Adios-Trustful Hanover) is a wonderful looking prospect and another good individual, with solid, rugged conformation, good, flat bone and excellent feet.
This colt arrived at the Raceway early last November, and immediately was put into harness and line-driven for a few days, and then put to cart and broken in very nicely, knowing nothing but trot.
He appeared in the hopples about November 14, was treated for worms on the 18th, the latter date being the first time he struck a real pace.
On December 5 he paced a mile in 55 on the twice-around, out in third position all the way.
This colt has done everything asked of him, and done it with ease.
His best mile to date is 2:32.2.
Gamecock (Tar Heel-Terka Hanover) is another promising colt, and his best time is 2:32.2.
This is one of the best-tempered Tar Heels ever at the center.
The first time he was harnessed he stood like a gentle old mare;
the crupper under his tail seemed to be old stuff.
The fourth time in harness he walked off like a gentleman.
Being blistered for curbs has delayed his work somewhat.
But up to date he has shown as much as any in the big Simpson stable.
Hustler (Knight Dream-Torkin) is a playful bay rascal of a colt, not the best gaited, but he surely can pace and is right there with them, and sometimes leading them, in the best miles.
Torrid Freight (Torrid-Breeze On Hal) is a very rugged, strong-made colt with a wonderful stride who has done with ease everything asked of him.
His best time is around 2:33.
Strongheart (Adios-Direct Gal), a fair-looking sorrel colt, knows nothing but pace and has been right there in the best miles.
Torrid Adios (Torrid-Adios Molly) is not so masculine as most of the colts, but I like his type and he certainly is one of the best-gaited pacers on the grounds.
Blistered for curbs and laid off three weeks, he is coming along fine and looks like a pacer to me.
First Flyer (Frisco Flyer-Castle Light) looks like a splendid candidate for the Illinois Stakes.
His best time is 2:33.2.
The colts in Simpson's stable have little if anything on the fillies, especially the pacers.
Justine Hanover (Sampson Hanover-Justitia Hanover) is improving with each work-out and paced 2:32.4 weeks ago.
Mrs. Freight (Knight Dream-Miss Reed) shows promise and does it in good form, and her best time is about 2:35.
Hoopla (Tar Heel-Holiday Hanover), a filly that wanted to trot, knocked herself October 31 and November 1 fighting the hopples.
She was then trained on the trot until December 29, hitched to a breaking cart once around the half-mile track and hoppled again.
This time she submitted and in a few days was going good.
On January 11 she paced a mile in 2:43.1--:38;
on Jan. 18 2:37.3--:36.1;
on Jan. 21, 2:36.
This filly is a much better individual than either of her full-sisters, Valentine Day and Cerise--more scale and much better underpinning.
She is more like her full brother, Taraday Hanover, but larger.
Up to date she is a grand-looking filly.
Pete Dailey has four promising 2-year-old pacers.
Marquis Pick (Gene Abbe-Direct Grattan) seems to be the pick of the stable at the present time.
He is a fine-looking colt with a good body, good set of legs and nice way of going.
His best mile to date is 2:28-:33.
Majestic Pick comes next, with a mile in 2:30-:33.2.
This colt is another fine-looking equine.
Staley Hanover (Knight Dream-Sweetmite Hanover) is a little on the small side but a very compact colt and looks like one to stand training and many future battles with colts in his class.
Best time to date is 2:34-:34.
Step Aside (Direct Rhythm-Wily Widow) has worked in 2:32 on the half-mile track and shows promise.
Most of Billy Haughton's 2-year-olds have worked from 2:40 to 2:35.
Bonnie Wick (Gene Abbe-Scotch Mary) has gone in 2:36;
Hickory Ash (Titan Hanover-Misty Hanover) in 2:35.
The first time I saw the latter filly she trotted by me and I noticed such a family resemblance that I said to myself, that must be Hickory Ash.
She is a beautiful filly and likes to trot.
Hickory Hill (Star's Pride-Venus Hanover) has gone in 2:33;
Hickory Spark (Harlan-Hickory Tiny) 2:37;
Buxton Hanover (Tar Heel-Beryl Hanover) 2:35;
Faber's Kathy (Faber Hanover-Ceyway) 2:37;
Honor Rodney (Rodney-Honor Bright) around 2:40.
The last-named is a fine-looking, large colt, who has been unfortunate to be laid off for some time due to injuries.
He is going sound again now, and looks good.
Brief Candle (Harlan-Marcia) has gone in 2:37;
Lena Faber (Faber Hanover-Chalidale Lena) 2:33;
Martha Rodney (Rodney-Miss Martha D.) 2:35;
Checkit (Faber Hanover-Supermarket) 2:35;
Charm Rodney (Rodney-The Charmer) 2:37;
Fair Sail (Farvel-Topsy Herring) 2:36;
Custom Maid (Knight Dream-Way Dream) 2:34.2;
Jacky Dares ((Meadow Gene-Princess Lorraine) 2:36;
Good Flying (Good Time-Olivette Hanover) 2:36;
Bordner Hanover (Tar Heel-Betty Mahone) 2:34;
Faber's Choice (Faber Hanover-Sally Joe Whippet) 2:36;
Invercalt (Florican-Inverness) 2:35;
Duffy Dares (Meadow Gene-Princess Mite) 2:36;
Harold J. (Worthy Boy-Lady Scotland) 2:36;
Knightfall (Knight Dream-Miss Worthy Grapes) 2:36;
Next Knight (Knight Dream-Next Time) 2:36;
Trader Jet (Florican-My Precious) 2:37;
Trader Rich (Worthy Boy-Marquita Hanover) 2:37;
Good Little Girl (Good Time-Mynah Hanover) 2:36;
Iosola Hanover (Kimberly Kid-Isoletta Hanover) 2:36.
The last-named is one of the favorites in the stable, and the boys like her very much.
I will be able to tell you more about this string of equines in the near future.
I have just seen Debonnie and Prompt Time work a mile in 2:34, last quarter in:35.3.
In going away Debonnie got behind several lengths, stalling at the start--she is a little fussy.
They left the three-quarters together and finished almost together.
Prompt Time shows class.
This filly is another Adios that wants to trot, and trot she did until forced to do otherwise.
After well broken and equipped with 12-oz. shoes on behind, bare-footed in front, she would trot a real storm with the master, Delvin, driving.
Being placed in the hopples she was completely baffled.
She hesitated, she hopped, she rolled and rocked, skipped and jumped, but in some two weeks she started to pace, From that time to this she has shown steady improvement and now looks like one of the classiest things on the grounds.
Rain on Friday prevented many workouts, but there were a few miles of note on Thursday.
Those responsible included Stardel Hanover (Star's Pride-Starlette Hanover), 2:30-:34.3;
Lorena Gallon (Bill Gallon-Loren Hanover), 2:30-:34.3;
Prudent Hanover (Dean Hanover-Precious Hanover), 2:30.3-:35.3;
Premium Freight (Titan Hanover-Pebble Hanover), 2:30.3-35.3;
Laguerre Hanover ((Tar Heel-Lotus Hanover), 2:30.3-:36.1;
Monel (Tar Heel-Miracle Byrd), 2:30.3-:36.1;
Fury Hanover (Hoot Mon-Fay), 2:30.3-:36;
Isaac (Hoot Mon-Goddess Hanover), 2:30.3-:36;
Caper (Hoot Mon-Columbia Hanover), 2:30.3-:36;
Lucky Freight (Knight Dream-Lusty Helen), 2:31.3-:35.3.
Sam Caton's Butterwyn (Scotch Victor-Butler Wyn), a light bay filly, knows nothing but trot and has worked on the half-mile in 2:30-:36.
Riverboat (Dalzell-Cousin Rachel) has gone in 2:38.
Sam is having his troubles with Layton Hanover (Dean Hanover-Lucy Hanover), but hopes to have him straightened out and going before long.
Jimmy Jordon is high on Adios Scarlet (Adios-Rena Grattan) and she sure looks good as she goes by.
Her best time to date is about 2:30.
He also likes Hampton Hanover (Titan Hanover-Bertie Hanover) 2:37.
Cathy J. Hanover (Tar Heel-Kaola Hanover), formerly called Karet Hanover, has been rather a problem child, but is getting better all the while and can pace a twice around in about 2:31.
Armbro Comet (Nibble Hanover-Mauri Hanover) has been in 2:38.
Flick Nipe's and Neil Engle's Miss Phone (Galophone-Prissy Miss) is a fine-looking filly with good disposition and good gait, and she has worked up to date in 2:46.
Del Mar, Calif., Feb. 3
-- After 52 rainless days, moisture finally came to Del Mar, resulting in but one workout during the week for most of the horses, and leaving us with less than half our total average rainfall during the season.
While 2-year-olds are still gaining most of the attention at the track, green horses are starting to go a bit, and Jimmy Cruise has several that can really make it.
Work-outs for the week are as follows: Plain Scotch, 3 (by Scotch Victor), Demon Law, 3 (by Demon Hanover), Coffee Royal, p (by Royal Blackstone) and Beauty Way, p, 3 (by Demon Hanover) in 25;
Eddie Duke, p, 3 (by Duke Of Lullwater), Marilyn C., p (by Sampson Hanover) and Chalidale Barry, 5 (by King's Ransom) in 2:20;
Tiger Hanover, p, 3 (by Adios) in 2:26;
Sherwood Lass, 4 (by Victory Song) in 2:22;
and Dauntless, 3 (by Greentree Adios) in 2:32.
For the aged horses: Mr. Budlong, p, 2:00.2, Lottie Thomas, p, 2:04.2, Mighty Signal 2:03, Clever Braden, p, 2:01.1, and Glow Star, p, 2:02.3 have been in 2:35;
Miss Demon Abbe, p, 1:59.3 has trotted in 2:26, and is expected to race at this gait;
Carter Creed, p, 3, 2:01.1, Great Lullwater 2:00.3, and Hi Jay, p, 2:05.1 have been in 2:30;
Tanker T., 3, 2:05.3 is now wearing hopples and has trained in 2:19;
Stormy Dream, p, 2:01.3, Demon Abbe, p, 2:02, Dundeen B., 4, 2:04.2, Claudia's Song, 3, 2:06.3, and (Jet Fire, 4, 2:02.2 have been in 2:25;
Maria Key, 2, 2:06 looked great in 2:22;
Mocking Byrd, p, 2:01.1 has been in 2:12, with a racing date approaching at Bay Meadows.
Dewey Urban has a clever green trotter in Dr. Orin I., 3 (by Yankee Hanover), his latest mile in 2:20;
Victory Sun, p, 2:04 has trained in 2:24;
Early Sun, p, 2:02.3, Chester Maid 2:05, Dark Sun, p, 2:06.1, and Sun Tan Maid 2:05.2 have been in 2:21.
The average reader of this magazine owns more than one gun (we ran a survey to find out) but he's always on the lookout for new and better arms.
He's more than a reader of outdoor articles;
he's a real hunter and shooter, eager to improve his sport.
Well, if you're that kind of sportsman we're here to help you.
You've probably given a lot of Christmas-season thought to the guns in your rack, but it's not easy to decide on a new one.
You still have time to drop a few hints about the gifts you'd appreciate most;
the time to decide on them is now.
As a Christmas service, I've taken a close look at this year's crop of new models.
Here they are, with my comments and judgments.
Read on, take your pick--and start dropping those hints.
First on my own list would be two arms--a rifle and a handgun--that qualify as new in the strictest sense.
For me, a changed barrel length or an improved stock doesn't constitute a truly new design.
Such modifications are all for the best but it takes something as different as a Deerstalker or a Jet to change arms-making concepts.
Bill Ruger's long-awaited Deerstalker (under $110) is a new rifle action in a caliber that upsets all the modern theory of high-velocity fans;
it's a short, light, quick-handling, fast-firing little timber gun designed to push a heavy slug at modest velocity but with lots of killing power and ample range for our most popular big game--whitetail.
Ruger reports that on his recent African safari the little Magnum cartridge was a real work horse.
Small antelope were generally grassed with one shot, and the Magnum carbine also bagged reedbuck, kob and wart hog with deadly efficiency;
these are fairly large, tough animals.
The deadliness of the Magnum in a rifle comes as no surprise to me.
At least five years ago, Tom Robinson of Marlin made up an over/under double rifle for me in this caliber, using the now defunct Model 90 action in 20-gauge size.
After figuring out how to regulate the barrels so that they shot to the same point of impact, we fired this little 20-inch-barrel job on my home range and in Marlin's underground test gallery.
We quickly ran into the same trouble that plagued Bill Ruger in his first experiments: Three or four bullets would be placed well in a six-inch bull at 100 yards and then, unaccountably, one could stray far out of the group.
Ruger learned that this was because the higher velocity achieved in a long barrel was upsetting the shape of the unjacketed revolver bullet.
The new, jacketed slug in Magnum corrected this.
But even without jacketed bullets, I had enough faith in my double to take it on an opening-day deer hunt that first year.
Within half an hour I jumped a six-point buck that hop-skipped through a rhododendron thicket, and I caught him just behind the left foreleg at 60 yards.
He moved only about 30 feet after the 240-grain slug hit him--and this was after the bullet had passed through a sapling.
Three more deer have fallen to this same gun, and all were one-shot kills.
My double was made with standard-weight revolver barrels (before cutting to revolver length), and although it compares well in other respects, it's considerably heavier than the Deerstalker, which only scales about 6-1/2 pounds.
If ever a rifle met the needs of the whitetail hunter, this is it.
The Deerstalker points with the ease, speed and precision of a fine imported double shotgun, and its trigger pull is light and sharp.
The 240-grain bullet leaves the muzzle at 1,850 fps, which gives it all the smash needed at woods ranges.
With five shots at the immediate command of the hunter's trigger finger, the gun and load are a deadly combination.
The second really new development this year was a revolver handling a different sort of varmint load--the
Remington Jet Magnum Center Fire.
At present it's available in one model, the fine and familiar Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver (about $110), long a top-quality handgun among target arms.
The velocity of this
, 40-grain bullet is rated at a very hot 2,460 fps, and it's the flattest shooting of any revolver cartridge, with a mid-range rise of about an inch over a 100-yard range.
This is a varmint load, pure and simple;
it's much too explosive for small edible game.
It can cut a red squirrel neatly in two or burst a crow into a flurry of feathers.
The most intriguing aspect of the S & W Magnum chambered for the new Jet is that it can also fire standard
rim-fires by means of adapter sleeves in the chambers.
You may therefore convert the gun into a small-game and plinking arm, although the difference in the point of impact (Jet vs. rim-fire) can be somewhat disconcerting.
The accuracy of the Jet cartridge is fine;
I tested it in my scoped S & W and it was good enough to allow me to hit a chuck with every shot at 100 yards if I did my part by holding the handgun steadily.
Hunting rifles, '61
The fact that the Deerstalker and the Jet were the only completely new designs this year doesn't mean that 1961 didn't see changes in models, actions and calibers.
Aside from the Ruger carbine, a number of hunting rifles have been introduced for the first time.
Here are the brands (in alphabetical order) and the new models.
Newcomers to the American hunter are the Browning group of bolt-action, high-power rifles.
They have fine FN actions and a better-than-average finish on both the metal and the stock wood.
Barrel weights vary sensibly with the various calibers available, and these include the standard bores (about $165) plus the Magnums (around $170);
the latter include the
, S & H, and.
Shotgun-type rubber recoil pads are standard on all of the Magnums except the
Stock designs are excellent for use with scopes.
Colt's center-fire 1961 rifles are all made with Sako actions, regardless of caliber.
The
have the short action;
the
and, the medium action, and the
, Af and the Magnums, the long action (about $135 for the Standard Coltsman and $200 for the Custom version).
Previously, FN actions were used for the larger cartridges.
High Standard has introduced a
auto, the Sport-King, in two grades--field and special (less than $45 and just over $45, respectively).
It's a streamlined rifle, fast and well-made.
Among
Magnum Rim-Fire rifles, 1961's lone newcomer was the Kodiak Model 260 autoloader (around $60).
Previously known as Jefferson Arms, Kodiak has given this 11-shot hammerless job an exceptionally fine stock design, and the 260 is the first autoloader to handle
Magnum rim-fires.
Marlin has made two contributions to the harvest of new offerings.
The Model 99 (under $45) is a light-weight, streamlined
rim-fire auto with a tubular magazine that holds 18 Long Rifles.
It's extremely accurate for an auto, and the test rifle I tried was completely trouble-free in functioning.
The 989 (about $40) is an even newer
auto, this one with a seven- or 12-shot clip.
Once again the Mossberg Targo outfit has appeared, but this time as a bolt-action rifle-shotgun combination.
The bore is unrifled but is provided with an insert tube which is rifled and which, surprisingly, gives pretty fair accuracy even though it's only 3-1/2 inches long.
You can unscrew this tube and replace it with a smoothbore insert for use with
shotshells--to break the little Targo clay targets.
A trap for throwing these miniature clays fastens to the barrel so that the shooter can throw his own targets.
A spring trap for solid mounting and a regular hand trap are also available.
You can have your choice of a seven-shot repeater, the 340TR (about $40) or a single-shot, the 320TR ($10 less).
The Targo is a good outfit for fun shooting or for economic wing-shooting practice, but it's tougher than it looks to run up a score on the clay birds.
They'll travel 50 feet or more when thrown from the spring trap but it's almost impossible to break one after it passes the 35-foot mark.
The combination of thin pattern and very tiny pellets makes it necessary to get on the birds, right now!
Big Magnum calibers appeared in the Remington line for 1961, with the addition of the and to the list of Model 725's.
These are made on special order only, in Kodiak grade (about $310), with integral muzzle brakes and heavy rubber recoil pads;
they weigh around nine pounds.
A shortened version of the highly regarded Remington 742 autoloader also appeared in 1961.
This carbine (under $140, about $15 more for a deluxe grade) has an 18-1/2-inch barrel and was obviously inspired by the popularity of last year's Model 760 pump with a short-barrel.
This design is hard to beat for timber hunting or for packing in a saddle scabbard.
Presently, the 742C is available in Af.
The latest versions of the famous Savage Model 99 are the 99 Featherweight (about $125) and the 99 Deluxe (under $135), which have a top-tang safety and improved trigger design.
The replacement of the slide-lock side safety catch will make this lever-action favorite more appealing than ever since the new safety is easier and faster to operate.
Beginners' guns, '61
A fresh crop of beginners' guns showed up in 1961, and they're good bets for your Christmas gift list if you're wondering what to get for a youngster.
The most unusual of them is the Ithaca 49 (about $20, $5 for a saddle scabbard)--a lever-action single-shot patterned after the famous Winchester lever-action and featuring the Western look.
Because of its traditional lines, it probably has more kid appeal than any other model.
The action is a drop-block, handling all the standard
rim-fires.
Marlin's latest is also designed for the beginning shooter, although it's a full-sized rifle with plenty of barrel weight and ample stock.
This is the Model 122 (about $20);
it's a single-shot bolt-action with an automatic safety--i.e., the safety goes on every time the bolt is lifted and the gun cocked for the next shot.
Stock design is excellent, and this model is a good first gun.
Another boy's model is the
single-shot Remington 514C (around $20), which comes with a 21-inch barrel and a short--12-1/2-inch--stock;
it's just right for a boy of 12-1/2.
A beginner's shotgun has also been introduced this year.
The single-barrel Stevens 940Y (under $35) is made with a side lever rather than a top-tang lever because many youngsters aren't strong enough to operate a top tang to open a gun--and the side lever does indeed open very easily.
This gun has a 12-1/2-inch stock and is available in either 20 or gauge.
There's another addition to the Stevens line, the pump-action Model 77 in (under $75), which you may or may not consider a kid's gun;
many experienced hunters like this gauge and type of scattergun too.
Shotguns, '61
Although there were no startling developments in shotgun design this year, a number of new models and variations of existing models did hit the market.
For example, a Browning trap version of the Superposed over/under, the Broadway (from $350 up, depending on grade), differs from standard models in that it is equipped with a full beavertail fore end, a cushion recoil pad and a barrel-wide ventilated rib for fast sighting.
The Colt line now includes a new scattergun, the Standard or Custom Pump Model (about $90 and $150, respectively) in 12, 16 and 20.
Firearms International has introduced another import, this one from Finland.
It's the Valmet (about $170), a 12-gauge over/under very much like the old Remington 32--which was so fine a gun that today a used one still brings high prices.
High Standard has also added two models to its line.
The Supermatic Trophy (prices begin at less than $135 and depend on grade and optional features) is a 12-gauge auto.
The Flite-King Trophy (beginning at just over $85) is a pump gun in 12 or 16.
Either model is a very good dollar value.
Mossberg's latest contribution to the field is the Model 500 (from $73.50);
this is an improved version of the old Model 200, a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun.
See page 24 for a complete report on it.
Handguns, '61
Aside from the
Jet--which I coupled with the Deerstalker carbine as one of the year's two biggest developments--few significant innovations appeared among 1961's handguns.
Livery stable--J. Vernon, prop..
Coaching had declined considerably by 1905, but the sign was still there, near the old Wells Fargo building in San Francisco, creaking in the fog as it had for thirty years.
John Vernon had had all the patronage he cared for--he had prospered, but he could not retire from horsedom.
Coaching was in his blood.
He had two interests in life: the pleasures of the table and driving.
Twice a week he drove his tallyho over the Santa Cruz road, upland and through the redwood forest, with orchards below him at one hand, and glimpses of the Pacific at the other.
The journey back he made along the coast road, traveling hell-for-leather, every lantern of the tallyho ablaze.
The southward route was the classic run in California, and the most fashionable.
His patronage on this stretch was made up largely of San Franciscans--regulars, most of them, and trenchermen like himself.
They did not complain at the inhuman hour of starting (seven in the morning), nor of the tariff, which was reasonable since it covered everything but the tobacco.
Breakfast was at the Palace Hotel, luncheon was somewhere in the mountain forest, and dinner was either at Boulder Creek or at Santa Cruz.
Gazing too long at the scenery could be tiring, so halts were contrived between meals.
Then the Chinese hostler, who rode with Vernon on the box, would break open a hamper and produce filets of smoked bass or sturgeon, sandwiches, pickled eggs, and a rum sangaree to be heated over a spirit lamp.
In spring and in autumn the run was made for a group of botanists which included an old friend of mine.
They gathered roots, bulbs, odd ferns, leaves, and bits of resin from the rare Santa Lucia fir, which exists only on a forty-five mile strip on the westerly side of these mountains.
In the Spanish days Franciscan monks roamed here to collect the resin for incense.
It yields a fragrance as Orphic as that of the pastilles of Malabar.
Vernon was serviceable on the botanical field trips, but he could arrange no schedule with the cooks, and he was glad when the trips dropped off, and the botanists began to motor out by themselves.
My friend often breakfasted with Vernon on the morning of the regular tallyho run.
This was an honor, like dining with a captain at his private table.
Vernon's office adjoined the stable, and the walls were adorned with brightly colored lithographs, the folk art of the period.
They advertised harness polish, liniments, Ball's Rubber Boots, Green River Whiskey, Hood's Sarsaparilla, patent medicines, shoe blacking, and chewing tobacco.
The hostler would have the table ready and a pot of coffee hissing on the stove;
then a porter from Manning's Fish House would trot in with a tray on his head.
It was draped with snowy napkins that kept hot a platter of oyster salt roast and a mound of corn fritters.
Vernon was consummately fond of oysters, and Manning's had been famous for them since the Civil War.
Oyster salt roast--oysters on the half shell, cooked on a bed of coarse salt that kept them hot when served--was a standby at Manning's.
Its early morning patrons were coachmen, who fortified themselves for the day with that delicacy.
In the 1890's the Palace Hotel began serving an oyster dish named after its manager, John C. Kirkpatrick.
This dish much resembles the oysters Rockefeller made famous by Antoine's in New Orleans, though the Palace chef announced it as a variant of Manning's roast oysters.
(Gastronomes have long argued about which came first, the Palace's or Antoine's.
Antoine's held as mandatory a splash of absinthe or Pernod on the parsley or spinach which was used for the underbedding.
The Kirkpatrick version holds liqueur as optional.
) Vernon, however, held out for plain oyster roast, and plenty of it, unadorned by herbs or any seasoning but salt, though he did fancy a bit of lemon.
After the meal, he and his guests went out to inspect the rig;
this was merely a ritual, to please all hands concerned.
The tallyho had cost Vernon $2,300.
A replica of two coaches made in England for the Belmont Club in the East, and matchless west of the Rockies, it was the despair of whips on the Santa Cruz run.
One could shave in the reflection of its French-polished panels, and its axles were greased like those of roulette wheels.
The horses were groomed to a high gloss;
departing, they stepped solemnly with knees lifted to the jaw, for they had been trained to drag at important funerals.
But for the start of the Santa Cruz run, the whip fell.
The clients boarded the tallyho at the Palace promptly at seven.
They had been fed a hunting breakfast, so called because a kedgeree, the dish identified with fox hunting, was on the bill.
There are many ways of making a kedgeree, every one of which is right.
Here is an original kedgeree recipe from the Family Club's kitchen:
Club Kedgeree
Flake (for three) a cupful of cold boiled haddock, mix with a cupful of cooked rice, two minced hard-boiled eggs, some buttery white sauce done with cream, cayenne, pepper, salt, a pinch of curry, a tablespoonful of minced onion fried, and a bit of anchovy.
Heat and serve hot on toast.
The omelet named for Ernest Arbogast, the Palace's chef, was even more in demand.
For decades it was the most popular dish served in the Ladies' Grill at breakfast, and it is one of the few old Palace dishes that still survive.
Native California oysters, salty and piquant, as coppery as Delawares and not much larger than a five-cent piece, went into it.
The original formula goes thus:
omelet Arbogast
Fry in butter a small minced onion, rub with a tablespoonful of flour, add half a cup of cream, six beaten eggs, pepper, celery salt, a teaspoonful of minced chives, a dash of cayenne, and a pinch of nutmeg.
A jigger of dry Sherry follows, and as the mixture stiffens, in go a hundred of the little oysters.
As things happened, Morgan was installed in the Nob Hill residence of a magnate friend, whose kitchen swarmed with cooks of approved talent.
Sherry remained in his hotel suite, where he amused himself as best he could.
Twice he left everything to his entourage, and fled to make the Santa Cruz tour under Vernon's guidance.
In the grand court of the Palace, notable for its tiers of Moorish galleries that looked down on the maelstrom of vehicles below, Vernon's station was at the entrance.
It was a post of honor, held inviolate for him;
he had the primacy among the coachmen.
Of majestic build, rubicund and slash-mouthed, he resembled the late General Winfield Scott, who was said to be the most imposing general of his century, if not of all centuries.
Vernon wore a gray tall hat, a gardenia, and maroon Wellington boots that glistened like currant jelly.
Promptly at seven he would clatter out of the court with twelve in the tallyho.
He had style: he held his reins in a loose bunch at the third button of his checked Epsom surtout, and when the horses leaned at a curve, as if bent by the force of a gale, he leaned with them.
They cantered down the peninsula, not slackening until the coach reached Woodside where the Santa Cruz uplands begin.
The road maps of the region have changed since 1905;
inns have burned down, moved elsewhere, or taken other names.
Once on the road (and especially if the passengers were all regulars and masculine), the schedule meant nothing.
An agreeable ease suffused Vernon and the passengers of the tallyho, from which there issued clouds of smoke.
Vernon would tilt his hat over one ear as he lounged with his feet on the dashboard, indulging in a huge cigar.
The horses moved at a clump;
they were no more on parade than was their driver;
one fork of the road was as good as another.
The Santa Cruz mountains sprawl over three counties, and the roads twist through sky-tapping redwoods down whose furrowed columns ripple streams of rain, even when heat bakes the Santa Clara valley below at the left.
The water splashes into shoulder-high tracts of fernery.
You arrive there in seersucker, and feel you were half-witted not to bring a mackintosh.
Vernon kept an account book with a list of all the establishments that he thought worthy of patronage.
A number of them must have fallen into disfavor;
they were struck out with remarks in red ink, denouncing both the cooks and the management.
He was copious in his praise of those that served food that was good to eat.
The horses seemed to know these by instinct, he used to say: such places invariably had stables with superior feed bins.
There was Wright's, for one, lost amongst trees, its wide verandas strewn with rockers.
Many of its sojourners were devoted to seclusion and quiet, and lived there to the end of their days.
It was the haunt of writer Ambrose Bierce, who admired its redwoods.
Acorns from the great oaks fed the small black pigs (akin to Berkshires), whose carcass sweepstakes were renowned.
Their ham butts, cured in oak-log smoke, were also esteemed when roasted or boiled, and served with this original sauce:
Wright's devil sauce
put into a saucepan a cupful of the baked ham gravy, or of the boiled ham liquor, with a half stick of butter, three teaspoonfuls of made mustard, and two mashed garlic cloves.
Contribute also an onion, a peeled tomato and two pickled gherkins, and a mashed lime.
After this has simmered an hour, add two tablespoons each of Worcestershire, catsup, and chutney, two pickled walnuts, and a pint of Sherry.
Then simmer fifteen minutes longer.
Every winter a kegful of this sauce was made and placed at the end of a row of four other kegs in the cellar, so that when its turn came, it was properly mellowed.
Vineyards and orchards also grew around Wright's, and deer were rather a nuisance;
they leaped six-foot fences with the agility of panthers.
But no one complained when they wound up, regardless of season, in venison pies.
No one complained of the white wine either: at this altitude of two thousand feet, grapes acquire a dryness and the tang of gunflint.
(The Almaden vineyards have now climbed to this height.
) Apple trees grew there also.
Though creeks in the Santa Cruz mountains flow brimful the year round and it is forever spring, the apples that grow there have a wintry crackle.
Dwellers thereabouts preferred to get their apple pies at the local bakery, which had a brick oven fired with redwood billets.
The merit of the pie, Vernon believed, was due more to its making than to the waning heat of the oven.
The recipe, which he got from the baker, and wrote down in his ledger, is basically this:
Wright's apple pie
peel, core, and slice across enough apples to make a dome in the pie tin, and set aside.
In a saucepan put sufficient water to cover them, an equal amount of sugar, a sliced lemon, a tablespoonful of apricot preserve or jam, a pinch each of clove and nutmeg, and a large bay leaf.
Let this boil gently for twenty minutes, then strain.
Poach the apples in this syrup for twelve minutes, drain them, and cool.
Set the apples in the pastry-lined tin, spread over them three tablespoonfuls of softened butter, with as much brown sugar, a sprinkling of nutmeg, and a fresh bay leaf, then lay on a cover of pastry, and gild it with beaten yolk of egg.
Those who have never traveled the width and length of this land cannot conceive, on the basis of textbook description alone, the overwhelming space and variety of this country held together under one government.
The miracle of democratic America comes home to one most strongly only when one has seen the endless Great Plains of the Midwest;
the sky-reaching peaks of the Northwest mountains;
the smoke-filled, art-filled, drama-filled life of the great cities of the East;
the lush and historic charm of the South.
Now, to add to the already unbelievable extremes found in one nation, we have the two new states of Hawaii and Alaska.
To hope to cover just one region of this land and to enjoy all of its sights and events and, of course, to bring back pictures of your experiences, requires advance planning.
For this reason, U.S. Camera has prepared this special U.S.A. vacation feature.
We divided the country into five regions plus Hawaii and Alaska and in each is included a general description of the area plus specific recommendations of places and events to cover.
Any special photographic requirements are also given.
Use this section to plan now to make the most of your vacation in photogenic America.
The Northeast
birthplace of the nation, the Northeast offers historic battlefields;
lovely old villages and a rugged seashore among its many worthwhile sights.
The rolling farms of Maryland, the peerless metropolis of New York City, the verdant mountains of Vermont can all be included in your Northeast vacation.
By automobile from New York, for example, you can take a one or two-day tour to Annapolis, Maryland to see the colonial homes and the U.S. Naval Academy (where you can shoot the dress parade on Wednesdays);
to Washington, D.C., for an eye-filling tour of the city;
or to Lancaster, Pa., the center of the Pennsylvania Dutch country;
Philadelphia with its historic buildings and nearby Valley Forge;
to West Point, N.Y., the famous military academy in a beautiful setting on the Hudson River.
New England deserves as much of your vacation time as you can afford with such areas as Cape Cod providing wonderful beaches, artists' colonies and quaint townships.
From here you can easily include a side trip to the old whaling port of Nantucket, Massachusetts, which looks just as it must have two centuries ago.
At Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, you'll find a completely-restored New England town.
North to Acadia National Park, Maine, with views of a rockbound coast and dark, magnificent forests.
One of the most exciting ways to end a Northeast vacation would be with a week in New York City.
Return through New England, stopping for a visit to Lake Champlain where you can take a boat ride and go to Ethan Allen Park.
There you'll witness a view which includes the Adirondack Mts. and the Winooski River.
Now you're ready for a whirlwind sightseeing tour of America's most exciting city.
The skyline, the bridges, Broadway, and the Staten Island ferry are only a few of the spots to put on your must list for New York City.
Photographing in the Northeast
Some tips for shooting in Northeastern locales: In New York City don't miss coverage of the United Nations.
These striking, modernistic buildings on the East River are open to the public and every weekday guided tours are available.
Pictures can be taken in the public areas and when on tours.
However, the use of tripods is not allowed.
Photos of Conference Rooms and the General Assembly Hall can be made when these rooms are not being used for meetings.
Flash is allowed, subject to above restrictions.
Around New England, you'll no doubt want a color shot of one of the picturesque lighthouses.
Be careful here not to overexpose this subject since they are extremely bright and light-reflecting.
In color, 1/50th of a second between Af and Af will do for bright, frontal sunlight.
The South
the southern United States, extending from Florida in the east to Texas in the west, still maintains its unique flavor of gracious living and historical elegance.
It encompasses in its expanse areas where the natural beauty encourages a vacation of quiet contemplation, on the one hand, to places where entertainment and spectacles of all sorts have been provided for the tourist with camera.
Of special interest this anniversary year of the war between the states are the many Civil War battlefields where, likely as not, you'll catch some memorial re-enactments.
Among the locales to visit are Shiloh, Tennessee;
Lookout Mountain, Tennessee;
Vicksburg, Mississippi;
Richmond, Virginia;
Petersburg, Virginia, and Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Florida provides tropical scenes unequalled in the United States.
At Cypress Gardens special bleachers are set up for photographers at water-ski shows and lovely models pose for pictures in garden settings.
Silver Springs features glass-bottom boat rides and in Everglades National Park there are opportunities to photograph rare wildlife.
Miami Beach and surroundings feature fabulous hotel row, palm-studded beaches plus the Miami Seaquarium and Parrot Jungle.
One of the most delightful spots in a southern tour is the city of New Orleans.
The famous old French and Spanish buildings with their elaborate wrought iron balconies and the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter present an Old World scene.
For restoration of early American life the places to visit are Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, Virginia.
Another Virginia sight and a photographic adventure are the Luray Caverns, lit by photofloodlights.
The great state of Texas offers metropolitan attractions such as the Dallas Fair Park with its art and natural history museums.
In contrast are the vast open stretches of ranch country and oil wells.
In San Antonio visit the famous Alamo and photograph 18th Century Spanish buildings and churches.
The Great Smoky Mountains is another area of the South well worth a visit.
Along the 127-mile route through Great Smoky Mountains National Park you can photograph the breath-taking peaks, gorges and valleys which come into view at every turn.
Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is the center of this area.
Another scenic spot in Tennessee is Chattanooga where the Rock City Gardens are not to be missed.
Beautiful homes and gardens are trademarks of the South and cities particularly noted for them are Charleston, S.C., Natchez, Miss., and Savannah, Ga..
At Charlottesville, Va., shoot Monticello and the beautiful buildings of the University.
Picturing the south
Foliage is the outstanding photo subject in many of the Southern locales mentioned above and some specific tips on how and where to shoot it are in order.
For example, the Chamber of Commerce of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, sponsors special camera tours into the Great Smoky Mountains to get pictures of the profusion of wild flowers flourishing in these wooded regions.
Exposure problems may occur in these forest areas where uneven lighting results from shafts of sunlight filtering through the overhead branches.
Best solution is to find an area that is predominantly sunlight or shade.
In any instance, you should determine the exposure according to the type of light which falls on most of the subject area.
Try some closeups on Southern blossoms to provide a welcome contrast with the many long-view scenics you'll be making.
For shooting the interiors of the famous ante-bellum Southern mansions make sure your equipment includes a tripod.
Enough daylight is usually available from the windows, but if you have synchronized flash--use it.
For some unusual photographic subjects, if your vacation takes you nearby, try these events: the 600-mile auto race in Charlotte, N.C., on May 27;
the Florida Folk Festival, White Springs, May 5-7;
Singing On The Mountain in Linville, North Carolina, on June 25.
Peak action photography is your goal at Miami's Seaquarium and the Cypress Gardens waterskiing events.
The Midwest
A pleasant start to your midwestern vacation is a few days spent in cosmopolitan Chicago.
Lake Michigan offers swimming and pictures which combine cityscapes with beaches.
A visit to Chicago's museums and a stroll around broad Michigan Avenue will unfold many photogenic subjects to the alert photographer.
Wisconsin Dells, where fantastically scenic rocks carved by the Wisconsin River are overgrown with fern and other foliage, rates a stopover when traveling from Chicago.
The farmlands forming the heart of America stretch out across the Midwest from Chicago.
In North Dakota the strangely beautiful Badlands will challenge you to translate its wonder on to film.
While here, visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park for its spectacular scenery.
Another spot with an image-provoking name is the Black Hills where you can visit the old frontier mining town of Deadwood.
The Black Hills Passion Play is produced every summer and is a pageant worth seeing and shooting.
Of course, while in this vicinity you won't want to miss a visit to Mount Rushmore National Memorial where on the side of a mountain are the famous sculptures of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.
In Missouri (which we are including in our general Midwest region) you can glance into Mark Twain's birthplace at Hannibal, see the landmarks of his life and writings and visualize where Huck Finn hatched his boyish mischief.
Similarly in Illinois there is Lincoln country to be seen--his tomb and other landmarks.
Minnesota, fabled land of waters, is in itself, ideal vacationland, having within its borders 10,000 lakes!
Itasca State Park, where the Mississippi River begins, is one of the outstanding tourist spots in Minnesota.
Mementoes of the Old West recall the days of Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, Nebraska, where present-day cowboys add a colorful human interest note to your vacation shooting.
Of current interest is Abilene, Kansas, the birthplace of ex-President Eisenhower.
There's a museum here and also Old Abilene Town, a reconstruction of the cattle boomtown of the 70's and 80's.
For a resort area, Mackinack Island, Michigan, is the place to visit.
It truly relives another age for the inhabitants use carriages rather than autos and old British and French forts are left intact for tourists to visit and record.
Pictures of the Midwest
Night scenes will add an exciting touch to your vacation travelogue and what better place to take them then along Chicago's Lake Shore Drive?
Just after sunset is a good time to record the city lights in color since you get a fill-in light from the sky.
Another memo for sightseers: bring your camera along to museums.
Photos of historic dioramas of the area you visit will add depth and background to your vacation photo story.
Again, be sure your tripod is handy for those sometimes-necessary time exposures.
Special events and their dates which will make interesting shooting in the Midwest area, include the following:
A re-enactment of the Battle of Lexington, May 18th at Lexington, Missouri;
the world-renowned 500-mile auto race at Indianapolis, Indiana, plus a festival from May 27-30;
Song Of Hiawatha, in Elgin, Illinois, from June 20 to 24th.
Michigan offers the lovely Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan, May 12-14;
the USGA Open in Birmingham from June 15-17;
and the International Freedom Festival in Detroit, June 29 thru July 4.
For early vacationers there's the fun-filled Fishing Derby in Hot Springs, Arkansas, April 19-23, and the Arkansas Band Festival in Hot Springs, April 20-22.
The West
A western vacation is practically synonymous with a visit to at least one of the magnificent national parks in this area.
A tour of several of them is possible in a two-week vacation while a stay at just one of these natural beauty spots can be of equal reward.
In California is located one of the most popular of the national parks--Yosemite.
Among its most spectacular features are its falls, the highest being Upper Yosemite which drops 2,425 feet.
The Sequoia Grove presents another unique aspect of Yosemite, for these ancient giant trees are a sight never to be forgotten.
In the Utah area are Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.
Fantastic colors are to be seen in the fanciful formations of eroded rock which loom out of the semiarid country in both parks.
Colorado's Grand Canyon, probably the most famous landmark of the United States, can be the highpoint of your Western vacation.
Built upon seven hills, Istanbul, like Rome, is one of the most ancient cities in the world, filled with splendor and contrast.
It is an exotic place, so different from the ordinary that the casual tourist is likely to see at first only the contrast and the ugliness of narrow streets lined with haphazard houses.
At the moment, many of these are being pulled down.
Whole blocks are disappearing and more are scheduled to vanish to make room for wide boulevards that will show off its treasures to better advantage--the great domes and graceful spires of its mosques, the panorama of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn.
Even when they are finished, however, the contrast will remain, for Istanbul is the only city in the world that is built upon two continents.
For almost 3,000 years Europe and Asia have rubbed shoulders in its streets.
Founded in the Ninth Century B.C. it was called Byzantium 200 years later when Byzas, ruler of the Megarians, expanded the settlement and named it after himself.
About a thousand years after that, when the Roman Empire was divided, it became capital of the Eastern section.
On May 11,330, A.D., its name was changed again, this time to Constantinople after its emperor, Constantine.
In 1453 when the last vestige of ancient Roman power fell to the Turks, the city officially shifted religions--although the Patriarch, or Pope, of the Orthodox Church continued to live there, and still does--and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
When that was broken up after the First World War, its name was changed once more.
Rich in Christian and Moslem art, Istanbul is today a fascinating museum of East and West that recently became a seaside resort as well with the development of new beaches on the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara only a short distance from the center of town.
Easy to get to, and becoming more popular every year, it is only fourteen hours from New York by Pan American World Airways jet, four hours from Rome.
Start of tour
Most of the sights lie in the old section across the Golden Horn from the modern hotels.
I started my tour of them at the Turkish Government Tourist Office, next to Pan American's office on the left as you enter the driveway that leads to the Hilton Hotel.
From there I turned left along Cumhuriyet Cadesi past more hotels and a park on the left, Republic Gardens, and came in a few moments to Taksim Square, one of the hubs of the city, with the Monument of the Republic, erected in 1928, in its center.
Directly across from the Gardens I found a bus stop sign for T 4 and rode it down to the Bosphorus, with the sports center on my left just before I reached the water and the entrance to Dolmabahce Palace immediately after that.
There the bus turned right along the Bosphorus, past ocean liners at anchor, to Galata Bridge over the entrance to the Golden Horn, a brown sweep of water that empties into the Bosphorus.
Across the bridge on the left I saw St. Sophia with its sturdy brown minarets and to the right of them the slenderer spires of the Blue Mosque.
On the other side of the Golden Horn I rode through Eminonu Square, with Yeni Cami, or the New Mosque, which dates from the Seventeenth Century, just across from the entrance to the bridge.
Passing it, the bus climbed a hill, with the covered spice bazaar on the right and Pandelli's, a famous and excellent restaurant, above it.
At the top of the hill the buildings on the left gave way to a park.
I got off there, crossed the street, walked ahead with St. Sophia on my left, the Blue Mosque on my right, and in a moment came to the entrance of St. Sophia.
Erected on the site of pagan temples and three previous St. Sophias, the first of which was begun by Constantine, this fourth church was started by Justinian in 532 and completed twenty years later.
On his first trip to the finished structure he boasted that he had built a temple grander than Solomon's in Jerusalem.
A few years later the dome fell in.
Nevertheless, it remained one of the most splendid churches of the Eastern Empire, where the Byzantine Emperors were crowned.
After the Turks conquered the city in 1453 they converted it to a mosque, adding the stubby minarets.
In the second half of the Sixteenth Century, Sinan, the great architect who is the Michelangelo of the East, designed the massive buttresses that now help support the dome.
With the birth of the Turkish Republic after the First World War, St. Sophia became a museum, and the ancient mosaics, which were plastered over by the Moslems, whose religion forbids pictures in holy places, have been restored.
Inside over the first door I saw one of these, which shows Constantine offering the city to the Virgin Mary and Justinian offering the temple.
On the columns around the immense dome are round plaques with Arabic writing.
The eight green columns, I learned, came from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the others, red, from the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis.
Beneath the dome I saw the spot where the Byzantine Emperors were crowned, a bit of floor protected now by a wooden fence.
Behind this is a minber or Moslem pulpit and near it a raised platform with golden grillwork, where the emperors and, after them, the sultans, sat.
Directly opposite is the emperor's door, through which they entered the building.
Outside St. Sophia I walked through the flower garden in front of it, with the Blue Mosque ahead on my left.
Across the street on my right I saw the Hippodrome, now a park.
It was laid out in 196 for chariot races and other public games.
Statues and other monuments that stood there were stolen, mostly by the waves of Crusaders.
This one was set up here in 390 A.D. on a pedestal, the faces of which are carved with statues of the emperor and his family watching games in the Hippodrome, done so realistically that the obelisk itself is included in them.
Beyond it I noted a small green column, about twelve feet below the present ground level--the Serpentine Column, three entwined serpents, which once stood at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece.
Near the end of the Hippodrome I came upon the Built Column, a truncated obelisk of blocks, all that remains of a monument that once rivalled the Colossus of Rhodes.
Magnificent Mosque
Retracing my steps to the Mosque of Sultan Ahmet, only one with six minarets, I entered the courtyard, with a gallery supported by pointed arches running around it and a fountain in the middle.
One of the most beautiful buildings in Istanbul, it was constructed in the early years of the Seventeenth Century, with a huge central dome, two half domes that seem to cascade down from it, and smaller full domes around the gallery.
The round minarets, tall and graceful, rise from rectangular bases and have three platforms from which the muezzin can chant his call to prayer.
Inside, the walls are covered with blue and white tile, the floor with red and cream carpets.
Back at the Kaiser's Fountain, I walked left to the streetcar stop and rode up the hill--any car will do--past the Column of Constantine, also known as the Burnt Column, at the top on my right.
It stands in the middle of what was once the Forum of Constantine, who brought it from Rome.
I stayed on the car for a few minutes until, turning right, it entered a huge square, Bayezit, with the Bayezit Mosque on the right and the gate to the university just beyond it.
There I got off, crossed the square, and on the side directly opposite the gate found a good restaurant, hard to come by in this part of the city.
Called the Marmara Gazinosu, it is on the third floor, with signs pointing the way there, and has a terrace overlooking the Sea of Marmara.
After lunch, in the arcade on my left just before reaching the street I found a pastry shop that sells some of the best baklava--a sweet, flaky cake--in Istanbul.
It's a great favorite of the university students, and I joined them there for dessert.
Taking the streetcar back to Kaiser's Fountain, I walked ahead, then left down the street opposite St. Sophia and just beyond the corner came to a small, one-story building with a red-tile roof, which is the entrance to the Sunken Palace.
Actually an underground cistern, its roof supported by rows and rows of pillars, it was built by Justinian in the Sixth Century to supply the palace with water.
There is still water in it.
I found it fairly depressing and emerged almost immediately.
Outside I walked past the entrance to St. Sophia, turned left at the end of it, and continued toward a gate in the wall ahead.
Just before reaching it I came to a grey and brown stone building that looks somewhat like an Oriental pagoda, with Arabic lettering in gold and colored tile decorations--the Fountain of Sultan Ahmet.
Passing through the gate, with towers on either side once used as prisons, I entered a huge square surrounded by buildings, and on the wall to my right found a general plan of the grounds, with explanations in English for each building.
There are a good many of them.
At one time about 10,000 people lived there.
Following arrowed signs, I veered right toward the former kitchens, complete with chimneys, which now house one of the world's greatest collections of Chinese porcelain and a fabulous array of silver dinner services.
Next to it is a copper section, with cooking utensils and a figure of the chief cook in an elaborate, floor-length robe.
In the court once more, I went right toward the Reception House, a long one-story building with a deep portico.
Going through a door into another small court, I had the Throne Room directly in front.
They are made of gold and covered with emeralds, pearls and other jewels.
(Do start fires one or two hours ahead of time to obtain a lasting bed of glowing coals.
Keep ashes from one barbecue to the next to sprinkle over coals if they are too hot, and to stop flames that arise from melting grease.
Do line barbecue fire bowl with heavy foil to reflect heat.
Don't forget to buy a plastic pastry brush for basting with sauces.
Clean it meticulously in boiling water and detergent, rinse thoroughly.
Do build a wall of glowing coals six to eight inches in front of meat that is barbecued on an electric spit.
Make use of the back of the barbecue or of the hood for heating vegetables, sauces and such.
Don't fail to shorten cooking time by the use of aluminum foil cut slightly larger than the surface of steaks and chops.
Sear on both sides then cover meat loosely with heat reflecting foil for juiciest results.
Do avoid puncturing or cutting into meats to test them.
If doubtful about a steak, boldly cut it in half.
If necessary to replace both halves on grill, sear cuts and allot extra time.
For roasts, insert meat thermometer diagonally so it does not rest on bone.
Also make sure thermometer does not touch the revolving spit or hit the coals.
Don't practice a new recipe on guests.
Have a test-run on the family first, to be sure timing and seasoning are right.
Do buy meat the day or the day before you intend to cook it.
Keep it no longer than 36 hours before cooking, and keep it in the coldest (but non-freezing) compartment of the refrigerator.
Don't plan meals that are too complicated.
Limit yourself to good meat and drink, with bread, salad, corn or potatoes as accessories.
Keep the desserts simple;
fruit does nicely.
Do whatever kitchen work, such as fixing a salad, preparing garlic bread, or making a marinade sauce, ahead of time.
When you start the outdoor performance, you can stay outdoors without a dozen running trips into the kitchen.
(This goes for getting a drink tray ready, and for having a big cooler full of ice on hand long before the party begins.
Don't think you have to start with the most expensive equipment in the world.
The simplest grill (pan type) or inexpensive hibachi can make you a chef.
You need tongs to handle meat;
long forks for turning potatoes and corn;
heavy foil on hand at all times.
And lots of hot pads!
Do keep the grill high enough above the fire so that when fat from meat drips down and flares up, flames cannot reach the meat.
Don't forget to have a supply of Melamine plates, bowls, cups, saucers, and platters for outdoor use.
Made of the world's toughest unbreakable plastic, Melamine dinnerware comes in almost 400 different patterns and dozens of colors.
There is even one set that has barbecue written on it.
Do without fancy tablecloths.
It's cheaper to buy Wall-Tex and cover your outdoor table.
Or buy half a dozen lengths of oilcloth and change patterns for different kinds of barbecues.
Oilcloth only costs about 79-cents a yard for the very best.
Tougher than plastic, it wears well.
Don't forget--when you take to the hills or the beach--that your cooler, which you might have used for wine- or beer-cooling on your terrace or back yard, is indispensable for carrying liquid refreshments.
There are many varieties of coolers and they serve many purposes.
With them, you can carry steaks and hamburgers at refrigerator temperatures, and also get your frozen food for stews and chowders, to the marina or picnic, in A-1 condition.
Do use paper napkins;
lots of them.
Except when you prepare do it yourself shish kebob or a lobster roast.
Then you'll want terry cloth towels for mopping up.
Don't think barbecue cooking is just sometimes, or seasonal.
It's year-round, and everywhere.
In the winter, hibachi in the kitchen or grill over the logs of the fireplace.
Even use your portable electric or gas grill in the winter, inside.
Summertime supper, outside, is a natural.
You'll find, once your technique is perfected, that you can cook on a boat with a simple Bernz-O-Matic.
Do buy all-purpose mugs or cups.
Get copper or earthenware mugs that keep beer chilled or soup hot.
Be sure to get a few more than you need.
You will discover you keep the sauce for basting meat in one, use six for drinks, serve soup or coffee in another half-dozen--and need one more to mix the salad dressing.
Don't forget the joys of a meal on the road.
If you travel over the vast U.S.A. you will, no doubt, discover that feeding is an expensive business.
Decide in the beginning to put your barbecue equipment to work.
You can take it with you.
A picnic bag, a grill, a cooler for soft drinks and beer, and for frozen convenience foods.
Eat in a restaurant or motel mornings and evenings;
or just evenings.
You need a little stove, a coffee pot and a stew pot;
maybe a skillet, a basket of essentials like salt, pepper, plates, forks, knives and a can opener.
As you pull out of your motel or national park home-for-the-night, visit a market and buy just what you need for the next meal.
For 25-cents load up the cooler with ice and keep cool pop in the car.
Simple meat dishes
spice is a fact of life in the U.S.A..
You only have to think of franks and sausages to know what I mean.
Go a step further and list all the wonderful barbecue basics--cervelat, salami, Vienna sausages, mettwurst, bratwurst, bockwurst, knackwurst, Bologna, pepperoni, blutwurst--and you have a long list of easy specialties.
Threaded on a skewer with new boiled potatoes, a bit of green pepper, a fresh white mushroom--any one of these spiced meats makes a man a cook, and a meal a feast.
Sure, for the most of us, a frankfurter is the favorite.
A story goes that a certain Herr Feuchtwanger of St. Louis, around 1883 served his sausages (grilled) and mustard to his fancy customers.
So that his customers should not soil their hands, Feuchtwanger issued white gloves.
Discovery that the gloves frequently left with the customers made the wise peddler of spiced sausage-meat come upon a compromise.
He had a bakery make buns sized to fit his franks.
Years later, franks-in-buns were accepted as the first to go at the New York Polo Grounds.
The nation's number one picnic treat is the skinless frankfurter--toasted over a bonfire on the beach or, more sedately, charcoal broiled on a portable grill.
Either way it's hard to beat in flavor as well as ease of preparation.
To make the picnic frank come close to perfection, remember these tips:
-- Score each frankfurter in four or five places about a third of the way through.
This permits the juices to permeate the meat during cooking.
-- Relishes are as vital to the success of the frank as are buns.
Bring along the conventional ones--catsup, pickle relish, mustard, mayonnaise--plus a few extras, such as tangy barbecue sauce, chive cream cheese, or horse-radish for the brave ones in the crowd.
-- Using a portable grill permits you to toast the buns, too.
Watch closely while browning them, as it doesn't take long.
-- An unusual flavor can be achieved by marinating the franks in French dressing or a mixture of honey, lemon juice and brown sugar prior to the picnic.
Broil or toast as usual.
Contrary to popular opinion, a la mode doesn't mean with ice cream--it just means, in the latest style.
Here are a couple of the latest, highly styled ways to fix skinless franks in your own back yard!
You'll have the neighbor's eyes popping as well as their mouths watering!
Jiffy barbecues
1 cup chili sauce 1/3 cup water 1 tablespoon barbecue sauce 2 teaspoons prepared mustard 1/2 pound chipped, spiced ham 6 sandwich buns, heated
Combine first 4 ingredients in saucepan;
heat thoroughly.
Add ham;
heat.
Serve on buns.
Makes 6 barbecues.
Hot hibachi franks
You'll never hear sayonara, the Japanese word for goodbye, from your guests when you give a hibachi party.
The fun of toasting their own sausages over the small Oriental charcoal burners and dipping them in tasty sauces will keep your group busy--try it and see!
Canned cocktail frankfurters
sweet-sour sauce
1 large onion, chopped fine 2 tablespoons salad oil 1 8-oz. can crushed pineapple and 1/2 cup of the juice 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 tablespoon prepared mustard 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce pineapple chunks
Mustard cream
2 tablespoons dry mustard Water 1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped Salt Paprika
Spear canned cocktail franks with picks.
Also spear pineapple chunks and place in separate bowl.
Make sauces ahead.
Sweet-sour sauce can be kept warm over a second hibachi or chafing dish while charcoal in broiler is reaching glowing coal stage.
Mustard cream, used as alternate dip for franks and pineapple tidbits, tastes best when served at room temperature.
For sweet-sour sauce, cook onion in oil until soft.
Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.
Simmer about 10 minutes, and keep warm for serving.
To prepare mustard cream, blend mustard with enough water to make a thin paste.
Fold into whipped cream and add a dash of salt and sprinkling of paprika.
Trim-your-own-franks
A back-yard picnic with grilled frankfurters and a selection of frankfurter trimmings is a fine way to entertain guests this summer.
Be sure to have plenty of frankfurters and buns on hand.
Some tasty frank toppings are chili con carne, Coney Island sauce and savory sauerkraut.
Serve the chili and kraut hot with the franks.
Here are suggestions for the frankfurter trimmings: 1.
Chili con carne: use canned chili con carne.
Coney Island sauce: finely chop several onions and add enough catsup to moisten well;
add prepared mustard to suit taste.
Savory sauerkraut: add several tablespoons of brown sugar to a can of sauerkraut.
Add a few caraway seeds, too, if you'd like.
Barbecued frankfurters
1/2 cup minced celery 1/4 cup minced onion 1/2 cup tomato ketchup 1/2 cup water 1/4 cup vinegar 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon prepared mustard 1/2 teaspoon salt 8 frankfurters
Combine first 9 ingredients in skillet.
Simmer 15 minutes.
Prick frankfurters with fork;
place in sauce.
Cover;
simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until sauce is of desired consistency.
Serve in frankfurter buns or as a meat dish.
Makes 8 sandwiches or 4 servings.
Pretend ham
Make criss-cross gashes on one side of skinless frankfurters.
Stick 4 or 5 cloves in each frank, ham fashion.
Make a paste of brown sugar and mustard and spread lightly over scored surface.
If desired, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon drained crushed pineapple.
Place on rectangle of foil and pinch edges together tightly.
Roast on grill over coals 15-20 minutes.
Frankfurter twists
Blend 2 cups biscuit mix with 2/3 cup milk to make a soft dough.
Knead on lightly floured board and roll out to form a Af-inch rectangle.
Spread dough with a mixture of 3 tablespoons chili sauce, 1 teaspoon horse-radish and 2 teaspoons mustard.
Cut dough carefully into 12 strips, about 3/4 inch by a foot long.
Twist one strip diagonally around each skinless frankfurter, pinching dough at ends to seal it.
Brush frankfurter twists with about 1/2 cup melted butter and toast slowly over glowing coals until dough is golden brown.
Serves 12.
Hamburger patties with nuts
1 pound ground beef 2 teaspoons grated onion Dash of pepper 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/4 cup ice cold bourbon
Combine ingredients;
form into patties and barbecue 5 minutes on each side.
Note:
Directions are written for those who have had previous experience in making pottery.
Instructions for preparing clay, drying, glazing and firing are not given.
Equipment:
Basic pottery studio equipment.
Wooden butter molds and cookie presses.
Materials:
Ceramic modeling clay: red, white or buff.
Stoneware clay for tiles.
Glazes, one-stroke ceramic colors, stains, cones as indicated in the individual instructions.
General directions:
Use well-wedged clay, free of air bubbles and pliable enough to bend without cracking.
Clean wooden molds and presses thoroughly;
they must be free of oil, wax and dust.
Pressing designs:
The size of wooden mold will determine the amount of clay needed.
Roll clay to thickness indicated in individual instructions.
Whenever possible, use the wooden mold as a pattern for cutting clay.
When mold has more than one design cavity, make individual paper patterns.
Place mold or paper pattern on rolled clay and cut clay by holding knife in vertical position (cut more pieces than required for project to make allowance for defects;
experiment with defects for decoration techniques of glazes and colors).
Place the cut clay piece loosely over the carved cavity design side of wooden mold.
To obtain clear impression of mold, press clay gently but firmly into mold cavity, starting at center and working to outer edges.
Trim excess clay away from outer edges.
Check thickness of clay and build up thin areas by moistening surface with a little water and adding small pieces of clay.
Be sure to press the additional clay firmly into place without locking in air bubbles.
Allow project to stand for about five minutes (if wooden press mold is a good antique, do not leave clay in too long as the dampness may cause mold to crack).
To release clay from mold, place hands in a cupped position around project;
gently lift the edge on far side, then continue to release edge completely around mold.
Slight tapping on the underside of mold will help release the clay, but too much agitation will cause the clay to become soft and will interfere with removal of clay from mold.
Place a piece of plaster wall board or plaster bat on clay and reverse bat, clay and mold in one action.
This will prevent the clay from twisting or bending, causing warping when fired.
Place project on table and carefully lift the mold off.
Study surface of clay for defects or desired corrections.
If clay is slightly out of shape, square straight sides with guide sticks or rulers pressed against opposite sides, or smooth round pieces with damp fingers.
If the background of design is too smooth, or you wish to create a wood-grained effect, it may be added at this time with a dull tool such as the handle of a fine paintbrush.
Make slight, smooth grooves rather than cuts for the texture (cuts could cause air pockets under the glaze creating pinholes or craters in the glaze during firing).
Leave the clay on plaster board to dry slowly, covered lightly with a loose piece of plastic or cloth to prevent warping.
Rectangular tiles
(opposite page, right top): Stoneware clay was used.
Clay was rolled to 1/4thickness.
Back of clay scored or roughened for proper gripping surface.
No bisque firing.
Glazed with two coats of Creek-Turn white stoneware glaze (no glaze on sides or bottom).
Decorated on unfired glaze with one coat of one-stroke ceramic colors;
raised details of designs were colored in shades of yellow-green, blue-green, brown and pink.
Tiles were fired once to cone 05.
Round plaque
(opposite page, bottom): White clay was used, rolled to 1/4thickness.
Bisque fired to cone 05.
Stained with Jacquelyn's ceramic unfired stain, polished, following manufacturer's directions.
Opaque cantaloupe and transparent wood brown were used.
No further firing.
Paperweight
(opposite page, top left): Red clay was used, rolled 1/2thick.
Mold was used as pattern and clay cut by holding knife at about 45-degree angle, to form an undercut, making base smaller than the pattern top.
While clay is still pressed in mold, press three equally spaced holes 1/4deep, using pencil eraser, in bottom of clay to allow for proper drying and firing.
Paperweight may be personalized on back while clay is leather hard.
Bisque fired to cone 05.
Unglazed.
Jars with lids
(opposite page, top left): Remove wooden design head from bowl of butter mold.
Fill small hole in bowl with clay.
Make paper patterns for sections of jar and lid (see Fig. 1, opposite page).
Measurements for rectangular pattern piece A are obtained by measuring inside circumference and depth of butter mold bowl.
Pattern for circular base piece B is diameter of Aj.
Use wooden design head of mold for pattern C;
pattern D for lid fits over top diameter of Aj.
Pattern for inner lid piece E fits inside Aj.
Jars are assembled in bowl of butter mold.
Use white or buff clay, rolled to 3/16thickness.
Place patterns on rolled clay and cut around them with knife in vertical position.
Place clay pieces on wall board.
To assemble jar, put paper pattern B for base in bottom of mold and clay disk B on top.
Line sides of mold with paper pattern Aj.
Bevel and score ends of clay piece A so that they overlap about 1/2and make even thickness.
Place clay piece A inside;
use slip to join overlapped ends together.
Join B to bottom of A, scoring and reinforcing with clay coil.
Trim excess clay from around lip of mold and set aside while assembling lid.
To assemble lid, press clay piece C in cavity of wooden design head.
Press clay into mold as instructed in General Directions.
Score plain side of C and leave in mold.
Score one side of disk D, join to C;
score other side of D and one side of disk E and join as before.
While assembled lid is still on design head, gently but firmly press it on plaster board.
If design head has a deep cavity, clay lid will be quite thick at this point;
press eraser of pencil gently 1/4deep into deep clay to allow vent for proper drying and firing.
Check fit of lid on jar;
if inner lid is too big, trim to fit, allowing room for thickness of glaze.
Remove lid from head of mold.
Remove jar from mold.
Place jar on plaster board with lid in place to dry slowly.
Bisque fire to cone 08 with lid on jar.
For an antique effect on jars, brush Creek-Turn brown toner on bisque ware and sponge it off.
Glaze with two coats of clear or transparent matt glaze.
The large jar was brushed with Creek-Turn green toner and sponged off.
Glaze with two coats of matt glazes in turquoise with touches of blossom pink on lid.
When dry they were fired to cone 06-05.
Little folks set:
(Made from modern wooden molds Af.
) Roll white clay to 3/16thickness.
Salt and pepper:
Use mold to cut four side pieces.
For top and bottom pieces, use short end of mold as measurement guide.
Press the side pieces of clay into cavity of mold.
Trim excess clay from rim of mold.
Cut beveled edge on the long sides of clay at a 45-degree angle to miter corners.
Score beveled edges and remove pieces from mold;
place design-side up on plaster board.
Make all four sides.
Cut clay top and base pieces;
place on plaster board.
Allow all pieces to become leather hard before constructing shaker.
To assemble:
Construct sides, bottom and top as for box, using slip on scored edges and coils of clay to reinforce seams.
Join the four sides together first, then add the base;
add top last.
Use water on finger to smooth seams and edges.
Turn shaker upside down.
Recess base slightly to allow room for stopper.
Cut hole in base for cork stopper.
Add holes in top, forming S for salt and P for pepper.
Set aside to dry thoroughly.
Sugar and creamer:
Cut a strip of clay for sides long enough and wide enough for three impressions of mold design.
Press clay into cavity of one mold three times;
bevel overlapping ends for splice joint, score beveled edges.
Form clay strip into a cylinder;
use slip to join scored ends.
Place cylinder on a disk of clay slightly larger than cylinder.
Score bottom edge of cylinder and join to disk with slip.
Trim away excess clay;
reinforce seam with a coil of clay.
This will form the sugar bowl.
Make creamer the same.
Handle for creamer is a strip of clay 1/2wide and 3-1/2long.
To add handle, place a wooden dowel against the inside wall of creamer.
Score outside of container where handle ends will be joined.
Bend handle;
press scored handle ends firmly in place using dowel to reinforce container while pressing;
use slip to join.
To form spout, between two designs, dampen area slightly and gently push clay outward.
Make lid for sugar bowl the same as jar lids, omitting design disk.
Cut a notch in lid for spoon handle if desired.
Set aside to dry with lid on sugar bowl.
Vases:
Make same as salt and pepper shakers, leaving off top pieces.
Vases may be made into candles by filling with melted wax and a wick.
Napkin holder:
Cut a piece of clay for base and two for sides each about Af (long enough for three impressions of mold).
Press the two sides into cavity of one mold three times.
Put cut pieces on plaster board to dry to firm leather-hard state.
Score side edges of base;
join sides and base with slip and reinforce with coil.
A cardboard pattern cut to fit inside holder will help to prevent warping.
Place pattern inside holder;
use three strips of clay to hold in place (see Fig. 2, page 71).
Do not use wood as it will not shrink with the clay and would cause breakage.
Let all projects dry slowly for several days.
Clean greenware.
Bisque fire to cone 08.
Inside of pieces was glazed with three coats of Creek-Turn bottle green antique glaze.
Outside was finished with Creek-Turn brown toner brushed on and sponged off to give antique finish.
Fired to cone 06-05.
Changing colors
to change from one color yarn to another:
When changing from one color to another, whether working on right or wrong side, pick up the new strand from underneath dropped strand.
Photograph shows the wrong side of work with light strand being picked up under dark strand in position to be purled.
To measure work:
Spread article on flat surface to required width before measuring length at center.
Measuring armhole
to measure armhole:
Mark row on which first stitches have been bound off for armhole by drawing a contrasting colored thread through it.
Place work on a flat surface and smooth out.
Measure straight up from marked row.
See illustration.
To insert markers:
When directions read sl a marker on needle, put a small safety pin, paper clip, or commercial ring marker on needle.
In working, always slip marker from one needle to another.
To mark a row or stitch, tie contrasting thread around end of row or stitch to be marked.
Backstitching seam
to sew seams with backstitch:
Most seams are sewn with backstitch, especially on curved, slanted or loose edges.
Pin right sides of pieces together, keeping edges even and matching rows or patterns.
Thread matching yarn in tapestry needle.
Run end of yarn through several stitches along edge to secure;
backstitch pieces together close to edge.
Do not draw yarn too tight.
See illustration.
To sew in sleeves:
Place sleeve seam at center underarm and center of sleeve cap at shoulder seam.
Ease in any extra fullness evenly around.
Backstitch seam.
Weaving seam
to weave seams together:
Straight vertical edges, such as those at the back seam of a sock, can be woven together invisibly.
Thread matching yarn in tapestry needle.
Hold edges together, right side up.
Hotei is 23 feet long with an 8-1/2-foot beam and every inch a family boat.
Menfolk can ride in the forward cockpit where the helmsman has a clear view.
Youngsters can sleep or amuse themselves safely in the large cabin which has 5-foot 11-inch headroom, bunks for three, galley and marine toilet.
The gals can sun themselves in the roomy aft cockpit.
All are well distributed, not crowded together near the stern.
And with passenger weight shifted forward, Hotei levels off for speed under power of a Merc 800.
The 80-hp motor drives her at 25 mph with six aboard!
With only two aboard, Hotei does better than 27 mph--and she gives a comfortable ride at this speed even in a three-foot chop.
She also banks into a turn like a fine runabout--not digging in on the outside to throw passengers all over the boat like many a small cabin cruiser.
Nor is she a wet boat.
We've been out in five-foot waves and stayed dry.
A lot of thought went into storage space construction.
There's a large compartment in the forward cockpit for charts and other items.
The cabin has several shelves for small items and storage under the bunks for water skiis, life jackets, etc..
The aft cockpit has a Af storage bin over six feet long that doubles as a seat.
On each side of the motor well there's storage for battery, bumpers, line and spare props with six-gallon gas tanks below.
The well itself is designed to take two Merc 800's or 500's if you wish and there's room for a 25-gallon long-cruise gas tank below it.
Needless to say, you can't build Hotei in a couple of weeks.
Our building time was slightly over 400 hours--but the total cost for the hull with Fiberglas bottom, sink, head and hardware was under $800.
A comparable manufactured boat would cost close to $3,000.
Consider what you have to earn to be able to spend the $3,000 and your building time is well worth it.
A Gator trailer, Model 565, is used to transport the boat to the waterways.
This piece of equipment costs a little over $600 but it will save you that in mooring and hauling fees in a few years.
All framing in Hotei is one-inch mahogany which, in the dressed state you buy it, is about the 13/16-inch thickness specified in the drawings.
Therefore, the lumber is bought in planks and ripped to size for battens, etc., on a table saw.
Besides flathead bronze screws, silicon bronze Stronghold nails (made by Independent Nail & Packing Co., Bridgewater, Mass.) are used extensively in assembly and Weldwood resorcinol glue is used in all the joints.
Construction follows a thorough study of the drawings.
Start by laying out the six frames and the transom on a level floor.
Draw each outline in a different-color chalk, one on top of the other.
In this way you will be able to detect any obvious mistakes.
The transom frame is made first with the joints lapped, glued and fastened with one-inch, No. 12 Stronghold nails.
After notching it for the keelson, chines and battens, the half-inch plywood transom is secured to it with glue and the same type nails.
All frames are butted at the joints and 3/8-inch plywood gussets are glued and nailed on each side of each joint, again using the one-inch, No. 12 nails.
The frames are notched only for the keelson and the chines.
If notched for the battens, they would require more work, be weakened and limber holes would have to be bored so that bilge water could flow through.
Nowhere in the boat do the frames come in contact with the plywood planking.
The jig is erected after the frames and transom are complete.
This is an important step because any misalignment would cause progressively worse misalignment in the hull as you advance in construction.
Be sure all members are parallel, vertical and level as required.
After the frames and transom are set up on the jig and temporarily braced, a piece of three-inch-wide mahogany (only widths will be given since the 13/16-inch thickness is used throughout) is butted between frames one and two below the line of the keelson.
The frames are glued and screwed to this piece.
The joints are also reinforced on each side with small blocks set in resin-saturated Fiberglas cloth and nailed.
It is over this piece that the laminated stem and keelson are spliced.
The keelson, made of two three-inch widths, is next installed.
The first piece is glued and screwed to the frames and transom and the piece butted between frames one and two.
The second piece is in turn glued and screwed to the first.
Note, however, that it is six inches shorter at the forward end.
One-inch, No. 10 screws are used in both cases.
A stem jig is next cut to the proper shape and temporarily fastened to frame one.
The stem is laminated from four pieces.
Take two three-inch-wide pieces and rip them down the center of the thickness to make the four.
Then spread a generous amount of glue on the four pieces and bend them into place on the jig.
The first two pieces butt against the inner member of the keelson and are glued and screwed to the brace between the first two frames.
The second two pieces lap over the inner member of the keelson and butt against the outer member.
They're glued and screwed to the inner member of the keelson.
A number of C clamps hold the pieces together on the jig until the glue sets.
All bottom battens are two inches wide.
The side ones are a half-inch narrower.
The battens are carefully fastened in place after some necessary fairing on all frames.
Glue and 1-1/2-inch, No. 10 screws are used.
Placement is important because the rear seat, bunks and front jump seats rest on or are fastened to many of the side battens.
With the exception of two battens, all run to the stem where they are glued and screwed after careful beveling.
The chines go in the same way except that they are made of two pieces of two-inch wood for strength and easier bending.
Fairing is always a tedious job but the work can be cut down considerably with a Skill planer and a simple jig.
I clamped a 30-inch piece of aluminum to the base of the planer with a pair of Sure Grips.
The aluminum, flush against the battens, acted as a fairing stick and enabled me to plane the chines and keelson to the proper bevels easily.
If you don't own a planer and don't want to buy one, it's well worth renting.
The planking is five-ply, 3/8-inch-thick Weldwood Royal Marine plywood.
This can be obtained in 42-inch widths 24 feet long.
The 42-inch width leaves very little waste.
Four pieces are used.
Plank the sides first, using glue and one-inch, No. 12 Stronghold nails at all battens, the stem and the transom.
Another person inside with a weight against each batten will help in the fastening.
The best procedure is to have a few friends hold the planking in place while you mark it off.
Then trim the excess.
I used a Homemaster Routo-Jig made by Porter Cable for this job.
It's good for cutting all the planking because it cuts with a bit-like blade at high rpm and does not chatter the plywood like a saber saw.
When cut, the planking is clamped in place for a final and careful trimming.
Then it is marked on the inside where it comes in contact with the transom, frames, keelson and all the battens.
It may then be pre-drilled for the fastenings.
The next step is to remove it and spread glue where it has been marked at the contact points.
Then it is replaced and fastened.
The bottom planking is applied in the same manner.
After planking, the bottom gets a layer of Fiberglas.
The spray rails are first glued on the outside and fastened from the inside with screws.
Then the chines are rounded off and the bottom is rough-sanded in preparation.
Since the sides are also covered up to the spray rails, they are also rough-sanded in that area.
The cloth is laid on one half of the bottom at a time.
A 50-inch width is used on each side and it laps the keel line by about three inches.
Lay the cloth in place and trim it to size.
Then remove it and give the whole bottom a coat of resin.
When the resin has hardened, mix up another batch with a pigment added if you wish.
I used bright red, mixing the pigment in thoroughly before adding the hardener.
Using a cheap brush, coat one side of the bottom with the resin and then apply the cloth.
When the cloth is smooth, apply another coat of resin, spreading it with a paint roller.
Be sure it is well saturated and then allow it to harden.
When the whole bottom has hardened, use a disk sander to feather the edges of the cloth at the keel line and near the spray rail.
Then lay a three-inch-wide strip of cloth along the keel line from the transom to the point of the stem.
Before the resin has hardened, screw a one-inch mahogany keel strip along the centerline.
This protects the bottom in beaching.
Fiberglas materials are available from Glass Plastic Supply Co., 1605 W. Elizabeth Ave., Linden, N. J..
They will also supply literature on application.
The hull is now turned over (with the help of about seven friends) and placed in a level, well-braced position.
I set it on the Gator trailer.
I laid three layers of glass cloth on the inside of the stem, also installing a bow eye at this time.
For added strength, I also fastened a small block on each side of every frame and batten joint.
Again, these blocks were set in resin-saturated glass cloth and nailed.
After trimming off the excess on the frames and transom which was used to fasten them to the jig at a working height, the top of the side planking is installed.
This is made up of scraps left over from the sides and bottom.
These flaring parts really help to keep the boat dry.
When they're on, the top edges are planed even with the sheer batten.
The sides of the motor well run from the bottom battens to the top and from frame six to the transom, forming a real strong transom brace.
Note another piece of wood six inches wide is fastened to the transom between these pieces.
The decking is quarter-inch mahogany marine plywood.
All the flooring and the storage bin is half-inch exterior fir plywood.
Most floor battens are glued and screwed to the flooring.
The exception is where the flooring butts.
These battens are glued and screwed to the frames.
With all deck battens in place, the bilge is cleaned and painted up to the floor line.
Use one coat of Firzite and one coat of marine paint.
Bottoms of the floorboards are also painted and the flooring is then screwed in place.
After the decking is on, the cabin sides are installed.
They're followed by the front and rear bulkheads as illustrated.
The windshield glass is shatterproof and Plexiglas is used in the cabin.
Inside, bunks are framed up and installed as indicated.
A head is a handy thing to have and I installed one under a removable section of the port bunk.
The sink in the hinged panel above the bunk drains into the head and a five-gallon water tank is mounted on the bulkhead above the sink.
For padding the seats and bunks, I used Ensolite, Type Aj.
Lightweight, non-absorbent, fire resistant and dimensionally stable, it is easily bonded to the wood with contact cement.
Available in Af sheets, it costs about a dollar a square foot.
You can build this vacation cottage yourself.
It is a full scale, small, but efficient house that can become a year 'round retreat complete in every detail.
Because of the unique design by the architect Egils Hermanovski, you can build most of it in your own home workshop in your spare time.
Most of it is panelized and utilizes standard materials, and requires the use of only simple tools.
On the following pages and in the following issues we take you every step of the way to your vacation cottage, from choosing the proper site to applying the final trim.
In recognition of the growing trend for second homes, or vacation cottages, we have designed this one specifically with the family handyman in mind.
It is a big project, not to be taken lightly.
But each step has been broken down into easy stages, utilizing standard materials and simple tools, well within the capabilities of the handyman.
The theory
The idea behind our design is modular units, or panelization.
Everything possible has been scaled to standard sizes and measurements of materials.
Wall panels and structural timbers are standard as are windows and doors, making for a minimum of cutting.
We have developed an ingenious method of interlocking these so that you can make the major part of your house in your own workshop, panel by panel, according to plan.
Thus, when you have prepared your foundation and laid the floor, these can be trucked to the site and erected with a small crew of friends in a weekend.
The roof timbers are precut and the panels standard so that the house can be completely enclosed in a matter of three or four days.
Then you can do the finishing touches at your leisure.
A warning
Due to the fact that building codes and regulations vary so much throughout the country, the first thing to do is to find out what, if any, they are.
Close to a large city they might even specify the size of the nails used;
in a remote section there might be no restrictions at all.
This can usually be found out at the nearest town hall.
At the same time check the electrical, plumbing, and sanitary requirements, as well as possible zoning regulations.
Whether electricity and public water and sewers are available or not, check the local customs in the use of bottled or L-P gas (we give you alternatives later on).
Be sure that this information is reasonably official and not just an unfounded opinion.
If there are any major restrictions, they usually can be obtained in printed form.
Where a building permit is required, find out what you must present when applying for one.
In many cases, you must file a complete set of plans with the local building inspector.
These will be available at cost from our Plans Department.
The site
Some general things to look for in a site, if you haven't already bought one, are accessibility, water drainage, and orientation.
How are the roads, and how will they stand up?
Is there evidence of wash-outs on the property;
swampy areas or intermittent springs?
A visit in the early spring after a thaw will be very informative.
Note where the sun rises and sets, and ask which direction the prevailing winds and storms come from.
Will the view be something you can live with?
Don't worry too much about rocky or sloping terrain;
we will take up alternative foundations later on.
The materials
With this first issue we give you a list of the materials needed to build the basic (AjA version) and the expandable (AjB version).
This will be for the shell of the house only (roof, walls, and floor), and does not include the carport or balcony.
This will permit you to get a rough estimate of how much the materials for the shell will cost.
Bear in mind that this does not include interior panels for partitions, fancy flooring, appliances and fixtures, electrical wiring, and plumbing, all of which will be taken up in detail in later issues.
The wall panels are constructed of a framework of standard Af and Af of a good grade, free from structural faults.
They should be as straight as possible, as this will effect their ability to mesh properly when the walls are erected.
The outside surface of the solid units shall be of an exterior grade of panel board such as plywood, plastic coated panel board, high density particle board, asbestos-cement board, or any other product locally obtainable upon recommendation of your building supply dealer.
The inner panels do not have to be weatherproof, and the choice will depend on the quality of finish desired.
All panel board comes in standard Af foot size.
It is recommended that panels be both glued as well as nailed to the frame.
The fixed window panels with louvers should have a good grade of 1/8-inch double-strength glass set in a mastic glazing compound.
The louvers are constructed as shown in the detail, with a drop door for ventilation.
There are standard sliding glass windows in wood or aluminum frames for those panels requiring them.
The door panels are designed to accommodate standard doors which should be of exterior grade.
The filler panels for the gable ends are cut from full Af sheets as shown, leaving no wastage.
The battens covering the joints are of Af stock and are applied after the walls are erected.
All nails should be rustproof, and aluminum is highly recommended.
Note: If 1/2-inch panel board is used inside and out, or 5/8-inch one side and 3/8-inch the other, and 1/8-inch glass is used, stock lumber in Af, Af, and Af can be used in making the glass panels.
Other thicknesses may necessitate ripping a special size lumber for the glass trim.
In any case, there is no special milling or rabbeting required for the panels.
With modern techniques of woodworking and the multitude of cutting tools, fixtures, and attachments available, the drill press has become a basic home workshop tool.
There is often a means of locking the quill and, on larger presses, the table can be tilted.
The size of the press is usually expressed in terms of chuck capacity (the maximum diameter tool shank it will hold) or distance between the spindle center and the column.
A press with an 11 inch capacity lets you drill to the center of a 22 inch board or circle.
A new radial drill press with a 16 inch capacity has a tilting head that allows drilling to be done at any angle.
The head is mounted on a horizontal arm that swivels on the supporting column to position the drill bit instead of the work.
Set-up and maintenance
The drill press should be leveled and, depending on whether it is a bench or floor model, bolted securely to a sturdy bench or stand or screwed to the floor with lag or expansion screws.
This will reduce vibration and increase accuracy.
A coat of paste wax or a rubdown with a piece of wax paper will protect the polished surface of the table;
wiping with a slightly oiled cloth will discourage rusting of the column and quill.
Presses not fitted with sealed spindle bearings will need a drop of oil now and then in the lubrication holes in the quill.
The rest of the press should be kept clean by dusting with a clean rag or brush.
Be careful to keep the drive belt free of oil and grease.
Belt tension is adjusted by manipulation of two locking bolts and a movable motor mount.
Keep the belt just tight enough so the pulleys won't slip when pulled by hand;
excess tension will only cause undue wear on the motor and spindle bearings.
Most drill presses have a quill return spring that raises the spindle automatically when the feed lever is released and holds the quill in the raised position.
Turning the housing clockwise will reduce tension, counter-clockwise will increase it.
Don't lose the chuck key
Some manufacturers have had the foresight to provide a socket for the chuck key;
otherwise, you'll have to spend a few minutes to either attach a suitable spring clip somewhere on the press head or fit the key to a length of light chain and fasten to the bottom of the motor mount so that the key is out of the way when not in use.
Feeds and speeds
Drill speeds are important if you want a good job.
Each cutting tool will operate best at a given speed, depending on the material worked.
On most drill presses, it is impossible to get the exact speed, but you can come close by adjusting the drive belt on the step-cone pulleys.
You will find a chart giving the various speed ratios available with your particular drill press somewhere in the instruction booklet that came with the tool.
See the table on page 34 for exact recommended speeds.
Generally, the larger the tool and the harder the material, the slower the speed.
Feed pressure is also of major importance.
Too much pressure will force the tool beyond its cutting capacity and result in rough cuts and jammed or broken tools.
Too light a feed, particularly with metal or other hard material, causes overheating of the tool and burning of the cutting edge.
The best results will be obtained by matching the correct speed with a steady feed pressure that lets the tool cut easily at an even rate.
Common drilling tools
There are numerous types and styles of tools to drill holes.
The most common are the twist drill, the solid center shaft with interchangeable cutting blades, the double spur bit, and the power wood bit.
All will do a good job if sharp, but the twist drills don't cut quite as smoothly as the others, since they do not have the outlining spurs that sever the fibers before actual boring starts.
The adjustable fly cutter is very useful for cutting large diameter holes and can be used to cut exact-size discs by reversing the cutter blade.
Since fly cutters are one sided and not balanced, they should be used at the slowest speed available, and fed very slowly to avoid binding.
Fly cutters can fool you into putting your hand too close to the tool, so if you want to avoid nicked fingers, keep your hands well out of the way.
Simple hole drilling operations
When drilling all the way through a workpiece, always place a piece of scrap wood underneath.
This will not only protect the work table, but also assure a clean breakthrough.
Another method of assuring a clean hole is to first drill a small pilot hole all the way through, then drill half way with the dimensional bit, turn the piece over, and finish from the other side.
In soft woods with pronounced grain, there is sometimes a tendency for the hole to wander, due to the varying hardness of the wood.
In this case, drilling a small pilot hole or clamping the work will do much to improve accuracy.
When a hole is to be bored to a predetermined depth, mark the depth on the side of the stock, then run the bit down so that it is even with the mark.
The depth gauge rod can now be set, and any number of holes bored to exact and identical depth.
The old-time bridges over the Merrimac River in Massachusetts are of unusual interest in many respects.
For their length, their types of construction, their picturesque settings, and their literary associations, they should be known and remembered.
In this sequence I shall write about them in the order of their erection.
The first bridge known to have been covered wholly or in part,--and perhaps the most interesting one, connected Newbury (now Newburyport) with Salisbury Point.
Its building was first proposed in 1791, when a group of citizens, mostly Newburyport men, petitioned the General Court for an act of incorporation.
This document began: No. 1 Newbury Port, may 30th, 1791
This paper was signed by forty-five persons, subscribing a total of two hundred shares.
A month later the General Court served notice to the town of Newbury that the bridge was to be built.
The matter was considered and reconsidered, and finally opposed, but in spite of many objections, the Court granted a charter on January 9, 1792.
On November 26 of that year the bridge was completed and opened.
This two-part bridge is best described by Rev. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, in his Travels In New-England And New-York, published in New Haven in 1821.
He says of it:
It consists of two divisions, separated by an island at a small distance from the southern shore.
The division between the island and this shore, consists principally of an arch;
whose chord is one hundred and sixty feet, and whose vortex is forty feet (it was actually 37 feet) above the high-water mark.
In appearance and construction it resembles the Pascataqua bridge.
The whole length of Essex bridge is one thousand and thirty feet and its breadth thirty-four.
I have already mentioned that Mr. Timothy Palmer of Newburyport was the inventor of the arched bridges in this country.
As Mr. Palmer was educated to house-building only, and had never seen a structure of this nature;
he certainly deserves not a little credit for the invention.
It is hardly necessary to remind students of covered bridges that Timothy Palmer was born in 1751 in nearby Rowley;
that he moved with his parents to West Boxford when he was sixteen years old;
and was there apprenticed to a builder and architect, Moody Spofford.
It was indeed a remarkable feat that a man who had had no experience of bridge building should have applied the principle of the arch, which appears in his famous bridges at Portsmouth, Haverhill, and Philadelphia.
The Essex Merrimack Bridge when first built was not covered.
As far as we know, no American bridge had been thus protected in 1792.
Richard S. Allen is the authority for the statement that the northern section was probably roofed by 1810.
Its original appearance is shown in an engraving published in the Massachusetts Magazine in May 1793, which is reproduced herewith (Fig. 1).
A brief description accompanying the picture says that the bridge contained more than 6000 tons of timber.
Between the abutments on the Newbury shore and the south bank of Deer Island there was one span or arch measuring 160 feet;
between the north shore of Deer Island and the Salisbury side there was an arch of 113 feet and a series of piers with a draw forty feet long.
A dinner and celebration in honor of this piece of engineering took place July 4, 1793, in a tavern erected by the corporation on the island.
It is said that the eccentric Timothy Dexter, who was one of the first share-holders, stood on the table and made a speech worthy of the occasion.
The Essex Journal says that he delivered an oration on the bridge, which for elegance of style, propriety of speech or force of argument, was truly Ciceronian.
The reporter must have written this with tongue in cheek, because Dexter's oration could hardly be understood;
and, although he later explained that he was talking French, it seems rather more likely that he had succumbed to the joys of the evening.
The north portion of the Essex bridge was well worth the cost of construction, although it proved to be twice what was estimated in the beginning.
It stood in its original form until 1882.
The southern half, however, on account of its underbracing, was considered by boat owners a menace to navigation.
In 1810 it was torn down and replaced by a chain suspension bridge.
This was built by John Templeman from plans submitted by James Finley of Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
Timothy Palmer had general supervision of the work.
An advertisement in the Newburyport Herald, December 21, 1810, shows Palmer in a new light as an expert on chain bridges.
It reads: chain bridges
Mr. Palmer will attend to any applications relating to bridges and if desired will view the proposed site, and lay out and superintend the work, or recommend a suitable person to execute it.
John Templeman
Approved, Timothy Palmer
This chain bridge proved less durable than the wooden arch on the Salisbury end.
It fell, February 6, 1827, carrying with it a horse and wagon, two men and four oxen.
The horse and men were saved, but the oxen drowned.
In spite of this catastrophe, the bridge was rebuilt on the same plan and opened again on July 17, 1827.
This second chain bridge was 570 feet long, had two thirty-foot towers and a draw, and a double roadway.
The Essex bridge was a toll crossing until 1868, when the County Commissioners laid out all the Merrimack bridges as highways.
He was closely followed by the Ohio and Indiana troops--thus the old bridge has another distinction;
that of being the first such structure secured by force of arms in the war of the '60s.
The bridge has survived the natural hazards of the elements, war, fire, and floods, as well as injuries incident to heavy traffic, for more than a hundred years.
Twice during the Civil War it was saved from destruction by the opposing armies by the pleas and prayers of a local minister.
It still stands as a monument to the engineering skills of the last century and still serves in the gasoline age to carry heavy traffic on U.S. Route 250--the old Beverly and Fairmont Turnpike.
It is one of the very few, if not the only surviving bridge of its type to serve a main artery of the U.S. highway system, thus it is far more than a relic of the horse and buggy days.
This covered, wooden bridge is so closely identified with the first action in the early morning of June 3, 1861, and with subsequent troop movements of both armies in the Philippi area that it has become a part and parcel of the war story.
So frequently have pictures of the bridge appeared in books and in national publications that it vies with the old John Brown Fort at Harpers Ferry as the two nationally best known structures in West Virginia.
Completed and opened for traffic in 1852, the bridge was designed and built by Lemuel Chenoweth and his brother, Eli, of Beverly.
The Philippi bridge, however, was the Chenoweth master piece, with its 139-foot, dual lane, span--and it stands today as a monument to its builders.
Never rebuilt, the bridge was strengtened in 1938 by two extra piers, a concrete floor, and a walk-way along the upper side in order to care for modern traffic.
During the war it was in constant use by the wagon trains transporting supplies from the railhead at Grafton to the troops operating in the interior.
Union soldiers at times used it for sleeping quarters to escape from the rain or other inclement weather, and some of them left momentoes of their stay by carving their names and small tokens on its walls and beams.
But what the elements could not do was seriously threatened when Brigadier General William E. (Grumble) Jones reached Philippi while on the famous Jones-Imboden raid in May, 1863.
General Jones was fresh from a long series of bridge burnings, including the long bridge at Fairmont, and, after seeing a great drove of horses and cattle he had collected safely across the bridge, he sent his men to work piling combustibles in and around it.
Reverend Joshual Corder, a Baptist minister, gathered a few citizens of Southern sympathies, to call on Jones and plead with him to spare the structure;
he reasoned and argued, pointing out that Jones or other Confederate commanders would need it should troops pass that way in retreat.
Jones relented, he did not order his men to apply the torch--the drove of livestock was driven up the valley, via Beverly, and across the mountains to feed and serve the Confederate army, while Jones and his raiders turned toward Buckhannon to join forces with Imboden.
Again Reverend Corder saved the bridge when Union soldiers planned to destroy it, after filling its two lanes with hay and straw--but for what reason is not recorded nor remembered, certainly not because of pressure from an opposing Confederate force.
On the second occasion it took prayers as well as reason to dissuade the soldiers from their purpose.
It is a good eight years now since each of us acquired a swimming pool--eight enlightening, vigorous, rigorous, not wholly unrewarding years.
We have learned a lot--a dash of hydrochemistry here, a bit about plumbing and pump-priming there.
We have had sound grounding in the principles of the mailed-fist-in-velvet-glove school of diplomacy.
We have become amateur insurance experts and fine-feathered yard birds.
True, our problems have lessened a bit as more and more of our neighbors have built their own pools, thereby diluting our spectacular attractions.
But problems cling to pools, as any pool owner knows.
So our innate generosity of spirit prompts us to share our trials, errors and solutions with any who are taking the pool plunge for the first time--in the pious hope that some may profit from our experience.
Where to put it
Position may not be everything, but in the case of a pool it can certainly contribute difficulties, social and/or physical.
We speak from varying viewpoints.
One of us has a pool set in a wooded area very near the house.
The other has his pool far away from the house in a field high on a hill.
If you are dreaming of a blue, shimmering pool right outside your living room windows, close your eyes firmly and fill in the picture with lots and lots of children, damp towels, squashed tubes of suntan oil and semi-inflated plastic toys.
You are likely to be nearer the truth.
You can also see that the greater the proximity of the pool to your main living quarters, the greater the chance for violation of family privacy, annoying noise and the let's-make-your-house-our-club attitude.
On the other hand, out-of-sight does not lead to out-of-mind when children cannot be easily observed and you have to make a long trek to reach the pool.
Another dilemma: As picturesque as a sylvan pond in the forest may be, trees offer a leaf and root hazard to the well-being of a pool.
Yet a grassy approach can turn a pool into a floating lawn every time the grass is mowed.
As in choosing a wife, it is only sensible to consider also how appealing a pool is likely to be in bad weather as well as in good.
In the colder climes, for instance, you will have to live through the many unglamorous winter months when your pool will hardly look its best.
It may be a big hole in the ground filled with salt hay, or an ice floe studded with logs.
Even a neat, plastic-covered plunge is not exactly a joy to behold.
(We do, however, recommend those patented covers to prevent both people and junk--flora and fauna generally--from accidentally wintering in the pool.
Probably no location for a pool is perfect on all counts.
Naturally it will be dictated to a large extent by the shape and size of your land.
But if space and money are no problem and small children are not on hand every day, it is certainly more restful to have your pool and entertainment area removed from the immediate environs of the house.
And a good several feet around the pool should be neither greensward nor woods, but good hard pavement.
The placement of your pool, however, will not of itself solve the two major problems of pool owning--those that involve your social life and those pertaining to safety.
Coping with them demands stern discipline--of yourself as well as of your family, neighbors, friends and anyone you ever talked to on a transoceanic jet.
But not even our first pool-side gatherings came anywhere near those rosy fantasies.
We seemed to be witnessing the population explosion right in our own backyards.
Our respective families looked as if they had quadrupled.
Had we taken a lien on a state park?
Not at all.
We had merely been discovered by the pool sharks.
We were in business!
From proud pool-owners to perpetual hosts and handymen was a short step--no more than the change from city clothes to trunks.
Naive of us, maybe, but the results of our impulsive invitations to come over next summer and swim in our new pool were both unexpected and unsettling.
Our book of etiquette
After the first few weeks, it was obvious that rules had to be made, laid down and obeyed--even if our popularity ratings became subnormal as a result.
So rules we made, in unabashed collusion.
Since our viewpoints in this respect coincided precisely, we present the fruits of our efforts herewith as a single social code for pool owners.
First and foremost: No one--no, not anyone--in the family is allowed to issue blanket invitations to his or her own circle.
Just short of forty lashes we finally managed to coerce our children to this view.
Their friends and ours are welcome to share the pool, but on our terms and at our times.
No friends are to arrive without an invitation or without at least telephoning beforehand.
No ringers, either--even if they are trailing legitimate invitees.
We want to know when the Potlatches telephone exactly how many they are planning to bring, so that we won't end up with a splashing mob that looks like Coney Island in August.
No young children may come without adults except for a specific, organized, chaperoned party.
And accompanying adults are urged to keep an alert and sensible eye on their responsibilities.
A gaggle of gabbling mothers, backs to the pool, is no safeguard.
No bottle pool is tolerated--bottle pool being our lingo for those who come to swim and sink into our bar while protesting that they can only dunk and run.
(Sanity, solvency and relations with our wine merchant took a beating that first summer as we inadvertently became the neighborhood free-drink stop.
We designated one day a week as the time when neighborhood teen-agers might swim at definite hours.
This has saved us from constant requests seven days a week and made us feel less brutal to the young less fortunate than ours.
We also worked out logistics for Sunday afternoon swimmers who arrive two hours early with their weekend guests while we are still enjoying an alfresco lunch en famille.
We gently usher them to an island of tables and chairs strategically placed on the far side of the pool where they can amuse each other until we get ready to merge sides.
All dressing (undressing to be more exact) must be done in our small bath house or at the swimmers' homes.
(To avoid any possible excuse for a dripping parade through your house, it is a good idea to have a telephone extension near the pool as well as a direct outdoor route between the pool, and the parking area.
) We do, however, provide a limited number of extra suits, mainly for children, and we stock extra towels and a few inexpensive bathing conveniences.
Life-preservers, the buckle-on kapok-filled kind, are held in readiness, too, for the very young.
Preserving life and limb
Safety rules, of course, are more important than all the others put together.
In many localities, now, the law requires all pools to be fenced, usually to a minimum height of 5 feet.
But fenced or unfenced, no pool-side is the place for running or horseplay.
We allow no underwater endurance contests, either, or inexpert versions of water polo.
Diving boards must have non-skid surfaces (coco matting takes an awful beating from chlorine and rots quickly, but grit-impregnated paints are excellent).
And divers must be enjoined to look before they leap, either on top of someone else or onto a pool edge.
Our pools also have wide, shallow steps--for the benefit of the littlest swimmers who can thus be introduced to the water with far greater safety than a ladder affords.
All bottles must be kept a safe distance away from the pool and drinking glasses are banned in favor of plastic or metal cups.
When you first acquire a pool, we earnestly recommend--for your own mental health--a good long chat with your insurance agent.
You should be prepared to cope with any pitfall such as plunges into empty pools or shallow ends and all manner of winter as well as summer lawsuits.
Soignee pools, alas, do not just happen.
They are the result of a constant and careful contest with the elements.
Unless you want to make your wife a pool widow and to spend a great many of your leisure hours nursing your pool's pristine purity, its care and feeding--from pH content to filtering and vacuuming--is best left to a weekly or bi-monthly professional service.
Of course, if your pool is close to the house, your wife can always add it to her housekeeping chores (you hope).
Or you can make pool care the price of swimming for teen-agers.
Even so, every pool owner, in case of emergency, should have some idea of what makes things work.
A brief course in hydraulics from the pool builders may well be appreciated in a future crisis.
Preserving the pool
A sudden high rise in temperature will turn your pool poison green overnight.
You need more chlorine.
The walls feel slippery.
You need algaecide.
With or without professional help, you will have to be able to do some of these jobs yourself unless you have a full-time pool nurse.
You should see to it that the trap, the dirt-catcher in front of the filter, is always clean.
A pool is no place for a shut trap.
You should firmly insist that no bobby pins or hair pins be worn in the water.
When shed, they leave rust marks.
You can hope against hope that come spring cleaning, your fair-weather friends will lend a hand at scrubbing and furbishing.
It has happened.
Many hours of spring cleaning will be saved, however, if you remove the main drain grate when you close the pool season in the fall.
As the pool is emptied, stand by to brush down the walls and bottom while they are still wet.
Much of the dirt and leaf stain is easily removed when damp, but requires dynamite if allowed to dry.
If you have a 6- to 8-inch drain pipe, you may easily wash out all the debris when the grate is out.
Of course, when your 6-inch torrent of water is released, it may cause a lot of comment as it passes through or by neighboring properties.
Do not forget this possibility.
If your pool is located on or near sloping ground, it may have natural drainage which is certainly more desirable than to be faced with the annual expense and labor of first pumping out the water and then scooping out all the debris.
It may be true that pool lighting dramatizes an evening scene, but lights also attract all the insect life for miles around.
Once on the water, these little visitors seldom leave, and this adds to your filtering and vacuuming problems as well as providing a slapping good time for all those present.
Often one floodlight high in a tree will provide all the light you need at much less expense.
Our experience has taught us that it pays to buy the best equipment possible, from pipes to brushes.
Follow pool-care instructions to the letter, and be sure that one person (in the family or not) is regularly responsible for each aspect of the job, with no chance for claiming, It wasn't my turn.
Never let anyone not in the know take a turn at the valves--even if the little boys do want to play space ship.
You may find yourself hitting bottom, literally, as you discover that water is running out even while you are putting it in.
Draw a line across the country at the latitude of lower Pennsylvania.
Any house built now below that line without air conditioning will be obsolete in 10 years.
Fortunately, it is the FHA which has arrived at this conclusion, for it means that cooling equipment of all kinds may now be included in a mortgage, and thus acquired with a minimum of financial stress.
Even if you live above that line, the FHA will back you, for they have decided that the inclusion of air conditioning in all new homes is a good thing and should be encouraged.
New simplified packaged units, recently devised prefabricated glass-fiber ducts, and improved add-on techniques make it possible to acquire a system for an 1800-square-foot house for as little as $600 to $900.
Two men can often do the installation in a day.
You can install it yourself--this is a central system that will cool every part of your house.
Its upkeep?
No less an authority than the FHA concurs that the savings air conditioning makes possible more than offset its operating costs.
Is it worth-while?
Home air conditioning has come a long way from the early days of overcooled theaters and the thermal shock they inflicted.
We know now that a 15-degree differential in temperature is the maximum usually desirable, and accurate controls assure the comfort we want.
We know, too, that health is never harmed by summer cooling.
On the contrary, there are fewer colds and smaller doctor bills.
The filtered air benefits allergies, asthma, sinus, hay fever.
Control of temperature and humidity is a godsend to the aged and the invalid.
Heart conditions and high blood pressure escape the stresses brought on by oppressive heat.
Housekeeping is easier.
The cleaner air means less time spent pushing a vacuum, fewer trips to the dry cleaners, lighter loads for the washing machine.
The need for reupholstering, redecorating, repainting becomes more infrequent.
Clothes hold their shape better, and mildew and rust become almost forgotten words.
It will improve your disposition.
When you're less fatigued, things just naturally look brighter.
The children can have their daytime naps and hot meals, and be put to bed on schedule in shade-darkened rooms.
You'll sleep longer and better, too, awake refreshed and free of hot weather nerves.
You can forget about screens, and leave the storm windows up all year around.
Best of all, central air conditioning is something you can afford.
Like its long-lived cousin, the refrigerator, a conditioner can be expected to last 20 to 25 years or more.
That brings its per-year cost down mighty low.
For any house.
No matter what style your home is, ranch, two-story, Colonial or contemporary, central air conditioning is easily installed.
The equipment won't take up valuable space either.
It can go in out-of-the-way waste space.
But there's no denying that the easiest and most economical way to get year-'round whole-house air conditioning is when you build.
If that's done, the house can be designed and oriented for best operation, and this can mean savings both in the size of equipment and in the cost of the house itself.
If you can't see your way clear to have summer cooling included when building, by all means make provision for its easy adding later.
Manufacturers have designed equipment for just such circumstances, and your savings over starting from scratch will be substantial.
If your house is to have a forced warm air system, cooling can be a part of it.
This costs less than having a completely separate cooling system, for your regular heating ductwork, filters and furnace blower do double duty for cooling.
You can get year-'round air conditioners in the same variety of styles in which you buy a furnace alone--high or low boy, horizontal or counterflow.
The units can be installed in basement, attic, crawlspace, or in a closet located in the living area.
The cooling coil is located in the furnace's outlet.
From the coil small copper pipes connect to a weatherproof refrigeration section set in the yard, garage, carport, or basement.
If you plan to add cooling later to your heating system, there are things to watch for.
Be sure ducts that require insulation get it when they are installed.
They may be inaccessible later.
Be sure your ducts and blower are big enough to handle cooling.
This is especially important if you live in a mild-winter zone.
Be sure you get a perimeter heating system, and diffusers that will work as well for cooling as they do for heating.
You can get a hot water system that will also work for cooling your house.
For cooling, chilled water is circulated instead of hot water.
Instead of radiators you'll have cooling-heating units, each with its own thermostat.
These systems are more expensive than year-'round forced air systems.
The minimum cost for an average one-story, 7-room house with basement, is likely to run $1500 above the cost of the heating alone.
Separate systems.
If the problems of combining cooling with your heating are knotty, it may be cheaper to plan on a completely separate cooling system.
The simplest kind of separate system uses a single, self-contained unit.
It is, in effect, an oversize room conditioner equipped with prefab glass-fiber ducts to distribute the cooled, cleaned, dehumidified air where it is wanted.
In a long, rambling ranch, two such units can be installed, one serving the living area, the other the sleeping zone.
In a two-story house, one unit may be installed in the basement to serve the first floor, another in the attic to cool the second.
In each case, having separate systems for living and sleeping areas has the advantage of permitting individual zone control.
The heat pump.
One of the more remarkable of the new cooling systems is one that can be switched to heating.
As you know, a conditioner makes indoor air cool by pumping the heat out of it and then releasing this heat outdoors.
A relatively simple switching arrangement reverses the cycle so that the machine literally runs backward, and the heat is extracted from outdoor air and turned indoors.
Up until recently, this heat pump method of warming air was efficient only in areas of mild winters and when outside temperatures were above 40 degrees.
Now, the machine has been improved to a point where it is generally more economical than oil heat at temperatures down to 15 degrees.
You can get this added heating feature for as little as $200 more than the price of cooling alone.
Consider it as a standby setup, at negligible cost, for those emergencies when the furnace quits, a blizzard holds up fuel delivery, or for cool summer mornings or evenings when you don't want to start up your whole heating plant.
What size conditioner?
How large a cooling unit you need, and the method of its installation, depends on a variety of factors.
Among other things, besides the nature of your house and how much heat finds its way into its various rooms from the outside, it will depend upon your personal habits and the makeup of your family.
Families with children usually don't want the house quite so cool.
If you are a party thrower, you may need added capacity.
The body is a heat machine, and 20 to 25 guests can easily double your cooling load.
Cooling requirements are best expressed in terms of Aj.
A BTU is a unit of heat, and the BTU rating of a conditioner refers to how much heat your machine can pump out of your house in an hour.
A very rough rule of thumb is that, under favorable conditions, you'll need 15 BTU's of cooling for every square foot of your house.
This is if outdoor temperatures have a high average of 95 degrees.
You'll need more if the high average is above that, less if it's below.
Coolers are also rated by tons.
A ton of cooling compares to the cooling you get by melting a ton of ice.
By accepted definition, a 1-ton conditioner will provide 12,000 BTU of cooling in one hour.
You may find a conditioner rated by horsepower.
It is generally an inaccurate method of rating, for the horsepower is that of the compressor motor, and many other components beside it determine how much cooling you'll get.
A 1-hp conditioner, for example, may vary in effectiveness from under 8,000 BTU to well over 10,000 Aj.
The safest procedure is to let your builder estimate the size of the unit you need, rather than trying to do this yourself.
Don't urge your builder to give you a little extra cooling capacity just to be sure you have enough.
Better to have your equipment slightly undersized than too big.
Here's why:
Reducing humidity is often as important as cooling.
An oversize unit will cool off your house quickly, then shut down for a long period.
Before it cycles on again, humidity can build up and make you uncomfortable even though the temperature is still low.
With a unit of the right size, a compressor will run continuously during hot weather, reducing humidity as evenly as it does temperature.
Money-saving tips.
Attention to details can cut in half the size unit you need and pare operating expense proportionately.
A well-designed, 1200-square-foot house can be comfortably cooled and heated for as little as $128 a year, or $11 a month.
If you have a house which heat doesn't penetrate easily, your unit will have less heat to remove.
Keep the direct sun from reaching the house and you've won the first battle.
In a new house, generous roof overhangs are a logical and effective solution.
If the house you plan to buy or build won't have big overhangs, you can still do a fair job of keeping the sun off walls and windows with properly designed trellises, fences and awnings.
Shade trees, too, are a big help, so keep them if you can.
Drawn blinds and draperies do some good, but not nearly as much as shading devices on the outside of the house.
The more directly the sun strikes walls and roof, the greater its heat impact.
The way a house is set on its lot can therefore influence how much cooling you're going to need.
A shift in the walls, or a change in the roof slope, so the sun hits them more obliquely, can save you money.
You can use heat-absorbing glass to stop the sun, double glass and insulated glass to combat condensation.
Restrict large glass areas to the north and south sides of the house.
They're easier to shade there.
An attic space above insulation makes a house easier to cool.
You'll even gain by putting your water heater outside the conditioned space, and using an electric range instead of a gas one.
Gas adds to the moisture load.
Insulate, weatherstrip, double-glaze to the maximum.
In insulation, the numbers to remember are 6-4-2.
They stand for 6 inches of mineral wool insulation in the ceiling, 4 inches in the side walls, 2 inches in the floors.
Such extra-thick insulation not only permits a much smaller cooling installation, but will continue to reduce operating expenses both in heating and cooling.
A light-colored roof will reduce sun heat by 50 per cent.
It costs two to three times as much to remove a BTU in summer as it does to add one in winter, so every solitary BTU is worth attention.
You'll foil them in droves, along with their pal humidity, by having and using a kitchen range exhaust fan, a bathroom ventilator for when you shower, and an outside vent for the clothes drier.
Keeping conditioners quiet.
It's no use pretending that all conditioners are quiet, but the noise they produce can be kept to a minimum.
Good workmanship is important in the installation, so if you're doing your own contracting, don't award the job on the basis of price alone.
Avoid attic placement directly above a bedroom.
Most recreation work calls for a good deal of pre-planning.
This is particularly true in site selection.
You must know before you start what the needs and objectives of your organization are;
you must have a list of requirements on where, how many, and what type sites are needed.
With such a program you can make constructive selections of the best sites available.
Begin the examination of a site with a good map and aerial photos if possible.
These are becoming more and more available through the work of counties and other government agencies.
The new editions of topographic maps being made by the federal government are excellent for orienting yourself to the natural features of the site.
These are inexpensive and available from the U. S. Geological Society, Washington 25, D. C..
In recent years many counties and the U. S. Forest Service have taken aerial photos which show features in detail and are very good for planning use.
Most counties also have maps available from the county engineer showing roads and other features and from the assessor's office showing ownerships of land.
Inspect the site in the field during the time of the year when the area will be most heavily used for recreation.
This gives you a better opportunity to get the feel of the climate conditions, the exposure to the sun and wind, the water interests, etcetera, which vary greatly with the seasons.
It is usually helpful to make a sketch map in the field, showing the size and location of the features of interest and to take photographs at the site.
These are a great aid for planning use back at the office.
For site planning work, it is best to have a qualified and experienced park planner to carry through the study.
However, there is also much to be gained by making use of the abilities of the local people who are available and interested in recreation.
County judges, commissioners, engineers, assessors, and others who have lived in the area for a long time may have valuable knowledge regarding the site or opinions to offer from their varied professional experiences.
A visit to the site by a group of several persons can usually bring out new ideas or verify opinions most helpful to the planning study of any recreation area.
How much study is required?
This, of course, depends on the character of the site itself, the previous experience of the investigator, and the number of factors needed to arrive at a good decision.
It is too easy for the inexperienced person to make a quick judgment of a few values of the area and base a decision on these alone.
Usually there are more factors to good site planning than first impressions.
A site may be a rundown slum or a desolate piece of desert in appearance today but have excellent potentials for the future with a little development or water.
The same is true of areas which at first look good because of a few existing recreation features but may actually be poor areas to develop for general public use.
In looking for the best sites available that meet the requirements, you need information to compare the site with others.
You need answers to four important questions.
What are the existing recreation features?
How well can the site be developed?
How useful will it be to the public?
Is this site available?
Check the quantity and quality of all of the recreation interests already existing at the site.
Naturally, a park site with scenic views, a good lake, trees, and sand dunes, will attract more people than a nearby area with only trees and dunes.
Quality is vitally important.
Frontage on a body of clear, clean water will be vastly different from the same amount of frontage on polluted water.
Some recreation features, such as scenic values and water interest, also have greater overall value than other interests.
One of the most desirable features for a park are beautiful views or scenery.
It may be distant views of a valley or the mountains or natural features such as a small lake, colorful rock formations, or unusual trees.
A site which overlooks a harbor or river may offer interest in the activities of boating traffic.
An area on the coast may have relaxing views of the surf rolling in on a beach.
A site may also be attractive just through the beauty of its trees and shrubs.
Note extent of these interests and how available they will be for the public to enjoy.
Water interest is one of the most valuable factors you can find for a recreation site.
Most park planners look to water frontage for basic park areas.
This follows naturally since frontage on an ocean, stream, or lake provides scenic values and opportunities for the very popular recreation activities of bathing, fishing, boating, and other water sports.
A body of water is usually the center of interest at parks which attract the greatest picnic and camping use.
It also cools the air in summer and nourishes the trees and wild life.
The amount of water frontage, the quantity and quality of the water, and the recreation afforded by it are important.
A restricted frontage may be too crowded an area for public use.
The quantity of water flow may be critical;
a stream or pond which is attractive in the springtime may become stagnant or dry in late summer.
If the site is on a reservoir, the level of the water at various seasons as it affects recreation should be studied.
Check the quality of the water.
A stream which has all of its watershed within a national forest or other lands under good conservation practices is less likely to be affected by pollution than one passing through unrestricted logging or past an industrial area.
Other factors, such as water temperature, depth of water, the fish life it supports, wave action, flooding, etcetera, will affect its recreation value.
Other natural features which can be of high interest are the forests, canyons, mountains, deserts, seacoast, beaches, sand dunes, waterfalls, springs, etcetera with which the area is blessed.
Just as the national and state parks place emphasis on features which are of national or state significance, counties should seek out these features which are distinctive of their area.
Although the site may not contain the features themselves, there are often opportunities to include them as additional interest to the site.
The route to the park may lead people past them or display views of them.
A group of native trees or plants which are outstanding in a particular county can be featured at the site.
The fish, animals, and birds which may be found at the site are another interest.
Fishing interest calls for a check of the species found, quantity and size, the season they are available, and the stocking program of the fish commission.
Animals may be present at the site or provide hunting in nearby areas.
The site may be on one of the major flyways of migratory birds or have its own resident bird life.
Clams, crabs, and other marine life may add interest at coastal areas.
Each area has its own historical interests with which much can be done.
Park visitors are always eager to learn more about the area they are in.
The historical sign tells its story, but nothing gets interest across as well as some of the original historical items or places themselves which still have the character of the period covered.
Notice should be taken of unusual rock formations, deposits, or shapes of the earth's crust in your region.
Those which tell a story of the earth's formation in each area can add geological interest to the recreation sites.
An old shipwreck, a high dam, an old covered bridge, a place to find agates or other semi-precious stones or a place to pan gold, etcetera may be of interest.
Some areas may provide archeological values such as ancient Indian village sites or hunting areas, caves, artifacts, etcetera.
How well can the site be developed?
Look at the physical features of the land to determine how desirable it is for use, what can be done to correct the faults, and what it will cost to make the area meet your needs in comparison to other sites.
Many things need to be checked:
size and shape
-- The size of the area alone can be a determining factor.
An area may be too small for the needs of the project.
Areas should be large enough to include the attractions, have ample space for the use of facilities needed, and have room around the edges to protect the values of the area from encroachment by private developments.
Acreage in excess of the minimum is good practice as recreation areas are never too large for the future and it is often more economical to operate one large area than several small ones.
Shape of the area is also related to the use attractions and needs of the development.
A large picnic area or camping development is most efficient in shape as a square or rectangle several hundred feet in width in preference to a long narrow area less than one hundred feet wide.
This is true because of savings in utility lines and the fact that your buildings have a useful radius equal in all directions.
However, a narrow strip may be very practical for small developments, or to provide additional stream frontage for a fisherman's trail, or include scenic strips within the park unit.
Adjoining areas
-- The values of the site may be affected by the appearance of the adjoining lands, ownership and use of the land, and the utilities available there.
For instance, a site adjoining other publicly owned lands, such as a national forest or a public road, may be desirable, whereas a site next to an industrial plant might not.
The utilities available nearby may provide a savings in the cost of extending electricity or water to the site.
Topography
-- Topography is very important.
Check the elevation of the ground, degree and direction of slopes, drainage, rock outcrops, topsoil types and quality, as well as subsoil.
Nearly level areas are required for parking areas, beaches, camp areas, ballfields, etcetera.
Determine how much topography limits useful area or what the costs of earth moving or grading might be.
Water
-- In addition to its recreation interests, water is needed for drinking, sanitation, and irrigation.
The quantity and quality of water sources is often a big factor in site selection.
The area may provide good springs or opportunities for a well or be near to municipal water lines.
Figure the cost of providing water to the use areas.
Plants
-- The existing plant growth calls for thorough checking.
Look at the trees as to size and interest, the amount of shade they provide, how healthy they are, the problems of maintenance, fire hazards, wind throw, etcetera.
An area may have been partially logged and requires removal of stumps or clean-up.
Some shrubs may be of good landscaping value, other areas of brush may need to be cleared.
The extent and location of open areas is noted.
Exposure
-- How much will wind, rain, sun, and temperature affect the use?
An area sheltered from strong winds may be highly desirable for recreation use.
The direction, velocity, and season of these winds should be noted as to just how they will affect the recreation use and your maintenance and operation of the area.
Lack of rainfall and extreme temperatures may call for the development of shade and irrigation of a site to make it useable.
Sometimes, you have a choice of exposure for sites where the topography or trees of the area will provide afternoon shade, morning sun, or whatever may be most desirable for the use intended.
Improvements
-- Some areas may already have been improved and contain buildings, roads, utilities, cleared land, etcetera which may raise the cost of the site.
Your invitation to write about Serge Prokofieff to honor his 70th Anniversary for the April issue of Sovietskaya Muzyka is accepted with pleasure, because I admire the music of Prokofieff;
and with sober purpose, because the development of Prokofieff personifies, in many ways, the course of music in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Serge Prokofieff whom we knew in the United States of America was gay, witty, mercurial, full of pranks and bonheur--and very capable as a professional musician.
These qualities endeared him to both the musicians and the social-economic haute monde which supported the concert world of the post-World War 1, era.
Prokofieff's outlook as a composer-pianist-conductor in America was, indeed, brilliant.
Prokofieff's Classical Symphony was hailed as an ingenious work from a naturally gifted and well-trained musician still in his twenties.
To the Traditionalists, it was a brilliant satire on modernism;
to the Neo-Classicists, it was a challenge to the pre-war world.
What was it to Prokofieff?
A tongue-in-cheek stylization of 18th-Century ideas;
a trial balloon to test the aesthetic climate of the times;
a brilliant piece de resistance?
Certainly its composer was an ascending star on a new world horizon.
I heard the Classical Symphony for the first time when Koussevitzky conducted it in Paris in 1927.
All musical Paris was there.
Some musicians were enthusiastic, some skeptical.
I myself was one of the skeptics (35 years ago).
I remember Ernest Bloch in the foyer, shouting in his high-pitched voice: it may be a tour de force, mais mon Dieu, can anyone take this music seriously?
The answer is, Yes!
Certainly, America took Prokofieff and his Classical Symphony seriously, and with a good deal of pleasure.
His life-long friend, Serge Koussevitzky, gave unreservedly of his praise and brilliant performances in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., to which he added broadcastings and recordings for the whole nation.
Chicago was also a welcome host: there, in 1921, Prokofieff conducted the world premiere of the Love For Three Oranges, and played the first performance of his Third Piano Concerto.
Uncle Sam was, indeed, a rich uncle to Prokofieff, in those opulent, post-war victory years of peace and prosperity, bold speculations and extravaganzas, enjoyment and pleasure: The Golden Twenties.
We attended the premieres of his concertos, symphonies, and suites;
we studied, taught, and performed his piano sonatas, chamber music, gavottes, and marches;
we bought his records and played them in our schools and universities.
We unanimously agreed that Prokofieff had won his rights as a world citizen to the first ranks of Twentieth-Century Composers.
So young Prokofieff was the darling of success: in his motherland;
in the spacious hunting grounds of Uncle Sam;
in the exciting salons of his lovely, brilliant Paris--mistress of gaiety--excess and abandon--world theatre of new-found freedoms in tone, color, dance, design, and thought.
Meanwhile, three great terrible forces were coagulating and crystallizing.
In this world-wide conscription of men, minds, and machines, Prokofieff was recalled to his native land.
The world exploded when Fascism challenged all concepts of peace and liberty, and the outraged, freedom-loving peoples of the Capitalist and Socialist worlds combined forces to stamp Fascist tyranny into cringing submission.
After this holocaust, a changing world occupied the minds of men;
a world beset with new boundaries, new treaties and governments, new goals and methods, and the age-old fears of aggression and subjugation--hunger and exposure.
In this changed world, Prokofieff settled to find himself, and to create for large national purpose.
Here, this happy, roving son of good fortune proved that he could accept the disciplines of a new social-economic order fighting for its very existence and ideals in a truculent world.
Here, Prokofieff became a workman in the vineyards of Socialism--producing music for the masses.
It is at this point in his life that the mature Prokofieff emerges.
One might have expected that such a violent epoch of transition would have destroyed the creative flair of a composer, especially one whose works were so fluent and spontaneous.
But no: Prokofieff grew.
He accepted the environment of his destiny--took root and grew to fulfill the stature of his early promise.
By 1937 he had clarified his intentions to serve his people: I have striven for clarity and melodious idiom, but at the same time I have by no means attempted to restrict myself to the accepted methods of harmony and melody.
This is precisely what makes lucid, straightforward music so difficult to compose--the clarity must be new, not old.
How right he was;
how clearly he saw the cultural defection of experimentation as an escape for those who dare not or prefer not to face the discipline of modern traditionalism.
And with what resource did Prokofieff back up his Credo of words--with torrents of powerful music.
Compare the vast difference in scope and beauty between his neat and witty little Classical Symphony and his big, muscular, passionate, and eloquent Fifth Symphony;
or the Love For Three Oranges (gay as it is) with the wonderful, imaginative, colorful, and subtle tenderness of the magnificent ballet, The Stone Flower.
This masterpiece has gaiety, too, but it is the gaiety of dancing people: earthy, salty and humorous.
Of course, these works are not comparable, even though the same brain conceived them.
The early works were conceived for a sophisticated, international audience;
the later works were conceived to affirm a way of life for fellow citizens.
However, in all of Prokofieff's music, young or mature, we find his profile--his signature--his craftsman's attitude.
Prokofieff never forsakes his medium for the cause of experimentation per se.
In orchestration, he stretches the limits of instrumentation with good judgment and a fine imagination for color.
His sense for rhythmic variety and timing is impeccable.
His creative development of melodic designs of Slavic dance tunes and love songs is captivating: witty, clever, adroit, and subtle.
His counterpoint is pertinent, skillful, and rarely thick.
That Prokofieff's harmonies and forms sometimes seem professionally routine to our ears, may or may not indicate that he was less of an original than we prefer to believe.
Need for novelty may be a symptom of cultural fatigue and instability.
Prokofieff might well emerge as a cultural hero, who, by the force of his creative life, helped preserve the main stream of tradition, to which the surviving idioms of current experimentalism may be eventually added and integrated.
At this date, it seems probable that the name of Serge Prokofieff will appear in the archives of History, as an effective Traditionalist, who was fully aware of the lure and danger of experimentation, and used it as it served his purpose;
yet was never caught up in it--never a slave to its academic dialectics.
Certainly, it is the traditional clarity of his music which has endeared him to the Western World--not his experimentations.
So Prokofieff was able to cultivate his musical talents and harvest a rich reward from them.
Nor can anyone be certain that Prokofieff would have done better, or even as well, under different circumstances.
His fellow-countryman, Igor Stravinsky, certainly did not.
Why did Prokofieff expand in stature and fecundity, while Stravinsky (who leaped into fame like a young giant) dwindled in stature and fruitfulness?
I think the answer is to be found in Prokofieff's own words: the clarity must be new, not old.
When Prokofieff forged his new clarity of lucid, straightforward music, so difficult to compose, he shaped his talents to his purpose.
When Stravinsky shaped his purpose to the shifting scenes of many cultures, many salons, many dialectics, many personalities, he tried to refashion himself into a stylist of many styles, determined by many disparate cultures.
Prokofieff was guided in a consistent direction by the life of his own people--by the compass of their national ideas.
But Stravinsky was swayed by the attitudes of whatever culture he was reflecting.
But time is running out, and many of Stravinsky's admirers begin to fear that he will never find terra firma.
What a patchwork of proclamations and renunciations!
Meager and shabby by-products linger to haunt our memories of a once mighty protagonist;
a maladroit reharmonization of our National Anthem (The Star-Spangled Banner);
a poor attempt to write an idiomatic jazz concerto;
a circus polka for elephants;
his hopes that the tunes from his old music might be used for popular American commercial songs!
Stravinsky, nearing the age of eighty, is like a lost and frantic bird, flitting from one abandoned nest to another, searching for a home.
How differently Prokofieff's life unfolded.
Prokofieff was able to adjust his creative personality to a swiftly changing world without losing his particular force and direction.
In the process, his native endowments were stretched, strengthened and disciplined to serve their human purpose.
Of course, it must not be forgotten that in achieving this historical feat, Prokofieff had the vast resources of his people behind him;
time and economic security;
symphony orchestras, opera and ballet companies;
choruses, chamber music ensembles;
soloists;
recordings;
broadcastings;
television;
large and eager audiences.
Thus in Prokofieff the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics produced one of the great composers of the Twentieth Century.
That his moods, even in his early years, are those of his people, does him honor, as his music honors those who inspired it.
That he mastered every aspect of his medium according to his own great talents and contemporary judgments, is a good and solid symbol of his people under the tremendous pressures of proclaiming and practising the rigors of a new culture;
and perhaps of even greater significance--his music is strong 20th-Century evidence of the effectiveness of Evolution, based on a broad Traditionalism for the creative art of music.
April 10 marked a memorable date in New York's musical history--indeed in the musical history of the entire eastern United States.
On that date the Musicians Emergency Fund, organized to furnish employment for musicians unable to obtain engagements during the depression and to provide relief for older musicians who lost their fortunes in the stock market crash, observed its 30th anniversary.
Roy Mason is essentially a landscape painter whose style and direction has a kinship with the English watercolorists of the early nineteenth century, especially the beautifully patterned art of John Sell Cotman.
And like this English master, Mason realizes his subjects in large, simplified masses which, though they seem effortless, are in reality the result of skilled design born of hard work and a thorough distillation of the natural form that inspired them.
As a boy Roy Mason began the long process of extracting the goodness of the out-of-doors, its tang of weather, its change of seasons, its variable moods.
His father, a professional engraver and an amateur landscape painter, took his sons on numerous hunting expeditions, and imparted to them his knowledge and love of nature.
Out of this background of hunting and fishing, it was only natural that Roy first painted subjects he knew best: hunters in the field, fishermen in the stream, ducks and geese on the wing--almost always against a vast backdrop of weather landscape.
It is this subject matter that has brought Mason a large and enthusiastic following among sportsmen, but it is his exceptional performance with this motif that commends him to artists and discerning collectors.
Mason had to earn the privilege of devoting himself exclusively to painting.
Like many others, he had to work hard, long hours in a struggling family business which, though it was allied to art of a kind--the design and production of engraved seals--bore no relation to the painting of pictures.
But it did teach Roy the basic techniques of commercial art, and later, for twelve years, he and his sister Nina conducted an advertising art studio in Philadelphia.
On the death of their father, they returned to their home in Batavia, New York.
After more years of concentrated effort, Roy and his brother Max finally established a thriving family business at the old stand.
During all this time Roy continued to paint, first only on weekends, and then, as the family business permitted, for longer periods.
Gradually he withdrew from the shop altogether, and for the past thirty years, he has worked independently as a painter, except for his continued hunting and fishing expeditions.
But even on these, the palette often takes over while the shotgun cools off!
Except for a rich friendship with the painter, Chauncey Ryder who gave him the only professional instruction he ever had--and this was limited to a few lessons, though the two artists often went on painting trips together--Roy developed his art by himself.
In the best tradition, he first taught himself to see, then to draw with accuracy and assurance, and then to paint.
He worked in oil for years before beginning his work in watercolor, and his first public recognition and early honors, including his election to the Academy, were for his essays in the heavier medium.
Gradually watercolor claimed his greater affection until today it has become his major, if not exclusive, technique.
It has been my privilege to paint with Roy Mason on numerous occasions, mostly in the vicinity of Batavia.
More often than not I have found easy excuse to leave my own work and stand at a respectable distance where I could watch this man transform raw nature into a composed, not imitative, painting.
What I have observed time and time again is a process of integration, integration that begins as abstract design and gradually takes on recognizable form;
color patterns that are made to weave throughout the whole composition;
and that over-all, amazing control of large washes which is the Mason stylemark.
Finally come those little flicks of a rigger brush and the job is done.
Inspiring--yes;
instructive--maybe;
duplicable--no!
But for the technical fact, we have the artist's own testimony:
Of late years, I find that I like best to work out-of-doors.
If a human figure or wild life are to be part of the projected final picture, I try to place them in the initial sketch.
For me, these will belong more completely to their surroundings if they are conceived in this early stage, though I freely admit that I do not hesitate to add or eliminate figures on the full sheet when it serves my final purpose.
I am thoroughly convinced that most watercolors suffer because the artist expects nature will do his composing for him;
as a result, such pictures are only a literal translation of what the artist finds in the scene before him.
Just because a tree or other object appears in a certain spot is absolutely no reason to place it in the same position in the painting, unless the position serves the design of the whole composition.
If the artist would study his work more thoroughly and move certain units in his design, often only slightly, finer pictures would result.
Out of long experience I have found that incidental figures and other objects like trees, logs, and bushes can be traced from the original sketch and moved about in the major areas on the final sheet until they occupy the right position, which I call clicking.
If I have seemed to emphasize the structure of the composition, I mean to project equal concern for color.
Often, in working out-of-doors under all conditions of light and atmosphere, a particular passage that looked favorable in relation to the subject will be too bright, too dull, or too light, or too dark when viewed indoors in a mat.
When this occurs, I make the change on the sketch or on the final watercolor--if I have been working on a full sheet in the field.
When working from one of my sketches I square it up and project its linear form freehand to the watercolor sheet with charcoal.
When this linear draft is completed, I dust it down to a faint image.
From this point, I paint in as direct a manner as possible, by flowing on the washes with as pure a color mixture as I can manage.
However, first I thoughtfully study my sketch for improvement of color and design along the lines I have described.
Then I plan my attack: the parts I will finish first, the range of values, the accenting of minor details--all in all, mechanics of producing the finished job with a maximum of crispness.
The longer I work, the more I am sure that for me, at least, a workmanlike method is important.
Trial and error are better placed in the preliminary sketch than in hoping for miracles in the final painting.
As for materials, I use the best available.
I work on a watercolor easel in the field, and frequently resort to a large garden umbrella to protect my eyes from undue strain.
In my studio I work at a tilt-top table, but leave the paper unfixed so that I can move it freely to control the washes.
I have used a variety of heavy-weight hand-made papers, but prefer an English make, rough surface, in 400-pound weight.
After selecting a sheet and inspecting it for flaws (even the best sometimes has foreign'nubbins'on its surface), I sponge it thoroughly on both sides with clean, cold water.
Then I dry the sheet under mild pressure so that it will lie flat as a board.
In addition to the usual tools, I make constant use of cleansing tissue, not only to wipe my brushes, but to mop up certain areas, to soften edges, and to open up lights in dark washes.
The great absorbency of this tissue and the fact that it is easier to control than a sponge makes it an ideal tool for the watercolorist.
I also use a small electric hand-blower to dry large washes in the studio.
My brushes are different from those used by most watercolorists, for I combine the sable and the bristle.
The red sables are 8;
two riggers, 6 and 10;
and a very large, flat wash brush.
The bristles are a Fitch 2 and a one-half inch brush shaved to a sharp chisel edge.
In analyzing the watercolors of Roy Mason, the first thing that comes to mind is their essential decorativeness, yet this word has such a varied connotation that it needs some elaboration here.
True, a Mason watercolor is unmistakably a synthesis of nature rather than a detailed inventory.
Unlike many decorative patterns that present a static flat convention, this artist's pictures are full of atmosphere and climate.
Long observation has taught Mason that most landscape can be reduced to three essential planes: a foreground in sharp focus--either a light area with dark accents or a dark one with lights;
a middle distance often containing the major motif;
and a background, usually a silhouetted form foiled against the sky.
In following this general principle, Mason provides the observer with a natural eye progression from foreground to background, and the illusion of depth is instantly created.
When painting, Mason's physical eyes are half-closed, while his mind's eye is wide open, and this circumstance accounts in part for the impression he wishes to convey.
He does not insist on telling all he knows about any given subject;
rather his pictures invite the observer to draw on his memory, his imagination, his nostalgia.
It is for this reason that Roy avoids selecting subjects that require specific recognition of place for their enjoyment.
His pictures generalize, though they are inspired by a particular locale;
they universalize in terms of weather, skies, earth, and people.
By dealing with common landscape in an uncommon way, Roy Mason has found a particular niche in American landscape art.
Living with his watercolors is a vicarious experience of seeing nature distilled through the eyes of a sensitive interpretor, a breath and breadth of the outdoor world to help man honor the Creator of it all.
The artist was born in Gilbert Mills, New York, in 1886, and until two years ago when he and his wife moved to California, he lived in western New York, in Batavia.
When I looked up the actual date of his birth and found it to be March 15th, I realized that Roy was born under the right zodiacal sign for a watercolorist: the water sign of Pisces (February 18 thru March 20).
And how very often a water plane is featured in his landscapes, and how appropriate that he should appear in American Artist again, in his natal month of March!
Over the years, beginning in 1929, Mason has been awarded seventeen major prizes including two gold medals;
two Ranger Fund purchase awards;
the Joseph Pennell Memorial Medal;
two American Watercolor Society prizes;
the Blair Purchase Prize for watercolor, Art Institute of Chicago;
and others in Buffalo, New York, Chautauqua, New Haven, Rochester, Rockport, and most recently, the $300 prize for a watercolor at the Laguna Beach Art Association,
He was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate in the oil class in 1931 (after receiving his first Ranger Fund Purchase Prize at the Academy in 1930), and elevated to Academicianship in 1940.
Other memberships include the American Watercolor Society, Philadelphia Water Color Club, Allied Artists of America, Audubon Artists, Baltimore Watercolor Society.
The Russian gymnasts beat the tar out of the American gymnasts in the 1960 Olympics for one reason--they were better.
They were better trained, better looking, better built, better disciplined and something else--they were better dancers.
Our athletes are only just beginning to learn that they must study dance.
The Russians are all trained as dancers before they start to study gymnastics.
But why gymnastics at all?
And is the sport really important?
After all, we did pretty well in some other areas of the Olympics competition.
But if it is important, what can we do to improve ourselves?
It is more than just lack of dance training that is our problem, for just as gymnastics can learn from dance, dance has some very important things to learn from gymnastics.
Taking first things first, let's understand the sport called gymnastics.
It is made up of tumbling, which might be said to start with a somersault, run through such stunts as headstands, handstands, cartwheels, backbends, and culminate in nearly impossible combinations of aerial flips and twists and apparatus work.
The apparatus used by gymnasts was once a common sight in American gyms, but about 1930 it was dropped in favor of games.
The parallel bars, horse, buck, springboard, horizontal bar, rings, and mats formerly in the school gyms were replaced by baseball, volleyball, basketball and football.
But the Russians use gymnastics as the first step in training for all other sports because it provides training in every basic quality except one, endurance.
The gymnast must develop strength, flexibility, coordination, timing, rhythm, courage, discipline, persistence and the desire for perfection.
In short, gymnastics uses every part of the body and requires a great deal of character as well.
The addition of endurance training later, when the body is mature enough to benefit from it without danger of injury, provides that final quality that makes the top athlete, soldier or citizen.
Another reason gymnastic study is valuable is that it can be started very early in life.
(An enterprising teacher or parent could start training a healthy child at the age of seven days.
Most Europeans have been exercising newborn infants for centuries.
) In most sports, as in most walks of life, the angels are on the side of those who begin young, and the Russian competitor of 16 has at least thirteen years of training behind him.
The American is very lucky if he has three.
If a nation wished to get a head start in physical fitness over all other nations, it would start its kindergarten students on a program of gymnastics the day they entered and thus eliminate a large number of the problems that plague American schools.
First of the problems attacked would be fatigue and emotional tension, since action relieves both.
Oddly enough, it is proven that there would be less reading difficulty.
Certainly there would be less anxiety, fewer accidents (it is the clumsy child who sustains the worst injuries), and higher scholastic averages, since alert children work better.
Russia knows this, and that is why there were over 800,000 competing for places as candidates for the Olympic gymnastic team.
Eighty thousand won top honors and a chance to try for the team itself.
We could scarcely find eighty in our great land of over 180 million people.
And what has dancing to do with all this?
A great deal.
Russia's young gymnasts have studied dance before having the rigorous training on apparatus.
Well-stretched, trained in posture and coordinated movement, and wedded to rhythm, they presented the audiences in Rome with one of the most beautiful sights ever seen at any Olympic contest.
American audiences in particular learned two valuable lessons.
They saw completely masculine and obviously virile men performing with incredible grace.
They were further stripped of old wive's tales by seeing the slender, lovely Russian girls performing feats requiring tremendous strength and with not one bulging muscle.
President Kennedy has asked that we become a physically fit nation.
If we wait until children are in junior high or high school, we will never manage it.
To be fit, one has to start early with young children, and today the only person who really reaches such children is the teacher of dance.
If the dance teachers of America make it their business to prepare their young charges for the gymnastics that must come some day if our schools are really responsible, we will be that much ahead.
School teachers, all too unprepared for the job they must do, will need demonstrators.
There should be youngsters who know how to do a headstand, and also how to help other children learn it.
They should know simple exercises that could prepare less fortunate children for the sports we will demand be taught.
Dance teachers can respond to President Kennedy's request not only through their regular dance work, but also through the kind of basic gymnastic work that makes for strength and flexibility.
Very little in today's living provides the strength we need and nothing provides the flexibility.
Dancers do have flexibility.
They often fail, however, to develop real abdominal, back, chest, shoulder and arm strength.
Ask any group of ballerinas to do ten push-ups or three chin-ups and the results, considering the amount of physical training they have had, will be very disappointing.
Even the boys will not be outstanding in these areas.
This isn't surprising when we consider that over 29 percent of the 11-year-old boys in America cannot chin themselves once, and that English school girls outdo them in almost every test (even dashes and endurance).
The only area in which American boys hold their own is the baseball throw.
The chinning bar
For arm and shoulder strength a chinning bar is recommended.
It should be installed over a door that is in full view of everyone, and a chair should be placed under it, a little to one side.
Those children who can chin themselves should be told to do one chin-up each time they pass under it.
Those who are too weak, should climb on the chair and, starting at the top of the chin, let themselves slowly down.
When they can take ten seconds to accomplish the descent, they will have the strength to chin-up.
Parents should be informed about this system and encouraged to do the same with the whole family at home.
The horse kick
Arm, shoulder, chest, upper and lower back strength will be aided with the Horse kick.
Start on hands and feet.
Keeping the hands in the starting position, run in place to a quick rhythm.
After this has become easy, use slower and slower rhythms, kicking higher and higher.
Follow this by crossing from one corner of the room to the other on all fours, kicking as high as possible.
Push-ups
Push-ups are essential, but few have the strength for them at first.
Start on the knees in a large circle.
Fall slowly forward onto the hands and let the body down to rest on the floor.
Push back up and repeat.
Do this exercise six times each class period.
As strength improves start in a standing position with legs wide apart and upper body bent forward.
Start by falling forward to a point close to the feet, and, as strength improves, fall farther and farther out.
Try to push back to the stand position from the stretched position without any intermediate pushes from the hands.
The push-up itself can be taught by starting at the top of the push-up with legs spread wide.
Let the body down slowly, taking at least five seconds for the letting down.
Five of these done daily for about a week will develop the strength for one push-up.
Handstands
Handstands come after arms, chest and shoulders have developed at least a minimum of strength.
Of course those who have developed more will find them easier.
Start with the class standing in a circle, with weight on the right foot and the left extended a little way into the circle.
At first each child should do a kick-up by himself so that the teacher can determine those ready to work alone, and those who need help.
Drop both hands to the floor and at the same time kick the right foot up in back.
The left will follow at once.
The right will land first, followed by the left.
Return to the standing position.
Care should be taken to see that the hands are placed on the floor before the kick starts and also that the landing foot is brought as close to the hands as possible.
This will prevent flat falls and toe injuries.
Bare feet are better for such work than any form of slipper.
Eventually the class will be able to kick up high enough so that the teacher can catch the leading leg.
The child should then bring both legs together overhead, point the toes and tighten the seat muscles.
Be sure that the landing foot is brought close to the hands and that only one foot lands at a time.
Backbends
The backbend is of extreme importance to any form of free gymnastics, and, as with all acrobatics, the sooner begun the better the results.
Have the class lie supine with knees apart and bent.
Place flat palms on either side of the head a few inches away from the ears, fingers pointing toward the shoulders.
Arch the back upwards to make a bridge.
Be sure the head drops backward so that the child looks at the floor rather than toward the ceiling.
As flexibility improves, the feet will move closer to the hands and the bridge rise higher.
Later this can be combined with the handstand to provide a walkover.
Back circle
To further increase back flexibility, work on the back circle.
Have the class lie prone.
Place the hands in front of the chest.
Keep the legs straight and the toes pointed.
Straighten the arms slowly, this arches the back.
At the peak of the arch, tip the head back and bend the knees in an effort to touch toes to head.
Improvement can be measured by the lessening distance between toes and head.
Somersaults
The last essential to the beginner's gymnastic program is the somersault, or forward roll.
This used to be part of every child's bag of tricks, but few children can do it today;
some are actually incapable of rolling forward and are completely confused when not sitting or standing upright.
For most small children, learning a forward roll is simply a matter of copying another child who can.
After it has been seen, have the child start on a mat on hands and knees (a thin, inexpensive mat is quite sufficient for anything that does not require falling).
He places the hands on either side of the head, keeping the chin down on the chest.
He then pushes his seat into the air and the teacher guides it over.
One or two practice runs should be sufficient for solo.
If, however, the child is weak, overweight, or afraid, more help will be needed.
When the child raises his seat into the air, the teacher takes hold under both sides of the pelvis;
then no matter what happens, the child's performance will be controlled.
By lifting the seat upwards a little, the weight is taken off the neck and the back is kept rounded.
These are beginnings, but correctly learned they prepare for satisfying and exciting stunts that can be performed by a strong, flexible body (we are not talking of eccentric extremes).
Even if gymnastics are not the ultimate goal, the good tumbler will be a better dancer, a better athlete, and a human being with a greater margin of safety in any activity.
It is very important for parents to understand that early training is imperative.
And dancing school, so helpful in artistic and psychological development, also contributes to this essential early training--and can contribute even more.
Every taxpayer is well aware of the vast size of our annual defense budget and most of our readers also realize that a large portion of these expenditures go for military electronics.
We have noted how some electronic techniques, developed for the defense effort, have evenutally been used in commerce and industry.
The host of novel applications of electronics to medical problems is far more thrilling because of their implication in matters concerning our health and vitality.
When we consider the electronic industry potential for human betterment, the prospect is staggering.
The author has recently studied the field of medical electronics and has been convinced that, in this area alone, the application of electronic equipment has enormous possibilities.
The benefits electronics can bring to bio-medicine may be greater by far than any previous medical discovery.
We use the term bio-medicine because of the close interrelation between biology and medical research.
Electronics has been applied to medicine for many years in the form of such familiar equipment as the x-ray machine, the electrocardiograph, and the diathermy machine.
Recently many doctors have installed ultrasonic vibration machines for deep massage of bruises, contusions, and simple bursitis.
Commonly used electronic devices which are found in practically every hospital are closed-circuit TV and audio systems for internal paging and instruction, along with radiation counters, timers, and similar devices.
In this article we will concentrate on the advances in the application of electronics in bio-medical research laboratories because this is where tomorrow's commonplace equipment originates.
From the wealth of material and the wide variety of different electronic techniques perfected in the past few years we have selected a few examples which appear to be headed for use in the immediate future and which offer completely new tools in medical research.
Ultraviolet microscopy
Many cells, bacteria, and other microorganisms are transparent to visible light and must be stained for microscopic investigation.
This stain often disrupts the normal cell activity or else colors only the outside.
A completely new insight into living cells and their structure will be possible by use of a new technique which replaces visible light with ultraviolet radiation and combines a microscope with a color-TV system to view the results.
Fig. 1 is a simplified block diagram of the ultraviolet microscopy system developed at the Medical Electronics Center of Rockefeller Institute.
By combining the talents of a medical man, Dr. Aterman, a biophysicist, Mr. Berkely, and an electronics expert, Dr. Zworykin, this novel technique has been developed which promises to open broad avenues to understanding life processes.
Three different wavelengths of ultraviolet radiation are selected by the variable filters placed in front of the three mercury xenon lights which serve as the ultraviolet sources.
These wavelengths are reflected in sequence through the specimen by the rotating mirror;
the specimen is magnified by the microscope.
Instead of the observer's eye the image orthicon in the TV camera does the looking.
The microscope and orthicon are both selected to operate well into the ultraviolet spectrum, which means that all lenses must be quartz.
The video signal is amplified and then switched, in synchronism with the three ultraviolet light sources which are sequenced by the rotating mirror so that during one-twentieth of a second only one wavelength, corresponding to red, green, or blue, is seen.
(Note: Because of light leakage from one ultraviolet source to another, the lights are switched by a commutator-like assembly rotated by a synchronous motor.
This assembly also supplies a 20-cps switching gate for the electronics circuitry.
) This is the same system as was used in the field-sequential color-TV system which preceded the present simultaneous system.
Three separate amplifiers then drive a 21-inch tricolor tube.
The result is a color picture of the specimen where the primary colors correspond to the three different ultraviolet wavelengths.
Many of the cells and microorganisms which are transparent to visible light, absorb or reflect the much shorter wavelengths of the ultraviolet spectrum.
Different parts of these cells sometimes absorb or reflect different wavelengths so that it is often possible to see internal portions of cells in a different color.
Where the microscope under visible light may show only vague shadows or nothing at all, ultraviolet illumination and subsequent translation into a color TV picture reveal a wealth of detail.
At the present time the research team which pioneered this new technique is primarily interested in advancing and perfecting it.
Breathing--electronically analyzed
The medical title of Lobar Ventilation In Man by Drs. C. J. Martin and A. C. Young, covers a brief paper which is one part of a much larger effort to apply electronics to the study of the respiratory process.
At the University of Washington Medical School, the electronics group has developed the Respiratory Gas Analyzer shown in Fig. 3.
This unit, affectionately dubbed The Monster, can be wheeled to any convenient location and provides a wealth of information about the patient's breathing.
Usually the patient breathes into a mouthpiece while walking a treadmill, standing still, or in some other medically significant position.
From the resulting data the doctor can determine lung defects with hitherto unknown accuracy and detail.
Heart-measuring techniques
The original electrocardiograph primarily indicates irregularities in the heartbeat, but today's techniques allow exact measurements of the flow of blood through the aorta, dimensioning of the heart and its chambers, and a much more detailed study of each heartbeat.
For many of these measurements the chest must be opened, but the blood vessels and the heart itself remain undisturbed.
A group of researchers at the University of Washington have given a paper which briefly outlines some of these techniques.
One simple method of measuring the expansion of the heart is to tie a thin rubber tube, filled with mercury, around the heart and record the change in resistance as the tube is stretched.
A balanced resistance bridge and a pen recorder are all the electronic instrumentation needed.
Sonar can be used to measure the thickness of the heart by placing small crystal transducers at opposite sides of the heart or blood vessel and exciting one with some pulsed ultrasonic energy.
The travel time of sound in tissue is about 1500 meters per second;
thus it takes about 16 Msec. to traverse 25 mm. of tissue.
A sonar or radar-type of pulse generator and time-delay measuring system is required for body-tissue evaluation.
In addition to the heart and aorta, successful measurements of liver and spleen have also been made by this technique.
The Doppler effect, using ultrasonic signals, can be employed to measure the flow of blood without cutting into the blood vessel.
A still more sophisticated system has been devised for determining the effective power of the heart itself.
It uses both an ultrasonic dimensioning arrangement of the heart and a catheter carrying a thermistor inserted into the bloodstream.
The latter measures the heat carried away by the bloodstream as an indication of the velocity of the blood flow.
It is also possible to utilize a pressure transducer, mounted at the end of a catheter which is inserted into the heart's left ventricle, to indicate the blood pressure in the heart itself.
This pressure measurement may be made at the same time that the ultrasonic dimensioning measurement is made.
A simplified version of the instrumentation for this procedure is shown in Fig. 2.
Outputs of the two systems are measured by a pulse-timing circuit and a resistance bridge, followed by a simple analogue computer which feeds a multichannel recorder.
From this doctors can read heart rate, change in diameter, pressure, and effective heart power.
Radio-transmitter pills
Several years ago headlines were made by a small radio transmitter capsule which could be swallowed by the patient and which would then radio internal pressure data to external receivers.
This original capsule contained a battery and a transistor oscillator and was about 1 cm. in diameter.
Battery life limited the use of this pill to about 8 to 30 hours maximum.
A refinement of this technique has been described by Drs. Zworykin and Farrar and Mr. Berkely of the Medical Electronics Center of the Rockefeller Institute.
In this novel arrangement the pill is much smaller and contains only a resonant circuit in which the capacitor is formed by a pressure-sensing transducer.
As shown in Fig. 4, an external antenna is placed over or around the patient and excited 3000 times a second with short 400-kc. bursts.
The energy received by the pill causes the resonant circuit to ring on after the burst and this ringing takes place at the resonant frequency of the pill.
These frequencies are amplified and detected by the FM receiver after each burst of transmitted energy and, after the pill has been calibrated, precise internal pressure indications can be obtained.
One of the advantages of this method is that the pill can remain in the patient for several days, permitting observation under natural conditions.
Applications to organs other than the gastrointestinal tract are planned for future experiments.
Sonar in medical research
One of the most gratifying applications of an important technique of submarine detection is in the exploration of the human body.
Our readers are familiar with the principles of sonar where sound waves are sent out in water and the echoes then indicate submerged objects.
Various methods of pulsing, scanning, and displaying these sound waves are used to detect submarines, map ocean floors, and even communicate under water.
In medicine the frequencies are much higher, transducers and the sonar beams themselves are much smaller, and different scanning techniques may be used, but the principles involved are the same as in sonar.
Because the body contains so much liquid, transmission of ultrasonic signals proceeds fairly well in muscles and blood vessels.
Bones and cartilage transmit poorly and tend to reflect the ultrasonic signals.
Based on this phenomenon, a number of investigators have used this method to look through human organs.
A good example of the results obtainable with ultrasonic radiation is contained in papers presented by Dr. G. Baum who has explored the human eye.
He can diagnose detachment of the retina where conventional methods indicate blindness due to glaucoma.
The method used to scan the eye ultrasonically is illustrated in Fig. 6.
The transducer is coupled to the body through a water bath, not shown.
For display, Dr. Baum uses a portion of an Af, an airborne radar indicator, and then photographs the screen to obtain a permanent record.
A typical sonogram of a human eye, together with a description of the anatomical parts, is shown in Fig. 5.
The frequency used for these experiments is 15 mc. and the transducer is a specially cut crystal with an epoxy lens capable of providing beam diameters smaller than one millimeter.
The transducer itself moves the beam in a sector scan, just like a radar antenna, while the entire transducer structure is moved over a 90-degree arc in front of the eye to look into all corners.
The total picture is only seen by the camera which integrates the many sector scans over the entire 90-degree rotation period.
Drs. Howry and Holmes at the University of Colorado Medical School have applied the same sonar technique to other areas of soft tissue and have obtained extremely good results.
By submerging the patient in a tub and rotating the transducer while the scanning goes on, they have been able to get cross-section views of the neck, as shown in Fig. 7, as well as many other hitherto impossible insights.
As mentioned before, bone reflects the sound energy and in Fig. 7 the portion of the spine shows as the black area in the center.
Arteries and veins are apparent by their black, blood-filled centers and the surrounding white walls.
A cross-section of a normal lower human leg is shown in Fig. 8 with the various parts labeled.
Oersted's boyhood represented a minimal chance of either attaining greatness or serving his people so well and over so long a span of life.
He was born in the small Danish town of Rudkoebing on the island of Langeland in the south-central part of Denmark on August 14, 1777.
His father Soeren was the village apothecary whose slender income made it difficult to feed his family, let alone educate them in a town without even a school.
The two older boys, Hans and Anders, his junior by a year, therefore went daily to the home of a warm and friendly wigmaker nearby for instruction in German;
his wife taught the two boys to read and write Danish.
Other brothers later joined them for instruction with Oldenburg, the wigmaker, and also arithmetic was added to Bible reading, German, and Danish in the informal curriculum.
Oldenburg's contributions were soon exhausted and the boys had to turn to a wider circle of the town's learned, such as the pastor, to supplement the simple teaching.
From the town surveyor, Hans learned drawing and mathematics and, from a university student, some academic subjects.
The mayor of the town taught them English and French.
Whatever Hans or Anders learned separately they passed on to each other;
they read every book that they could borrow in the village.
At 12, Hans was sufficiently mature to help his father in the apothecary shop, which helped stimulate his interest in medicine and science.
His earlier love for literature and history remained with him for his entire life.
In 1793 the brothers decided to enter the University of Copenhagen (founded in 1479) and the following spring found them at the university preparing to matriculate for the autumn session.
While Hans devoted himself to the sciences of medicine, physics, and astronomy, his brother studied law.
The brothers continued to help each other during their studies, sharing a joint purse, lodging together in the dormitory and dining together at the home of their aunt.
They supplemented their income by small government assistance, by tutoring and economizing wherever they could.
So impressive were those serious years of study at the university that Hans later wrote, to be perfectly free, the young man must revel in the great kingdom of thought and imagination;
there is a struggle there, in which, if he falls, it is easy for him to rise again, there is freedom of utterance there, which draws after it no irreparable consequences on society.
I lived in this onward-driving contest where each day overcame a new difficulty, gained a new truth, or banished a previous error.
He openly proclaimed his pleasure in lecturing and writing about science.
In this third year at the university, Hans, in 1797, was awarded the first important token of recognition, a gold medal for his essay on Limits Of Poetry And Prose.
He completed his training in pharmacy also, taking his degree with high honors in 1797, and in 1799 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy along with a prize for an essay in medicine.
He proposed a fresh theory of alkalis which later was accepted in chemical practices.
Ferment of scientific activity
Hans' student days were at a time when Europe was in a new intellectual ferment following the revolutions in America and in France, Germany and Italy were rising from divisive nationalisms and a strong wave of intellectual awareness was sweeping the Continent.
The new century opened with Oersted beginning his professional career in charge of an apothecary shop in Copenhagen and as lecturer at the university.
He was stirred by the announcement of Volta's discovery of chemical electricity and he immediately applied the voltaic pile to experiments with acids and alkalis.
The following year he devoted to the customary Wanderjahr, traveling in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, meeting the philosophers Schelling, Fichte, and Tieck.
He also met Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Mass.) who was then serving the Elector of Bavaria, and the physicist Ritter;
these were Oersted's main contacts in science.
From Gottingen (1801) where he stayed for 10 days, he wrote, The first question asked everywhere is about galvanism.
As everybody is curious to see the battery of glass tubes I have invented, I have had quite a small one made here of four glass tubes (in Copenhagen I used 30) and intend to carry it with me.
Oersted joined Ritter at Jena and stayed with him for 3 weeks, continuing their correspondence after he left.
With Ritter he was exposed to the fantastic profusion of ideas that stormed through his host's fertile but disorganized mind.
Oersted remodeled Ritter's notes into an essay in French which was submitted to the Institut De France for its annual prize of 3,000 francs.
The sound discoveries of this quixotic genius were so diluted by those of fantasy that the prize was never awarded to him.
In May, 1803, Ritter, in another flight of fancy, wrote to Oersted a letter that contained a remarkable prophecy.
He related events on earth to periodic celestial phenomena and indicated that the years of maximum inclination of the ecliptic coincided with the years of important electrical discoveries.
Thus, 1745 corresponded to the invention of the Leiden jar by Kleist, 1764 that of the electrophorus by Wilcke, 1782 produced the condenser of Volta, and 1801 the voltaic pile.
Ritter proceeded, You now emerge into a new epoch in which late in the year 1819 or 1820, you will have to reckon.
This we might well witness.
Ritter died in 1810 and Oersted not only lived to see the event occur but was the author of it.
In 1803 Oersted returned to Copenhagen and applied for the university's chair in physics but was rejected because he was probably considered more a philosopher than a physicist.
However, he continued experimenting and lecturing, publishing the results of his experiments in German and Danish periodicals.
In 1806 his ambition was realized and he became professor of physics at the Copenhagen University, though not realizing full professorship (ordinarius) until 1817.
During Oersted's attendance at the university, it was poorly equipped with physical apparatus for experimenting in the sciences.
He was, however, fortunate in his contact with Prof. J. G. L. Manthey (1769-1842), teacher of chemistry, who, in addition to his academic chair, was also proprietor of the Lion Pharmacy in Copenhagen where Oersted assisted him.
Manthey maintained a valuable collection of physical and chemical apparatus which was at Oersted's disposal during and after his graduation.
In 1800, Manthey went abroad and Oersted was appointed manager of the Lion Pharmacy.
In February 1801, Oersted did manage to experiment with physical apparatus and reported experiments made with a voltaic battery of 600 plates of zinc and silver and of later experiments with a battery of 60 plates of zinc and lead.
In the following year, 1803, Oersted, simultaneously with Davy, discovered that acids increased the strength of a voltaic battery more than did salts.
Eager as he was to pursue this promising line, he was so loaded down with the management of the pharmacy and lectures in the medical and pharmaceutical faculties at the university that he could devote only Sunday afternoons to galvanizing.
He assumed his academic career with the same intensity and thoroughness that had marked every step in his rise from boyhood.
The university was the only one in Denmark and the status of professor represented the upper social level.
His broad interest in literary, political, and philosophical movements opened many doors to him.
His friends were numerous and their ties to him were strong.
The years 1812 and 1813 saw him in Germany and France again, but on this visit to Berlin he did not seek out the philosophers as he had on his first journey.
His interest in finding a relationship between voltaic electricity and magnetism is here first indicated.
Chapter 8, is entitled On Magnetism and in it are included such remarks as, One has always been tempted to compare the magnetic forces with the electrical forces.
The great resemblance between electrical and magnetic attractions and repulsions and the similarity of their laws necessarily would bring about this comparison.
It is true, that nothing has been found comparable with electricity by communication;
but the phenomena observed had such a degree of analogy to those depending on electrical distribution that one could not find the slightest difference.
The form of galvanic activity is halfway between the magnetic form and the electrical form.
There, forces are more latent than in electricity, and less than in magnetism.
But in such an important question, we would be satisfied if the judgment were that the principal objection to the identity of forces which produce electricity and magnetism were only a difficulty, and not a thing which is contrary to it.
One could also add to these analogies that steel loses its magnetism by heat, which proves that steel becomes a better conductor through a rise in temperature, just as electrical bodies do.
It is also found that magnetism exists in all bodies of nature, as proven by Bruckmann and Coulomb.
By that, one feels that magnetic forces are as general as electrical forces.
An attempt should be made to see if electricity, in its most latent stage, has any action on the magnet as such.
His plan and intent were clearly charted.
Oersted returned in 1814 and resumed an active part in university and political discussions.
In one debate he supported the freedom of judgment as opposed to dogma, in another he held that the practice of science was in fact an act of religious worship.
He continued as a popular lecturer.
He devised a detonating fuse in which a short wire was caused to glow by an electric current.
In 1819 under royal command he undertook a very successful geological expedition to Bornholm, one of the Danish islands, being one of three scientists in the expedition.
It was with the assistance of one of the members of this expedition, Lauritz Esmarch, that Oersted succeeded in producing light by creating an electric discharge in mercury vapor through which an electric current was made to flow.
Together they also developed a new form of voltaic cell in which the wooden trough was replaced by one of copper, thereby producing stronger currents.
Esmarch was among those who witnessed Oersted's first demonstration of his discovery.
Discovery of electromagnetism
the association between electric (both electrostatic and voltaic) forces and magnetic forces had been recognized by investigators for many decades.
Electrical literature contained numerous references to lightning that had magnetized iron and had altered the polarity of compass needles.
In the late 1700's Beccaria and Van Marum, among others, had magnetized iron by sending an electrostatic charge through it.
Beccaria had almost stumbled on a lead to the relationship between electricity and magnetism when a discharge from a Leyden jar was sent transversally through a piece of watch-spring steel making its ends magnetic.
The resulting magnetic effect proved stronger than when the discharge was made lengthwise.
The experiments of Romagnosi and others have already been noted but no one had determined the cause-and-effect relationship between these two primary forces.
Oersted's own earlier experiments were unimpressive, possibly because he had, like other experimenters, laid the conducting wire across the compass needle instead of parallel with it.
At this lecture Oersted happened to place the conducting wire over and parallel to a magnetic needle.
Knowing specifically what the many feed additives can do and how and when to feed them can make a highly competitive business more profitable for beef, dairy, and sheep men.
The target chart quickly and briefly tells you which additives do what.
All the additives listed here are sanctioned for use by the Food and Drug Administration of the federal government.
All comments concerning effectiveness and use of drugs have been carefully reviewed by a veterinary medical officer with Aj.
This article assumes that the rations you are feeding your beef, dairy cattle, and sheep are adequately balanced with protein, vitamins, and minerals.
The drug's chemical name is listed, since most states require feed processors to use this name instead of the trade name on the feed tag.
In some instances, the trade name is shown in parentheses following the chemical name.
This indicates that this drug is being marketed under one trade name only or state regulatory organizations have approved its use on the feed tag.
Here's your feed additive guide for ruminants:
drug's chemical name:
Oxytetracycline hydrochloride (Terramycin) what it does:
Increases rate of gain and improves feed efficiency, aids in the prevention or treatment (depending on level fed) of the early stages of shipping fever, prevents or treats bacterial diarrhea, and aids in reducing incidence of bloat and liver abscesses.
Milk production may be increased by the anti-infective properties of this drug.
How to feed: beef cattle (finishing ration)
-- To increase rate of gain and improve feed efficiency, feed 75 milligrams per head in daily supplement.
Calves
-- To increase rate of gain and improve feed efficiency, feed 10 to 25 grams per ton of complete feed.
As an aid in the prevention of bacterial diarrhea (scours), feed 50 grams per ton of complete feed.
For the treatment of bacterial scours, feed 100-200 grams.
For prevention or treatment of bacterial scours, feed 0.1 to 5 milligrams per pound of body weight daily.
Beef and dairy
-- As an aid in reducing incidence and severity of bloat, provide 75 milligrams of oxytetracycline hydrochloride per animal daily.
To reduce incidence of liver abscesses, supply 75 milligrams of oxytetracycline activity per head daily.
To prevent or treat bacterial diarrhea, furnish 0.1 to 5 milligrams per pound of body weight daily.
For the prevention or treatment of the early stages of shipping fever complex, increase feeding level to 0.5 to 2 grams per head per day.
For the best results, feed this level to cattle 3 to 5 days preceding shipment and/or 3 to 5 days following their arrival in your feed lot.
For treatment of shipping fever, this level should be fed at the onset of the disease symptoms until symptoms disappear.
Sheep
-- To increase rate of gain and improve feed efficiency, feed 10 to 20 grams per ton.
As an aid in the prevention of bacterial diarrhea (scours), feed 50 grams per ton.
Drug's chemical name:
Chlortetracycline (Aureomycin) what it does:
Increases gains, improves feed efficiency, and reduces losses from bacterial infections listed under How To Feed section.
Milk production may be increased by the anti-infective properties of this drug.
How to feed: beef
-- Not less than 70 milligrams of Aureomycin per head daily to aid in the prevention of liver abscesses in feed-lot beef cattle.
Prevention of bacterial pneumonia, shipping fever, as an aid in reduction of losses due to respiratory infections (infectious rhinotracheitis--shipping fever complex).
Feed at level of 70 milligrams per head per day.
Treatment of the above diseases: 350 milligrams per head per day for 30 days only.
For prevention of these diseases during periods of stress such as shipping, excessive handling, vaccination, extreme weather conditions: 350 milligrams per head per day for 30 days only.
As an aid in reducing bacterial diarrhea and preventing foot rot, feed not less than 0.1 milligram per pound of body weight daily.
To aid in the prevention of anaplasmosis, feed not less than 0.5 milligram per pound of body weight daily.
Dairy
-- For calves, feed not less than 50 grams of Aureomycin per ton complete feed as an aid in preventing bacterial diarrhea and foot rot.
Sheep
-- As an aid in reducing losses due to enterotoxemia (overeating disease), feed a complete ration containing not less than 20 and not more than 50 grams of Aureomycin per ton.
To reduce vibrionic abortion in breeding sheep, feed 80 milligrams per head daily.
Drug's chemical name:
Dynafac.
What it does:
An aid in getting cattle and sheep on full feed, in improving feed conversion and growth, in reducing bloat and founder, and in controlling scours.
How to feed: beef and dairy calves
-- 0.2 gram Dynafac per head daily (1 gram of premix per head daily) for promoting growth, feed conversion, bloom, and full feed earlier.
Feeder cattle
-- Dynafac in a complete ration or 0.3 to 0.4 gram per head per day (200 grams of premix per ton complete ration or equivalent.
Animals consuming 20 pounds feed daily receive 2 grams Dynafac).
Aids in minimizing the occurrence of feed-lot bloat due to high consumption of concentrates.
Sheep and lambs
-- 1.0 gram premix per head per day for promoting growth, feed conversion, and getting lambs on full feed earlier.
Drug's chemical name:
Diethylstilbestrol.
What it does:
Increases rate of gain and improves feed efficiency.
How to feed: beef cattle
-- 10 milligrams of diethylstilbestrol per head daily.
This may be incorporated in complete feeds at the level of 0.4 milligram of diethylstilbestrol per pound of ration--assuming animal consumes about 25 pounds daily.
The drug is also incorporated in supplements.
These are to be fed at a rate to provide 10 milligrams DES per head daily.
The recommended 10-milligram daily intake level should be maintained.
It may be incorporated into cattle creep feeds in levels from 1.0 to 1.5 milligrams of diethylstilbestrol per pound of feed.
Sheep fattening rations
-- The recommended level for sheep is 2 milligrams daily, and this level should be maintained.
Include supplement containing 0.4 to 2 milligrams per pound to provide 2 milligrams per head per day.
Caution:
Discontinue medication 48 hours before slaughter.
Drug's chemical name:
Hydroxazine hydrochloride.
What it does:
Improves growth rate and feed efficiency of fattening beef animals.
How to feed:
At the rate of 2-1/2 milligrams per head per day.
Drug's chemical name:
Iodinated casein.
What it does:
Drug elevates the metabolic rate of the cow.
Fed to dairy cattle to increase milk production and butterfat percentage.
How to feed:
1 to 1-1/2 grams per 100 pounds of body weight.
Caution:
Cows receiving drug may not be officially tested under breed registry testing programs.
Drug's chemical name:
Bacterial and fungal enzymes.
(These enzyme preparations appear on today's feed tags as fermentation extracts of Bacillus subtilis, Apergillus orzae, Niger, and Flavus.
) what it does:
Improves utilization of low-moisture corn (less than 14%).
How to feed:
Greatest benefits have been associated with feeding low-moisture corn in beef-feeding programs.
Several firms are merchandising enzyme preparation through feed manufacturers.
Drug's chemical name:
Ronnel.
What it does:
Effectively controls cattle grubs which damage hides and can reduce gains.
How to feed:
Drug is added to either a protein or mineral supplement for a period of 7 or 14 days.
Follow manufacturer's recommendation carefully.
Caution:
Do not feed to dairy cows and do not feed within 60 days of slaughter.
Drug's chemical name:
Methyl polysiloxanes.
What it does:
Aids in preventing foamy bloat.
How to feed:
For prevention of foamy bloat, feed at a rate of 0.5 to 2 milligrams per head per day in mineral or salt or feed.
For treatment of bloat, drug is fed at a higher level.
Drug's chemical name:
Phenothiazine.
What it does:
Reduces losses from stomach, hookworm, and nodular worms by interfering with reproduction of the female worm by reducing the number of eggs laid and essentially rendering all laid eggs sterile.
Also, aids in the control of horn flies by preventing them from hatching in the droppings.
How to feed:
Treat cattle with 10 grams per 100 pounds body weight with a maximum of 70 grams per animal.
Then, for the above parasites, feed continuously at these levels: Feeder cattle--2-5 grams of phenothiazine daily;
beef calves--to 1.5 grams daily depending on weight of animal.
Treat lambs with 12 grams per head for lambs weighing up to 50 pounds;
treat lambs over 50 pounds and adults with 24 grams per animal.
For continuous control, feed 1 part phenothiazine to 9 parts minerals or salts.
To include in feed, add phenothiazine to supply 0.5 to 1 gram per sheep daily.
Caution:
Continuous administration is not recommended for lactating cows.
Following single-dose treatment, milk should be discarded for 4 days following treatment.
Drug's chemical name:
Procaine penicillin.
What it does:
Aids in reducing the incidence and severity of bloat in beef or dairy cattle on legume pasture.
How to feed:
Feed 75,000 units or 75 milligrams per head daily.
Drug's chemical name:
Sodium propionate.
What it does:
For the prevention or treatment of acetonemia (ketosis) in dairy cows.
How to feed:
For the prevention of acetonemia (ketosis) feed 1/4 pound per day beginning at calving and continuing for 6 weeks.
For the treatment of ketosis feed 1/4 to 1/2 pound per day for 10 days.
Drug's chemical name:
Sulfaquinoxaline.
What it does:
Helps control shipping dysentery and coccidiosis in lambs.
How to feed: lambs
-- feed at level for 2 or 3 days.
Drug's chemical name:
Dried rumen bacteria.
What it does:
Stimulates rumen activity.
How to feed:
Incorporated in commercially prepared feed at proper levels.
Drug's chemical name:
Calcium and sodium lactate.
What it does:
Prevents and treats acetonemia (ketosis) in dairy cows.
How to feed:
For prevention of ketosis, feed 1/4 pound per head daily for 6 weeks commencing at calving time.
For treatment of ketosis, feed 1/2 pound daily until symptoms disappear.
Then, feed preventive dose until 6 weeks after calving.
Drug's chemical name:
Promazine hydrochloride.
What it does:
A tranquilizer fed to cattle (other than lactating dairy cows) prior to their being subjected to stress conditions such as vaccinating, shipping, weaning calves, and excessive handling.
How to feed:
Not less than milligram but not more than 1.25 milligrams of additive per pound of body weight.
Caution:
Additive should not be fed 72 hours before animals are slaughtered.
There are three principal feed bunk types for dairy and beef cattle: (1) Fence-line bunks--cattle eat from one side while feed is put in from the opposite side of the fence by self-unloading wagons;
(2) Mechanized bunks--they sit within the feed lot, are filled by a mechanical conveyor above feeding surface;
(3) Special bunks--as discussed here, they permit cattle to eat from all sides.
Feed is put in with an elevator.
Several materials or combinations of materials can be used to construct a satisfactory feed bunk.
The selection of materials depends on skills of available labor for installation, cost of materials available locally, and your own preference.
No one material is best for all situations.
Selecting bunks by economic comparison is usually an individual problem.
Fence-line feeding.
Animals eat only from one side, so the fence-line bunk must be twice as long as the mechanical bunk.
These bunks also serve as a fence, so part of the additional cost must be attributed to the fence.
Because of their location, on the edge of the feed lot, fence-line bunks are not in the way of mechanical manure removal.
Filling these bunks by the same self-unloading wagons used to fill silos spreads cost of the wagons over more time and operations.
All-weather roads must be provided next to the feeding floor so access will be possible all year.
This will be a problem in areas of heavy snowfall.
Marketing in the new decade will be no picnic--for the sixties will present possibly the most intense competitive activity that you have experienced in the last 20-25 yrs..
Why?
Companies of all types have made great advances in production capabilities and efficiencies--in modern equipment and new processes, enlarged R & D facilities, faster new product development.
Many companies have upgraded their sales manpower and tested new selling, distribution, and promotion techniques to gain a bigger competitive edge.
Given this kind of business climate, what competitive marketing problems will your company face in the next 10 yrs.?
Based on our experience with clients, we see 14 major problems which fall into three broad groups--the market place itself, marketing methods, and marketing management.
Problems in the market
greater price-consciousness.
There has been an intensification of price-consciousness in recent years;
there is every indication it will continue.
Frequently, wittingly or unwittingly, price-consciousness has been fostered by manufacturers, distributors, and dealers.
Despite generally good levels of income, we see greater price pressures than ever before--traveling back along the chain from consumer to distributor to manufacturer.
Here are some key areas to examine to make sure your pricing strategy will be on target:
Has the probable price situation in your field been forecast as a basis for future planning?
Have cost studies been made of every phase of your operation to determine what might be done if things get worse?
Have you actually checked out (not just mentally tested) different selling approaches designed to counter the price competition problem?
Increased customer sophistication.
Average consumer is becoming more sophisticated regarding product and advertising claims, partly because of widespread criticism of such assertions.
This problem can force a change in marketing approach in many kinds of businesses.
Have you examined this problem of increasing consumer sophistication from the standpoint of your own company?
Greater demand for services.
Need for service is here to stay--and the problem is going to be tougher to solve in the sixties.
There are two reasons for this.
First, most products tend to become more complex.
Second, in a competitive market, the customer feels his weight and throws it around.
Providing good customer service requires as thorough a marketing and general management planning job as the original selling of the product.
Too often it is thought of at the last moment of new product introduction.
Good service starts with product design and planning: Many products seem to be designed for a production economy, not for a service one.
Proper follow-through requires training your own sales organization, and your distributor organizations, not only in the techniques but also in good customer relations.
Have you assessed the importance of service and given it proper attention?
Wider discretionary choices for customers.
In spending his money today, the consumer is pulled in many directions.
To the manufacturer of the more convenient-type product--the purchase of which can be switched, delayed, or put off entirely--the implications are important.
Your competition is now proportionately greater--you are competing not only against manufacturers in the same field but also against a vast array of manufacturers of other appealing consumer products.
Many industry trade associations are developing campaigns to protect or enhance the share of the consumer's dollar being spent on their particular products.
Has your company thought through its strategy in this whole discretionary buying area?
Geographic shift of customers.
The trends have been in evidence for many years--population shifts to the Southwest and Far West, and from city to suburbs.
These shifts will continue in the next 10 yrs..
Have you considered the implications of continuing geographic shifts in terms of sales force allocation, strength of distributor organizations, and even plant location?
Market concentration and distribution in fewer accounts.
We have already witnessed great changes through mergers and acquisitions in the food industry--at both the manufacturing and retail ends.
Instead of relatively small sales to many accounts, there are now larger sales to or through fewer accounts.
The change may require different products, pricing, packaging, warehousing, salesmanship, advertising and executive attention--practically every link in the marketing network may have to be adjusted.
Have you examined these trends, forecast the effects, and planned your marketing strategy to compete effectively under changing circumstances?
Problems in marketing methods
more private label competition.
In the area of private label competition, it is logical to expect a continuation of trends which have been under way during the first decade.
As mass dealer and distributor organizations grow in size, there is every reason to expect them to try to share in the manufacturer's as well as the distributor's profits--which is, in effect, what the sale of private brands tends to do.
Average manufacturer frequently has helped build private brand business, delivering largely the same qualities and styles in private brand merchandise as in branded.
Moreover, the larger and more aggressive mass distribution outlets and chain stores have insisted on high quality--and the customer seems to have caught on.
If you are up against private brand competition, have you formulated a long-term program for researching and strengthening your market position?
If private brand competition hasn't been felt in your product field as yet, have you thought how you will cope with it if and when it does appear?
Less personal salesmanship.
Display merchandising, backed by pre-selling through advertising and promotion, will continue to make strides in the sixties.
It has multiple implications and possible headaches for your marketing program.
How can you cash in on this fast-growing type of outlet and still maintain relationships with older existing outlets which are still important?
If you have a higher-quality product, how can you make it stand out--justify its premium price--without the spoken word?
Salesmanship is still necessary, but it's a different brand of salesmanship.
Have you carefully examined the selling techniques which best suit your products?
Have you studied the caliber and sales approaches of your sales force in relation to requirements for effective marketing?
Are you experimenting with different selling slants in developing new customers?
Higher costs of distribution generally.
Some distribution costs are kept up by competitive pressure, some by the fact that the customers have come to expect certain niceties and flourishes.
No manufacturer has taken the initiative in pointing out the costs involved.
The use of bulk handling is continuously growing.
Computers are being used to keep branch inventories at more workable levels.
Selective selling--concentrating sales on the larger accounts--has been used effectively by some manufacturers.
There may be possible economies at any one of a number of links in your marketing and distribution chain.
Do you have a program for scrutinizing all these links regularly and carefully--and with some imagination?
In your sales force, will a smaller number of higher-priced, high-quality salesmen serve you best, or can you make out better with a larger number of lower-paid salesmen?
Will your trade customers settle for less attention and fewer frills in return for some benefit they can share?
In one company covering the country with a high-quality sales force of 10 men, the president personally phones each major account every 6 mos..
As a result, distribution costs were cut, customer relations improved.
Distribution costs are almost bound to increase in the sixties--and you will never know what you can do to control them unless you study each element and experiment with alternative ways of doing the job.
Higher costs of advertising and promotion.
From the manufacturer's point of view, the increasing cost of advertising and promotion is a very real problem to be faced in the sixties.
It is accentuated by the need for pre-selling goods, and private label competition.
How much fundamental thinking and research has your company done on its advertising program?
Are you following competition willy-nilly--trying to match dollar for dollar--or are you experimenting with new means for reaching and influencing consumers?
Have you evaluated the proper place of advertising and all phases of promotion in your total marketing program--from the standpoint of effort, money, and effectiveness?
Increasing tempo of new product development.
Practically all forecasts mention new and exciting products on the horizon.
Will you be out in the market place with some of these sales-building new products?
If competition beats you to it, this exciting new product era can have real headaches in store.
On the other hand, the process of obsoleting an old product and introducing the new one is usually mighty expensive.
As markets become larger and marketing more complex, the costs of an error become progressively larger.
Is your R & D or product development program tuned in to the commercial realities of the market?
Are there regular communications from the field, or meetings of sales and marketing personnel with R & D people?
Technical knowledge is a wonderful thing, but it's useless unless it eventually feeds the cash register.
Are there individuals in your organization who can shepherd a new product through to commercialization;
who can develop reliable estimates of sales volume, production, and distribution costs;
and translate the whole into profit and loss and balance sheet figures which management can act on with some assurance?
We have seen good new products shelved because no one had the assignment to develop such facts and plans--and management couldn't make up its mind.
Problems in marketing management
shortage of skilled salesmen.
There is a shortage of salesmen today.
In the future, quantitative demand will be greater because of the expansion of the economy, and the qualitative need will be greater still.
While many companies have done fine work in developing sales personnel, much of it has been product rather than sales training.
Nor has the training been enough in relation to the need.
Most marketing people agree it is going to take redoubled efforts to satisfy future requirements.
Have you estimated your sales manpower needs for the future (both quantitatively and qualitatively)?
Has your company developed selection and training processes that are geared to providing the caliber of salesmen you will need in the next 10 yrs.?
Shortage of sales management talent.
With the growing complexity of markets and intensity of competition, sales management, whether at the district, region or headquarters level, is a tough job today--and it will be tougher in the future.
Men qualified for the broader task of marketing manager are even more scarce due to the demanding combination of qualifications called for by this type of management work.
The growth of business has outdistanced the available supply, and the demand will continue to exceed the supply in the sixties.
Does your company have a program for selecting and developing sales and marketing management personnel for the longer term?
Does your management climate and your management compensation plan attract and keep top-notch marketing people?
Complexity of complete marketing planning.
Every single problem touched on thus far is related to good marketing planning.
Hip-pocket tactics are going to be harder to apply.
Many food and beverage companies are already on a highly planned basis.
They have to be.
With greater investments in plant facilities, with automation growing, you can't switch around, either in volume or in product design, as much as was formerly possible--or at least not as economically.
Are planning and strategy development emphasized sufficiently in your company?
We find too many sales and marketing executives so burdened with detail that they are short-changing planning.
Are annual marketing plans reviewed throughout your management group to get the perspective of all individuals and get everyone on the marketing team?
Do you have a long-term (5- or 10-yr.) marketing program?
The key to effective marketing is wrapped up in defining your company's marketing problems realistically.
Solutions frequently suggest themselves when you accurately pinpoint your problems, whether they be in the market, in marketing methods or in marketing management.
If companies will take the time to give objective consideration to their major problems and to the questions they provoke, then a long constructive step will have been taken toward more effective marketing in next decade.
The controversy of the last few years over whether architects or interior designers should plan the interiors of modern buildings has brought clearly into focus one important difference of opinion.
It is true that most architectural schools have five year courses, some even have six or more.
The element of public danger which enters so largely into architectural certification, however, would demand a prolonged study of structure.
This would, naturally, lengthen their courses far beyond the largely esthetic demands of interior designer's training.
We may then dismiss the time difference between these courses and the usual four year course of the interior design student as not having serious bearing on the subject.
The real question that follows is--how are those four years used and what is their value as training?
The American Institute of Interior Designers has published a recommended course for designers and a percentage layout of such a course.
One or two of the schools have a five year curriculum, but the usual pattern of American education has limited most of them to the four-year plan which seems to be the minimum in acceptable institutions.
The suggested course of the A.I.D. was based on the usual course offered and on the opinion of many educators as to curricular necessities.
Obviously, the four year provision limits this to fundamentals and much desirable material must be eliminated.
Without comparing the relative merits of the two courses--architecture versus interior design--let us examine the educational needs of the interior designer.
To begin with, what is an interior designer?
Makes drawings and plans of rooms showing placement of furniture, floor coverings, wall decorations, and determines color schemes.
Furnishes complete cost estimates for clients approval.
Makes necessary purchases, places contracts, supervises construction, installation, finishing and placement of furniture, fixtures and other correlated furnishings, and follows through to completion of project.
In addition to this the U. S. Civil Service Bureau, when examining applicants for government positions as interior designers, expects that when various needed objects are not obtainable on the market he will design them.
He must be capable of designing for and supervising the manufacture of any craft materials needed in the furnishings.
This seems like a large order.
The interior designer, then, must first be an artist but also understand carpentry and painting and lighting and plumbing and finance.
Yet nobody will question the necessity of all this and any reputable interior designer does know all this and does practice it.
And further he must understand his obligation to the client to not only meet his physical necessities but also to enhance and improve his life and to enlarge the cultural horizon of our society.
Few will quarrel with the aim of the schools or with the wording of their curriculum.
It is in the quality of the teaching of all this that a question may arise.
The old established independent art schools try their best to fulfill their obligations.
Yet even here many a problem is presented;
as in a recent design competition with a floor plan and the simple command--design a luxury apartment;
no description of the client or his cultural level, no assertion of geographical area or local social necessities--simply a luxury apartment.
Working in a vacuum of minimal information can result only in show pieces that look good in exhibitions and catalogs and may please the public relations department but have little to do with the essence of interior design.
It is possible, of course, to work on extant or projected buildings where either architect or owner will explain their necessities so that the student may get the feel of real interior design demands.
Unfortunately, the purely synthetic problem is the rule.
It is like medical schools in India where, in that fairy-land of religious inhibition, the dissection of dead bodies is frowned upon.
Instead they learn their dissection on the bulbs of plants.
Thus technical efficiency is achieved at the expense of actual experience.
In the earlier years of training certain phases of the work must be covered and the synthetic problem has its use.
But to continue to divorce advanced students from reality is inexcusable.
Consultation with architects, clients, real estate men, fabric houses and furniture companies is essential to the proper development of class problems just as in actual work.
Even the history of furniture can hardly be taught exclusively from photographs and lantern slides.
Here, too, the reality of actual furniture must be experienced.
The professional organizations such as American Institute of Interior Designers, National Society of Interior Designers, Home Fashions League and various trade associations, can and do aid greatly in this work.
Certainly every educator involved in interior design should be a member and active in the work of one of these organizations.
Participation for the educator in this case, however, would have to be raised to full and complete membership.
The largest of these organizations at present denies to the full time educator any vote on the conduct and standards of the group and, indeed, refuses him even the right to attach the customary initials after his name in the college catalog.
This anomalous status of the educator cannot fail to lower his standing in the eyes of the students.
The professor in turn dares not tolerate the influence in his classes of an organization in the policies and standards of which he has no voice.
This seems somewhat shortsighted since if the absolute educational qualifications for membership which the organizations profess are ever enforced, the educator will have the molding of the entire profession in his hands.
In one way the Institutes and Societies do a disservice to the schools.
That is in the continuance of the grandfather clauses in their membership requirements.
When these groups were first formed many prominent and accomplished decorators could not have had the advantage of school training since interior design courses were rare and undeveloped during their youth.
Long hard years of on the job training had brought them to their competence.
The necessity of that day has long disappeared.
There is plenty of opportunity for proper education today.
It is discouraging for students to realize that the societies do not truly uphold the standards for which they are supposed to stand.
The reason and the day of grandfather clauses has long since passed.
No one can deny that these back door admissions to membership provisions have been seriously abused nor that they have not resulted in the admission of downright incompetents to membership in supposedly learned societies.
Beyond any question of curriculum and approach to subject must be the quality of the teachers themselves.
It will occur to anyone that the teacher must have adequate education, a depth and breadth of knowledge far beyond the immediate necessities of his course plus complete dedication to his subject and to his students.
The local decorator who rushes in for a few hours of teaching may but more likely may not have these qualifications.
Nor will the hack, the Jack-of-all-trades, still found in some of the smaller art schools, suffice.
Only a few years ago a middle western college circulated a request for a teacher of interior design.
At the end of its letter was the information that applicants for this position must also be prepared to teach costume design and advertising art.
This kind of irresponsibility toward their students can scarcely build a strong professional attitude in the future designer.
We must build a corps of highly professional teachers of interior design who have had education, experience in the profession and are willing to take on the usual accompaniments of teaching--minimal income and minimal status among their confreres.
Considerable specialization in teaching subjects such as architecture, furniture design, textiles and color is also desirable.
In all degree courses in interior design a number of academic or general studies courses are included.
It is only fair to demand that teachers of courses in English, history, psychology and so on be as well informed in matters of art, especially interior design, as are the art teachers educated in the academic subjects.
The proper correlation of the art with the academic can be achieved only if this standard is observed.
The matter of sympathy of the academic professors for art objectives also must be taken into account.
One technical question of school organization comes to mind here.
For proper accreditation of schools, teachers in any course must have a degree at least one level above that for which the student is a candidate.
Since there are almost no schools in the country offering graduate work in interior design this rule cannot at present be observed.
Indeed, it has only been a matter of the last few years that reputable schools of art have granted degrees at all.
The question, however, cannot be ignored for long.
The basic problem involved is that a college setting up a graduate school must have an entirely separate faculty for the advanced degree.
Most professors in the course must, naturally, again have a higher degree than the course offers.
One solution is the aquisition of degrees in education but it is a poor substitute.
It is a sort of academic ring-around-a-rosy and you solve it.
This brings us to the question of accreditation of art schools in general.
Only the independent art schools, that is, those not connected with any university or college, receive severe and separate investigation before accreditation by the various regional organizations.
It has been the custom for most universities to stretch the blanket of accreditation for their liberal arts school to cover the shivering body of their fine arts department.
This, plus the habit of many schools of simply adding interior design to the many subjects of their home economics department, yet, nevertheless, claiming that they teach interior design, has contributed to the low repute of many university courses in interior design.
In spite of this, many universities offer adequate and even distinguished courses in the subject.
There will be no mitigation of these offences until all art schools, whether independent or attached to universities have separate accreditation--as do medical schools--by an art accreditation group such as the National Association of Schools of Art.
Independent art schools granting degrees must, naturally, follow this with academic accreditation by the appropriate regional group.
General
How long has it been since you reviewed the objectives of your benefit and service program?
Have you permitted it to become a giveaway program rather than one that has the goal of improved employee morale and, consequently, increased productivity?
What effort do you make to assess results of your program?
Do you measure its relation to reduced absenteeism, turnover, accidents, and grievances, and to improved quality and output?
Have you set specific objectives for your employee publication?
Is it reaching these goals?
Is it larger or fancier than you really need?
Are you using the most economical printing methods, paper, etc..
Are there other, cheaper communications techniques that could be substituted?
Has your attitude toward employee benefits encouraged an excess of free government work in your plant?
Is your purchasing agent offering too much free-buying service for employees?
When improvements are recommended in working conditions--such as lighting, rest rooms, eating facilities, air-conditioning--do you try to set a measure of their effectiveness on productivity?
When negotiating with your union, do you make sure employees have a choice between new benefits and their cents-per-hour cost in wages.
Can you consider restricting any additional employee benefits to those paid for by profit-sharing money, such as was done in the union contract recently signed by American Motors Corporation?
Insurance
Do your employees understand all the benefits to which your insurance entitles them?
Are they encouraged to take full legal advantage of these benefits?
Have you publicized the cents-per-hour value of the company's share of insurance premiums?
When did you last compare your present premium costs with the costs of insurance from other sources?
Can your insurance company aid you in reducing administrative costs?
Do you try to maintain the principle of employee-contributed (as opposed to fully company-paid) programs?
Holidays, time off, overtime
Do you protect your holiday privileges with an attendance requirement both before and after the holiday?
Do you plan to limit additional holidays to area and/or industrial patterns?
Have you investigated the possibility of moving midweek holidays forward to Monday or back to Friday in order to have an uninterrupted work week?
Are you carefully policing wash-up time and rest periods to be certain that all other time is productive?
Are you watching work schedules for boiler operators, guards, and other 24-hour-day, 7-day-week operations in order to minimize overtime?
Are you careful to restrict the number of people on leave at one time so that your total employment obligation is minimized?
Plant feeding facilities
Have you considered using vending equipment to replace or reduce the number of cafeteria employees?
What are the possibilities for operating your cafeteria for a single shift only and relying upon vending machines or prepackaged sandwiches for the second- and third-shift operations?
Have you checked the cost of subcontracting your cafeteria operation in order to save administrative costs?
Are there possibilities of having cafeteria help work part-time on custodial or other jobs?
Can staggered lunch periods relieve the capacity strain on your feeding facilities?
Would it be feasible to limit the menu in order to reduce feeding costs?
Have you considered gradual withdrawal of subsidies to your in-plant feeding operation?
Are you utilizing cafeteria space for company meetings or discussions?
Recreation facilities
Are your expenses in this area commensurate with the number of employees who benefit from your program?
Have you audited your program recently to weed out those phases that draw least participation?
Do employees contribute their share of money to recreational facilities?
Have you considered delegating operational responsibility to your employee association and carefully restricting your plant's financial contribution?
Could an employee's garden club take over partial care of plant grounds?
Would a camera club be useful in taking pictures pertinent to plant safety?
Are you spending too much money on team uniforms that benefit only a few employees?
Are you underwriting expensive team trips?
Are you utilizing vending machine proceeds to help pay for your program?
Transportation and parking
Do you know the trend in your cost of maintaining access roads and parking lots?
If you use parking attendants, can they be replaced by automatic parking gates?
Will your local bus company erect and/or maintain the bus stops at your plant?
If you provide inter-plant transportation, can this be replaced by available public transportation?
If you use company transportation to meet trains or to haul visitors, would taxis be cheaper?
How efficient and necessary are your intra-company vehicles?
Can they be re-scheduled?
Can part-time drivers be assigned to other productive work?
Paid vacations
Which is more economical for your plant--a vacation shutdown or spaced vacations that require extra employees for vacation fill-ins?
Can vacations be spaced throughout the 12 months to minimize the number of employee fill-ins?
Do you insist that unneeded salary employees take their vacations during plant shutdowns?
What can your sales and purchasing departments do to curtail orders, shipments, and receipts during vacation shutdown periods?
Retirement
Is an arbitrary retirement age of 65 actually costing your plant money?
What sort of effort do you make to assure that older or disabled workers are fully productive?
Would early retirement of non-productive, disabled employees reduce the number of make-work jobs?
Will your union accept seniority concessions in assigning work for older or disabled employees?
Medical and health
Can you share medical facilities and staff with neighboring plants?
If you have a full-time doctor now, can he be replaced with a part-time doctor or one who serves on a fee-per-case basis only?
Can your plant nurse be replaced by a trained first-aid man who works full-time on some other assignment?
Do you rigidly distinguish between job- and non-job-connected health problems and avoid treating the latter?
Are you indiscriminantly offering unnecessary medical services--flu shots, sun lamp treatments, etc.?
If you have an annual or regular physical examination program, is it worth what it is costing you?
A program to fit your needs
Consider what you can afford to spend and what your goals are before setting up or revamping your employee benefit program.
Too many plant officials are all too eager to buy a package program from an insurance company simply because it works for another plant.
But even if that other plant employs the same number of workers and makes the same product, there are other facts to consider.
How old is your working force?
What's your profit margin?
In what section of the country are you located?
Are you in a rural or urban area?
These factors can make the difference between waste and efficiency in any benefit program.
Above all, don't set up extravagant fringe benefits just to buy employee good will.
Unions stress fringe benefits, but the individual hourly worker prefers cash every time.
Aim to balance your employee benefit package.
Some plants go overboard on one type of fringe--say a liberal retirement plan--and find themselves vulnerable elsewhere.
They're asking for union trouble.
Communications
If you want credit for your employee services program, let your workers know what they're entitled to.
Encourage them to exercise their benefits.
This can be done by stories in your house organs, posters, special publications, letters to workers' homes as well as by word of mouth through your chain of command.
Some companies find a little imagination helpful.
Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, Mo., has a do-it-yourself quiz game called Benefit Bafflers, which it distributes to employees.
M & R Dietetic Laboratories, Inc., Columbus, gives all its workers a facsimile checkbook--each check showing the amount the company spends on a particular fringe.
U. S. Rubber Company, New York, passes out a form itemizing the value of benefits.
The blue-collar worker thus knows his insurance package, for example, costs $227.72.
Insurance
Have the insurance company or your own accounting department break down the cost of your insurance package periodically.
You may find certain coverage costing much more than is economically feasible, thereby alerting you to desirable revisions.
Check to see if some of your benefits--such as on-the-job disability pay--can be put on a direct payment rather than an insured basis at a savings to you.
Use deductable insurance wherever feasible.
It can put an end to marginal claims which play havoc with your insurance rates.
Also, beware of open-end policies, especially in the medical field.
This will mean that every time there's an increase in hospital rates your cost will go up in like manner.
Put a dollar-and-cents limit on benefits.
Don't go overboard on insurance that pays benefits only upon death.
Generally, your employee will greatly appreciate benefits that protect him during his working life or during retirement.
Special time off
In granting bereavement leaves, specify the maximum time off and list what the worker's relation to the deceased must be to qualify.
Thus, you avoid headaches when an employee wants off for his fourth cousin's funeral.
Also, reserve the right to demand proof of death despite the fact that you'll probably never use it.
Coffee breaks can be a real headache if not regulated.
Vending machines can alleviate the long hike to the cafeteria during the break with resulting waste of production time.
If coffee is sold at the cafeteria, let a few workers in each department get it for the whole group.
Consider installing supplemental serving lines in production areas.
Make sure milk for the coffee is placed in dispensers rather than in containers, if you are supplying the coffee.
Otherwise, you may be saddled with a good-size milk bill by milk drinkers.
Retirement policies
Keep the retirement age flexible so skilled craftsmen such as tool and die makers can be kept on the job for the convenience of the company.
And so deadheads on the payroll can be eased out at the earliest possible age.
Make sure you have minimum age and time-on-the-job requirements tied into your pension plan.
Younger men usually don't think of pensions as an important job benefit factor anyhow and they're liable to change jobs several times before settling down.
Choose carefully between contributory or non-contributory pension plans.
There are two sides of a coin for this decision.
Workers usually think more of a plan they contribute to.
And they can at least collect the money they put in, plus interest, when they leave the company.
A non-contributory plan usually won't pay off for the worker until he retires.
Thus, there is an added incentive to stay on the job.
Holidays
Make sure you don't pay for holidays that occur when an employee would not otherwise be working.
These include: leaves of absences, illnesses, and layoffs.
Consider adopting a system of holidays in which time off is granted with an eye to minimum inconvenience to the operation of the plant.
It's usually not too hard to sell workers on this as it gives them longer holiday periods.
For example, the Friday after Thanksgiving can be substituted for Washington's birthday.
This reduces the number of expensive plant shutdowns and startups.
Require each employee to work his last shift both before and after the holiday to be eligible for pay.
This cuts the absentee rate.
Eating facilities
Consider using vending machines rather than subsidized cafeterias.
Latest models serve hot meals at reasonable prices, and at a profit to you.
If a concessionaire runs the cafeteria, keep an eye out for quality and price.
If the soup tastes like dishwater, your employees won't blame the concessionaire.
You'll take the rap.
Check your cafeteria location to make sure it's convenient for most employees.
You may save valuable production minutes with a change.
Vacations
Spread your vacation period over the widest possible span of time or shut the plant down for two weeks.
This will cut the expense of vacation replacements.
And with the shutdown method there will be no argument as to who gets the choice vacation dates.
Also make sure you have reasonable requirements as to hours worked before a production employee is entitled to a vacation.
You might try providing standard vacation time off but make the vacation pay depend on the number of hours worked in the previous year.
The long and ever-increasing column of sportsmen is now moving into a new era.
Modern times have changed the world beyond recognition.
The early years of the twentieth century seem very far away.
But with all the changes in philosophy, dress and terrain--a few things remain constant, including the devotion of Americans to the great field sports, hunting and fishing.
As the generations move on, clothes become more suitable for the enjoyment of outdoor sports.
Sporting firearms change, markedly for the better.
Just as modern transportation has outmoded the early Studebaker covered wagon, the demand of today's sportsmen and women has necessitated changes in their equipment.
The American firearms and ammunition manufacturers through diligent research and technical development have replaced the muzzle loader and slow-firing single-shot arms with modern fast firing auto-loaders, extremely accurate bolt, lever, and slide action firearms.
And millions of rounds of entirely new and modern small-arms ammunition, designed for today's hunting and target shooting.
And due to modern resource-use and game management practices, there is still game to shoot, even with the ever-expanding encroachment on land and water.
Present conservation practices regard wildlife, not as an expendable natural resource, but as an annual harvest to be sown and also reaped.
Unlimited game bags are possible and legal in more than 40 states, on shooting preserves (one of the newer phases of modern game-management) for five and six months each year.
Close to two million game birds were harvested on 1,500 commercial and private shooting preserves, and on State Game Commission-controlled upland game areas during the 1960-61 season.
The shooting development program of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute has successfully published these facts in all major outdoor magazines, many national weeklies and the trade papers.
The most effective way to develop more places for more sportsmen to shoot is to encourage properly managed shooting preserves.
This has been the aim of the director of the shooting development program, the New York staff of the Sportsmen's Service Bureau, and the SAAMI shooting preserve field consultants since the start of the program in 1954.
Following the kick-off of SAAMI's shooting development program in 1954, a most interesting meeting took place in Washington, D.C..
This meeting was called to determine how these groups might cooperate to launch what is known as the Outdoor Education Project.
The Outdoor Education Project took cognizance of the fact, so often overlooked, that athletic activities stressed in most school programs have little or no relationship to the physical and mental needs and interests of later life.
The various team sports assuredly have their place in every school, and they are important to proper physical development.
But with the exception of professional athletes, few contact sports and physical education activities in our schools have any carryover in the adult life of the average American man or woman.
Following a vigorous campaign of interpretation and leadership development by OEP director Dr. Julian Smith, today thousands of secondary schools, colleges and universities have shooting and hunting education in their physical education and recreation programs.
SAAMI's financial support since 1955 has contributed to the success of this project in education.
Personnel assigned through the shooting development program have proudly participated in over 53 state and regional workshops, at which hundreds of school administrators, teachers, professors, and recreational leaders have been introduced to Outdoor Education.
Considering that the current school-age potential is 23 million youths, the project and its message on hunting and shooting education have many more to reach.
In 1959 SAAMI's shooting development program announced a new activity designed to expose thousands of teen-age boys and girls to the healthy fun enjoyed through the participation in the shooting sports.
This program is now nationally known as Teen Hunter Clubs.
Teen Hunter Clubs were initially sponsored by affiliated members of the Allied Merchandising Corporation.
The first program was sponsored by Abraham & Strauss, Hempstead, New York, under the direction of Special Events director Jennings Dennis.
Other pilot programs were conducted by A & S, Babylon, New York;
J. L. Hudson, Detroit;
Joseph Horne, Pittsburgh.
SAAMI's field men have served as consultants and/or have participated in 75 Teen Hunter Club activities which have reached over 40,000 enthusiastic young Americans.
The continuation and expansion of the shooting development program will assure to some degree that national and community leaders will be made aware of the ever-growing need for shooting facilities and activities for hunting and shooting in answer to public demand.
While individual sportsmen are aware of this situation, too many of our political, social, educational and even religious leaders too often forget it.
Help is needed from dealers, at the grass-roots level.
The American gun and ammunition producers sponsor a successful promotional program through their industry trade association.
Since SAAMI's conception in 1926, and more specifically since the adoption of the Shooting Development Program in 1954, millions of dollars and promotional man-hours have gone into the development of more places to shoot for more youths and adults.
We trust that you, as a gun and ammunition dealer, have benefited through additional sales of equipment.
Are you getting top dollar from the shooting sports?
Are you looking ahead to the exploding market of millions of American boys and girls, who will grow up to enjoy a traditional American way of life--ranging the fields with a fine American gun and uniformly excellent ammunition?
Is your sporting firearms and ammunition department primed for the expanding horizons?
Would you like to organize Teen Hunters Clubs, shooting programs, and have information on seasons including six months of hunting with unlimited game bags on shooting preserves?
Ask Sammy Shooter.
We were camping a few weeks ago on Cape Hatteras Campground in that land of pirates, seagulls and bluefish on North Carolina's famed Outer Banks.
This beach campground with no trees or hills presents a constant camping show with all manner of equipment in actual use.
With the whole camp exposed to view we could see the variety of canvas shelters in which Americans are camping now.
There were umbrella tents, wall tents, cottage tents, station wagon tents, pup tents, Pop tents, Baker tents, tents with exterior frames, camper trailers, travel trailers, and even a few surplus parachutes serving as sunshades over entire family camps.
Moving around camp we saw all kinds of camp stoves, lanterns, coolers, bedding, games, fishing tackle, windbreaks and sunshades.
We saw similar displays in the other three campgrounds in this 70-mile-long National Seashore Recreation Area.
Dealers would do well to visit such a campground often, look at the equipment and talk with the campers.
Here you begin to appreciate the scope of the challenges and possibilities facing the industry.
Camping is big and getting bigger.
No one knows where it will stop.
Almost every official who reflects on it thinks this movement of Americans to canvas dwellings opens one of the most promising of all outdoor markets.
You read various guesses on how many Americans are camping.
The number depends on who is talking at the moment.
The figures range as high as 15 million families.
I've heard 10 million mentioned often, but I'm more inclined to think there may be a total of some five to seven million families camping.
Seven million families would total 30 million Americans or more.
Consider the equipment needed to protect this many from the weather, to make their cooking easy and their sleeping comfortable.
More campers than campsites
Harassed state park officials often have more campers than they know what to do with.
They are struggling to meet the demand for camping space, but families are being turned away, especially on holiday weekends.
The National Parks, always popular camping places, are facing the same pressure.
The National Park Service hopes by 1966 to have 30,000 campsites available for 100,000 campers a day--almost twice what there are at present.
The U.S. Forest Service cares for hundreds of thousands of campers in its 149 National Forests and is increasing its facilities steadily.
But the campers still come.
They bring their families and tents and camp kitchens and bedding.
They bring their fishing rods and binoculars and bathing suits.
They come prepared for family fun because Americans in ever-growing numbers are learning that here is the way to a fine economical vacation that becomes a family experience of lasting importance.
Why they keep coming
There are a half dozen reasons helping to account for the migration to the campgrounds.
Among them, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, are: (1) shorter work weeks, (2) higher pay, (3) longer paid vacations, (4) better transportation, (5) earlier retirement, and (6) more education.
The more people learn about their country, the more they want to learn.
Camping is family fun, and it is helping more Americans see more of the country than they ever saw before.
But make no mistake about it, the first reason people turn to camping is one of economy.
Here is the promise of a vacation trip they can afford.
The American Automobile Association, computing the cost for two people to vacation by automobile, comes up with an average daily expenditure figure of $29.
The AAA then splits it down this way: $10.50 for meals, $9.50 for lodging, $7 for gas and oil, and $2 for tips and miscellaneous.
What does the camping couple do to this set of figures?
The $9.50 for lodging they save.
Because they prepare their own meals they also keep in their pockets a good portion of that $10.50 food bill along with most of the tip money.
The automobile expenses are about the only vacationing cost they can't either eliminate or pare down drastically by camping along the way.
Where Americans used to think of a single vacation each summer, they now think about how many vacations they can have.
Long weekends enable many to get away from home for three or four days several times a year.
And even if they stay in resorts part of the time, they might, if the right salesman gets them in tow, develop a yearning to spice the usual vacation fare with a camping trip into the wide open spaces.
It would be a mistake to sell those thousands of beginning campers on the idea they're buying the comforts of home.
They're not.
Home is the place to find the comforts of home.
They're buying fun and adventure and family experiences.
But it would also be a mistake for them not to realize how comfortable camping has become.
This is no longer a way of life for the bearded logger and the wandering cowboy.
Today's campers want comforts, and they have them.
And this helps explain why so many people are now going camping.
It's fun, and it's easy--so easy that there is time left after cooking, and tent keeping, for the women to get out and enjoy outdoor fun with their families.
Camp meals are no great problem.
Neither are beds, thanks to air mattresses and sleeping bags.
Neither are shelters, because there is one to meet the needs of every camper or prospective camper.
But there is still the sometimes complex problem of helping campers choose the best equipment for their individual needs.
Throughout history, the man who showed superior performance has become the commander of others--for good or bad.
Since the Industrial Revolution, when factories emerged, this classical pattern has been followed.
Until recently.
There have always been tales of disillusionment--the competent technician who became an administrator, willingly or not, and found he didn't like it;
the scientist who rebelled against the personnel and paper work;
and much more commonly in recent years, the engineer who found that other duties interfered with--or eliminated--his engineering contributions.
There have been many extremely competent men who have been converted into very incompetent managers or submerged in paper work, to their own and the public's dissatisfaction and loss.
This has been more evident since our products have incorporated astronomically increased technology.
The remedies have been many and varied--attempts to teach management techniques--either in plant, at special schools, or in university crash courses--provision of management-trained assistants or associates.
But the realization has been growing that these are not the complete answer.
Some men have no talent for or interest in management;
forcing them into management can only create trouble.
The old shop adage still holds: A good mechanic is usually a bad boss.
Yet our economy clings inexorably to recognition of managerial status as the gage of success.
Labor fights to change its collar from blue to white.
All grades of management seek more resounding titles and incomes because of social pressures.
As several recent books have over-emphasized, we have become the most status-conscious nation in the world.
What can be done for the individual contributor who is extremely important--and likely to be more so--in the operation of the technically oriented company?
He is usually conscious of the social pressures at home and outside;
usually concerned about America's belief that attainment and success are measured in dollars and titles.
Yet titles are traditionally given only to management men, and income tends to rise with title.
Even the college professor in America has been affected.
It is, as one engineer says, indeed a difficult thing for the engineer to accept that he can go as far on his technical merit as he could employing managerial skills.
This difficulty arises even though we can give examples of men who have actually followed this course.
This leads one to conclude, as you have, that there is inevitably more prestige in a management position in the minds of our people.
Nobody should be more able to answer the questions on this score than engineering vice-presidents and chief engineers.
So we asked such men in major companies in the design field to offer their opinions on the dual-road-up problem--and more importantly--their solutions.
In the paragraphs that follow, we quote from 32 men who are identified on the final page.
First: what title, what setup?
Among the more familiar plans for dual-channel advancement is that of General Electric.
This is not a mutually exclusive plan;
there is no one point in a man's career at which he must select either the technical or the managerial path upward.
Further, the management path does not open the door to higher opportunities than are offered by the more technical path.
It is common to shift back and forth, working up through a number of supervisory and individual-contributor positions.
Actually, there are a number of individual-contributor positions in both operating departments and in the company-wide services operation that are filled by men with successful managerial experience who are currently broadening their capabilities.
Also, moving into a managerial position does not necessarily end a man's recognition as a technical expert.
As examples at GE: Glen B. Warren, formerly manager of the Turbine Division, widely recognized as a turbine designer.
The late W. R. G. Baker, a pioneer in television design and long-time vp & gm of the Electronics Division, and later, by his own choice, an individual consultant.
Harold E. Strang, expert in switchgear design, for a long period vp & gm of the Measurements & Industrial Products Division, and who currently, approaching retirement, is vice-president and consulting engineer in the Switchgear & Control Division.
In the GE plan, a number of individual contributors have positions and compensation higher than those of many managers.
These positions carry such titles as:
Consultant, Advanced Development
Consulting Engineer,
Consulting Engineer, Heat Transfer
Consulting Electrical Engineer,
Senior Electrical Engineer,
Senior Physicist.
Westinghouse has a similar system, with two classifications representing various levels of competence on the strictly technical side: consulting engineer or scientist, as the case may be, and advisory engineer or scientist.
Many companies have systems, particularly in R & D, which work more or less well, depending upon size and actual belief in the policy on the part of administration, as will be abundantly apparent in subsequent quotations.
Another factor that may hold hope is for parallel recognition is, as one man says it: that the fad for educating top people along managerial lines is yielding to the technically trained approach.
Senior staff engineer?
One company instituted, early in 1959, a vertical classification system consisting of four levels.
There is no formal equivalence to the supervisory ranks;
the top non-supervisory level, senior staff engineer, enjoys status and pay ranging up to that for the second level of engineering supervision.
The second level, senior engineer, rates slightly below first-level supervision.
The expectation is that first-level supervisors will be selected in approximately equal numbers from the second and third engineering level, with very few coming from the first level.
The company expects to extend upward both compensation and status for non-supervisory engineers, but probably not into executive levels.
In this organization, about half of the engineers with 15 or more years of employment are in supervision, engineering or elsewhere.
This reflects the very heavy engineering content of the products--which are not military.
Several other examples: central and satellite
We have over 20 divisions--each of which has an engineering department headed by a chief engineer.
We have set up a central R & D department, as well as engineering-management departments--about 80 people working on problems related to those of our plants.
A separate research department is, of course, confined to new or future designs.
Part of this headquarters staff, however, are engineering managers who work between divisional chief engineers and headquarters management.
These headquarters engineers, headed by the vice-president--Engineering, counsel and advise divisional managers and chief engineers on product problems as well as aid with design;
and many are engineers who have been advanced from the divisions.
These men are considered managers of engineers.
They must learn to wear several hats, so to speak, working with management, sales and engineering problems related to the product.
We do not have people in our organization termed'consultants'or'fellows ', who are specialists in one particular technical subject.
I suppose it is because we are just not big enough.
We have a few'consultants '--retired engineers retained and called in on certain problems.
The only'fellows'in our company are those who have been honored by ASME, AIEE or AIChE.
I am sure that the engineer who enters management is nearly always opening the door to greater possibilities than he would have as a technical specialist--because of his wider accountability.
Another structure
We have tried to make both paths attractive, so that good men could find opportunity and satisfaction in either.
One way to formalize this is in the job structure.
We have these positions, which compare directly: Af
Above these jobs we have chief engineer for the company and vice-president of Engrg, R & Aj.
The latter jobs include major management responsibilities and have been filled by those who have come up primarily through the engineering-management side.
We have not yet succeeded in establishing recognition of technical specialization comparable to our higher levels of management, but I believe we will trend in this direction but not to exceed vice-president.
Top job: research scientist
Approximately four years ago, we initiated a dual ladder of advancement for technical persons.
The highest position is known as a'research scientist.
This approach has not been entirely satisfactory.
The primary deterrent appears to lie with the technical people themselves, and their concept of what constitutes status in present-day society.
Scientists who agitate hardest for technical recognition are often the most reluctant to accept it.
We have discovered that the outward trappings such as private offices and private secretaries are extremely important;
and although we have attempted to provide these status symbols, support of the'dual-ladder'plan has been half-hearted despite the creation of a salary potential for a research scientist commensurate with that of men in top managerial positions.
A serious problem accompanying the technical-ladder approach is the difficulty of clearly defining responsibilities and standards of performance for each level.
With no set standards, there is the tendency to promote to the next highest level when the top of a salary band is reached regardless of performance.
Promotion is too often based on longevity and time in salary grade instead of merit.
If no specific organization plan exists limiting the number of scientists at each salary level, the result is a department top-heavy with high-level, high-salaried personnel.
Staff engineer dept. manager
We have two approaches for the technical man: the position of staff engineer, which is rated as high in salary as department manager;
and an administrative organization to take the routine load away from department managers and project engineers as much as possible, thus allowing them more time for strictly technical work.
These are only halfway measures, and the answer will come when some way is found to allow the technical man in industry to progress without limit in salary and prestige.
A complete plan
We have made limited application of the'parallel ladder'plan.
The highest rated non-supervisory engineering title is'research engineer.
The salary schedule permits remuneration greater than the average paid to the first level of engineering supervision (engineering section head).
We also have an'engineering section head--research engineer'classification which has salary possibilities equivalent to that of a research engineer.
Above this point there is no generally used parallel ladder.
We also do a number of things to build up the prestige of the engineer as a'professional'and also to give public recognition to individual technical competence.
These include encouragement of, and assistance to, the engineer in preparation and publication of technical papers.
We have two media for publicizing individual technical activity, a magazine widely distributed both within and without the company, and an information bulletin for engineering personnel distributed to the homes of all engineers.
Publicity is given to the award of patents to our engineers and financial support is provided for individual membership in technical societies.
A recent, and more pertinent action, has been the establishment of a technical staff reporting to the vice-president for Engineering.
This function is staffed by engineers chosen for their technical competence and who have the title, member of the technical staff.
Salaries compare favorably with those paid to the first two or three levels of management.
Additional symbols of status are granted, such as reserved parking, distinctive badge passes authorizing special privileges, and a difference in the treatment of financial progress through merit.
We presently are involved in inaugurating a new development center.
Operations of this nature offer the best opportunity to recognize scientific status.
All scientific staff members will have the title,'research-staff member.
The salary level of an individual within the group will reflect the scientific community's acceptance of him as an authority in his scientific field.
Contrary to usual organization-position evaluations, the position to which research-staff members report administratively will not necessarily encompass the duties of the research-staff member, therefore, are not necessarily evaluated as highly.
These recent steps do not offer the possibility of extension to the great number of senior engineers who have displayed technical competence.
It is doubtful that the complete solution to the over-all problem can result entirely from company efforts.
Fundamental to the difficulty of creating the desired prestige is the fact that, in the business community, prestige and status are conferred in proportion to the authority that one man has over others and the extent of which he participates in the management functions.
Sixty miles north of New York City where the wooded hills of Dutchess County meet the broad sweep of the Hudson River there is a new home development called Oakwood Heights.
As a matter of fact you could probably find a new home development in every populated county in the country with three-bedroom ranch style cottages in the $14,000 range.
But Oakwood Heights is unique in one particular.
Its oil for heating is metered monthly to each home from a line that starts at a central storage point.
This is a pilot operation sponsored by a new entity chartered in Delaware as the Tri-State Pipeline Corporation, with principal offices in New York State.
Its president is Otis M. Waters, partner in the law firm of Timen & Waters, 540-K Chrysler Bldg., New York City.
Vice-president is Louis Berkman and the secretary-treasurer is Mark Ritter.
Ritter is the builder of Oakwood Heights and president of Kahler-Craft Distributors, Inc., Newburgh, N.Y..
The idea of a central tank with lines to each house is not in itself a novelty.
Not a year goes by but what several local companies in the U.S. and Canada, even overseas, write to Fueloil & Oil Heat to inquire if it's feasible and where it is being done.
Its editors only knew of one example to point to, a public housing development of 278 homes in New Haven described by John Schulz in the March, 1950 issue.
This has survived the years but there has been considerable concern among the tenants over the fact that the oil was not metered.
Rather the monthly total consumption was divided and charged on the basis of number of rooms and persons in the family.
Common complaints included Mrs. Murphy leaving her windows open all the time, a fresh air fan, or the family was visiting Aunt Minnie with the house shut up but they still paid the same rate for oil.
As a result of that attitude, others have been discouraged from trying central distribution.
A new low capacity meter is the key that unlocks the situation at Oakwood Heights.
Called a Slo-Flo meter it was designed for this job by Power Plus Industries of Los Angeles, a key individual being Don Nelson.
Tri-State has acquired its exclusive distribution for the northern, principal heating states.
There's an advantage in having a firm like Tri-State headed by a lawyer.
The earlier New Haven development was public housing, so it easily leaped over the problems met in a private venture.
These have to do with property rights, municipal official attitudes and a host of others.
In working out the practical legal conclusions President Waters was not thinking only of this pilot project, for it is planned to duplicate this program or system in other builder developments nationally.
It is always difficult, or at least time-consuming, to get approval of any kind of line under a public street, as one example.
To overcome this, the builder lays and completes the street himself, then deeds it to the community while retaining a perpetual easement for the oil lines.
When a family buys a home the title is subject to a perpetual easement to Tri-State.
For the central storage, Tri-State buys one acre, Buries its tanks and simply holds permanent title to that piece.
In other words, the whole storage and pipeline system does not belong to the homeowners nor to the town but rather to Tri-State.
How does Tri-State get its revenue from this plan?
It leases the whole facility to a large oil company, at least large enough to have a strong credit position.
This first test is being leased for ten years but future projects will require at least 15 years.
The amount paid by the oil company to Tri-State for the use of its oil distribution system and the privilege of supplying all the homes, is subject to negotiation but naturally must be profitable to both parties.
On this first venture the central storage is 20,000 gallons, in two tanks, or an average of 400 gallons for each of the 50 homes.
The supplier delivers at his convenience in transport loads, so as to maintain two-to-three weeks reserve supply against weather contingencies.
However, that is not all he has to do.
He must undertake complete servicing of the oilheating equipment to assure fine heating.
In the present project the heating is by circulating hot water from Paragon boiler-burner units with summer-winter domestic hot water hookups.
Again, the oil man must read the meters at such intervals as he finds best.
For this first development the supplier signing the lease is a major oil company but in turn the deal is being transferred for operation to its local fueloil distributor.
The major gets the assured gallonage for the life of the lease and the distributor apparently can do well because delivery cost is low.
Initial considerations
The officers of the new corporation have naturally explored many angles, as well as personalities that might be affected.
For example, the officials of Poughkeepsie town (township) where the project is located think highly of it because it simplifies their snow clearing problem.
The central storage is near a main artery quite easy to reach with large transports on a short crescent swing, with fewer trucks in the residential streets.
The Public Service Commission has ruled that this is not a public utility, subject to their many regulations.
Several financial institutions, both banks and insurance companies, have been sounded out.
They like it and would supply most of the capital because of the long term leases by strong oil companies.
The Government housing agencies consider it feasible with one special stipulation.
There must be a restriction in the deed to provide that the customer may not be charged more than the current market price for the oil, an obvious precaution, since the account is permanently wedded, just like with gas or electricity.
For a few details of the system the lines are 1-1/4X-Tru-Coat, a product of Republic Steel Corp., and all lines are welded.
They are laid a minimum of 24deep and in some areas four feet down, particularly under roads, to stay clear of all other piping such as water and sewers and to minimize shocks from heavy trucking.
The meter is mounted high on the basement wall.
Its figures are a half inch high and very easy to read, even into tenth gallons.
It will accommodate firing rates as low as a half gallon an hour.
Ritter, the builder, is convinced that the total cost of all the heating systems plus the oil distribution system is no greater than would be gas heating systems in the houses plus their lines and meters.
He believes that this is a sound approach to gas competition in builder developments where gas is available.
It would be pretty difficult to install a Tri-State system in old neighborhoods, and that's an understatement.
The job of getting property easements and street easements and the acre for the tanks would become pretty discouraging.
But in a new development where everything starts from scratch the solutions are simple.
Future plans
What does Tri-State actually want to do, now that it has the meters under franchise and certain phases of its piping system in the patent applied for stage?
It wants to interest builders and oil companies in the idea of including its facility in their new home projects, by financing and installing the storage, piping and meters, and leasing these for 15 years, with renewal options, to a strong oil company.
It may also work in one other way--by licensing its system patents and supplying the meters, letting the oil company or even the builder install the facilities.
This whole development is certain to be of interest to the readers, for the idea has so often been mentioned, somewhat wistfully.
But it's too early yet to go visit Oakwood Heights.
Only eight of the 50 houses were completed at the time of the editor's visit on June 8th;
others were building.
The big tanks were at the site but still sunning themselves.
A big mechanical ditcher was running the trenches, and the town building inspector was paying a friendly, if curious, visit.
The oilheating industry is looking up, led by a revival of research and development.
A primary ingredient in these fields is imagination, and Tri-State Pipeline Corporation deserves a very good mark.
Every year about this time National Gargle Your Cooling System week rolls around.
It pays in the long (hot) run to take good care of the water works.
Do it this way for the summer gargle:
First, drain that old coolant down the storm sewer.
Don't save the anti-freeze, even if it the expensive permanent type.
The word means it won't boil away easily, nothing else.
The rust inhibitors in the fluid are used up after one year, and you don't want to risk the rust that two years' use could mean.
Pitch it out.
If a lot of rust shows in the drain, use a good flushing cleaner.
Then fill the system and add a rust inhibitor.
Of course, you'll want to use the softest water you can in your radiators.
Now, check for leaks in your hoses and hose connections, around the freeze-out plugs, gaskets, water pump seals and heater fittings.
Next, run the engine and let it heat up so the thermostat opens, and then look for leaks again.
Be sure the bugs and dirt are blown out of the radiator fins.
Use the air hose for this job.
Check the temperature gage and be sure it is working.
If you use one of the new year-round cooling system fluids such as Dowguard be sure to check it.
Dow says that the fluid can be used now for two years.
Check its inhibitor effectiveness before leaving it in during the summer.
Take precautions now, to be sure you avoid those unpleasant and costly heat breakdowns when the temperature zooms this summer.
Don't let your mechanics pull the thermostats out of those fueloil delivery trucks or installation rigs of yours.
Spring and summer may be here officially, but those thermos stay in.
The fact is that removing and leaving out a thermostat from any water cooled vehicle, will greatly increase the fuel consumption, reduce power and contribute to spark plug fouling due to an accumulation of excessive carbon deposits on the insulators.
If you run into excess plug fouling on one truck, check to be sure that the rig has a thermostat.
The thermostat is important to get your engine up to operating temperature quickly, and to keep it running at its most efficient temperature through the proper circulation of the coolant.
Are you paying too much for your truck insurance?
There's a good chance you are doubling on some coverage, not taking discounts coming to you and not cutting some corners that can be cut.
Have a talk with your insurance agent.
Be careful that you keep adequate coverage, but look for places to save money.
First go over the type of coverage you now have.
Look for these features which may mean you can save:
Duplicate coverage.
Avoid doubling up on the same item.
For example, don't pay in a truck policy for medical coverage that you may be paying for in a health and accident policy.
Does your policy have a lay-up clause?
This means that if your insured vehicle is laid up for more than 30 days, insurance can be suspended and a proportionate return of your premium made to you.
This applies to repair work of winter storage.
The figure five is important in insurance.
With many company policies you get a fleet discount if you insure five or more rigs.
This means either cars or trucks.
Discounts run up to 2% of cost.
Usually premium reductions can be obtained by applying deductibles to your liability plan.
For example: If your bodily injury claims start payment after the first $250, a 25% premium saving is often made.
In the period since the end of World War 2,--a period coinciding with merchandising demands for the colorful, the unusual, and the original in signs and displays--plastics have come on so strong that today they are the acknowledged leaders in the field.
The importance of the sign industry to the plastics industry, however, is not in terms of volume alone.
Designers of signs and displays have shown a refreshing approach to the adaptation of plastics that has influenced the workings of other industries.
Many of today's developments in thermoforming stem from original work done with signs and displays;
the art of preprinting in distortion was similarly perfected by the sign makers;
and the reverse-surface decorating techniques now used for escutcheons, medallions, etc., owes much to the field, as does the technology of designing with the light-transmitting properties of the transparent plastics.
There is much that many industries can continue to learn from some of the more recent developments described below.
The concept of trans-illumination (as shown by the photo on p. 92), as just one example, offers an entirely new approach to lighting problems--no matter what industry is involved.
A volume market
According to a recent Wall Street Journal survey, plastics units now account for more than 50% of all sign sales.
Five years ago, they had only 10% of the market, with the remainder firmly entrenched in the stronghold of neon tubing.
And it's far from the end for plastics.
Industry sources are now estimating that 75% of the signs made during the 1960's will be of plastic construction.
Evidence of this trend can best be seen in the recent activities of such leading companies in the field as Advance Neon Sign Co., Los Angeles, Calif..
Four years ago, the company's entire line was devoted to neon signs;
today, 85% is in plastics.
From the volume standpoint, the total market represented by the sign industry is impressive.
Aggregate sales during 1960 reached approximately $500 million.
Currently, there are some 6000 companies in the field, ranging from small firms with a handful of employees to major concerns having complete facilities for production of metal, electrical, and plastic components.
Why the trend to plastics?
What accounts for the rapid growth of plastics in the sign and display field?
Out of many factors which might be cited, five are most important: 1.
Plastics combine such properties as built-in color, light weight, optional transparency or translucency, resistance to corrosion, as well as the ease of fabrication.
Plastic signs are economical.
According to one major producer, materials for a typical plastic sign are approximately 25% less costly than for a comparable neon unit.
Shipping cost is also reduced;
a 3-by-6-ft. plastic sign weighs about 120 lb., compared to 275-300 lb. for neon.
The weight advantage, plus greater durability of the plastic unit, yields a saving of about one-fifth in shipping.
The lighter weight also means less costly supports and mountings are needed.
Finally, maintenance costs on plastic signs are much lower than on fragile neon signs.
They offer exceptional design freedom, making it possible to incorporate contours and details which give free range to the talents of the designer.
Vacuum- and pressure-formed sheet plastics fill the gap between cardboard and molded plastics.
Pre-decoration, low-cost molds, and the freedom to form large and small, thick and thin materials make plastics tailor-made for the industry.
Plastic signs work around the clock.
Internal illumination, protected from the elements, gives them powerful visual appeal at night;
during daylight hours their brilliant colors command attention and interest.
Among the newest fabrication methods to enter the display field are expandable styrene molding and blow molding.
What plastics to use?
For outdoor signs and displays, acrylic, with its outstanding optical characteristics, weather resistance and formability, strongly dominates the picture.
At present, both the familiar cast acrylic and the newer extruded sheets are being used by sign manufacturers, with extruded now representing an estimated 10% of the total.
(See panel, p. 166, for a comparison.
Of interest is a recent announcement by Du Pont's Polychemicals Dept. of a new methyl methacrylate monomer designated as Monocite H 100, which was developed specifically for production of cast acrylic sheets for the sign and lighting industry.
Sheeting cast from this material reportedly weighs only one-third as much as glass, is impervious to all kinds of weather, and will not yellow.
Its high impact strength, even at low temperatures, resists chipping, cracking, and crazing, according to Du Pont.
Cellulose acetate butyrate is used extensively for vacuum-formed signs, background panels, and molded or formed letters because of its exceptional toughness, ease of forming, and excellent weathering properties.
Its clarity and good optical properties are other important factors.
New to the field is a duplex type butyrate laminate in which the two sheets of the laminate are of different color.
Thermoforming the laminate and then sanding away the top layer is a quick and economical way to produce a two-color sign.
(see MPl, Mar. 1961, p. 98).
For specialized types of displays, such as large three-dimensional units reproducing a product, package, human or animal figures, etc., reinforced plastics and rotationally molded vinyl plastisols are other materials frequently used.
A relative newcomer in outdoor signs is Mylar polyester film, now used as a printed overlay for trans-illuminated signs (see below).
For outdoor signs and displays, where the problem of weathering resistance is no longer a factor, the choice of plastics is almost unlimited.
Here may be found regular and impact styrene, cellulose acetate, cellulose butyrate and cellulose propionate, acrylic, vinyl, expandable styrene foam, and polyethylene.
The final choice of material depends upon such factors as costs, method of fabrication, degree of complexity, number of units required, time available for tooling, and projected life expectancy of the unit.
Often, the finished sign or display incorporates several types of plastics and two or more fabricating techniques.
Trans-illuminated billboards
One of the most significant advancements in design of plastics signs is the so-called trans-illuminated billboard, now being produced by several large sign manufacturers such as Advance Neon Sign Co., Los Angeles, and Industrial Electric Inc., New Orleans, La..
The essential difference between the new trans-illuminated boards and existing billboards is that the former, constructed of translucent plastic panels, are lighted from within.
With the source of light behind the copy, there is no loss of lumen output, as with conventional boards illuminated by means of reflected light.
Also, the light sources are shielded from dirt and weather exposure and cannot obstruct the view of the sign.
The copy itself, including any text or illustrations, is reproduced in full color directly on a thin Mylar polyester film by a photo screen process.
The film has an adhesive on the back which permits it to be stripped onto the acrylic panels forming the sign, and also to be stripped off for replacement by new copy as required.
Spare sets of face panels simplify the change from one copy or message to another;
new panels are exchanged for the old right in the field on a single trip.
Panels with outdated copy are returned to the sign shop so a new message can be applied.
Signs of this type have already made their appearance in several larger cities, and others are on the way.
It is believed that these boards will, within the next few years, replace many of the conventional flood-lighted boards now in use.
Trans-illuminated signs also show versatility in other directions.
As used by Industrial Electric Inc., the film panels are printed one at a time, as are 24-sheet posters.
Thus the film can be applied to back-lighted translucent plastics faces;
they can also be applied to opaque panels for use on cutouts, or they can be applied directly to painted bulletin faces.
In this way, the sign maker has an economical means for displaying uniform copy on different sign media.
Recently Industrial Electric unveiled another new development made possible by modern plastic materials--a revolving spectacular sign.
Comprised of 16 triangular trans-illuminated plastic sections, it makes it possible to combine three different signs in a single unit.
The triangles automatically revolve in a cycle which permits 9 sec. of viewing time for each poster subject.
Sixteen panels, each slightly more than 1-1/2 ft. wide, make up the 25-ft. length of the sign.
Changeable letters fill many needs
Perhaps the best way to indicate the versatility of design that characterizes the use of plastics in signs and displays would be to look at what is happening in only one of the areas in this complex field--changeable signs.
Signs are meant to convey a message, and in most cases, this requires words and letters.
Frequently, the message must be changed at intervals to feature new products, price changes, etc..
The huge market for changeable signs has spurred a universal demand for individual plastic letters, in all shapes and sizes--and a number of companies are set up to supply them.
Here are some of the newer items currently available:
Poster Products Inc., Chicago, Ill.: a changeable copy and display sign which consists of an extruded impact styrene background in choice of colors, onto which are mounted snap-in letters, figures, or words screened on acetate or other types of sheet stock.
The background, which is available in various widths and continuous lengths, is extruded with parallel undercut grooves which grip the flexible letters securely.
The Adaptaplex Co., Beaverton, Ore.: letters molded of butyrate, available in several sizes in either red or black.
Ideal for merchandising use, they are weather-resistant, and have mounting pegs on the back which fit into openings in a vacuum-formed waffle-pattern background panel.
For large letters, e.g. thermoformed of acrylic or butyrate, there are other techniques.
For example, in a typical store installation, fifty 24-in. and six 36-in. red acrylic letters were mounted against a white painted wood background.
The fact that even the larger letters weighed only 5 lb. each made it possible to secure the letters to the building through clear acrylic angle brackets cemented to the letters.
Stainless steel screws were used to minimize corrosion stains.
For mounting to corrugated plastic backgrounds, very small holes may be drilled in the sides of the letters and stainless steel wire threaded through the openings, its ends twisted behind the panels.
Large injection-molded letters are also available for sign installations.
Wagner Sign Service Inc., Chicago, for example, supplies them in several colors, in heights of 4, 6, 8, 10, and 17 inches.
They are molded of a special weather-resistant formulation of Tenite butyrate.
Also available from this company are Snug-Grip Plasti-Bars, extruded of transparent acrylic material, which may be cemented to any corrugated acrylic background material.
Made in lengths from 3 to 10 ft., the bars are shaped in cross section to provide a secure fit for the tapered slots molded in back of the letters.
Still another approach to the changeable letter type of sign is a modular unit introduced by Merritt Products, Azusa, Calif..
This vacuum formed sign is comprised of 27-in. (or smaller) panels formed of 0.080-in. clear butyrate sheet stock, masked and sprayed on the rear side.
Finished signs are produced by sliding the separate letter panels into channels of 0.025-in. aluminum, which may be mounted to various surfaces.
The sheets are extruded of Tenite butyrate by Jet Specialties Co., Los Angeles, Calif..
On large-area units, where additional structural requirements are imposed, one recent approach utilizes modular extruded or formed channels (e.g. right-angled corrugations) of the acrylic or butyrate.
Joined side by side, such channels make possible construction of continuous two-dimensional luminous areas up to 50 ft. high and of unlimited width.
Letters may be wired to the face of the combined channels, painted on the first surface, or handled in other ways.
New rule no. 2::
Don't build from the outside in--try to build from the inside out
Don't insert your components into fixed openings, they may or may not fit;
position your components before you close them in.
For example:
Don't wall in your kitchen before you hang the wall cabinets and set the appliances.
It's a lot quicker and easier to dimension the kitchen to fit the cabinets and erect the end wall after they are all in place.
Set your bathtub before you close in the end of the bathroom.
Don't try to wrestle a 400-lb. tub Af through a narrow doorway.
Finish your plumbing before you frame it in (most economical framing is a thin non-bearing partition on either side of the pipes).
Finish installing and connecting up your furnace and your water heater before you wall them in.
There is no better way to waste time than trying to install a furnace in a finished Af closet.
Don't position your studs before you insert your windows in conventional construction;
that way you may pay more to shim the window into place than you paid for the window.
You can save all that shimming time if you set your windows in one, two, three order--first the stud on one side, then the window, then the stud on the other side.
Install your disappearing stair (or stairs) to the attic and finish your overhead ducts before you drywall the ceiling.
Don't close in your house until everything has been carried in.
Last wall Bob Schmitt erects is the wall between the house and garage.
That way he can truck his parts right indoors and unload them under the roof.
No auto maker would dream of putting the head on the engine before he fitted the pistons in the block.
And trailer makers, those most industrialized and therefore most efficient of homebuilders, say they save hundreds of dollars by always building from the inside out.
New rule no. 3: rethink everything to get all the big savings the revolution in materials handling offers you
This revolution is the biggest build-better-for-less news of all, because: 1.
It makes it easy to handle much heavier units, so you can plan to build with much bigger and heavier prefabricated components like those shown in the pictures alongside.
It makes materials handling the only construction cost that (like earthmoving and roadbuilding) should be lower today than in 1929.
It changes the answers to Who should do what, and where?
It lessens the need for costly on-site fabrication and increases the chance for shop fabrication, where almost everything can be made better and cheaper.
It changes the answers on when to do what at the site.
For example, instead of putting in your driveways last (as many builders do) you can now save money by putting them in first.
Instead of closing the house in first (as most builders do) you can now cut your costs by not closing it in until you have to (see p 121).
It changes the answers on builder-dealer relations.
Not so long ago many builders were finding they could cut their costs by buying direct and short-cutting the dealer.
Says Clarence Thompson: We dealers must earn our mark-up by performing a service for the builder cheaper than he could do it himself.
The revolution now under way in materials handling makes this much easier.
The revolution is well under way, but much more remains to be done
Five years ago a House & Home Round Table cosponsored by the Lumber Dealers' Research Council reported unhappily:
Only one lumber dealer in ten is equipped to handle unit loads;
only one box car in eight has the wide doors needed for unit loads;
only one producer in a hundred is equipped to package and ship unit loads;
only one builder in a thousand is equipped to receive unit loads.
So from raw materials to finished erection the costs of materials handling (most of it inefficient) add up to one-fourth of the total construction cost of housing.
That House & Home Round Table was the real starting point for today's revolution in materials handling, says Clarence Thompson, long chairman of the Lumber Dealers' Research Council.
It made our whole industry recognize the need for a new kind of teamwork between manufacturer, carrier, equipment maker, dealer, and builder, all working together to cut the cost of materials handling.
Before that we lumber dealers were working almost single-handed on the problem.
Here is where things stand today:
Almost all of the 3,000 lumber dealers who cater primarily to the new-house market and supply 90% of this year's new houses are mechanized.
There are few areas left where a builder cannot find a dealer equipped to save him money by delivering everything at lower cost just where his workmen will need it.
Truck and materials-handling equipment makers now offer specialized units to meet almost every homebuilding need.
For some significant new items see the pictures.
More than 50% of all lumber is unitized;
an NLRDA survey found that at least 492 lumber mills will strap their shipments for mechanized handling.
Of these, 376 said they make no extra charge for strapping in standard units, because they save enough on mechanized carloading to offset their strapping cost.
Most of the others will swallow their $.50 to $3 charge rather than lose a good customer.
With a 15,500-lb. fork-lift, dealers can unload unitized lumber from wide-door box cars for $.30/mbf compared with $1.65 or more to unload loose lumber one piece at a time, says James Wright of Aj.
Lumber dealers and lumber manufacturers have agreed on a standard unit for unitized shipments--48wide by a nominal 30high (or six McCracken packets 24wide by nominal 7high).
These units make it easy to load as much as 48,000 bd/ft (say 120,000 lb in a 50' box car) much more than the average for loose-loaded cars.
The railroads have responded by adding 20,000 more box cars with doors 12' or wider for forklift unloading (a 21% increase while the total number of box cars was falling 6%) and by cutting their freight rates twice on lumber shipped in heavily loaded cars.
First was a 1958 cut of more than 50% on that portion of the load in excess of 40,000 lb;
later came a 1961 cut on the West Coast (still pending elsewhere) of $.07/cwt on 70,000 lb-plus carloads (which works out to more than $4/mbf on that portion of the load in excess of 70,000 lb.
More unitized lumber is being shipped on flat cars, and NLRDA studies show that flat cars loaded with the new Type 6-B floating-load method can be unloaded for as little as $.054/mbf.
For long hauls these shipments should be protected with water-proof paper.
This costs from $.75 to $2.30/mbf, but the cover can pay off if the lumber is to be stored in the open.
These carriers cut handling costs for the dealer--and the builder
Says NRLDA's James Wright: Since 1958 carriers that move material from the yard to the job site have undergone more radical changes than any of the dealer's other equipment.
The reason: today's components and lumber packages are far too bulky to be handled by a truckdriver and a helper.
So manufacturers have pioneered a new type of vehicle--the self-unloading carrier.
It cuts the lumber dealer's cost because it takes only one man--the driver--to unload it, and because it unloads in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of hand unloading.
And it helps the builder because it can handle a more efficiently packaged load, can deliver it to the best spot (in some cases, right on the roof or inside the house), and never takes any of the builder's high-priced labor to help unload it.
Says Wright: Our survey shows that one third of the retail dealers plan to increase the mechanization of their materials handling in the coming two years.
And most of the gain will be in self-unloading vehicles.
New rule no. 4::
Restudy what your men do, to help them waste less of the time you pay for
Even America's most efficient builder, Bob Schmitt of Berea, hopes to cut his labor costs another $2,000 per house as a result of the time-&-motion studies now being completed on his operation by industrial efficiency engineers from the Stanley Works.
Already this study has suggested ways to cut his foundation manhours from 170 to 105 by eliminating idle time and wasted motion.
A midwestern builder cut his labor costs per thousand bricks from $81 to $43.50 by adopting this same process, cut them another $7.50 to $36 by buying his bricks in convenient, easy-to-spot 100-brick packages.
The SCR process, with its precision corner-posts, its precision guide lines, its working level scaffold, and its hand-level brick supply takes eight manhours to get set, but once ready it makes it easy for bricklayers to lay a thousand bricks a day.
See page 156.
One good way to cut your labor waste is to make sure you are using just the right number of men in each crew.
Reports Jim Lendrum: By studying men on the job, we found that two men--a carpenter and a helper--can lay a floor faster than three.
We found that three men--two carpenters and a helper--can put up wall panels or trusses more economically than four men--because four men don't make two teams;
they make one inefficient three-men-and-a-helper team.
We found that wherever you can use two teams on a job, five men, not four, is the magic number.
No house was ever built that could not have been built better for less if the work had been better planned and the work better scheduled.
New rule no. 5::
Don't waste any $.10-a-minute time on green lumber to save $.03 a stud
This is the most penny-wise, pound-foolish chisel a builder can commit.
Green lumber was all very well back in the days of wet plaster, when the framing lumber was bound to swell and then shrink as tons of water dried out the gypsum.
But now that all production builders build with drywall and all smart builders build with panels, green lumber is an anachronism you cannot afford.
Green studs cost about $.65;
dry studs cost less than $.03 more.
So if a green stud makes a carpenter or a drywall finisher or anybody else waste even 20 seconds, the green stud becomes more expensive than a dry stud.
There comes a time in the lives of most of us when we want to be alone.
Not necessarily to be off all by ourselves, but away from the crowds and common happenstance.
If you've travelled in Europe a time or two, it is quite certain that you've had that wanting-to-be-alone feeling or that you will get it on your next visit across the Atlantic.
Following a guide, and gratefully so, is an excellent way to see all the important places when everything is strange and new.
The champagne at Troyes, the traditional capital of the champagne country, has more ambrosial taste somehow than it has at a sidewalk cafe on the Rue de la Paix or at Tour D'Argent.
You can relive history and follow, in fancy, the Crusaders in their quest for the Holy Grail as they sail out from Brindisi, an ancient town in the heel of Italy's boot.
And you don't meet the folks from home in Northwest Spain which has remained almost untouched by time and tourists since the Middle Ages.
Time stands still as you climb the narrow, stone stairways in tiny villages clinging to steep mountain slopes or wander through story-book towns, perched atop lofty crags, their faces turned to the sea.
They've been there since the days of the Moors and the Saracens.
And what better way to end a day than by dining with artists and gourmets in a squat but charming fisherman's village on the Mediterranean?
An almost too-simple-to-be-true way to set forth on such adventures is just to put yourself behind the wheel of a car and head for the open road.
For those who need or want and can afford another car, buying one and driving it on the grand tour, then shipping it home, is one popular plan for a do-it-yourself pilgrimage.
Then, of course, there are those of us who either do not want or need or cannot afford another car.
The answer to this diathesis is to pick up a telephone and arrange to rent one.
It is that elemental.
Almost any travel agent will reserve a car for you.
You can call one of the car rental services directly (Hertz, Avis, Auto-Europe Nationalcar Rental, and others) and ask them to reserve a car of your choice, and some transportation lines offer this service as well.
With few exceptions, your car will be waiting for you at dockside, airport, railroad station or hotel when you arrive, oftentimes at no additional cost.
You can wait, of course, until you arrive in Europe before renting your car.
The disadvantages to this method are that you may not have as great a choice of models readily available or you may have to wait a few days or, during the busy tourist season, when cars are in great demand, you might find it fairly difficult to get a car at all.
Since charges are relatively the same, reserving a car before you leave for Europe will assure you of having one on tap when you want it.
For those who plan to travel to Europe by one route and return by another some agencies offer a service whereby you can pick up a car in one city on arrival and leave it in another city, or even another country, when you are ready to return home.
At some cities, this pick-up and delivery service is without additional charge, and, if you are budget-wise, when you are planning your itinerary, you will take advantage of these free delivery and collection stations in major cities within the larger European countries.
International Touring Documents are usually provided with the car as are road maps and touring data.
A valid American driving license is accepted in all countries except Portugal, Spain, Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe.
If you plan to visit any of these countries, you can obtain your International Driving Permit before you leave at a nominal fee--around $3.00.
Your insurance, too, with most agencies, is provided with the car, covering comprehensive fire, theft, liability and collision with a deductible clause which varies in different countries.
If you would feel happier with full collision insurance, there is a small additional charge, again varying from country to country and depending on the term of such insurance.
The average charge for this additional insurance coverage is roughly $1.00 a day.
The charge is variable, however, and goes as low as $.50 a day in Ireland and as high as $2.00 a day in Greece.
Rental fees are variable, too, throughout the countries of Europe.
There are as many rates as there are countries and models of cars available.
As in the United States, there is a flat fee-per-day rental charge plus a few cents per kilometer driven, and the per-day rate drops if the car is retained for a week.
It drops again after fifteen and/or twenty-one days.
Your choice of model will undoubtedly be governed by the number of people travelling in your group.
With the exception of the sports cars, even the quite tiny sedans will seat four passengers if you are willing to sacrifice comfort and luggage space for really economical transportation.
There is a large variety of models to choose from in most countries, however, including 6-passenger sedans and station wagons and the rental fee isn't all that much greater than for the wee sedans.
The basic costs are generally pretty much the same regardless of the agency through which you reserve your car, but some of them offer supplementary advantages.
There is the free intra-city rent it here, leave it there service, as an example, the free delivery and collection at the airport, dockside or your hotel, luggage racks, touring documents and information and other similar services.
A little investigation by telephone or reading the travel ads in the newspapers and magazines will give you these pertinent details on the additional money-saving benefits.
The investigation will be well worth your time.
All model cars are not available in all countries.
Quite naturally, there is a greater availability of those models which are manufactured within a specific country.
If you would like to start your tour in Italy, where the rental fees are actually the lowest in Europe, Fiats in all sizes are available, as are Alfa Romeo Giulietta models.
If you wish to budget closely on transportation, saving your extra dollars to indulge in luxuries, one agency lists the small Fiat 500 at only $1.26 a day plus $.03 a kilometer and the Fiat 2100 Station Wagon, seating six, at just $1.10 a day and $.105 a kilometer.
If you will be using your car more than fifteen days, which isn't all unlikely, the daily rates drop quite sharply to $.86 a day for the Fiat 500 and to an infinitesimal $.30 a day for the Fiat 2100 Station Wagon.
With six in the group, the cost comes to just a nickel a day per person on the daily fee.
In the majority of countries, however, the rates range from $3.00 to $3.50 a day for the smaller sedans and graduate up to $7.00 and $8.00 a day for the larger, luxury European models, with the rate per kilometer driven starting at $.03 and going up as high as $.12.
The same model car might be available in six or eight countries, yet not two countries will have the same rate either for the daily rate or rate per kilometer driven.
The variations are not too great.
Rates for American cars are somewhat higher, ranging from about $8.00 a day up to $14.00 a day for a Chevrolet Convertible, but the rate per kilometer driven is roughly the same as for the larger European models.
Rates in Greece and Finland are fairly high, actually the highest in Europe, and, surprisingly enough, they are also quite high in Ireland.
If you are planning to tour Europe for longer than a month, it might be wise for you to lease a car.
The actual over-all cost, for the first month, will perhaps not be too much lower than the rental charges for the same period of time, but you will receive a new car.
You will be entitled to all the advantages of a new car owner, which includes the factory guarantee and the services valid at authorized dealers throughout Europe.
Further, there is no mileage charge or mileage limitations when you lease a car, and you pay only the flat monthly rate plus a nominal charge for documents and insurance since the car is registered and insured individually for your trip.
There is a fairly wide selection of models of English, German and French manufacture from which you can choose from the very small Austin 7, Citroen 2 CV, Volkswagens, Renaults to the 6-passenger Simca Beaulieu.
Leasing a car is not as common or as popular as renting a car in Europe, but for long periods it will be unquestionably more economical and satisfactory.
After the first month, rates are considerably less, averaging only about $60 a month for most 4- and 5-passenger models.
There are reasons for some people not wanting to rent cars and going on the do-it-yourself plan.
For one thing, the driver usually sees less and has less fun than his passengers since it becomes pretty necessary for him to keep at least one eye on the road.
Then, too, European drivers have reputations for being somewhat crazy on the road and some Americans are not particularly keen on getting mixed up with them.
Still there is a way for those who want to see some of the back country of Europe by car.
The way is to rent a chauffeur-driven car.
It isn't as expensive as most people believe it to be.
Your chauffeur's expenses will average between $7.00 to $12.00 a day, but this charge is the same whether you rent a 7-passenger Cadillac limousine or a 4-passenger Peugeot or Fiat 1800.
The big spread is in the charge for each kilometer driven, being governed by the rate at which gasoline is consumed.
The fees for the rental of chauffeur-driven cars vary in the different countries in the same manner as they do for the drive-yourself cars.
However, whether you arrange to have a European or American model, if you rent a car with the proper seating capacity in relation to the number of people in your party, your transportation expense will average very close to $10.00 per day per passenger.
This will include your helpful, English-speaking chauffeur and a drive of an average of 150 kilometers in any one day.
If you drive greater distances than that, you'll just be skimming the surface and will never discover the enchantment, fascination and beauty which lured you in the first place to explore the hinterlands.
In American romance, almost nothing rates higher than what the movie men have called meeting cute--that is, boy-meets-girl seems more adorable if it doesn't take place in an atmosphere of correct and acute boredom.
Just about the most enthralling real-life example of meeting cute is the Charles MacArthur-Helen Hayes saga: reputedly all he did was give her a handful of peanuts, but he said simultaneously, I wish they were emeralds.
Aside from the comico-romantico content here, a good linguist-anthropologist could readily pick up a few other facts, especially if he had a little more of the conversation to go on.
The way MacArthur said his line--if you had the recorded transcript of a professional linguist--would probably have gone like this: Af Primary stresses on emeralds and wish;
note pitch 3 (pretty high) on emeralds but with a slight degree of drawl, one degree of oversoftness.
Conclusions: The people involved (and subsequent facts bear me out here) knew clearly the relative values of peanuts and emeralds, both monetary and sentimental.
And the drawling, oversoft voice of flirtation, though fairly overt, was still well within the prescribed gambit of their culture.
In other words, like automation machines designed to work in tandem, they shared the same programming, a mutual understanding not only of English words, but of the four stresses, pitches, and junctures that can change their meaning from black to white.
At this point, unfortunately, romance becomes a regrettably small part of the picture;
but consider, if you can bear it, what might have happened if MacArthur, for some perverse, undaunted reason, had made the same remark to an Eskimo girl in Eskimo.
To her peanuts and emeralds would have been just so much blubber.
The point--quite simply--is this: words they might have had;
but communication, no.
This basic principle, the first in a richly knotted bundle, was conveyed to me by Dr. Henry Lee Smith, Jr., at the University of Buffalo, where he heads the world's first department of anthropology and linguistics.
Later, he became one of the central spirits of the Army Language Program and the language school of Washington's Foreign Service Institute.
It was there, in the course of trying to prepare new men for the culture shock they might encounter in remote overseas posts, that he first began to develop a system of charting the norms of human communication.
To the trained ear of the linguist, talk has always revealed a staggering quantity of information about the talker--such things as geographical origin and/or history, socio-economic identity, education.
It is only fairly recently, however, that linguists have developed a systematic way of charting voices on paper in a way that tells even more about the speakers and about the success or failure of human communication between two people.
This, for obvious reasons, makes their techniques superbly useful in studying the psychiatric interview, so useful, in fact, that they have been successfully used to suggest ways to speed diagnosis and to evaluate the progress of therapy.
Smith's first workout with stresses, pitches, and junctures was based on mother, which spells, in our culture, a good deal more than bread alone.
For example, if you are a reasonably well-adjusted person, there are certain ways that are reasonable and appropriate for addressing your mother.
The usual U.S. norm would be: Af Middle pitches, slight pause (juncture) before mother, slight rise at the end.
The symbols of mother's status, here, are all usual for culture U.S.A..
Quite other feelings are evidenced by this style: Af Note the drop to pitch 1 (the lowest) on mother with no rise at the end of the sentence;
this is a fade ending, and what you have here is a downtalking style of speech, expressing something less than conventional respect for mother.
Even less regard for mom and mom's apple pie goes with: Af In other words, the way the speaker relates to mother is clearly indicated.
And while the meaning of the words is not in this instance altered, the quality of communication in both the second and third examples is definitely impaired.
An accompanying record of paralanguage factors for the second example might also note a throaty rasp.
With this seven-word sentence--though the speaker undoubtedly thought he was dealing only with the subject of food--he was telling things about himself and, in the last two examples, revealing that he had departed from the customs of his culture.
Since interviewing is the basic therapeutic and diagnostic instrument of modern psychiatry, the recording of interviews for playbacks and study has been a boost of Redstone proportions in new research and training.
In a general way, psychiatrists were able to establish on a wide basis what many of them had always felt--that the most telling cues in psychotherapy are acoustic, that such things as stress and nagging are transmitted by sound alone and not necessarily by words.
At a minimum, recording--usually on tape, which is now in wide professional use--brings the psychiatric interview alive so that the full range of emotion and meaning can be explored repeatedly by the therapist or by a battery of therapists.
Newest to this high-powered battery are the experts in linguistics who have carried that minimum to a new level.
By adding a systematic analysis with symbols to the typed transcripts of interviews, they have supplied a new set of techniques for the therapist.
Linguistic charting of the transcribed interview flags points where the patient's voice departs from expected norms.
It flags such possible breakdowns of communication as rehearsed dialogue, the note of disapproval, ambivalence or ambiguity, annoyance, resentment, and the disinclination to speak at all--this last often marked by a fade-in beginning of sentences.
His esoteric chartings of the voice alert the therapist to areas where deeper probing may bring to light underlying psychological difficulties, making them apparent first to the therapist and eventually to the patient.
In one now-historic first interview, for example, the transcript (reproduced from the book, The First Five Minutes) goes like this: The therapist's level tone is bland and neutral--he has, for example, avoided stressing you, which would imply disapproval;
or surprise, which would set the patient apart from other people.
The patient, on the other hand, is far from neutral;
Then she catapults into everything and everybody, putting particular violence on everybody, indicating to the linguist that this is a spot to flag--that is, it is not congruent to the patient's general style of speech up to this point.
Consequently, it is referred to the therapist for attention.
He may then very well conclude that everybody is probably not the true target of her resentment.
Immediately thereafter, the patient fractures her rehearsed story, veering into an oversoft, breathy, sloppily articulated, I don't feel like talking right now.
Within the first five minutes of this interview it is apparent to the therapist that everybody truthfully refers to the woman's husband.
She says later, but still within the opening five minutes, I keep thinking of a divorce but that's another emotional death.
The linguistic and paralinguistic signals of misery are all present in the voice chart for this sentence;
so are certain signals that she does not accept divorce.
By saying another emotional death, she reveals that there has been a previous one, although she has not described it in words.
This the therapist may pursue in later questioning.
The phrase, emotional death, interesting and, to a non-scientific mind, rather touching, suggests that this woman may have some flair for words, perhaps even something of the temperament regrettably called creative.
Since the psychiatric interview, like any other interview, depends on communication, it is significant to note that the therapist in this interview was a man of marked skill and long experience.
His own communication apparatus operated superbly, and Lillian Ross readers will note instantly its total lack of resemblance to the blunted, monumentally unmeshed mechanism of Dr. Blauberman.
Interestingly enough--although none of the real-life therapists involved could conceivably compare with Blauberman--when groups of them began playing back interviews, they discovered any number of ways in which they wanted to polish their own interview techniques;
almost everyone, on first hearing one of his own sessions on tape, expressed some desire to take the whole thing over again.
Yet, in spite of this, intensive study of the taped interviews by teams of psychotherapists and linguists laid bare the surprising fact that, in the first five minutes of an initial interview, the patient often reveals as many as a dozen times just what's wrong with him;
to spot these giveaways the therapist must know either intuitively or scientifically how to listen.
Naturally, the patient does not say, I hate my father, or Sibling rivalry is what bugs me.
What he does do is give himself away by communicating information over and above the words involved.
Some of the classic indicators, as described by Drs. Pittenger, Hockett, and Danehy in The First Five Minutes, are these: ambiguity of pronouns:
Stammering or repetition of I, you, he, she, et cetera may signal ambiguity or uncertainty.
On the other hand significant facts may be concealed--she may mean I or everybody, as it did with the tense and irritable woman mentioned before, may refer to a specific person.
The word that is not used can be as important as the word that is used;
therapist and/or linguist must always consider the alternatives.
When someone says, for example, They took x-rays to see that there was nothing wrong with me, it pays to consider how this statement would normally be made.
(This patient, in actuality, was a neurasthenic who had almost come to the point of accepting the fact that it was not her soma but her psyche that was the cause of her difficulty.
) Amateur linguists note here that Pursewarden, in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, stammered when he spoke of his wife, which is hardly surprising in view of their disastrous relationship.
She was just another freighter from the States, and she seemed as commonplace as her name.
She was the John Harvey, one of those Atlantic sea-horses that had sailed to Bari to bring beans, bombs, and bullets to the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, to Field Marshal Montgomery's Eighth Army then racing up the calf of the boot of Italy in that early December of 1943.
The John Harvey arrived in Bari, a port on the Adriatic, on November 28th, making for Porto Nuovo, which, as the name indicates, was the ancient city's new and modern harbor.
Hardly anyone ashore marked her as she anchored stern-to off Berth 29 on the mole.
If anyone thought of the John Harvey, it was to observe that she was straddled by a pair of ships heavily laden with high explosive and if they were hit the John Harvey would likely be blown up with her own ammo and whatever else it was that she carried.
Which was poison gas.
It had required the approval of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt before the John Harvey could be loaded with 100 tons of mustard gas and despatched to the Italian warfront.
For in a world as yet unacquainted with the horrors of the mushroom cloud, poison gas was still regarded as the ultimate in hideous weapons.
Throughout the early years of World War 2, reports persisted that the Axis powers had used gas--Germany in Russia, Japan in China again.
They were always denied.
Influential people in America were warning the Pentagon to be prepared against desperation gas attacks by the Germans in future campaigns.
Some extremists went so far as to urge our using it first.
To silence extremists, to warn the Axis, President Roosevelt issued this statement for the Allies in August:
From time to time since the present war began there have been reports that one or more of the Axis powers were seriously contemplating use of poisonous gas or noxious gases or other inhumane devices of warfare.
I have been loath to believe that any nation, even our present enemies, could or would be willing to loose upon mankind such terrible and inhumane weapons.
However, evidence that the Axis powers are making significant preparations indicative of such an intention is being reported with increasing frequency from a variety of sources.
Use of such weapons has been outlawed by the general opinion of civilized mankind.
This country has not used them, and I hope that we never will be compelled to use them.
I state categorically that we shall under no circumstances resort to the use of such weapons unless they are first used by our enemies.
The following month the invasion of Italy was begun, and Roosevelt gave effect to his warning by consenting to the stockpiling of poison gas in southern Italy.
Bari was chosen as a depot, not only for its seeming safety, but because of its proximity to airfields.
Any retaliatory gas attack would be airborne.
It would be made in three waves--the first to lay down a smokescreen, the second to drop the gas bombs, the third to shower incendiaries which would burn everything below.
So the vile cargo went into the hole of the John Harvey.
A detachment of six men from the 701st Chemical Maintenance Company under First Lt. Howard D. Beckstrom went aboard, followed by Lt. Thomas H. Richardson, the Cargo Security Officer.
Secrecy was paramount.
Only a few other people--very important people--knew of the nitrogen-mustard eggs nestled below decks.
No one else must know.
Thus, in the immemorial way--in the way of the right hand that knows and the left that does not--was the stage set for tragedy at Bari.
It was the night of December 2, 1943, and it was growing dark in Bari.
It was getting on toward 7 o'clock and the German Me-210 plane had been and gone on its eighth straight visit.
Capt. A. B. Jenks of the Office of Harbor Defense was very worried.
He knew that German long-range bombers had been returning to the attack in Italy.
On November 24th, they had made a raid on La Maddalena.
Two days later, some 30 of them had struck at a convoy off Bougie, sinking a troopship--and it had been that very night that the Me-210 had made its first appearance.
After it had reappeared the next two nights, Jenks went to higher headquarters and said:
For three days now a German reconnaissance plane has been over the city taking pictures.
They're just waiting for the proper time to come over here and dump this place into the Adriatic.
But the older and wiser heads had dismissed his warning as alarmist.
Even though it was known that the Luftwaffe in the north was now being directed by the young and energetic General Peltz, the commander who would conduct the Little Blitz on London in 1944, a major raid on Bari at this juncture of the war was not to be considered seriously.
True, there had been raids on Naples--but Naples was pretty far north on the opposite coast.
No, Bari was out of range.
More than that, Allied air had complete superiority in the Eighth Army's sector.
So Captain Jenks returned to his harbor post to watch the scouting plane put in five more appearances, and to feel the certainty of this dread rising within him.
For Jenks knew that Bari's defenses were made of paper.
The Royal Air Force had but a single light anti-aircraft squadron and two balloon units available.
There were no R.A.F. fighter squadrons on Bari airfield.
The radar station with the best location was still not serviceable.
Telephone communication was bad.
And everywhere in evidence among the few remaining defensive units was that old handmaiden of disaster--multiple command.
It had been made shockingly evident that very morning to Ensign Kay K. Vesole, in charge of the armed guard aboard the John Bascom.
A British officer had come aboard and told him that in case of enemy air attack he was not to open fire until bombs were actually dropped.
Then he was to co-ordinate his fire with a radar-controlled shore gun firing white tracers.
This harbor is a bomber's paradise, the Britisher had said with frank grimness.
It's up to you to protect yourselves.
We can't expect any help from the fighters at Foggia, either.
They're all being used on offensive missions.
Vesole had been stunned.
Not fire until the bombs came down!
He thought of the tons and tons of flammable fluid beneath his feet and shook his head.
Like hell!
Like hell he'd wait--and supposing the radar-controlled gun got knocked out?
What would his guns guide on then--the North Star?
Ensign Vesole decided that he would not tarry until he heard the whispering of the bombs, and when night began to fall, he put Seaman 2/c Donald L. Norton and Seaman 1/c William A. Rochford on the guns and told them to start shooting the moment they saw an enemy silhouette.
Below decks, Seaman 1/c Stanley Bishop had begun to write a letter home.
Above decks on the John Harvey, Lieutenant Richardson gazed at the lights still burning on the port wall and felt uneasy.
There were lights glinting in the city, too, even though it was now dark enough for a few stars to become visible.
Bari was asking for it, he thought.
For five days now, they had been in port and that filthy stuff was still in the hold.
Richardson wondered when it would be unloaded.
He hoped they would put in somewhere way, way down in the earth.
The burden of his secret was pressing down on him, as it was on Lieutenant Beckstrom and his six enlisted men.
Lieutenant Richardson could envy the officers and men of the John Harvey in their innocent assumption that the ship contained nothing more dangerous than high explosive bombs.
They seemed happy at the delay in unloading, glad at the chance to go ashore in a lively liberty port such as Bari.
Nine of them had gone down the gangplank already.
Deck Cadet James L. Cahill and Seaman Walter Brooks had been the first to leave.
Richardson had returned their departing grins with the noncommittal nod that is the security officer's stock in trade.
The other half of the crew, plus Beckstrom and his men, had remained aboard.
Richardson glanced to sea and started slightly.
Damned if that wasn't a sailing ship standing out of the old harbor--Porto Vecchio.
The night was so clear that Richardson had no difficulty making out the silhouette.
Then the thought of a cloudless sky made him shiver, and he glanced upward.
His eyes boggled.
It was a clear night and it was raining!
Capt. Michael A. Musmanno, Military governor of the Sorrentine Peninsula, had also seen and felt the rain.
But he had mistaken it for bugs.
Captain Musmanno's renovated schooner with the flamboyant name Unsinkable had just left Porto Vecchio with a cargo of badly-needed olive oil for the Sorrentine's civilian population.
Musmanno was on deck.
At exactly 7:30, he felt a fluttering object brush his face.
He snatched at it savagely.
He turned the beam of his flashlight on it.
He laughed.
It was the silver foil from the chocolate bar he had been eating.
He frowned.
But how could --?
Another, longer strip of tinsel whipped his mouth.
It was two feet long.
It was not candy wrapping.
It was window--the tinsel paper dropped by bombers to jam radar sets, to fill the scope with hundreds of blips that would seem to be approaching bombers.
Fermate!
Musmanno bellowed to his Italian crewmen.
Stop!
Stop the engines!
They had come from airports in the Balkans, these hundred-odd Junkers 88's.
They had winged over the Adriatic, they had taken Bari by complete surprise and now they were battering her, attacking with deadly skill.
They had ruined the radar warning system with their window, they had made themselves invisible above their flares.
And they also had the lights of the city, the port wall lanterns, and a shore crane's spotlight to guide on.
After the first two were blacked out, the third light was abandoned by a terrified Italian crew, who left their light to shine for nine minutes like an unerring homing beacon until British MP's shot it out.
In that interval, the German bombers made a hell of Bari harbor.
Merchant ships illuminated in the light of the flares, made to seem like stones imbedded in a lake of polished mud, were impossible to miss.
The little Unsinkable sank almost immediately.
Captain Musmanno roared at his men to lash three of the casks of olive oil together for a raft.
They got it over the side and clambered aboard only a few minutes before their schooner went under.
John Bascom went down early, too.
Ensign Vesole and his gunners had fought valiantly, but they had no targets.
Most of the Junkers were above the blinding light of the flares, and the radar-controlled shore gun had been knocked out by one of the first sticks of bombs.
Vesole rushed from gun to gun, attempting to direct fire.
He was wounded, but fought on.
Norton and Rochford fired wildly at the sounds of the motors.
Bishop rushed on deck to grab a 20-mm gun, pumping out 400 rounds before sticks of three bombs each crashed into Holds One, Three and Five.
Now the Bascom was mortally wounded.
Luckily, she was not completely aflame and would go down before the gasoline could erupt.
The order to abandon ship was given, but cries of pain could be heard from the wounded below decks.
There is a pause in the merriment as your friends gaze at you, wondering why you are staring, open-mouthed in amazement.
You explain, I have the strangest feeling of having lived through this very same event before.
I can't tell when, but I'm positive I witnessed this same scene of this particular gathering at some time in the past!
This experience will have happened to many of you.
Most psychiatrists dismiss these instances of that weird feeling as the deja vue (already seen) illusion, just as they dismiss dream previsions as coincidences.
In this manner they side-step the seemingly hopeless investigation of the greater depths of mystery in which all of us grope continually.
When a man recognizes a certain experience as the exact pattern of a previous dream, we have an instance of deja vue, except for the fact that he knows just why the experience seems familiar.
Occasionally there are examples of pre-vision which cannot be pushed aside without confessing an unscientific attitude.
One day Maeterlinck, coming with a friend upon an event which he recognized as the exact pattern of a previous dream, detailed the ensuing occurrences in advance so accurately that his companion was completely mystified.
Rudyard Kipling's scorn for the jargon of psychical research was altered somewhat when he wondered how, or why, had I been shown an unreleased roll of my life film?
The famous author tells us of the strange incident in Something About Myself.
At that moment Kipling was overwhelmed with awed amazement, suddenly recalling that these identical details of scene, action and word had occurred to him in a dream six weeks earlier.
Freud probably contributed more than anyone else to the understanding of dreams, enabling us to recognize their equivalents in our wakeful thoughts.
However, readers who accept Freud's findings and believe that he has solved completely the mystery of dreams, should ponder over the following words in his Interpretation Of Dreams, Chapter 1::
Dreams present many mysteries of telepathy, clairvoyance, prevision and retrovision.
The basic mystery of dreams, which embraces all the others and challenges us from even the most common typical dream, is in the fact that they are original, visual continuities.
I recall the startling, vivid realism of a dream in which I lived through the horror of the bombing of a little Korean town.
I am sure that nothing within me is capable of composing that life-like sequence, so complete in detail, from the hodge-podge of news pictures I have seen.
And when psychology explains glibly, but the subconscious mind is able to produce it it refers to a mental region so vaguely identified that it may embrace the entire universal mind as conceivably as part of the individual mind.
Skeptics may deny the more startling phenomena of dreams as things they have never personally observed, but failure to wonder at their basic mystery is outright avoidance of routine evidence.
The question becomes, What is a dream?
Is a dream simply a mental or cerebral movie?
Every dream, and this is true of a mental image of any type even though it may be readily interpreted into its equivalent of wakeful thought, is a psychic phenomenon for which no explanation is available.
In most cases we recognize certain words, persons, animals or objects.
But these are dreamed in original action, in some particular continuity which we don't remember having seen in real life.
For instance, the dreamer sees himself seated behind neighbor Smith and, with photographic realism, sees Smith driving the car;
whereas, it is a matter of fact that Smith cannot drive a car.
There is nothing to suggest that the brain can alter past impressions to fit into an original, realistic and unbroken continuity like we experience in dreams.
The entire concept of cerebral imagery as the physical basis of a mental image can find no logical support.
Dreams that display events of the future with photographic detail call for a theory explaining their basic mystery and all its components, including that weird feeling of deja vue, inevitably fantastic though that theory must seem.
As in the theory of perception, established in psycho-physiology, the eye is recognized as an integral part of the brain.
But then this theory confesses that it is completely at a loss as to how the image can possibly be received by the brain.
The opening paragraph of the chapter titled The Theory Of Representative Perception, in the book Philosophies Of Science by Albert G. Ramsperger says, passed on to the brain, and there, by some unexplained process, it causes the mind to have a perception.
But why is it necessary to reproduce the retinal image within the brain?
Modern physics has developed the theory that all matter consists of minute waves of energy.
We know that the number of radio and television impulses, sound waves, ultra-violet rays, etc., that may occupy the very same space, each solitary upon its own frequency, is infinite.
So we may conceive the coexistence of the infinite number of universal, apparently momentary states of matter, successive one after another in consciousness, but permanent each on its own basic phase of the progressive frequencies.
This theory makes it possible for any event throughout eternity to be continuously available at any moment to consciousness.
Space in any form is completely measured by the three dimensions.
If the fourth dimension is a physical concept and not purely metaphysical, through what medium does it extend?
It is not through space nor time that the time machine most approved by science fiction must travel for a visit to the permanent prehistoric past, or the ever-existent past-fantasy future.
Three seconds flat is the usual time, and the space is crossed by moderate mileage, while the overwhelming immensity of such journeys must be conceived as a static pulsation through an enormous number of coexistent frequencies which perpetuate all events.
The body, senses and brain, in common with all matter, have their counterpart on each of a countless number of frequencies.
The senses in each counterpart bear the impression only of phenomena that share its own frequency, whereas those upon all other frequencies are invisible, inaudible and intactible to them.
Consciousness is the factor that provides the progressive continuity to sensory impressions.
When consciousness deserts the sleeping body and the wakeful world, it continues in the myriad progressions of the ever-present past and future, in a life as vibrant and real as the one left when the body tired and required sleep.
As a matter of fact, the incorrect classification, the result of many weeks of labor by Dr. Hilprecht, was about to be published by him the following day.
Some time later the missing part of the relic was found and the complete inscription, together with other new evidence, fully corroborated the ancient priest's information.
Dr. Hilprecht was uncertain as to the language used by the ancient priest in his dream.
He was almost positive it was not Assyrian nor Cassite, and imagined it must have been German or English.
We may conclude that all six points of information, ostensibly given by the dream priest, could have been furnished by Dr. Hilprecht's subconscious reasoning.
But, in denying any physical reality for this dream, how could the brain possibly compose that realistic, vividly visual continuity uninterrupted by misty fadeout, violent break or sudden substitution?
Which theory is more fantastic: 1.
That the perfect continuity was composed from the joblot of memory impressions in the professor's brain, or 2.
That the dream was a reality on the infinite progressions of universal, gradient frequencies, across which the modern professor and the priest of ancient Nippur met?
The degree of circumstance, the ratio of memory to forgetfulness, determines whether a dream will be a recognized, fulfilled prevision, or the vaguely, effective source of the weird deja vue feeling.
No doubt some experiences vanish so completely as to leave no trace on the sleeper's mind.
Probably less than one percent of our previsions escape final obliteration before we wake.
When we arrive at the events concerned in the vanished majority, they, of course, cannot impress us as anything familiar.
Nevertheless, there are notably frequent instances of deja vue, in which our recognition of an entirely novel event is a feeling of having lived through it before, a feeling which, though vague, withstands the verbal barrage from the most impressive corps of psychologists.
If deja vue is an illusion, then peculiarly, it is a most prevalent mental disturbance affecting even the most level-headed people.
After the preliminary business affair was finished Depew arose and delivered the convincing speech that clinched the nomination for Roosevelt.
If Depew had told any academic psychologist that he had a weird feeling of having lived through that identical convention session at some time in the past, he would have been informed that he was a victim of deja vue.
But the famous orator felt more than vague recognition for the scene.
He remembered exactly when he had lived through it before, and he had something to prove he had.
One week before the convention, Depew was seated on the porch of a country home on the Hudson, gazing at the opposite shore.
The food is wonderful and it is a lot of fun to be here!
So wrote a ten year old student in a letter to his parents from North Country School, Lake Placid, New York.
In this one sentence, he unwittingly revealed the basic philosophy of the nutrition and psychological programs in operation at the school.
Because the food is selected with thought for its nutritional value, care for its origin, and prepared in a manner that retains the most nutrients, the food does taste good.
Situated in a region of some of the loveliest mountain scenery in the country, the school buildings are located amid open fields and farm lands.
These contemporary structures, beautifully adapted to a school in the country, are home to 60 children, ages eight to fourteen, grades four through eight.
From fourteen states and three foreign countries they come to spend the months from mid-September to June.
The Director, Walter E. Clark, believes that a school with children living full time in its care must take full responsibility for their welfare.
To him this means caring for the whole child, providing basic nutrition, and a spiritual attitude that lends freedom for the development of the mind.
Improved farming methods
The concept of good nutrition really began with the garden.
The school has always maintained a farm to supply the needs of the school.
In a climate hostile to agriculture, Mr. Clark has had to keep alert to the most productive farm techniques.
Where a growing season may, with luck, allow 60 days without frost, and where the soil is poor, sandy, quick-drying and subject to erosion, many farmers fail.
Throughout the Adirondack region abandoned farm homes and wild orchards bear ghostly testimony that their owners met defeat.
Mr. Clark found that orthodox procedures of deep plowing, use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, plus the application of conservation principles of rotation and contouring, did not prevent sheet erosion in the potato fields and depreciation of the soil.
To give up these notions required a revolution in thought, Mr. Clark said in reminiscing about the abrupt changes in ideas he experienced when he began reading Organic Gardening And Modern Nutrition in a search for help with his problems.
Louis Bromfield's writings excited me as a conservationist.
By 1952 he was convinced he would no longer spray.
He locked his equipment in a cabinet where it still remains.
After reading Plowman's Folly by Edward H. Faulkner, he stopped plowing.
The basis for compost materials already existed on the school farm with a stable of animals for the riding program, poultry for eggs, pigs to eat garbage, a beef herd and wastes of all kinds.
Separate pails were kept in the kitchen for coffee grounds and egg shells.
All these materials and supplementary manure and other fertilizers from neighboring dairy and poultry farms made over 40 tons of finished compost a year.
It was applied with a compost shredder made from a converted manure spreader.
Years of patient application of compost and leaf mulching has changed the structure of the soil and its water-holding capacity.
Soon after the method changed, visitors began asking how he managed to irrigate his soil to keep it looking moist, when in reality, it was the soil treatment alone that accomplished this.
To demonstrate the soil of his vegetable gardens as it is today, Mr. Clark stooped to scoop up a handful of rich dark earth.
Sniffing its sweet smell and letting it fall to show its good crumbly consistency, he pointed to the nearby driveway and said, This soil used to be like that hard packed road over there.
People and soils respond slowly, says Walter Clark, but the time has now come when the gardens produce delicious long-keeping vegetables due to this enrichment program.
No chemical fertilizers and poisonous insecticides and fungicides are used.
The garden supplies enough carrots, turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, beets, cabbage and squash to store for winter meals in the root cellar.
The carrots sometimes don't make it through the winter;
the cabbage and squash keep until March or April.
There is never enough corn, peas or strawberries.
Mr. Clark still has to use rotenone with potatoes grown on the least fertile fields, but he has watched the insect damage decrease steadily and hopes that continued use of compost and leaf mulch will allow him to do without it in the future.
A new project planned is the use of Bio-Dynamic Starter.
New ideas for improving nutrition came with the study of soil treatment.
After the soil, the kitchen, says Mr. Clark.
The first major change was that of providing wholewheat bread instead of white bread.
Adults take a long time to convince and you are thwarted if you try to push.
At first the kitchen help was tolerant, but ordered their own supply of white bread for themselves.
You can't make French toast with whole-wheat bread, was an early complaint.
Of course they learned in time that they not only could use whole-wheat bread, but the children liked it better.
Homemade bread
Mrs. Clark, as house manager, planned the menus and cared for the ordering.
Then Miss Lillian Colman came from Vermont to be kitchen manager.
Today whole grains are freshly ground every day and baked into bread.
Mr. Clark's studies taught him that the only way to conserve the vitamins in the whole grain was prompt use of the flour.
Once the grains are ground, vitamin E begins to deteriorate immediately and half of it is lost by oxidation and exposure to the air within one week.
A mill stands in a room off the kitchen.
Surrounding it are metal cans of grains ordered from organic farms in the state.
Miss Colman pours measures of whole wheat, oats, and soy beans and turns on the motor.
She goes on about her work and listens for the completion of the grinding.
The bread baked from this mixture is light in color and fragrant in aroma.
It is well liked by the children and faculty.
There is one problem with the bread.
Lillian's bread is so good and everything tastes so much better here that it is hard not to eat too much, said the secretary ruefully eyeing her extra pounds.
Hot, freshly-ground cereal
The school has not used cold prepared cereals for years, though at one time that was all they ever served.
When the chance came, they first eliminated cold cereal once a week, then gradually converted to hot fresh-ground cereal every day.
They serve cracked wheat, oats or cornmeal.
Occasionally, the children find steamed, whole-wheat grains for cereal which they call buckshot.
At the beginning of the school year, the new students don't eat the cereal right away, but within a short time they are eating it voraciously.
When they leave for vacations they miss the hot cereal.
The school has received letters from parents asking, What happened to Johnny?
He never used to like any hot cereal, now that's the only kind he wants.
Where can we get this cereal he likes so much?
Body-building foods
Salads are served at least once a day.
Vegetables are served liberally.
Most come from the root cellar or from the freezer.
Home-made sauerkraut is served once a week.
Sprouted grains and seeds are used in salads and dishes such as chop suey.
Sometimes sprouted wheat is added to bread and causes the children to remark, Lillian, did you put nuts in the bread today?
Milk appears twice a day.
The school raises enough poultry, pigs, and beef cattle for most of their needs.
Lots of cheese made from June grass milk is served.
Hens are kept on the range and roosters are kept with them for their fertility.
Organ meats such as beef and chicken liver, tongue and heart are planned once a week.
Also, salt water fish is on the table once a week.
For deserts, puddings and pies are each served once a week.
Most other desserts are fruit in some form, fresh fruits once daily at least, sometimes at snack time.
Dried fruits are purchased from sources where they are neither sulphured nor sprayed.
Apples come from a farm in Vermont where they are not sprayed.
Oranges and grapefruit are shipped from Florida weekly from an organic farm.
Finding sources for these high quality foods is a problem.
Sometimes the solution comes in unexpected ways.
Following a talk by Mr. Clark at the New York State Natural Food Associates Convention, a man from the audience offered to ship his unsprayed apples to the school from Vermont.
Wheat-germ, brewer's yeast and ground kelp are used in bread and in dishes such as spaghetti sauce, meat loaves.
Miss Colman hopes to find suitable shakers so that kelp can be available at the tables.
Raw wheat-germ is available on the breakfast table for the children to help themselves.
Very few fried foods are used and the use of salt and pepper is discouraged.
Drinking with meals is also discouraged;
pitchers of water merely appear on the tables.
Nothing is peeled.
The source is known so there is no necessity to remove insecticide residues.
The cooking conserves a maximum of the vitamin C content of vegetables by methods which use very little water and cook in the shortest time possible.
Wholesome snacks, no candy
Since Mr. Clark believes firmly that the chewing of hard foods helps develop healthy gums and teeth, raw vegetables and raw whole-wheat grains are handed out with fresh fruit and whole-wheat cookies at snack time in the afternoons.
To solve the problem of the wheat grains spilling on the floor and getting underfoot, a ball of maple syrup boiled to candy consistency was invented to hold the grains.
On their frequent hikes into the nearby mountains, the children carry whole grains to munch along the trail.
They learn to like these so well that it isn't surprising to hear that one boy tried the oats he was feeding his horse at chore time.
They tasted good to him, so he brought some to breakfast to eat in his cereal bowl with milk and honey.
Maple syrup is made by the children in the woods on the school grounds.
This and raw sugar replace ordinary refined sugar on the tables and very little sugar is used in cooking.
Candy is not allowed.
Parents are asked in the bulletin to send packages of treats consisting of fruit and nuts, but no candy.
Nourishing meals
Mr. Clark believes in a good full breakfast of fruit, hot cereal, milk, honey, whole-wheat toast with real butter and eggs.
The heavy meal comes in the middle of the day.
Soup is often the important dish at supper.
Homemade of meat, bones and vegetables, it is rich in dissolved minerals and vitamins.
The school finds that the children are satisfied with smaller amounts of food since all of it is high in quality.
The cost to feed one person is just under one dollar a day.
Outdoor exercises
Even before he saw the necessity of growing better food and planning good nutrition, Mr. Clark felt the school had a good health program.
Rugged outdoor exercise for an hour and a half every day in all kinds of weather was the rule.
A vigorous program existed in skiing, skating sports and overnight hiking.
Healthier children
Since the change to better nutrition, he feels he can report on improvements in health, though he considers the following statements observations and not scientific proof.
Visitors to the school ask what shampoo they use on the children's hair to bring out the sheen.
The ruddy complexion of the faces also brings comment.
Buffeted by swirling winds, the little green biplane struggled northward between the mountains beyond Northfield Gulf.
Wires whined as a cold November blast rocked the silver wings, but the engine roar was reassuring to the pilot bundled in the open cockpit.
He peered ahead and grinned as the railroad tracks came into view again below.
Good old iron compass!
He thought.
A plume of smoke rose from a Central Vermont locomotive which idled behind a string of gravel cars, and little figures that were workmen labored to set the ruptured roadbed to rights.
The girders of a shattered Dog River bridge lay strewn for half a mile downstream.
Vermont's main railroad line was prostrate.
And in the dark days after the Great Flood of 1927--the worst natural disaster in the state's history--the little plane was its sole replacement in carrying the United States mails.
Clerks and postmasters shoveled muck out of their offices--those who still had offices--and wondered how to move the mail.
The state's railroad system counted miles of broken bridges and missing rights-of-way: it would obviously remain out of commission for weeks.
And once medicine, food, clothing and shelter had been provided for the flood's victims, communications and the mail were the next top problems.
From Burlington, outgoing mail could be ferried across Lake Champlain to the railroad at Port Kent, N. Y..
But what came in was piling up.
The nearest undisrupted end of track from Boston was at Concord, N. H..
When Governor Al Smith offered New York National Guard planes to fly the mail in and out of the state, it seemed a likely temporary solution, easing Burlington's bottleneck and that at Montpelier too.
The question was Where to land?
There was no such thing as an airport in Vermont.
Burlington aviator John J. Burns suggested the parade ground southwest of Fort Ethan Allen, and soon a dozen hastily-summoned National Guard pilots were bringing their wide-winged Jenny and DeHaviland two-seaters to rest on the frozen sod of the military base.
The only available field that could be used near flood-ravaged Montpelier was on the Towne farm off upper Main Street, a narrow hillside where takeoffs and landings could be safely made only under light wind conditions.
Over in Barre the streets had been deep in swirling water, and bridges were crumpled and gone.
Anticipating delivery of medicines and yeast by plane, Granite City citizens formed an airfield committee and with the aid of quarrymen and the 172nd Infantry, Vermont National Guard, laid out runways on Wilson flat, high on Millstone Hill.
The Barre Aviation Field was set to receive its first aircraft the Sunday following the flood.
Though the makeshift airports were ready, the York State Guard flyers proved unable to keep any kind of mail schedule.
They had courage but their meager training consisted of weekend hops in good weather, in and out of established airports, And the increasingly cold weather soon raised hob with the water cooled engines of their World War 1, planes.
It seemed like a good time for officials to use a recently-passed law empowering the post office department to contract for the transport of first class mail by air.
They had to act fast, for letters were clogging the terminals.
Down in Concord, New Hampshire, was a flier in the right place at the right time: Robert S. Fogg, a native New Englander, had been a World War 1, flying instructor, barnstormer, and one of the original planners of the Concord Airport.
Tall, wiry, dark-haired Bob Fogg had already racked up one historical first in air mail history.
Piloting a Curtiss Navy MF flying boat off Lake Winnipesaukee in 1925, he had inaugurated the original Rural Delivery air service in America.
During the excitement following Lindbergh's flight to Paris earlier in 1927, dare devil aviators overnight became legendary heroes.
In Concord, Bob Fogg was the most prominent New Hampshire boy with wings.
Public-spirited backers staked him to a brand-new airplane, aimed at putting their city and state on the flying map.
The ship was a Waco biplane, one of the first two of its type to be fitted with the air cooled, 225/hp Wright radial engine known as the Whirlwind.
A trim green and silver-painted craft only 22-1/2 feet long, the Waco was entered to compete in the On-to-Spokane Air Derby of 1927.
As a matter of fact, Fogg and his plane didn't get beyond Pennsylvania in the race--an engine oil leak forced him down--but the flying service and school he started subsequently were first steps in paying off his wry-faced backers.
So with all this experience, Bob Fogg was a natural choice to receive the first Emergency Air Mail Star Route contract.
His work began just six days after the flood.
By airline from Concord to Burlington is a distance of about 150 miles, counting a slight deviation for the stop at either Barre or Montpelier.
The first few days Bob Fogg set his plane down on Towne field back of the State House when the wind was right, and used Wilson flat above Barre when it wasn't.
Between the unsafe Towne field and the long roundabout back road haul that was necessary to gain access to Wilson flat, arrangements at the state capital were far from satisfactory.
Each time in, the unhappy pilot, pushing his luck, begged the postal officials that met him to find a safer landing place, preferably on the flat-topped hills across the Winooski River.
But Fogg, they countered, we can't get over there.
And besides you seem to make it all right here.
It took a tragedy to bring things to a head.
After a week of precarious uphill landings and downwind takeoffs, Fogg one day looked down at the shattered yellow wreckage of an Army plane strewn across snow-covered Towne field.
Sent to Montpelier by Secretary Herbert Hoover, Red Cross Aide Reuben Sleight had been killed, and his pilot, Lt. Franklin Wolfe, badly injured.
With the field a blur of white the unfortunate pilot had simply flown into the hillside.
Faced with this situation, Postmaster Charles F. McKenna of Montpelier went with Fogg on a Burlington trip, and together they scouted the terrain on the heights of Berlin.
A long flat known as the St. John field seemed to answer their purpose, and since the Winooski bridges were at last passable, they decided to use it.
With a wary eye on the farmer's bull, Fred Somers of Montpelier and Mr. St. John marked the field with a red table cloth.
As a wind direction indicator, they tied a cotton rag to a sapling.
With these aids, and a pair of skiis substituting for wheels on the Waco, Bob Fogg made the first landing on what is now part of the Barre-Montpelier Airport on November 21, 1927.
Each trip saw the front cockpit filled higher with mail pouches.
During the second week of operations, Fogg received a telegram from the Post Office Department, asking him to put on two airplanes and make two flights daily, plus one Sunday trip.
Since Fogg's was a one-man, one-plane flying service, this meant that he would have to do both trips, flying alone 600 miles a day, under sub-freezing temperature conditions.
Over the weeks, America's first Star Route Air Mail settled into a routine pattern despite the vagaries of weather and the lack of ground facilities and aids to navigation.
Each morning at five Fogg crawled out of bed to bundle into flying togs over the furnace register of his home.
Always troubled by poor circulation in his feet, he experimented with various combinations of socks and shoes before finally adopting old-style felt farmer's boots with his sheepskin flying boots pulled over them.
A sheep-lined leather flying suit, plus helmet, goggles and mittens completed his attire for the rigors of the open cockpit.
The airman's stock answer to Weren't you cold?
Became Yes, the first half hour is tough, but by then I'm so numb I don't notice it!
As daylight began to show through the frosty windows, Fogg would place a call to William A. Shaw at the U. S. Weather Station at Northfield, Vermont, for temperature and wind-velocity readings.
Shaw could also give the flyer a pretty good idea of area visibility by a visual check of the mountains to be seen from his station.
Ceilings were judged by comparison with known mountain heights and cloud positions.
Later on in the day Fogg could get a better weather picture from the Burlington Weather Bureau supervised by Frank E. Hartwell.
Out at the airport each morning, Fogg's skilled mechanic Caleb Marston would have the Waco warmed up and running in the drafty hangar.
(He'd get the engine oil flowing with an electric heater under a big canvas cover.
) Wishing to show that aviation was dependable and here to stay, Bob Fogg always made a point of taking off each morning on the dot of seven, disregarding rain, snow and sleet in true postal tradition.
Concord learned to set its clocks by the rackety bark of the Whirlwind's exhaust overhead.
Sometimes the pilot had to turn back if fully blocked by fog, but 85% of his trips were completed.
Plane radios were not yet available, and once in the air, Fogg flew his ship by compass, a good memory for landmarks as seen from above, and a capacity for dead reckoning and quick computation.
Often, threading through the overcast, he was forced to fly close to the ground by a low ceiling, skimming above the Winooski or the White River along the line of the broken railroad.
When driving rain or mist socked in one valley, Fogg would chandelle up and over to reverse course and try another one, ranging from the Ottauquechee up to Danville in search of safe passage through the mountain passes.
The dependable Wright engine was never stopped on these trips.
It ticked over smoothly, idling while Fogg exchanged mails with the armed messenger from Burlington at Fort Ethan Allen, and one from Montpelier and Barre at the St. John field.
Sometimes, on a return trip, the aviator would go upstairs high over the clouds.
There he'd take a compass reading, figure his air speed, and deduce that in a certain number of minutes he'd be over the broad meadows of the Merrimack Valley where it would be safe to let down through the overcast and see the ground before it hit him.
Bob Fogg didn't have today's advantages of Instrument Flight and Ground Control Approach systems.
At the end of the calculated time he'd nose the Waco down through the cloud bank and hope to break through where some feature of the winter landscape would be recognizable.
Usually back in Concord by noon, there was just time to get partially thawed out, refuel, and grab a bit of Mrs. Fogg's hot broth before starting the second trip.
Day after day Fogg shuttled back and forth on his one-man air mail route, until the farmers in their snowy barnyards and the road repairmen came to recognize the stubby plane as their link with the rest of the country.
The flyer had his share of near-misses.
At Fort Ethan Allen the ever-present wind off Lake Champlain could readily flip a puny man-made thing like an airplane if the pilot miscalculated.
Once the soldiers from the barracks had to hold the ship from blowing away while Fogg revved the engine and got the tail up.
At a nod of his head they let go, turning to cup their ears against the icy slipstream.
Tracks in the snow showed the plane was airborne in less than a hundred feet.
One afternoon during a cold, powdery snowstorm, Fogg took off for Concord from the St. John field.
Are you retiring now?
If so, are you saying, Where did the last few years go?
How did I get to be sixty-five so fast?
What do I do now?
Yes, retirement seems to creep upon you suddenly.
Somehow we old-timers never figured we would ever retire.
We always thought we would die with our boots on.
Out of the blue comes talk of pension plans.
Compulsory retirement at sixty-five looms on our horizon.
Still, it seems in the far future.
Suddenly, one day, up it pops!
Sixty-five years and you've had it!
So, now what?
Oh sure!
You've thought about it before in a hazy sort of way.
But!
It never seemed real;
never seemed as if it could happen to you;
only to the other fellow.
Now!
Here it is!
How am I going to live?
What am I going to do?
Where do I go from here?
A great many retired people are the so-called white collar workers.
Are you one of these?
If so, you are of the old school.
You are conscientious, hard working, honest, accurate, a good penman, and a stickler for a job well done, with no loose ends.
Everything must balance to the last penny.
Also you can spell, without consulting a dictionary for every other word.
You never are late for work and seldom absent.
Actually, you can take no special credit for this.
It is the way you were taught and your way of life.
All this is standard equipment for a man of your day;
your stock in trade;
your livelihood.
However, the last few years of your life, things seem to be changing.
Your way doesn't seem to be so darned important any more.
You realize you are getting in the old fogy class.
To put it bluntly, you are getting out-moded.
What's happened?
The answer is a new era.
Now, looming on the horizon are such things as estimated totals, calculated risks and I.B.M. machines.
The Planning Dept. comes into existence.
All sorts of plans come to life.
This is followed by a boom in conferences.
Yes sir!
Conferences become very popular.
When a plan burst its seams, hasty conferences supply the necessary patch, and life goes merrily on.
That's called progress!
The new way of life!
Let's face it!
You had your day and it was a good day.
Let this generation have theirs.
Time marches on!
Well, to get back to the problem of retirement.
Every retiring person has a different situation facing him.
Some have plenty of money--some have very little money.
Some are blest with an abundance of good health--some are in poor health and many are invalids.
Some have lovely homes--some live in small apartments.
Some have beautiful gardens--some not even a blade of grass.
Some have serenity of mind, the ability to accept what they have, and make the most of it (a wonderful gift to have, believe me)--some see only darkness, the bitter side of everything.
Well, whatever you have, that's it!
You've got to learn to live with it.
Now!
The question is How are you going to live with it?
You can sit back and moan and bewail your lot.
Yes!
You can do this.
But, if you do, your life will be just one thing--unhappiness--complete and unabridged.
It seems to me, the first thing you've got to do, to be happy, is to face up to your problems, no matter what they may be.
Make up your mind to pool your resources and get the most out of your remaining years of life.
One thing, I am sure of, you must get an interest in life.
You've got to do something.
Many of you will say, Well, what can I do?
Believe me!
There are many, many things to do.
Find out what you like to do most and really give it a whirl.
If you can't think of a thing to do, try something--anything.
Maybe you will surprise yourself.
True!
We are not all great artists.
I, frankly, can't draw a straight line.
Maybe you are not that gifted either, but how about puttering around with the old paints?
You may amaze yourself and acquire a real knack for it.
Anyway, I'll bet you have a lot of fun.
Do you like to sew?
Does making your own clothes or even doll clothes, interest you?
Do you love to run up a hem, sew on buttons, make neat buttonholes?
If you do, go to it.
There is always a market for this line of work.
Some women can sit and sew, crochet, tat or knit by the hour, and look calm and relaxed and turn out beautiful work.
Where sewing is concerned, I'm a total loss.
When you see a needle in my hands you will know the family buttons have fallen off and I have to sew them back on, or get out the safety pins.
Then again, there's always that lovely old pastime of hooking or braiding rugs.
Not for me, but perhaps just the thing for you.
Well!
How's about mosaic tile, ceramics or similar arts and crafts?
Some people love to crack tile and it's amazing what beautiful designs they come up with as a result of their cracking good time.
How about the art of cooking?
Do you yearn to make cakes and pies, or special cookies and candies?
There is always an open market for this sort of delicacy, in spite of low calorie diets, cottage cheese and hands-off-all-sweets to the contrary.
Some people can carve most anything out of a piece of wood.
Some make beautiful chairs, cabinets, chests, doll houses, etc..
Perhaps you couldn't do that but have you ever tried to see what you could do with a hunk of wood?
Outside of cutting your fingers, maybe you would come up with nothing at all, but then again, you might turn out some dandy little gadgets.
Some women get a real thrill out of housework.
They love to dust, scrub, polish, wax floors, move the furniture around from place to place, take down the curtains, put up new ones and have themselves a real ball.
Maybe that's your forte.
It certainly isn't mine.
I can look at furniture in one spot year in and year out and really feel for sure that's where it belongs.
Perhaps you would like to become a writer.
This gives you a wide and varied choice.
Will it be short stories, fiction, nonfiction, biography, poetry, children's stories, or even a book if you are really ambitious?
Ever since I was a child, I have always had a yen to try my hand at writing.
If you do decide to write, you will soon become acquainted with rejection slips and dejection.
Don't be discouraged!
This is just being a normal writer.
Just let the rejection slips fall where they may, and keep on plugging, and finally you will make the grade.
Few new writers have their first story accepted, so they tell me.
But, it could happen, and it may happen to you.
Then there's always hobbies, collecting stamps, coins, timetables, salt and pepper shakers, elephants, dogs, dolls, shells, or shall we just say collecting anything your heart desires?
I can hear some of you folks protesting.
You say, But it costs a lot of money to have a hobby.
I haven't got that kind of money.
True!
It does cost a lot of money for most hobbies but there are hobbies that are for free.
How about a rock collection, or a collection of leaves from different trees or shrubs and in different colors?
Then, take flowers.
They are many and varied.
Also, there's scrap books, collecting newspaper pictures and clippings, or any items of interest to you.
It's getting interested in something that counts.
As for me, I am holding in reserve two huge puzzles (I love puzzles) to put together when time hangs heavy on my hands.
So far, the covers have never been off the boxes.
I just don't have time to do half the things I want to do now.
So in closing, fellow retired members, I advise you to make the most of each day, enjoy each one to the n'th degree.
Travel, if you can.
Keep occupied to the point you are not bored with life and you will truly find these final days and years of your lives to be sunshine sweet.
Good Luck!
To one and all--Good Days ahead!
An important criterion of maturity is creativity.
The mature person is creative.
What does it mean to be creative, a term we hear with increasing frequency these days?
When we turn to Noah Webster we find him helpful as usual.
To be creative is to have the ability to cause to exist--to produce where nothing was before--to bring forth an original production of human intelligence or power.
We are creative, it seems, when we produce something which has not previously existed.
Thus creativity may run all the way from making a cake, building a chicken coop, or producing a book, to founding a business, creating a League of Nations or, developing a mature character.
All living creatures from the lowest form of insect or animal life evidence the power of creativity, if it is only to reproduce a form like their own.
While man shares this procreative function with all his predecessors in the evolutionary process, he is the only animal with a true non-instinctive and conscious creative ability.
An animal, bird or insect creates either a burrow, or nest or hive in unending sameness according to specie.
Man's great superiority over these evolutionary forbears is in the development of his imagination.
This gives him the power to form in his mind new image combinations of old memories, ideas and experiences and to project them outside of himself into his environment in new and ever-changing forms.
It has been truly said that anything man can imagine he can produce or create by projecting this inner image into its counterpart in the objective world.
In our own time we have seen the most fantastic imagery of a Jules Verne come into actuality.
The vision of a Lord Tennyson expressed in a poem 100 years ago took visible form over London in the air blitzes of 1941.
In fact all of our civilized world is the resultant of man's projection of his imagination over the past 60 centuries or more.
It is in this one aspect, at least, that man seems to be made in the image of his Creator.
Not only can man project his imagination out into his environment in concrete forms, but even more importantly, he can turn it inward to help create new and better forms of himself.
We recognize that young people through imaginative mind and body training can become athletes, acrobats, dancers, musicians and artists, developing many potentialities.
We know that actors can learn to portray a wide variety of character roles.
By this same combination of the will and the imagination, each one of us can learn to portray permanently the kind of character we would like to be.
We must realize with Prof. Charles Morris in his The Open Self that Man is the being that can continually remake himself, the artisan that is himself the material for his own creation.
So far in history man has been too greatly over-occupied with projecting things into his environment rather than first creating the sort of person who can make the highest use of the things he has created.
Is not the present world crisis a race between things we have created which can now destroy us and between populations of sufficient wisdom and character to forestall the tragedy.
Is it not the obligation of us older citizens to lend our weight to being creative on the character side and to hasten our own maturing process?
Some recent writings assume that the ignorant young couples are a thing of the remote, Victorian past;
that nowadays all honeymooners are thoroughly familiar with the best sex-manuals and know enough from talk with friends and personal experimentation to take all the anxiety and hazards out of the situation.
Perhaps--but extensive discussions with contemporary practitioners, family doctors and gynecologists indicate that this is still an area of enormous ignorance.
Joking and talking may be freer and easier, but the important factual information is still lacking for far too many newly-married men and women.
Various factors in the setting can still be of great advantage in making the first intercourse a good rather than a bad memory for one or both.
Privacy must be highly assured both in time and place.
That is, locking the room or stateroom door gives privacy of location, but it is equally important to be sure there is time enough for an utterly unhurried fulfillment.
The consummation should come at the next stopping place when they have a long private time (day or night) for that purpose.
First intercourse for the bride brings with it the various problems connected with virginity and the hymen.
One thing should be clear to both husband and wife--neither pain nor profuse bleeding has to occur when the hymen is ruptured during the first sex act.
Ignorance on this point has caused a great deal of needless anxiety, misunderstanding and suspicion.
The hymen is, in essence, a fragile membrane that more or less completely covers the entrance to the vagina in most female human beings who have not had sex relations.
(Hymen, in fact, is the Greek word for membrane.
Often it is thin and fragile and gives way readily to the male organ at the first attempt at intercourse.
As might be expected, girls in this situation bleed very little and perhaps not at all in the process of losing their virginity.
It is also important to realize that many girls are born without a hymen or at most only a tiny trace of one;
so that the absence of the hymen is by no means positive proof that a girl has had sex relations.
But there is a basis in fact for the exaggerations of the folk-lore beliefs.
Some hymens are so strongly developed that they cannot be torn without considerable pain to the girl and marked loss of blood.
More rarely, the hymen is so sturdy that it does not yield to penetration.
Extreme cases are on record in which the doctor has had to use instruments to cut through the hymen to permit marital relations to be consummated.
These cases, for all their rarity, are so dramatic that friends and relations repeat the story until the general population may get an entirely false notion of how often the hymen is a serious problem to newly-weds.
In recent times, when sexual matters began to be discussed more scientifically and more openly, the emotional aspects of virginity received considerable attention.
Obviously, the bridal pair has many adjustments to make to their new situation.
Is it necessary to add to the other tensions the hazard of making the loving husband the one who brought pain to his bride?
Gynecologists and marriage manuals began to advise that the bride should consult a physician before marriage.
If he foresaw any problem because of the quality of the hymen, it was recommended that simple procedures be undertaken at once to incise the hymen or, preferably, to dilate it.
As a natural outgrowth of this approach it was often suggested that the doctor should complete the preparation for painless intercourse by dilating the vagina.
This recommendation was based on the fact that the hymen was not the only barrier to smooth consummation of the sex act.
The vagina is an organ capable of remarkable contraction and dilation.
This is obvious when it is remembered that, during childbirth, the vagina must dilate enough to permit the passage of the baby.
The intricate system of muscles that manage the contraction and dilatation of the vagina are partly under voluntary control.
But an instinctive reflex may work against the conscious intention of the woman.
That is, when first penetration takes place, the pressure and pain signals may involuntarily cause all the vaginal muscles to contract in an effort to bar the intrusion and prevent further pain.
The advantages of dilatation by the physician are both physical and psychological.
Since it is a purely professional situation, none of the pain is associated with love-making or the beloved.
By using instruments of gradually increasing size, the vagina is gently, and with minimum pain at each stage, taught to yield to an object of the appropriate shape.
In this process the vaginal muscles come under better conscious control by the girl.
She learns how to relax them to accept--instead of contracting them to repel--the entering object.
Apart from the standard problem of controlling the vaginal muscles, other serious barriers may exist that need special gynecological treatment.
It is far better to have such conditions treated in advance than to have them show up on the honeymoon where they can create a really serious situation.
When no medical problems exist, the newly married couple generally prefer to cope with the adjustments of their new relationship by themselves.
Special information and guidance about the possible difficulties are still of great value.
Folk-lore, superstition and remembered passages from erotic literature can create physical and emotional problems if blindly taken as scientific facts and useful hints.
The importance of loving tenderness is obvious.
The long, unhurried approach and the deliberate prolongation of fore-play work on several levels.
Under the excitement of caresses and sexual stimulation the vagina relaxes and dilates and the local moisture greatly increases, providing an excellent lubricant to help achieve an easier penetration.
Extensive observations by physicians during vaginal examinations have established the fact that a single finger inserted along the anterior wall (the top line of the vagina as the woman lies on her back) may cause a great deal of distress in a virgin.
But during the same examination, two fingers may be inserted along the posterior wall (the bottom of the vagina in the same position) without any pain;
and in fact without any difficulty if the pressure is kept downward at all times.
These regional differences of sensitivity to pain may be of crucial significance during the earliest intercourse.
The husband and wife should start with this anatomical information clearly in mind.
They may then adjust their positions and movements to avoid too much pressure on the urethra and the anterior wall of the vagina;
at least until repeated intercourse has dilated it and pain is no longer a possible threat against the full pleasure of love-making.
In fact, the technical procedure in medical examinations may be wisely adapted to his romantic purposes by the husband during the honeymoon.
Locker-room talk often stresses the idea that a man is doing the girl a favor if he is forceful and ruthless during the first penetration.
The false reasoning is that a gradual advance prolongs the pain while a swift powerful act gets it over with and leaves the girl pleased with his virility and grateful for his decisiveness in settling the problem once and for all.
Such talk is seriously in error.
Ruthlessness at this time can be a very severe shock to the bride, both physically and psychologically.
The insistent, forceful penetration may tear and inflame the vaginal walls as well as do excessive damage to the hymen.
Serious attention must also be given to the husband's problems in the honeymoon situation.
The necessity for keeping alert to his bride's hazards can act as an interference with the man's spontaneous desire.
The emotional stimulation may be so great that he may experience a premature climax.
This is a very common experience and should in no way discourage or dishearten either husband or wife.
Or the frequent need to check and discipline himself to the wisest pace of the consummation can put him off stride and make it impossible for him to be continuously ready for penetration over a long period.
The signals to proceed may therefore come when he is momentarily not able to take advantage of them.
The best course is to recover his physical excitement by a change of pace that makes him ardent again.
This may require imagination and reminding himself that now he can be demanding and self-centered.
He can take security from the fact that the progress he has made by his gentle approach will not be lost.
Now while he uses talk, caresses or requires caresses from her, his bride will sympathetically understand the situation and eagerly help him restore his physical situation so they can have the consummation they both so eagerly desire.
A final word.
The accumulated information on this point shows that first intercourse, even when it is achieved with minimum pain or difficulty, is seldom an overwhelming sexual experience to a woman.
Too many new things are happening for it to be a complete erotic fulfillment.
Only under rare circumstances would a bride experience an orgasm during her first intercourse.
Both man and wife should be aware of the fact that a lack of climax, and even the absence of the anticipated keen pleasure are not a sign that the wife may be cold or frigid.
If the early approaches are wise, understanding and patient, the satisfactions of marital fulfillment will probably be discovered before the marriage is much older.
Writing in a large volume on the nude in painting and sculptures, titled The Nude: A Study In Ideal Form, Kenneth Clark declares: The human body, as a nucleus, is rich in associations.
It is ourselves and arouses memories of all the things we wish to do with ourselves.
Perhaps this is a clue to the amazing variety and power of reactions, attitudes, and emotions precipitated by the nude form.
The wide divergence of reactions is clearly illustrated in the Kinsey studies in human sexuality.
Differences were related to social, economic, and educational backgrounds.
Whereas persons of eighth grade education or less were more apt to avoid or be shocked by nudity, those educated beyond the eighth grade increasingly welcomed and approved nudity in sexual relations.
Attempts at censorship always involve and reveal such complex and multiple individual reactions.
The indignant crusader sees the nude or semi-nude human form as lewd and pornographic, a threat and danger to all the young, or good, or religious, or moral persons.
The equally ardent proponent of freedom from any kind of censorship may find the nude human form the natural, honest, free expression of man's spirit and the epitome of beauty and inspiration.
One is always a little surprised to bump into such individual distinctions when it is unexpected.
I still recall the mild shock I experienced in reading material of an enthusiastic advocate of the clean, healthful, free way of natural life in nudism, who seemed to brave much misunderstanding and persecution in fine spirit.
In tradition and in poetry, the marriage bed is a place of unity and harmony.
The partners each bring to it unselfish love, and each takes away an equal share of pleasure and joy.
At its most ecstatic moments, husband and wife are elevated far above worldly cares.
Everything else is closed away.
This is the ideal.
But marriage experts say that such mutual contribution and mutual joy are seldom achieved.
Instead one partner or the other dominates the sexual relationship.
In the past, it has been the husband who has been dominant and the wife passive.
But today there are signs that these roles are being reversed.
In a growing number of American homes, marriage counselors report, the wife is taking a commanding role in sexual relationships.
It is she who decides the time, the place, the surroundings, and the frequency of the sexual act.
It is she who says aye or nay to the intimate questions of sexual technique and mechanics--not the husband.
The whole act is tailored to her pleasure, and not to theirs.
Beyond a certain point, of course, no woman can be dominant--nature has seen to that.
But there is little doubt that in many marriages the wife is boss of the marital bed.
Of course, there remain many old-fashioned marriages in which the husband maintains his supremacy.
Yet even in these marriages, psychologists say, wives are asserting themselves more strongly.
The meekest, most submissive wife of today is a tiger by her mother's or grandmother's standards.
To many experts, this trend was inevitable.
They consider it simply a sign of our times.
Our society has emancipated the woman, giving her new independence and new authority.
It is only natural that she assert herself in the sexual role.
The sexual relationship does not exist in a vacuum, declares Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone, medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and author of the recent book, Release From Sexual Tensions.
It reflects what is going on in other areas of the marriage and in society itself.
A world in which wives have taken a more active role is likely to produce sexual relationships in which wives are more self-assertive, too.
Yet many psychologists and marriage counselors agree that domination of the sex relationship by one partner or the other can be unhealthy and even dangerous.
It can, in fact, wreck a marriage.
When a husband is sexually selfish and heedless of his wife's desires, she is cheated of the fulfillment and pleasure nature intended for her.
And she begins to regard him as savage, bestial and unworthy.
On the other hand, wifely supremacy demeans the husband, saps his self-respect, and robs him of his masculinity.
He is a target of ridicule to his wife, and often--since private affairs rarely remain private--to the outside world as well.
A marriage can survive almost any kind of stress except an open and direct challenge to the husband's maleness, declares Dr. Calderone.
This opinion is supported by one of the nation's leading psychiatrists, Dr. Maurice E. Linden, director of the Mental Health Division of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
When the roles of husband and wife are reversed, so that the wife becomes leader and the husband follower, Dr. Linden says, the effects on their whole relationship, sexual and otherwise, can be disastrous.
In one extreme case, cited by a Pittsburgh psychologist, an office worker's wife refused to have sexual relations with her husband unless he bought her the luxuries she demanded.
To win her favors, her husband first took an additional job, then desperately began to embezzle from his employer.
Caught at last, he was sentenced to prison.
While he was in custody his wife divorced him.
More typical is the case of a suburban Long Island housewife described by a marriage counselor.
This woman repeatedly complained she was too tired for marital relations.
To please her, her husband assumed some of the domestic chores.
Finally, he was cooking, washing dishes, bathing the children, and even ironing--and still his wife refused to have relations as often as he desired them.
One wife, described by a New York psychologist, so dominated her husband that she actually placed their sexual relationship on a schedule, writing it down right between the weekly PTA meetings and the Thursday-night neighborhood card parties.
Another put sex on a dollars-and-cents basis.
After every money argument, she rebuffed her husband's overtures until the matter was settled in her favor.
Experts say the partners in marriages like these can almost be typed.
The wife is likely to be young, sophisticated, smart as a whip--often a girl who has sacrificed a promising career for marriage.
She knows the power of the sex urge and how to use it to manipulate her husband.
The husband is usually a well-educated professional, preoccupied with his job--often an organization man whose motto for getting ahead is: Don't rock the boat.
Sometimes this leads to his becoming demandingly dominant in marriage.
Hemmed in on the job and unable to assert himself, he uses the sex act so he can be supreme in at least one area.
More often, though, he is so accustomed to submitting to authority on the job without argument that he lives by the same rule at home.
Some psychologists, in fact, suggest that career-bound husbands often are more to blame for topsy-turvy marriages than their wives.
The wife's attempt at control, these psychologists contend, is sometimes merely a pathetic effort to compel her husband to pay as much attention to her as he does to his job.
Naturally no woman can ever completely monopolize the sexual initiative.
Unless her husband also desires sex, the act cannot be consummated.
Generally, however, in such marriages as those cited, the husband is at his wife's mercy.
The pattern, says Dr. Morton Schillinger, psychologist at New York's Lincoln Institute for Psychotherapy, is for the husband to hover about anxiously and eagerly, virtually trembling in his hope that she will flash him the signal that tonight is the night.
No one seriously contends, of course, that the domineering wife is, sexually speaking, a new character in our world.
After all, the henpecked husband with his shrewish wife is a comic figure of long standing, in literature and on the stage, as Dr. Schillinger points out.
There is no evidence that these Milquetoasts became suddenly emboldened when they crossed the threshhold of the master bedroom.
Furthermore, Dr. Calderone says, a certain number of docile, retiring men always have been around.
They aren't frigid and they aren't homosexual;
they're just restrained in all of life.
They like to be dominated.
One such man once confided to Dr. Theodor Reik, New York psychiatrist, that he preferred to have his wife the sexual aggressor.
Asked why, he replied primly: Because that's no activity for a gentleman.
But such cases were, in the past, unusual.
Society here and abroad has been built around the dominating male--even the Bible appears to endorse the concept.
Family survival on our own Western frontier, for example, could quite literally depend on a man's strength and ability to bring home the bacon;
and the dependent wife seldom questioned his judgment about anything, including the marriage bed.
This carried over into the more urbanized late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the man ruled the roost in the best bull-roaring Life With Father manner.
In those days, a wife had mighty few rights in the domestic sphere and even fewer in the sexual sphere.
Grandma wasn't expected to like it, Dr. Marion Hilliard, the late Toronto gynecologist, once summed up the attitude of the '90s.
Wives of the period shamefacedly thought of themselves as used by their husbands--and, history indicates, they often quite literally were.
When was the turning point?
When did women begin to assert themselves sexually?
Some date it from woman suffrage, others from when women first began to challenge men in the marketplace, still others from the era of the emancipated flapper and bathtub gin.
Virtually everyone agrees, however, that the trend toward female sexual aggressiveness was tremendously accelerated with the postwar rush to the suburbs.
Left alone while her husband was miles away in the city, the modern wife assumed more and more duties normally reserved for the male.
Circumstances gave her almost undisputed sway over child-rearing, money-handling and home maintenance.
She found she could cope with all kinds of problems for which she was once considered too helpless.
She liked this taste of authority and independence, and, with darkness, was not likely to give it up.
Very few wives, says Dr. Calderone, who balance the checkbook, fix the car, choose where the family will live and deal with the tradesmen, are suddenly going to become submissive where sex is concerned.
A woman who dominates other family affairs will dominate the sexual relationship as well.
And an additional factor was helping to make women more sexually self-assertive--the comparatively recent discovery of the true depths of female desire and response.
Marriage manuals and women's magazine articles began to stress the importance of the female climax.
They began to describe in detail the woman's capacity for response.
In fact, the noted psychologist and sex researcher, Dr. Albert Ellis, has declared flatly that women are sexually superior to men.
According to Dr. Ellis, the average 20-year-old American woman is capable of far greater sexual arousal than her partner.
Not surprisingly, Dr. Ellis says, some recently enlightened wives are out to claim these capabilities.
Yet, paradoxically, according to Dr. Maurice Linden, many wives despise their husbands for not standing up to them.
An aggressive woman wants a man to demand, not knuckle under.
When the husband becomes passive in the face of his wife's aggressiveness, Dr. Linden says, the wife, in turn, finds him inadequate.
Often she fails to gain sexual satisfaction.
One such wife, Dr. Linden says, became disgusted with her weak husband and flurried through a series of extramarital affairs in the hope of finding a stronger man.
But her personality was such that each affair lasted only until that lover, too, had been conquered and reduced to passivity.
Then the wife bed-hopped to the next on the list.
In some cases, however, domination of the sex act by one partner can be temporary, triggered by a passing but urgent emotional need.
Thus a man who is butting a stone wall at the office may become unusually aggressive in bed--the one place he can still be champion.
If his on-the-job problems work out, he may return to his old pattern.
Sometimes a burst of aggressiveness will sweep over a man--or his wife--because he or she feels age creeping up.
On the other hand, a husband who always has been vigorous and assertive may suddenly become passive--asking, psychologists say, for reassurance that his wife still finds him desirable.
Or a wife may make sudden demands that she be courted, flattered or coaxed, simply because she needs her ego lifted.
In any case, Dr. Calderone remarks, such problems are a couple's own affair, and can't always be measured by a general yardstick.
As long as the couple is in agreement in their approach to sex, it makes little difference if one or the other dominates, Dr. Calderone declares.
The important point is that both be satisfied with the adjustment.
Other experts say, however, that if sexual domination by one or the other partner exists for longer than a brief period, it is likely to shake the marriage.
And just as domination today often begins with the wife, so the cure generally must lie with the husband.
To get a marriage back where it belongs, comments Dr. Schillinger of the Lincoln Institute, the husband must take some very basic steps.
He must begin, paradoxically, by becoming more selfish.
He must become more expressive of his own desires, more demanding and less'understanding'''.
Too many husbands, Dr. Schillinger continues, worry about how well they're doing, and fear that their success depends on some trick or technique of sexual play.
She gave herself a title, Lady Diana Harrington.
The New York D.A. gave her another, The Golden Girl of cafe society.
Houston police gave her a third, less flamboyant, title, prostitute.
And Houston police have the final say in the matter since she died there on September 20, 1960, Diane Harris Graham, 30, D.O.A., circumstances--unusual.
Early in her life she had discovered that where there were men, there was money, and with the two came luxury and liquor.
She was still in the play for pay business when she died, a top trollop who had given the world's oldest profession one of its rare flashes of glamour.
She never hid the fact that she liked to play.
Her neighbors in the expensive Houston apartment building told reporters that the ash-blonde beauty had talked at times about her past as the Golden Girl of the Mickey Jelke trial.
It was the trial of oleomargarine heir Minot (Mickey) Jelke for compulsory prostitution in New York that put the spotlight on the international play-girl.
(Jelke later served 21 months when he was found guilty of masterminding a ring of high-priced call girls.
Diane was needed as a material witness in the case and New York police searched three continents before they found her in their own back yard--in a swank hotel, of course.
She had been moving in cafe society as Lady Diana Harrington, a name that made some of the gossip columns.
It was when she was seized as a material witness that she got the designation she liked best.
Clad in mink and diamonds, she listened to Assistant District Attorney Anthony Liebler describe her to the arraigning judge:
This girl is the Golden Girl of cafe society.
In 1951 she was a prostitute in New York County.
In the spring and early summer of that year she met a wealthy foreign tycoon who took her to France, where she later met a very wealthy man and toured all Europe with him.
At Deauville she met an Egyptian by the name of Pulley Bey.
He was the official procurer for King Farouk, now in exile.
She was in Egypt during the revolution and had passport difficulty.
She lied in order to get it.
We have checked her in different parts of Europe and Egypt and finally back into this country.
She has been acting as a prostitute.
Our information is that she gave the proceeds of her acts to Jelke.
Diane sobbingly denied this to the court.
That's a lie.
I never gave that boy a cent.
I am not a prostitute, and I had only one very wealthy boy friend, she said.
During the course of the trial, Jelke backed up part of that statement.
Diane is the type of girl, Jelke said, who wouldn't get loving--even on her wedding night--unless you piled up all your money in the middle of the floor.
But she seemed to have underestimated the number of her boy friends.
She came to New York from Detroit as a teenager, but with a sponsor instead of a chaperone.
As she told it, He's a rich boy friend, an old guy about 60.
She was Mary Lou Brew then, wide-eyed, but not naive.
She had talked her boy friend into sending her to New York to take a screen test.
The screen test was never made--but Diane was.
She quickly moved into cafe society, possibly easing her conscience by talking constantly of her desire to be in show business.
She seemed so anxious to go on the stage that some of her friends in the cocktail circuit set up a practical joke.
An ex-fighter was introduced to her in a bar as Mr. Warfield, the famous producer.
The phony producer asked her if she would like to be in one of his shows.
I'd love to audition for you, she gushed.
The audition was held a few minutes later in somebody's apartment.
She thought she had great possibilities in the ballet and wanted to show the eminent producer how well she could dance.
After a few minutes he said, I can't use you if you dance like that.
I'd like to see you dance nude.
She hastily complied.
Diane loved to dance in the nude, something she was to demonstrate time and again.
She developed another quaint habit.
Even among the fast set in which she was moving, her method for keeping an escort from departing too early was unique.
When the date would try to bid her good-night at the door, she would tell him, If you go home now, I'll scream.
More often than not he would bow to the inevitable.
One who needed no such threats was a French financier.
One of the blonde's yearnings that he satisfied was for travel.
She wanted to go around the world, but she settled for a French holiday.
In an anonymous interview with a French newspaper the financier told of spending several months with her.
Then she went to Deauville where she met a member of a powerful Greek syndicate of gamblers.
The Greek evidently fell for her, Monsieur X recounted, and to clinch what he thought was an affair in the making he gave her 100,000 francs (about $300) and led her to the roulette tables.
She could do no wrong at the tables that time.
And in short order the croupier had pushed several million francs her way.
Smarter than most gamblers, she slipped away from the casino, packed her bag and took the night train to Paris.
No one ever learned what happened to the Greek.
The luxury of Paris' most fashionable hotel, the George 5, bored the beautifully-built blonde, so she high-tailed it to Rome.
She teamed up with another beauty, whose name has been lost to history, and commenced with some fiddling that would have made Nero envious.
To climax her Roman revels, she was thrown out of the swanky Hotel Excelsior after she had run naked through its marble halls screaming for help.
It was a rugged finish for what must have been a very interesting night.
Discreet Italian police described it in a manner typically continental.
There had been a threesome at the party in the suite's bedroom: Miss Harrington (this was Diane's choice for a Roman name), another woman who has figured in other very interesting events and one of your well-known American actors.
The actor had had much to drink and apparently became very violent.
The hotel staff, as well as residents of the Excelsior, told us they saw that both ladies were bleeding from scratches as they were seen fleeing down the hall.
They were wearing nothing but their scratches.
They were asked to leave the hotel.
No charges were filed.
The girls, after dressing, were indignant.
You can't do this to us, Diane screamed.
We are Americans.
In the morning she found rooms directly across from the Excelsior at the equally luxurious Hotel Ambassador.
With the Ambassador as headquarters, she continued to promote good will abroad.
Of course, her benevolence was limited to those who could afford it, but then there is a limit to what one person can do.
By this time Diane was a beguiling lass of 19 and still seeking her place in the world.
She thought royal status might come her way when, while she was still in Rome, she met Pulley Bey, a personal procurer to King Farouk of Egypt.
A close friend of hers in the Roman days described it this way:
It was a strange relationship.
Pulley Bey spoke no English.
Diane spoke no Italian or French.
She had a hard time making him understand that it was Farouk she wished to meet.
Pulley Bey insisted that she bestow her favors on him, the friend continued.
It seemed as though she were always auditioning.
No believer in the traditional devotion of royal servitors, the plump Pulley broke the language barrier and lured her to Cairo where she waited for nine months, vainly hoping to see Farouk.
Pulley had set her up at the Semiramis Hotel, but she grew impatient waiting for a royal reception and moved to a luxurious apartment to which the royal pimp had no key.
She picked her own Middle-Eastern friends from the flock of ardent Egyptians that buzzed around her.
Tewfik Badrawi, Mohammed Gaafer and numerous other wealthy members of Cairo society enjoyed her company.
So extensive became her circle of admirers, Egyptian police said, that her escapades caused distrust.
The roof was about ready to fall in on Diane's little world, but it took nothing less than the Egyptian revolution to bring it down.
When Farouk was overthrown, police picked up his personal pimp, Pulley Bey.
They also called upon Diane with a request for a look at her passport.
The cagey Pulley Bey, who spoke no English, had taken the passport so that Diane couldn't leave the country without his approval.
Officials provided a temporary passport, good only for return to the United States.
And return to the United States she did, into waiting arms--the unromantic ones of the New York District Attorney's office.
Held as a material witness in the compulsory prostitution trial of Mickey Jelke, the comely courtesan was unable to raise bail and was committed to the Women's House of Detention, a terribly overcrowded prison.
It is a tribute to her talents that she was able to talk the District Attorney into having her removed from the prison to a hotel room, with her meals taken at Vesuvio's, an excellent Italian restaurant.
Newspapers at the time noted that the move indicated that she was co-operating with the District Attorney.
With the end of the trial Diane disappeared from New York.
It was no longer fashionable to be seen with fabulous Lady Harrington.
Several years ago she married a Houston business man, Robert Graham.
She later divorced Graham, who is believed to have moved to Bolivia.
Houston police got to know Diane two years ago when the vice squad picked her up for questioning about a call girl ring.
Last May, they said, she admitted being a prostitute.
The next time the police saw her she was dead.
It was September 20, 1960, in a lavishly decorated apartment littered with liquor bottles.
She had had a party with a regular visitor, Dr. William W. McClellan.
McClellan, who had once lost his medical license temporarily on a charge of drug addiction, was with her when she died.
He had been in the apartment two days and was hazy about what had happened during that time.
When he realized she was dead, he called two lawyers and then the police.
When the police arrived, they found McClellan and the two lawyers sitting and staring silently.
The blonde's nude body was in bed, a green sheet and a pink blanket covered her.
Pictures of her in more glamorous days were on the walls.
An autopsy disclosed a large amount of morphine in Diane's body.
Police theorize that a combination of dope, drink and drugs killed her.
I think that maybe she wanted it this way, a vice squad cop said.
A maid told us that she still bragged about getting $50 a date.
She was on the junk, and they slide fast when that happens.
At least she never knew what the bottom was like.
I am a carpet salesman.
I work for one of the biggest chains of retail carpet houses in the East.
We cater mostly to nice people in the $5-8,000 annual income bracket and we run a string of snazzy, neon-lit, chromium-plated suburban stores.
I am selling the stuff of which is made one of the Great American Dreams--wall-to-wall carpeting.
There is only one trouble with this big, beautiful dream.
From where I sit it looks more like a nightmare.
People come to me with confidence.
They depend on my supposedly expert knowledge of a trade of which they themselves know little.
But I knowingly abuse their confidence.
Franklin D. Lee proved a man of prompt action when Mrs. Claire Shaefer, accompanied by a friend, visited him in Bakersfield, California, several months ago as a prospective patient.
Doctor Lee asked her to lie down on a bed and remove her shoes.
Then, by squeezing her foot three times, he came up--presto--with a different diagnosis with each squeeze.
She had--he informed her--kidney trouble, liver trouble, and a severe female disorder.
(He explained that he could diagnose these ailments from squeezing her foot because all of the nervous system was connected to it.
) He knew just the thing for her--a treatment from his cosmic light ozone generator machine.
As he applied the applicator extending from the machine--which consisted of seven differently colored neon tubes superimposed on a rectangular base--to the supposedly diseased portions of Mrs. Shaefer's body, Lee kept up a steady stream of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.
Yes, the ozone from his machine would cure practically everything, he assured her.
Did she know, he asked, why the colors of the tubes were important to people's health?
The human body--he pointed out, for example--required 33 units of blue light.
For that reason, he informed her, the Lord made the sky blue.
Continuing glibly in this vein, he paused to comfort her:
Don't you worry.
This machine will cure your cancer-ridden body.
Cancer!
Mrs. Shaefer practically shrieked.
You didn't tell me I had cancer.
You have it, all right.
But as long as you can have treatment from my machine you have nothing to worry about.
Why, I once used this machine to cure a woman with 97 pounds of cancer in her body.
He urged her to buy one of his machines--for $300.
When she said that she didn't have the money, he said that she could come in for treatment with his office model until she was ready to buy one.
He then sold her minerals to cure her kidney ailment, a can of sage to make her look like a girl again, and an application of plain mud to take her wrinkles away.
Lee renewed his pressure on Mrs. Shaefer to buy his machine when she visited him the next day.
After another treatment with the machine, he told her that her entire body was shot through with tumors and cysts.
He then sold her some capsules that he asserted would take care of the tumors and cysts until she could collect the money for buying his machine.
When she submitted to his treatment with the capsules, Mrs. Shaefer felt intense pain.
Leaving Lee's office, Mrs. Shaefer hurried over to her family physician, who treated her for burned tissue.
For several days, she was ill as a result of Lee's treatment.
Mrs. Shaefer never got around to joining the thousand or so people who paid Lee some $30,000 for his ozone machines.
For Mrs. Shaefer--who had been given a clean bill of health by her own physician at the time she visited Lee--and her friend were agents for the California Pure Food and Drug Inspection Bureau.
And she felt amply rewarded for her suffering when the evidence of Lee's quack shenanigans, gathered by the tape recorder under her friend's clothing, proved adequate in court for convicting Franklin D. Lee.
The charge: violation of the California Medical Practices Act by practicing medicine without a license and selling misbranded drugs.
The sentence: 360 days' confinement in the county jail.
An isolated case of quackery?
By no means.
The machine quack makes his Rube Goldberg devices out of odds and ends of metals, wires, and radio parts.
With these gadgets--impressive to the gullible because of their flashing light bulbs, ticks, and buzzes--he then carries out a vicious medical con game, capitalizing on people's respect for the electrical and atomic wonders of our scientific age.
He milks the latest scientific advances, translating them into his own special Buck Rogers vocabulary to huckster his fake machines as a cure-all for everything from hay fever to sexual impotence and cancer.
The gadget faker operates or sells his phony machines for $5 to $10,000--anything the traffic will bear.
He may call himself a anaprapath, a physiotherapist, an electrotherapist, a naturopath, a sanipractor, a medical cultist, a masseur, a doctor--or what have you.
Not only do these quacks assume impressive titles, but represent themselves as being associated with various scientific or impressive foundations--foundations which often have little more than a letterhead existence.
The medical device pirate of today, of course, is a far more sophisticated operator than his predecessor of yesteryear--the gallus-snapping hawker of snake oil and other patent medicines.
His plunder is therefore far higher--running into hundreds of millions.
According to the Food And Drug Administration (FDA), Doctor Ghadiali, Dr. Albert Abrams and his clique, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich--to name three notorious device quacks--succeeded, respectively, in distributing 10,000, 5000, and 2000 fake health machines.
Authorities believe that many of the Doctor Frauds using these false health gadgets are still in business.
Look at the sums paid by two device quack victims in Cleveland.
Sarah Gross, a dress shop proprietor, paid $1020 to a masseur, and Mr. A., a laborer, paid $4200 to a chiropractor for treatment with two fake health machines--the radioclast and the diagnometer.
Multiply these figures by the millions of people known to be conned by medical pirates annually.
You will come up with a frightening total.
That's why the FDA, the American Medical Association (AMA), and the National Better Business Bureau (BBB) have estimated the toll of mechanical quackery to be a substantial portion of the $610 million or so paid to medical charlatans annually.
The Postmaster General recently reported that mail order frauds--among which fake therapeutic devices figure prominently--are at the highest level in history.
Similarly, the American Cancer Society (ACS), the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation, and the BBB have each stated lately that medical quackery is at a new high.
For example, the BBB has reported it was receiving four times as many inquiries about quack devices and 10 times as many complaints compared with two years ago.
Authorities hesitate to quote exact figures, however, believing that any sum they come up with is only a surface manifestation--turned up by their inevitably limited policing--of the real loot of the medical racketeer.
In this sense, authorities believe that all estimates of phony device quackery are conservative.
The economic toll that the device quack extracts is important, of course.
But it is our health--more precious than all the money in the world--that these modern witch doctors with their fake therapeutic gadgets are gambling away.
By preying on the sick, by playing callously on the hopes of the desperate, by causing the sufferer to delay proper medical care, these medical ghouls create pain and misery by their very activity.
Typically, Sarah Gross and Mr. A both lost more than their money as the result of their experiences with their Cleveland quacks.
Sarah Gross found that the treatments given her for a nervous ailment by the masseur were not helping her.
As a result, she consulted medical authorities and learned that the devices her quack doctor was using were phony.
She suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be institutionalized.
Mr. A has recovered, but he is, justifiably, a bitter man.
That's a lot of hard-earned money to lose, he says today.
Neither me nor my wife were helped by that chiropractor's treatments.
And there was the case of Tom Hepker, a machinist, who was referred by a friend to a health machine quack who treated him with a so-called diagnostic machine for what Doctor Fraud said was a system full of arsenic and strychnine.
After his pains got worse, Tom decided to see a real doctor, from whom he learned he was suffering from cancer of the lung.
Yes, Tom caught it in time to stay alive.
But he's a welfare case now--a human wreck--thanks to this modern witch doctor.
But the machine quack can cause far more than just suffering.
In such diseases as cancer, tuberculosis, and heart disease, early diagnosis and treatment are so vital that the waste of time by the patient with Doctor Fraud's cure-all gadget can prove fatal.
Moreover, the diabetic patient who relies on cure by the quack device and therefore cuts off his insulin intake can be committing suicide.
For instance:
Hang this around your neck or attach it to other parts of your anatomy, and its rays will cure any disease you have, said the company.
Mr. H. is dead today because he followed this advice.
Doris Hull, suffering from tuberculosis, was taken by her husband to see Otis G. Carroll, a sanipractor--a licensed drugless healer--in Spokane.
Carroll diagnosed Mrs. Hull by taking a drop of blood from her ear and putting it on his radionic machine and twirling some knobs (fee $50).
His prescription: hot and cold compresses to increase her absorption of water.
Although she weighed only 108 pounds when she visited him, Carroll permitted her to go on a 10-day fast in which she took nothing but water.
Inevitably, Mrs. Hull died of starvation and tuberculosis, weighing 60 pounds.
Moreover, her husband and child contracted T.B. from her.
(Small wonder a Spokane jury awarded the husband $35,823 for his wife's death.
In California, a few years ago, a ghoul by the name of H. F. Bell sold electric blankets as a cure for cancer.
He did this by the charming practice of buying up used electric blankets for $5 to $10 from survivors of patients who had died, reconditioning them, and selling them at $185 each.
When authorities convicted him of practicing medicine without a license (he got off with a suspended sentence of three years because of his advanced age of 77), one of his victims was not around to testify: He was dead of cancer.
By no means are these isolated cases.
Death!
Have no doubt about it.
That's where device quackery can lead.
The evidence shows that fake therapeutic machines, substituted for valid medical cures, have hastened the deaths of thousands.
Who are the victims of the device quacks?
Authorities say that oldsters are a prime target.
Says Wallace F. Jannsen, director of the FDA's Division of Public Information: Quacks are apt to direct their appeal directly to older people, or to sufferers from chronic ailments such as arthritis, rheumatism, diabetes, and cancer.
People who have not been able to get relief from regular medical doctors are especially apt to be taken in by quacks.
The victims of the quacks are frequently poor people, like Mr. A., who scrape up their life savings to offer as a sacrifice to Doctor Fraud's avarice.
They are often ignorant as well as underprivileged.
Ten-year-old Richard Stewart had been irritable and quarrelsome for almost a year.
His grades had gone steadily downhill, and he had stopped bringing friends and classmates home from school.
Mr. and Mrs. Stewart were puzzled and concerned.
Then one day Dick's classmate Jimmy, from next door, let the cat out of the bag.
The youngsters in the boys' class had nicknamed Dick Bugs Bunny because his teeth protruded.
When Richard's parents told him they wanted to take him to an orthodontist--a dentist who specializes in realigning teeth and jaws--their young son was interested.
During the year that followed, Dick co-operated whole-heartedly with the dentist and was delighted with the final result achieved--an upper row of strong straight teeth that completely changed his facial appearance.
Richard Stewart is no special case.
The majority of children in the United States could benefit by some form of orthodontic treatment, says Dr. Allan G. Brodie, professor and head of the department of orthodontics at the University of Illinois and a nationally recognized authority in his field.
What do parents need to know about those years of the braces in order not to waste a child's time and their money?
How can they tell whether a child needs orthodontic treatment?
Why and when should tooth-straightening be undertaken?
What is it likely to cost?
Tooth fit explained
occlusion is the dentist's expression for the way teeth fit together when the jaws are closed.
Malocclusion, or a bad fit, is what parents need to look out for.
One main type of malocclusion is characterized by a receding chin and protruding upper front teeth.
A chin too prominent in relation to the rest of the face, a thrusting forward of the lower front teeth, an overdeveloped lower jawbone, and an underdeveloped upper jaw indicate the opposite type of malocclusion.
These two basic malformations have, of course, many variations.
A child probably requires some form of treatment if he has any of the following conditions:
A noticeable protrusion of the upper or lower jaw.
Crooked, overlapping, twisted, or widely spaced teeth.
Front teeth not meeting when the back teeth close.
Upper teeth completely covering the lowers when the back teeth close.
The eyeteeth (third from the middle on top, counting each front tooth as the first) beginning to protrude like fangs.
Second teeth that have come in before the first ones have fallen out, making a double row.
Contrary to the thinking of 30 to 40 years ago, when all malocclusion was blamed on some unfortunate habit, recent studies show that most tooth irregularity has at least its beginning in hereditary predisposition.
However, this does not mean that a child's teeth or jaws must necessarily resemble those of someone in his family.
Tooth deformity may be the result of excessive thumb- or finger-sucking, tongue-thrusting, or lip-sucking--but it's important to remember that there's a difference between normal and excessive sucking habits.
It's perfectly normal for babies to suck their thumbs, and no mother need worry if a child continues this habit until he is two or three years old.
Occasional sucking up to the fifth year may not affect a youngster's teeth;
but after that, if thumb-sucking pressure is frequent, it will have an effect.
Malocclusion can also result if baby teeth are lost too soon or retained too long.
If a child loses a molar at the age of two, the adjoining teeth may shift toward the empty space, thus narrowing the place intended for the permanent ones and producing a jumble.
If baby teeth are retained too long, the incoming second teeth may be prevented from emerging at the normal time or may have to erupt in the wrong place.
Correction can save teeth
every orthodontist sees children who are embarrassed by their malformed teeth.
Some such youngsters rarely smile, or they try to speak with the mouth closed.
In certain cases, as in Dick Stewart's, a child's personality is affected.
Yet from the dentist's point of view, bad-fitting teeth should be corrected for physical reasons.
Bad alignment may result in early loss of teeth through a breakdown of the bony structure that supports their roots.
This serious condition, popularly known as pyorrhea, is one of the chief causes of tooth loss in adults.
Then, too, misplaced or jammed-together teeth are prone to trapping food particles, increasing the likelihood of rapid decay.
For these and other reasons, says Dr. Brodie, orthodontics can prolong the life of teeth.
The failure of teeth to fit together when closed interferes with normal chewing, so that a child may swallow food whole and put a burden on his digestive system.
Because of these chewing troubles, a child may avoid certain foods he needs for adequate nutrition.
Badly placed teeth can also cause such a speech handicap as lisping.
The when and how of straightening
most orthodontic work is done on children between the ages of 10 and 14, though there have been patients as young as two and as old as 55, says Dr. Brodie.
In the period from 10 to 14 the permanent set of teeth is usually completed, yet the continuing growth of bony tissue makes moving badly placed teeth comparatively easy.
Orthodontic work is possible because teeth are held firmly but not rigidly, by a system of peridontal membrane with an involved nerve network, to the bone in the jaw;
they are not anchored directly to the bone.
Abnormal pressure, applied over a period of time, produces a change in the bony deposit, so a tooth functions normally in the new position into which it has been guided.
What can 10-year-old Susan expect when she enters the orthodontist's office?
On her first visit the orthodontist will take x-rays, photographs, tooth measurements, and tooth prints--an impression of the mouth that permits him to study her teeth and jaws.
If he decides to proceed, he will custom-make for Susie an appliance consisting of bands, plastic plates, fine wires, and tiny springs.
This appliance will exert a gentle and continuous or intermittent pressure on the bone.
As the tooth moves, bone cells on the pressure side of it will dissolve, and new ones will form on the side from which the tooth has moved.
This must be done at the rate at which new bony tissue grows, and no faster.
If teeth are moved too rapidly, serious injury can be done to their roots as well as to the surrounding bone holding them in place, explains Dr. Brodie.
Moving one or two teeth can affect the whole system, and an ill-conceived plan of treatment can disrupt the growth pattern of a child's face.
During the first few days of wearing the appliance and immediately following each adjustment, Susan may have a slight discomfort or soreness, but after a short time this will disappear.
Parents are often concerned that orthodontic appliances may cause teeth to decay.
When in place, a well-cemented band actually protects the part of the tooth that is covered.
Next Susie will enter the treatment stage and visit the orthodontist once or twice a month, depending on the severity of her condition.
During these visits the dentist will adjust the braces to increase the pressure on her teeth.
Last comes the retention stage.
Susie's teeth have now been guided into a desirable new position.
But because teeth sometimes may drift back to their original position, a retaining appliance is used to lock them in place.
Usually this is a thin band of wire attached to the molars and stretching across the teeth.
Susie may wear this only at night or for a few hours during the day.
Then comes the time when the last wire is removed and Susie walks out a healthier and more attractive girl than when she first went to the orthodontist.
How long will this take?
Straightening one tooth that has come in wrong may take only a few months.
Aligning all the teeth may take a year or more.
An added complication such as a malformed jaw may take two or three years to correct.
What is the cost?
The charge for a complete full-banded job differs in various parts of the country.
Work that might cost $500 to $750 in the South could cost $750 to $1,200 in New York City or Chicago.
An average national figure for two to three years of treatment would be $650 to $1,000.
Factors in the cost of treatment are the length of time involved and the skill and education of the practitioner, says Dr. Brodie.
To become an orthodontist, a man must first be licensed by his state as a dentist, then he must spend at least two years in additional training to acquire a license as a specialist.
Costs may seem high, but they used to be even higher, says Dr. Brodie.
Fees are about half to a third of what they were 25 years ago.
The reason?
People today are aware of the value of orthodontics, and as a result there are more practitioners in the field.
Most orthodontists require an initial payment to cover the cost of diagnostic materials and construction of the appliances, but usually the remainder of the cost may be spread over a period of months or years.
In many cities in the United States clinics associated with dental schools will take patients at a nominal fee.
Some municipal agencies will pay for orthodontic treatment for children of needy parents.
Research helps families
growth studies have been carried on consistently by orthodontists.
Dr. Brodie has 30-year records of head growth, started 20 minutes after children's births.
In the past anyone who said that 90% of all malocclusion is hereditary was scoffed at;
now we know that family characteristics do affect tooth formation to a large extent, he says.
Fortunately through our growth studies we have been able to see what nature does, and that helps us know what we can do.
This knowledge both modifies and dictates diagnosis and treatment.
For example, a boy may inherit a small jaw from one ancestor and large teeth from another.
In the past an orthodontist might have tried, over four or five years, to straighten and fit the boy's large teeth into a jaw that, despite some growth, would never accommodate them.
Now a dentist can recommend extraction immediately.
In other cases, in view of present-day knowledge of head growth, orthodontists will recommend waiting four or five years before treatment.
The child is kept on call, and the orthodontist watches the growth.
Nature often takes care of the problem, says Dr. Brodie.
A child with a certain type of head and teeth will outgrow tooth deformity.
That is why Dr. Brodie asks parents not to insist, against their dentist's advice, that their child have orthodontic work done too early.
Both because of our culture's stress on beauty and our improved economic conditions, some parents demand that the dentist try to correct a problem before it is wise to do so.
Let the orthodontist decide the proper time to start treatment, he urges.
Superior new material for orthodontic work is another result of research.
Plastics are easier to handle than the vulcanized rubber formerly used, and they save time and money.
Plaster of Paris, once utilized in making impressions of teeth, has been replaced by alginates (gelatin-like material) that work quickly and accurately and with least discomfort to a child.
Prevention is best
as a rule, the earlier general dental treatment is started, the less expensive and more satisfactory it is likely to be.
After your child's baby teeth are all in--usually at the age of two and one half to three--it's time for that first dental appointment, Dr. Brodie advises.
Then see that your youngster has a routine checkup once a year.
To help prevent orthodontic problems from arising, your dentist can do these things:
He can correct decay, thus preventing early loss of teeth.
If a child does lose his first teeth prematurely because of decay--and if no preventive steps are taken--the other teeth may shift out of position, become overcrowded and malformed.
In turn the other teeth are likely to decay because food particles may become impacted in them.
From time to time the medium mentions other people around him, who were on the other side, and reports what they are saying.
After a while there come initials and names, and he is interested to hear some rather unusual family nicknames.
As the hour progresses, the sensitive seems to probe more deeply and to make more personal and specific statements.
There are a few prognoses of coming events.
Another medium, another sitter, would produce a somewhat different content, but in general it would probably sound much like the foregoing reading.
Some mediums speak in practical, down-to-earth terms, while others may stress the spiritual.
Not all, as a matter of fact, consider themselves mediums in the sense of receiving messages from the deceased.
In fact, some sensitives rule this out, preferring to consider their expression as strictly extra-sensory perception (ESP), on this side of the veil.
However that may be, people are known to go to mediums for diverse reasons.
Perhaps they are mourning a recent death and want comfort, to feel in touch with the deceased, or seek indications for future plans.
They may, of course, be curiosity seekers--or they may just be interested in the phenomenon of mediumship.
The mediums with whom the Parapsychology Foundation is working in this experiment are in a waking or only slightly dissociated state, so that the sitter can make comments, ask and answer questions, instead of talking with a control who speaks through an entranced sensitive.
What we have here is in some ways more like an ordinary conversation.
But it is not really only a conversation.
Many a sitter (in a personal sitting) has been amazed to realize that the medium was describing very vividly his state of mind.
He himself might not have been really aware of his own mood;
it had been latent, unspecified, semi-conscious and only partly realized--until she described it to him!
Most striking indeed is this beyond-normal ability to put a finger on pre-conscious moods and to clarify them.
However, in the next visit that the researcher made to the medium, he did not receive a personal reading.
Instead he brought with him the names of some people he had never met and of whom the medium knew nothing.
For this was to be a proxy sitting.
As was noted earlier, it is important that in valid, objective study of this sort of communication, the interested sitter should be separated from the sensitive.
Dr. Karlis Osis, Director of Research at the Parapsychology Foundation, described the basis for the experiment in a tomorrow article, (New Research On Survival After Death, Spring 1958).
He remarked: It has been clearly established that in a number of instances the message did not come from a spirit but was received telepathically by the medium from the sitter.
The possibility has to be ruled out that the medium's ESP may tap the memory of the sitter, and to do this, the two central characters in this drama must be separated.
One way to do this is by proxy sittings, wherein the person seeking a message does not himself meet with the medium but is represented by a substitute, the proxy sitter.
If the latter knows nothing about the absent sitter except his name (given by the experimenter), he cannot possibly give any clues, conscious or unconscious, far less ask leading questions.
All he can do is to be an objective and careful questioner, seeking to help the sensitive in clarifying and making more specific her paranormal impressions.
Sometimes in these experiments appointment sittings are used.
Here the absent sitter makes a date with a communicator (someone close to him who is deceased), asking him to come in at a certain hour, when a channel will be open for him.
In this case the proxy sitter will know only the name of the communicator, nothing else.
He gives this to the medium at the appointed time, and the reading then will be concerned with material about or messages from the communicator.
As always, a tape recording or detailed notes are made, and a typescript of this is sent to the absent sitter.
So this proxy situation has set up at least a partial barrier between the medium's ESP and the absent sitter's mind.
It is now harder to assume telepathy as a basis for the statements--though research still does not know how far afield ESP can range.
Now the original absent sitter must decide whether the statements are meaningful to him.
Here again laboratory approaches are being evolved, for it is recognized how elastic these readings can be, how they can apply to many people, and are often stated in general terms all too easily applied to any individual's own case.
If you look at a reading meant for someone else, you will probably see that many of the items could be considered as applicable to you, even when you were not in the picture at all!
An interested sitter may think the sensitive has made a hit, describing something accurately for him, but can he really be sure that another sitter, hearing the same statement, would not apply it subjectively to his own circumstances?
It is, of course, easy to see how J will mean Uncle Jack to one person and little Jane to another.
A journey, a little white house, a change of outlook, can apply to many people.
And even more complex items can be interpreted to conform to one's own point of view, which is by nature so personal.
One sitter may think a leather couch identifies a reading as surely directed to him;
to another, it seems that nobody but his father ever used the phrase, Atta boy!
To get around this quite difficult corner, there is one first aid to objectiveness: prevent the distant sitter from knowing which reading was for him.
If he is not told which of four or five readings was meant for him, he can more readily assess each item in a larger frame: Does that statement really sound as if it were for me, significant in my particular life?
Or am I taking something that could really apply to almost anybody, and forgetting that many other people probably have had a similar experience?
Conversely, experimenters would consider as impressive such statements as the following, which, if they turned out to be hits, are so unusual as to be really significant:
He had four children, two sets of twins.
After being a lawyer for twenty-five years he started studying for the ministry.
Part of his house had been moved to the other side of the road.
He died of typhoid in 1921.
Methods have been developed of assigning weights to statements;
that is, it is known empirically that names beginning with R are more common than those beginning with Z;
that fewer women are named Miranda than Elizabeth;
that in the United States more people die of heart disease than of smallpox.
So each reading can be given a weight and each reading a score by adding up these weights.
Specific dates would be important, as would double names.
Various categories have been explored to find out about these empirical probabilities against which to measure the readings.
In the parapsychology foundation's long-range experiment, readings are made by a variety of sensitives for a large number of cooperating sitters, trying to throw light on this question of the significance of mediumistic statements.
It is very important indeed, in the field of extra-sensory perception and its relation to the survival hypothesis, to know whether the statements are actually only those which any intuitive person might venture and an eager sitter attach to himself.
Or, on the other hand, are unlikely facts being stated, facts which are in themselves significant and not easily applicable to everybody?
That is one thing the experiments are designed to find out.
He is required to mark every item and to indicate which reading he feels is actually his.
All these evaluations are then totted up and tabulated, by adding up the Hits and Significants, with the weight placed on those in the sitter's own reading.
That is, if he marks as most correct a reading not meant for him, the total experimental score falls.
Conversely, if he gives a heavy rating to his own reading, and finds more accurate facts in it than in the others, a point is chalked up for the intrinsic, objective meaningfulness of this type of mediumistic material.
And there are some positive results, though the final findings will not be known for a long time--and then further research can be formulated.
In another approach to the same procedure, the content of the readings is analyzed so as to see how the particular medium is likely to slant her statements.
Does she often speak of locations, of cause of death?
Does she accurately give dates, ages, kind of occupation?
It is possible to find out in which categories most of her correct statements fall, and where she makes most of her hits.
Now when, so to speak, the cream has been skimmed off, and the items in the successful categories separated out, the sitter can be asked to consider and rate only this concentrated cream, where the sensitive is at her best.
Mediumistic impressions are evidently of all sorts and seem to involve all the senses.
I feel cold, the medium says, or My leg aches, My head is heavy.
Or perhaps she hears words or sounds: There's such a noise of loud machinery, or I hear a child crying, or He says we're all here and glad to see you.
Maybe an entire scene comes into consciousness, with action and motion, or a static view: a house under a pine tree, with a little stone path going up to the door.
The sensitive often seems to smell definite odors, too, or subjectively feels emotions.
Sometimes she displays amazing eidetic imagery and seems to see all details in perspective, as if the scene were actually there.
If pressed by the sitter for more detail, she may be able to bring the picture more into focus and see more sharply, almost as if she were physically going closer.
If asked how she gets her impressions, she probably can only say that she just gets them--some more vividly than others.
Perhaps this is not so extraordinary after all.
Even in normal experience one gets impressions without knowing exactly how--of atmosphere, of one another's personalities, moods, intentions.
Of course, there is an element of training here: these gifted people, by concentration, study, guidance, have learned to develop their power.
Simply using it increases its intensity, I was told by one sensitive.
Nor does a medium automatically know how to interpret her imagery.
Impressions often appear in a symbolic form and cannot be taken at face value.
It is apparently by symbols that the unconscious speaks to the conscious, and the medium has to translate these into meaning.
If communication with an entity on the other side is taking place, this too may assume the form of clairvoyant symbolism.
During one reading an image appeared of a prisoner in irons.
But this did not necessarily refer to an actual jail;
taken with other details it could have referred to a state of mental or spiritual confinement.
In this connection it is worth noting how names are sometimes obtained.
Though they are often heard clairaudiently, as if a voice were speaking them, in other cases they are apprehended visually as symbols: a slope to signify the name Hill, for instance.
One medium saw two sheets flapping on a line and found that the name Shietz was significant to the sitter.
Farming is confining.
The farmer's life must be arranged to meet the demands of crops and livestock.
Livestock must be tended every day, routinely.
A slight change in the work schedule may cut the production of cows or chickens.
Even if there are no livestock, the farmer cannot leave the farm for long periods, particularly during the growing season.
The worker who lives on a farm cannot change jobs readily.
He cannot leave the farm to take work in another locality on short notice;
such a move may mean a loss of capital.
Hard physical labor and undesirable hours are a part of life.
The farmer must get up early, and, at times, work late at night.
Frequently he must work long hours in the hot sun or cold rain.
No matter how well work is planned, bad weather or unexpected setbacks can cause extra work that must be caught up.
It may not be profitable for a part-time farmer to own the labor-saving machinery that a full-time farmer can invest in profitably.
Production may fall far below expectations.
Drought, hail, disease, and insects take their toll of crops.
Sickness or loss of some of the livestock may cut into the owner's earnings, even into his capital.
Returns for money and labor invested may be small even in a good year.
The high cost of land, supplies, and labor make it difficult to farm profitably on a part-time basis.
Land within commuting distance of a growing city is usually high in price, higher if it has subdivision possibilities.
Part-time farmers generally must pay higher prices for supplies than full-time farmers because they buy in smaller quantities.
If the farm is in an industrial area where wages are high, farm labor costs will also be high.
A part-time farmer needs unusual skill to get as high production per hen, per cow, or per acre as can be obtained by a competent full-time farmer.
It will frequently be uneconomical for him to own the most up-to-date equipment.
He may have to depend upon custom service for specialized operations, such as spraying or threshing, and for these, he may have to wait his turn.
There will be losses caused by emergencies that arise while he is away at his off-farm job.
The farm may be an additional burden if the main job is lost.
This may be true whether the farm is owned or rented.
If the farm is rented, the rent must be paid.
If it is owned, taxes must be paid, and if the place is not free of mortgage, there will be interest and payments on the principal to take care of.
Advantages
A farm provides a wholesome and healthful environment for children.
It gives them room to play and plenty of fresh air.
The children can do chores adapted to their age and ability.
Caring for a calf, a pig, or some chickens develops in children a sense of responsibility for work.
Part-time farming gives a measure of security if the regular job is lost, provided the farm is owned free of debt and furnishes enough income to meet fixed expenses and minimum living costs.
For some retired persons, part-time farming is a good way to supplement retirement income.
It is particularly suitable for those who need to work or exercise out of doors for their health.
Generally, the same level of living costs less in the country than in the city.
The savings are not as great, however, as is sometime supposed.
Usually, the cost of food and shelter will be somewhat less on the farm and the cost of transportation and utilities somewhat more.
Where schools, fire and police protection, and similar municipal services are of equal quality in city and country, real estate taxes are usually about the same.
A part-time farmer and his family can use their spare time profitably.
Some persons consider the work on a farm recreational.
For some white-collar workers it is a welcome change from the regular job, and a physical conditioner.
Land, labor, and equipment needed
Part-time farming can take comparatively little land, labor, and equipment--or a great deal.
It depends on the kind and the scale of the farming operation.
General requirements for land, labor, and equipment are discussed below.
Specific requirements for each of various types of enterprises are discussed on pages 8 to 14.
Land
Three quarters to 1 acre of good land is enough for raising fruits and vegetables for home use, and for a small flock of chickens, a cow, and two pigs.
You could not, of course, raise feed for the livestock on a plot this small.
If you want to raise feed or carry out some enterprise on a larger scale, you'll need more land.
In deciding how much land you want, take into account the amount you'll need to bring in the income you expect.
But consider also how much you and your family can keep up along with your other work.
The cost of land and the prospects for appreciation in value may influence your decision.
Some part-time farmers buy more land than they need in anticipation of suburban development.
This is a highly speculative venture.
Sometimes a desired acreage is offered only as part of a larger tract.
When surplus land is not expensive to buy or to keep up, it is usually better to buy it than to buy so small an acreage that the development of adjoining properties might impair the residential value of the farm.
Labor
If you have a year-round, full-time job you can't expect to grow much more than your family uses--unless other members of the family do a good deal of the work or you hire help.
As a rule, part-time farmers hire little help.
In deciding on the enterprises to be managed by family labor, compare the amount of labor that can be supplied by the family with the labor needs of various enterprises listed in table 1.
List the number of hours the family can be expected to work each month.
You may want to include your own regular vacation period if you have one.
Do not include all your spare time or all your family's spare time--only what you are willing to use for farm work.
Equipment
If you are going to produce for home use only, you will need only hand tools.
You will probably want to hire someone to do the plowing, however.
For larger plantings, you'll need some kind of power for plowing, harrowing, disking, and cultivating.
If you have a planting of half an acre or more you may want to buy a small garden tractor (available for $300 to $500 with attachments, 1960 prices).
These tractors are not entirely satisfactory for plowing, particularly on heavier soils, so you may still want to hire someone to do the plowing.
Cost of power and machinery is often a serious problem to the small-scale farmer.
If you are going to farm for extra cash income on a part-time basis you must keep in mind the needed machinery investments when you choose among farm enterprises.
You can keep your machinery investment down by buying good secondhand machinery, by sharing the cost and upkeep of machinery with a neighbor, and by hiring someone with machinery to do certain jobs.
If an expensive and specialized piece of machinery is needed--such as a spray rig, a combine, or a binder--it is better to pay someone with a machine to do the work.
Selecting a farm
Before you look for a farm you'll need to know (1) the kind and scale of farming you want to undertake;
and (2) whether you want to buy or rent.
Information on pages 8 to 14 may help you in deciding on the kind and scale of your farming venture.
If you are not well acquainted with the area in which you wish to locate, or if you are not sure that you and your family will like and make a success of farming, usually you would do better to rent a place for a year or two before you buy.
Discussed below are some of the main things to look for when you select a part-time farm.
Location
nearness to work.
Choose a location within easy commuting distance of both the regular job and other employment opportunities.
Then if you change jobs you won't necessarily have to sell the farm.
The presence of alternative job opportunities also will make the place easier to sell if that should become desirable.
Obviously the farm should be on an all-weather road.
Nearness to markets.
If you grow anything to sell you will need markets nearby.
If you plan to sell fresh vegetables or whole milk, for example, you should be close to a town or city.
Kind of neighborhood.
Look for a farm in a neighborhood of well-kept homes.
There are slums in the country as well as in the city.
Few rural areas are protected by zoning.
A tavern, filling station, junk yard, rendering plant, or some other business may go up near enough to hurt your home or to hurt its value.
Facilities in the area.
Check on the schools in the area, the quality of teaching, and the provision for transportation to and from them.
Find out whether fire protection, sewage system, gas, water mains, and electrical lines are available in the locality.
If these facilities are not at the door, getting them may cost more than you expect.
You may have to provide them yourself or get along without them.
You cannot get along without an adequate supply of pure water.
If you are considering a part-time farm where the water must be provided by a well, find out if there is a good well on the farm or the probable cost of having one drilled.
A pond may provide adequate water for livestock and garden.
Pond water can be filtered for human use, but most part-time farmers would not want to go to so much trouble.
The following amounts of water are needed per day for livestock and domestic uses.
Topography and soil
Is the land suited to the crops you intend to raise?
If you can't tell, get help from your county agricultural agent or other local specialist.
Soil type, drainage, or degree of slope can make the difference between good crops and poor ones.
Small areas that aren't right for a certain crop may lie next to areas that are well suited to that crop.
The house
Will the house on any part-time farm you are considering make a satisfactory full-time residence?
How much will it cost to do any necessary modernizing and redecorating?
If the house is not wired adequately for electricity or if plumbing or a central heating system must be installed, check into the cost of making these improvements.
Buying a farm
The value of the farm to you will depend on --
Its worth as a place to live.
The value of the products you can raise on it.
The possibilities of selling the property later on for suburban subdivision.
Decide first what the place is worth to you and your family as a home in comparison with what it would cost to live in town.
Take into account the difference in city and county taxes, insurance rates, utility rates, and the cost of travel to work.
Next, estimate the value of possible earnings of the farm.
To do this, set up a plan on paper for operating the farm.
List the kind and quantity of things the farm can be expected to produce in an average year.
Estimate the value of the produce at normal prices.
The total is the probably gross income from farming.
To find estimated net farm income, subtract estimated annual farming expenditures from probable gross income from farming.
Include as expenditures an allowance for depreciation of farm buildings and equipment.
Also count as an expense a charge for the labor to be contributed by the family.
It may be hard to decide what this labor is worth, but charge something for it.
Otherwise, you may pay too much for the farm and get nothing for your labor.
To figure the value of the farm in terms of investment income, divide the estimated annual net farm income by the percentage that you could expect to get in interest if the money were invested in some other way.
Everyone with a personal or group tragedy to relate had to be given his day in court as in some vast collective dirge.
For almost two months, the defendant and the world heard from individuals escaped from the grave about fathers and mothers, graybeards, adolescents, babies, starved, beaten to death, strangled, machine-gunned, gassed, burned.
One who had been a boy in Auschwitz had to tell how children had been selected by height for the gas chambers.
The gruesome humor of the Nazis was not forgotten--the gas chamber with a sign on it with the name of a Jewish foundation and bearing a copper Star of David--nor the gratuitous sadism of SS officers.
And still another witness, one who had crawled out from under a heap of corpses, had to tell how the victims had been forced to lay themselves head to foot one on top of the other before being shot.
Most of this testimony may have been legally admissible as bearing on the corpus delicti of the total Nazi crime but seemed subject to question when not tied to the part in it of the defendant's Department of Jewish Affairs.
Counsel for the defense, however, shrewdly allowing himself to be swept by the current of dreadful recollections, rarely raised an objection.
Would not the emotional catharsis eventually brought on by this awfulness have a calming, if not exhausting, effect likely to improve his client's chances?
Those who feared emotionalism at the Trial showed less understanding than Dr. Servatius of the route by which man achieves the distance necessary for fairness toward enemies.
Interruptions came largely from the bench, which numerous times rebuked the Attorney General for letting his witnesses run on, though it, too, made no serious effort to choke off the flow.
But there was a contrast even more decisive than a hunger for fact between the Trial in Jerusalem and those in Moscow and New York.
In each of the last, the trial marked the beginning of a new course: in Moscow the liquidation of the Old Bolsheviks and the tightening of Stalin's dictatorship;
in the United States the initiation of militant anti-Communism, with the repentant ex-Communist in the vanguard.
These trials were properly termed political cases in that the trial itself was a political act producing political consequences.
But what could the Eichmann Trial initiate?
Of what new course could it mark the beginning?
The Eichmann case looked to the past, not to the future.
It was the conclusion of the first phase of a process of tragic recollection, and of refining the recollection, that will last as long as there are Jews.
As such, it was beyond politics and had no need of justification by a message.
It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historical trial--said Ben Gurion, and not the Nazi regime alone--but anti-Semitism throughout history.
How could supplying Eichmann with a platform on which to maintain that one could collaborate in the murder of millions of Jews without being an anti-semite contribute to a verdict against anti-Semitism?
And if it was not an individual who was in the dock, why was the Trial, as we shall observe later, all but scuttled in the attempt to prove Eichmann a fiend?
These questions touch the root of confusion in the prosecution's case.
It might be contended, of course, that Eichmann in stubbornly denying anti-Semitic feelings was lying or insisting on a private definition of anti-Semitism.
But in either event he was the wrong man for the kind of case outlined by Ben Gurion and set forth in the indictment.
In such a case the defendant should serve as a clear example and not have to be tied to the issue by argument.
One who could be linked to anti-Semitism only by overcoming his objections is scarcely a good specimen of the Jew-baiter throughout the ages.
Shout at Eichmann though he might, the Prosecutor could not establish that the defendant was falsifying the way he felt about Jews or that what he did feel fell into the generally recognized category of anti-Semitism.
Yes, he believed that the Jews were enemies of the Reich, and such a belief is, of course, typical of patriotic anti-Semites;
but he believed in the Jew-as-enemy in a kind of abstract, theological way, like a member of a cult speculating on the nature of things.
The real question was how one passed from anti-Semitism of this sort to murder, and the answer to this question is not to be found in anti-Semitism itself.
In regard to Eichmann, it was to be found in the Nazi outlook, which contained a principle separate from and far worse than anti-Semitism, a principle by which the poison of anti-Semitism itself was made more virulent.
Perhaps under the guidance of this Nazi principle one could, as Eichmann declared, feel personally friendly toward the Jews and still be their murderer.
The measures for annihilation proposed and accepted at the Conference affected industry, transportation, civilian agencies of government.
This, in fact, it turned out to be.
Since the magnitude of the plan made secrecy impossible, once the wheels had began to turn, persons controlling German industries, social institutions, and armed forces became, through their anti-Semitism or their tolerance of it, conscious accomplices of Hitler's crimes;
whether in the last degree or a lesser one was a matter to be determined individually.
What more could be asked for a Trial intended to warn the world against anti-Semitism than this opportunity to expose the exact link between the respectable Anti-Semite and the concentration-camp brute?
Not in Eichmann's anti-Semitism but in the anti-Semitism of the sober German man of affairs lay the potential warning of the Trial.
No doubt many of the citizens of the Third Reich had conceived their anti-Semitism as an innocent dislike of Jews, as do others like them today.
The Final Solution proved that the Jew-baiter of any variety exposes himself as being implicated in the criminality and madness of others.
Ought not an edifying Trial have made every effort to demonstrate this once and for all by showing how representative types of mere anti-Semites were drawn step by step into the program of skull-bashings and gassings?
The Prosecutor in his opening remarks did refer to the germ of anti-Semitism among the Germans which Hitler stimulated and transformed.
But if there was evidence at the Trial that aimed over Eichmann's head at his collaborators in the societies where he functioned, the press seems to have missed it.
Nor did the Trial devote much attention to exposing the usefulness of anti-Semitism to the Nazis, both in building their own power and in destroying that of rival organizations and states.
Certainly, one of the best ways of warning the world against anti-Semitism is to demonstrate its workings as a dangerous weapon.
Eichmann himself is a model of how the myth of the enemy-Jew can be used to transform the ordinary man of present-day society into a menace to all his neighbors.
The career of Eichmann made the Trial a potential showcase for anti-Semitic demoralization: fearful of being mistaken for a Jew, he seeks protection in his Nazi uniform;
clinging to the enemy-Jew idea, he is forced to overcome habits of politeness and neighborliness;
once in power he begins to give vent to a criminal opportunism that causes him to alternate between megalomania and envy of those above him.
Is this the type of citizen you desire?
The Trial should have asked the nations.
But though this characterization in no way diminished Eichmann's guilt, the Prosecutor, more deeply involved in the tactics of a criminal case than a political one, would have none of it.
Should not everyone have been awakened to it as an outstanding fact of our time that the nations poisoned by anti-Semitism proved less fortunate in regard to their own freedom than those whose citizens saved their Jewish compatriots from the transports?
Wasn't this meaning of Eichmann's experience in various countries worth highlighting?
Only across a distance of time could the epic accounting begin.
It is already difficult to recall how little we knew before the Trial of what had been done to the Jews of Europe.
It is not that the facts of the persecution were unavailable;
most of the information elicited in Jerusalem had been brought to the surface by the numerous War Crimes tribunals and investigating commissions, and by reports, memoirs, and survivors' accounts.
In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1952, a Roman Catholic hospital presented seven Protestant physicians with an ultimatum to quit the Planned Parenthood Federation or to resign from the hospital staff.
Three agreed, but four declined and were suspended.
After a flood of protests, they were reinstated at the beginning of 1953.
The peace of the community was badly disturbed, and people across the nation, reading of the incident, felt uneasy.
In New York City in 1958, the city's Commissioner of Hospitals refused to permit a physician to provide a Protestant mother with a contraceptive device.
He thereby precipitated a bitter controversy involving Protestants, Jews and Roman Catholics that continued for two months, until the city's Board of Hospitals lifted the ban on birth-control therapy.
A year later in Albany, N.Y., a Roman Catholic hospital barred an orthopedic surgeon because of his connection with the Planned Parenthood Association.
Immediately, the religious groups of the city were embroiled in an angry dispute over the alleged invasion of a man's right to freedom of religious belief and conscience.
These incidents, typical of many others, dramatize the distressing fact that no controversy during the last several decades has caused more tension, rancor and strife among religious groups in this country than the birth-control issue.
It has flared up periodically on the front pages of newspapers in communities divided over birth-prevention regulations in municipal hospitals and health and family-welfare agencies.
It has erupted on the national level in the matter of including birth-control information and material in foreign aid to underdeveloped countries.
Where it is not actually erupting, it rumbles and smolders in sullen resentment like a volcano, ready to explode at any moment.
The time has come for citizens of all faiths to unite in an effort to remove this divisive and nettlesome issue from the political and social life of our nation.
The first step toward the goal is the establishment of a new atmosphere of mutual good will and friendly communication on other than the polemical level.
Instead of emotional recrimination, loaded phrases and sloganeering, we need a dispassionate study of the facts, a better understanding of the opposite viewpoint and a more serious effort to extend the areas of agreement until a solution is reached.
All too often our language is unduly harsh.
The second step is to recognize the substantial agreement--frequently blurred by emotionalism and inaccurate newspaper reporting--already existing between Catholics and Non-Catholics concerning the over-all objectives of family planning.
Instead of Catholics' being obliged or even encouraged to beget the greatest possible number of offspring, as many Non-Catholics imagine, the ideal of responsible parenthood is stressed.
Family planning is encouraged, so that parents will be able to provide properly for their offspring.
These are substantially the same factors considered by Non-Catholics in family planning.
The laws of many states permit birth control only for medical reasons.
The Roman Catholic Church, however, sanctions a much more liberal policy on family planning.
Catholics, Protestants and Jews are in agreement over the objectives of family planning, but disagree over the methods to be used.
The Roman Catholic Church sanctions only abstention or the rhythm method, also known as the use of the infertile or safe period.
The Church considers this to be the method provided by nature and its divine Author: It involves no frustration of nature's laws, but simply an intelligent and disciplined use of them.
With the exception of the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Catholic Churches, most churches make no moral distinction between rhythm and mechanical or chemical contraceptives, allowing the couple free choice.
There is a difference in theological belief where there seems little chance of agreement.
The grounds for the Church's position are Scriptural (Old Testament), the teachings of the fathers and doctors of the early Church, the unbroken tradition of nineteen centuries, the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical authority and the natural law.
The latter plays a prominent role in Roman Catholic theology and is considered decisive, entirely apart from Scripture, in determining the ethical character of birth-prevention methods.
The Roman Catholic natural-law tradition regards as self-evident that the primary objective purpose of the conjugal act is procreation and that the fostering of the mutual love of the spouses is the secondary and subjective end.
This conclusion is based on two propositions: that man by the use of his reason can ascertain God's purpose in the universe and that God makes known His purpose by certain given physical arrangements.
Thus, man can readily deduce that the primary objective end of the conjugal act is procreation, the propagation of the race.
Moreover, man may not supplant or frustrate the physical arrangements established by God, who through the law of rhythm has provided a natural method for the control of conception.
Believing that God is the Author of this law and of all laws of nature, Roman Catholics believe that they are obliged to obey those laws, not frustrate or mock them.
Let it be granted then that the theological differences in this area between Protestants and Roman Catholics appear to be irreconcilable.
But people differ in their religious beliefs on scores of doctrines, without taking up arms against those who disagree with them.
Why is it so different in regard to birth control?
It is because each side has sought to implement its distinctive theological belief through legislation and thus indirectly force its belief, or at least the practical consequences thereof, upon others.
It is always a temptation for a religious organization, especially a powerful or dominant one, to impose through the clenched fist of the law its creedal viewpoint upon others.
Both Roman Catholics and Protestants have succumbed to this temptation in the past.
Consider what happened during World War 1, when the Protestant churches united to push the Prohibition law through Congress.
Many of them sincerely believe that the use of liquor in any form or in any degree is intrinsically evil and sinful.
With over four million American men away at war, Protestants forced their distinctive theological belief upon the general public.
With the return of our soldiers, it soon became apparent that the belief was not shared by the great majority of citizens.
The attempt to enforce that belief ushered in a reign of bootleggers, racketeers, hijackers and gangsters that led to a breakdown of law unparalleled in our history.
The so-called noble experiment came to an inglorious end.
That tumultuous, painful and costly experience shows clearly that a law expressing a moral judgment cannot be enforced when it has little correspondence with the general view of society.
That experience holds a lesson for us all in regard to birth control today.
Up to the turn of the century, contraception was condemned by all Christian churches as immoral, unnatural and contrary to divine law.
This was generally reflected in the civil laws of Christian countries.
Today, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches stand virtually alone in holding that conviction.
The various Lambeth Conferences, expressing the Anglican viewpoint, mirror the gradual change that has taken place among Protestants generally.
Denouncing the view that the sexual union is an end in itself, the Conference declared: We steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage.
One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely, the continuance of the race through the gift and heritage of children;
the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control.
The Conference called for a vigorous campaign against the open or secret sale of contraceptives.
In 1930, the Lambeth Conference again affirmed the primary purpose of marriage to be the procreation of children, but conceded that, in certain limited circumstances, contraception might be morally legitimate.
In 1958, the Conference endorsed birth control as the responsibility laid by God on parents everywhere.
Many other Protestant denominations preceded the Anglicans in such action.
In March, 1931, 22 out of 28 members of a committee of the Federal Council of Churches ratified artificial methods of birth control.
As to the necessity, the committee declared, for some form of effective control of the size of the family and the spacing of children, and consequently of control of conception, there can be no question.
There is general agreement also that sex union between husbands and wives as an expression of mutual affection without relation to procreation is right.
Since then, many Protestant denominations have made separate pronouncements, in which they not only approved birth control, but declared it at times to be a religious duty.
What determines the morality, they state, is not the means used, but the motive In general, the means (excluding abortion) that prove most effective are considered the most ethical.
This development is reflected in the action taken in February, 1961, by the general board of the National Council of Churches, the largest Protestant organization in the Aj.
The board approved and commended the use of birth-control devices as a part of Christian responsibility in family planning.
It called for opposition to laws and institutional practices restricting the information or availability of contraceptives.
The general board declared: Most of the Protestant churches hold contraception and periodic continence to be morally right when the motives are right.
The general Protestant conviction is that motives, rather than methods, form the primary moral issue, provided the methods are limited to the prevention of conception.
An action once universally condemned by all Christian churches and forbidden by the civil law is now not only approved by the overwhelming majority of Protestant denominations, but also deemed, at certain times, to be a positive religious duty.
This viewpoint has now been translated into action by the majority of people in this country.
Repeated polls have disclosed that most married couples are now using contraceptives in the practice of birth control.
For all concerned with social-welfare legislation, the significance of this radical and revolutionary change in the thought and habits of the vast majority of the American people is clear, profound and far-reaching.
To try to oppose the general religious and moral conviction of such a majority by a legislative fiat would be to invite the same breakdown of law and order that was occasioned by the ill-starred Prohibition experiment.
This brings us to the fact that the realities we are dealing with lie not in the field of civil legislation, but in the realm of conscience and religion: They are moral judgments and matters of theological belief.
Conscience and religion are concerned with private sin: The civil law is concerned with public crimes.
Only confusion, failure and anarchy result when the effort is made to impose upon the civil authority the impossible task of policing private homes to preclude the possibility of sin.
Among the chief victims of such an ill-conceived imposition would be religion itself.
On April 17, 1610, the sturdy little three-masted bark, Discovery, weighed anchor in St. Katherine's Pool, London, and floated down the Thames toward the sea.
She carried, besides her captain, a crew of twenty-one and provisions for a voyage of exploration of the Arctic waters of North America.
Seventeen months later, on September 6, 1611, an Irish fishing boat sighted the Discovery limping eastward outside Galway Bay.
When she reached port, she was found to have on board only eight men, all near starvation.
The captain was gone, and the mate was gone.
The man who now commanded her had started the voyage as an ordinary seaman.
What disaster struck the Discovery during those seventeen months?
What happened to the fourteen missing men?
These questions have remained one of the great sea mysteries of all time.
For hundreds of years, the evidence available consisted of (1) the captain's fragmentary journal, (2) a highly prejudiced account by one of the survivors, (3) a note found in a dead man's desk on board, and (4) several second-hand reports.
All told, they offered a highly confused picture.
But since 1927, researchers digging into ancient court records and legal files have been able to find illuminating pieces of information.
Not enough to do away with all doubts, but sufficient to give a fairly accurate picture of the events of the voyage.
Historians have had two reasons for persisting so long in their investigations.
First, they wanted to clarify a tantalizing, bizarre enigma.
Second, they believed it important to determine the fate of the captain--a man whose name is permanently stamped on our maps, on American towns and counties, on a great American river, and on half a million square miles of Arctic seas.
The name: Henry Hudson.
This is the story of his last tragic voyage, as nearly as we are able--or ever, probably, will be able--to determine:
The sailing in the spring of 1610 was Hudson's fourth in four years.
Each time his objective had been the same--a direct water passage from Western Europe to the Far East.
In 1607 and 1608, the English Muscovy Company had sent him northward to look for a route over the North Pole or across the top of Russia.
Twice he had failed, and the Muscovy Company indicated it would not back him again.
In 1609, the Dutch East India Company hired Hudson, gave him two learned geographers, fitted him out with a ship called the Half Moon, and supplied him with Dutch sailors.
This time he turned westward, to the middle Atlantic coast of North America.
His chief discovery was important--the Great North (later, the Hudson) River--but it produced no northwest passage.
When the Half Moon put in at Dartmouth, England, in the fall of 1609, word of Hudson's findings leaked out, and English interest in him revived.
The government forbade Hudson to return to Amsterdam with his ship.
He thereupon went to London and spent the winter talking to men of wealth.
By springtime, he was supported by a rich merchant syndicate under the patronage of Henry, Prince of Wales.
He had obtained and provisioned a veteran ship called the Discovery and had recruited a crew of twenty-one, the largest he had ever commanded.
The purpose of this fourth voyage was clear.
A century of exploration had established that a great land mass, North and South America, lay between Europe and the Indies.
One by one, the openings in the coast that promised a passage through had been explored and discarded.
In fact, Hudson's sail up the Great North River had disposed of one of the last hopes.
But there remained one mysterious, unexplored gap, far to the north.
Nearly twenty-five years before, Captain John Davis had noted, as he sailed near the Arctic Circle, a very great gulf, the water whirling and roaring, as it were the meeting of tides.
He named this opening, between Baffin Island and Labrador, the Furious Overfall.
(Later, it was to be called Hudson Strait.
In 1602, George Waymouth, in the same little Discovery that Hudson now commanded, had sailed 300 miles up the strait before his frightened men turned the ship back.
Hudson now proposed to sail all the way through and test the seas beyond for the long-sought waterway.
Even Hudson, experienced in Arctic sailing and determined as he was, must have had qualms as he slid down the Thames.
Ahead were perilous, ice-filled waters.
On previous voyages, it had been in precisely such dangerous situations that he had failed as a leader and captain.
On the second voyage, he had turned back at the frozen island of Novaya Zemlya and meekly given the crew a certificate stating that he did so of his own free will--which was obviously not the case.
On the third voyage, a near-mutiny rising from a quarrel between Dutch and English crew members on the Half Moon had almost forced him to head the ship back to Amsterdam in Mid-Atlantic.
Worse, his present crew included five men who had sailed with him before.
Of only one could he be sure--young John Hudson, his second son.
The mate, Robert Juet, who had kept the journal on the Half Moon, was experienced--but he was a bitter old man, ready to complain or desert at any opportunity.
Philip Staffe, the ship's carpenter, was a good worker, but perversely independent.
Arnold Lodley and Michael Perse were like the rest--lukewarm, ready to swing against Hudson in a crisis.
But men willing to sail at all into waters where wooden ships could be crushed like eggs were hard to find.
Hudson knew he had to use these men as long as he remained an explorer.
And he refused to be anything else.
It is believed that Hudson was related to other seafaring men of the Muscovy Company and was trained on company ships.
He was a Londoner, married, with three sons.
(The common misconception that he was Dutch and that his first name was Hendrik stem from Dutch documents of his third voyage.
) In 1610, Hudson was probably in his early forties, a good navigator, a stubborn voyager, but otherwise fatally unsuited to his chosen profession.
Hudson's first error of the fourth voyage occurred only a few miles down the Thames.
There at the river's edge waited one Henry Greene, whom Hudson listed as a clerk.
Greene was in actuality a young ruffian from Kent, who had broken with his parents in order to keep the company he preferred--pimps, panders and whores.
He was not the sort of sailor Hudson wanted his backers to see on board and he had Greene wait at Gravesend, where the Discovery picked him up.
For the first three weeks, the ship skirted up the east coast of Great Britain, then turned westward.
On May 11, she reached Iceland.
Poor winds and fog locked her up in a harbor the crew called Lousie Bay.
The subsequent two-weeks wait made the crew quarrelsome.
With Hudson looking on, his protege Greene picked a fight with the ship's surgeon, Edward Wilson.
The issue was settled on shore, Greene winning and Wilson remaining ashore, determined to catch the next fishing boat back to England.
With difficulty, Hudson persuaded him to rejoin the ship, and they sailed from Iceland.
Early in June, the Discovery passed Desolation (southern Greenland) and in mid-June entered the Furious Overfall.
Floating ice bore down from the north and west.
Fog hung over the route constantly.
Turbulent tides rose as much as fifty feet.
The ship's compass was useless because of the nearness of the magnetic North Pole.
As the bergs grew larger, Hudson was forced to turn south into what is now Ungava Bay, an inlet of the Great Strait.
After finding that its coasts led nowhere, however, he turned north again, toward the main, ice-filled passageway--and the crew, at first uneasy, then frightened, rebelled.
The trouble was at least partly Juet's doing.
For weeks he had been saying that Hudson's idea of sailing through to Java was absurd.
The great, crushing ice masses coming into view made him sound like the voice of pure reason.
A group of sailors announced to Hudson that they would sail no farther.
Instead of quelling the dissension, as many captains of the era would have done (Sir Francis Drake lopped a man's head off under similar circumstances), Hudson decided to be reasonable.
He went to his cabin and emerged carrying a large chart, which he set up in view of the crew.
Patiently, he explained what he knew about their course and their objectives.
When Hudson had finished, the town meeting broke down into a general, wordy argument.
One man remarked that if he had a hundred pounds, he would give ninety of them to be back in England.
Up spoke carpenter Staffe, who said he wouldn't give ten pounds to be home.
The statement was effective.
The meeting broke up.
Hudson was free to sail on.
All through July the Discovery picked her way along the 450-mile-long strait, avoiding ice and rocky islands.
On August 3, two massive headlands reared out of the mists--great gateways never before, so far as Hudson knew, seen by Europeans.
To starboard was a cape a thousand feet high, patched with ice and snow, populated by thousands of screaming sea birds.
To port was a point 200 feet high rising behind to a precipice of 2,000 feet.
Hudson named the capes Digges and Wolstenholme, for two of his backers.
Hudson pointed the Discovery down the east coast of the newly discovered sea (now called Hudson Bay), confident he was on his way to the warm waters of the Pacific.
After three weeks' swift sailing, however, the ship entered an area of shallow marshes and river deltas.
The ship halted.
The great sea to the westwards was a dead end.
This must have been Hudson's blackest discovery.
For he seemed to sense at once that before him was no South Sea, but the solid bulk of the North American continent.
This was the bitter end, and Hudson seemed to know he was destined to failure.
Feverishly, he tried to brush away this intuition.
North and south, east and west, back and forth he sailed in the land-locked bay, plowing furiously forward until land appeared, then turning to repeat the process, day after day, week after week.
Hundreds of miles to the north, the route back to England through the Furious Overfall was again filling with ice.
The men were at first puzzled, then angered by the aimless tacking.
Once more, Juet's complaints were the loudest.
Hudson's reply was to accuse the mate of disloyalty.
Juet demanded that Hudson prove his charges in an open trial.
The trial was held September 10.
Hudson, presiding, heard Juet's defense, then called for testimony from crew members.
Juet had made plentiful enemies, several men stepped forward.
Hands on Bible, seaman Lodley and carpenter Staffe swore that Juet had tried to persuade them to keep muskets and swords in their cabins.
Cook Bennett Mathues said Juet had predicted bloodshed on the ship.
Others added that Juet had wanted to turn the ship homeward.
Hudson deposed Juet and cut his pay.
The new mate was Robert Bylot, talented but inexperienced.
There were other shifts and pay cuts according to the way individuals had conducted themselves.
The important result, however, was that Juet and Francis Clemens, the deposed boatswain, became Hudson's sworn enemies.
As Hudson resumed his desperate criss-crossing of the little bay, every incident lessened the crew's respect for him.
Once, after the Discovery lay for a week in rough weather, Hudson ordered the anchor raised before the sea had calmed.
Just as it was being hauled inboard, a sea hit the ship.
Michael Butt and Adame Moore were thrown off the capstan and badly injured.
The anchor cable would have been lost overboard, but Philip Staffe was on hand to sever it with his axe.
Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk, a noble humanitarian Scot concerned with the plight of the crofters of his native Highlands, conceived a plan to settle them in the valley of the Red River of the North.
Since the land he desired lay within the great northern empire of the Hudson's Bay Company, he purchased great blocks of the Comany's stock with the view to controlling its policies.
Having achieved this end, he was able to buy 116,000 square miles in the valleys of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
The grant, which stretched southward to Lake Traverse--the headwaters of the Red--was made in May, 1811, and by October of that year a small group of Scots was settling for the winter at York Factory on Hudson Bay.
Seven hundred miles south of York Factory, at the Forks of the Red and the Assiniboine, twenty-three men located a settlement in August 1812.
By October the little colony about Fort Douglas (present-day Winnipeg) numbered 100.
Within a few years the Scots, engaged in breaking the thick sod and stirring the rich soil of the valley, were joined by a group called Meurons.
The latter, members of two regiments of Swiss mercenaries transported by Great Britain to Canada to fight the Americans in the War of 1812, had settled in Montreal and Kingston at the close of the war in 1815.
Selkirk persuaded eighty men and four officers to go to Red River where they were to serve as a military force to protect his settlers from the hostile Northwest Company which resented the intrusion of farmers into the fur traders' empire.
The mercenaries were little interested in farming and added nothing to the output of the farm plots on which all work was still done with hoes as late as 1818.
It was the low yield of the Selkirk plots and the ravages of grasshoppers in 1818 that led to the dispersal of the settlement southward.
When late in the summer the full extent of the damage was assessed, all but fifty of the Scots, Swiss and metis moved up the Red to the mouth of the Pembina river.
Here they built huts and a stockade named Fort Daer after Selkirk's barony in Scotland.
The new site was somewhat warmer than Fort Douglas and much closer to the great herds of buffalo on which the settlement must depend for food.
The Selkirk settlers had been anticipated in their move southward by British fur traders.
For many years the Northwest Company had its southern headquarters at Prairie Du Chien on the Mississippi River, some 300 miles southeast of present-day St. Paul, Minnesota.
When in 1816 an act of Congress forced the foreign firm out of the United States, its British-born employees, now become American citizens--Joseph Rolette, Joseph Renville and Alexis Bailly--continued in the fur business.
On Big Stone Lake near the headwaters of the Red River, Robert Dickson, Superintendent of the Western Indian Department of Canada, had a trading post and planned in 1818 to build a fort to be defended by twenty men and two small artillery pieces.
His trading goods came from Canada to the Forks of Red River and from Selkirk's settlement he brought them south in carts.
These carts were of a type devised in Pembina in the days of Alexander Henry the Younger about a decade before the Selkirk colony was begun.
In 1802 Henry referred to our new carts as being about four feet off the ground and carrying five times as much as a horse could pack.
They were held together by pegs and withes and in later times drawn by a single ox in thills.
It was Dickson who suggested to Lord Selkirk that he return to the Atlantic coast by way of the United States.
In September 1817 at Fort Daer (Pembina) Dickson met the noble lord whom, with the help of a band of Sioux, he escorted to Prairie Du Chien.
Upon arriving at Baltimore, Selkirk on December 22 wrote to John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State at Washington, inquiring about laws covering trade with Missouri and Illinois Territories.
This traffic, he declared prophetically, tho' it might be of small account at first, would increase with the progress of our Settlements.
The route which he had traveled and which he believed might develop into a trade route was followed by his settlers earlier than he might have expected.
In 1819 grasshoppers again destroyed the crop at the Forks (Fort Douglas) and in December 1819, twenty men left Fort Daer for the most northerly American outpost at Prairie Du Chien.
It was a three-month journey in the dead of winter followed by three months of labor on Mackinac boats.
They reached Fort Douglas in June 1820.
This epic effort to secure seed for the colony cost Selkirk Ab1,040.
Nevertheless so short was the supply of seed that the settlers were forced to retreat to Fort Daer for food.
Thereafter seed and food became more plentiful and the colony remained in the north the year round.
In September 1822 two companies of infantry arrived at the mouth of the St. Peter's River, the head of navigation on the Mississippi, and began construction of Fort St. Anthony which, upon completion, was renamed in honor of its commander, Colonel Josiah Snelling.
It was from the American outposts that Red River shortages of livestock were to be made good.
Hercules L. Dousman, fur trader and merchant at Prairie Du Chien, contracted to supply Selkirk's people with some 300 head of cattle, and Alexis Bailly and Francois Labothe were hired as drovers.
Bailly, after leaving Fort Snelling in August 1821, was forced to leave some of the cattle at the Hudson's Bay Company's post on Lake Traverse in the Sieux Country and reached Fort Garry, as the Selkirk Hudson's Bay Company center was now called, late in the fall.
He set out on his 700-mile return journey with five families of discontented and disappointed Swiss who turned their eyes toward the United States.
Observing their distressing condition, Colonel Snelling allowed these half-starved immigrants to settle on the military reservation.
As these Swiss were moving from the Selkirk settlement to become the first civilian residents of Minnesota, Dousman of Michilimackinac, Michigan, and Prairie Du Chien was traveling to Red River to open a trade in merchandise.
Early in 1822 he was at Fort Garry offering to bring in pork, flour, liquor and tobacco.
Alexander McDonnell, governor of Red River, and James Bird, a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, ordered such sundry articles to a value of Ab4,500.
For its part the Hudson's Bay Company was troubled by the approach of American settlement.
As the time drew near for the drawing of the British-American frontier by terms of the agreement of 1818, the company suspected that the Pembina colony--its own post and Fort Daer--was on American territory.
Accordingly Selkirk's agents ordered the settlers to move north, and by October, John Halkett had torn down both posts, floating the timber to the Forks in rafts.
I have done everything, he wrote, to break up the whole of that unfortunate establishment.
Despite Company threats, duly carried through, to cut off supplies of powder, ball, and thread for fishing nets, about 350 persons stayed in the village.
They would attempt to bring supplies from St. Louis or Prairie Du Chien at great expense as well as danger.
At Fort Garry some of the Swiss also decided to cast their lot with the United States, and in 1823 several families paid guides to take them to Fort Snelling.
The disasters of 1825-1826 caused more to leave.
After heavy rains and an onslaught of mice, snow fell on October 15, 1825, and remained on the ground through a winter so cold that the ice on the Red was five feet thick.
In April came a rapid thaw that produced high waters which did not recede until mid-June.
On June 24 more than 400 families started the three-month trip across the plains to the Mississippi.
By fall, 443 survivors of this arduous journey were clustered about Fort Snelling, but most of them were sent on to Galena and St. Louis, with a few going as far as Vevay, Indiana, a notable Swiss center in the United States.
In 1837, 157 Red River people with more than 200 cattle were living on the reservation at Fort Snelling.
Below the fort, high bluffs extended uninterruptedly for six miles along the Mississippi River.
At the point where they ended, another settlement grew up around a chapel built at the boat landing by Father Lucian Galtier in 1840.
Its people, including Pierre Bottineau and other American Fur Company employees and the refugees from Fort Garry, were joined by the remaining Scots and Swiss from Fort Snelling when Major Joseph Plympton expelled them from the reservation in May 1840.
The resultant town, platted in 1847 and named for the patron of Father Galtier's mission, St. Paul, was to become an important center of the fur trade and was to take on a new interest for those Selkirkers who remained at Red River.
While population at Fort Garry increased rapidly, from 2,417 in 1831 to 4,369 in 1840, economic opportunities did not increase at a similar rate.
Accordingly, though the practice violated the no-trading provision of the Selkirk charter which reserved all such activity in merchandise and furs to the Hudson's Bay Company, some settlers went into trade.
The Company maintained a store at which products of England could be purchased and brought in goods for the new merchants on the understanding that they refrain from trading in furs.
Despite this prohibiton, by 1844 some of the Fort Garry merchants were trading with the Indians for furs.
In June 1845, the Governor and Council of Assiniboia imposed a 20 per cent duty on imports via Hudson's Bay which were viewed as aimed at the very vitals of the Company's trade and power.
To reduce further the flow of goods from England, the Company's local officials asked that its London authorities refrain from forwarding any more trade goods to these men.
With their customary source of supply cut off, the Fort Garry free traders engaged three men to cart goods to them from the Mississippi country.
Others carried pemmican from the Forks to St. Paul and goods from St. Paul to Red River, as in the summer of 1847 when one trader, Wells, transported twenty barrels of whisky to the British settlement.
This trade was subject to a tariff of 7.5 per cent after February 1835, but much was smuggled into Assiniboia with the result that the duty was reduced by 1841 to 4 per cent on the initiative of the London committee.
The trade in a few commodities noted above was to grow in volume as a result of changes both north and south of the 49th parallel.
The letters of the common soldiers are rich in humor.
Indeed, no richer humor is to be found in the whole of American literature than in the letters of the semi-literate men who wore the blue and the gray.
Some of their figures of speech were colorful and expressive.
A Confederate observed that the Yankees were: thicker than lise on a hen and a dam site ornraier.
Another reported that his comrades were in fine spirits pitching around like a blind dog in a meat house.
A third wrote that it was raining like poring peas on a rawhide.
Yanks were equally adept at figurative expression.
One wrote: (I am so hungry) I could eat a rider off his horse & snap at the stirups.
A second reported that the dilapidated houses in Virginia look like the latter end of original sin and hard times.
A third remarked of slowness of Southerners: they moved about from corner to corner, as uneasy as a litter of hungry leaches on the neck of a wooden god.
Still another, annoyed by the brevity of a recently received missive, wrote: yore letter was short and sweet, jist like a roasted maget.
A Yankee sergeant gave the following description of his sweetheart: my girl is none of your one-horse girls.
She is a regular stub and twister, double geered.
She is well-educated and refined, all wildcat and fur, and Union from the muzzle to the crupper.
Humor found many modes of expression.
A Texan wrote to a male companion at home: what has become of Halda and Laura?
When you see them again give them my love--not best respects now, but love by God.
William R. Stillwell, an admirable Georgian whose delightful correspondence is preserved in the Georgia Department of Archives and History, liked to tease his wife in his letters.
After he had been away from home about a year he wrote: (dear Wife) if I did not write and receive letters from you I believe that I would forgit that I was married.
I don't feel much like a maryed man but I never forgit it sofar as to court enny other lady but if I should you must forgive me as I am so forgitful.
A Yank, disturbed by his increasing corpulence, wrote: I am growing so fat I am a burden 2 myself.
Another Yank parodied the familiar bedtime prayer: now I lay me down to sleep, the gray-backs o'er my body creep;
if they should bite before I wake, I pray the Lord their jaws to break.
Charles Thiot, a splendid Georgia soldier, differed from most of his comrades in the ranks in that he was the owner of a large plantation, well-educated, and nearly fifty years of age.
But he was very much like his associates in his hatred of camp routine.
Near the end of his service he wrote that when the war was over he was going to buy two pups, name one of them Fall-in and the other Close-up, and then shoot them both, and that will be the end of Fall-in and Close-up.
The soldiers who comprised the rank and file of the Civil War armies were an earthy people.
They talked and wrote much about the elemental functions of the body.
One of the most common of camp maladies was diarrhoea.
Men of more delicate sensibilities referred to this condition as looseness of the bowels;
but a much more common designation was the sh-ts.
A Michigan soldier stationed in Georgia wrote in 1864::
I expect to be tough as a knott as soon as I get over the Georgia Shitts.
Johnny Rebs from the deep South who were plagued with diarrhoea after transfer to the Virginia front often informed their families that they were suffering from the the Virginia quickstep.
A Georgia soldier gave his wife the following description of the cause and consequence of diarrhoea: I have bin a little sick with diorah two or three days.
I eat too much eggs and poark.
It sowered (on) my stomack and turn loose on me.
A Michigan soldier wrote his brother: I am well at present with the exception I have got the Dyerear and I hope thease few lines find you the same.
The letters which poured forth from camps were usually written under adverse circumstances.
Save for brief periods in garrison or winter quarters, soldiers rarely enjoyed the luxury of a writing desk or table.
Most of the letters were written in the hubbub of camp, on stumps, pieces of bark, drum heads, or the knee.
In the South, after the first year of the war, paper and ink were very poor.
Scarcity of paper caused many Southerners to adopt the practice of cross-writing, i.e., after writing from left to right of the page in the usual manner, they gave the sheet a half turn and wrote from end to end across the lines previously written.
Sometimes soldiers wrote letters while bullets were whizzing about their heads.
A Yank writing from Vicksburg, May 28, 1863, stated: not less than 50 balls have passed over me since I commenced writing.
I could tell you of plenty narrow escapes, but we take no notice of them now.
A Reb stationed near Petersburg informed his mother: I need not tell you that I dodge pretty often for you can see that very plainly by the blots in this letter.
Just count each blot a dodge and add in a few for I don't dodge every time.
Another Reb writing under similar circumstances before Atlanta reported: the Yankees keep shooting so I am afraid they will knock over my ink, so I will close.
the most common type of letter was that of soldier husbands to their wives.
But fathers often addressed communications to their small children;
and these, full of homely advice, are among the most human and revealing of Civil War letters.
Rebs who owned slaves occasionally would include in their letters admonitions or greetings to members of the Negro community.
Occasionally they would write to the slaves.
Early in the war it was not uncommon for planters' sons to retain in camp Negro body servants to perform the menial chores such as cooking, foraging, cleaning the quarters, shining shoes, and laundering clothes.
Sometimes these servants wrote or dictated for enclosure with the letters of their soldier-masters messages to their relatives and to members of their owners' families.
Unmarried soldiers carried on correspondence with sweethearts at home.
Owing to the restrained usages characteristic of 19th-century America, these letters usually were stereotyped and revealed little depth of feeling.
Occasionally gay young blades would write vividly to boon companions at home about their amorous exploits in Richmond, Petersburg, Washington, or Nashville.
But these comments are hardly printable.
An Alabama soldier whose feminine associations were of the more admirable type wrote boastfully of his achievements among the Virginia belles: they thout I was a saint.
I told them some sweet lies and they believed it all.
I would tell them I got a letter from home stating that five of my Negroes had runaway and ten of Pappy's.
But I wold say I recond he did not mind it for he had a plenty more left and then they would lean to me like a sore eyd kitten to a basin of milk.
Some of the letters were pungently expressive.
An Ohio soldier who, from a comrade just returned from leave, received an unfavorable comment on the conduct of his sister, took pen in hand and delivered himself thus: dear Sis.
Alf sed he heard that you and Hardy was a runing together all the time and he though he wod gust quit having any thing mor to doo with you for he thought it was no more yuse.
I think you made a dam good chouise to turn off as nise a feler as Alf Dyer and let that orney thefin, drunkard, damed card playing sun of a bich com to sea you, the god damed theaf and lop yeard pigen tode helion, he is too orney for hel.
I will shute him as shore as I sea him.
Initiation into combat sometimes elicited from soldier correspondents choice comments about their experiences and reactions.
A Federal infantryman wrote to his father shortly after his first skirmish in Virginia: dear Pa.
Went out a skouting yesterday.
We got to one house where there were five secessionists.
They brok & run and Arch holored out to shoot the ornery suns of biches and we all let go at them.
Thay may say what they please but godamit Pa it is fun.
Some of the choicest remarks made by soldiers in their letters were in disparagement of unpopular officers.
A Mississippi soldier wrote: our General Reub Davis is a vain, stuck-up, illiterate ass.
An Alabamian wrote: Col. Henry is (an ignoramus) fit for nothing higher than the cultivation of corn.
A Floridian stated that his officers were not fit to tote guts to a bear.
His head cannot contain enough sense to command a regiment, much less a corps.
Jackson runs first and his Cavalry are well drilled to follow their leader.
He is not worth shucks.
But he is a West Point graduate and therefore must be born to command.
Similar comments about officers are to be found in the letters of Northern soldiers.
A Massachusetts soldier, who seems to have been a Civil War version of Bill Mauldin, wrote: the officers consider themselves as made of a different material from the low fellows in the ranks.
They get all the glory and most of the pay and don't earn ten cents apiece on the average, the drunken rascals.
Private George Gray Hunter of Pennsylvania wrote: I am well convinced in my own mind that had it not been for officers this war would have ended long ago.
Another Yankee became so disgusted as to state: I wish to God one half of our officers were knocked in the head by slinging them against (the other half).
No group of officers came in for more spirited denunciation than the doctors.
One Federal soldier wrote: the docters is no aconte--hell will be filde with do(c)ters and offersey when this war is over.
Shortly after the beginning of Sherman's Georgia campaign, an ailing Yank wrote his homefolk: the surgeon insisted on sending me to the hospital for treatment.
I insisted on takeing the field and prevailed--thinking that I had better die by rebel bullets than (by) Union quackery.
The attitudes which the Rebs and Yanks took toward each other were very much the same and ranged over the same gamut of feeling, from friendliness to extreme hatred.
The Rebs were, to a Massachusetts corporal, fighting madmen or not men at all but whiskey & gunpowder put into a human frame.
A Pennsylvania soldier wrote that they were the hardest looking set of men that ever I saw.
They looked as if they had been fed on vinegar and shavings.
They recooned as how you'uns all would be a heap wus to we'uns all'''.
The popularity of folklore in America stands in direct proportion to the popularity of nationalism in America.
And the emphasis on nationalism in America is in proportion to the growth of American influence across the world.
Thus, if we are to observe American folklore in the twentieth century, we will do well to establish the relationships between folklore, nationalism and imperialism at the outset.
Historians have come to recognize two cardinal facts concerning nationalism and international influence.
1) Every age rewrites the events of its history in terms of what should have been, creating legends about itself that rationalize contemporary beliefs and excuse contemporary actions.
What actually occurred in the past is seldom as important as what a given generation feels must have occurred.
2) As a country superimposes its cultural and political attitudes on others, it searches its heritage in hopes of justifying its aggressiveness.
Its folklore and legend, usually disguised as history, are allowed to account for group actions, to provide a focal point for group loyalty, and to become a cohesive force for national identification.
One can apply these facts to Britain in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as she spread her dominion over palm and pine, and they can be applied again to the United States in more recent years.
The popularity of local color literature before the Spanish-American War, the steady currency of the Lincoln myth, the increased emphasis on the frontier West in our mass media are cases in point.
Of course, nationalism has really outlived its usefulness in a country as world-oriented as ours, and its continued existence reflects one of the major culture lags of the twentieth-century United States.
Yet nationalism has lost few of its charms for the historian, writer or man in the street.
It is an understandable paradox that most American history and most American literature is today written from an essentially egocentric and isolationistic point of view at the very time America is spreading her dominion over palm and pine.
Anyone's identification with an international struggle, whether warlike or peaceful, requires absurd oversimplification and intense emotional involvement.
Such identification comes for each group in each crisis by rewriting history into legend and developing appropriate national heroes.
In America, such self-deception has served a particularly useful purpose.
A heterogeneous people have needed it to attain an element of cultural and political cohesion in a new and ever-changing land.
But we must never forget, most of the appropriate heroes and their legends were created overnight, to answer immediate needs, almost always with conscious aims and ends.
Parson Weems's George Washington became the symbol of honesty and the father image of the uniting States.
Abraham Lincoln emerged as an incarnation of the national Constitution.
Robert E. Lee represented the dignity needed by a rebelling confederacy.
And their roles are paralleled by those of Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, Theodore Roosevelt and many, many more.
Therefore, the scholar, as he looks at our national folklore of the last 60 years, will be mindful of two facts.
1) Most of the legends that are created to fan the fires of patriotism are essentially propagandistic and are not folk legends at all.
2) The concept that an American national folklore exists is itself probably another propagandistic legend.
Folklore is individually created art that a homogeneous group of people preserve, vary and recreate through oral transmission.
It has come to mean myths, legends, tales, songs, proverbs, riddles, superstitions, rhymes and such literary forms of expression.
Related to written literature, and often remaining temporarily frozen in written form, it loses its vitality when transcribed or removed from its oral existence.
Though it may exist in either literate or illiterate societies, it assumes a role of true cultural importance only in the latter.
In its propagandistic and commercial haste to discover our folk heritage, the public has remained ignorant of definitions such as this.
Enthusiastically, Americans have swept subliterary and bogus materials like Paul Bunyan tales, Abe Lincoln anecdotes and labor union songs up as true products of our American oral tradition.
Naturally, such scholarly facts are of little concern to the man trying to make money or fan patriotism by means of folklore.
That much of what he calls folklore is the result of beliefs carefully sown among the people with the conscious aim of producing a desired mass emotional reaction to a particular situation or set of situations is irrelevant.
As long as his material is Americana, can in some way be ascribed to the masses and appears democratic to his audience, he remains satisfied.
From all this we can now see that two streams of development run through the history of twentieth-century American folklore.
On the one side we have the university professors and their students, trained in Teutonic methods of research, who have sought out, collected and studied the true products of the oral traditions of the ethnic, regional and occupational groups that make up this nation.
On the other we have the flag-wavers and the national sentimentalists who have been willing to use any patriotic, frontier western or colonial material willy-nilly.
Unfortunately, few of the artists (writers, movie producers, dramatists and musicians) who have used American folklore since 1900 have known enough to distinguish between the two streams even in the most general of ways.
After all, the field is large, difficult to define and seldom taught properly to American undergraduates.
In addition, this country has been settled by many peoples of many heritages and their lore has become acculturated slowly, in an age of print and easy communication, within an ever-expanding and changing society.
The problems confuse even the experts.
For that matter, the experts themselves are a mixed breed.
Anthropologists, housewives, historians and such by profession, they approach their discipline as amateurs, collectors, commercial propagandists, analysts or some combination of the four.
They have widely varying backgrounds and aims.
They have little esprit de corps.
The outlook for the amateur, for instance, is usually dependent on his fondness for local history or for the picturesque.
His love of folklore has romanticism in it, and he doesn't care much about the dollar-sign or the footnote.
Folklore is his hobby, and he, all too rightly, wishes it to remain as such.
The amateur is closely related to the collector, who is actually no more than the amateur who has taken to the field.
The collector enjoys the contact with rural life;
he hunts folklore for the very field and stream reasons that many persons hunt game;
and only rarely is he acutely concerned with the meaning of what he has located.
Fundamentally, both these types, the amateur and the collector, are uncritical and many of them don't distinguish well between real folklore and bogus material.
But there are also the commercial propagandists and the analysts--one dominated by money, the other by nineteenth-century German scholarship.
Both are primarily concerned with the uses that can be made of the material that the collector has found.
Both shudder at the thought of proceeding too far beyond the sewage system and the electric light lines.
The commercial propagandist, who can't afford to be critical, gets along well with the amateur, from whom he feeds, but he frequently steps on the analyst's toes by refusing to keep his material genuine.
His standards are, of course, completely foreign to those of the analyst.
To both the amateur and the commercial progandist the analyst lacks a soul, lacks appreciation with his endless probings and classifications.
Dominated by the vicious circle of the university promotion system, the analyst looks down on and gets along poorly with the other three groups, although he cannot deny his debt to the collector.
The knowledge that most Americans have of folklore comes through contact with commercial propagandists and a few energetic amateurs and collectors.
The work done by the analysts, the men who really know what folklore is all about, has no more appeal than any other work of a truly scientific sort and reaches a limited, learned audience.
Publishers want books that will sell, recording studios want discs that will not seem strange to ears used to hillbilly and jazz music, grade and high schools want quaint, but moral, material.
The analyst is apt to be too honest to fit in.
As a result, most people don't have more than a vague idea what folklore actually is;
they see it as a potpourri of charming, moral legends and patriotic anecdotes, with a superstition or remedy thrown in here and there.
And so well is such ignorance preserved by the amateur and the money-maker that even at the college level most of the hundred-odd folklore courses given in the United States survive on sentiment and nationalism alone.
If one wishes to discuss a literary figure who uses folklore in his work, the first thing he must realize is that the literary figure is probably part of this ignorant American public.
And while every writer must be dealt with as a special case, the interested student will want to ask himself a number of questions about each.
Does the writer know the difference between an ersatz ballad or tall tale and a true product of the folk?
When the writer uses material does he tamper with it to improve its commercial effect or does he leave it pure?
Is the writer propagandistic?
Is he swept away by sentiment and nostalgia for an America that was?
Or does he sincerely want to tap the real springs of American attitude and culture regardless of how unpopular and embarrassing they may be?
When he gets the answers to his questions he will be discouraged.
In the first place, a good many writers who are said to use folklore, do not, unless one counts an occasional superstition or tale.
Robert Frost, for instance, writes about rural life in New England, but he does not include any significant amount of folklore in his poems.
This has not, however, prevented publishers from labeling him a folk poet, simply because he is a rural one.
In the second place, a large number of writers, making a more direct claim than Frost to being folk writers of one sort or another, clearly make no distinctions between genuine and bogus material.
Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's Body comes immediately to mind in this connection, as does John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath and Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes.
The last two writers introduce strong political bias into their works, and not unlike the union leaders that we will discuss soon, see folklore as a reservoir of protest by a downtrodden and publically silenced mass.
Folklore, as used by such writers, really reflects images engraved into it by the very person using it.
The folk are simply not homogeneous with respect to nation or political attitude.
In fact, there is much evidence to indicate they don't care a bit about anything beyond their particular regional, ethnic and occupational limits.
As part of the same arrangement, Torrio had, in the spirit of peace and good will, and in exchange for armed support in the April election campaign, bestowed upon O'Banion a third share in the Hawthorne Smoke Shop proceeds and a cut in the Cicero beer trade.
The coalition was to prove inadvisable.
O'Banion was a complex and frightening man, whose bright blue eyes stared with a kind of frozen candour into others'.
He had a round, frank Irish face, creased in a jovial grin that stayed bleakly in place even when he was pumping bullets into someone's body.
He carried three guns--one in the right trouser pocket, one under his left armpit, one in the left outside coat pocket--and was equally lethal with both hands.
He killed accurately, freely, and dispassionately.
The police credited him with twenty-five murders but he was never brought to trial for one of them.
Like a fair number of bootleggers he disliked alcohol.
He was an expert florist, tenderly dextrous in the arrangement of bouquets and wreaths.
He had no apparent comprehension of morality;
he divided humanity into right guys and wrong guys, and the wrong ones he was always willing to kill and trample under.
He had what was described by a psychologist as a sunny brutality.
He walked with a heavy list to the right, as that leg was four inches shorter than the other, but the lurch did not reduce his feline quickness with his guns.
Landesco thought him just a superior sort of plugugly but he was, in fact, with his aggression and hostility, and nerveless indifference to risking or administering pain, a casebook psychopath.
He was also at this time, although not so interwoven in high politics and the rackets as Torrio and Capone, the most powerful and most dangerous mob leader in the Chicago underworld, the roughneck king.
O'Banion was born in poverty, the son of an immigrant Irish plasterer, in the North Side's Little Hell, close by the Sicilian quarter and Death Corner.
He had been a choir boy at the Holy Name Cathedral and also served as an acolyte to Father O'Brien.
The influence of Mass was less pervasive than that of the congested, slum tenements among the bawdy houses, honkytonks, and sawdust saloons of his birthplace;
he ran wild with the child gangs of the neighbourhood, and went through the normal pressure-cooker course of thieving, police-dodging, and housebreaking.
At the age of ten, when he was working as a newsboy in the Loop, he was knocked down by a streetcar which resulted in his permanently shortened leg.
Because of this he was known as Gimpy (but, as with Capone and his nickname of Scarface, never in his presence).
He then got a job with the Chicago Herald-Examiner as a circulation slugger, a rough fighter employed to see that his paper's news pitches were not trespassed upon by rival vendors.
O'Banion's first conflict with the police came in 1909, at seventeen, when he was committed to Bridewell Prison for three months for burglary;
two years later he served another three months for assault.
Those were his only interludes behind bars, although he collected four more charges on his police record in 1921 and 1922, three for burglary and one for robbery.
But by now O'Banion's political pull was beginning to be effective.
On the occasion of his 1922 indictment the $10,000 bond was furnished by an alderman, and the charge was nolle prossed.
On one of his 1921 ventures he was actually come upon by a Detective Sergeant John J. Ryan down on his knees with a tool embedded in a labour office safe in the Postal Telegraph Building;
the jury wanted better evidence than that and he was acquitted, at a cost of $30,000 in bribes, it was estimated.
As promptly as Torrio, O'Banion jumped into bootlegging.
He conducted it with less diplomacy and more spontaneous violence than the Sicilians, but he had his huge North Side portion to exploit and he made a great deal of money.
Unlike the Sicilians, he additionally conducted holdups, robberies, and safe-cracking expeditions, and refused to touch prostitution.
He was also personally active in ward politics, and by 1924 O'Banion had acquired sufficient political might to be able to state: I always deliver my borough as per requirements.
But whose requirements?
Until 1924 O'Banion pistoleers and knuckle-duster bullyboys had kept his North Side domain solidly Democratic.
There was a question-and-answer gag that went around at that time: Q. Who'll carry the Forty-second and Forty-third wards?
A. O'Banion, in his pistol pocket.
But as November 1924 drew close the Democratic hierarchy was sorely troubled by grapevine reports that O'Banion was being wooed by the opposition, and was meeting and conferring with important Republicans.
To forestall any change of allegiance, the Democrats hastily organised a testimonial banquet for O'Banion, as public reward for his past services and as a reminder of where his loyalties lay.
The reception was held in a private dining room of the Webster Hotel on Lincoln Park West.
It was an interesting fraternisation of ex-convicts, union racketeers, ward heelers, sold-out officials, and gunmen.
The guest list is in itself a little parable of the state of American civic life at this time.
It included the top O'Banion men and Chief of Detectives Michael Hughes.
When Mayor Dever heard of the banquet he summoned Hughes for an explanation of why he had been dishonouring the police department by consorting with these felons and fixers.
Hughes said that he had understood the party was to be in honour of Jerry O'Connor, the proprieter of a Loop gambling house.
But when I arrived and recognised a number of notorious characters I had thrown into the detective bureau basement half a dozen times, I knew I had been framed, and withdrew almost at once.
In fact, O'Connor was honoured during the ceremony with the presentation of a $2500 diamond stickpin.
There was a brief interruption while one of O'Banion's men jerked out both his guns and threatened to shoot a waiter who was pestering him for a tip.
Then O'Banion was presented with a platinum watch set with rubies and diamonds.
Pasley continued: They became an institution of the Chicago scene and marked the way to the moral and financial collapse of the municipal and county governments in 1928-29.
However, this inaugural feast did its sponsors no good whatever.
O'Banion accepted his platinum watch and the tributes to his loyalty, and proceeded with the bigger and better Republican deal.
On Election Day--November 4--he energetically marshalled his force of bludgeon men, bribers, and experts in forging repeat votes.
The result was a landslide for the Republican candidates.
This further demonstration of O'Banion's ballooning power did not please Torrio and Capone.
In the past year there had been too many examples of his euphoric self-confidence and self-aggrandisement for their liking.
He behaved publicly with a cocky, swaggering truculence that offended their vulpine Latin minds, and behaved towards them personally with an unimpressed insolence that enraged them beneath their blandness.
To settle this slight, O'Banion went down to the La Salle Theatre in the Loop, where, he had learned, Dave Miller was attending the opening of a musical comedy.
At the end of the performance, Dave and Max came out into the brilliantly lit foyer among a surge of gowned and tuxedoed first nighters.
O'Banion drew his guns and fired at Dave, severely wounding him in the stomach.
A second bullet ricocheted off Max's belt buckle, leaving him unhurt but in some distress.
O'Banion tucked away his gun and walked out of the theatre;
he was neither prosecuted nor even arrested.
That sort of braggadocio, for that sort of reason, in the view of Torrio and Capone, was a nonsense.
A further example of the incompatible difference in personalities was when two policemen held up a Torrio beer convoy on a West Side street and demanded $300 to let it through.
One of the beer-runners telephoned O'Banion--on a line tapped by the detective bureau--and reported the situation.
O'Banion's reaction was: Three hundred dollars!
To them bums?
Why, I can get them knocked off for half that much.
Upon which the detective bureau despatched rifle squads to prevent trouble if O'Banion should send his gunmen out to deal with the hijacking policemen.
But in the meantime the beer-runner, unhappy with this solution, telephoned Torrio and returned to O'Banion with the message: Say, Dionie, I just been talking to Johnny, and he said to let them cops have the three hundred.
He says he don't want no trouble.
But Torrio and Capone had graver cause to hate and distrust the Irishman.
For three years, since the liquor territorial conference, Torrio had, with his elastic patience, and because he knew that retaliation could cause only violent warfare and disaster to business, tolerated O'Banion's impudent double-crossing.
They had suffered, in sulky silence, the sight of his sharp practice in Cicero.
When, as a diplomatic gesture of amity and in payment for the loan of gunmen in the April election, Torrio had given O'Banion a slice of Cicero, the profits from that district had been $20,000 a month.
In six months O'Banion had boosted the profits to $100,000 a month--mainly by bringing pressure to bear on fifty Chicago speak-easy proprietors to shift out to the suburb.
These booze customers had until then been buying their supplies from the Sheldon, Saltis-McErlane, and Druggan-Lake gangs, and now they were competing for trade with the Torrio-Capone saloons;
once again O'Banion's brash recklessness had caused a proliferation of ill will.
The revenue from O'Banion's Cicero territory went up still higher, until the yield was more than the Torrio-Capone takings from the far bigger trade area of Chicago's South and West Sides.
But he still showed no intention of sharing with the syndicate.
At last, even the controlled Torrio was unable to hold still, and he tentatively suggested that O'Banion should take a percentage in the Stickney brothels in return for one from his Cicero beer concession.
O'Banion's reply was a raucous laugh and a flat refusal.
Here was stored $1,000,000 worth of bonded whisky.
These 1750 cases were carted off in a one-night operation by the O'Banion men, who left in their stead the same number of barrels filled with water.
A tsunami may be started by a sea bottom slide, an earthquake or a volcanic eruption.
The most infamous of all was launched by the explosion of the island of Krakatoa in 1883;
it raced across the Pacific at 300 miles an hour, devastated the coasts of Java and Sumatra with waves 100 to 130 feet high, and pounded the shore as far away as San Francisco.
The ancient Greeks recorded several catastrophic inundations by huge waves.
Whether or not Plato's tale of the lost continent of Atlantis is true, skeptics concede that the myth may have some foundation in a great tsunami of ancient times.
Indeed, a tremendously destructive tsunami that arose in the Arabian Sea in 1945 has even revived the interest of geologists and archaeologists in the Biblical story of the Flood.
One of the most damaging tsunami on record followed the famous Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755;
its waves persisted for a week and were felt as far away as the English coast.
Tsunami are rare, however, in the Atlantic Ocean;
they are far more common in the Pacific.
Japan has had 15 destructive ones (eight of them disastrous) since 1596.
The Hawaiian Islands are struck severely an average of once every 25 years.
In 1707 an earthquake in Japan generated waves so huge that they piled into the Inland Sea;
one wave swamped more than 1,000 ships and boats in Osaka Bay.
A tsunami in the Hawaiian Islands in 1869 washed away an entire town (Ponoluu), leaving only two forlorn trees standing where the community had been.
In 1896 a Japanese tsunami killed 27,000 people and swept away 10,000 homes.
The dimensions of these waves dwarf all our usual standards of measurement.
An ordinary sea wave is rarely more than a few hundred feet long from crest to crest--no longer than 320 feet in the Atlantic or 1,000 feet in the Pacific.
But a tsunami often extends more than 100 miles and sometimes as much as 600 miles from crest to crest.
While a wind wave never travels at more than 60 miles per hour, the velocity of a tsunami in the open sea must be reckoned in hundreds of miles per hour.
The greater the depth of the water, the greater is the speed of the wave;
Lagrange's law says that its velocity is equal to the square root of the product of the depth times the acceleration due to gravity.
In the deep waters of the Pacific these waves reach a speed of 500 miles per hour.
Tsunami are so shallow in comparison with their length that in the open ocean they are hardly detectable.
Their amplitude sometimes is as little as two feet from trough to crest.
Usually it is only when they approach shallow water on the shore that they build up to their terrifying heights.
On the fateful day in 1896 when the great waves approached Japan, fishermen at sea noticed no unusual swells.
Not until they sailed home at the end of the day, through a sea strewn with bodies and the wreckage of houses, were they aware of what had happened.
The seemingly quiet ocean had crashed a wall of water from 10 to 100 feet high upon beaches crowded with bathers, drowning thousands of them and flattening villages along the shore.
The giant waves are more dangerous on flat shores than on steep ones.
They usually range from 20 to 60 feet in height, but when they pour into a V-shaped inlet or harbor they may rise to mountainous proportions.
Generally the first salvo of a tsunami is a rather sharp swell, not different enough from an ordinary wave to alarm casual observers.
This is followed by a tremendous suck of water away from the shore as the first great trough arrives.
Reefs are left high and dry, and the beaches are covered with stranded fish.
At Hilo large numbers of people ran out to inspect the amazing spectacle of the denuded beach.
Many of them paid for their curiosity with their lives, for some minutes later the first giant wave roared over the shore.
After an earthquake in Japan in 1793 people on the coast at Tugaru were so terrified by the extraordinary ebbing of the sea that they scurried to higher ground.
When a second quake came, they dashed back to the beach, fearing that they might be buried under landslides.
Just as they reached the shore, the first huge wave crashed upon them.
A tsunami is not a single wave but a series.
The waves are separated by intervals of 15 minutes to an hour or more (because of their great length), and this has often lulled people into thinking after the first great wave has crashed that it is all over.
The waves may keep coming for many hours.
Usually the third to the eighth waves in the series are the biggest.
Among the observers of the 1946 tsunami at Hilo was Francis P. Shepard of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the world's foremost marine geologists.
He was able to make a detailed inspection of the waves.
Their onrush and retreat, he reported, was accompanied by a great hissing, roaring and rattling.
The third and fourth waves seemed to be the highest.
On some of the islands' beaches the waves came in gently;
they were steepest on the shores facing the direction of the seaquake from which the waves had come.
In Hilo Bay they were from 21 to 26 feet high.
The highest waves, 55 feet, occurred at Pololu Valley.
Scientists and fishermen have occasionally seen strange by-products of the phenomenon.
During a 1933 tsunami in Japan the sea glowed brilliantly at night.
The luminosity of the water is now believed to have been caused by the stimulation of vast numbers of the luminescent organism Noctiluca miliaris by the turbulence of the sea.
Japanese fishermen have sometimes observed that sardines hauled up in their nets during a tsunami have enormously swollen stomachs;
the fish have swallowed vast numbers of bottom-living diatoms, raised to the surface by the disturbance.
The waves of a 1923 tsunami in Sagami Bay brought to the surface and battered to death huge numbers of fishes that normally live at a depth of 3,000 feet.
Gratified fishermen hauled them in by the thousands.
The tsunami-warning system developed since the 1946 disaster in Hawaii relies mainly on a simple and ingenious instrument devised by Commander C. K. Green of the Coast and Geodetic Survey staff.
It consists of a series of pipes and a pressure-measuring chamber which record the rise and fall of the water surface.
Ordinary water tides are disregarded.
But when waves with a period of between 10 and 40 minutes begin to roll over the ocean, they set in motion a corresponding oscillation in a column of mercury which closes an electric circuit.
This in turn sets off an alarm, notifying the observers at the station that a tsunami is in progress.
Such equipment has been installed at Hilo, Midway, Attu and Dutch Harbor.
The moment the alarm goes off, information is immediately forwarded to Honolulu, which is the center of the warning system.
This center also receives prompt reports on earthquakes from four Coast Survey stations in the Pacific which are equipped with seismographs.
Its staff makes a preliminary determination of the epicenter of the quake and alerts tide stations near the epicenter for a tsunami.
By means of charts showing wave-travel times and depths in the ocean at various locations, it is possible to estimate the rate of approach and probable time of arrival at Hawaii of a tsunami getting under way at any spot in the Pacific.
The civil and military authorities are then advised of the danger, and they issue warnings and take all necessary protective steps.
All of these activities are geared to a top-priority communication system, and practice tests have been held to assure that everything will work smoothly.
Since the 1946 disaster there have been 15 tsunami in the Pacific, but only one was of any consequence.
On November 4, 1952, an earthquake occurred under the sea off the Kamchatka Peninsula.
At 17:07 that afternoon (Greenwich time) the shock was recorded by the seismograph alarm in Honolulu.
The warning system immediately went into action.
Within about an hour with the help of reports from seismic stations in Alaska, Arizona and California, the quake's epicenter was placed at 51 degrees North latitude and 158 degrees East longitude.
It turned out that the waves were not so high as in 1946.
They hurled a cement barge against a freighter in Honolulu Harbor, knocked down telephone lines, marooned automobiles, flooded lawns, killed six cows.
But not a single human life was lost, and property damage in the Hawaiian Islands did not exceed $800,000.
There is little doubt that the warning system saved lives and reduced the damage.
But it is plain that a warning system, however efficient, is not enough.
In the vulnerable areas of the Pacific there should be restrictions against building homes on exposed coasts, or at least a requirement that they be either raised off the ground or anchored strongly against waves.
The key to the world of geology is change;
nothing remains the same.
Life has evolved from simple combinations of molecules in the sea to complex combinations in man.
The land, too, is changing, and earthquakes are daily reminders of this.
Earthquakes result when movements in the earth twist rocks until they break.
Sometimes this is accompanied by visible shifts of the ground surface;
often the shifts cannot be seen, but they are there;
and everywhere can be found scars of earlier breaks once deeply buried.
Today's earthquakes are most numerous in belts where the earth's restlessness is presently concentrated, but scars of the past show that there is no part of the earth that has not had them.
The effects of earthquakes on civilization have been widely publicized, even overemphasized.
The role of an earthquake in starting the destruction of whole cities is tremendously frightening, but fire may actually be the principal agent in a particular disaster.
Superstition has often blended with fact to color reports.
We have learned from earthquakes much of what we now know about the earth's interior, for they send waves through the earth which emerge with information about the materials through which they have traveled.
These waves have shown that 1,800 miles below the surface a liquid core begins, and that it, in turn, has a solid inner core.
Earthquakes originate as far as 400 miles below the surface, but they do not occur at greater depths.
Two unsolved mysteries are based on these facts.
(1) As far down as 400 miles below the surface the material should be hot enough to be plastic and adjust itself to twisting forces by sluggish flow rather than by breaking, as rigid surface rocks do.
(2) If earthquakes do occur at such depths, why not deeper?
Knowledge gained from studying earthquake waves has been applied in various fields.
In the search for oil and gas, we make similar waves under controlled conditions with dynamite and learn from them where there are buried rock structures favorable to the accumulation of these resources.
We have also developed techniques for recognizing and locating underground nuclear tests through the waves in the ground which they generate.
The following discussion of this subject has been adapted from the book Causes Of Catastrophe by L. Don Leet.
The restless earth and its interior
At twelve minutes after five on the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, San Francisco was shaken by a severe earthquake.
A sharp tremor was followed by a jerky roll.
In Ireland's County Limerick, near the River Shannon, there is a quiet little suburb by the name of Garryowen, which means Garden of Owen.
Undoubtedly none of the residents realize the influence their town has had on American military history, or the deeds of valor that have been done in its name.
The cry Garryowen!
Bursting from the lips of a charging cavalry trooper was the last sound heard on this earth by untold numbers of Cheyennes, Sioux and Apaches, Mexican banditos under Pancho Villa, Japanese in the South Pacific, and Chinese and North Korean Communists in Korea.
Garryowen is the battle cry of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, The Fighting Seventh.
Today a battle cry may seem an anachronism, for in the modern Army, esprit de corps has been sacrificed to organizational charts and tables.
But don't tell that to a veteran of the Fighting Seventh, especially in a saloon on Saturday night.
Of all the thousands of men who have served in the 7th Cav, perhaps no one knows its spirit better than Lieutenant Colonel Melbourne C. Chandler.
Wiry and burr-headed, with steel blue eyes and a chest splattered with medals, Chandler is the epitome of the old-time trooper.
The truth is, however, that when Mel Chandler first reported to the regiment the only steed he had ever ridden was a swivel chair and the only weapon he had ever wielded was a pencil.
Chandler had been commissioned in the Medical Service Corps and was serving as a personnel officer for the Kansas City Medical Depot when he decided that if he was going to make the Army his career, he wanted to be in the fighting part of it.
Though he knew no more about military science and tactics than any other desk officer, he managed to get transferred to the combat forces.
The next thing he knew he was reporting for duty as commanding officer of Troop H, 7th Cavalry, in the middle of corps maneuvers in Japan.
Outside of combat, he couldn't have landed in a tougher spot.
First of all, no unit likes to have a new CO brought in from the outside, especially when he's an armchair trooper.
Second, if there is ever a perfect time to pull the rug out from under him, it's on maneuvers.
In combat, helping your CO make a fool of himself might mean getting yourself killed.
But in maneuvers, with the top brass watching him all the time, it's easy.
Chandler understood this and expected the worst.
But his first few days with Troop H were full of surprises, beginning with First Sergeant Robert Early.
Chandler had expected a tough old trooper with a gravel voice.
Instead Sergeant Early was quiet, sharp and confident.
He had enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and had immediately set about learning his new trade.
There was no weapon Early could not take apart and reassemble blind-folded.
He could lead a patrol and he knew his paper work.
Further, he had taken full advantage of the Army's correspondence courses.
He not only knew soldiering, but mathematics, history and literature as well.
But for all his erudite confidence, Sergeant Early was right out of the Garryowen mold.
He was filled with the spirit of the Fighting Seventh.
That saved Mel Chandler.
Sergeant Early let the new CO know just how lucky he was to be in the best troop in the best regiment in the United States Army.
He fed the captain bits of history about the troops and the regiment.
For example, it was a battalion of the 7th Cavalry under Colonel George Armstrong Custer that had been wiped out at the Battle of The Little Big Horn.
It didn't take Captain Chandler long to realize that he had to carry a heavy load of tradition on his shoulders as commander of Troop Aj.
But what made the load lighter was the realization that every officer, non-com and trooper was ready and willing to help him carry it, for the good of the troop and the regiment.
Maneuvers over, the 7th returned to garrison duty in Tokyo, Captain Chandler still with them.
It was the 7th Cavalry whose troopers were charged with guarding the Imperial Palace of the Emperor.
But still Mel Chandler was not completely convinced that men would really die for a four-syllable word, Garryowen.
The final proof was a small incident.
It happened at the St. Patrick's Day party, a big affair for a regiment which had gone into battle for over three-quarters of a century to the strains of an Irish march.
In the middle of the party Chandler looked up to see four smiling faces bearing down upon him, each beaming above the biggest, greenest shamrock he had ever seen.
The faces belonged to Lieutenant Marvin Goulding, his wife and their two children.
And when the singing began, it was the Gouldings who sang the old Irish songs the best.
Though there was an occasional good-natured chuckle about Marvin Goulding, the Jewish officer from Chicago, singing tearfully about the ould sod, no one really thought it was strange.
For Marvin Goulding, like Giovanni Martini, the bugler boy who carried Custer's last message, or Margarito Lopez, the one-man Army on Leyte, was a Garryowen, through and through.
It was no coincidence that Goulding was one of the most beloved platoon leaders in the regiment.
And so Mel Chandler got the spirit of Garryowen.
He set out to keep Troop H the best troop in the best regiment.
One of his innovations was to see to it that every man--cook and clerk as well as rifleman--qualified with every weapon in the troop.
Even the mess sergeant, Bill Brown, a dapper, cocky transfer from an airborne division, went out on the range.
The troop received a new leader, Lieutenant Robert M. Carroll, fresh out of ROTC and bucking for Regular Army status.
Carroll was sharp and military, but he was up against tough competition for that RA berth, and he wanted to play it cool.
So Mel Chandler set out to sell him on the spirit of Garryowen, just as he himself had been sold a short time before.
When the Korean war began, on June 25, 1950, the anniversary of the day Custer had gone down fighting at the Little Big Horn and the day the regiment had assaulted the beachhead of Leyte during World War 2, the 7th Cavalry was not in the best fighting condition.
Its entire complement of non-commissioned officers on the platoon level had departed as cadre for another unit, and its vehicles were still those used in the drive across Luzon in World War 2.
Just a month after the Korean War broke out, the 7th Cavalry was moving into the lines, ready for combat.
From then on the Fighting Seventh was in the thick of the bitterest fighting in Korea.
One night on the Naktong River, Mel Chandler called on that fabled esprit de corps.
The regiment was dug in on the east side of the river and the North Koreans were steadily building up a concentration of crack troops on the other side.
The troopers knew an attack was coming, but they didn't know when, and they didn't know where.
At 6 o'clock on the morning of August 12, they were in doubt no longer.
Then it came, against Troop Aj.
The enemy had filtered across the river during the night and a full force of 1000 men, armed with Russian machine guns, attacked the position held by Chandler's men.
They came in waves.
First came the cannon fodder, white-clad civilians being driven into death as a massive human battering ram.
They were followed by crack North Korean troops, who mounted one charge after another.
They overran the 7th Cav's forward machine-gun positions through sheer weight of numbers, over piles of their own dead.
Another force flanked the company and took up a position on a hill to the rear.
Captain Chandler saw that it was building up strength.
He assembled a group of 25 men, composed of wounded troopers awaiting evacuation, the company clerk, supply men, cooks and drivers, and led them to the hill.
One of the more seriously wounded was Lieutenant Carroll, the young officer bucking for the Regular Army.
Chandler left Carroll at the bottom of the hill to direct any reinforcements he could find to the fight.
Then Mel Chandler started up the hill.
He took one step, two, broke into a trot and then into a run.
The first thing he knew the words Garryowen!
Burst from his throat.
His followers shouted the old battle cry after him and charged the hill, firing as they ran.
The Koreans fell back, but regrouped at the top of the hill and pinned down the cavalrymen with a screen of fire.
Chandler, looking to right and left to see how his men were faring, suddenly saw another figure bounding up the hill, hurling grenades and hollering the battle cry as he ran.
It was Bob Carroll, who had suddenly found himself imbued with the spirit of Garryowen.
He had formed his own task force of three stragglers and led them up the hill in a Fighting Seventh charge.
Because of this diversionary attack the main group that had been pinned down on the hill was able to surge forward again.
But an enemy grenade hit Carroll in the head and detonated simultaneously.
He went down like a wet rag and the attackers hit the dirt in the face of the withering enemy fire.
Enemy reinforcements came pouring down, seeking a soft spot.
They found it at the junction between Troops H and G, and prepared to counterattack.
Marvin Goulding saw what was happening.
He turned to his platoon.
Okay, men, he said.
Follow me.
Goulding leaped to his feet and started forward, Garryowen!
On his lips, his men following.
But the bullets whacked home before he finished his battle cry and Marvin Goulding fell dead.
For an instant his men hesitated, unable to believe that their lieutenant, the most popular officer in the regiment, was dead.
Then they let out a bellow of anguish and rage and, cursing, screaming and hollering Garryowen!
They charged into the enemy like wild men.
That finished the job that Captain Chandler and Lieutenant Carroll had begun.
Goulding's platoon pushed back the enemy soldiers and broke up the timing of the entire enemy attack.
Reinforcements came up quickly to take advantage of the opening made by Goulding's platoon.
The North Koreans threw away their guns and fled across the rice paddies.
Artillery and air strikes were called in to kill them by the hundreds.
Though Bob Carroll seemed to have had his head practically blown off by the exploding grenade, he lived.
Today he is a major--in the Regular Army.
So filled was Mel Chandler with the spirit of Garryowen that after Korea was over, he took on the job of writing the complete history of the regiment.
After years of digging, nights and weekends, he put together the big, profusely illustrated book, Of Garryowen And Glory, which is probably the most complete history of any military unit.
The battle of the Naktong River is just one example of how the battle cry and the spirit of The Fighting Seventh have paid off.
For nearly a century the cry has never failed to rally the fighting men of the regiment.
Take the case of Major Marcus A. Reno, who survived the Battle of The Little Big Horn in 1876.
From the enlisted men he pistol-whipped to the subordinate officer whose wife he tried to rape, a lot of men had plenty of reason heartily to dislike Marcus Reno.
Many of his fellow officers refused to speak to him.
He was a member of The Fighting Seventh.
Although it was at the Battle of The Little Horn, about which more words have been written than any other battle in American history, that the 7th Cavalry first made its mark in history, the regiment was ten years old by then.
Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer was the regiment's first permanent commander and, like such generals as George S. Patton and Terry De La Mesa Allen in their rise to military prominence, Custer was a believer in blood and guts warfare.
During the Civil War, Custer, who achieved a brilliant record, was made brigadier general at the age of 23.
He finished the war as a major general, commanding a full division, and at 25 was the youngest major general in the history of the U.S. Army.
I do not mean to suggest that these assumptions are self-evident, in the sense that everyone agrees with them.
If they were, Walter Lippmann would be writing the same columns as George Sokolsky, and Herb Lock would have nothing to draw cartoons about.
I do mean, however, that I take them for granted, and that everything I shall be saying would appear quite idiotic against any contrary assumptions.
Assumption 1.
The ultimate objective of American policy is to help establish a world in which there is the largest possible measure of freedom and justice and peace and material prosperity;
and in particular--since this is our special responsibility--that these conditions be enjoyed by the people of the United States.
Assumption 2.
These conditions are unobtainable--are not even approachable in the qualified sense I have indicated--without the prior defeat of world Communism.
This is true for two reasons: because Communism is both doctrinally, and in practice, antithetical to these conditions;
and because Communists have the will and, as long as Soviet power remains intact, the capacity to prevent their realization.
Moreover, as Communist power increases, the enjoyment of these conditions throughout the world diminishes pro rata and the possibility of their restoration becomes increasingly remote.
Assumption 3.
It follows that victory over Communism is the dominant, proximate goal of American policy.
Proximate in the sense that there are more distant, more positive ends we seek, to which victory over Communism is but a means.
But dominant in the sense that every other objective, no matter how worthy intrinsically, must defer to it.
Peace is a worthy objective;
but if we must choose between peace and keeping the Communists out of Berlin, then we must fight.
Freedom, in the sense of self-determination, is a worthy objective;
but if granting self-determination to the Algerian rebels entails sweeping that area into the Sino-Soviet orbit, then Algerian freedom must be postponed.
Justice is a worthy objective;
but if justice for Bantus entails driving the government of the Union of South Africa away from the West, then the Bantus must be prepared to carry their identification cards yet a while longer.
Prosperity is a worthy objective;
but if providing higher standards of living gets in the way of producing sufficient guns to resist Communist aggression, then material sacrifices and denials will have to be made.
It may be, of course, that such objectives can be pursued consisently with a policy designed to overthrow Communism;
my point is that where conflicts arise they must always be resolved in favor of achieving the indispensable condition for a tolerant world--the absence of Soviet Communist power.
The uses of power
This much having been said, the question remains whether we have the resources for the job we have to do--defeat Communism--and, if so, how those resources ought to be used.
This brings us squarely to the problem of power, and the uses a nation makes of power.
I submit that this is the key problem of international relations, that it always has been, that it always will be.
And I suggest further that the main cause of the trouble we are in has been the failure of American policy-makers, ever since we assumed free world leadership in 1945, to deal with this problem realistically and seriously.
In the recent political campaign two charges were leveled affecting the question of power, and I think we might begin by trying to put them into proper focus.
One was demonstrably false;
the other, for the most part, true.
The first was that America had become--or was in danger of becoming--a second-rate military power.
I know I do not have to dwell here on the absurdity of that contention.
I have often searched for a graphic way of impressing our superiority on those Americans who have doubts, and I think Mr. Jameson Campaigne has done it well in his new book American Might And Soviet Myth.
Suppose, he says, that the tables were turned, and we were in the Soviets' position: There would be more than 2,000 modern Soviet fighters, all better than ours, stationed at 250 bases in Mexico and the Caribbean.
Overwhelming Russian naval power would always be within a few hundred miles of our coast.
Half of the population of the U.S. would be needed to work on arms just to feed the people.
Add this to the unrest in the countries around us where oppressed peoples would be ready to turn on us at the first opportunity.
Add also a comparatively primitive industrial plant which would severely limit our capacity to keep abreast of the Soviets even in the missile field which is reputed to be our main strength.
If we look at the situation this way, we can get an idea of Khrushchev's nightmarish worries--or, at least, of the worries he might have if his enemies were disposed to exploit their advantage.
U.S. prestige
The other charge was that America's political position in the world has progressively deteriorated in recent years.
The contention needs to be formulated with much greater precision than it ever was during the campaign, but once that has been done, I fail to see how any serious student of world affairs can quarrel with it.
The argument was typically advanced in terms of U.S. prestige.
Prestige, however, is only a minor part of the problem;
and even then, it is a concept that can be highly misleading.
Prestige is a measure of how other people think of you, well or ill.
But contrary to what was implied during the campaign, prestige is surely not important for its own sake.
Only the vain and incurably sentimental among us will lose sleep simply because foreign peoples are not as impressed by our strength as they ought to be.
The thing to lose sleep over is what people, having concluded that we are weaker than we are, are likely to do about it.
The evidence suggests that foreign peoples believe the United States is weaker than the Soviet Union, and is bound to fall still further behind in the years ahead.
This ignorant estimate, I repeat, is not of any interest in itself;
but it becomes very important if foreign peoples react the way human beings typically do--namely, by taking steps to end up on what appears to be the winning side.
To the extent, then, that declining U.S. prestige means that other nations will be tempted to place their bets on an ultimate American defeat, and will thus be more vulnerable to Soviet intimidation, there is reason for concern.
Still, these guesses about the outcome of the struggle cannot be as important as the actual power relationship between the Soviet Union and ourselves.
Here I do not speak of military power where our advantage is obvious and overwhelming but of political power--of influence, if you will--about which the relevant questions are: Is Soviet influence throughout the world greater or less than it was ten years ago?
And is Western influence greater or less than it used to be?
Communist gains
Success may mean merely the displacement of Western influence.
Communist political warfare, we must remember, is waged insidiously and in deliberate stages.
The Soviets understand, moreover, that the first step in turning a country toward Communism is to turn it against the West.
Thus, typically, the first stage of a Communist takeover is to neutralize a country.
The second stage is to retain the nominal classification of neutralist, while in fact turning the country into an active advocate and adherent of Soviet policy.
And this may be as far as the process will go.
The Kremlin's goal is the isolation and capture, not of Ghana, but of the United States--and this purpose may be served very well by countries that masquerade under a neutralist mask, yet in fact are dependable auxiliaries of the Soviet Foreign Office.
To recite the particulars of recent Soviet successes is hardly reassuring.
Six years ago French Indochina, though in troubie, was in the Western camp.
Today Northern Vietnam is overtly Communist;
Laos is teetering between Communism and pro-Communist neutralism;
Cambodia is, for all practical purposes, neutralist.
Indonesia, in the early days of the Republic, leaned toward the West.
Today Sukarno's government is heavily besieged by avowed Communists, and for all of its neutralist pretensions, it is a firm ally of Soviet policy.
Ceylon has moved from a pro-Western orientation to a neutralism openly hostile to the West.
In the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and Egypt were, a short while ago, in the Western camp.
Today the Nasser and Kassem governments are adamantly hostile to the West, are dependent for their military power on Soviet equipment and personnel;
in almost every particular follow the Kremlin's foreign policy line.
A short time ago all Africa was a Western preserve.
Never mind whether the Kikiyus and the Bantus enjoyed Wilsonian self-determination: the point is that in the struggle for the world that vast land mass was under the domination and influence of the West.
Today, Africa is swerving violently away from the West and plunging, it would seem, into the Soviet orbit.
Latin America was once an area as safe for the West as Nebraska was for Nixon.
Today it is up for grabs.
One Latin American country, Cuba, has become a Soviet bridgehead ninety miles off our coast.
Only in Europe have our lines remained firm--and there only on the surface.
The strains of neutralism are running strong, notably in England, and even in Germany.
Opportunities missed
What have we to show by way of counter-successes?
We have had opportunities--clear invitations to plant our influence on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
There was the Hungarian Revolution which we praised and mourned, but did nothing about.
There was the Polish Revolution which we misunderstood and then helped guide along a course favorable to Soviet interests.
There was the revolution in Tibet which we pretended did not exist.
Only in one instance have we moved purposively and effectively to dislodge existing Communist power: in Guatemala.
And contrary to what has been said recently, we did not wait for outside pressures and world opinion to bring down that Communist government;
we moved decisively to effect an Anti-Communist coup d'etat.
We served our national interests, and by so doing we saved the Guatemalan people the ultimate in human misery.
The first rattle of the machine guns, at 7:10 in the evening, roused around me the varied voices and faces of fear.
Sounds exactly like last time.
The young man spoke steadily enough, but all at once he looked grotesquely unshaven.
The middle-aged man said over and over, Why did I come here, why did I come here.
Then he was sick.
Amid the crackle of small arms and automatic weapons, I heard the thumping of mortars.
Then the lights went out.
This was my second day in Vientiane, the administrative capital of Laos, and my thoughts were none too brave.
Where was my flashlight?
Where should I go?
To my room?
Better stay in the hotel lobby, where the walls looked good and thick.
Chinese and Indian merchants across the street were slamming their steel shutters.
Hotel attendants pulled parked bicycles into the lobby.
A woman with a small boy slipped in between them.
Please, she said, please.
She held out her hand to show that she had money.
The American newspaperman worried about getting to the cable office.
But what was the story?
Had the Communist-led Pathet Lao finally come this far?
Or was it another revolt inside Vientiane?
Let's play hero, I said.
Let's go to the roof and see.
Gunfire saves the moon
By 7:50 the answer was plain.
There had been an eclipse of the moon.
A traditional Lao explanation is that the moon was being swallowed by a toad, and the remedy was to make all possible noise, ideally with firearms.
The din was successful, too, for just before the moon disappeared, the frightened toad had begun to spit it out again, which meant good luck all around.
How quaint it all seemed the next day.
A restaurant posted a reminder to patrons who became excited and left without paying their checks.
But everyone I met had sought cover first and asked questions later.
And no wonder, for Vientiane, the old City of Sandalwood, had become the City of Bullet Holes.
I saw holes in planes at the airport and in cars in the streets.
Along the main thoroughfares hardly a house had not been peppered.
In place of the police headquarters was a new square filled with rubble.
Mortars had demolished the defense ministry and set fire to the American Embassy next door.
What had been the ambassador's suite was now jagged walls of blackened brick.
This damage had been done in the battle of Vientiane, fought less than three months earlier when four successive governments had ruled here in three days (December 9-11, 1960).
And now, in March, all Laos suffered a state of siege.
The Pathet Lao forces held two northern provinces and openly took the offensive in three more.
Throughout the land their hit-and-run terrorists spread fear of ambush and death.
And it's all the more tragic because it's so little deserved, said Mr. J. J. A. Frans, a Belgian official of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
We talked after I hailed his Jeep marked with the U.N. flag.
Practically all the people of Laos, he explained--about two million of them--are rice farmers, and the means and motives of modern war are as strange to them as clocks and steel plows.
They look after their fields and children and water buffaloes in ten or eleven thousand villages, with an average of 200 souls.
Nobody can tell more closely how many villages there are.
They spread over an area no larger than Oregon;
yet they include peoples as different from one another as Oregonians are from Patagonians.
Life must be kept in harmony
What matters here is family loyalty;
faith in the Buddha and staying at peace with the phis, the spirits;
and to live in harmony with nature.
Harmony in Laos?
Precisely, said Mr. Frans.
He spoke of the season of dryness and dust, brought by the monsoon from the northeast, in harmony with the season of rain and mud, brought by the monsoon from the southwest.
The slim pirogues in harmony with the majestically meandering Mekong River.
Shy, slender-waisted girls at the loom in harmony with the frangipani by the wayside.
Even life in harmony with death.
For so long as death was not violent, it was natural and to be welcomed, making a funeral a feast.
To many a Frenchman--they came 95 years ago, colonized, and stayed until Laos became independent in 1953--the land had been even more delightfully tranquil than Tahiti.
Yet Laos was now one of the most explosive headaches of statesmen around the globe.
The Pathet Lao, stiffened by Communist Veterans from neighboring North Viet Nam, were supplied by Soviet aircraft.
The Royal Lao Army, on the other hand, was paid and equipped with American funds.
In six years, U.S. aid had amounted to more than $1.60 for each American--a total of three hundred million dollars.
We were there at a moment when the situation in Laos threatened to ignite another war among the world's giants.
Even if it did not, how would this little world of gentle people cope with its new reality of grenades and submachine guns?
We rode over roads so rough that our Jeep came to rest atop the soil between ruts, all four wheels spinning uselessly.
We flew in rickety planes so overloaded that we wondered why they didn't crash.
In the end we ran into Communist artillery fire.
We were Bill Garrett of the National Geographic Illustrations Staff, whose three cameras and eight lenses made him look as formidable as any fighting man we met;
Boun My, our interpreter;
and myself.
Boun My--the name means one who has a boun, a celebration, and is therefore lucky--was born in Savannakhet, the Border of Paradise.
He had attended three universities in the United States.
But he had never seen the mountainous half of his native land north of Vientiane, including the royal capital, Luang Prabang.
Before the airplanes came, he said, travel in Laos was just about impossible.
Prime minister moves fast
Alas, so it almost proved for us, too.
To go outside the few cities required permits.
And getting them seemed a life's work.
Nobody wanted Americans to be hurt or captured, and few soldiers could be spared as escorts.
We were told that to the Pathet Lao, a kidnaped American was worth at least $750, a fortune in Laos.
Everyone had heard of the American contractor who had spurned an escort.
Now Pathet Lao propagandists were reported marching him barefoot from village to village, as evidence of evil American intervention.
Although we enjoyed our rounds of the government offices in Vientiane, with officials offering tea and pleasing conversation in French, we were getting nowhere.
We had nearly decided that all the tales of Lao lethargy must be true, when we were invited to take a trip with the Prime Minister.
Could we be ready in 15 minutes?
His Highness had decided only two hours ago to go out of town, and he was eager to be off.
Prince wears ten-gallon hat
And so, after a flight southeast to Savannakhet, we found ourselves bouncing along in a Jeep right behind the Land-Rover of Prince Boun Oum of Champassak, a tall man of Churchillian mien in a bush jacket and a ten-gallon hat from Texas.
From his shoulder bag peeked the seven-inch barrel of a Luger.
The temperature rose to 105-degrees.
With our company of soldiers, we made one long column of reddish dust.
In Keng Kok, the City of Silkworms, the Prime Minister bought fried chickens and fried cicadas, and two notebooks for me.
Then we drove on, until there was no more road and we traversed dry rice fields, bouncing across their squat earth walls.
It was a spleen-crushing day.
An hour of bouncing, a brief stop in a village to inspect a new school or dispensary.
More bouncing, another stop, a new house for teachers, a new well.
Then off again, rushing to keep up.
We were miserable.
But our two Jeep mates--Keo Viphakone from Luang Prabang and John Cool from Beaver, Pennsylvania--were beaming under their coatings of dust.
Together they had probably done more than any other men to help push Laos toward the 20th century--constructively.
Mr. Keo, once a diplomat in Paris and Washington, was Commissioner of Rural Affairs.
John, an engineer and anthropologist with a doctorate from the London School of Economics, headed the rural development division of USOM, the United States Operations Mission administering U.S. aid.
What you see are self-help projects, John said.
We ask the people what they want, and they supply the labor.
We send shovels, cement, nails, and corrugated iron for roofs.
That way they have an infirmary for $400.
We have 2,500 such projects, and they add up to a lot more than just roads and wells and schools.
Ask Mr. Keo.
Mr. Keo agreed.
Our people have been used to accepting things as they found them, he said.
Where there was no road, they lived without one.
Now they learn that men can change their surroundings, through their traditional village elders, without violence.
That's a big step toward a modern state.
You might say we are in the nation-building business.
In the villages people lined up to give us flowers.
Then came coconuts, eggs, and rice wine.
The Prime Minister paid his respects to the Buddhist monks, strode rapidly among the houses, joked with the local soldiery, and made a speech.
The soldiers are fighting and the Americans are helping, he said, but in the fight against the Pathet Lao the key factor is the villager himself.
Then we were off again.
We did it for three days.
But our stumping tour of the south wasn't all misery.
Crossing the 4,000-foot width of the Mekong at Champassak, on a raft with an outboard motor, we took off our dusty shirts and enjoyed a veritable ocean breeze.
Then we hung overboard in the water.
Briefly we rolled over a paved road up to Pak Song, on the cool Bolovens Plateau.
The Prince visited the hospital of Operation Brotherhood, supported by the Junior Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, and fed rice to two pet elephants he kept at his residence at Pak Song.
Strings keep souls in place
In the village of Soukhouma, which means Peaceful, we had a baci.
This is the most endearing of Lao ceremonies.
It takes place in the household, a rite of well-wishing for myriad occasions--for the traveler, a wedding, a newborn child, the sick, the New Year, for any good purpose.
The preparations were elaborate: flowers, candles, incense sticks, rice wine, dozens of delicacies, and pieces of white cotton string.
The strings were draped around flowers in tall silver bowls (page 261).
The candles were lighted, and we sat on split-bamboo mats among the village notables.
I was careful to keep my feet, the seat of the least worthy spirits, from pointing at anyone's head, where the worthiest spirits reside.
Now a distinguished old man called on nine divinities to come and join us.
Next he addressed himself to our souls.
A man has 32 souls, one for each part of the body.
Those souls like to wander off, and must be called back.
With the divinities present and our souls in place, we were wished health, happiness, and power.
Then, one after another, the villagers tied the waiting cotton strings around our wrists.
These were to be kept on, to hold in the 32 souls.
As we stepped out into the sunlight, a man came up to John Cool and silently showed him his hand.
It had a festering hole as big as a silver dollar.
We could see maggots moving.
John said: I have some antiseptic salve with me, but it's too late for that.
My interviews with teen-agers confirmed this portrait of the weakening of religious and ethnic bonds.
Jewish identity was often confused with social and economic strivings.
Being Jewish gives you tremendous drive, a boy remarked.
It means that you have to get ahead.
When I pressed for a purely religious definition, I encountered the familiar blend of liberal piety, interfaith good will, and a small residue of ethnic loyalty.
I like the tradition, a girl said.
I like to follow the holidays when they come along.
But you don't have to worship in the traditional way.
You can communicate in your own way.
As I see it, there's no real difference between being Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant.
Another teen-ager remarked: Most Jews don't believe in God, but they believe in people--in helping people.
Still another boy asserted: To be a good Jew is to do no wrong;
it's to be a good person.
When asked how this was different from being a good Protestant, the boy answered, It's the same thing.
This accords with the study by Maier and Spinrad.
They discovered that, although 42 per cent of a sample of Catholic students and 15 per cent of the Protestants believed it important to live in accordance with the teachings of their religion, only 8 per cent of the Jewish students had this conviction.
The most important aims of the Jewish students were as follows: to make the world a better place to live in--30 per cent;
to get happiness for yourself--28 per cent;
and financial independence--21 per cent.
Nevertheless, most of the teen-agers I interviewed believed in maintaining their Jewish identity and even envisioned joining a synagogue or temple.
However, they were hostile to Jewish Orthodoxy, professing to believe in Judaism but in a moderate way.
One boy said querulously about Orthodox Jews: It's the twentieth century, and they don't have to wear beards.
The reason offered for clinging to the ancestral faith lacked force and authority even in the teen-agers' minds.
We were brought up that way was one statement which won general assent.
I want to show respect for my parents' religion was the way in which a boy justified his inhabiting a halfway house of Judaism.
Still another suggested that he would join a temple for social reasons, since I'll be living in a suburb.
Intermarriage, which is generally regarded as a threat to Jewish survival, was regarded not with horror or apprehension but with a kind of mild, clinical disapproval.
Most of the teen-agers I interviewed rejected it on pragmatic grounds.
When you marry, you want to have things in common, a girl said, and it's hard when you don't marry someone with your own background.
A fourteen-year-old girl from the Middle West observed wryly that, in her community, religion inconveniently interfered with religious activities--at least with the peripheral activities that many middle class Jews now regard as religious.
It appears that an Orthodox girl in the community disrupted plans for an outing sponsored by one of the Jewish service groups because she would not travel on Saturday and, in addition, required kosher food.
Another girl from a relatively large midwestern city described herself as the only Orthodox girl in town.
This is, no doubt, inaccurate, but it does convey how isolated she feels among the vast army of the nonobservant.
The older teens
One of the significant things about Jewish culture in the older teen years is that it is largely college-oriented.
Sixty-five per cent of the Jewish teen-agers of college age attend institutions of higher learning.
This is substantially higher than the figures for the American population at large--45.6 per cent for males and 29.2 per cent for females.
This may help explain a phenomenon described by a small-town Jewish boy.
In their first two years in high school, Jewish boys in this town make strenuous exertions to win positions on the school teams.
However, in their junior and senior years, they generally forego their athletic pursuits, presumably in the interest of better academic achievement.
It is significant, too, that the older teen-agers I interviewed believed, unlike the younger ones, that Jewish students tend to do better academically than their gentile counterparts.
The percentage of Jewish girls who attend college is almost as high as that of boys.
The motivations for both sexes, to be sure, are different.
The vocational motive is the dominant one for boys, while Jewish girls attend college for social reasons and to become culturally developed.
One of the significant developments in American-Jewish life is that the cultural consumers are largely the women.
It is they who read--and make--Jewish best-sellers and then persuade their husbands to read them.
In upper teen Jewish life, the non-college group tends to have a sense of marginality.
People automatically assume that I'm in college, a nineteen-year-old machinist observed irritably.
However, among the girls, there are some morale-enhancing compensations for not going to college.
The Jewish working girl almost invariably works in an office--in contradistinction to gentile factory workers--and, buttressed by a respectable income, she is likely to dress better and live more expansively than the college student.
She is even prone to regard the college girl as immature.
The lower-middle class college student
One of the reasons for the high percentage of Jewish teen-agers in college is that a great many urban Jews are enabled to attend local colleges at modest cost.
This is particularly true in large centers of Jewish population like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Perhaps the Jewish students at Brooklyn College--constituting 85 per cent of those who attend the day session--can serve as a paradigm of the urban, lower-middle class Jewish student.
There is, to begin, an important sex difference.
Typically, in a lower-middle class Jewish family, a son will be sent to an out-of-town school, if financial resources warrant it, while the daughter will attend the local college.
There are two reasons for this.
First, the girl's education has a lower priority than the son's.
Second, the attitude in Jewish families is far more protective toward the daughter than toward the son.
Most Jewish mothers are determined to exercise vigilance over the social and sexual lives of their daughters by keeping them home.
The consequence of this is that the girls at Brooklyn College outnumber the boys and do somewhat better academically.
One can assume that some of the brightest boys are out of town.
Brooklyn College students have an ambivalent attitude toward their school.
On the one hand, there is a sense of not having moved beyond the ambiance of their high school.
This is particularly acute for those who attended Midwood High School directly across the street from Brooklyn College.
They have a sense of marginality at being denied that special badge of status, the out-of-town school.
At the same time, there is a good deal of self-congratulation at attending a good college--they are even inclined to exaggerate its not inconsiderable virtues--and they express pleasure at the cozy in-group feeling that the college generates.
It's people of your own kind, a girl remarked.
You don't have to watch what you say.
Of course, I would like to go to an out-of-town school where there are all kinds of people, but I would want lots of Jewish kids there.
For most Brooklyn College students, college is at once a perpetuation of their ethnic attachments and a breaking away from the cage of neighborhood and family.
Brooklyn College is unequivocally Jewish in tone, and efforts to detribalize the college by bringing in unimpeachably midwestern types on the faculty have been unavailing.
However, a growing intellectual sophistication and the new certitudes imparted by courses in psychology and anthropology make the students increasingly critical of their somewhat provincial and overprotective parents.
And the rebellion of these third generation Jews is not the traditional conflict of culture but, rather, a protest against a culture that they view as softly and insidiously enveloping.
As long as I'm home, I'll never grow up, a nineteen-year-old boy observed sadly.
They don't like it if I do anything away from home.
It's so much trouble, I don't usually bother.
For girls, the overprotection is far more pervasive.
Parents will drive on Friday night to pick up their daughters after a sorority or House Plan meeting.
A freshman girl's father not too long ago called a dean at Brooklyn College and demanded the low-down on a boy who was going out with his daughter.
The domestic tentacles even extend to the choice of a major field.
Under pressure from parents, the majority of Brooklyn College girls major in education since that co-ordinates best with marriage plans--limited graduate study requirement and convenient working hours.
This means that a great many academically talented girls are discouraged from pursuing graduate work of a more demanding nature.
A kind of double standard exists here for Jewish boys and girls as it does in the realm of sex.
The breaking away from the prison house of Brooklyn is gradual.
First, the student trains on his hapless parents the heavy artillery of his newly acquired psychological and sociological insights.
Then, with the new affluence, there is actually a sallying forth into the wide, wide world beyond the precincts of New York.
It is significant that the Catskills, which used to be the summer playground for older teen-agers, a kind of summer suburb of New York, no longer attracts them in great numbers--except for those who work there as waiters, bus boys, or counselors in the day camps.
The great world beyond beckons.
But it should be pointed out that some of the new watering places--Fire Island, Nantucket, Westhampton, Long Island, for example--tend to be homogeneously Jewish.
Although Brooklyn College does not yet have a junior-year-abroad program, a good number of students spend summers in Europe.
In general, however, the timetable of travel lags considerably behind that of the student at Harvard or Smith.
And acculturation into the world at large is likely to occur for the Brooklyn College student after college rather than during the four school years.
Brooklyn College is Marjorie Morningstar territory, as much as the Bronx or Central Park West.
There are hordes of nubile young women there who, prodded by their impatient mothers, are determined to marry.
It is interesting that, although the percentage of married students is not appreciably higher at Brooklyn than elsewhere--about 30 per cent of the women and 25 per cent of the men in the graduating class--the anxiety of the unmarried has puffed up the estimate.
Almost everybody in the senior class is married, students say dogmatically.
And the school newspaper sells space to jubilant fraternities, sororities, and houses (in the House Plan Association) that have good news to impart.
These announcements are, in effect, advertisements for themselves as thriving marriage marts.
There are boxed proclamations in the newspaper of watchings, pinnings, ringings, engagements, and marriages in a scrupulously graded hierarchy of felicity.
Witt House happily announces the engagement of Fran Horowitz to Erwin Schwartz of Fife House.
The Brooklyn College student shows some striking departures from prevailing collegiate models.
The Ivy League enjoys no easy dominion here, and the boys are as likely to dress in rather foppish Continental fashion, or even in nondescript working class manner, as they are in the restrained, button-down Ivy way.
The girls are prone to dress far more flamboyantly than their counterparts out of town, and eye shadow, mascara, and elaborate bouffant hairdos--despite the admonitions of cautious guidance personnel--are not unknown even in early morning classes.
Among the boys, there is very little bravado about drinking.
Brooklyn College is distinctive for not having an official drinking place.
The Fort Lauderdale encampment for drinking is foreign to most Brooklyn College boys.
This should be used frequently (but shaken before using).
For galled breasts, the mother should shave into half a cup of fresh unsalted lard enough white chalk to make a paste.
This could also be used for any other skin irritation.
Or she might place cornstarch in the oven for a short time and then apply this under her breasts.
Female troubles of various kinds do not seem to have been common on the frontier;
at least I have only one remedy for anything of this kind in my collection, one for hastening delayed menstruation.
The sufferer drinks tansy tea.
Bruises, burns, cuts, etc., occurred frequently on the frontier, and folk medicine gave the answers to these problems too.
Bruises and black eyes were relieved by application of raw beefsteak.
(Doctors now say that it was not the meat but the coolness of the applications which relieved the pain.
) Salted butter was another cure for bruises.
Many people agreed that burns should be treated with bland oily salves or unsalted butter or lard, but one informant told me that a burn should be bathed in salt water;
the burn oozed watery fluid for many days, and finally the healing was completed by bathing it with epsom salts.
Another swore by vinegar baths for burns, and still another recommended salted butter.
Butter salve or butter ointment was used for burns, and for bruises as well.
This was made by putting butter in a pan of water and allowing it to boil;
when it was cool, the fat was skimmed off and bottled.
Cow's milk was another cure for burns, and burns covered with gum arabic or plain mucilage healed quickly.
One man, badly burned about the face and eyes by an arc welding torch, was blinded and could not find a doctor at the time.
A sympathetic friend made poultices of raw potato parings, which she said was the best and quickest way to draw out the heat.
Later the doctor used mineral oil on the burns.
The results were good, but which treatment helped is still not known.
To stop bleeding, cobwebs were applied to cuts and wounds.
One old-timer said to sprinkle sugar on a bleeding cut, even when on a knuckle, if it was made by a rusty tool;
this would stop the flow and also prevent infection.
My lawyer told me that his mother used a similar remedy for cuts and wounds;
she sprinkled common sugar directly on the injury and then bound it loosely with cotton cloth, over which she poured turpentine.
He showed me one of his fingers which had been practically amputated and which his mother had treated;
there is scarcely a scar showing.
Tobacco was common first aid.
A chaw of tobacco put on an open wound was both antiseptic and healing.
Or a thin slice of plug tobacco might be laid on the open wound without chewing.
One old man told me that when he was a boy he was kicked in the head by a fractious mule and had his scalp laid back from the entire front of his head.
His brother ran a mile to get the father;
when they reached the boy, the father sliced a new plug of tobacco, put the scalp back in place, and covered the raw edges with the slices.
Then he put a rag around the dressing to keep it in place.
There was no cleaning or further care, but the wound healed in less than two weeks and showed no scar.
Veronica from the herb garden was also used to stop bleeding, and rue was an antiseptic.
Until quite recently, sterile maggots could be bought to apply to a wound;
they would feed on its surface, leaving it clean so that it could be medically treated.
Tetanus could be avoided by pouring warm turpentine over a wound.
One family bound wounds with bacon or salt pork strips, or, if these were not handy, plain lard.
Another sprinkled sugar on hot coals and held the wounded foot or hand in the smoke.
Rabies were cured or prevented by madstones which the pioneer wore or carried.
In 1872 there were known to be twenty-two in Norton County, and one had been in the family for 200 years.
Another cure for hydrophobia was to suck the wounds, then cauterize them with a hot knife or poker.
While nowadays we recognize the fact that there are many causes for bleeding at the nose, not long ago a nosebleed was simply that, and treatment had little variation.
Since a fall or blow might have caused it, a cold pack was usually first aid.
This might be applied to the top of the nose or the back of the neck, pressed on the upper lip, or inserted into the nostril (cotton was usually used in this last).
Nosebleed could be stopped by wrapping a red woolen string about the patient's neck and tying it in a knot for each year of his life.
Or the victim could chew hard on a piece of paper, meanwhile pressing his fingers tight in his ears.
Old sores could be healed by the constant application of a wash made of equal parts vinegar and water.
Blood blisters could be prevented from forming by rubbing a work blister immediately with any hard nonpoisonous substance.
Felons were cured by taking common salt and drying it in the oven, pounding it fine, and mixing it with equal parts of spirits of turpentine;
this mixture was then spread on a cloth and wrapped around the affected part.
As the cloth dried, more of the mixture was applied, and after twenty-four hours the felon was supposed to be killed.
Insect bites were cured in many ways.
Many an old-timer swore by the saliva method;
get a bite, spit on it was a proverb.
This was used also for bruises.
Yellow clay was used as a poultice for insect bites and also for swellings;
not long ago Denver Mud was most popular.
Chiggers were a common pest along streams and where gardens and berries thrived;
so small as to be scarcely visible to the eye, they buried themselves in the victim's flesh.
Bathing the itching parts with kerosene gave relief and also killed the pests.
Ant bites were eased by applying liquid bluing.
For mosquito bites a paste of half a glass of salt and half a glass of soda was made.
For wasp stings onion juice, obtained by scraping an onion, gave quick relief.
A handier remedy was to bathe the painful part in strong soapy water;
mud was sometimes used as well as soap.
Just plain old black dirt was also used as a pack to relieve wasp or bee stings.
Bedbugs were a common pest in pioneer days;
to keep them out of homes, even in the 1900's, was a chore.
Bed slats were washed in alum water, legs of beds were placed in cups of kerosene, and all woodwork was treated liberally with corrosive sublimate, applied with a feather.
Kerosene was very effective in ridding pioneer homes of the pests.
At times pioneer children got lice in their hair.
A kerosene shampoo seems a heroic treatment, but it did the job.
To remove an insect from one's ear warm water should be inserted.
A cinder or other small object could be removed from the eye by placing a flaxseed in the eye.
As the seed swelled its glutinous covering protected the eyeball from irritation, and both the cinder and the seed could soon be washed out.
Another way to remove small objects from the eye was to have the person look cross-eyed;
the particle would then move toward the nose, where it could be wiped out with a wisp of cotton.
Shingles were cured by gentian, an old drug, used in combinations.
For erysipelas a mixture of one dram borax and one ounce glycerine was applied to the afflicted part on linen cloth.
Itching skin, considered just nerves, was eased by treating with whiskey and salt.
Winter itch was treated by applying strong apple cider in which pulverized bloodroot had been steeped.
To cure fungus growths on mouth or hands people made a strong tea by using a handful of sassafras bark in a quart of water.
They drank half a cup of this morning and night, and they also washed and soaked their hands in the same solution.
Six treatments cured one case which lasted a month and had defied other remedies.
Frostbite was treated by putting the feet and hands in ice water or by rubbing them with snow.
Now one hears that heat and hot water are used instead.
Another remedy was oil of eucalyptus, used as well for chilblains.
Chilblains were also treated with tincture of capsicum or cabbage leaves.
Boils have always been a source of much trouble.
A German informant gave me a sure cure made by combining rye flour and molasses into a poultice.
Another poultice was made from the inner bark of the elm tree, steeped in water until it formed a sticky, gummy solution.
This was also used for sores.
Another frequent pioneer difficulty, caused by wearing rough and heavy shoes and boots, was corns.
One veracious woman tells me she has used thin potato parings for both corns and calluses on her feet and they remove the pain or fire.
Another common cure was to soak the feet five or ten minutes in warm water, then to apply a solution of equal parts of soda and common brown soap on a kid bandage overnight.
This softened the skin so that in the morning when the bandage was removed the corn could be scraped off and a bit of corn plaster put on.
There were many cures for warts.
One young girl told me how her mother removed a wart from her finger by soaking a copper penny in vinegar for three days and then painting the finger with the liquid several times.
Another wart removal method was to rub each wart with a bean split open and then to bury the bean halves under the drip of the house for seven days.
Saliva gathered in the mouth after a night's sleep was considered poisonous;
wetting a wart with this saliva on wakening the first thing in the morning was supposed to cause it to disappear after only a few treatments, and strangely enough many warts did just that.
One wart cure was to wrap it in a hair from a blonde gypsy.
Another was to soak raw beef in vinegar for twenty-four hours, tie it on the wart, and wear it for a week.
A simpler method was to tie a thread tightly around the wart at its base and wear it this way.
I know this worked.
One person recommended to me washing the wart with sulphur water;
another said it should be rubbed with a cut potato three times daily.
Another common method was to cut an onion in two and place each half on the wart for a moment;
the onion was then fastened together with string and placed beneath a dripping eave.
As the onion decayed, so did the wart.
Sore muscles were relieved by an arnica rub;
sore feet by calf's-foot, an herb from the pioneer's ubiquitous herb garden, or by soaking the feet in a pan of hot water in which two cups of salt had been dissolved.
Leg cramps, one person tells me, were relieved by standing barefoot with the weight of the body on the heel and pressing down hard.
This does give relief, as I can testify.
One doctor prescribed a tablespoon of whiskey or brandy before each meal for leg cramps.
Pains in the back of the leg and in the abdomen were prevented from reaching the upper body by tying a rope about the patient's waist.
For sprains and swellings, one pint of cider vinegar and half a pint of spirits of turpentine added to three well beaten eggs was said to give speedy relief.
Except for the wine waiter in a restaurant--always an inscrutable plenipotentiary unto himself, the genii with the keys to unlock the gates of the wine world are one's dealer, and the foreign shipper or negociant who in turn supplies him.
In instances where both of these are persons or firms with integrity, the situation is ideal.
It may, on occasion, be anything but that.
However, by cultivating a wine dealer and accepting his advice, one will soon enough ascertain whether he has any knowledge of wines (as opposed to what he may have been told by salesmen and promoters) and, better yet, whether he has a taste for wine.
Again, by spreading one's purchases over several wine dealers, one becomes familiar with the names and specialties of reputable wine dealers and shippers abroad.
A good negociant or shipper will not only be the man or the firm which has cornered the wines from the best vineyards, or the best parts of them;
he may also be the one who makes and bottles the best blends--sound wines from vineyards generally in his own district.
These are the wines the French themselves use for everyday drinking, for even in France virtually no one drinks the Grands Crus on a meal-to-meal basis.
The Grands Crus are expensive, and even doting palates tire of them.
And certainly, in the case of the beginner or the comparatively uninitiated wine drinker, the palate and the capacity for appreciation will not be ready for the Grands Crus as a steady diet without frequent recourse to crus of less renown.
There is nothing infra dig about a good blend from a good shipper.
Some of them are very delicious indeed, and there are many good ones exported--unfortunately, along with others not so good, and worse.
Consultation with a reputable wine dealer and constant experimentation--steering ever from the known to the unknown--are the requisites.
Wine waiters are something else again;
especially if one is travelling or dining out a great deal, their importance mounts.
Most of them, the world over, operate on the same principle by which justice is administered in France and some other Latin countries: the customer is to be considered guilty of abysmal ignorance until proven otherwise, with the burden of proof on the customer himself.
Now the drinking of wine (and happily so!
) is for the most part a recondite affair, for manifestly, if everyone in the world who could afford the best wines also liked them, the supply would dry up in no time at all.
This is the only valid, and extenuating, argument that may be advanced in defense of the reprehensible attitude of the common wine waiter.
A really good wine waiter is, paradoxically, the guardian (and not the purveyor) of his cellar against the Visigoths.
Faced, on the one hand, with an always exhaustible supply of his best wines, and on the other by a clientele usually equipped with inexhaustible pocketbooks, it is a wonder indeed that all wine waiters are not afflicted with chronic ambivalence.
The one way to get around them--short of knowing exactly what one wants and sticking to it--is to frequent a single establishment until its wine waiter is persuaded that one is at least as interested in wine as in spending money.
Only then, perhaps, will he reveal his jewels and his bargains.
Wine bought from a dealer should ideally be allowed to rest for several weeks before it is served.
This is especially true of red wines, and a practice which, though not always practicable, is well worth the effort.
It does no harm for wine to stand on end for a matter of days, but in terms of months and years it is fatal.
Wine stored for a long time should be on its side;
otherwise, the cork dries and air enters to spoil it.
When stacking wine on its side in a bin, care should always be taken to be sure there is no air bubble left next to the cork.
Fat bottles, such as Burgundies, have a way of rolling around in the bin and often need little props, such as a bit of cardboard or a chip of wood, to hold them in the proper reclining posture.
Too much dampness in the cellar rots the corks, again with ill effects.
The best rule of thumb for detecting corked wine (provided the eye has not already spotted it) is to smell the wet end of the cork after pulling it: if it smells of wine, the bottle is probably all right;
if it smells of cork, one has grounds for suspicion.
Seasonal rises or drops in temperature are bad for wine: they age it prematurely.
The ideal storage temperature for long periods is about fifty-five degrees, with an allowable range of five degrees above or below this, provided there are no sudden or frequent changes.
Prolonged vibration is also undesirable;
consequently, one's wine closet or cellar should be away from machines or electrically driven furnaces.
If one lives near a subway or an express parkway, the solution is to have one's wines stored with a dealer and brought home a few at a time.
Light, especially daylight, is always bad for wine.
All in all, though, there is a good deal of nonsense expended over the preparations thought necessary for ordinary wine drinking;
many people go to extreme lengths in decanting, chilling or warming, or banishing without further investigation any bottle with so much as a slightly suspicious cork.
No one should wish to deny these purists the obvious pleasure they derive from all this, and to give fair warning where warning is due, no one who becomes fond of wines ever avoids acquiring some degree of purism!
A white wine, already at cool cellar temperature, may be adequately chilled in a bucket of ice and water or the freezing compartment of a refrigerator (the former is far preferable) in about fifteen minutes;
for those who live in a winter climate, there is nothing better than a bucket of water and snow.
Though by no means an ideal procedure, a red wine may similarly be brought from the cellar to the dining room and opened twenty minutes or so before serving time.
It may be a bit cold when poured;
but again, as one will have observed at any restaurant worth its salt, wine should be served in a large, tulip-shaped glass, which is never filled more than half full.
In this way, red wine warms of itself quite rapidly--and though it is true that it may not attain its potential of taste and fragrance until after the middle of the meal (or the course), in the meantime it will have run the gamut of many beguiling and interesting stages.
The only cardinal sin which may be committed in warming a wine is to force it by putting it next to the stove or in front of an open fire.
This invariably effaces any wine's character, and drives its fragrance underground.
It should not be forgotten that wines mature fastest in half-bottles, less fast in full bottles, slowly in Magnums--and slower yet in Tregnums, double Magnums, Jeroboams, Methuselahs, and Imperiales, respectively.
Very old red wines often require several hours of aeration, and any red wine, brought from the cellar within half an hour of mealtime, should be uncorked and allowed some air.
But white wines never!
White wines should be opened when served, having been previously chilled in proportion to their sweetness.
Thus, Sauternes or Barsacs should be very cold;
a Pouilly-Fuisse or a Chablis somewhat less cold.
Over-chilling is an accepted method for covering up the faults of many a cheap or poor white wine, especially a dry wine--and certainly less of a crime than serving a wine at a temperature which reveals it as unattractive.
The fragrance and taste of any white wine will die a lingering death when it is allowed to warm or is exposed for long to the air.
To quote Professor Saintsbury: The last glass of claret or Burgundy is as good as the first;
but the first glass of Chateau d'Yquem or Montrachet is a great deal better than the last!
This does not mean, though, that a red wine improves with prolonged aeration: there is a reasonable limit--and wines kept over to the next meal or the next day, after they have once been opened, are never as good.
If this must be done, they should always be corked and kept in a cool place;
it should be remembered that their lasting qualities are appreciably shorter than those of milk.
A few red wines, notably those of the Beaujolais, are better consumed at cellar temperature.
By tradition, a red wine should be served at approximately room temperature--if anything a little cooler--and be aged enough for the tannin and acids to have worked out and the sediment have settled well.
Thus, red wine must, if possible, never be disturbed or shaken;
very old red wine is often decanted so that the puckering, bitter elements which have settled to the bottom will not be mingled with the wine itself.
A tug-of-war between an old bottle and an inefficient corkscrew may do as much harm as a week at sea.
The cork should be pulled gradually and smoothly, and the lip of the bottle wiped afterward.
Many people use wicker cradles for old red wine, lifting the bottle carefully from the bin into the cradle and eventually to the table, without disturbing the sediment.
In France, when one wishes to entertain at a restaurant and serve truly fine old red wines, one visits the restaurant well ahead of time, chooses the wines and, with the advice of the manager and his chef, builds the menu around them.
The wine waiter will see to it that the bottles are taken from the bin and opened at least in time to warm and aerate, preferably allowed to stand on end for as long as possible and, perhaps in the case of very old wines, be decanted.
Decanting old wine aerates it fully;
it may also be--practically speaking--a matter of good economy.
For, in the process of decanting, the bottle is only tilted once instead of several or more times at the table: hence, a minimum of the undesirable mixture of wine and dregs.
Though there are many exceptions, which we have noted in preceding pages, white wine is as a rule best consumed between two and six years old, and red wines, nowadays, between three and ten.
Red wines of good years tend to mature later and to keep longer;
the average claret is notably longer-lived than its opposite number, red Burgundy.
Some clarets do not come into their own until they are ten or fifteen years of age, or even more.
If a red Bordeaux of a good name and year is bitter or acid, or cloying and muddy-tasting, leave it alone for a while.
Most of the wines of Beaujolais, on the other hand, should be drunk while very young;
and Alsatians may be.
Giffen lost no time in visiting the plantation.
The slaves appeared to be in good health and at work under John Palfrey's overseer.
An excellent crop was expected that year.
William, who lived in neighboring St. Mary's parish, had taken charge and decided that it would be best for all if the plantation were operated for another year.
Giffen advised acceptance of this plan, citing the depressed market for land then prevailing and the large stock of provisions at the plantation.
If sold then, the land and improvements might bring only $5,000.
Early in January, 1844 he had a conference with Henry and William in New Orleans, and upon learning of Gorham's intention, Henry remonstrated calmly but firmly with his brother.
The emancipation plan would not only be injurious to all the heirs, he contended, but would be a form of cruelty perpetrated on the hapless Negroes.
They were not capable of supporting themselves off the plantation, and Louisiana law required their removal from the state.
Gorham refused to accept money for slave property, but did he realize how much expense and trouble the transportation of his Negroes to the North involved?
The suggestion that Giffen hire out the slaves was not realistic, since no planter would take the risk of having Negroes who knew they were to be free living with his own slaves.
Henry hid his annoyance, although both he and William were furious with their Yankee brother.
William, who did not write to Gorham, told Giffen that unless he could operate the plantation as usual for a year, he would sue amicably to protect his interests.
Palfrey was determined that his portion of the slaves be converted to wage laborers during the transition period before emancipation.
If William wished to continue operations for a year, why not simply leave the Negroes undisturbed and pay them as high wages to remain there as are ever paid the labor of persons of their sex & age.
A disposition to exert themselves for my benefit would perhaps be a motive with some of them to come into the scheme.
Their having family ties on our plantation & the adjoining one would be a stronger inducement.
When he heard of his brothers' anger, Palfrey was still hopeful that they could be persuaded to accept his notion of paying wages.
If not, he was willing to accede to William's wishes in any way that did not block his ultimate aim.
William was adamant on one point: under no circumstances would he allow the Negroes to remain on the plantation with his and Henry's slaves if they were told of their coming freedom.
Knowing the antipathy that existed in Louisiana against increasing the number of free Negroes, Giffen suggested that Palfrey bring them to Boston at once, and then send them on to Liberia.
Lacking specific instructions, he agreed to William's condition.
In March there was a division of the slaves, and Giffen carried out his instructions as nearly as possible.
Of the fifty-two slaves, Giffen succeeded in getting a lot of twenty, twelve of whom were females.
I considered that your views would be best carried out, he explained, by taking women whose progeny will of course be free & more fully extend the philantrophy of Emancipation.
I have also taken the old servants of your father as a matter of Conscience & Justice.
The ages of the slaves ranged from sixty-five, for an old house servant, to an unnamed newborn child.
If Palfrey ever had any doubts about the wickedness of slavery, they were put aside after he received an inventory of the slave property he had inherited.
This cold reckoning of human worth in a legal paper, devoid of compassion or humanity, was all he needed.
Each human being, known only by a given name, had a cash value.
Old Sam's sixty-five years had reduced his value to $150;
Rose, a twelve-year-old with child-bearing potential, was worth $400.
In rejecting any claim to the value of the slave property, Palfrey was giving up close to $7,000.
Palfrey's brothers each received lots of sixteen Negroes, and for bookkeeping purposes it was agreed that all lots were to be valued at $6,666.66.
Thus twenty black souls were to remain ignorant of their imminent journey to the land of free men.
Giffen extracted one concession from William: the house servants could be free at any time Gorham thought expedient.
Despite Giffen's warning, Palfrey still had plans for freeing his slaves in Louisiana.
Yet even if he could get the necessary approval, fourteen of his Negroes could not be manumitted without special permission.
According to state law a slave had to be at least thirty years old before he could be freed.
Palfrey petitioned the state legislature to waive the requirement.
Otherwise, freedom would mean removal from the state in which as the place of their past residence from birth, or for many years, it would be materially for their advantage to be at liberty to remain.
On March 11 the Louisiana legislature voted unanimously to table the petition.
News of the legislative veto appeared in the New Orleans papers, and Henry and William became incensed by the fact that they had not been told of the attempt in advance.
Henry stormed into Giffen's office waving a copy of the New Orleans Courier, shouting that the emancipation scheme had become a public affair, and that it would reach the Ears of the People on the Plantation, and make them restless & unhappy.
His brothers' anger caused Palfrey genuine concern, for he had imposed a dual mission upon himself: to free his slaves, and to keep the family from falling apart over the issue.
When Giffen decided to charge him interest on the loan from John Palfrey, Gorham readily assented, vowing that in a matter of dollars and cents, his brothers would never have any cause to complain of him.
In view of these difficulties, Palfrey decided to go to Louisiana.
Giffen had already urged him to journey south, if only for a few days to clear up matters.
His duties as Massachusetts Secretary of State obliged him to wait until the adjournment of the legislature in mid-April.
Palfrey told his wife of his intentions for the first time, and left for New Orleans apprehensively invoking a special blessing of Providence that he might be allowed to see his family again.
During his journey Palfrey stopped off to see two abolitionists.
In both cases he desired information about placing the freedmen in homes once they arrived in the North.
In New York, Lydia Maria Child welcomed him enthusiastically: I have lately heard of you from the Legislature of Louisiana, and felt joy at your public recognition of the brotherhood of man.
Mrs. Child, who had once apologized for sending editor Palfrey a book on slavery, now confided that she had helped one of Henry Palfrey's slaves escape to Canada some years before, but asked him not to advertise the fact in Louisiana.
She agreed to take charge of five or six of the Negroes should Palfrey decide to send them north immediately.
At Lexington, Kentucky, Palfrey consulted with Cassius M. Clay on the same subject, but with no apparent result.
Despite his apprehensions about his personal safety, Palfrey's reception in New Orleans was more than cordial.
Instead of the expected annoyances due to the nature of his mission, he received many calling cards and invitations from gentlemen of mark, on whom I had no sort of claim, & have had many more invitations than I could accept.
He later told abolitionist Edmund Quincy of the marked attention and civility with which the New Orleans gentlemen and the upriver planters greeted him.
The memory of this southern hospitality did not survive the trials of coming antislavery years and Civil War.
Palfrey's autobiography contains a melodramatic account of two perilous days spent among the planters of Attakapas, many of whom were coarse & passionate people, much excited by what they heard of my plans.
He proceeded with his task bravely--in his memoirs, at least--before the passions of my neighbors should have time to boil too high.
Palfrey had already made up his mind that he would allow the men, but not the women, to choose freely whether or not to go North for freedom.
The women by remaining behind condemned their children, born and unborn, to bondage.
He had a short private talk with each adult slave.
Only one objected, but Palfrey soon convinced him that he ought to go with the others.
All the slaves joined in requesting that they be allowed to delay their departure until the end of the planting season, so that they could get in their own little produce.
Palfrey agreed;
the slaves were to remain as wage laborers for his account.
William's threat that under no conditions would he allow freedom-conscious slaves to mix with his own was not carried out, for the plantation continued in operation as before.
Palfrey returned to Massachusetts greatly relieved to have made an arrangement so satisfactory to my judgment & my conscience.
From Cambridge, Palfrey maintained a close interest in the welfare of his slaves.
In fact, as the time for their departure approached, his solicitousness increased.
Should any slave change his mind and request to leave earlier, Giffen was to provide passage at once.
When a sailing date of March, 1845 was finally established, Palfrey made sure that the Negroes would have comfortable quarters in New Orleans and aboard ship.
Giffen assured him that the captain and his mate had personally promised to treat the Negroes with consideration.
Palfrey was also concerned about the question of what wage to pay for their labor throughout 1844.
The plantation was sold in January, 1845, and Palfrey thought the new owner ought to pay his people two months' wages.
Giffen suggested fifty dollars as fair compensation for a year's work;
the new owner at Attakapas declined to enter into any philanthropic arrangement.
On March 21, 1845 the bark Bashaw weighed anchor at New Orleans, while on the levee Henry and William Palfrey waved farewell to their father's former chattels who must have looked back at the receding shore with mingled regret and jubilation.
Not all of Palfrey's slaves were aboard the Bashaw.
Giffen had advised that it would not be too difficult to obtain freedom locally for the old house servants.
Two of these were included in Palfrey's lot.
Giffen filed a petition for permission to emancipate four slaves (all more than fifty years old) with the St. Martin's Parish Police Jury.
After an initial rejection, which he attributed to a general Excitement against Abolition and Emancipation, Giffen bribed the right individuals on the jury, and got the permission without further delay.
When the Negroes landed at Boston a month later they were, of course, no longer slaves.
Slavery was prohibited in Massachusetts by the terms of the constitution of 1780, which declared all men are born free and equal.
Nevertheless, Palfrey arranged a religious ceremony at King's Chapel to formalize the emancipation.
An eyewitness recalled how awkward the red-turbaned colored women appeared as they curtseyed in the church doorway, and the diffidence the former slaves displayed while they listened to the few words that declared them free.
Once the question of emancipation was settled to Palfrey's satisfaction, he faced a real problem in placing the freedmen in suitable homes as servants.
Palfrey tried fruitlessly to place a Negro boy in the Hopedale Community, but he had better luck in his other attempts.
Mrs. Child, true to her word, helped place Anna and her four children with a Quaker family named Hathaway near Canandaigua, New York.
This group had been Palfrey's greatest worry since Anna was in bad health, and her children were too young to work for their keep.
But certainly the New Frontier has brought to Washington a group more varied in background and interest.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, a former Rhodes Scholar and Mills College dean, has headed the Rockefeller Foundation and in that role expended large sums for international cultural exchange.
One of his initial acts in office was to appoint Philip Coombs of the Ford Foundation as the first Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
(In the late forties and fifties, Coombs has declared in defining his role, two strong new arms were added to reinforce United States foreign policy economic assistance and military assistance.
As we embark upon the sixties we have an opportunity to build a third strong arm, aimed at the development of people, at the fuller realization of their creative human potential, and a better understanding among them.
Many of the new appointees are art collectors.
Ambassador-at-Large Averell Harriman has returned to the capital with a collection of paintings that include Renoir, Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Matisse, Picasso, and Walt Kuhn.
The Director of the Peace Corps, R. Sargent Shriver, Jr., a Kennedy brother-in-law, collects heavily among the moderns, including Kenzo Okada and Josef Albers.
Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon owns a prize Monet, Femmes dans un Jardin.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, former President of the Ford Motor Company, comes from a generation different from that of Eisenhower's own first Secretary of Defense, Charles Wilson, who had been head of General Motors.
Unlike Wilson, who at times seemed almost anti-intellectual in his earthy pragmatism.
McNamara is the scholar-businessman.
An inveterate reader of books, he chose while working in Detroit to live in the University community of Ann Arbor, almost forty miles away.
He selected as Comptroller of Defense, not a veteran accountant, but a former Rhodes Scholar, Charles Hitch, who is author of a study on The Economics Of Defense In The Nuclear Age.
One of the President's special assistants, the Harvard dean McGeorge Bundy, was co-author with Henry L. Stimson of the latter's classic memoir, On Active Service.
Another, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has won a Pulitzer Prize in history;
his wife, Marion, is a portrait painter.
The Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger, was a child prodigy as a pianist.
(It is always of sorrow to me when I find people who neither know nor understand music, he declared not long ago in proposing that White House prizes be awarded for music and art.
) Mrs. Arthur Goldberg, wife of the Secretary of Labor, paints professionally and helps sponsor the Associated Artists' Gallery in the District of Columbia.
(Artists are always at a new frontier, she claims.
In fact, the search is almost more important than the find.
) Mrs. Henry Labouisse, wife of the new director of the foreign aid program, is the writer and lecturer Eve Curie.
The list goes on.
At last count, sixteen former Rhodes Scholars (see box on page 13) had been appointed to the Administration, second in number only to its Harvard graduates.
Besides Schlesinger, the Justice Department's Information Director, Edwin Guthman, has won a Pulitzer Prize (for national reporting).
Postmaster General J. Edward Day, who must deal with matters of postal censorship, is himself author of a novel, Bartholf Street, albeit one he was obliged to publish at his own expense.
Two men show promise of playing prominent roles:
William Walton, a writer-turned-painter, has been a long-time friend of the President.
They arrived in Washington about the same time during the early postwar years: Kennedy as the young Congressman from Massachusetts;
Walton, after a wartime stint with Time-Life, to become bureau chief for The New Republic.
Both lived in Georgetown, were unattached, and shared an active social life.
Walton, who soon made a break from journalism to become one of the capital's leading semi-abstract painters, vows that he and Kennedy never once discussed art in those days.
Nonetheless, they found common interests.
During last year's campaign, Kennedy asked Walton, an utter novice in organization politics, to assist him.
Walton dropped everything to serve as a district co-ordinator in the hard-fought Wisconsin primary and proved so useful that he was promoted to be liaison officer to critically important New York City.
Walton, who served as a correspondent with General James Gavin's paratroopers during the invasion of France, combines the soul of an artist with the lingo of a tough guy.
He provoked outraged editorials when, after a post-Inaugural inspection of the White House with Mrs. Kennedy, he remarked to reporters, We just cased the joint to see what was there.
But his credentials are impeccable.
Already the President and the First Lady have deputized him to advise on matters ranging from the furnishing of the White House to the renovation of Lafayette Square.
A man of great talent, he will continue to serve as a sort of Presidential trouble-shooter, strictly ex officio, for culture.
A more official representative is the Secretary of the Interior.
Udall, who comes from one of the Mormon first-families of Arizona, is a bluff, plain-spoken man with a lust for politics and a habit of landing right in the middle of the fight.
But even while sparring furiously with Republican politicians, he displays a deep and awesome veneration for anyone with cultural attainments.
His private dining room has become a way station for visiting intellectuals such as C. P. Snow, Arnold Toynbee, and Aaron Copland.
Udall argues that Interior affairs should cover a great deal more than dams and wildlife preserves.
After promoting Frost's appearance at the Inauguration, he persuaded the poet to return several months later to give a reading to a select audience of Cabinet members, members of Congress, and other Washington notables gathered in the State Department auditorium.
The event was so successful that the Interior Secretary plans to serve as impresario for similar ones from time to time, hoping thereby to add to the cultural enrichment of the Administration.
His Ideas in this respect, however, sometimes arouse critical response.
One tempest was stirred up last March when Udall announced that an eight-and-a-half-foot bronze statue of William Jennings Bryan, sculpted by the late Gutzon Borglum, would be sent on indefinite loan to Salem, Illinois, Bryan's birthplace.
Spokesmen for the nation's tradition-minded sculptors promptly claimed that Udall was exiling the statue because of his own hostility to this art form.
They dug up a speech he had made two years earlier as a Congressman, decrying the more than two hundred statues, monuments, and memorials which dot the Washington landscape as patriotic societies and zealous friends are constantly hatching new plans.
Hoping to cut down on such works, Udall had proposed that a politician be at least fifty years departed before he is memorialized.
He is not likely to win this battle easily.
In the case of the Borglum statue an Interior aide was obliged to announce that there had been a misunderstanding and that the Secretary had no desire to hustle it out of Washington.
The last Congress adopted seven bills for memorials, including one to Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian poet laureate;
eleven others were introduced.
Active warfare is raging between the forces pressing for a monument to the first Roosevelt on Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac, and TR.'s own living children, who wish to preserve the island as a wildlife sanctuary.
Washington, President Kennedy has been heard to remark ironically, is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.
There have been indications that he hopes to redress that situation, commencing with the White House.
One of Mrs. Kennedy's initial concerns as First Lady was the sad state of the furnishings in a building which is supposed to be a national shrine.
Ever since the fire of 1812 destroyed the beautiful furniture assembled by President Thomas Jefferson, the White House has collected a hodgepodge of period pieces, few of them authentic or aesthetic.
Mrs. Kennedy shows a determination to change all this.
Not long after moving in she turned up a richly carved desk, hewed from the timbers of the British ship H.M.S. Resolute and presented to President Hayes by Queen Victoria.
It now serves the President in his oval office.
Later, browsing in an old issue of the Gazette Des Beaux-Arts, she found a description of a handsome gilt pier-table purchased in 1817 by President James Monroe.
She traced it to a storage room.
With its coating of gold radiator paint removed--a gaucherie of some earlier tenant--it will now occupy its rightful place in the oval Blue Room on the first floor of the White House.
But it soon became clear that the search for eighteenth-century furniture (which Mrs. Kennedy feels is the proper period for the White House) must be pursued in places other than government storage rooms.
The First Lady appointed a Fine Arts Advisory Committee for the White House, to locate authentic pieces as well as to arrange ways to acquire them.
Her effort to put the home of living Presidents on the same basis as Mount Vernon and Monticello recognizes no party lines.
By rough estimate her Committee, headed by Henry Francis Du Pont, contains three times as many Republicans as Democrats.
The press releases emanating from the White House give a clue to the activity within.
A curator has been appointed.
A valuable pencil-and-sepia allegorical drawing of Benjamin Franklin by Jean-Honore Fragonard has been donated by the art dealer Georges Wildenstein and now hangs in the Blue Room.
The American Institute of Interior Designers is redecorating the White House library.
Secretary and Mrs. Dillon have contributed enough pieces of Empire furniture, including Dolley Madison's own sofa, to furnish a room in that style.
And part of a fabulous collection of vermeil hollowware, bequeathed to the White House by the late Mrs. Margaret Thompson Biddle, has been taken out of its locked cases and put on display in the State dining room.
Woman's place is in the home: man must attend to matters of the yard.
One of the vexatious problems to first confront President Kennedy was the property lying just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
Congress had already appropriated money, and plans were well along to tear down the buildings flanking Lafayette Square and replace them with what one critic calls the marble monumentality of government office buildings.
While a Senator, Kennedy had unsuccessfully pushed a bill to preserve the Belasco Theater, as well as the Dolley Madison and the Benjamin Taylor houses, all scheduled for razing.
What to do about it now that he was President?
Only a few days after moving into the White House.
Kennedy made a midnight inspection of the Square.
Then he called in his friend Walton and turned over the problem to him, with instructions to work out what was best--provided it didn't pile unnecessary burdens on the President.
The situation involved some political perils.
One of the offices slated for reconstruction is the aged Court of Claims, diagonally across the street from the White House.
Logically, it should be moved downtown.
But Judge Marvin Jones, senior member of the Court, is an elderly gentleman who lives at the nearby Metropolitan Club and desires to walk to work.
More importantly, he also happens to be the brother-in-law of Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House.
There were aesthetic problems as well as political.
On delving deeper, Walton discovered that most of the buildings fronting the Square could be classified as early nondescript.
The old Belasco Theater, over which many people had grown sentimental, was only a shell of its former self after arduous years as a USO Center.
The Dolley Madison House, Walton concluded, was scarcely worth preserving.
The attempt to save the Square's historic value, he declares, came half a century too late.
Surrounded by ancient elms, the campus is spacious and beautiful.
The buildings are mostly Georgian.
The Dartmouth student does not live in monastic seclusion, as he once did.
But his is still a simple life relatively free of the female presence or influence, and he must go far, even though he may go fast, for sophisticated pleasures.
He is still heir to the rare gifts of space and silence, if he chooses to be.
He is by no means the country boy he might have been in the last century, down from the hills with bear grease on his hair and a zeal for book learning in his heart.
The men's shops on Hanover's Main Street compare favorably with those in Princeton and New Haven.
And the automobiles that stream out of Hanover each weekend, toward Smith and Wellesley and Mount Holyoke, are no less rakish than those leaving Cambridge or West Philadelphia.
But there has always been an outdoor air to Dartmouth.
The would-be sophisticate and the citybred youth adopt this air without embarrassment.
No one here pokes fun at manly virtues.
And this gives rise to an easy camaraderie probably unequaled elsewhere in the Ivy League.
It even affects the faculty.
President Dickey's golden retriever, frolicking in the snow at his feet, added to the picture of masculine informality.
This carefree disdain for side cropped up again in the same television broadcast.
Dean Thaddeus Seymour, wearing ski clothes, was crowning a beauteous damsel queen of the Carnival.
She must have looked temptingly pretty to the dean as he put the crown on her head.
So he kissed her.
No Dartmouth man was surprised.
Dartmouth students enjoy other unusual diversions with equal sang-froid.
For example, groups regularly canoe down the Connecticut River.
This is in honor of John Ledyard, class of 1773, who scooped a canoe out of a handy tree and first set the course way back in his own student days.
And these hardy travelers are not unappreciated today.
They are hailed by the nation's press, and Smith girls throng the riverbanks at Northampton and refresh the voyageurs with hot soup and kisses.
Dartmouth's favorite and most characteristic recreation is skiing.
Since the days when their two thousand pairs of skis outnumbered those assembled anywhere else in the United States, the students have stopped regarding the Olympic Ski Team as another name for their own.
Yet Dartmouth still is the dominant member of the Intercollegiate Ski Union, which includes the winter sports colleges of Canada as well as those of this country.
Dartmouth students ski everywhere in winter, starting with their own front door.
They can hire a horse and go ski-joring behind him, or move out to Oak Hill, where there's a lift.
The Dartmouth Skiway, at Holt's Ledge, ten miles north of the campus, has one of the best terrains in the East, ranging from novice to expert.
Forty miles farther north is Mount Moosilauke, Dartmouth's own mountain.
Here, at the Ravine Lodge, President Dickey acts as host every year to about a hundred freshmen who are being introduced by the Dartmouth Outing Club to life on the trails.
The Lodge, built of hand-hewn virgin spruce, can handle fifty people for dining, sleeping, or lounging in its huge living room.
The Outing Club also owns a chain of fourteen cabins and several shelters, extending from the Vermont hills, just across the river from the college, through Hanover to the College Grant--27,000 acres of wilderness 140 miles north up in the logging country.
The cabins are equipped with bunks, blankets, and cooking equipment and are ideal bases for hikes and skiing trips.
The club runs regular trips to the cabins, but many of the students prefer to take off in small unofficial groups for a weekend of hunting, fishing, climbing, or skiing.
There is much to be said for a college that, while happily attuned to the sophisticated Ivies, still gives its students a chance to get up early in the morning and drive along back roads where a glimpse of small game, deer, or even bear is not uncommon.
City boys find a lot of learning in the feel of an ax handle or in the sharp tang of a sawmill, come upon suddenly in a backwoods logging camp.
And on the summit of Mount Washington, where thirty-five degrees below zero is commonplace and the wind velocity has registered higher than anywhere else in the world, there is a kind of wisdom to be found that other men often seek in the Himalayas because it is there.
There is much to be said for such a college--and Dartmouth men have been accused of saying it too often and too loudly.
Their affection for their college home has even caused President Dickey to comment on this place loyalty as something rather specially Hanoverian.
Probably a lawyer once said it best for all time in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Early in the nineteenth century the State of New Hampshire was casting about for a way to found its own state university.
It fixed on Dartmouth College, which was ready-made and just what the proctor ordered.
The legislators decided to liberate Dartmouth and entered into a tug-o'-war with the college trustees over the control of classrooms, faculty, and chapel.
For a time there were two factions on the campus fighting for possession of the student body.
The struggle was resolved in 1819 in the Supreme Court in one of the most intriguing cases in our judicial history.
In 1817 the lawyers were generally debating the legal inviolability of private contracts and charters.
A lawyer, hired by the college, was arguing specifically for Dartmouth: Daniel Webster, class of 1801, made her plight the dramatic focus of his whole plea.
In an age of oratory, he was the king of orators, and both he himself and Chief Justice Marshall were bathed in manly tears, as Uncle Dan'l reached his thundering climax:
It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it.
Dartmouth is today still a small college--and still a private one, thanks to Webster's eloquence.
This is not out of keeping with its origins, probably the most humble of any in the Ivy group.
Eleazar Wheelock, a Presbyterian minister, founded the school in 1769, naming it after the second earl of Dartmouth, its sponsor and benefactor.
and also of English Youth and any others.
It was a hardy undertaking, and Wheelock's was indeed a voice crying in the wilderness.
A road had to be hacked through trackless forests between Hanover and Portsmouth to permit Governor Wentworth and a company of gentlemen to attend the first Dartmouth commencement in 1771.
The governor and his retinue thoughtfully brought with them a glorious silver punchbowl which is still one of the cherished possessions of the college.
The exuberance on this occasion set a standard for subsequent Dartmouth gatherings.
A student orator produced tears from a great number of the learned even before the punch was served.
Then from the branches of a near-by tree an Indian underclassman, disdaining both the platform and the English language, harangued the assemblage in his aboriginal tongue.
Governor Wentworth contributed an ox for a barbecue on the green beneath the three-hundred-foot pines, and a barrel of rum was broached.
The cook got drunk, and President Wheelock proved to be a man of broad talents by carving the ox himself.
Future commencements were more decorous perhaps, but the number of graduates increased from the original four at a relatively slow pace.
By the end of the nineteenth century, in 1893, when the Big Three, Columbia, and Penn were populous centers of learning, Dartmouth graduated only sixty-nine.
The dormitories, including the beloved Dartmouth Hall, could barely house two hundred students in Spartan fashion.
Then in 1893 Dr. William Jewett Tucker became president and the college's great awakening began.
He transformed Dartmouth from a small New Hampshire institution into a national college.
By 1907 the number of undergraduates had risen to 1,107.
And at his last commencement, in that year, Dr. Tucker and Dartmouth were honored by the presence of distinguished academic visitors attesting to the new stature of the college.
The presidents of Cornell, Wisconsin, C.C.N.Y., Bowdoin, Vermont, Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard and the presidents emeritus of Harvard and Michigan were there.
Dartmouth is numerically still a small college today, with approximately twenty-nine hundred undergraduates.
But it has achieved a cross-section of students from almost all the states, and two-thirds of its undergraduates come from outside New England.
Over 450 different schools are usually represented in each entering class.
Only a dozen or so schools send as many as six students, and there are seldom more than fifteen men in any single delegation.
About two-thirds of the boys now come from public schools.
It is still a college only and not a university;
it is, in fact, the only college in the Ivy group.
However, three distinguished associated graduate schools offer professional curriculums--the Dartmouth Medical School (third oldest in the country and founded in 1797), the Thayer School of Engineering, and the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.
All three are purposely kept small, with a current total enrollment of about two hundred.
All three schools coordinate their educational programs with that of the undergraduate college and, like the college proper, place emphasis upon a broad liberal arts course as the proper foundation for specialized study.
The Thayer School offers a year of postgraduate study in somewhat the same way, after a boy wins a B.S. in engineering.
So Dartmouth is moving closer to the others in the Ivy group.
It is still, however, the junior member of the League, if not in years at least in the catching up it has had to do.
It has not been a well-known school for any part of the span the other Ivies have enjoyed.
It has come on with a rush in more significant areas.
Today it espouses certain ideas in its curriculum that other institutions might consider somewhat breathtaking.
But Dartmouth preserves its youthful brashness even in its educational attitudes, and, although some of its experiments may still be in the testing stage, they make for lively copy.
President Emeritus Hopkins once proposed to corral an aristocracy of brains in Hanover.
The person who left the buggy there has never been identified.
It was a busy street, conveniently near the shopping center, and unattended horses and wagons were often left at the curbside.
There are, of course, many weaknesses in any case against Emma.
She didn't like her stepmother, but nothing is known to have occurred shortly before the crime that could have caused such a murderous rage.
She had no way of knowing in advance whether an opportunity for murder existed.
She would have been taking more than a fair risk of being seen and recognized during her travels.
If she avoided the train and hired a buggy, the stableman might have recognized her.
If police had checked on her more thoroughly than is indicated, she would be completely eliminated as a suspect.
Uncle John Vinnicum Morse was the immediate popular suspect.
His sudden unannounced appearance at the Borden home was strange in that he did not carry an iota of baggage with him, although he clearly intended to stay overnight, if not longer.
Lizzie stated during the inquest that while her father and uncle were in the sitting room the afternoon before the murders, she had been disturbed by their voices and had closed her door, even though it was a very hot day.
It is evident that Lizzie did not tell everything she overheard between her father and her Uncle Morse.
At that time Jennings had a young law associate named Arthur S. Phillips.
A few years ago, not too long before his death, Phillips revealed in a newspaper story that he had always suspected Morse of the murders.
He said Morse and Borden had quarreled violently in the house that day, information which must have come from Lizzie.
It was obviously the sound of this argument that caused Lizzie to close her door.
The New Bedford Standard-Times has reported Knowlton as saying, long after the trial, that if he only knew what Borden said during his conversation with Morse, he would have convicted somebody.
Notice, Knowlton did not say that he would have obtained a conviction in the trial of Lizzie Borden.
He said he would have convicted somebody.
It is known that Morse did associate with a group of itinerant horse traders who made their headquarters at Westport, a town not far from Fall River.
They were a vagabond lot and considered to be shady and undesirable characters.
Fall River police did go to Westport to see if they could get any information against Morse and possibly find an accomplice whom he might have hired from among these men.
These officers found no incriminating information.
Morse's alibi was not as solid as it seemed.
He said he returned from the visit to his niece on the 11:20 streetcar.
The woman in the house where the niece was staying backed up his story and said she left when he did to shop for her dinner.
Fall River is not a fashionable town.
The dinner hour there was twelve noon.
If this woman had delayed until after 11:20 to start her shopping, she would have had little time in which to prepare the substantial meal that was eaten at dinner in those days.
It is possible that Morse told the woman it was 11:20, but it could have been earlier, since she did serve dinner on time.
Police did make an attempt to check on Morse's alibi.
They interviewed the conductor of the streetcar Morse said he had taken, but the man did not remember Morse as a passenger.
Questioned further, Morse said that there had been four or five priests riding on the same car with him.
The conductor did recall having priests as passengers and this satisfied police, although the conductor also pointed out that in heavily Catholic Fall River there were priests riding on almost every trip the streetcar made, so Morse's statement really proved nothing.
We do know that Morse left the house before nine o'clock.
Bridget testified she saw him leave through the side door.
Morse said Borden let him out and locked the screen door.
From that point on he said he went to the post office and then walked leisurely to where his niece was staying, more than a mile away.
He met nobody he knew on this walk.
There is no accounting of his movements in this long gap of time which covers the early hours when Mrs. Borden was killed.
Morse testified that while he was having breakfast in the dining room, Mrs. Borden told the servant, Bridget, I want you to wash these windows today.
Bridget's testimony was in direct contradiction.
She said it was after she returned from her vomiting spell in the back yard that Mrs. Borden told her to wash the windows.
This was long after Morse had left the house.
Morse's knowledge of what Mrs. Borden told Bridget could indicate that he had returned secretly to the house and was hidden there.
He knew the house fairly well, he had been there on two previous visits during the past three or four months alone.
And despite Knowlton's attempts to show that the house was locked up tighter than a drum, this was not true.
The screen door was unlocked for some ten or fifteen minutes while Bridget was sick in the back.
It was unlocked all the time she was washing windows.
Morse could have returned openly while Bridget was sick in the back yard and gone up to the room he had occupied.
Mrs. Borden would not have been alarmed if she saw Morse with an ax or hatchet in his hand.
He had been to the farm the previous day and he could have said they needed the ax or hatchet at the farm.
Mrs. Borden would have had no reason to disbelieve him and he could have approached close enough to her to swing before she could cry out.
He could have left for Weybosset Street after her murder and made it in plenty of time by using the streetcar.
If he took an earlier streetcar than the 11:20 on his return, he could have arrived at the Borden house shortly after Mr. Borden came home.
With Lizzie in the barn, the screen door unlocked and Bridget upstairs in her attic room, he would have had free and easy access to the house.
With the second murder over, he could have left, hidden the weapon in some vacant lot or an abandoned cistern in the neighborhood.
His unconcerned stroll down the side of the house to a pear tree, with crowds already gathering in front of the building and Sawyer guarding the side door, was odd.
There was no close examination of his clothes for bloodstains, and certainly no scientific test was made of them.
And for a man who traveled around without any change of clothing, a few more stains on his dark suit may very well have gone unnoticed.
The motive may have been the mysterious quarrel;
there was no financial gain for Morse in the murders.
On the other side of the ledger is the fact that he did see his niece and the woman with whom she was staying.
The time would have been shortly after the murder of Mrs. Borden and they noticed nothing unusual in his behavior.
He said he had promised Mrs. Borden to return in time for dinner and that was close to the time when he did turn up at the Borden house.
What did Pearson say about Bridget Sullivan as a possible suspect in his trial-book essay?
He wrote:
The police soon ceased to look upon either Bridget or Mr. Morse as in possession of guilty knowledge.
Neither had any interest in the deaths;
indeed, it was probably to Mr. Morse's advantage to have Mr. and Mrs. Borden alive.
Both he and Bridget were exonerated by Lizzie herself.
That was his complete discussion of Bridget Sullivan as a possible suspect.
Although Pearson disbelieved almost everything Lizzie said, and read a sinister purpose into almost everything she did, he happily accepted her statement about Bridget as the whole truth.
He felt nothing further need be said about the servant girl.
The exoneration Pearson speaks of is not an exoneration, but Lizzie's expression of her opinion, as reported in the testimony of Assistant Marshal Fleet.
This officer had asked Lizzie if she suspected her Uncle Morse, and she replied she didn't think he did it because he left the house before the murders and returned after them.
Fleet asked the same question about Bridget, and Lizzie pointed out that as far as she knew Bridget had gone up to her room before her father's murder and came down when she called her.
Lizzie, actually, never named any suspect.
She told police about the prospective tenant she had heard quarreling with her father some weeks before the murders, but she said she thought he was from out of town because she heard him mention something about talking to his partner.
And, much as she detested Hiram Harrington, she also did not accuse him.
At the inquest she was asked specifically whether she knew anybody her father had bad feelings toward, or who had bad feelings toward her father.
She replied, I know of one man that has not been friendly with him.
They have not been friendly for years.
Asked who this was, she named Harrington.
Her statement certainly was true;
the press reported the same facts in using Harrington's interview, but Lizzie did not suggest at the inquest that Harrington was the killer.
When I interviewed Kirby, who as a boy picked up pears in the Borden yard, I asked if anybody else in the household besides Lizzie and Morse had been under any suspicion at the time of the murders.
He said he had not heard of anybody else.
How about Bridget Sullivan?
I inquired.
Oh, she was just the maid there, he replied, waving a hand to indicate how completely unimportant she was.
Kirby was, of course, reflecting the opinion that existed at the time of murders.
Everyone somehow manages to overlook completely the fact that, as far as we know, there were exactly two people in and about the house at the time of both murders: Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan.
All the officials on the case seem to have been afflicted with a similar myopia as far as Bridget was concerned, although records in police files contain many reports of servants who have murdered their employers.
True, it is no longer cricket for the butler to be the killer in mystery fiction, but we are dealing here with actual people in real life and not imaginary characters and situations.
The actions of Bridget should be examined, since she was there and opportunity did exist, if only to establish her innocence.
There are also other factors that require closer examination.
The legend as it exists in Fall River today always includes the solemn assurance that Bridget returned to Ireland after the trial with a big bundle of cash which Lizzie gave her for keeping her mouth shut.
The people who believe and retell the legend have apparently never troubled to read the trial testimony and do not know that the maid changed her testimony on several key points, always to the detriment of Lizzie.
If Bridget did get any bundles of cash, the last person who would have rewarded her for services rendered would have been Lizzie Borden.
Bridget was born in Ireland, one of fourteen children.
She was apparently the pioneer in her family because she had no close relatives in this country at that time.
She worked as a domestic, first in Newport for a year, and then in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for another year.
She finally settled in Fall River and, after being employed for a time by a Mrs. Reed, was hired by the Bordens.
I have previously described how, during the week of the murder, Bridget spent the first few hot days scrubbing and ironing clothes.
Her father, James Upton, was the Upton mentioned by Hawthorne in the famous introduction to the Scarlet Letter as one of those who came into the old custom house to do business with him as the surveyor of the port.
A gentleman of the old school, Mr. Upton possessed intellectual power, ample means, and withal, was a devoted Christian.
The daughter profited from his interest in scientific and philosophical subjects.
Her mother also was a person of superior mind and broad interests.
There is clear evidence that Lucy from childhood had an unusual mind.
She possessed an observant eye, a retentive memory, and a critical faculty.
When she was nine years old, she wrote a description of a store she had visited.
She named 48 items, and said there were many more things which it would take too long to write.
An essay on Freedom written at 10 years of age quoted the Declaration of Independence, the freedom given to slaves in Canada, and the views of George Washington.
Lucy Upton was graduated from the Salem High School when few colleges, only Oberlin and Elmira, were open to women;
and she had an appetite for learning that could not be denied.
A picture of her in high school comes from a younger schoolmate, Albert S. Flint, friend of her brother Winslow, and later, like Winslow, a noted astronomer.
He recalled Lucy, as a bright-looking black-eyed young lady who came regularly through the boys' study hall to join the class in Greek in the little recitation room beyond.
The study of Greek was the distinctive mark of boys destined to go to college, and Lucy Upton too expected to go to college and take the full classical course offered to men.
The death of her mother in 1865 prevented this.
With four younger children at home, Lucy stepped into her mother's role, and even after the brothers and sisters were grown, she was her father's comfort and stay until he died in 1879.
But even so Lucy could not give up her intellectual pursuits.
Do you think I might profitably study some of the history you do, perhaps two weeks behind you.
And that she proceeded to do.
Whatever was the science in the high school course for the time being, that was my favorite study.
Mathematics came next.
Her study of history was persistently pursued.
She read Maitland's Dark Ages, which I enjoyed very much;
La Croix on the Customs of the Middle Ages, 16 chapters of Bryce and liked it more and more;
more chapters of Guizot;
Lecky and Stanley's Eastern Church.
She discussed in her letters to Winslow some of the questions that came to her as she studied alone.
Lucy's correspondence with brother Winslow during his college days was not entirely taken up with academic studies.
She played chess with him by postcard.
Also Lucy and Winslow had a private contest to see which one could make the most words from the letters in importunately.
Who won is not revealed, but Winslow's daughter Eleanor says they got up to 1,212 words.
There was another family interest also.
Winslow had musical talents, as had his father before him.
At different times he served as glee-club and choir leader and as organist.
And it was Lucy Upton who first started the idea of a regular course in Music at Spelman College.
Winslow Upton after graduation from Brown University and two years of graduate study, accepted a position at the Harvard Observatory.
For three years he was connected with the U.S. Naval Observatory and with the U.S. Signal Corps;
and after 1883, was professor of astronomy at Brown University.
The six expeditions to study eclipses of the sun, of which he was a member, took him to Colorado, Virginia, and California as well as to the South Pacific and to Russia.
After her father's death, Lucy and her youngest sister lived for a few years with Winslow in Washington, D.C..
Their house, writes Albert S. Flint, was always a haven of hospitality and good cheer, especially grateful to one like myself far from home.
Lucy was a lively part of the household.
Moreover, she had physical as well as mental vigor.
Winslow, as his daughters Eleanor and Margaret recall, used to characterize her as our iron sister.
There is reason to suppose that Lucy would have made a record as publicly distinguished as her brother had it not been that her mother's death occurred just as she was about to enter college.
While in Washington, D.C., Lucy Upton held positions in the U.S. Census Office, and in the Pension Bureau.
They were not sufficiently challenging however, and she resigned in 1887, to go to Germany with her brother Winslow and his family while he was there on study.
After the months in Europe, she returned to Boston and became active in church and community life.
What was called an accidental meeting with Miss Packard in Washington turned her attention to Spelman.
Here was a cause she believed in.
After correspondence with Miss Packard and to the joy of Miss Packard and Miss Giles, she came to Atlanta, in the fall of 1888, to help wherever needed, although there was then no money available to pay her a salary.
She served for a number of years without pay beyond her travel and maintenance.
Her students have spoken of the exacting standards of scholarship and of manners and conduct she expected and achieved from the students;
of her great power of discernment;
of her exquisiteness of dress, her well-modulated voice that went straight to the hearts of the hearers;
her great love of flowers and plants and birds;
and her close knowledge of individual students.
She drew on all her resources of mind and heart to help them--to make them at home in the world;
and as graduates gratefully recall, she drew on her purse as well.
Many a student was able to remain at Spelman, only because of her unobtrusive help.
Under Miss Upton, the work of the year 1909-10 went forward without interruption.
After all, she had come to Spelman Seminary in 1888, and had been since 1891 except for one year, Associate Principal or Dean.
She had taught classes in botany, astronomy (with the aid of a telescope), geometry, and psychology.
Miss Upton and Miss Packard, as a matter of fact, had many tastes in common.
Both had eager and inquiring minds;
and both believed that intellectual growth must go hand in hand with the development of sturdy character and Christian zeal.
Both loved the out-of-doors, including mountain climbing and horseback riding.
In 1890 when the trip to Europe and the Holy Land was arranged for Miss Packard, it was Miss Upton who planned the trip, and with rare executive ability bore the brunt of the entire pilgrimage from beginning to end.
So strenuous it was physically, with its days of horseback riding over rough roads that it seems an amazing feat of endurance for both Miss Packard and Miss Upton.
Yet they thrived on it.
At the Fifteenth Anniversary (1896) as already quoted, Miss Upton projected with force and eloquence the Spelman of the Future as a college of first rank, with expanding and unlimited horizons.
When Dr. Wallace Buttrick, wise in his judgment of people, declined to have the Science Building named for him, he wrote Miss Tapley (April 7, 1923) If you had asked me, I think I would have suggested that you name the building for Miss Upton.
Her services to the School for many years were of a very high character, and I have often thought that one of the buildings should be named for her.
Such were the qualities of the Acting-President of the Seminary after the death of Miss Giles.
At the meeting of the Board of Trustees, on March 3, 1910, Miss Upton presented the annual report of the President.
She noted that no student had been withdrawn through loss of confidence;
that the enrollment showed an increase of boarding students as was desired;
and that the year's work had gone forward smoothly.
She urged the importance of more thorough preparation for admission.
The raising of the $25,000 Improvement Fund two days before the time limit expired, and the spontaneous praise demonstration held afterward on the campus, were reported as events which had brought happiness to Miss Giles.
With the Fund in hand, the debt on the boilers had been paid;
Rockefeller and Packard Halls had been renovated;
walks laid;
and ground had been broken for the superintendent's home.
Miss Upton spoke gratefully of the response of Spelman graduates and Negro friends in helping to raise the Fund, and their continuing efforts to raise money for greatly needed current expenses.
She spoke also with deep thankfulness of the many individuals and agencies whose interest and efforts through the years had made the work so fruitful in results.
Two bequests were recorded: one of $200 under the will of Mrs. Harriet A. Copp of Los Angeles;
and one of $2,000 under the will of Miss Celia L. Brett of Hamilton, New York, a friend from the early days.
Miss Upton told the Trustees that the death of Miss Giles was the sorest grief the Seminary had ever been called upon to bear.
The daughters of Spelman, she said, had never known or thought of Spelman without her.
The removal of Miss Packard 18 years earlier had caused them great sorrow, but they still had Miss Giles.
Now the school was indeed bereft.
Yet Spelman has strong, deep roots, and will live for the blessing of generations to come.
Miss Mary Jane Packard, Sophia's half-sister, became ill in March, 1910;
and when school closed, she was unable to travel to Massachusetts.
She remained in Atlanta through June and July;
she died on August sixth.
Before coming on a visit to Spelman in 1885, Miss Mary had been a successful teacher in Worcester, and her position there was held open for her for a considerable period.
But she decided to stay at Spelman.
She helped with teaching as well as office work for a few years--the catalogues show that she had classes in geography, rhetoric and bookkeeping.
Soon the office work claimed all her time.
She was closely associated with the Founders in all their trials and hardships.
Quiet and energetic, cheerful and calm, she too was a power in the development of the seminary.
Miss Giles always used to refer to her as Sister.
She served as secretary in the Seminary office for 25 years, and was in charge of correspondence, records, and bookkeeping.
The books of the school hold a memorial to her;
and so do the hearts of students and of teachers.
Mary J. Packard, states a Messenger editorial, was efficient, pains-taking, self-effacing, loving, radiating the spirit of her Master.
With infinite patience she responded to every call, no matter at what cost to herself, and to her all went, for she was sure to have the needed information or word of cheer.
In a few school districts one finds a link between school and job.
In those vocational programs organized with Smith-Hughes money, there may be a close tie between the labor union and a local employer on the one hand and the vocational teacher on the other.
In these cases a graduate may enter directly into an apprentice program, saving a year because of his vocational courses in grades 11 and 12.
The apprentice program will involve further education on a part-time basis, usually at night, perhaps using some of the same equipment of the high school.
These opportunities are to be found in certain cities in such crafts as auto mechanics, carpentry, drafting, electrical work, tool-and-die work, and sheet-metal work.
Formally organized vocational programs supported by federal funds allow high school students to gain experience in a field of work which is likely to lead to a full-time job on graduation.
The diversified occupations program is a part-time trade-preparatory program conducted over two school years on a cooperative basis between the school and local industrial and business employers.
The distributive education program operates in a similar way, with arrangements between the school and employers in merchandising fields.
In both cases the student attends school half-time and works in a regular job the other half.
He receives remuneration for his work.
In a few places cooperative programs between schools and employers in clerical work have shown the same possibilities for allowing the student, while still in school, to develop skills which are immediately marketable upon graduation.
Adult education courses, work-study programs of various sorts--these are all evidence of a continuing interest of the schools in furthering educational opportunities for out-of-school youth.
In general, however, it may be said that when a boy or a girl leaves the high school, the school authorities play little or no part in the decision of what happens next.
If the student drops out of high school, the break with the school is even more complete.
When there is employment opportunity for youth, this arrangement--or lack of arrangement--works out quite well.
Indeed, in some periods of our history and in some neighborhoods the job opportunities have been so good that undoubtedly a great many boys who were potential members of the professions quit school at an early age and went to work.
Statistically this has represented a loss to the nation, although one must admit that in an individual case the decision in retrospect may have been a wise one.
I make no attempt to measure the enduring satisfaction and material well-being of a man who went to work on graduation from high school and was highly successful in the business which he entered.
He may or may not be better off than his classmate who went on to a college and professional school.
But in the next decades the nation needs to educate for the professions all the potential professional talent.
In a later chapter dealing with the suburban school, I shall discuss the importance of arranging a program for the academically talented and highly gifted youth in any high school where he is found.
In the Negro neighborhoods and also to some extent in the mixed neighborhoods the problem may be one of identification and motivation.
High motivation towards higher education must start early enough so that by the time the boy or girl reaches grade 9 he or she has at least developed those basic skills which are essential for academic work.
Undoubtedly far more can be done in the lower grades in this regard in the Negro schools.
However, the teacher can only go so far if the attitude of the community and the family is anti-intellectual.
And the fact remains that there are today few shining examples of Negroes in positions of intellectual leadership.
This is not due to any policy of discrimination on the part of the Northern universities.
Quite the contrary, as I can testify from personal experience as a former university president.
Rather we see here another vicious circle.
The absence of successful Negroes in the world of scholarship and science has tended to tamp down enthusiasm among Negro youth for academic careers.
I believe the situation is improving, but the success stories need to be heavily publicized.
Here again we run into the roadblock that Negroes do not like to be designated as Negroes in the press.
How can the vicious circle be broken?
This is a problem to which leaders of opinion, both Negro and white, should devote far more attention.
It is at least as important as the more dramatic attempts to break down barriers of inequality in the South.
Vocational education
I should like to underline four points I made in my first report with respect to vocational education.
First and foremost, vocational courses should not replace courses which are essential parts of the required academic program for graduation.
Second, vocational courses should be provided in grades 11 and 12 and not require more than half the student's time in those years;
however, for slow learners and prospective dropouts these courses ought to begin earlier.
Third, the significance of the vocational courses is that those enrolled are keenly interested in the work;
they realize the relevance of what they are learning to their future careers, and this sense of purpose is carried over to the academic courses which they are studying at the same time.
Fourth, the type of vocational training programs should be related to the employment opportunities in the general locality.
This last point is important because if high school pupils are aware that few, if any, graduates who have chosen a certain vocational program have obtained a job as a consequence of the training, the whole idea of relevance disappears.
Vocational training which holds no hope that the skill developed will be in fact a marketable skill becomes just another school chore for those whose interest in their studies has begun to falter.
Those who, because of population mobility and the reputed desire of employers to train their own employees, would limit vocational education to general rather than specific skills ought to bear in mind the importance of motivation in any kind of school experience.
I have been using the word vocational as a layman would at first sight think it should be used.
I intend to include under the term all the practical courses open to boys and girls.
These courses develop skills other than those we think of when we use the adjective academic.
Practically all of these practical skills are of such a nature that a degree of mastery can be obtained in high school sufficient to enable the youth to get a job at once on the basis of the skill.
They are in this sense skills marketable immediately on graduation from high school.
To be sure, in tool-and-die work and in the building trades, the first job must be often on an apprentice basis, but two years of half-time vocational training enables the young man thus to anticipate one year of apprentice status.
Similarly, a girl who graduates with a good working knowledge of stenography and the use of clerical machines and who is able to get a job at once may wish to improve her skill and knowledge by a year or two of further study in a community college or secretarial school.
Of course, it can be argued that an ability to write English correctly and with some degree of elegance is a marketable skill.
So, too, is the mathematical competence of a college graduate who has majored in mathematics.
In a sense almost all high school and college courses could be considered as vocational to the extent that later in life the student in his vocation (which may be a profession) will be called upon to use some of the skills developed and the competence obtained.
In spite of the shading of one type of course into another, I believe it is useful to talk about vocational courses as apart from academic courses.
Perhaps a course in typewriting might be regarded as the exception which proves the rule.
Today many college bound students try to take a course in personal typing, as they feel a certain degree of mastery of this skill is almost essential for one who proposes to do academic work in college and a professional school.
Most of our largest cities have one or more separate vocational or technical high schools.
In this respect, public education in the large cities differs from education in the smaller cities and consolidated school districts.
The neighborhood high schools are not, strictly speaking, comprehensive schools, because some of the boys and girls may be attending a vocational or technical high school instead of the local school.
Indeed, one school superintendent in a large city objects to the use of the term comprehensive high school for the senior high schools in his city, because these schools do not offer strictly vocational programs.
He prefers to designate such schools as general high schools.
The suburban high school, it is worth noting, also is not a widely comprehensive high school because of the absence of vocational programs.
The reason is that there is a lack of interest on the part of the community.
Therefore employment and education in all the schools in a metropolitan area are related in different ways from those which are characteristic of the comprehensive high school described in my first report.
The separate vocational or technical high schools in the large cities must be reckoned as permanent institutions.
By and large their programs are satisfactorily connected both to the employment situation and to the realities of the apprentice system.
It is not often realized to what degree certain trades are in many communities closed areas of employment, except for a lucky few.
One has to talk confidentially with some of the directors of vocational high schools to realize that a boy cannot just say, I want to be a plumber, and then, by doing good work, find a job.
It is far more difficult in many communities to obtain admission to an apprentice program which involves union approval than to get into the most selective medical school in the nation.
Two stories will illustrate what I have in mind.
One vocational instructor in a city vocational school, speaking of his course in a certain field, said he had no difficulty placing all students in jobs outside of the city.
In the city, he said, the waiting list for those who want to join the union is so long that unless a boy has an inside track he can't get in.
In a far distant part of the United States, I was talking to an instructor about a boy who in the twelfth grade was doing special work.
What does he have in mind to do when he graduates?
Oh, he'll be a plumber, came the answer.
But isn't it almost impossible to get into the union?
I asked.
He'll have no difficulty, I was told.
He has very good connections.
In my view, there should be a school which offers significant vocational programs for boys within easy reach of every family in a city.
Ideally these schools should be so located that one or more should be in the area where demand for practical courses is at the highest.
An excellent example of a successful location of a new vocational high school is the Dunbar Vocational High School in Chicago.
Located in a bad slum area now undergoing redevelopment, this school and its program are especially tailored to the vocational aims of its students.
Hardly a window has been broken since Dunbar first was opened (and vandalism in schools is a major problem in many slum areas).
I discovered in the course of a visit there that almost all the pupils were Negroes.
They were learning trades as diverse as shoe repairing, bricklaying, carpentry, cabinet making, auto mechanics, and airplane mechanics.
The physical facilities at Dunbar are impressive, but more impressive is the attitude of the pupils.
The soybean seed is the most important leguminous food in the world.
In the United States, where half of the world crop is grown, soybeans are processed for their edible oil.
The residue from soybean processing goes mainly into animal feeds.
Soybeans are extensively processed into a remarkable number of food products in the Orient.
American chemists, seeking to increase exports of soybeans, have adapted modern techniques and fermentation methods to improve their use in such traditional Japanese foods as tofu and miso and in tempeh of Indonesia.
Soybean flour, grits, flakes, milk, and curd can be bought in the United States.
Peanuts are the world's second most important legume.
They are used mainly for their oil.
We produce peanut oil, but to a much greater extent we eat the entire seed.
Blanched peanuts, as prepared for making peanut butter or for eating as nuts, are roasted seeds whose seedcoats have been rubbed off.
Cereal grains, supplemented with soybeans or dry edible peas or beans, comprise about two-thirds or three-fourths of the diet in parts of Asia and Africa.
In western Europe and North America, where the level of economic development is higher, grains and other seed products furnish less than one-third of the food consumed.
Rather, meat and potatoes, sugar, and dairy products are the main sources of carbohydrate, protein, oils, and fats.
People depend less on seeds for foods in Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, where extensive grazing lands support sheep or cattle, and the consumption of meat is high.
Feeds for livestock took about one-sixth of the world's cereal crop in 1957-1958.
Most of the grain is fed to swine and dairy cows and lesser amounts to beef cattle and poultry.
About 90 percent of the corn used in the United States is fed to animals.
The rest is used for human food and industrial products.
More than half of the sorghum and barley seeds we produce and most of the byproducts of the milling of cereals and the crushing of oilseeds are fed to livestock.
More than 200 million tons of seeds and seed products are fed to livestock annually in the United States.
The efficiency with which animals convert grains and forages to meat has risen steadily in the United States since the 1930's and has paralleled the increased feeding of the cake and meal that are a byproduct when seeds are processed for oil.
The demand for food is so great in the world that little arable land can be given over to growing the nonfood crops.
Seeds grown for industrial uses hold a relatively minor position.
Chief among the seed crops grown primarily for industrial uses are the oil-bearing seeds--flax, castor, tung (nuts from the China wood-oil tree), perilla (from an Oriental mint), and oiticica (from a Brazilian tree).
Oils, or liquid fats, from the seeds of flax and tung have long been the principal constituents of paints and varnishes for protecting and beautifying the surfaces of wood and metal.
These oils develop hard, smooth films when they dry and form resinlike substances.
The artist who paints in oil uses drying oils to carry the pigments and to protect his finished work for the ages.
One of the finest of artists' oils comes from poppy seeds.
Seeds of soybean, cotton, corn, sesame, and rape yield semidrying oils.
Some are used in paints along with drying oils.
Palm oil protects the surfaces of steel sheets before they are plated with tin.
Castor oil, made from castorbeans, has gone out of style as a medicine.
This nondrying oil, however, is now more in demand than ever before as a fine lubricant, as a constituent of fluids for hydraulically operated equipment, and as a source of chemicals to make plastics.
Almond oil, another nondrying oil, was once used extensively in perfumery to extract flower fragrances.
It is still used in drugs and cosmetics, but it is rather scarce and sometimes is adulterated with oils from peach and plum seeds.
Liquid fats from all these oilseeds enter into the manufacture of soaps for industry and the household and of glycerin for such industrial uses as making explosives.
Sizable amounts of soybean, coconut, and palm kernel oil--seed oils that are produced primarily for food purposes--also are used to make soaps, detergents, and paint resins.
Solid fats from the seeds of the mahua tree, the shea tree, and the coconut palm are used to make candles in tropical countries.
Seeds are a main source of starch for industrial and food use in many parts of the world.
Corn and wheat supply most of the starch in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
In other countries where cereal grains are not among the principal crops of a region, starchy tubers or roots are processed for starch.
Starch is used in the paper, textile, and food-processing industries and in a multitude of other manufacturing operations.
Gums were extracted from quince, psyllium (fleawort), flax, and locust (carob) seeds in ancient times.
Today the yearly import into the United States of locust bean gum is more than 15 million pounds;
of psyllium seed, more than 2.6 million.
The discovery during the Second World War that guar gum was similar to imported locust gum increased its cultivation in western Asia and initiated it in the United States.
Water-soluble gums are used in foods and drugs and in the manufacture of pulp and paper as thickeners, stabilizers, or dispersing agents.
Guar gum thickens salad dressings and stabilizes ice cream.
Quince seed gum is the main ingredient in wave-setting lotions.
Once regarded as an agricultural nuisance, psyllium was sold in the 1930's as a mechanical laxative under 117 different brands.
Locust gum is added to pulp slurries to break up the lumps of fibers in making paper.
The seeds of hard, fibrous, stony fruits, called nuts, provide highly concentrated foods, oils, and other materials of value.
Most nuts consist of the richly packaged storage kernel and its thick, adherent, brown covering--the seedcoat.
The kernels of brazil nuts, cashews, coconuts, filberts, hazelnuts, hickory nuts, pecans, walnuts, and pine nuts are predominantly oily.
Almonds and pistachio nuts are not so high in oil but are rich in protein.
Chestnuts are starchy.
All nut kernels are rich in protein.
The world production of familiar seed nuts--almonds, brazil nuts, filberts, and the English walnuts--totals about 300 thousand tons annually.
Coconuts, the fruit of the coconut palm, have the largest of all known seeds and are grown in South Pacific islands as a crop for domestic and export markets.
The oil palm of West Africa yields edible oil from both the flesh and the seed or kernel of its fruit.
World production of copra, the oil-bearing flesh of the coconut, was a little more than 3 million tons in 1959.
Exports from producing countries in terms of equivalent oil were a little more than 1 million tons, about half of which was palm kernels or oil from them and about half was palm oil.
Other nuts consumed in lesser quantity include the spicy nutmeg;
the soap nut, which owes its sudsing power to natural saponins;
the marking nut, used for ink and varnish;
the aromatic sassafras nut of South America;
and the sweet-smelling cumara nut, which is suited for perfumes.
A forest crop that has not been extensively cultivated is ivory nuts from the tagua palm.
The so-called vegetable ivory is the hard endosperm of the egg-sized seed.
It is used for making buttons and other small, hard objects of turnery.
Seeds of the sago palm are used in Bermuda to make heads and faces of dolls sold to tourists.
The color and shape of seeds have long made them attractive for ornaments and decorations.
Since Biblical times, rosaries have been made from jobs-tears--the seeds of an Asiatic grass.
Bead tree seeds are the necklaces of South Pacific islanders and the eyes of Buddha dolls in Cuba.
Victorian ladies had a fad of stringing unusual seeds to wear as jewelry.
Handmade Christmas wreaths and trees often contain a variety of seeds collected during the year.
Tradition has assigned medicinal values to seeds because of their alkaloids, aromatic oils, and highly flavored components.
Although science has given us more effective materials, preparations from anise, castorbean, colchicum, nux vomica, mustard, fennel, and stramonium are familiar to many for the relief of human ailments.
Flaxseed poultices and mustard plasters still are used by some persons.
Peanut and sesame oils often are used as carriers or diluents for medicines administered by injection.
Still another group of seeds (sometimes tiny, dry, seed-bearing fruits) provide distinctive flavors and odors to foods, although the nutrients they supply are quite negligible.
The common spices, flavorings, and condiments make up this group.
Each year millions of pounds of anise, caraway, mustard, celery, and coriander and the oils extracted from them are imported.
Single-seeded dry fruits used for flavoring include several of the carrot family, such as cumin, dill, fennel, and angelica.
Less common seeds used in cooking and beverages include fenugreek (artificial maple flavor) and cardamom.
White pepper is the ground seed of the common black pepper fruit.
Sesame seed, which comes from the tall pods of a plant grown in Egypt, Brazil, and Central America, has a toasted-nut flavor and can be used in almost any dish calling for almonds.
It is a main flavoring for halvah, the candy of the Middle East.
Sesame sticks, a snack dip, originated in the Southwest.
Beverages are made from seeds the world over.
Coffee is made from the roasted and ground seeds of the coffee tree.
World production of coffee broke all previous records in 1959 and 1960 at more than 5 million tons.
Per capita consumption remains around 16 pounds in the United States.
Cocoa, chocolate, and cocoa butter come from the ground seeds of the cacao tree.
World production of about 1 million tons is divided primarily between Africa (63 percent) and South America (27 percent).
Several soft drinks contain extracts from kola nuts, the seed of the kola tree cultivated in the West Indies and South America.
Cereal grains have been used for centuries to prepare fermented beverages.
The Japanese sake is wine fermented from rice grain.
Arrack is distilled from fermented rice in India.
Beer, generally fermented from barley, is an old alcoholic beverage.
Beer was brewed by the Babylonians and Egyptians more than 6 thousand years ago.
Brewers today use corn, rice, and malted barley.
Distillers use corn, malt, wheat, grain sorghum, and rye in making beverage alcohol.
Seed crops hold a prominent place in the agricultural economy of the United States.
The farm value of seeds produced in this country for all purposes, including the cereals, is nearly 10 billion dollars a year.
Cereal grains, oilseeds, and dry beans and peas account for about 57 percent of the farm value of all crops raised.
Seeds furnish about 40 percent of the total nutrients consumed by all livestock.
Hay and pasture are the other chief sources of livestock feed.
Seeds are the essential raw materials for milling grain, baking, crushing oilseed, refining edible oil, brewing, distilling, and mixing feed.
More than 11 thousand business establishments in the United States were based on cereals and oilseeds in 1954.
The value of products from these industries was 15.8 billion dollars, of which about one-third was created by manufacturing processes.
Not included was the value of seed oil in paints and varnishes or the value of the coffee and chocolate industries that are based on imported seed or seed products.
Cereal grains furnish about one-fourth of the total food calories in the American diet and about one-third of the total nutrients consumed by all livestock and poultry.
To hold a herd of cattle on a new range till they felt at home was called locatin' 'em.
To keep 'em scattered somewhat and yet herd 'em was called loose herdin'.
To hold 'em in a compact mass was close herdin'.
Cattle were inclined to remain in a territory with which they were acquainted.
That became their home range.
Yet there were always some that moved farther and farther out, seekin' grass and water.
These became strays, the term bein' restricted to cattle, however, as hosses, under like circumstances, were spoken of as stray hosses, not merely strays.
Cattle would drift day and night in a blizzard till it was over.
You couldn't stop 'em;
you had to go with 'em or wait till the storm was over, and follow.
Such marchin' in wholesale numbers was called a drift, or winter drift, and if the storm was prolonged it usually resulted in one of the tragedies of the range.
The cowboy made a technical distinction in reference to the number of them animals.
The single animal or a small bunch were referred to as strays;
but when a large number were bunched up or banded up, and marched away from their home range, as long as they stayed together the group was said to be a drift.
Drifts usually occurred in winter in an effort to escape the severe cold winds, but it could also occur in summer as the result of lack of water or grass because of a drought, or as an aftermath of a stampede.
Drifts usually happened only with cattle, for hosses had 'nough sense to avoid 'em, and to find shelter for 'emselves.
The wholesale death of cattle as a result of blizzards, and sometimes droughts, over a wide range of territory was called a die-up.
Followin' such an event there was usually a harvest of fallen hides, and the ranchers needed skinnin' knives instead of brandin' irons.
Cattle were said to be potted when blizzard choked, that is, caught in a corner or a draw, or against a drift fence durin' a storm.
Cattle which died from them winter storms were referred to as the winter kill.
When cattle in winter stopped and humped their backs up they were said to bow up.
This term was also used by the cowboy in the sense of a human showin' fight, as one cowhand was heard to say, He arches his back like a mule in a hailstorm.
Cattle drove to the northern ranges and held for two winters to mature 'em into prime beef were said to be double wintered.
Cattle brought into a range from a distance were called immigrants.
Them new to the country were referred to as pilgrims.
This word was first applied to the imported hot-blooded cattle, but later was more commonly used as reference to a human tenderfoot.
Hereford cattle were often called white faces, or open-face cattle, and the old-time cowman gave the name of hothouse stock to them newly introduced cattle.
Because Holstein cattle weren't a beef breed, they were rarely seen on a ranch, though one might be found now and then for the milk supply.
The cowboy called this breed of cattle magpies.
A cattaloe was a hybrid offspring of buffalo and cattle.
Dry stock denoted, regardless of age or sex, such bovines as were givin' no milk.
A wet herd was a herd of cattle made up entirely of cows, while wet stuff referred to cows givin' milk.
The cowboy's humorous name for a cow givin' milk was a milk pitcher.
Cows givin' no milk were knowed as strippers.
The terminology of the range, in speakin' of dry stock and wet stock, was confusin' to the tenderfoot.
The most common reference to wet stock was with the meanin' that such animals had been smuggled across the Rio Grande after bein' stolen from their rightful owners.
The term soon became used and applied to all stolen animals.
Mixed herd meant a herd of mixed sexes, while a straight steer herd was one composed entirely of steers, and when the cowman spoke of mixed cattle, he meant cattle of various grades, ages, and sexes.
In the spring when penned cattle were turned out to grass, this was spoken of as turn-out time, or put to grass.
Shootin' 'em out was gettin' cattle out of a corral onto the range.
When a cow came out of a corral in a crouchin' run she was said to come out a-stoopin'.
To stir cattle up and get 'em heated and excited was to mustard the cattle, and the act was called ginnin' 'em 'round, or chousin' 'em.
After a roundup the pushin' of stray cattle of outside brands toward their home range was called throwin' over.
A cow rose from the ground rear end first.
By the time her hindquarters were in a standin' position, her knees were on the ground in a prayin' attitude.
It was when she was in this position that the name prayin' cow was suggested to the cowboy.
They were said to be on their heads when grazin'.
On the hoof was a reference to live cattle and was also used in referrin' to cattle travelin' by trail under their own power as against goin' by rail.
Shippin' cattle by train was called a stock run.
A general classification given grass-fed cattle was grassers.
When a cowboy spoke of dustin' a cow, he meant that he throwed dust into her eyes.
The cow, unlike a bull or steer, kept her eyes open and her mind on her business when chargin', and a cow on the prod or on the peck was feared by the cowhand more than any of his other charges.
The Injun's name for beef was wohaw, and many of the old frontiersmen adopted it from their association with the Injun on the trails.
The first cattle the Injuns saw under the white man's control were the ox teams of the early freighters.
Listenin' with wonder at the strange words of the bullwhackers as they shouted Whoa, Haw, and Gee, they thought them words the names of the animals, and began callin' cattle wohaws.
Rarely did a trail herd pass through the Injun country on its march north that it wasn't stopped to receive demand for wohaw.
Tailin' was the throwin' of an animal by the tail in lieu of a rope.
Any animal could when travelin' fast, be sent heels over head by the simple process of overtakin' the brute, seizin' its tail, and givin' the latter a pull to one side.
This throwed the animal off balance, and over it'd crash onto its head and shoulders.
Though the slightest yank was frequently capable of producin' results, many men assured success through a turn of the tail 'bout the saddle horn, supplemented sometimes, in the case of cattle, by a downward heave of the rider's leg upon the strainin' tail.
Such tactics were resorted to frequently with the unmanageable longhorns, and a thorough tailin' usually knocked the breath out of a steer, and so dazed 'im that he'd behave for the rest of the day.
It required both a quick and swift hoss and a darin' rider.
When cattle became more valuable, ranch owners frowned upon this practice and it was discontinued, at least when the boss was 'round.
When the cowboy used the word tailin's, he meant stragglers.
Bull tailin' was a game once pop'lar with the Mexican cowboys of Texas.
From a pen of wild bulls one would be released, and with much yellin' a cowhand'd take after 'im.
Seizin' the bull by the tail, he rushed his hoss forward and a little to one side, throwin' the bull off balance, and bustin' 'im with terrific force.
Rammin' one horn of a downed steer into the ground to hold 'im down was called peggin'.
Colors of cattle came in for their special names.
An animal covered with splotches or spots of different colors was called a brindle or brockle.
A lineback was an animal with a stripe of different color from the rest of its body runnin' down its back, while a lobo stripe was the white, yeller, or brown stripe runnin' down the back, from neck to tail, a characteristic of many Spanish cattle.
A mealynose was a cow or steer of the longhorn type, with lines and dots of a color lighter'n the rest of its body 'round the eyes, face, and nose.
Such an animal was said to be mealynosed.
Sabinas was a Spanish word used to describe cattle of red and white peppered and splotched colorin'.
The northern cowboy called all the red Mexican cattle which went up the trail Sonora reds, while they called all cattle drove up from Mexico yaks, because they came from the Yaqui Injun country, or gave 'em the name of Mexican buckskins.
Near the southern border, cattle of the early longhorn breed whose coloration was black with a lineback, with white speckles frequently appearin' on the sides and belly, were called zorrillas.
This word was from the Spanish, meanin' polecat.
Yeller bellies were cattle of Mexican breed splotched on flank and belly with yellerish color.
An animal with distinct coloration, or other marks easily distinguished and remembered by the owner and his riders, was sometimes used as a marker.
Such an animal has frequently been the downfall of the rustler.
Countin' each grazin' bunch of cattle where it was found on the range and driftin' it back so that it didn't mix with the uncounted cattle was called a range count.
The countin' of cattle in a pasture without throwin' 'em together for the purpose was called a pasture count.
The counters rode through the pasture countin' each bunch of grazin' cattle, and drifted it back so that it didn't get mixed with the uncounted cattle ahead.
This method of countin' was usually done at the request, and in the presence, of a representative of the bank that held the papers against the herd.
Them notes and mortgages were spoken of as cattle paper.
A book count was the sellin' of cattle by the books, commonly resorted to in the early days, sometimes much to the profit of the seller.
This led to the famous sayin' in the Northwest of the books won't freeze.
This became a common byword durin' the boom days when Eastern and foreign capital were so eager to buy cattle interests.
The origin of this sayin' was credited to a saloonkeeper by the name of Luke Murrin.
His saloon was a meetin' place for influential Wyoming cattlemen, and one year durin' a severe blizzard, when his herd-owner customers were wearin' long faces, he said, Cheer up, boys, whatever happens, the books won't freeze.
In this carefree sentence he summed up the essence of the prevailin' custom of buyin' by book count, and created a sayin' which has survived through the years.
Range delivery meant that the buyer, after examinin' the seller's ranch records and considerin' his rep'tation for truthfulness, paid for what the seller claimed to own, then rode out and tried to find it.
When a cowhand said that a man had good cow sense, he meant to pay 'im a high compliment.
No matter by what name cattle were called, there was no denyin' that they not only saved Texas from financial ruin, but went far toward redeemin' from a wilderness vast territories of the Northwest.
21 swingin' a wide loop
the first use of the word rustler was as a synonym for hustler, becomin' an established term for any person who was active, pushin', and bustlin' in any enterprise.
Again it was used as the title for the hoss wrangler, and when the order was given to go out and rustle the hosses, it meant for 'im to go out and herd 'em in.
Eventually herdin' the hosses was spoken of as hoss rustlin', and the wrangler was called the hoss rustler.
Later, the word became almost exclusively applied to a cow thief, startin' from the days of the maverick when cowhands were paid by their employers to get out and rustle a few mavericks.
It was John who found the lion tracks.
He stifled the Comanche yell and let John lead him straight toward the nearby black volcanic mountain.
This mountain was known as The Black Reef and it rose almost perpendicularly for about two hundred feet, honeycombed with caves, top covered with dense scrub and creepers and tall grass.
On the south it ended sharply as though the lava had been cut off there suddenly.
Kearton and Ulyate had started the day together while Jones followed the dogs, and Means and Loveless had taken another route, and now, with the discovery of the fresh trail still unknown to him, Ulyate reined in, in the shadow of the Reef and pointed.
Kearton focussed his field glasses.
That's the Colonel, he said, But I can't see the dogs.
As they watched, Jones rode straight for the Reef.
Then they picked up the smaller black specks on the plain in front of him.
The dogs were working a trail--lion?
Hyena?
The pack had made a bend to the north, swinging back toward the Reef, and Kearton and Ulyate could hear them faintly.
Kearton got off and tore up some dry grass that grew in cracks between the rocks and piled it in a heap and wanted to make the smoke signal that would bring Loveless and Means and the rest of the party.
Not yet, cautioned Ulyate.
Jones came toward them fast, now, along the southern toe of the Reef, and the dogs could be heard plainly, Old John with his Grand Canyon voice outstanding above the others.
There was Sounder, too, also a veteran of the North Rim, and Rastus and the Rake from a pack of English fox-hounds, and a collie from a London pound, and Simba, a terrier.
A motley pack, chosen for effectiveness, not beauty.
Jones was galloping close behind them leaning down, cheering them on.
Light it!
Ulyate said, and Kearton touched a match to the pile of grass, blew on it and flame licked out.
He threw green stuff on it, and a thin blue column of smoke rose.
That will fetch the gang and tell the Colonel where we are.
Two quick shots sounded.
Then there was a chorus of wild barking and baying.
Then the heavy roar of a lion.
Kearton and Ulyate looked at each other and began to gallop toward the sound.
It came from the top of the Reef not half a mile away.
At the base of the rocky hillside, they left their horses and climbed on foot.
The route was choked with rugged lava-rocks, creepers and bushes, so thickly overgrown that when Kearton lost sight of Ulyate and called, Ulyate answered from ten feet away.
Nice country to meet a lion in face to face.
Ulyate drew back with a start, and put finger to lips, almost afraid to move or whisper lest it set her off, The dogs have got her bayed.
She's just the other side of that bush!
And when they had drawn back a step he added: Jones is sitting on his horse right in front of her.
Why she doesn't charge him, I don't know.
And he hasn't even got a knife on him.
He couldn't get away from her in this kind of ground.
Careful, don't disturb her.
Jones had been about a hundred and fifty feet from her when he first broke through to the top of the Reef.
Intuition told him, however, that she was tired and winded from the run up the Reef and would not charge, yet.
He moved forward to within thirty-five feet of her, being careful, because he knew the female is less predictable than the male.
(In the graveyard at Nairobi he had been shown the graves of thirty-four big game hunters killed hunting the animals he was attempting to lasso.
Of the thirty-four, seventeen had been killed by lions, and eleven out of the seventeen by lionesses.
) She snarled terribly but intuition told him, again, that she was bluffing, and he could see that half her attention was distracted by the dogs.
He threw the lasso.
It was falling over her head when a branch of a bush caught it and it fell in front of her on the rock.
Even then, if she took one step forward he could catch her.
But John nipped her rear end--one lion's rear end was as good as another to John, Africa, Arizona no matter--and she changed ends and took a swipe at John, but he ducked back.
Jones then recoiled his rope and threw again, this time hitting her on the back but failing to encircle her.
She whirled and faced him, roaring terribly, and Ulyate, watching through the leaves, could not understand why she did not charge and obliterate him, because he wouldn't have much of a chance of getting away, in that thick growth, but she seemed just a trace uncertain;
while Jones, on the other hand, appeared perfectly confident and Ulyate decided perhaps that was the answer.
From the lioness' point of view, this strange creature on the back of another creature, lashing out with its long thin paw, very likely appeared as something she could not at first cope with.
But now she sank lower to the rock.
Her roar changed to a growl.
Her tail no longer lashed.
Although she appeared more subdued and defeated, Jones knew she was growing more dangerous.
She was rested and could mount a charge.
Just the tip of her tail was moving as she crouched, and she was treading lightly up and down with her hind feet.
At this moment, Loveless and Means arrived, crashing through the undergrowth with their horses, and distracted her, and she ran off a short distance and jumped into a crevice between two rocks.
The dogs followed her and she killed three and badly wounded Old John.
We've got to get her out of there!
Jones yelled, or she'll kill 'em all.
Bring me the firecrackers.
For such an emergency he had included Fourth-of-July cannon crackers as part of their equipment.
Lighting one he pitched it into the crevice, and the lioness left off mauling the dogs and departed.
Ain't she a beauty, though?
Called out Means as she ran.
Don't you go a step nearer her than I do, Jones warned, and if you do, go at a run so you'll have momentum!
For two hours they drove her from one strong point to another along the side of the Reef, trying to maneuver her onto the plain where they could get a good throw.
But she clung to the rocks and brush, and the day wore away.
It was hot.
The dogs were tired.
The men were tired too.
It was the story of the rhinoceros fight all over again.
And the sun was beginning to go down.
If dark came they would lose her.
I'll get a pole, Jones said finally, and I'll poke a noose over her head!
At this moment she was crouched in a cave-like aperture halfway down the Reef.
Ulyate made no comment but his face showed what he thought of poking ropes over lions' heads with poles, and of course these were the lions of fifty years ago, not the gentler ones of today, and this one was angry, with good reason.
Loveless, too, objected.
It won't work, Colonel.
Just the same we'll try it.
But without waiting for them to try it, she scattered the dogs and shot down the Reef and out across the plain.
John led the chase after her and the other dogs strung out behind, many of them trailing blood.
John himself was bruised and clawed from head to tail, but he was in this fight to the finish, running almost as strongly now as in the morning.
She took refuge on a tongue of land extending into a gully, crouched at the base of a thorn tree, and waited for them to come up.
She had chosen the spot well.
With the gully on three sides, she could be approached only along the tongue of land.
Careful, now, Jones warned.
Means tried her first.
They tell you horses go crazy at the sight or smell of a bear or a lion, but these didn't.
Means edged closer.
She snarled warningly.
Means spit and edged on.
Again she snarled, and again he edged.
The pony was sidewise to her.
With a whirling jump, it could get into gear.
However nothing on four legs was supposed to be faster than a lion over a short distance, unless it was a cheetah.
She charged.
Means spun and spurred.
For thirty yards she gained rapidly.
She was closing and within one more bound would have been able to reach the rear end of the bay, but--and here Jones and Loveless and Ulyate were holding breath for all they were worth--she never quite caught up that last bound.
Means held steady one jump ahead of her.
Then gradually he began to pull away.
A Western cowpony had outrun an African lion, from a standing start.
Photos showed later that she'd been about six feet from Means.
Of course the factor of head start made all the difference.
How much head start?
No one knew exactly.
That was the whole question.
Enough, was the answer.
The lioness quickly changed front, when she saw she couldn't catch Means, and made for Jones.
As she had done with Means, she gained rapidly at first, but then Baldy began to draw away.
Somewhere in the few scant yards of head start was the determining point.
When Jones too drew away, she returned to a thorn bush in the neck of land running into the gully, crouched low and waited as before.
This new position, however, gave the ropers a better chance.
There was room to make a quick dash past the bush and throw as you went.
So: Means edged around on the north side of her, Jones moved in from the south.
Tossing his rope and shouting he attracted her attention.
He succeeded almost too well, because once she rose as if to charge, and he half wheeled his horse--he was within fifty feet--but she sank back.
From behind her Means shot forward at a run.
Kearton began shouting, Wait, wait--the camera's jammed!
But Means kept on.
He raced by within twenty feet of her, roped her around the neck, but a lioness' neck is short and thick and with a quick twist she slipped the noose off.
The missionary obligation to proclaim the gospel to all the world was once left to zealous individuals and voluntary societies.
But the time came when a church that had no part in the missionary movement was looked upon as deficient in its essential life.
The Christian education of children, too, was once hardly more than a sideshow, but the day came when a congregation that did not assume full oversight of a church school was thought of as failing in its duty.
The most serious weakness of the ecumenical movement today is that it is generally regarded as the responsibility of a few national leaders in each denomination and a few interdenominational executives.
Most pastors and laymen, even though they believe it to be important, assume that the ecumenical movement lies outside the province of their parishes.
They may even dismiss it from their minds as something that concerns only the ecclesiastical Rover Boys, as someone has dubbed them, who like to go to national and international assemblies, and have expense accounts that permit them to do so.
As long as this point of view prevails, the ecumenical movement will be lame and halt.
The next stage ahead is that of making it thoroughly at home in the local community.
Progress will take place far less through what is done in any summit conference of the National Council or the World Council, or even in offices of the denominational boards, than through what happens in the communities where Christian people live together as neighbors.
The front line of advance is where witnessing and worshiping congregations of different traditions exist side by side.
Until they see the ecumenical movement in terms of the difference it makes in their own attitudes, programs, and relationships, it will have an inevitable aspect of unreality.
As things now stand, there is a grievous disparity between the unity in Christ which we profess in ecumenical meetings and the complacent separateness of most congregations on any Main Street in the nation.
The ecumenical congregation
The crux of ecumenical advance is an even more personalized matter than the relation between congregations in the same community.
The decisive question is what happens within each congregation and, finally, in the minds and hearts of the individual members.
It is here that the local and ecumenical must meet.
It is here that the ecumenical must become local and the local become ecumenical.
It has become almost trite to say that the ecumenical movement must be carried down to the grass roots.
This way of describing the matter is unfortunate.
It implies two misconceptions.
One is that whatever is ecumenical has to do with some over-all organization at the top and needs only to be understood at the so-called lower levels.
The truth, however, is that the ecumenical church is just the local church in its own true character as an integral unit of the whole People of God throughout the world.
The other misconception is that our ecumenical problems will be solved if only the knowledge of the church in its world-wide extension and its interdenominational connections, now comprehended by many national leaders, can be communicated to all congregations.
However needed this may be, the fundamental problem is not information but active commitment to the total mission of the church of Christ in the world.
The basic unit in the church, of whatever denominational polity, is always the congregation.
It is hardly possible to emphasize this too much.
Most people do not realize that the congregation, as a gathered fellowship meeting regularly face to face, personally sharing in a common experience and expressing that experience in daily relationships with one another, is unique.
The idea that it is a feature of all religions is entirely mistaken.
Their characteristic experience is that of the individual at an altar or a shrine rather than that of a continuing social group with a distinctive kind of fellowship.
How far the fellowship in most local churches falls below what the New Testament means by koinonia!
What is now called Christian fellowship is often little more than the social chumminess of having a gracious time with the kind of people one likes.
The koinonia of Acts and of the Epistles means sharing in a common relation to Christ.
It is an experience of a new depth of community derived from an awareness of the corporate indwelling of Christ in His people.
As Dietrich Bonhoffer puts it, Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.
This may mean having fellowship in the church with people with whom, on the level of merely human agreeableness, we might prefer not to have any association at all.
There is a vast difference between the community of reconciliation which the New Testament describes and the community of congeniality found in the average church building.
Whenever a congregation really sees itself as a unit in the universal Church, in vital relation with the whole Body of Christ and participating in His mission to the world, a necessary foundation-stone of the ecumenical movement has been laid.
The antithesis of the ecumenical and the local then no longer exists.
The local and the ecumenical are one.
Of course, the perspective of those who are dealing directly with the world-wide problems of the People of God will always be different from the perspective of those who are dealing with the nearby problems of particular persons in a particular place.
Each viewpoint is valid if it is organically related to the other.
Neither is adequate if it stands alone.
Our difficulty arises when either viewpoint shuts out the other.
And this is what all too often happens.
Divergent perspectives
A little parable illustrative of this truth is afforded by an incident related by Professor Bela Vasady at the end of the Second World War.
With great difficulty he made his way from his native Hungary to Geneva to renew his contacts as a member of the Provisional Committee for the World Council of Churches.
When he had the mishap of breaking his spectacles, his ecumenical colleagues insisted on providing him with new ones.
They were bifocals.
He often spoke of them as his ecumenical glasses and used them as a symbol of the kind of vision that is required in the church.
It is, he said, a bifocal vision, which can see both the near-at-hand and the distant and keep a Christian in right relation to both.
As things stand now, the local and the ecumenical tend to compete with each other.
On the one hand, there are ecumenists who are so stirred by the crises of the church in its encounter with the world at large that they have no eyes for what the church is doing in their own town.
They do not escape the pitfall into which Charles Dickens pictured Mrs. Jellyby as falling.
Her concern for the natives of Borrioboola-Gha was so intense that she quite forgot and neglected her son Peepy!
On the other hand, many a pastor is so absorbed in ministering to the intimate, personal needs of individuals in his congregation that he does little or nothing to lead them into a sense of social responsibility and world mission.
As a result, they go on thinking of the church, with introverted and self-centered satisfaction, only in connection with the way in which it serves them and their families.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that ninety per cent of the energy of most churches--whether in terms of finance or spiritual concern--is poured into the private and domestic interests of the members.
The parish lives for itself rather than for the community or the world.
The gap between the ecumenical perspective and the parish perspective appears most starkly in a church in any of our comfortable suburbs.
It is eminently successful according to all conventional standards.
It is growing in numbers.
Its people are agreeable friends.
It has a beautiful edifice.
Its preaching and its music give refreshment of spirit to men and women living under heavy strain.
It provides pastoral care for the sick and troubled.
It helps children grow up with at least a nodding acquaintance with the Bible.
It draws young people into the circle of those who continue the life of the church from generation to generation.
And it is easy for the ecumenical enthusiast to lose sight of how basic all this is.
But what is this church doing to help its members understand their roles as Christians in the world?
All too often its conception of parish ministry and pastoral care includes no responsibility for them in their relation to issues of the most desperate urgency for the life of mankind.
It is not stirring them to confront the racial tensions of today with the mind of Christ.
It is not helping them face the moral crisis involved in the use of nuclear energy.
It is not making them sensitive to the sub-Christian level of much of our economic and industrial life.
It is raising no disturbing question as to what Christian stewardship means for the relationship of the richest nation in the world to economically underdeveloped peoples.
It is not developing an awareness of the new kind of missionary strategy that is called for as young churches emerge in Asia and Africa.
To put it bluntly, many a local church is giving its members only what they consciously want.
It is not disturbing them by thoughts of their Christian responsibility in relation to the world.
We shall not make a decisive advance in the ecumenical movement until such a church begins to see itself not merely as a haven of comfort and peace but as a base of Christian witness and mission to the world.
There is a humorous but revealing story about a rancher who owned a large slice of Texas and who wanted to have on it everything that was necessary for a completely pleasant community.
He built a school and a library, then a recreation center and an inn.
Desiring to fill the only remaining lack, he selected the best site on the ranch for a chapel and spared no expense in erecting it.
A visitor to the beautiful little building inquired, Do you belong to this church, Mr. Rancher?
Why, no, ma'am, he replied, this church belongs to me!
The story reflects the way too many people feel.
As long as the congregation regards the church as our church, or the minister thinks of it as my church, just so long the ecumenical movement will make no significant advance.
There must first be a deeper sense that the church belongs not to us but to Christ, and that it is His purpose, not our own interests and preferences, that determines what it is to be and do.
Local embodiment of the whole
A local church which conceives its function to be entirely that of ministering to the conscious desires and concerns of its members tends to look on everything ecumenical as an extra, not as a normal aspect of its own life as a church.
It would doubtless be greatly surprised to be told that in failing to be ecumenical it is really failing to be the Church of Christ.
Yet the truth, according to the New Testament, is that every local church has its existence only by being the embodiment of the whole church in that particular place.
Yet a crowd came out to see some fresh kids from the city try to match the boys from the neighboring farms;
This was a bitterly fought game, carrying almost as much grudge as a fist fight, with no friendliness exhibited between the teams except the formal politeness that accompanied the setting forth of ground rules and agreements on balls that went into the crowd.
Every pitch in the game brought forth a howl from the enraptured audience and every fly ball the visitors dropped (and because their right fielder was still a little fuzzy from drink, they dropped many) called forth yelps of derision.
This was typical of such games, which were earnestly played to win and practically never wound up in an expression of good fellowship.
When the visitors, after losing this game, rode along the village streets toward home, the youngsters who could keep abreast of them for a moment or two screamed triumphantly, You bunch of hay-shakers!
G'ahn back home!
You hay-shakers!
Baseball was surely the national game in those days, even though professional baseball may have been merely a business.
Radio broadcasts had not begun and most devotees of baseball attended the games near home, in the town park or a pasture, with perhaps two or three trips to the city each season to see the Cubs or the Pirates or the Indians or the Red Sox.
Young men in school could look forward to playing ball for money in a dozen different places, even if they failed to make the major leagues.
Nearly any lad with a modicum of skill might find a payday awaiting him in the Three I League, or the Pony League, or the Coastal Plains League, or the fast Eastern League, if not indeed in one of the hundreds of city leagues that abounded everywhere.
Babe Ruth, of course, was everyone's hero, and everyone knew him, even though relatively few ever saw him play ball.
His face was always in the newspapers, sometimes in cartoons that seemed nearly as large as life.
As the twenties grew older, and as radio broadcasts of baseball games began to involve more and more people daily in the doings of the professionals, the great hitters (always led by Babe Ruth) overshadowed the game so that pitchers were nearly of no account.
Boys no longer bothered learning to bunt and even school kids scorned to choke up on a bat as Willie Keeler and the famous hitters of another day had done.
Lou Gehrig was given the nickname Buster, and he ran Ruth a close race in home runs.
But the nickname never stuck and Gehrig was no match for Ruth in color--which is sometimes a polite word for delinquent behavior on and off the field.
Ruth was a delinquent boy still, but he was in every way a great ball player who was out to win the game and occasionally risked a cracked bone to do it.
A few professional baseball players cultivated eccentricities, with the encouragement of the press, so that they might see their names in big black print, along with Daddy Browning's, Al Capone's, Earl Sande's, and the Prince of Wales'.
One who, for a time, succeeded best and was still the sorriest of all was Charles Arthur Shires, who called himself, in the newspapers, Art the Great, or The Great Shires.
It was his brag that he could beat everybody at anything, but especially at fighting, and he once took on the manager of his club and worked him over thoroughly with his fists.
He was given to public carousing and to acting the clown on the diamond;
and a policeman asserted he had found a pair of brass knuckles in Art's pocket once when he had occasion to collar the Great First Baseman for some forgotten reason.
(This made a sportswriter named Pegler wonder in print if Art had worn this armament when he defeated his manager.
In his minor way Charles Arthur Shires was perhaps more typical of his era than Ruth was, for he was but one of many young men who laid waste their talents in these Scott Fitzgerald days for the sake of earning space in the newspapers.
There were others who climbed flagpoles and refused to come down;
or who ingested strange objects, like live fish;
or who undertook to set records for remaining erect on a dance floor, with or without a partner;
or who essayed to down full bottles of illicit gin without pausing for breath.
One young man, exhilarated to the point of insanity by liquor and the excitement of the moment, performed a perfect swan dive out of the stands at the Yale Bowl during the Yale-Army football game, landed squarely on his head on the concrete ramp below, and died at once.
But the twenties were not all insanity and a striving after recognition.
The business of baseball began to prosper along with other entertainments, and performers--thanks partly to George Herman Ruth's spectacular efforts each season to run his salary higher and higher--prospered too.
The greatest team of this period was unquestionably the New York Yankees, bought by brewery millions and made into a ball club by men named Ed Barrow and Miller Huggins.
Boston fans sometimes liked to wring some wry satisfaction out of the fact that most of the great 1923-27 crew were graduates of the Red Sox--sold to millionaires Huston and Ruppert by a man who could not deny them their most trifling desire.
The deeds of this team, through two seasons and in the two World's Series that followed, have been written and talked about until hardly a word is left to be said.
But there is one small episode that a few New York fans who happened to sit in the cheap seats for one World's Series game in 1926 like best to recall.
The ball lay there, shining white on the grass in view of nearly every fan in the park while Ruth, red-necked with frustration, charged about the small patch of ground screaming, Where's the---ing ball?
But, as he snarled unhappily when the inning was over, not a sonofabitch in the place would tell me, so little Tommy ran all the way home.
The ordinary man and woman, however, saw little of the great professional games of those Golden Days, or of any other sporting event for that matter.
Promoters always hastened to place their choice tickets in the hands of the wealthy speculators, and only the man who knew the man who knew the fellow who had an in with the guy at the box office ever came up with a good seat for a contest of any importance.
In some cities games were broadcast throughout the week and then on weekends the announcer was silenced, and fans must needs drive to the city from all the broadcast area to discover how their heroes were faring.
This had a pleasant effect upon the Sunday gate receipts as well as upon the intake of the rail and bus companies, some of which began to offer special excursion rates, including seats at the park, just as the trolley and ferry companies had when baseball was new.
The questions women asked at baseball games were standard grist for amateur comedy, as were the doings of women automobile drivers;
for every grown man (except a few who were always suspected of being shy on virility) knew at least the fundamentals of baseball, just as every male American in this era liked to imagine (or pretend) that he could fight with his fists.
And women were not expected to know that the pitcher was trying not to let the batter hit the ball.
Radio, however, so increased the interest of women in the game that it was hardly necessary even to have Ladies' Days any longer to enable men to get to the ball park without interference at home.
Women actually began to appear unaccompanied in the stands, where they still occasionally ran the risk of coming home with a tobacco-juice stain on a clean skirt or a new curse word tingling their ears.
This conclusion is dependent on the assumption that traditional sex mores will continue to sanction both premarital chastity as the ideal, and the double standard holding females primarily responsible for preserving the ideal.
Our discussion does not utilize all the identity crises postulated by Erikson, but is intended to demonstrate the utility of his theoretical schema for studying unwed mothers.
We hope thereby to emphasize that, from a psychological standpoint, the effectual prevention of illegitimacy is a continuous long-term process involving the socialization of the female from infancy through adolescence.
Hypothesizing a series of developmental stages that begin in the individual's infancy and end in his old age, Erikson has indicated that the adolescent is faced with a series of identity crises.
Within Erikson's schema, the adolescent's delinquent behavior--in this case, her unwed motherhood--reflects her identity diffusion, or her inability to resolve these various identity crises positively.
The adolescent experiences identity crises in terms of time perspective vs. time diffusion.
Experience of this time diffusion ranges from a sense of utter apathy to a feeling of desperate urgency to act immediately.
These polar extremes in time diffusion were indicated in some of the comments by unwed mothers reported in earlier chapters.
Some of these mothers, apparently feeling a desperate urgency, made, on the spur of the moment, commitments, in love and sex, that would have life-long consequences.
Others displayed utter apathy and indifference to any decision about the past or the future.
For many of these unwed mothers, the data on their family life and early childhood experiences revealed several indications and sources of their basic mistrust of their parents in particular and of the world in general.
However, as Erickson has noted, the individual's failure to develop preliminary identities during infancy and childhood need not be irreversibly deterministic with respect to a given area of identity diffusion in his (or her) adolescence.
And, as shown in Chapter 6, some SNP females originally developed such trust only during their adolescence, through the aid of, and their identification with, alter-parents.
The adolescent experiences two closely related crises: self-certainty vs. an identity consciousness;
and role-experimentation vs. negative identity.
However, if the child has been constantly surrounded, during nursery and early school age, by peer groups;
inculcated with the primacy of group acceptance and group standards;
and allowed little initiative in early play and work patterns--then in adolescence her normal degree of vanity, sensitivity, and preoccupation with whether others find her appearance and behavior acceptable, will be compounded.
To be different is to invite shame and doubt;
and it is better to be shamed and criticized by one's parents, who already consider one different and difficult to understand, than by one's peers, who are also experiencing a similar groping for and denial of adult status.
The attitudes of some unwed mothers quoted in Chapter 2, revealed both considerable preoccupation with being accepted by others and a marked absence of self-certainty.
Many appeared to regard their sexual behavior as a justifiable means of gaining acceptance from and identification with others;
but very few seemed aware that such acceptance and identification need to be supplemented with more enduring and stable identification of and with one's self.
Another identity crisis confronting the adolescent involves anticipation of achievement vs. work-paralysis.
The adolescent's capacity to anticipate achievement and to exercise the self-discipline necessary to complete tasks successfully depends on the degree to which he or she developed autonomy, initiative, and self-discipline during childhood.
These childhood experiences are sources of the self-certainty that the adolescent needs, for experimenting with many roles, and for the freedom to fail sometimes in the process of exploring and discovering her skills and abilities.
If she has not had such experiences, the female's normal adolescent degree of indecision will be compounded.
She may well be incapacitated by it when she is confronted with present and future alternatives--e.g., whether to prepare primarily for a career or for the role of a homemaker;
whether to stay financially dependent on her parents or help support herself while attending school;
whether to pursue a college education or a job after high school;
and whether to attend this or that college and to follow this or that course of study.
Erikson has noted that, as this indecision mounts, it may result in a paralysis of workmanship.
This paralysis may be expressed in the female's starting--and never completing--many jobs, tasks, and courses of study;
and in the fact that she bases her decisions about work, college, carreer, and studies on what others are doing, rather than on her own sense of identity with given skills, abilities, likes, and dislikes.
The comments made by some unwed mothers (quoted in Chapter 2)) reflect this paralysis of workmanship.
They attended school and selected courses primarily on the basis of decisions others made;
they accepted a job primarily because it was available, convenient, and paid reasonably.
These things both express and, at the same time, continue contributing to, their identity diffusion in an area that could have become a source of developing dignity and self-certainty.
As their identity diffusion increased, they became more susceptible to sporadic diversions in love and sexual affairs.
These affairs temporarily relieved the monotony of school or work activities containing no anticipation of achievement and joy of craftsmanship, no sense of dignity derived from a job well done.
Childhood experiences in learning work and self-discipline habits within a context of developing autonomy and initiative have considerable significance for the prevention of illegitimacy.
The excerpts from case histories presented above confirm this significance, though through different facets of experience.
For example, some unwed mothers had had no work experiences, household chores, and responsibilities during childhood and early adolescence;
they subsequently occupied their leisure hours in searching for something exciting and diverting.
Sex was both.
The adolescent also faces the identity crisis that Erikson has termed ideological polarization vs. diffusion of ideals.
In discussing the ways this crisis is germane to consderations for the prevention of illegitimacy, we shall again superimpose Erikson's concept on our data.
Adolescents have a much-discussed tendency to polarize ideas and values, to perceive things as either-or, black or white--nuances of meaning are relatively unimportant.
This tendency is, perhaps, most clearly revealed in the literature on religious conversions and experiences of adolescents.
Erikson has postulated that such ideological polarization temporarily resolves their search for something stable and definite in the rapidly changing and fluctuating no-man's-land between childhood and adulthood.
It provides identification--with an idea, a value, a cause that cuts through, or even transcends, the multiple and ambivalent identities of their passage from child to adult, and permits their forceful and overt expression of emotion.
Most adolescents have some ideological diffusion at various developmental stages, as they experience a proliferation of ideas and values.
A pronounced ideological diffusion--i.e., inability to identify independently with given ideas and value systems--is reflected in many ways.
For example, it is evinced by the adolescent (or adult) whose beliefs and actions represent primarily his rebellion and reaction against the ideas and behavior patterns of others, rather than his inner conviction and choice.
It is mirrored by the individual Willie Lohmans, whose ideas and behavior patterns are so dependent and relativistic that they always coincide with those of the individual or group present and most important at the moment.
In another sense, it is represented in the arguments of the true believers who seek to disprove the validity of all other beliefs and ideas in order to retain confidence in theirs.
For example, the unwed mothers expressed their frustration with males who did not indicate more explicitly what it is they really want from a girl so one can act accordingly.
They were disappointed by the physical and emotional hurt of premarital sexual intercourse.
They condemned the movie script writers for implying that sex was enjoyable and exhilarating.
They criticized parents for never having emphasized traditional concepts of right and wrong;
and they censured parents who never disciplined and were too permissive or who never explained how easy it was to get pregnant.
In the adult world, there are a number of rather general and diffuse sources of ideological diffusion that further compound the adolescent's search for meaning during this particular identity crisis.
In the final accounting, these would have augmented the bill for both sides.
An estimate of one million dollars is probably not excessive.
Yet the huge amount of money consumed by the Selden litigation, which many regarded as wasteful, indirectly contributed to constructive changes in legal procedure.
The duration and other circumstances of the Selden case made it a flagrant example of the gross abuses of patent infringement actions.
The suit, as we have seen, came before the courts when patent attorneys, inventors, and laymen were making mounting demands for reforms in the American patent system.
Chief among the defects they singled out were the complicated and wearisome procedures in equity.
In a long and angry footnote to his opinion, Judge Hough had lent the weight of judicial condemnation to such criticism.
As long as the bar prefers to adduce evidence by written deposition, rather than viva voce before an authoritative judicial officer, I fear that the antiquated rules will remain unchanged, and expensive prolixity remain the best known characteristic of Equity.
Observing that reforms sometimes begin with the contemplation of horrible examples, Hough catalogued the many abuses encouraged by existing procedures.
He cited the elephantine dimensions of the Selden case record;
the duplication of testimony and exhibits;
the numerous squabbles over minor matters;
the objections stated at outrageous length;
and the frequent and rancorous verbal bouts, uncalled for and unjustifiable, from the retort discourteous to the lie direct.
Not least among the members of the patent bar who echoed this powerful indictment were those who had participated in the Selden suit.
William A. Redding asserted that if the case had been heard in open court under rules of evidence, the testimony would have been completed in sixty days instead of five years.
Inventors joined lawyers in the clamor for reform, inevitably centering upon the Selden litigation as a horrible example.
Its costive deliberations were likened to those of the British courts of chancery mercilessly caricatured by Dickens in Bleak House.
Parker, who agreed with much of this criticism, did not conceal his dissatisfaction with procedural defects.
But he felt that the Selden case was being unfairly pilloried.
In a detailed letter published in the Scientific American in 1912, he remarked that loose statements about the case showed scant understanding of the facts.
The suit, although commonly designated as a single action, actually embraced five cases.
Parker insisted that the size of the record would have been drastically reduced but for an unavoidable duplication of testimony.
In a private communication written in 1911, Parker had been more to the point.
The vast industrial interests caught up in the Selden suit, as well as the complex character of the automotive art, encouraged both sides to exploit every possible chance for or against the patent, said Parker.
This very seldom happens in this class or in other cases, and of course all of these matters led to a volume and an expense of the record beyond what ordinarily would occur.
Parker listed the remedies he deemed essential for reducing the cost and mass of testimony.
The most important of these found him in agreement with Hough's plea for reform.
Parker called for abolition of the indiscriminate or uncontrolled right of taking depositions before officers of the court who had no authority to limit testimony.
The taking of depositions, he suggested, should be placed under a special court examiner empowered to compel responsive and relevant answers and to exclude immaterial testimony.
I am satisfied that in the Selden case had this power existed and this course (been) pursued, it would have shortened the depositions of some of the experts nearly one-half and of some of the other witnesses thereto more than that.
In the end Hough's acidulous protest, which Parker called the now somewhat famous note on this'Selden'case, did not go unheeded.
In 1912 the United States Supreme Court adopted a new set of rules of equity which became effective on February 1, 1913.
The revised procedure was acclaimed as a long-overdue reform.
Under the new rules, testimony is taken orally in open court in all cases except those of an extraordinary character.
Other expeditious methods are designed to prevent prolixity, limit delays, and reduce the expense of infringement suits.
One of the A.L.A.M. lawyers observed that if the Selden case had been tried under this simplified procedure, the testimony which filled more than a score of volumes, at a minimum cost of $1 a page for publication alone, could have been contained in one volume.
While patent suits are still among the most complex and expensive forms of litigation, these rules have saved litigants uncounted sums of money.
There is little doubt that they were promulgated by the Supreme Court as a direct result of the Selden patent suit.
Even before it was formally dissolved in 1912, the A.L.A.M. was succeeded by the Automobile Board of Trade, the direct lineal ancestor of the present-day Automobile Manufacturers Association.
The trade bodies which came in the wake of the A.L.A.M. were more representative, for they never adopted a policy of exclusion.
Nevertheless, it is from the Selden organization that the industry inherited its institutional machinery for furthering the broader interests of the trade.
One of the chief features of this community of interest is the automotive patents cross-licensing agreement, a milestone in the development of American industrial cooperation.
Its origin lies in the Selden patent controversy and its aftermath.
From the earliest days of the motor car industry, before the A.L.A.M. was established, patent infringement loomed as a serious and vexing problem.
Many patent contests were waged over automobile components and accessories, among them tires, detachable rims, ball bearings, license brackets, and electric horns.
The fluidity and momentum of the young industry abetted a general disregard of patent claims.
As early as 1900 a Wall Street combination acquired detail patents with the intention of exacting heavy tribute from automobile manufacturers.
This scheme failed, and the following decade brought a deluge of infringement suits among individual manufacturers that reached its crest in 1912.
In this tangle of conflicting claims, the patent-sharing scheme adopted by the A.L.A.M. at its founding proved to be the best device for avoiding or mitigating the burdens of incessant litigation.
The interchange of shop licenses for a nominal royalty eliminated infringement suits among the members of the A.L.A.M. patent pool (although it did not protect them against outside actions) and kept open channels for the cross-fertilization of automotive technology.
One of the conditions of the pool was a prohibition upon the withholding of patent rights among A.L.A.M. members.
Within its limits, this arrangement had the actual or potential characteristics of a cross-licensing agreement.
Its positive features outweighed the fact that the pool was an adjunct of a wouldbe monopoly.
Since the A.L.A.M. holdings embraced only about twenty-five per cent of motor vehicle patents, the denial of rights to independent companies did not retard technical progress in unlicensed sectors of the industry.
The highly important Dyer patents on the sliding gear transmission were held by the A.L.A.M. pool.
But Henry Ford used the planetary transmission in his Model T and earlier cars and, in 1905, as a precautionary measure, took out a license from the man who claimed to be its inventor.
For those affiliated with it, the A.L.A.M. pool was a haven from the infringement actions involving detail patents that beset the industry with mounting intensity after 1900.
By 1910 the courts were crowded with cases, many of them brought by freebooters who trafficked in disputed inventions.
It was commonplace for auto makers, parts-suppliers, and dealers to find warning notices and threats of infringement suits in their daily mail.
Occasionally new enterprise was discouraged by the almost certain prospect of legal complications.
One manufacturer who held an allegedly basic patent said: I would readily put over $50,000 into the manufacture of the device, but it is so easy to make that we would enter immediately into a prolonged ordeal of patent litigation which would eat up all our profits.
By that time it was commonly agreed that patent warfare was sapping constructive achievement and blocking the free exchange of technical information.
At this point Charles C. Hanch, long an advocate of patent peace in the industry, became chairman of the patents committee of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, successor to the Automobile Board of Trade.
Hanch was treasurer of the Nordyke & Marmon Company, an Indianapolis firm which had manufactured flour-milling machinery before producing the Marmon car in 1904.
He had first-hand knowledge of the patent wars which had driven about ninety per cent of the milling equipment makers out of business in the mid-1890's.
Anxious to avoid a similar debacle in the motor car industry, Hanch went to Detroit in 1909 to enlist the support of leading A.L.A.M. members for an industry-wide patent-sharing plan.
The breach created by the Selden patent doomed his proposal, but Hanch did not abandon his scheme.
After the demise of the A.L.A.M., the time was propitious for establishing such a pool.
Most manufacturers were now disposed to heed a proposal for the formal interchange of patents.
With the other members of the patents committee--Wilfred C. Leland, Howard E. Coffin, Windsor T. White, and W. H. Vandervoort--Hanch drafted a cross-licensing agreement whose essential feature of royalty-free licensing was his own contribution.
The plan was supported by Frederick P. Fish, counsel for the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce.
It will be recalled that in his summation for the A.L.A.M. before Judge Hough, Fish had condemned patent litigation as the curse of the American industrial community.
He was well aware that some inventors and their allies used their patents solely for nuisance value.
My personal view is that not one patented invention in ten is worth making, he later told a Congressional committee.
The eloquent persuasions of Fish guaranteed the adoption of the plan by the members of the automotive trade association.
Drawn up in 1914, the cross-licensing agreement became effective in 1915.
It remained in force for ten years and has been renewed at five-year intervals since 1925.
A little farther along the road you come to the Church of Santa Sabina, called the Pearl of the Aventine.
Continue another hundred yards to the Piazza of the Knights of Malta.
On the wall of this square there are delightful bas-reliefs of musical instruments.
The massive gate of the Maltese villa affords one of the most extraordinary views in Rome.
If you look through the keyhole, you will see an artistically landscaped garden with the white dome of St. Peter's framed in a long avenue of cropped laurel trees.
Retrace your steps a few yards on the Via Di Santa Sabina and turn right on the Via Di S. Alessio, a street lined with stately homes.
Oleanders, cypress, and palms in the spacious gardens add much color and beauty to this attractive residential section.
Turn left a block or so before the street ends, and then turn right down the Via Di Santa Prisca to the Viale Aventino.
Here you can pick up a taxi or public transport to return to the center of the city.
The renaissance city
to the piazza Navona and pantheon
These two walks take you through the heart of Rome.
You will walk some of the narrow, old streets, hemmed in by massive palazzi.
You will visit a few churches that are exceptional yet often by-passed, a magnificent square, the main shopping district, the Spanish Steps, and the lovely Pincian Gardens.
By seeing such varied places, both interesting and beautiful, you will become aware of the many different civilizations Rome has lived through, and in particular, get a feel of Renaissance Rome.
You will realize why Rome is indeed the Eternal City.
Start on the Via D. Teatro Di Marcello at the foot of the Capitoline Hill.
The majestic circular tiers of stone of the Theatre of Marcellus give you some idea of the huge edifice that the Emperor Augustus erected in 13 B.C..
Twenty-two thousand spectators used to crowd it in Roman days.
Andrea Palladio, an Italian architect of the sixteenth century, modeled his designs on its Doric and Ionic columns.
Wander past the three superb Columns of Apollo by the arches of the theatre.
The remains of the Portico of Octavia are now in front of you.
Climb the steps from the theatre to the Via Della Tribuna Di Campitelli for an even better view of the Columns of Apollo.
Turn to the right along a narrow street to the tiny Piazza Campitelli, then proceed along the Via Dei Funari to the Piazza Mattei.
Here is one of the loveliest fountains in Rome, the Fontana delle Tartarughe or Fountain of the Tortoises.
It's typical of Rome that in the midst of this rather poor area you should find such an artistic work in the center of a little square.
Stand here for a few moments and look at this gem of a fountain with its four youths, each holding a tortoise and each with a foot resting on the head of a dolphin.
The figures have been executed so skillfully that one senses a great feeling of life and movement.
Opposite is the Palazzo Mattei, one of Rome's oldest palaces, now the headquarters of the Italo-American Association.
Go inside for a closer look at a Renaissance palace.
In the first courtyard there are some fine bas-reliefs and friezes, and in the second a series of delightful terraced roof gardens above an ivy-covered wall.
The Palazzo Caetani, still inhabited by the Caetani family, adjoins the Palazzo Mattei.
Keep straight ahead on the Via Falegnami, cross the wide Via Arenula, and you will come to the Piazza B. Cairoli, where you should look in at the Church of San Carlo Ai Catinari to see the frescoes on the ceiling.
Follow the colorful and busy Via D. Giubbonari for a hundred yards or so.
Now turn left at the Via dell' Arco Del Monte to the Piazza Dei Pellegrini.
Just a few yards to the right on the Via Capo Di Ferro will bring you to the Palazzo Spada, built in 1540 and now occupied by the Council of State.
Paintings by Titian, Caravaggio, and Rubens are on display (open 9:30 to 4:00).
Before you enter the palazzo, note Francesco Borromini's facade.
The great architect also designed the fine interior staircase and colonnade which connects the two courts.
The large statue on the first floor is believed to be the statue of Pompey at the base of which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death (if so, the statue once stood in the senate house).
(This is shown in the afternoon and on Sunday morning.
By tipping the porter, you can see in the courtyard Borromini's unusual and fascinating trick in perspective.
When you stand before the barrel-vaulted colonnade you have the impression that the statue at the end is at a considerable distance, yet it is actually only a few feet away.
The sense of perspective has been created by designing the length of the columns so that those at the far end of the colonnade are much shorter than those in front.
The gardens of the palazzo, shaded by a huge magnolia tree, are most attractive.
The courtyard is magnificently decorated.
From the Palazzo Spada you continue another block along the Via Capo Di Ferro and Vicolo De Venti to the imposing Palazzo Farnese, begun in 1514 and considered by many to be the finest palace of all.
Michelangelo was the most distinguished of several noted architects who helped design it.
Today it is occupied by the French Embassy.
Its lovely seventeenth-century ceiling frescoes, as well as the huge guards room with a tremendously high and beautifully carved wooden ceiling, can be seen Sundays (11:00 to 12:00 noon).
Ask to see the modern tapestries of Paris and Rome designed by Lurcat.
Directly in front of the palace along the Via D. Baullari you will come to the Campo Di Fiori, the famous site of executions during the turbulent days of Renaissance Rome.
Today, by contrast it is a lively and colorful fruit, vegetable, and flower market.
Continue on the Via D. Baullari to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, then turn right for a couple of hundred yards to the Church of Sant' Andrea Della Valle.
As you approach the church on the Via D. Baullari you are passing within yards of the remains of the Roman Theatre of Pompey, near which is believed to have been the place where Julius Caesar was assassinated.
The dome of the church is, outside of St. Peter's, one of the largest in Rome.
Opera lovers will be interested to learn that this church was the scene for the first act of Tosca.
At this point you cross the wide Corso Vittorio Emanuele 2, walk along the Corso Del Rinascimento a couple of hundred yards, then turn left on the Via Dei Canestrani to enter the splendid Piazza Navona, one of the truly glorious sights in Rome.
The site of the oblong piazza is Domitian's ancient stadium, which was probably used for horse and chariot races.
For centuries it was the location of historic festivals and open-air sports events.
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century it was a popular practice to flood the piazza in the summer, and the aristocrats would then ride around the inundated square in their carriages.
The eyes of the figure of the Nile are covered, perhaps either to symbolize the mystery of her source or to obscure from her sight the baroque facade of the Church of Sant' Agnese in Agone, the work of Bernini's rival, Borromini.
In the Piazza Navona there are many delightful cafes where you can sit, have a drink or lunch, and watch the fountains in the square.
The scene before you is indeed theatrical and often appears in movies about Rome.
Perhaps a street musician will pass to add that extra touch.
Take the Via Di S. Agnese in Agone, next to the church and opposite the center of the square, then turn right after about two hundred yards to reach the beautiful Church of Santa Maria Della Pace.
Inside you will find the lovely Sibyls painted by Raphael and a chapel designed by Michelangelo.
The church's cloisters are among Donato Bramante's most beautiful creations.
Now return to the Piazza Navona and leave it on the opposite side by the Corsia Agonale;
in a moment cross the Corso Del Rinascimento.
In front of you is the Palazzo Madama, once belonging to the Medici and now the Italian Senate.
Walk by the side of the palazzo and after two blocks along the Via Giustiniani you will come to the Piazza Della Rotonda.
You are now facing the Pantheon, the largest and best-preserved building still standing from the days of ancient Rome.
This circular edifice, constructed by Agrippa in B.C. 27, was rebuilt in its present shape by the Emperor Hadrian.
It was dedicated as a church in the seventh century.
As you pause in the piazza by the Egyptian obelisk brought from the Temple of Isis, you will admire the Pantheon's impressive Corinthian columns.
The Pantheon's interior, still in its original form, is truly majestic and an architectural triumph.
Its rotunda forms a perfect circle whose diameter is equal to the height from the floor to the ceiling.
The only means of interior light is the twenty-nine-foot-wide aperture in the stupendous dome.
Standing before the tomb of Raphael, the great genius of the Renaissance, when shafts of sunlight are penetrating this great Roman temple, you are once again reminded of the varied civilizations so characteristic of Rome.
As you leave the Pantheon, take the narrow street to the right, the Via Del Seminario, a block to Sant' Ignazio, one of the most splendid baroque churches in the city.
(Along the way there, about one hundred yards on your right, you pass a simple restaurant, La Sacrestia, where you can have the best pizza in Rome.
) The curve of faded terra-cotta-colored houses in front of the church seems like a stage set.
This is one of the most charming little squares in this part of Rome.
One block along the Via De Burro (in front of the church) will bring you to the Stock Exchange in the old Temple of Neptune.
A few yards farther, on the Via Dei Bergamaschi, is the Piazza Colonna.
The great column from which the square takes its name was erected by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
You are now at the Corso, though narrow, one of Rome's busiest streets.
Horse races took place here in the Middle Ages.
Here is your opportunity to see the inside of a palazzo where the family still lives.
Otherwise, cross over the Corso and walk a block or so to the left.
You will come to Alemagna, a delightful, though moderately expensive restaurant, which is particularly noted for its exceptional selection of ice creams and patisseries.
Either here, or in one of the modest restaurants nearby, is just the place to end this first walk through the heart of Rome.
To the Spanish steps
The second walk through the heart of Rome should be taken after lunch, so that you will reach the Pincian Hill when the soft light of the late afternoon is at its best.
Rare, indeed, is the Harlem citizen, from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality.
I myself have witnessed and endured it more than once.
The businessmen and racketeers also have a story.
And so do the prostitutes.
(And this is not, perhaps, the place to discuss Harlem's very complex attitude toward black policemen, nor the reasons, according to Harlem, that they are nearly all downtown.
It is hard, on the other hand, to blame the policeman, blank, good-natured, thoughtless, and insuperably innocent, for being such a perfect representative of the people he serves.
He, too, believes in good intentions and is astounded and offended when they are not taken for the deed.
He has never, himself, done anything for which to be hated--which of us has?
-- and yet he is facing, daily and nightly, people who would gladly see him dead, and he knows it.
There is no way for him not to know it: there are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.
He moves through Harlem, therefore, like an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile country;
which is precisely what, and where, he is, and is the reason he walks in twos and threes.
And he is not the only one who knows why he is always in company: the people who are watching him know why, too.
Any street meeting, sacred or secular, which he and his colleagues uneasily cover has as its explicit or implicit burden the cruelty and injustice of the white domination.
And these days, of course, in terms increasingly vivid and jubilant, it speaks of the end of that domination.
The white policeman standing on a Harlem street corner finds himself at the very center of the revolution now occurring in the world.
He is not prepared for it--naturally, nobody is--and, what is possibly much more to the point, he is exposed, as few white people are, to the anguish of the black people around him.
Even if he is gifted with the merest mustard grain of imagination, something must seep in.
He cannot avoid observing that some of the children, in spite of their color, remind him of children he has known and loved, perhaps even of his own children.
He knows that he certainly does not want his children living this way.
He can retreat from his uneasiness in only one direction: into a callousness which very shortly becomes second nature.
He becomes more callous, the population becomes more hostile, the situation grows more tense, and the police force is increased.
One day, to everyone's astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.
Before the dust has settled or the blood congealed, editorials, speeches, and civil-rights commissions are loud in the land, demanding to know what happened.
What happened is that Negroes want to be treated like men.
Negroes want to be treated like men: a perfectly straightforward statement, containing only seven words.
People who have mastered Kant, Hegel, Shakespeare, Marx, Freud, and the Bible find this statement utterly impenetrable.
The idea seems to threaten profound, barely conscious assumptions.
A kind of panic paralyzes their features, as though they found themselves trapped on the edge of a steep place.
I once tried to describe to a very well-known American intellectual the conditions among Negroes in the South.
My recital disturbed him and made him indignant;
and he asked me in perfect innocence, Why don't all the Negroes in the South move North?
I tried to explain what has happened, unfailingly, whenever a significant body of Negroes move North.
They do not escape Jim Crow: they merely encounter another, not-less-deadly variety.
They do not move to Chicago, they move to the South Side;
they do not move to New York, they move to Harlem.
The pressure within the ghetto causes the ghetto walls to expand, and this expansion is always violent.
White people hold the line as long as they can, and in as many ways as they can, from verbal intimidation to physical violence.
But inevitably the border which has divided the ghetto from the rest of the world falls into the hands of the ghetto.
The white people fall back bitterly before the black horde;
the landlords make a tidy profit by raising the rent, chopping up the rooms, and all but dispensing with the upkeep;
and what has once been a neighborhood turns into a turf.
This is precisely what happened when the Puerto Ricans arrived in their thousands--and the bitterness thus caused is, as I write, being fought out all up and down those streets.
Northerners indulge in an extremely dangerous luxury.
They seem to feel that because they fought on the right side during the Civil War, and won, they have earned the right merely to deplore what is going on in the South, without taking any responsibility for it;
and that they can ignore what is happening in Northern cities because what is happening in Little Rock or Birmingham is worse.
Well, in the first place, it is not possible for anyone who has not endured both to know which is worse.
I know Negroes who prefer the South and white Southerners, because At least there, you haven't got to play any guessing games!
The guessing games referred to have driven more than one Negro into the narcotics ward, the madhouse, or the river.
I know another Negro, a man very dear to me, who says, with conviction and with truth, The spirit of the South is the spirit of America.
He was born in the North and did his military training in the South.
He did not, as far as I can gather, find the South worse;
he found it, if anything, all too familiar.
In the second place, though, even if Birmingham is worse, no doubt Johannesburg, South Africa, beats it by several miles, and Buchenwald was one of the worst things that ever happened in the entire history of the world.
The world has never lacked for horrifying examples;
but I do not believe that these examples are meant to be used as justification for our own crimes.
This perpetual justification empties the heart of all human feeling.
The emptier our hearts become, the greater will be our crimes.
Thirdly, the South is not merely an embarrassingly backward region, but a part of this country, and what happens there concerns every one of us.
As far as the color problem is concerned, there is but one great difference between the Southern white and the Northerner: the Southerner remembers, historically and in his own psyche, a kind of Eden in which he loved black people and they loved him.
Historically, the flaming sword laid across this Eden is the Civil War.
Personally, it is the Southerner's sexual coming of age, when, without any warning, unbreakable taboos are set up between himself and his past.
Everything, thereafter, is permitted him except the love he remembers and has never ceased to need.
The resulting, indescribable torment affects every Southern mind and is the basis of the Southern hysteria.
None of this is true for the Northerner.
Negroes represent nothing to him personally, except, perhaps, the dangers of carnality.
He never sees Negroes.
Southerners see them all the time.
Northerners never think about them whereas Southerners are never really thinking of anything else.
Negroes are, therefore, ignored in the North and are under surveillance in the South, and suffer hideously in both places.
Neither the Southerner nor the Northerner is able to look on the Negro simply as a man.
They are two sides of the same coin and the South will not change--cannot change--until the North changes.
The country will not change until it re-examines itself and discovers what it really means by freedom.
In the meantime, generations keep being born, bitterness is increased by incompetence, pride, and folly, and the world shrinks around us.
It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.
Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become.
East River, downtown: postscript to a letter from Harlem
the fact that American Negroes rioted in the U.N. while Adlai Stevenson was addressing the Assembly shocked and baffled most white Americans.
Stevenson's speech, and the spectacular disturbance in the gallery, were both touched off by the death, in Katanga, the day before, of Patrice Lumumba.
Stevenson stated, in the course of his address, that the United States was against colonialism.
I had intended to be there myself.
It was my first reaction upon hearing of Lumumba's death.
I was curious about the impact of this political assassination on Negroes in Harlem, for Lumumba had--has--captured the popular imagination there.
I was curious to know if Lumumba's death, which is surely among the most sinister of recent events, would elicit from our side anything more than the usual, well-meaning rhetoric.
And I was curious about the African reaction.
However, the chaos on my desk prevented my being in the U.N. gallery.
Had I been there, I, too, in the eyes of most Americans, would have been merely a pawn in the hands of the Communists.
The climate and the events of the last decade, and the steady pressure of the cold war, have given Americans yet another means of avoiding self-examination, and so it has been decided that the riots were Communist inspired.
Nor was it long, naturally, before prominent Negroes rushed forward to assure the republic that the U.N. rioters do not represent the real feeling of the Negro community.
According, then, to what I take to be the prevailing view, these rioters were merely a handful of irresponsible, Stalinist-corrupted provocateurs.
I find this view amazing.
It is a view which even a minimal effort at observation would immediately contradict.
One has only, for example, to walk through Harlem and ask oneself two questions.
The first question is: Would I like to live here?
And the second question is: Why don't those who now live here move out?
The answer to both questions is immediately obvious.
Unless one takes refuge in the theory--however disguised--that Negroes are, somehow, different from white people, I do not see how one can escape the conclusion that the Negro's status in this country is not only a cruel injustice but a grave national liability.
Now, I do not doubt that, among the people at the U.N. that day, there were Stalinist and professional revolutionists acting out of the most cynical motives.
Wherever there is great social discontent, these people are, sooner or later, to be found.
Their presence is not as frightening as the discontent which creates their opportunity.
What I find appalling--and really dangerous--is the American assumption that the Negro is so contented with his lot here that only the cynical agents of a foreign power can rouse him to protest.
It is a notion which contains a gratuitous insult, implying, as it does, that Negroes can make no move unless they are manipulated.
Color was delayed until 1935, the wide screen until the early fifties.
Movement itself was the chief and often the only attraction of the primitive movies of the nineties.
Each film consisted of fifty feet, which gives a running time of about one minute on the screen.
As long as audiences came to see the movement, there seemed little reason to adventure further.
Motion-picture exhibitions took place in stores in a general atmosphere like that of the penny arcade which can still be found in such urban areas as Times Square.
Brief snips of actual events were shown: parades, dances, street scenes.
The sensational and frightening enjoyed popularity: a train rushes straight at the audience, or a great wave threatens to break over the seats.
An early Edison production was The Execution Of Mary, Queen Of Scots.
The unfortunate queen mounted the scaffold;
the headsman swung his axe;
the head dropped off;
end of film.
An early film by a competitor of the Wizard of Menlo Park simply showed a long kiss performed by two actors of the contemporary stage.
In the field of entertainment there is no spur to financial daring so effective as audience boredom, and the first decade of the new device was not over before audiences began staying away in large numbers from the simple-minded, one-minute shows.
In response, the industry allowed the discovery of the motion picture as a form of fiction and thus gave the movies the essential form they have had to this day.
Despite the sheer beauty and spectacle of numerous documentaries, art films, and travelogues, despite the impressive financial success of such a recent development as Cinerama, the movies are at heart a form of fiction, like the play, the novel, or the short story.
Moreover, the most artistically successful of the nonfiction films have invariably borrowed the narrative form from the fiction feature.
Thus such great American documentaries as The River and The Plow That Broke The Plains were composed as visual stories rather than as illustrated lectures.
The discovery that movies are a form of fiction was made in the early years of this century and it was made chiefly by two men, a French magician, Georges Melies, and an American employee of Edison, Edwin S. Porter.
Narrative time and film time
Melies, however, out of his professional instincts as a magician, discovered and made use of a number of illusionary techniques that remain part of the vocabulary of film.
One of these is the dissolve, which makes possible a visually smooth transition from scene to scene.
As the first scene begins to fade, the succeeding scene begins to appear.
For a moment or two, both scenes are present simultaneously, one growing weaker, one growing stronger.
In a series of fairy tales and fantasies, Melies demonstrated that the film is superbly equipped to tell a straightforward story, with beginning, middle and end, complications, resolutions, climaxes, and conclusions.
Immediately, the film improved and it improved because in narrative it found a content based on time to complement its own unbreakable connection with time.
Physically, a movie is possible because a series of images is projected one at a time at such a speed that the eye remembers the one that has gone before even as it registers the one now appearing.
Linking the smoothly changing images together, the eye itself endows them with the illusion of movement.
The projection time of painting and sculpture is highly subjective, varying from person to person and even varying for a given person on different occasions.
So is the time of the novel.
The drama in the theater and the concert in the hall both have a fixed time, but the time is fixed by the director and the players, the conductor and the instrumentalists, subject, therefore, to much variation, as record collectors well know.
The time of the motion picture is fixed absolutely.
The film consists of a series of still, transparent photographs, or frames, 35-mm.-wide.
Each frame comes between the light and the lens and is individually projected on the screen, at the rate, for silent movies, of 16 frames per second, and, for sound films, 24 frames per second.
This is the rate of projection;
it is also the rate of photographing.
Time is built into the motion picture, which cannot exist without time.
Now time is also the concern of the fictional narrative, which is, at its simplest, the story of an action with, usually, a beginning, a middle, and an end--elements which demand time as the first condition for their existence.
The moving picture of the train or the wave coming at the audience is, to be sure, more intense than a still picture of the same subject, but the difference is really one of degree;
the cinematic element of time is merely used to increase the realism of an object which would still be reasonably realistic in a still photo.
In narrative, time is essential, as it is in film.
Almost everything about the movies that is peculiarly of the movies derives from a tension created and maintained between narrative time and film time.
This discovery of Melies was vastly more important than his sometimes dazzling, magician's tricks produced on film.
It was Porter, however, who produced the very first movie whose name has lived on through the half century of film history that has since ensued.
The movie was The Great Train Robbery and its effects on the young industry and art were all but incalculable.
Overnight, for one thing, Porter's film multiplied the standard running time of movies by ten.
The Great Train Robbery is a one-reel film.
One reel--from eight to twelve minutes--became the standard length from the year of Robbery, 1903, until Griffith shattered that limit forever with Birth Of A Nation in 1915.
The reel itself became and still is the standard of measure for the movies.
The material of the Porter film is simplicity itself;
much of it has continued to be used over the years and the heart of it--good guys and bad guys in the old West--pretty well dominated television toward the end of the 1950's.
A band of robbers enters a railroad station, overpowers and ties up the telegraph operator, holds up the train and escapes.
A posse is formed and pursues the robbers, who, having made their escape, are whooping it up with some wild, wild women in a honky-tonk hide-out.
The robbers run from the hide-out, take cover in a wooded declivity, and are shot dead by the posse.
As a finale is appended a close-up of one of the band taking aim and firing his revolver straight at the audience.
All this is simple enough, but in telling the story Porter did two important things that had not been done before.
The plane of the action in the scene is not parallel with the plane of the film in the camera or on the screen.
If the change, at first sight, seems minor, we may recall that it took the Italian painters about two hundred years to make an analogous change, and the Italian painters, by universal consent, were the most brilliant group of geniuses any art has seen.
In that apparently simple shift Porter opened the way to the sensitive use of the camera as an instrument of art as well as a mechanical recording device.
He did more than that.
He revealed the potential value of the cut as the basic technique in the art of the film.
Cutting, of course, takes place automatically in the creation of a film.
The meaning of the word is quite physical, to begin with.
The physical film is cut with a knife at the end of one complete sequence, and the cut edge is joined physically, by cement, to the cut edge of the beginning of the next sequence.
If, as a home movie maker, you shoot the inevitable footage of your child taking its first steps, you have merely recorded an historical event.
If, in preparing that shot for the inevitable showing to your friends, you interrupt the sequence to paste in a few frames of the child's grandmother watching this event, you have begun to be an artist in film;
you are employing the basic technique of film;
you are cutting.
This is what Porter did.
As the robbers leave the looted train, the film suddenly cuts back to the station, where the telegrapher's little daughter arrives with her father's dinner pail only to find him bound on the floor.
She dashes around in alarm.
The two events are taking place at the same time.
Time and space have both become cinematic.
We leap from event to event--including the formation of the posse--even though the events, in reality are taking place not in sequence but simultaneously, and not near each other but at a considerable distance.
The chase as a standard film device probably dates from The Great Train Robbery, and there is a reason for the continued popularity of the device.
The chase in itself is a narrative;
it presumes both speed and urgency and it demands cutting--both from pursued to pursuer and from stage to stage of the journey of both.
The simple, naked idea of one man chasing another is of its nature better fitted for the film than it is for any other form of fiction.
The cowboy films, the cops and robbers films, and the slapstick comedy films culminating in an insane chase are not only catering to what critics may assume to be a vulgar taste for violence;
these films and these sequences are also seeking out--instinctively or by design--the peculiarly cinematic elements of narrative.
The creator of the art of the film: D.W. Griffith
There still remained the need for one great film artist to explore the full potential of the new form and to make it an art.
The man was D.W. Griffith.
When he came to the movies--more or less by accident--they were still cheap entertainment capable of enthralling the unthinking for an idle few minutes.
In about seven years Griffith either invented or first realized the possibilities of virtually every resource at the disposal of the film maker.
Before he was forty Griffith had created the art of the film.
Not that there had not been attempts, mostly European, to do exactly that.
But in general the European efforts to make an art of the entertainment had ignored the slowly emerging language of the film itself.
Staggeringly condensed versions of famous novels and famous plays were presented.
Great actors and actresses--the most notable being Sarah Bernhardt--were hired to repeat their stage performances before the camera.
In all of this extensive and expensive effort, the camera was downgraded to the status of recording instrument for art work produced elsewhere by the actor or by the author.
The phonograph today, for all its high fidelity and stereophonic sound, is precisely what the early art purveyors in the movies wished to make of the camera.
Not surprisingly, this approach did not work.
The effort produced a valuable record of stage techniques in the early years of the century and some interesting records of great theater figures who would otherwise be only names.
But no art at all was born of the art effort in the early movies.
In general, religious interest seems to exist in all parts of the metropolis;
congregational membership, however, is another thing.
A congregation survives only if it can sustain a socially homogeneous membership;
that is, when it can preserve economic integration.
Religious faith can be considered a necessary condition of membership in a congregation, since the decision to join a worshiping group requires some motive force, but faith is not a sufficient condition for joining;
the presence of other members of similar social and economic level is the sufficient condition.
The breakdown of social homogeneity in inner city areas and the spread of inner city blight account for the decline of central city churches.
Central cities reveal two adverse features for the major denominations: (1) central cities tend to be areas of residence for lower social classes;
(2) central cities tend to be more heterogeneous in social composition.
The central city areas, in other words, exhibit the two characteristics which violate the life principle of congregations of the major denominations: they have too few middle-class people;
they mix middle-class people with lower-class residents.
Central city areas have become progressively poorer locales for the major denominations since the exodus of middle-class people from most central cities.
With few exceptions, the major denominations are rapidly losing their hold on the central city.
The key to Protestant development, therefore, is economic integration of the nucleus of the congregation.
Members of higher and lower social status often cluster around this nucleus, so that Protestant figures on social class give the impression of spread over all social classes;
but this is deceptive, for the core of membership is concentrated in a single social and economic stratum.
The congregation perishes when it is no longer possible to replenish that core from the neighborhood;
moreover, residential mobility is so high in metropolitan areas that churches have to recruit constantly in their core stratum in order to survive;
they can lose higher- and lower-status members from the church without collapsing, but they need adequate recruits for the core stratum in order to preserve economic integration.
The congregation is first and foremost an economic peer group;
it is secondarily a believing and worshiping fellowship.
If it were primarily a believing fellowship, it would recruit believers from all social and economic ranks, something which most congregations of the New Protestantism (with a few notable exceptions) have not been able to do.
They survive only when they can recruit social and economic peers.
The vulnerability of Protestant congregations to social differences has often been attributed to the folksy spirit of Protestant religious life;
in fact, a contrast is often drawn in this regard with the impersonal Roman Catholic parish.
We have seen that the folksy spirit is confined to economic peers;
consequently, the vulnerability to social difference should not be attributed to the stress on personal community in Protestant congregations;
actually, there is little evidence of such personal community in Protestant congregations, as we shall see in another connection.
This fact is evident in the recruitment of new members.
Mission as co-optation
The rule of economic integration in congregational life can be seen in the missionary outreach of the major denominations.
There is much talk in theological circles about the Church as Mission and the Church's Mission;
theologians have been stressing the fact that the Church does not exist for its own sake but as a testimony in the world for the healing of the world.
A crucial question, therefore, is what evangelism and mission actually mean in metropolitan Protestantism.
If economic integration really shapes congregational life, then evangelism should be a process of extending economic integration.
The task of a congregation would be defined, according to economic integration, as the work of co-opting individuals and families of similar social and economic position to replenish the nuclear core of the congregation.
(Co-optation means to choose by joint action in order to fill a vacancy;
it can also mean the assimilation of centers of power from an environment in order to strengthen an organization.
) In a mobile society, congregational health depends on a constant process of recruitment;
this recruitment, however, must follow the pattern of economic integration or it will disrupt the congregation;
therefore, the recruitment or missionary outreach of the congregation will be co-optation rather than proclamation--like elements will have to be assimilated.
Evangelism and congregational outreach have not been carefully studied in the churches;
one study in Pittsburgh, however, has illuminated the situation.
In a sample of new members of Pittsburgh churches, almost 60 per cent were recruited by initial contacts with friendly members.
If we add to these contacts with friendly members the contacts with an organization of the church (11.2 per cent of the cases), then a substantial two thirds of all recruitment is through friendly contact.
On the surface, this seems a sound approach to Christian mission: members of the congregation show by their friendly attitudes that they care for new people;
the new people respond in kind by joining the church.
Missionary outreach by friendly contact looks somewhat different when one reflects on what is known about friendly contact in metropolitan neighborhoods;
the majority of such contacts are with people of similar social and economic position;
association by level of achievement is the dominant principle of informal relations.
This means that the antennae of the congregation are extended into the community, picking up the wave lengths of those who will fit into the social and economic level of the congregation;
the mission of the church is actually a process of informal co-optation;
the lay ministry is a means to recruit like-minded people who will strengthen the social class nucleus of the congregation.
Churches can be strengthened through this process of co-optation so long as the environs of the church provide a sufficient pool of people who can fit the pattern of economic integration;
once the pool of recruits diminishes, the congregation is helpless--friendly contacts no longer keep it going.
The transmutation of mission to co-optation is further indicated by the insignificance of educational activities, worship, preaching, and publicity in reaching new members.
The proclamation of the churches is almost totally confined to pastoral contacts by the clergy (17.3 per cent of new members) and friendly contacts by members (over two thirds if organizational activities are included).
Publicity accounted for 1.1 per cent of the initial contacts with new members.
economic integration and co-optation are the two methods by which Protestants associate with and recruit from the neighborhood.
The inner life of congregations will prosper so long as like-minded people of similar social and economic level can fraternize together;
the outer life of congregations--the suitability of the environment to their survival--will be propitious so long as the people in the area are of the same social and economic level as the membership.
Economic integration ceases when the social and economic statuses in an area become too mixed or conflict with the status of the congregation.
In a rapidly changing society congregations will run into difficulties repeatedly, since such nice balances of economic integration are hard to sustain in the metropolis for more than a single generation.
The fact that metropolitan churches of the major denominations have moved approximately every generation for the last hundred years becomes somewhat more intelligible in the light of this struggle to maintain economic balance.
The expense of this type of organization in religious life, when one recalls the number of city churches which deteriorated beyond repair before being abandoned, raises fundamental questions about the principle of Protestant survival in a mobile society;
nonetheless, the prevalence of economic integration in congregations illumines the nature of the Protestant development.
It was observed in the introductory chapter that metropolitan life had split into two trends--expanding interdependence on an impersonal basis and growing exclusiveness in local communal groupings.
These trends seem to be working at cross-purposes in the metropolis.
Residential associations struggle to insulate themselves against intrusions.
The motifs of impersonal interdependence and insulation of residential communities have polarized;
the schism between central city and suburb, Negro and White, blue collar and white collar can be viewed as symptomatic of this deeper polarization of trends in the metropolis.
It now becomes evident that the denominational church is intimately involved with the economy of middle-class culture, for it serves to crystallize the social class identity of middle-class residential groupings.
The accelerated pace of metropolitan changes has accentuated the drive to conformity in congregations of the major denominations.
This conformity represents a desperate attempt to stabilize a hopelessly unstable environment.
Since American life is committed above all to productivity and a higher standard of economic life, the countervailing forces of residential and religious exclusiveness have fought a desperate, rearguard action against the expanding interdependence of the metropolis.
Consumer communities have suffered at the hands of the productive interests.
Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and rural newcomers are slowly making their way into the cities.
Soon they will fight their way into the lower middle-class suburbs, and the churches will experience the same decay and rebuilding cycle which has characterized their history for a century.
Mission to the metropolis contradicts survival of the congregation in the residential community, because the middle classes are fighting metropolitan interdependence with residential exclusion.
This interpretation of the role of residence in the economy of middle-class culture could lead to various projections for the churches.
It could be argued that any fellowship which centers in residential neighborhoods is doomed to become an expression of the panic for stable identity among the middle classes.
It could be argued that only such neighborhoods can sustain religious activity, since worship presupposes some local stabilities.
Whatever projection one makes, the striking fact about congregational and parochial life is the extent to which it is a vehicle of the social identity of middle-class people.
Attention will be given in the next chapter to the style of association in the denominational churches;
this style is characteristically an expression of the communal style of the middle classes.
The keynotes of this style are activism and emphasis on achievements in gaining self-esteem.
Fellowship by likeness and mission by friendly contact form the iron cage of denominational religion.
Its contents are another matter, for they reveal the kinds of interests pursued by the congregation.
What goes on in the cage will occupy our attention under the rubric of the organization church.
An understanding of the new role of residential association in an industrial society serves to illuminate the forces which have fashioned the iron cage of conformity which imprisons the churches in their suburban captivity.
The perplexing question still remains as to why the middle classes turn to the churches as a vehicle of social identity when their clubs and charities should fill the same need.
With capital largely squandered, there seemed to them no other course to pursue.
The directors sold directly to concessionaires, who had to make their profits above the high prices asked by the company.
These concessionaires traded where they wished and generally dealt with the Indians through engages, who might be habitants, voyageurs, or even soldiers.
The concessionaires also had to pay a tax of one-tenth on the goods they traded, and all pelts were to be taken to company stores and shipped to France in company ships.
The company disposed of the pelts, but with what profit, the records do not show.
In accord with its penurious policy, the company failed to furnish presents to hold the loyalty of the principal Indians.
The lavish use of presents had been effective in expanding the Indian trade of New France and Louisiana in the previous century, and the change in liberality aroused resentment in the minds of the red men.
Traders from the English colonies were far more generous, and Indian loyalty turned to them.
Protests from governors and intendants passed unheeded, and the parsimonious policy of the company probably let loose Indian insurrections that brought ruin to the company.
In 1721 the King sent three commissioners to Louisiana with full powers to do all that was necessary to protect the colony.
They ordered the raising of troops and obtained 75,000 livres with which to build forts.
They adopted a program by which Louisiana was divided into five districts.
In each of these there was to be a strong military post, and a trading depot to supply the smaller trading houses.
For southeastern Louisiana, Mobile was the principal post, and it was to furnish supplies for trade to the north and east, in the region threatened by British traders.
Mobile was to be the anchor of a chain of posts extending northward to the sources of the Tennessee River.
Fort Toulouse, on the Alabama River, had been erected in 1714 for trade with the Alabamas and Choctaws, but money was available for only one other new post, near the present Nashville, Tennessee, and this was soon abandoned.
West of the Mobile district was the lower Mississippi district, of which New Orleans was headquarters.
Dependent upon it were posts on the lower Mississippi and the region westward to the frontiers of New Spain.
On the middle Mississippi a principal post was to be located near the mouth of the Arkansas.
It was hoped that to this post would flow a large quantity of furs from the west, principally down the Arkansas River.
On the Ohio or Wabash was to be built another post at the fork of two great rivers.
Other posts would be established up the Ohio and Wabash to protect communication with Canada.
On the upper Mississippi the Illinois post was to be established near Kaskaskia, and dependent posts were to be built on the Missouri, where there are mines in abundance.
Each of the five principal posts was to have a director, responsible to a director-general at New Orleans.
An elaborate system of accounting and reports was worked out, and the trade was to be managed in the most scientific way.
Concessionaires were to be under the supervision of the directors.
Engages must be loyal to the concessionaires, and must serve until the term provided in the engagement was ended.
The habitants were to be encouraged to trade and were to dispose of their pelts to the concessionaires.
Only two principal storehouses were actually established--one at Mobile, the other at New Orleans.
New Orleans supplied the goods for the trade on the Mississippi, and west of that river, and on the Ohio and Wabash.
Mobile was also supplied by New Orleans with goods for the Mobile district.
The power that Bienville exercised during his first administration cannot be determined.
Regulations for the Indian trade were made by the Conseil superieure de la Louisiane, and Bienville apparently did not have control of that body.
The Conseil even treated the serious matter of British aggression as its business and, on its own authority, sent to disaffected savages merchandise suitable for the peltry trade.
It decided, also, that the purely secular efforts of Bienville were insufficient, and sent missionaries to win the savages from the heathen Carolinians.
During the first administration of Bienville, the peltry trade of the Mobile district was a lucrative source of revenue.
The Alabamas brought in annually 15,000 to 20,000 deerskins, and the Choctaws and Chickasaws brought the total up to 50,000 pelts.
These deerskins were the raw material for the manufacture of leather, and were the only articles which the tribes of this district had to exchange for European goods.
During his first administration, Bienville succeeded in keeping Carolina traders out of the Alabama country and the Choctaw country.
The director of the post at Mobile kept an adequate amount of French goods, of a kind to which they were accustomed, to supply the Indian needs.
The Alabama and Tombigbee rivers furnished a highway by which goods could be moved quickly and cheaply.
De La Laude, commander of the Alabama post, had the friendship of the natives, and was able to make them look upon the British as poor competitors.
Diron D'Artaguette, the most prominent trader in the district, was energetic and resourceful, but his methods often aroused the ire of the French governors.
He became, after a time, commander of a post on the Alabama River, but his operations extended from Mobile throughout the district, and he finally obtained a monopoly of the Indian trade.
The Chickasaws were the principal source of trouble in the Mobile district.
Their territory lay to the north, near the sources of the Alabama, the Tombigbee, the Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers, and was easily accessible to traders among the near-by Cherokees.
In 1720 some Chickasaws massacred the French traders among them, and did not make peace for four years.
Venturesome traders, however, continued to come to them from Mobile, and to obtain a considerable number of pelts for the French markets.
British traders from South Carolina incited the Indians against the French, and there developed French and British Factions in the tribe.
The Chickasaws finally were the occasion for the most disastrous wars during the French control of Louisiana.
To hold them was an essential part of French policy, for they controlled the upper termini of the routes from the north to Mobile.
They threatened constantly to give the British a hold on this region, from whence they could move easily down the rivers to the French settlements near the Gulf.
Bienville realized that if the French were to hold the southeastern tribes against the enticements of British goods, French traders must be able to offer a supply as abundant as the Carolinians and at reasonable prices.
His urgings brought some results.
The Company of the Indies promised to send over a supply of Indian trading goods, and to price them more cheaply in terms of deerskins.
But it coupled with this a requirement that Indians must bring their pelts to Mobile and thus save all costs of transportation into and out of the Indian country.
The insistence of Bienville upon giving liberal prices to the Indians, in order to drive back the Carolina traders, was probably a factor that led to his recall in 1724.
For two years his friend and cousin, Boisbriant, remained as acting governor and could do little to stem the Anglican advance.
Although he incited a few friendly Indians to pillage the invaders, and even kill some of them, the Carolina advance continued.
The company was impressed with some ideas of the danger from Carolina, and when Perier came over as governor in 1727, he was given special instructions regarding the trade of the Mobile district.
But the Company of the Indies, holding to its program of economy, made no arrangements to furnish better goods at attractive prices.
To the directors the problem appeared a matter of intrigue or diplomacy.
Perier attempted to understand the problem by sending agents to inquire among the Indians.
These agents were to ascertain the difference between English and French goods, and the prices charged the Indians.
They were to conciliate the unfriendly savages, and, wherever possible, to incite the natives to pillage the traders from Carolina.
They were to promise fine presents to the loyal red men, as well as an abundant supply of trading goods at better prices than the opposition was offering.
Perier's intrigues gained some successes.
The savages divided into two factions;
one was British and the other, French.
So hostile did these factions become that, among the Choctaws, civil war broke out.
Perier's efforts, however, were on the whole ineffective in winning back the tribes of the Mobile district, and he decided to send troops into the troubled country.
He asked the government for two hundred soldiers, who were to be specifically assigned to arrest English traders and disloyal Indians.
In spite of the company's restrictions, he planned to build new posts in the territory.
He asked also for more supplies to trade at a low price for the Indians' pelts.
No help came from the crown, and Perier, in desperation, gave a monopoly of the Indian trade in the district to D'Artaguette.
D'Artaguette went vigorously to work, and gave credit to many hunters.
But they brought back few pelts to pay their debts, and soon French trade in the region was at an end.
Perier finally, in one last bid in 1730, cut the price of goods to an advance of 40 per cent above the cost in France.
The Indians were not impressed and held to the Carolina traders, who swarmed over the country, almost to the Mississippi.
With the loss of the Mobile trade, which ended all profits from Louisiana, the Natchez Indians revolted.
They destroyed a trading house and pillaged the goods, and harassed French shipping on the Mississippi.
The war to subdue them taxed the resources of the colony and piled up enormous debts.
In January, 1731, the company asked the crown to relieve it of the government of the colony.
It stated that it had lost 20,000,000 livres in its operations, and apparently blamed its poor success largely on the Indian trade.
It offered to surrender its right to exclusive trade, but asked an indemnity.
The King accepted the surrender and fixed the compensation of the company at 1,450,000 livres.
Thenceforth, the commerce of Louisiana was free to all Frenchmen.
Company rule in Louisiana left the colony without fortifications, arms, munitions, or supplies.
The difficulties of trade had ruined many voyageurs, and numbers of them had gone to live with the natives and rear half-blood families.
Others left the country, and there was no one familiar with the Indian trade.
If this trade should be resumed, the habitants who had come to be farmers or artisans, and soldiers discharged from the army, must be hardened to the severe life of coureurs de bois.
This was a slow and difficult course, and French trade suffered from the many mistakes of the new group of traders.
These men were without capital or experience.
Perier and Salmon, the intendant, wished either to entrust the trade to an association of merchants or to have the crown furnish goods on credit to individuals who would repay their debts with pelts.
Bienville, who returned to succeed Perier in 1732, objected that the merchants would not accept the responsibility of managing a trade in which they could see no hope of profits.
He reported, too, that among the habitants there were none of probity and ability sufficient to justify entrusting them with the King's goods.
He did find some to trust, however, and he employed the King's soldiers to trade.
With no company to interfere, he kept close control over all the traders.
In order to compete with English traders, Bienville radically changed the price schedule.
The King should expect no profit, and an advance of only 20 per cent above the cost in France, which would cover the expense of transportation and handling, was all he charged the traders.
They would not be pleased to have it published back home that they planned a frolic in Paris or Hong Kong at the Treasury's expense.
They would be particularly displeased with the State Department if it were the source of such reports.
Few things are more perilous for the State Department than a displeased congressman.
The reason for this bears explaining for those who may wonder why State spends so much of its diplomatic energy on Congress when the Russians are so available.
First, the State Department is unique among government agencies for its lack of public supporters.
The farmers may be aroused if Congress cuts into the Agriculture Department's budget.
Businessmen will rise if Congress attacks the Commerce Department.
Labor restrains undue brutality toward the Labor Department;
the Chamber of Commerce, assaults upon the Treasury.
A kaleidoscope of pressure groups make it unpleasant for the congressman who becomes ugly toward the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
The congressman's patriotism is always involved when he turns upon the Defense Department.
Tampering with the Post Office may infuriate every voter who can write.
With all these agencies, the congressman must constantly check the political wind and trim his sails accordingly.
No such political restraint subdues his blood when he gazes upon the State Department in anger.
In many sections he may even reap applause from press and public for giving it a good lesson.
After all, the money dispensed by State goes not to the farmer, the laborer, or the businessman, but to foreigners.
Not only do these foreigners not vote for American congressmen;
they are also probably ungrateful for Uncle's Sam's bounty.
And are not the State Department men who dispense this largesse merely crackpots and do-gooders who have never met a payroll?
Will not the righteous congressman be cheered at the polls if he reminds them to get right with America and if he saves the taxpayer some money by spoiling a few of their schemes?
The chances are excellent that he will.
The result is that the State Department's perpetual position before Congress is the resigned pose of the whipping boy who expects to be kicked whenever the master has had a dyspeptic outing with his wife.
People in this position do not offend the master by relating his peccadilloes to the newspapers.
State keeps the junketeering list a secret.
The Department expects and receives no thanks from Congress for its discretion.
Congress is a harsh master.
State is expected to arrange the touring Cicero's foreign itinerary;
its embassies are expected to supply him with reams of local money to pay his way;
embassy workers are expected to entertain him according to his whim, frequently with their savings for the children's college tuition.
But come the next session of Congress, State can expect only that its summer guest will bite its hand when it goes to the Capitol asking money for diplomatic entertaining expenses abroad or for living expenses for its diplomats.
The congressman who, in Paris, may have stuffed his wallet with enough franc notes to paper the roof of Notre-Dame will systematically scream that a $200 increase in entertainment allowance for a second secretary is tantamount to debauchery of the Treasury.
In the matter of money State's most unrelenting watchdog during the Eisenhower years was Representative John J. Rooney, of Brooklyn, who controlled the purse for diplomatic administrative expenses.
Diplomats stayed up nights thinking of ways to attain peaceful coexistence, not with Nikita Khrushchev, but with John Rooney.
Nothing worked.
In the most confidential whispers ambassadors told of techniques they had tried to bring Rooney around--friendly persuasion, groveling abasement, pressure subtly exerted through other powerful congressmen, tales of heartbreak and penury among a threadbare diplomatic corps.
Rooney remained untouched.
The trouble, explained Loy Henderson, then Deputy Undersecretary for Administration, is that when we get into an argument with him about this thing, it always turns out that Rooney knows more about our budget than we do.
One year the Department collected a file of case histories to document its argument that men in the field were paying the government's entertainment bills out of personal income.
News of the project reached the press.
Next day, reports went through the Department that Rooney had been outraged by what he considered a patent attempt to put public pressure on him for increased entertainment allowances and had sworn an oath that, that year, expense allowances would not rise a dollar.
They didn't.
The Department's constant fight with the House for money is a polite minuet compared with its periodic bloody engagements with the Senate.
Armed with constitutional power to negate the Executive's foreign policy, the Senate carries a big stick and is easily provoked to use it on the State Department's back, or on the head of the Secretary of State.
With its power to investigate, the Senate can paralyze the Secretary by keeping him in a state of perpetual testimony before committees, as it did with Dean Acheson.
John Foster Dulles escaped by keeping his personal show on the road and because Lyndon Johnson, who was then operating the Senate, refused to let it become an Inquisition.
During Dulles's first two years in office, while Republicans ran the Senate, the Department was at the mercy of men who had thirsted for its blood since 1945.
An internal police operation managed by Scott McLeod, a former F.B.I. man installed as security officer upon congressional insistence, was part of the vengeance.
So was the attack upon Charles E. Bohlen when Eisenhower appointed him Ambassador to Moscow.
The principal mauler, however, was Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Where Acheson had fought a gallant losing battle for the Department, Dulles fed the crocodile with his subordinates.
Fretting privately but eschewing public defense of his terrorized bureaucrats, Dulles remained serene and detached while the hatchet men had their way.
In view of Eisenhower's reluctance to concede that anything was amiss in the Terror, it is doubtful that heroic intervention by Dulles could have produced anything but disaster for him and the country's foreign policy.
In any event, the example of Acheson's trampling by the Senate did not encourage Dulles to provoke it.
He elected to get along.
During this dark chapter in State Department history, men who had offered foreign-policy ideas later proven wrong by events filled the tumbrels sent up to Capitol Hill.
Their old errors of judgment were equated, in the curious logic of the time, with present treasonous intent.
Their successors, absorbing the lesson, made it a point to have few ideas.
This, in turn, brought a new fashion in senatorial criticism as the Democrats took control.
In the new style, the Department was berated as intellectually barren and unable to produce the vital ideas needed to outwit the Russians.
For three or four years in the mid-1950's, this complaint was heard rumbling up from the Senate floor whenever there was a dull legislative afternoon.
It became smart to say that the fault was with Dulles because he would not countenance thinking done by anyone but himself.
An equally tenable thesis is that the dearth of new thought was created by the Senate's own penchant for crucifying anyone whose ideas seem unorthodox to the next generation.
Getting along with foreigners
there are ninety-eight foreign embassies and legations in Washington.
They range from the Soviet Embassy on Sixteenth Street, a gray shuttered pile suggesting a funeral-accessories display house, to what Congressman Rooney has called that monstrosity on Thirty-fourth Street, the modern cement-and-glass chancery of the Belgians.
Here is the world of the chauffeured limousine and the gossip reporter, of caviar on stale crackers and the warm martini, of the poseur, the spy, the party crasher, and the patriot, of the rented tails, the double cross, and the tired Lothario.
Into its chanceries each day pour reports from ministries around the earth and an endless stream of home-office instructions on how to handle Uncle Sam in an infinite variety of contingencies.
Here are hatched plans for getting a share of the American bounty, the secret of the anti-missile missile, or an invitation to dinner.
Out of it each week go hundreds of thousands of words purporting to inform home ministries about what is really happening inside Washington.
Some, like the British and the French, maintain an elaborate system of personal contacts and have experts constantly studying special areas of the American scene.
Other embassies cable home The New York Times without changing a comma.
Each has its peculiar style.
The Soviet Embassy is popularly regarded as Russian espionage headquarters.
When Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov took it over in 1957 from Georgi Zaroubin, he made a determined effort to change this idea.
Menshikov hit Washington with a TV announcer's grin and a hearty handclasp.
To everyone's astonishment he seemed no more like the run-of-the-mine Russian ambassador than George Babbitt was like Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov.
Where his predecessors had glowered, Menshikov smiled.
Where they had affected the bleak social style of embalmers' assistants, Menshikov went abroad gorgeous in white tie and tails.
Overnight he became the most available man in Washington.
Speeches by the Soviet ambassador became the vogue as he obliged rural Maryland Rotarians and National Press Club alike.
In Senator Joseph McCarthy's phrase, it was the most unheard-of thing ever heard of.
A newspaperman who met him at a reception swore that he asked Menshikov: What should we call you?
And that Menshikov replied: Just call me Mike.
Smilin' Mike was the sobriquet Washington gave him.
His English was usable and he used it fearlessly.
Toasting in champagne one night at the embassy, he hoisted his glass to a senator's wife and gaily cried: Up your bottom!
For a few giddy months that coincided with one of Moscow's smiling moods, he was the sensation of Washington.
At the State Department, hard-bitten Russian experts complained that the Capitol was out of its wits.
Newspaper punditry was inspired to remind everyone that Judas, too, had been able to smile.
The Menshikov interlude ended as larks with the Russians usually end.
Finding peaceful coexistence temporarily unsuitable because of domestic politics, Moscow resumed scowling and Smilin' Mike dropped quietly out of the press except for an occasional story reporting that he had been stoned somewhere in the Middle West.
The most inscrutable embassies are the Arabs', and the most inscrutable of the Arabs are the Saudi Arabians.
When King Saud visited Washington, the overwhelming question consuming the press was the size of his family.
Rumor had it that his children numbered in the hundreds.
The State Department was little help on this, or on much else about Saudi Arabia.
A reporter who consulted a Middle East Information officer for routine vital statistics got nowhere until the State Department man produced from his bottom desk drawer a brochure published by the Arabian-American Oil Company.
This is where I get my information from, he confided.
But bring it right back.
It's the only copy I've got.
The size of Saud's family was still being debated when the King appeared for his first meeting with Eisenhower.
When it ended, a dusky sheik in desert robes flowed into Hagerty's office to report on the interview.
The massed reporters brushed aside the customary bromides about Saudi-American friendship to bore in on the central question.
How many children did the King have?
Twenty-one, replied the sheik.
And how many of these were sons?
Twenty-five, the sheik replied.
Do you mean to tell us, a reporter asked, that the King has twenty-one children, twenty-five of whom are sons?
The sheik smiled and murmured: That is precisely correct.
The Egyptians are noted for elusiveness of language.
When Dag Hammarskjold was negotiating the Middle East peace after Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt, he soon found himself speaking the mysterious phrases of Cairo, a language as anarchic as Casey Stengel's.
The reports of President Nasser's pledges which Hammarskjold was relaying from Cairo to Washington became increasingly incomprehensible to other diplomats, including the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mrs. Golda Meir.
Finally he reported that Nasser was ready to make a concrete commitment in return for Israeli concessions.
The deep water is used by many people, but it is always clean, for the washing is done outside.
I know now why our Japanese friends were surprised when they walked into our bathroom.
Of course, most toilets are Eastern style--at floor level--but even when they are raised to chair height, they are actually outside toilets--inside.
A few newer homes have Western flush toilets, but even with running water, they are usually Eastern style.
The next day I visited International Christian College which has developed since the war under the leadership of people who were interned and who know Japan well.
They are trying to demonstrate some different ways of teaching and learning.
The library has open shelves even in the unbound periodical stockroom.
Spiritual life is cultivated, but students do not need to be Christian.
They have an enviable record of being able to place in employment 100% of their graduates.
In the afternoon Miss Hosaka and her mother invited me to go with them and young Mrs. Kodama to see the famous Spring dances of the Geisha dancers.
Mrs. Hosaka is one of the Japanese women one reads about--beautiful, artistically talented, an artful manager of her big household--(four boys and four girls), and yet looking like a pampered, gentle Japanese woman.
She was a real experience!
The dances were as beautiful as anything I have ever seen--they rival the New York Rockettes for scenery and precision as well as imagination.
Because Don was leaving the next day, I spent the evening with him at Asia Center.
The following morning Mr. Morikawa called for me, and we went to visit schools--kindergarten, middle-school, elementary school, and high school--Mr. Yoshimoto's school.
There is much more freedom in the schools here than I expected--some think too much.
There is a great deal of thought being given to the question of moral education in the schools.
With the loss of the Emperor diety in Japan, the people are left in confusion with no God or moral teachings that have strength.
The older parents continued to teach their children traditional principles, but the younger people, who have lost all faith and convictions, are now parents.
There seems to be no purpose in life that is sure--no certain guiding principles to give stability.
As a result, money is spent quickly and freely, with no thought of its value.
Gambling is everywhere, especially among students.
Parents indulge their children.
The government has recognized the dilemma and is beginning to devise some moral education for the schools--but the teachers often have no firm conviction and are confused.
I was told that it is quite likely that Japanese soldiers would not fight again--for why should they?
It will be painful, but interesting, to see what kind of a god these people will create or what strong convictions they will develop.
In the evening the former Oregon State science teachers met for dinner at the New Tokyo Restaurant where I had my first raw fish and found it good.
They suggested several new foods, and usually I found them good, except the sweets, which I think I could learn to like.
Six of the science teachers were present, and we had great fun.
Kyoto
After a day at Nikko, Mrs. Kodama put me on the train for Kyoto.
My instructions were that Mr. Nishimo would meet me at the hotel, but instead he and three others were at the station with a very warm welcome.
They understood and teased me a bit about it.
I think I would have been much disappointed in Japan if I had not seen Kyoto, Nara, and Hiroshima.
Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan and still its cultural center.
It, along with Nara, was untouched by the war--and is now a beautiful example of the loveliness of prewar Japan.
Here I was accompanied by Mrs. Okamoto (Fumio's mother), her son, Mr. Washizu (a prospective student with whom I have been corresponding for more than a year), and Mr. Nishima, one of the science teachers.
I arrived at 7:00 a.m. and by 9:00 a.m. I had finished breakfast and was on my way to see what they had planned.
We walked miles and saw various shrines and gardens.
We visited the Okamoto home--where for the first time I saw the famous tea ceremony.
At 6:00 p.m. we went to the Kyoto Spring dances at the place where these beautiful dances originated.
They were even better than those of Tokyo--more spectacular and more imaginative.
After a supper of unagi (rice with eel--eel which is raised in an ice-cold pond at the foot of Mt. Fuji), I returned to my beautiful room to sleep as hard as possible to be ready for another busy day.
We started at 9 a.m. to visit the Kyoto University where Mr. Washizu is attending.
I was amazed at the very poor hospital facilities accompanying the medical school.
They apologized for the condition, including dirt and flies, and I was a little at a loss to know what to say.
There seemed to be no excuse?
I don't have the answer yet.
We had tea at Mr. Washizu's home where I learned that he, too, comes from a very wealthy family.
His grandfather is a Buddhist priest;
and he, being the eldest, was supposed to be a priest, but he chose to do differently, and one of his brothers is to become the priest.
This is a significant fact in Japan, for only a few years ago he would have had no choice.
In his big home live four families and thirty people, so it needs to be big.
Also, there are housed here some priceless historical treasures from 400 to 600 years old--paintings, lacquer, brocade, etc..
He had displayed more of them than usual so that I could enjoy them.
About 100 of the most important items he had already given to the museum.
The house itself is 400 years old with all the craftsmanship of older, less-hurried times.
Nara, Osaka, and Hiroshima
Mr. Nishima went with me on the train to Nara.
We passed his house and school on the way.
In Nara I stayed at the hotel where the Prince and Princess had stayed on their honeymoon.
A new red carpet had been laid for their coming, but I walked on it, too.
Here Mr. Yoneda met us after a three-hour train trip from the town where he teaches.
Even though we had walked miles in Kyoto that day, we started out again to see Nara at night.
In the evening both of the men went with me on the train 30 miles to Osaka to put me on the train for Hiroshima.
Again the plan was for me to go alone, but they wouldn't let me.
At Osaka, Mr. Yoneda had to leave us to get the train to his home, but Mr. Nishima and I had an hour and a half before train time to see Osaka at night.
It is the second largest city in Japan, with about four million people.
One spot in Osaka I shall always remember--the bridge where we stood to watch the reflections of the elaborate neon signs in the still waters of the river.
In the midst of a great busy city, people take time to enjoy the beauty of natural reflection of artificial light.
My train arrived in Hiroshima at the awful hour of 4:45 a.m..
I had planned to go to the hotel by taxi and sleep a little, after which Mr. Uno would arrive and pilot me around.
But there he was at the train with an Oregon State pennant in his hand.
I know now why the students insisted that I go to Hiroshima even when I told them I didn't want to.
They knew that I was still grieving over the tragic event, and they felt that if I could see the recovery and the spirit of the people, who hold no grudge, but who also regret Pearl Harbor, I would be happier and would understand better a new Japan.
There were no words to say this but there was no need.
The teachers of Mr. Uno's school gave me a small gift to thank me for coming.
Hiroshima is a better city than it was before--in the minds of the people I met was a strong determination for peace and understanding.
I was grateful for their insight into my need for this experience.
A better world may yet come out of Hiroshima.
Tokyo
On arriving in Tokyo later we were met by Masu who took us immediately to her university, the Japanese Women's University.
This day was Open House for Parents day, and the girls were busy preparing exhibits and arranging tea tables.
Everything was in an exciting turmoil--full of anticipation and fun.
It was thrilling to see the effect of an American-trained teacher on Japanese students in a class in Home Planning.
Our Masu is one of the very few architects in Japan who is trying to plan homes around family functions and women's needs.
I am told the time will soon come when women will find it necessary to do most of their own work, and even now it is important to have conveniences for the use of servants.
Many of the features of the homes are the latest modern devices in American homes, but an interesting blend of cultures finds us using Japanese artfulness in our own Western architecture at the same time that the Japanese are adopting Western utility patterns.
At this Women's University we find a monument to a courageous family who believed that Japanese women also should be educated.
Even today there are some doubts about the value of education for Japanese women, but this University continues to grow and to send its students out into the community.
Active alumnae have built a fine building on the campus where members can come and stay for a few days or longer and where they can have their social gatherings and professional meetings.
As far as I am concerned there is continuous piling up of evidence that the creative fresh ideas which are needed in the world are going to be found by educated women unafraid to break traditions.
Masu is also teaching in a municipally-sponsored school for Japanese widows in Tokyo.
Here the women learn to keep house as maids;
they become skilled in cooking and cleaning and in receiving guests.
They learn how to take care of children and sick members of the family.
They have model kitchens, a sick room with a model patient in bed, and a nursery with a life-like doll.
Although the training is only for one month, it is intensive and thorough.
Graduates of this maid's school are much in demand and can always find work immediately.
Occasionally they return for additional training.
Masu's home economics training comes into play as she designs cupboards along modern functional lines for the storage of cleaning materials.
Masu also uses the training she got in an American home where she learned to polish furniture, clean corners, and work effectively in keeping a shiny house.
Her education in the United States, not just in a classroom, but also in an American house with an American housekeeper, stands her in good stead.
University of Tokyo
After a fine luncheon in the cafeteria, the kitchen of which Masu had planned, Mr. Washizu and I left to meet representatives of the USIS for a visit to the University of Tokyo.
Here again it was vacation time and there were many things I could not see, but I was able to visit with a professor who is famous in Japanese circles and be guided through the grounds by his assistant.
The achievement of the desegregation of certain lunch counters not only by wise action by local community leaders but by voluntary action following consultation between Attorney General Rogers and the heads of certain national chain stores should, of course, be applauded.
But for it to be just to attain this same result by means of the force of a boycott throughout the nation would require the verification of facts contrary to those assumed in the foregoing case.
Then the boycott would not be secondary, but a primary one.
It would be directed against the actual location of the unjust policy which, for love's sake and for the sake of justice, must be removed, and, indivisible from this, to the economic injury of the people directly and objectively a part of this policy.
Perhaps this would be sufficient to justify an economic boycott of an entire national chain in order, by threatening potential injury to its entire economy, to effect an alteration of the policy of its local stores in the matter of segregation.
Such a general boycott might still be a blunt or indiscriminating instrument, and therefore of questionable justification.
Action located where the evil is concentrated will prove most decisive and is most clearly legitimate.
It is true, of course, that the end or objective of this action was different.
An unlimited use of economic pressures for diametrically opposite causes could devastate the pre-conditions of any fellow humanity as surely as this would be destroyed by the use of more obviously brutal means.
Here the recourse is in steps to give economic sustenance to those being despoiled, and to legal remedies.
This, however, is sufficient to show that more or less non-violent resistance and economic conflict (if both sides are strong enough) can be war of all against all no less than if other means are used.
It is clear that non-violent resistance is a mode of action in need of justification and limitation in Christian morality, like any other form of resistance.
The language used itself often makes very clear that this is only another form of struggle for victory (perhaps to be chosen above all others).
One of the sit-in leaders has said: Nobody from the top of Heaven to the bottom of Hell can stop the march to freedom.
Everybody in the world today might as well make up their minds to march with freedom or freedom is going to march over them.
The present writer certainly agrees with that statement, and would also affirm this--in the order of justice.
However, it is also a Christian insight to know that unless charity interpenetrates justice it is not likely to be freedom that marches forward.
And when charity interpenetrates man's struggle for justice and freedom it does not simply surround this with a sentimental good will.
It also definitely fashions conduct in the way explained above, and this means far more than in the choice of non-violent means.
R. B. Gregg has written that non-violence and good will of the victim act like the lack of physical opposition by the user of physical jiu-jitsu, to cause the attacker to lose his moral balance.
He suddenly and unexpectedly loses the moral support which the usual violent resistance of most victims would render him;
and again, that the object of non-violent resistance is partly analogous to this object of war--namely, to demoralize the opponent, to break his will, to destroy his confidence, enthusiasm, and hope.
In another respect it is dissimilar, for non-violent resistance demoralizes the opponent only to re-establish in him a new morale that is firmer because it is based on sounder values.
A trial of strength, however, is made quite inevitable by virtue of the fact that anyone engaging in non-violent resistance will be convinced that his action is based on sounder values than those of his opponent;
and in warfare with any means, men commonly disagree over the justice of the cause.
This makes necessary a morality of means, and principles governing the conduct of resistance whenever this is thought to be justified.
The question, then, is whether sufficient discrimination in the use of even non-violent means of coercion is to be found in the fact that such conduct demoralizes and overcomes the opponent while re-moralizing and re-establishing him.
Here it is relevant to remember that men commonly regard some causes as more important than their lives;
and to them it will seem insignificant that it is proposed to defeat such causes non-violently.
A technique by which it is proposed to enter with compulsion into the very heart of a man and determine his values may often in fact seem the more unlimited aggression.
Among Christian groups, the Mennonites have commonly been aware more than others of the fact that the nature of divine charity raises decisively the question of the Christian use of all forms of pressure.
Since the will and word of God are for them concentrated in Christ-like love, it seems clear to them that non-violent resistance is quite another thing.
The primary objective of non-violence, writes the outstanding Mennonite ethicist, is not peace, or obedience to the divine will, but rather certain desired social changes, for personal, or class, or national advantage.
These principles we have now set forth.
Economy in the use of power needs not only to be asserted, but clearly specified;
and when this is done it will be found that the principles governing Christian resistance cut across the distinction between violent and non-violent means, and apply to both alike, justifying either on occasion and always limiting either action.
Economy in the use of power means more than inflicting a barely intolerable pressure upon an opponent and upon the injustice opposed.
That would amount to calculating the means and justifying them wholly in terms of their effectiveness in reaching desired goals.
There must also be additional and more fundamental discrimination in the use of means of resistance, violent or non-violent.
In these terms, the economic withdrawal of the Negroes of Nashville, Tennessee, from trading in the center city, for example, was clearly justified, since these distinctions do not require that only people subjectively guilty be singled out.
We may now take up for consideration a hard case which seems to require either no action employing economic pressure or else action that would seem to violate the principles set forth above.
There may be instances in which, if economic pressure is to be undertaken at all, this would have to be applied without discrimination against a whole people.
Both the conditions and the complicity are documented in considerable detail.
This leads to the conclusion that the fact is inescapable that America does have a say in whether or not apartheid shall continue.
Northern liberals are the chief supporters of civil rights and of integration.
They have also led the nation in the direction of a welfare state.
And both in their objectives of non-discrimination and of social progress they have had ranged against them the Southerners who are called Bourbons.
The name presumably derives from the French royal house which never learned and never forgot;
since Bourbon whiskey, though of Kentucky origin, is at least as much favored by liberals in the North as by conservatives in the South.
The nature of the opposition between liberals and Bourbons is too little understood in the North.
The race problem has tended to obscure other, less emotional, issues which may fundamentally be even more divisive.
It is these other differences between North and South--other, that is, than those which concern discrimination or social welfare--which I chiefly discuss herein.
I write about Northern liberals from considerable personal experience.
A Southerner married to a New Englander, I have lived for many years in a Connecticut commuting town with a high percentage of artists, writers, publicity men, and business executives of egghead tastes.
Most of them are Democrats and nearly all consider themselves, and are viewed as, liberals.
This is puzzling to an outsider conscious of the classic tradition of liberalism, because it is clear that these Democrats who are left-of-center are at opposite poles from the liberal Jefferson, who held that the best government was the least government.
Yet paradoxically my liberal friends continue to view Jefferson as one of their patron saints.
When I question them as to what they mean by concepts like liberty and democracy, I find that they fall into two categories: the simpler ones who have simply accepted the shibboleths of their faith without analysis;
and the intelligent, cynical ones who scornfully reply that these things don't count any more in the world of to-day.
I am naive, they say, to make use of such words.
I take this to mean that the intelligent--and therefore necessarily cynical?
-- liberal considers that the need for a national economy with controls that will assure his conception of social justice is so great that individual and local liberties as well as democratic processes may have to yield before it.
This seems like an attitude favoring a sort of totalitarian bureaucracy which, under a President of the same stamp, would try to coerce an uncooperative Congress or Supreme Court.
As for states' rights, they have never counted in the thinking of my liberal friends except as irritations of a minor and immoral nature which exist now only as anachronisms.
The American liberal may, in the world of to-day, have a strong case;
but he presents it publicly so enmeshed in hypocrisy that it is not an honest one.
Why, in the first place, call himself a liberal if he is against laissez-faire and favors an authoritarian central government with womb-to-tomb controls over everybody?
If he attaches little importance to personal liberty, why not make this known to the world?
And if he is so scornful of the rights of states, why not advocate a different sort of constitution that he could more sincerely support?
I am concerned here, however, with the Northern liberal's attitude toward the South.
It appears to be one of intense dislike, which he makes little effort to conceal even in the presence of Southern friends.
His assumption seems to be that any such friends, being tolerable humans, must be more liberal than most Southerners and therefore at least partly in sympathy with his views.
Time's editor, Thomas Griffith, in his book, The Waist-High Culture, wrote: most of what was different about it (the Deep South) I found myself unsympathetic to.
This, for the liberals I know, would be an understatement.
Theirs is no mere lack of sympathy, but something closer to the passionate hatred that was directed against Fascism.
I do not think that my experience would be typical for Southerners living in the North.
In business circles, usually conservative, this sort of atmosphere would hardly be found.
But in our case--and neither my wife nor I have extreme views on integration, nor are we given to emotional outbursts--the situation has ruined one or two valued friendships and come close to wrecking several more.
Accounts have been published of Northern liberals in the South up against segregationist prejudice, especially in state-supported universities where pressure may be strong to uphold the majority view.
But these accounts do not show that Northerners have been subjected to embarrassment or provocation by Yankee-hatred displayed in social gatherings.
From my wife's experience and other sources, this seems to be rarely encountered in educated circles.
The strong feeling is certainly there;
but there is a leavening of liberalism among college graduates throughout the South, especially among those who studied in the North.
And social relations arising out of business ties impose courtesy, if not sympathy, toward resident and visiting Northerners.
Also, among the latter a large percentage soon acquire the prevalent Southern attitude on most social problems.
There are of course many Souths;
but for this discussion the most important division is between those who have been reconstructed and those who haven't.
My definition of this much abused adjective is that a reconstructed rebel is one who is glad that the North won the War.
Nobody knows how many Southerners there are in this category.
I suspect that there are far more unreconstructed ones than the North likes to believe.
I never heard of a poll being taken on the question.
No doubt such a thing would be considered unpatriotic.
Prior to 1954 I imagine that a majority of Southerners would have voted against the Confederacy.
Since the Supreme Court's decision of that year this is more doubtful;
and if a poll had been taken immediately following the dispatch of troops to Little Rock I believe the majority would have been for the Old South.
Belief in the traditional way of life persists much more in the older states than in the new ones.
Probably a larger percentage of Virginians and South Carolinians remain unreconstructed than elsewhere, with Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama following along after them.
Old attitudes are held more tenaciously in the Tidewater than the Piedmont;
so that a line running down the length of the South marking the upper limits of tidewater would roughly divide the Old South from the new, but with, of course, important minority enclaves.
The long-settled areas of states like Virginia and South Carolina developed the ante-bellum culture to its richest flowering, and there the memory is more precious, and the consciousness of loss the greater.
Also, we should not even to-day discount the fact that a region such as the coastal lowlands centering on Charleston had closer ties with England and the West Indies than with the North even after independence.
The social and psychological consequences of this continue to affect the area.
In certain respects defeat increased the persistent Anglophilia of the Old South.
Poor where they had once been rich, humbled where they had been arrogant, having no longer any hope of sharing in the leadership of the nation, the rebels who would not surrender in spirit drew comfort from the sympathy they felt extended to them by the mother country.
And no doubt many people in states like the Carolinas and Georgia, which were among the most Tory in sentiment in the eighteenth century, bitterly regretted the revolt against the Crown.
Among Bourbons the racial issue may have less to do with their remaining unreconstructed than other factors.
All Southerners agree that slavery had to go;
but many historians maintain that except for Northern meddling it would have ended in states like Virginia years before it did.
Southern resentment has been over the method of its ending, the invasion, and Reconstruction;
their fears now are of miscegenation and Negro political control in many counties.
But apart from racial problems, the old unreconstructed South--to use the moderate words favored by Mr. Thomas Griffith--finds itself unsympathetic to most of what is different about the civilization of the North.
And this, in effect, means most of modern America.
It is hard to see how the situation could be otherwise.
And therein, I feel, many Northerners delude themselves about the South.
For one thing, this is not a subject often discussed or analyzed.
There seems to be almost a conspiracy of silence veiling it.
I suppose the reason is a kind of wishful thinking: don't talk about the final stages of Reconstruction and they will take care of themselves.
Or else the North really believes that all Southerners except a few quaint old characters have come around to realizing the errors of their past, and are now at heart sharers of the American Dream, like everybody else.
If the circumstances are faced frankly it is not reasonable to expect this to be true.
The situation of the South since 1865 has been unique in the western world.
Regardless of rights and wrongs, a population and an area appropriate to a pre-World-War- 1 great power have been, following conquest, ruled against their will by a neighboring people, and have had imposed upon them social and economic controls they dislike.
And the great majority of these people are of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic descent.
This is the only case in modern history of a people of Britannic origin submitting without continued struggle to what they view as foreign domination.
The fact is due mainly to international wars, both hot and cold.
In every war of the United States since the Civil War the South was more belligerent than the rest of the country.
So instead of being tests of the South's loyalty, the Spanish War, the two World Wars, and the Korean War all served to overcome old grievances and cement reunion.
And there is no section of the nation more ardent than the South in the cold war against Communism.
It is extraordinary that a people as proud and warlike as Southerners should have been as docile as they have.
The North should thank its stars that such has been the case;
but at the same time it should not draw false inferences therefrom.
The two main charges levelled against the Bourbons by liberals is that they are racists and social reactionaries.
There is much truth in both these charges, and not many Bourbons deny them.
Whatever their faults, they are not hypocrites.
Most of them sincerely believe that the Anglo-Saxon is the best race in the world and that it should remain pure.
Many Northeners believe this, too, but few of them will say so publicly.
The Bourbon economic philosophy, moreover, is not very different from that of Northern conservatives.
But those among the Bourbons who remain unreconstructed go much further than this.
They believe that if the South had been let alone it would have produced a civilization superior to that of modern America.
The South's antipathy to Northern civilization includes such charges as poor manners, harsh accents, lack of appreciation of the arts of living like gastronomy and the use of leisure.
Their own easier, slower tempo is especially dear to Southerners;
and I have heard many say that they are content to earn a half or a third as much as they could up North because they so much prefer the quieter habits of their home town.
In the past, the duties of the state, as Sir Henry Maine noted long ago, were only two in number: internal order and external security.
By prevailing over other claimants for the loyalties of men, the nation-state maintained an adequate measure of certainty and order within its territorial borders.
Outside those limits it asserted, as against other states, a position of sovereign equality, and, as against the inferior peoples of the non-Western world, a position of dominance.
It became the sole subject of international law (a term which, it is pertinent to remember, was coined by Bentham), a body of legal principle which by and large was made up of what Western nations could do in the world arena.
(That corpus of law was a reflection of the power system in existence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaking generally, it furthered--and still tends to further--the interests of the Western powers.
The enormous changes in world politics have, however, thrown it into confusion, so much so that it is safe to say that all international law is now in need of reexamination and clarification in light of the social conditions of the present era.
Beyond the two basic tasks mentioned above, no attention was paid by statesman or scholar to an idea of state responsibility, either internally or externally.
This was particularly true in the world arena, which was an anarchical battleground characterized by strife and avaricious competition for colonial empires.
That any sort of duty was owed by his nation to other nations would have astonished a nineteenth-century statesman.
His duty was to his sovereign and to his nation, and an extension to peoples beyond the territorial boundaries was not to be contemplated.
At the same time, all suggestions that some sort of societal responsibility existed for the welfare of the people within the territorial state was strongly resisted.
Social Darwinism was able to stave off the incipient socialist movement until well into the present century.
However, in recent decades, for what doubtless are multiple reasons, an unannounced but nonetheless readily observable shift has occurred in both facets of national activity.
A concept of responsibility is in process of articulation and establishment.
Already firmly implanted internally, it is a growing factor in external matters.
A little more than twenty years ago the American people turned an important corner.
In what has aptly been called a constitutional revolution, the basic nature of government was transformed from one essentially negative in nature (the night-watchman state) to one with affirmative duties to perform.
The positive state came into existence.
Of greater importance, however, is the content of those programs, which have had and are having enormous consequences for the American people.
Labor relations have been transformed, income security has become a standardized feature of political platforms, and all the many facets of the American version of the welfare state have become part of the conventional wisdom.
A national consensus of near unanimity exists that these governmental efforts are desirable as well as necessary.
Ratified in the Republican Party victory in 1952, the Positive State is now evidenced by political campaigns being waged not on whether but on how much social legislation there should be.
The general acceptance of the idea of governmental (i.e., societal) responsibility for the economic well-being of the American people is surely one of the two most significant watersheds in American constitutional history.
The other, of course, was the Civil War, the conflict which a century ago insured national unity over fragmentation.
A third, one of at least equal and perhaps even greater importance, is now being traversed: American immersion and involvement in world affairs.
Internal national responsibility, now a truism, need not be documented.
Nevertheless, it may be helpful to cite one example--that of employment--for, as will be shown below, it cuts across both facets of the new concept.
Thirty years ago, while the nation was wallowing in economic depression, the prevailing philosophy of government was to stand aside and allow natural forces to operate and cure the distress.
That guiding principle of the Hoover Administration fell to the siege guns of the New Deal;
less than a score of years later Congress enacted the Employment Act of 1946, by which the national government assumed the responsibility of taking action to insure conditions of maximum employment.
Hands-off the economy was replaced by conscious guidance through planning--the economic side of the constitutional revolution.
The American people have indeed come a long way in the brief interval between 1930 and 1961.
Internal national responsibility is a societal response to the impact of the Industrial Revolution.
Reduced to its simplest terms, it is an assumption of a collective duty to compensate for the inability of individuals to cope with the rigors of the era.
National responsibility for individual welfare is a concept not limited to the United States or even to the Western nations.
A measure of its widespread acceptance may be derived from a statement of the International Congress of Jurists in 1959.
Meeting in New Delhi under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists, a body of lawyers from the free world, the Congress redefined and expanded the traditional Rule of Law to include affirmative governmental duties.
It is noteworthy that the majority of the delegates to the Congress were from the less developed, former colonial nations.
The Rule of Law, historically a principle according everyone his day in court before an impartial tribunal, was broadened substantively by making it a responsibility of government to promote individual welfare.
The idea of national responsibility thus has become a common feature of the nations of the non-Soviet world.
For better or for worse, we all now live in welfare states, the organizing principle of which is collective responsibility for individual well-being.
Whether a concept analogous to the principle of internal responsibility operates in a nation's external relations is less obvious and more difficult to establish.
The hypothesis ventured here is that it does, and that evidence is accumulating validating that proposition.
The content is not the same, however: rather than individual security, it is the security and continuing existence of an ideological group--those in the free world--that is basic.
External national responsibility involves a burgeoning requirement that the leaders of the Western nations so guide their decisions as to further the viability of other friendly nations.
If internal responsibility suggests acceptance of the socialist ideal of equality, then external responsibility implies adherence to principles of ideological supranationalism.
Reference to two other concepts--nationalism and sovereignty--may help to reveal the contours of the new principle.
In its beginnings the nation-state had to struggle to assert itself--internally, against feudal groups, and externally, against the power and influence of such other claimants for loyalty as the Church.
The breakup of the Holy Roman Empire and the downfall of feudalism led, not more than two centuries ago, to the surge of nationalism.
) The concept of nationalism is the political principle that epitomizes and glorifies the territorial state as the characteristic type of socal structure.
But it is more than that.
For it includes the emotional ties that bind men to their homeland and the complex motivations that hold a large group of people together as a unit.
Today, as new nations rise from the former colonial empires, nationalism is one of the hurricane forces loose in the world.
Almost febrile in intensity, the principle has become worldwide in application--unfortunately at the very time that nationalist fervors can wreak greatest harm.
Historically, however, the concept is one that has been of marked benefit to the people of the Western civilizational group.
By subduing disparate lesser groups the nation has, to some degree at least, broadened the capacity for individual liberty.
Within their confines, moreover, technological and industrial growth has proceeded at an accelerated pace, thus increasing the cornucopia from which material wants can be satisfied.
While the pattern is uneven, some having gained more than others, nationalism has in fact served the Western peoples well.
(Whether historical nationalism helped the peoples of the remainder of the world, and whether today's nationalism in the former colonial areas has equally beneficial aspects, are other questions.
It is one of the ironic quirks of history that the viability and usefulness of nationalism and the territorial state are rapidly dissipating at precisely the time that the nation-state attained its highest number (approximately 100).
But it is more than irony: one of the main reasons why nationalism is no longer a tenable concept is because it has spread throughout the planet.
In other words, nationalism worked well enough when it had limited application, both as to geography and as to population;
it becomes a perilous anachronism when adopted on a world-wide basis.
Complementing the political principle of nationalism is the legal principle of sovereignty.
The former receives its legitimacy from the latter.
Operating side by side, together they helped shore up the nation-state.
While sovereignty has roots in antiquity, in its present usage it is essentially modern.
Jean Bodin, writing in the sixteenth century, may have been the seminal thinker, but it was the vastly influential John Austin who set out the main lines of the concept as now understood.
Austin's nineteenth-century view of law and sovereignty still dominates much of today's legal and political thinking.
To him, law is the command of the sovereign (the English monarch) who personifies the power of the nation, while sovereignty is the power to make law--i.e., to prevail over internal groups and to be free from the commands of other sovereigns in other nations.
These fundamental ideas--the indivisibility of sovereignty and its dual (internal-external) aspects--still remain the core of that concept of ultimate political power.
The nation-state, then, exemplifies the principle of nationalism and exercises sovereignty: supreme power over domestic affairs and independence from outside control.
In fact, however, both principles have always been nebulous and loosely defined.
High-level abstractions are always difficult to pin down with precision.
That is particularly true of sovereignty when it is applied to democratic societies, in which popular sovereignty is said to exist, and in federal nations, in which the jobs of government are split.
Nevertheless, nationalism and sovereignty are reputed, in the accepted wisdom, to describe the modern world.
Is there a different reality behind the facade?
Does the surface hide a quite different picture?
The short answer to those questions is yes.
Both concepts are undergoing alteration;
to some degree they are being supplanted by a concept of national responsibility.
As evidence to support that view, consider the following illustrative instances.
Can thermonuclear war be set off by accident?
What steps have been taken to guard against the one sort of mishap that could trigger the destruction of continents?
Are we as safe as we should be from such a disaster?
Is anything being done to increase our margin of safety?
Will the danger increase or decrease?
To the men in the instrument-jammed bomber cockpits, submarine compartments and the antiseptic, windowless rooms that would be the foxholes of tomorrow's impersonal intercontinental wars, the questions seem farfetched.
There is unceasing pressure, but its sources are immediate.
Readiness exercises are almost continuous.
Each could be the real thing.
In the command centers there are special clocks ready to tick off the minutes elapsed since E hour.
E stands for execution--the moment a go order would unleash an American nuclear strike.
There is little time for the men in the command centers to reflect about the implications of these clocks.
They are preoccupied riding herd on control panels, switches, flashing colored lights on pale green or gray consoles that look like business machines.
They know little about their machinery beyond mechanical details.
Accidental war is so sensitive a subject that most of the people who could become directly involved in one are told just enough so they can perform their portions of incredibly complex tasks.
As an Air Force psychiatrist put it: You can't have dry runs on this one.
The experts are thus forced to hypothesize sequences of events that have never occurred, probably never will--but possibly might.
Only one rule prevailed in my conversations with these men: The more highly placed they are--that is, the more they know--the more concerned they have become.
Already accidental war is a silent guest at the discussions within the Kennedy Administration about the urgency of disarmament and nearly all other questions of national security.
Only recently new holes were discovered in our safety measures, and a search is now on for more.
Work is under way to see whether new restraining devices should be installed on all nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the experts speak of wars triggered by false pre-emption, escalation, unauthorized behavior and other terms that will be discussed in this report.
They inhabit a secret world centered on go codes and gold phones.
Their conversations were, almost invariably, accompanied by the same gestures--arms and pointed forefingers darting toward each other in arclike semicircular motions.
One arm represented our bombers and missiles, the other arm theirs.
Yet implicit in each movement was the death of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, perhaps you and me--and the experts.
These men are not callous.
It is their job to think about the unthinkable.
Unanimously they believe that the world would become a safer place if more of us--and more Russians and Communist Chinese, too--thought about accidental war.
The first systematic thinking about this Pandora's box within Pandora's boxes was done four years ago by Fred Ikle, a frail, meek-mannered Swiss-born sociologist.
He was, and is, with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit pool of thinkers financed by the U.S. Air Force.
His investigations made him the Paul Revere of accidental war, and safety procedures were enormously increased.
In recent weeks, as a result of a sweeping defense policy reappraisal by the Kennedy Administration, basic United States strategy has been modified--and large new sums allocated--to meet the accidental-war danger and to reduce it as quickly as possible.
The chain starts at BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) in Thule, Greenland.
Its radar screens would register Soviet missiles shortly after they are launched against the United States.
BMEWS intelligence is simultaneously flashed to NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for interpretation;
to the SAC command and control post, forty-five feet below the ground at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska;
to the Joint War Room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon and to the President.
Telephones, Teletypes, several kinds of radio systems and, in some cases, television, link all vital points.
Alternate locations exist for all key command centers.
For last-ditch emergencies SAC has alternate command posts on KC-135 jet tankers.
Multiple circuits, routings and frequencies make the chain as unbreakable as possible.
The same principle of redundancy applies to all communications on these special networks.
And no messages can be transmitted on these circuits until senders and receivers authenticate in advance, by special codes, that the messages actually come from their purported sources.
Additional codes can be used to challenge and counterchallenge the authentications.
Only the President is permitted to authorize the use of nuclear weapons.
That's the law.
But what if somebody decides to break it?
The President cannot personally remove the safety devices from every nuclear trigger.
He makes the momentous decision.
Hundreds of men are required to pass the word to the button pushers and to push the buttons.
What if one or more of them turn irrational or suddenly, coolly, decide to clobber the Russians?
What if the President himself, in the language of the military, goes ape?
Or singlehandedly decided to reverse national policy and hit the Soviets without provocation?
Nobody can be absolutely certain of the answers.
However, the system is designed, ingeniously and hopefully, so that no one man could initiate a thermonuclear war.
Even the President cannot pick up his telephone and give a go order.
Even he does not know the one signal for a nuclear strike--the go code.
In an emergency he would receive available intelligence on the gold-phone circuit.
A system of gold--actually yellow--phones connects him with the offices and action stations of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the SAC commander and other key men.
All can be connected with the gold circuit from their homes.
All could help the President make his decision.
The talk would not be in code, but neither would it ramble.
Vital questions would be quickly answered according to a preprepared agenda.
Officers who participate in the continual practice drills assured me that the President's decision could be made and announced on the gold circuit within minutes after the first flash from Aj.
If communications work, his decision would be instantly known in all command posts that would originate the actual go order.
For these centers, too, are on the gold circuit.
They include the Navy's Atlantic Command at Norfolk, Virginia, which is in contact with the Polaris subs;
NATO headquarters in Europe;
Air Force forward headquarters in Europe and in the Pacific, which control tactical fighters on ships and land bases;
and SAC, which controls long-range bombers and Atlas missiles.
Let us look in on one of these nerve centers--SAC at Omaha--and see what must still happen before a wing of B-52 bombers could drop their Aj.
In a word, plenty.
The key man almost certainly would be Col. William W. Wisman, SAC's senior controller.
He or his deputy or one of their seven assistants, all full colonels, mans the heart of the command post twenty-four hours a day.
It is a quiet but impressive room--140 feet long, thirty-nine feet wide, twenty-one feet high.
Movable panels of floor-to-ceiling maps and charts are crammed with intelligence information.
And Bill Wisman, forty-three, a farmer's son from Beallsville, Ohio, is a quiet but impressive man.
His eyes are steady anchors of the deepest brown.
His movements and speech are precise, clear and quick.
No question ruffles him or causes him to hesitate.
Wisman, who has had the chief controller's job for four years, calls the signals for a team operating three rows of dull-gray consoles studded with lights, switches and buttons.
At least a dozen men, some armed, are never far away from him.
In front of him is a gold phone.
In emergencies the SAC commander, Gen. Thomas Power, or his deputies and their staff would occupy a balcony that stretches across the length of the room above Wisman and his staff.
At General Power's seat in the balcony there is also a gold phone.
General Power would participate in the decision making.
Wisman, below, would listen in and act.
His consoles can give him instant contact with more than seventy bases around the world and with every SAC aircraft.
He need only pick up one of the two red telephone receivers at his extreme left, right next to the big red button marked alert.
(There are two receivers in case one should be dropped and damaged.
But Wisman, too, does not know the go code.
He must take it from the red box.
In point of fact, this is a beige box with a bright red door, about one and a half feet square and hung from the wall about six feet from the door to Wisman's right.
The box is internally wired so the door can never be opened without setting off a screeching klaxon (It's real obnoxious).
Now we must become vague, for we are approaching one of the nation's most guarded secrets.
The codes in the red box--there are several of them covering various contingencies--are contained in a sealed X-ray-proof unique device.
They are supplied, a batch at a time, by a secret source and are continually changed by Wisman or his staff, at random intervals.
But even the contents of Wisman's box cannot start a war.
They are mere fragments, just one portion of preprepared messages.
What these fragments are and how they activate the go order may not be revealed.
The pieces must be placed in the context of the prepared messages by Wisman's staff.
I asked Wisman what would happen if he broke out the go codes and tried to start transmitting one.
I'd wind up full of bullet holes, he said, and there was no question that he was talking about bullets fired by his coworkers.
Now let us imagine a wing of B-52's, on alert near their positive control (or fail-safe) points, the spots on the map, many miles from Soviet territory, beyond which they are forbidden to fly without specific orders to proceed to their targets.
They, too, have fragments of the go code with them.
As Wisman put it, They have separate pieces of the pie, and we have the whole pie.
Once we send out the whole pie, they can put their pieces into it.
Unless we send out the whole pie, their pieces mean nothing.
Why does Wisman's ever-changing code always mesh with the fragments in possession of the button pushers?
The answer is a cryptographic secret.
At any rate, three men out of a six-man B-52 crew are required to copy down Wisman's go-to-war message.
Each must match Wisman's pie with the fragment that he carries with him.
All three must compare notes and agree to go.
After that, it requires several minutes of concentrated work, including six separate and deliberate actions by a minimum of three men sitting at three separate stations in a bomber, each with another man beside him to help, for an armed bomb to be released.
Unless all gadgets are properly operated--and the wires and seals from the handles removed first--no damage can be done.
Suddenly, however, their posture changed and the game ended.
They went as rigid as black statuary six figures, lean and tall and angular, went still.
Their heads were in the air sniffing.
They all swung at the same instant in the same direction.
They saw it before I did, even with my binoculars.
It was nothing more than a tiny distant rain squall, a dull gray sheet which reached from a layer of clouds to the earth.
In the 360 degrees of horizon it obscured only a degree, no more.
A white man would not have seen it.
The aborigines fastened upon it with a concentration beyond pathos.
Watching, they waited until the squall thickened and began to move in a long drifting slant across the dry burning land.
At once the whole band set off at a lope.
They were chasing a rain cloud.
They went after the squall as mercilessly as a wolf pack after an abandoned cow.
I followed them in the jeep and now they did not care.
The games were over, this was life.
Occasionally, for no reason that I could see, they would suddenly alter the angle of their trot.
Sometimes I guessed it was because the rain squall had changed direction.
Sometimes it was to skirt a gulley.
Their gait is impossible to convey in words.
It has nothing of the proud stride of the trained runner about it, it is not a lope, it is not done with style or verve.
It is the gait of the human who must run to live: arms dangling, legs barely swinging over the ground, head hung down and only occasionally swinging up to see the target, a loose motion that is just short of stumbling and yet is wonderfully graceful.
It is a barely controlled skimming of the ground.
They ran for three hours.
Finally, avoiding hummocks and seeking low ground, they intercepted the rain squall.
For ten minutes they ran beneath the squall, raising their arms and, for the first time, shouting and capering.
Then the wind died and the rain squall held steady.
They were studying the ground.
Suddenly one of them shouted, ran a few feet, bent forward and put his mouth to the ground.
He had found a depression with rain water in it.
He bent down, a black cranelike figure, and put his mouth to the ground.
With a lordly and generous gesture, the discoverer stood up and beckoned to the closest of his fellows.
The other trotted over and swooped at the tiny puddle.
In an instant he had sucked it dry.
The aborigine lives on the cruelest land I have ever seen.
Which does not mean that it is ugly.
Part of it is, of course.
There are thousands of square miles of salt pan which are hideous.
They are huge areas which have been swept by winds for so many centuries that there is no soil left, but only deep bare ridges fifty or sixty yards apart with ravines between them thirty or forty feet deep and the only thing that moves is a scuttling layer of sand.
Such stretches have an inhuman moonlike quality.
But much of the land which the aborigine wanders looks as if it should be hospitable.
It is softened by the saltbush and the bluebush, has a peaceful quality, the hills roll softly.
The malignancy of such a landscape has been beautifully described by the Australian Charles Bean.
He tells of three men who started out on a trip across a single paddock, a ten-by-ten-mile square owned by a sheep grazer.
They went well-equipped with everything except knowledge of the outback country.
The countryside looked like a beautiful open park with gentle slopes and soft gray tree-clumps.
Nothing appalling or horrible rushed upon these men.
Only there happened--nothing.
There might have been a pool of cool water behind any of these tree-clumps: only--there was not.
It might have rained, any time;
only--it did not.
There might have been a fence or a house just over the next rise;
only--there was not.
They lay, with the birds hopping from branch to branch above them and the bright sky peeping down at them.
No one came.
The white men died.
And countless others like them have died.
Even today range riders will come upon mummified bodies of men who attempted nothing more difficult than a twenty-mile hike and slowly lost direction, were tortured by the heat, driven mad by the constant and unfulfilled promise of the landscape, and who finally died.
The aborigine is not deceived;
he knows that the land is hard and pitiless.
He knows that the economy of life in the outback is awful.
There is no room for error or waste.
Any organism that falters or misperceives the signals or weakens is done.
I do not know if such a way of life can come to be a self-conscious challenge, but I suspect that it can.
Perhaps this is what gives the aborigine his odd air of dignity.
The family at the boulder
seeing an aborigine today is a difficult thing.
Many of them have drifted into the cities and towns and seaports.
I persuaded an Australian friend who had lived outback for years to take me to see some aborigines living in the bush.
It was a difficult and ambiguous kind of negotiation, even though the rancher was said to be expert in his knowledge of the aborigines and their language.
Finally, however, the arrangements were made and we drove out into the bush in a Land Rover.
We followed the asphalt road for a few miles and then swung off onto a smaller road which was nothing more than two tire marks on the earth.
The rancher went a mile down this road and then, when he reached a big red boulder, swung off the road.
At once he started to glance toward the instrument panel.
It took me a moment to realize what was odd about that panel: there was a gimbaled compass welded to it, which rocked gently back and forth as the Land Rover bounced about.
The rancher was navigating his way across the flatland.
Do you always navigate like this?
I asked.
Damned right, he said.
Once I get out on the flat I do.
Some chaps that know an area well can make their way by landmarks, a tree here, a wash here, a boulder there.
But if you don't know the place like the palm of your hand, you'd better use a compass and the speedometer.
Two miles northeast, then five miles southwest that sort of thing.
Very simple.
He was right.
The landscape kept repeating itself.
I would try to memorize landmarks and saw in a half-hour that it was hopeless.
Finally we approached the bivouac of the aborigines.
They were camped beside a large column-shaped boulder: a man, his lubra, and two children.
The sun was not yet high and all of them were in the small area of shade cast by the boulder.
There was also a dog, a dingo dog.
Its ribs showed, it was a yellow nondescript color, it suffered from a variety of sores, hair had scabbed off its body in patches.
It lay with its head on its paws and only its eyes moving, watching us carefully.
It struck me as a very bright and very malnourished dog.
No one patted the dog.
It was not a pet.
It was a worker.
The buggers love shade, the rancher said.
I suppose because it saves them some loss of body water.
They'll move around that rock all day, following the shade.
During the hottest part of the day, of course, the sun comes straight down and there isn't any shade.
We drove close to the boulder, stopped the Land Rover, and walked over toward the family.
The man was leaning against the rock.
He gazed away from us as we approached.
He was over six feet tall and very thin.
His legs were narrow and very long.
Every bone and muscle in his body showed, but he did not give the appearance of starving.
He had long black hair and a wispy beard.
The ridges over his eyes were huge and his eyelids were half shut.
There was something about his face that disturbed me and it took several seconds to realize what.
It was not merely that flies were crawling over his face but his narrowed eyelids did not blink when the flies crawled into his eye sockets.
A fly would crawl down the bulging forehead, into the socket of the eye, walk along the man's lashes and across the wet surface of the eyeball, and the eye did not blink.
The Australian and I both were wearing insect repellent and were not badly bothered by insects, but my eyes watered as we stood watching the aborigine.
I turned to look at the lubra.
She remained squatting on her heels all the time we were there;
like the man, she was entirely naked.
Her long thin arms moved in a slow rhythmical gesture over the family possessions which were placed in front of her.
There were two rubbing sticks for making fire, two stones shaped roughly like knives, a woven-root container which held a few pounds of dried worms and the dead body of some rodent.
There was also a long wooden spear and a woomera, a spear-throwing device which gives the spear an enormous velocity and high accuracy.
There was also a boomerang, elaborately carved.
Everything was burnished with sweat and grease so that all of the objects seemed to have been carved from the same material and to be ageless.
The two children, both boys, wandered around the Australian and me for a few moments and then returned to their work.
They squatted on their heels with their heads bent far forward, their eyes only a few inches from the ground.
They had located the runway of a colony of ants and as the ants came out of the ground, the boys picked them up, one at a time, and pinched them dead.
The tiny bodies, dropped onto a dry leaf, made a pile as big as a small apple.
The odor here was more powerful than that which surrounded the town aborigines.
The smell at first was more surprising than unpleasant.
It was also subtly familiar, for it was the odor of the human body, but multiplied innumerable times because of the fact that the aborigines never bathed.
One's impulse is to say that the smell was a stink and unpleasant.
But that is a cliche and a dishonest one.
The smell is sexual, but so powerfully so that a civilized nose must deny it.
Their skin was covered with a thin coating of sweat and dirt which had almost the consistency of a second skin.
They roll at night in ashes to keep warm and their second skin has a light dusty cast to it.
In spots such as the elbows and knees the second skin is worn off and I realized the aborigines were much darker than they appeared;
as if the coating of sweat, dirt, and ashes were a cosmetic.
The boys had beautiful dark eyes and unlike their father they brushed constantly at the flies and blinked their eyes.
That smell is something, eh, mate?
The Australian asked.
They swear that every person smells different and every family smells different from every other.
At the corroborees, when they get to dancing and sweating, you'll see them rubbing up against a man who's supposed to have a specially good smell.
Idje, here, and he nodded at the man, is said to have great odor.
The stink is all the same to me, but I really think they can make one another out blindfolded.
Here, Idje, you fella like tabac?
He said sharply.
Idje still stared over our shoulders at the horizon.
The Australian stopped trying to talk a pidgin I could understand, and spoke strange words from deep in his chest.
It was a fortunate time in which to build, for the seventeenth century was a great period in Persian art.
The architects, the tile and carpet makers, the potters, painters, calligraphers, and metalsmiths worked through Abbas's reign and those of his successors to enrich the city.
At the heart of all of this was the square, which one such traveler declared to be as spacious, as pleasant and aromatick a Market as any in the Universe.
In time Isfahan came to be known as half the world, Isfahan nisf-i-jahan.
In the early eighteenth century this fantastic city, then the size of London, started to decline.
The Afghans invaded;
the Safavids fell from power;
the capital went elsewhere;
the desert encroached.
Isfahan became more of a legend than a place, and now it is for many people simply a name to which they attach their notions of old Persia and sometimes of the East.
They think of it as a kind of spooky museum in which they may half see and half imagine the old splendor.
Those who actually get there find that it isn't spooky at all but as brilliant as a tile in sunlight.
But even for them it remains a museum, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a tomb, a tomb in which Persia lies well preserved but indeed dead.
Everyone is ready to grant the Persians their history, but almost no one is willing to acknowledge their present.
It seems that for Persia, and especially for this city, there are only two times: the glorious past and the corrupt, depressing, sterile present.
The one apparent connection between the two is a score of buildings which somehow or other have survived and which naturally enough are called historical monuments.
However, just as all the buildings have not fallen and flowed back to their original mud, so the values which wanted them and saw that they were built have not all disappeared.
The values and talents which made the tile and the dome, the rug, the poem and the miniature, continue in certain social institutions which rise above the ordinary life of this city, as the great buildings rise above blank walls and dirty lanes.
Often, too, the social institutions are housed in these pavilions and palaces and bridges, for these great structures are not simply historical monuments;
they are the places where Persians live.
The promenade, for example, continues to take place on the Chahar Bagh, a mile-long garden of plane and poplar trees that now serves as the city's principal street.
It takes place as well along the terraces and through the arcades of the Khaju bridge, and also in the gardens of the square.
And of course religious life continues to center in the more famous mosques, and commercial life--very much a social institution--in the bazaar.
But more important, and the thing which the casual traveler and the blind sojourner often do not see, is that these places and activities are often the settings in which Persians exercise their extraordinary aesthetic sensibilities.
Water, air, fruit, poetry, music, the human form--these things are important to Persians, and they experience them with an intense and discriminating awareness.
I should like, by the way, to make it clear that I am not using the word Persians carelessly.
I don't mean a few aesthetes who play about with sensations, like a young prince in a miniature dabbling his hand in a pool.
These things are important to almost all Persians and perhaps most important to the most ordinary.
The men crying love poems in an orchard on any summer's night are as often as not the lutihaw, mustachioed toughs who spend most of their lives in and out of the local prisons, brothels, and teahouses.
A few months ago it was a fairly typical landlord who in the dead of night lugged me up a mountainside to drink from a spring famous in the neighborhood for its clarity and flavor.
Not long ago an acquaintance, a slick-headed water rat of a lad up from the maw of the city, stood on the balcony puffing his first cigarette in weeks.
The air, he said, was just right;
a cigarette would taste particularly good.
I really didn't know what he meant.
It was a nice day, granted.
But he knew;
he sniffed the air and licked it on his lip and knew as a vintner knows a vintage.
The natural world then, plus poetry and some kinds of art, receives from the most ordinary of Persians a great deal of attention.
The line of an eyebrow, the color of the skin, a ghazal from Hafiz, the purity of spring water, the long afternoon among the boughs which crowd the upper story of a pavilion--these things are noticed, judged, and valued.
Nowhere in Isfahan is this rich aesthetic life of the Persians shown so well as during the promenade at the Khaju bridge.
There has probably always been a bridge of some sort at the southeastern corner of the city.
For one thing, there is a natural belt of rock across the river bed;
for another, it was here that one of the old caravan routes came in.
It was to provide a safe and spacious crossing for these caravans, and also to make a pleasance for the city, that Shah Abbas 2, in about 1657 built, of sun-baked brick, tile, and stone, the present bridge.
It is a splendid structure.
From upstream it looks like a long arcaded box laid across the river;
from downstream, where the water level is much lower, it is a high, elaborately facaded pavilion.
The top story contains more than thirty alcoves separated from each other by spandrels of blue and yellow tile.
At either end and in the center there are bays which contain nine greater alcoves as frescoed and capacious as church apses.
Here, in the old days--when they had come to see the moon or displays of fireworks--sat the king and his court while priests, soldiers, and other members of the party lounged in the smaller alcoves between.
Below, twenty vaults tunnel through the understructure of the bridge.
These are traversed by another line of vaults, and thus rooms, arched on all four sides, are formed.
Down through the axis of the bridge there is a long diminishing vista like a visual echo of piers and arches, while the vaults fronting upstream and down frame the sunset and sunrise, the mountains and river pools.
Here, on the hottest day, it is cool beneath the stone and fresh from the water flowing in the sluices at the bottom of the vaults.
On the downstream, or pavilion, side these vaults give out onto terraces twice as wide as the bridge itself.
From the terraces--eighteen in all--broad flights of steps descend into the water or onto still more terraces barely above the level of the river.
Out of water, brick, and tile they have made far more than just a bridge.
On spring and summer evenings people leave their shops and houses and walk up through the lanes of the city to the bridge.
It is a great spectacle.
The bridge itself rises up from the river, light-flared and enormous, like the outdoor set for an epic opera.
Crowds press along the terraces, down the steps, in and out of the arcades, massing against it as though it were a fortress under siege.
All kinds come to walk in the promenade: merchants from the bazaar bickering over a deal;
a Bakhtiari khan in a cap and hacking jacket;
dervishes who stand with the stillness of the blind, their eyes filmed with rheum and visions;
the old Kajar princes arriving in their ancient limousines;
students, civil servants, beggars, musicians, hawkers, and clowns.
Families go out to the edge of the terraces to sit on carpets around a samovar.
Below, people line the steps, as though on bleachers, to watch the sky and river.
Above, in the tiled prosceniums of the alcoves, boys sing the ghazals of Hafiz and Saadi, while at the very bottom, in the vaults, the toughs and blades of the city hoot and bang their drums, drink arak, play dice, and dance.
Here in an evening Persians enjoy many of the things which are important to them: poetry, water, the moon, a beautiful face.
To a stranger their delight in these things may seem paradoxical, for Persians chase the golden calf as much as any people.
Many of them, moreover, are beginning to complain about the scarcity of Western amusements and to ridicule the old life of the bazaar merchant, the mullah, and the peasant.
Nonetheless, they take time out--much time--from the game of grab and these new Western experiments to go to the gardens and riverbanks.
Above all, they will stop in the middle of anything, anywhere, to hear or quote some poetry.
Poetry in Persian life is far more than a common ground on which--in a society deeply fissured by antagonisms--all may stand.
It contains, in fact, their whole outlook on life.
And it is expressed, at least to their taste, in a perfect form.
Poetry for a Persian is nothing less than truth and beauty.
In most Western cultures today these twins have been sent away to the libraries and museums.
In Persia, where practically speaking there are no museums or libraries or, for that matter, hardly any books, the twins run free.
It is perhaps difficult to conceive, but imagine that tonight on London bridge the Teddy boys of the East End will gather to sing Marlowe, Herrick, Shakespeare, and perhaps some lyrics of their own.
That, at any rate, is what happens at the Khaju bridge.
Boys and men go along the riverbank or to the alcoves in the top arcade.
Here in these little rooms--or stages arched open to the sky and river--they choose a few lines out of the hundreds they may know and sing them according to one of the modes into which Persian music is divided.
Each mode is believed to have a specific attribute--one inducing pleasure, another generosity, another love, and so on, to include all of the emotions.
The singer simply matches the poem to a mode;
for example, the mode of bravery to this anonymous folk poem: They brought me news that Spring is in the plains And Ahmad's blood the crimson tulip stains;
Go, tell his aged mother that her son Fought with a thousand foes, and he was one.
Or the mode of love to this fragment by a recent poet: Know ye, fair folk who dwell on earth Or shall hereafter come to birth, That here, with dust upon his eyes, Iraj, the sweet-tongued singer, lies.
In this true lover's tomb interred A world of love lies sepulchred.
These songs (practically all Persian music, for that matter) are limited to a range of two octaves.
Yet within this limitation there is an astonishing variety: design as intricate as that in the carpet or miniature, with the melodic line like the painted or woven line often flowing into an arabesque.
Die Frist ist um, und wiederum verstrichen sind sieben Jahr, the Maestro quoted The Flying Dutchman, as he told of his career and wanderings, explaining that the number seven had significantly recurred in his life several times.
The music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, William Steinberg, has molded his group into a prominent musical organization, which is his life.
When he added to his Pittsburgh commitments the directorship of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1958, he conducted one hundred fifty concerts within nine months, commuting between the two cities.
This schedule became too strenuous, even for the energetic and conscientious Mr. Steinberg.
His London contract was rescinded, and now, he explains cheerfully, as a bright smile lightens his intense, mobile face, I conduct only one hundred and twenty concerts!
Our meeting took place in May, 1961, during one of the Maestro's stop-overs in New York, before he left for Europe.
As we began to converse in the lounge of his Fifth Avenue hotel, his restlessness and sensitivity to light and sound became immediately apparent.
Seeking an obscure, dark, relatively quiet corner in the airy room otherwise suffused with afternoon sunshine, he asked if the soft background music could be turned off.
Unfortunately, it was Muzak, which automatically is piped into the public rooms, and which nolens volens had to be endured.
As he talked about himself, time and again stuffing and dragging on his pipe, Steinberg began to relax and the initial hurried feeling grew faint and was dispelled.
Did he come from a musical family?
Yes: though not professional musicians, they were a music-loving family.
In his native Cologne, where his mother taught him to play the piano, he was able to read notes before he learned the alphabet.
She even devised a system of colors, whereby the boy could easily distinguish the different note values.
When he started school at the age of five-and-a-half, he could not understand why the alphabet begins with the letter A, instead of C, as in the scale.
Because, like many other children, he intensely disliked practicing Czerny Etudes, he composed his own studies.
When he was eight he began violin lessons.
Soon he was playing in the Cologne Municipal Orchestra, and during World War 1, when musicians were scarce, he joined the opera orchestra as well.
Steinberg claims that these early years of orchestra participation were of invaluable help to his career.
By observing the conductor, he says with a twinkle in his eyes, I learned how not to conduct.
The musician ran away from school when he was fifteen, but this escapade did not save him from the Gymnasium.
Simultaneously, he pursued his musical studies at the conservatory, receiving sound training in counterpoint and harmony, as well in the violin and piano.
His professional career began when he was twenty;
he became Otto Klemperer's personal assistant at the Cologne Opera, and a year later was promoted to the position of regular conductor.
Wasn't this an unusually young age to fill such a responsible post?
Yes, the Maestro assented.
Had he always wished to be a conductor?
No, originally he had hoped to become a concert pianist and had even performed as such.
However, when he assumed the duties of a conductor, he relinquished his career as a pianist.
Five years were spent with the Cologne Opera, after which he was called to Prague by Alexander von Zemlinsky, teacher of Arnold Schonberg and Erich Korngold.
In 1927 he succeeded Zemlinsky as opera director of the German Theater at Prague.
During his tenure he also fulfilled guest engagements at the Berlin State Opera.
Two years later he became director of the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained until he lost this position in 1933 through the rise of the Hitler regime.
During these years the youthful conductor had contributed greatly to the high level of musical life in Germany.
He had presented the first German performances of Puccini's Manon Lescaut and De Falla's La Vida Breve.
The Frankfurt years were particularly noteworthy for his performance of Berg's Wozzek soon after the Berlin premiere under Erich Kleiber, and the world premiere of Schonberg's Von heute auf morgen.
At the outset of his career, Steinberg had dedicated himself to the advancement of contemporary music by vowing to do a Schonberg work every year.
In Frankfurt, too, he directed the Museum and Opera House concerts which, in addition to the standard repertoire, featured novelties like Erdmann's Piano Concerto and Mahler's Sixth Symphony.
Because of the political upheaval in Germany in the 1930's, Steinberg was forced to restrict his activities to the Jewish community.
Through the Frankfurt Jewish Kulturbund he began to give sonata recitals in synagogues, with Cellist Emanuel Feuermann.
As more and more Jewish musicians lost their jobs with professional organizations Steinberg united them into the Frankfurt Kulturbund Orchestra, which also gave guest performances in other German cities.
In 1936 he accepted the leadership of the Berlin Kulturbund.
In 1938, at the insistence of Arturo Toscanini, Steinberg left Germany for the United States, by way of Switzerland.
After he had spent the first three years in New York as associate conductor, at Toscanini's invitation, of the NBC Orchestra, he made numerous guest appearances throughout the United States and Latin America.
In 1945 he became conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Seven years later he was asked to become director of the Pittsburgh Symphony.
Since 1944 he has also conducted regularly at the San Francisco Opera, where he made his debut with a memorable performance of Verdi's Falstaff.
In recent years he has traveled widely in Europe, conducting in Italy, France, Austria, and Switzerland.
He returned to Germany for the first time in 1953, where he has since conducted in Cologne, Frankfurt, and Berlin.
Where in Europe was he going now?
First of all, to Italy for a short vacation--Forte Dei Marmi, a place he loves.
Since it is not far from Viareggio, he will visit Puccini's house, as he never fails to do, to pay his respects to the memory of the composer of La Boheme, which he considers one of Puccini's masterpieces.
Steinberg spoke with warmth and enthusiasm about Italy: Rome is my second home.
I consider it the center of the world and make it a point to be there once a year.
He will conduct two concerts at the Accademia Di Santa Cecilia, as well as concerts in Munich and Cologne.
Then I return to the United States for engagements at the Hollywood Bowl and in Philadelphia, he added.
The forthcoming season in Pittsburgh also promises to be of unusual interest.
There will be premieres of new works, made possible through Ford Foundation commissions: Carlisle Floyd's Mystery, with Phyllis Curtin as soprano soloist.
Other world premieres will be Gardner Read's Third Symphony and Burle Marx's Samba Concertante.
And next year we will do--also a Ford commission--a piano concerto by Elliott Carter, with Jacob Lateiner as soloist.
Of course, I shall conduct Mahler and Bruckner works in the coming season, as usual.
We'll play Bruckner's Fifth Symphony in the original version, and Mahler's Seventh--the least accessible, known, and played of Mahler's works.
My Pittsburghers have become real addicts to Mahler and Bruckner.
He added that he also stresses the works of these favorite masters on tour, especially Mahler's First and Fourth symphonies, and Das Lied Von der Erde, and Bruckner's Sixth--which is rarely played--and Seventh.
Bruckner's Eighth he refers to as my travel symphony.
He recalled that in California after a critic had attacked him for still trying to sell Bruckner to the Americans, the public's response at the next concert was a standing ovation.
Now that Bruno Walter is virtually in retirement and my dear friend Dimitri Mitropoulos is no longer with us, I am probably the only one--with the possible exception of Leonard Bernstein--who has this special affinity for and champions the works of Bruckner and Mahler.
Since he introduces so much modern music, I could not resist asking how he felt about it.
There was always and at all times a contemporary music and it expresses the era in which it was created.
But I usually stick to the old phrase:'Ich habe ein Amt, aber keine Meinung (I hold an office, but I do not feel entitled to have an opinion).
I consider it to be my job to expose the public to what is being written today.
With all his musical activities, did he have the time and inclination to do anything else?
He had just paid a brief visit to the Frick Collection to admire his favorite paintings by Rembrandt and Franz Hals.
He was not enthusiastic over the newly acquired Claude Lorrain, but reminisced with pleasure over a Poussin exhibit he had been able to see in Paris a year ago.
And how did he feel about modern art?
Again Steinberg was cautious and replied with a smile that he was not exposed to it enough to hazard comments.
As my wife puts it, he said, again with a twinkle in his eyes, all you know is your music.
But after all, you never learned anything else!
What did he do for relaxation?
Like his late colleague, Mitropoulos, he reads mystery stories, in particular Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
He cited Heine and Stendhal as favorites in literature.
But his prime interest, apart from music, he insisted seriously, was his family--his wife, daughter and son.
At the moment he was excited about his son's having received the Prix De Rome in archaeology and was looking forward to being present this summer at the excavation of an Etruscan tomb.
Both children are musical and my wife is a music lover of unfailing instinct and judgement.
Is the attitude of German youth comparable to that of the angry young men'of England?
Was the topic for a round-table discussion at the Bayerische Rundfunk in Munich.
I was chairman, the only not youthful participant.
I was far from convinced of the truth of my statement, but could not think of anything that might evoke responses more quickly.
It is easy for you to talk;
countered a twenty year old law student, you travel around the world.
We would like to do that too.
But you want a job guaranteed when you return, I continued my attack.
You must have some security, said a young clerk.
When I mentioned that for my first long voyage I did not even have the money for the return fare, but had trusted to luck that I would earn a sufficient amount, the young people looked at me doubtingly.
One girl expressed what was obviously in their minds.
Would you advise us to act the same way?
You might have failed.
I think it is rather foolhardy to trust to luck.
Others mentioned that I might have had to ask friends or even strangers for help and that to be stranded in a foreign country without sufficient funds did not contribute to international understanding.
The debate needed no additional controversy and soon I could ask each individually what he expected from life, what his hopes were and what his fears.
Though the four boys and two girls, the youngest nineteen years of age, the oldest twenty-four, came from varying backgrounds and had different professional and personal interests, there was surprising agreement among them.
What they wished for most was security;
what they feared most was war or political instability in their own country.
The ideal home, they agreed, would be a small private house or a city apartment of four to five rooms, just enough for a family consisting of husband, wife, and two children.
No one wanted a larger family or no children, and none hoped for a castle or said that living in less settled circumstances would be satisfactory.
All expressed interest in world affairs but no one offered to make any sacrifices to satisfy this interest.
Once again, as in the days of the Founding Fathers, America faces a stern test.
That test, as President Kennedy forthrightly depicted it in his State of the Union message, will determine whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure.
It is well then that in this hour both of national peril and of national opportunity we can take counsel with the men who made the nation.
Incapable of self-delusion, the Founding Fathers found the crisis of their time to be equally grave, and yet they had confidence that America would surmount it and that a republic of free peoples would prosper and serve as an example to a world aching for liberty.
Seven Founders--George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay--determined the destinies of the new nation.
In certain respects, their task was incomparably greater than ours today, for there was nobody before them to show them the way.
As Madison commented to Jefferson in 1789, We are in a wilderness without a single footstep to guide us.
Our successors will have an easier task.
They thought of themselves, to use Jefferson's words, as the Argonauts who had lived in the Heroic Age.
Accordingly, they took special pains to preserve their papers as essential sources for posterity.
Strong men with strong opinions, frank to the point of being refreshingly indiscreet, the Founding Seven were essentially congenial minds, and their agreements with each other were more consequential than their differences.
Before merging them into a common profile it is well to remember that their separate careers were extraordinary.
Certainly no other seven American statesmen from any later period achieved so much in so concentrated a span of years.
Eldest of the seven, Benjamin Franklin, a New Englander transplanted to Philadelphia, wrote the most dazzling success story in our history.
The young printer's apprentice achieved greatness in a half-dozen different fields, as editor and publisher, scientist, inventor, philanthropist and statesman.
On a military mission for his native Virginia the youthful George Washington touched off the French and Indian War, then guarded his colony's frontier as head of its militia.
Commanding the Continental Army for six long years of the Revolution, he was the indispensable factor in the ultimate victory.
Retiring to his beloved Mount Vernon, he returned to preside over the Federal Convention, and was the only man in history to be unanimously elected President.
During his two terms the Constitution was tested and found workable, strong national policies were inaugurated, and the traditions and powers of the Presidential office firmly fixed.
John Adams fashioned much of pre-Revolutionary radical ideology, wrote the constitution of his home state of Massachusetts, negotiated, with Franklin and Jay, the peace with Britain and served as our first Vice President and our second President.
During the greater part of Jefferson's career he enjoyed the close collaboration of a fellow Virginian, James Madison, eight years his junior.
If Franklin was an authentic genius, then Alexander Hamilton, with his exceptional precocity, consuming energy, and high ambition, was a political prodigy.
His revolutionary pamphlets, published when he was only 19, quickly brought him to the attention of the patriot leaders.
Principal author of The Federalist, he swung New York over from opposition to the Constitution to ratification almost single-handedly.
His collaboration with Washington, begun when he was the general's aide during the Revolution, was resumed when he entered the first Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.
His bold fiscal program and his broad interpretation of the Constitution stand as durable contributions.
Less dazzling than Hamilton, less eloquent than Jefferson, John Jay commands an equally high rank among the Founding Fathers.
He served as president of the Continental Congress.
He played the leading role in negotiating the treaty with Great Britain that ended the Revolution, and directed America's foreign affairs throughout the Confederation period.
As first Chief Justice, his strong nationalist opinions anticipated John Marshall.
He ended his public career as a two-term governor of New York.
These Seven Founders constituted an intellectual and social elite, the most respectable and disinterested leadership any revolution ever confessed.
Their social status was achieved in some cases by birth, as with Washington, Jefferson and Jay;
in others by business and professional acumen, as with Franklin and Adams, or, in Hamilton's case, by an influential marriage.
Unlike so many of the power-starved intellectuals in underdeveloped nations of our own day, they commanded both prestige and influence before the Revolution started.
As different physically as the tall, angular Jefferson was from the chubby, rotund Adams, the seven were striking individualists.
Ardent, opinionated, even obstinate, they were amazingly articulate, wrote their own copy, and were masters of phrasemaking.
Capable of enduring friendships, they were also stout controversialists, who could write with a drop of vitriol on their pens.
John Adams dismissed John Dickinson, who voted against the Declaration of Independence, as a certain great fortune and piddling genius.
Washington castigated his critic, General Conway, as being capable of all the meanness of intrigue to gratify the absurd resentment of disappointed vanity.
And Hamilton, who felt it a religious duty to oppose Aaron Burr's political ambitions, would have been a better actuarial risk had he shown more literary restraint.
The Seven Founders were completely dedicated to the public service.
Madison once remarked: My life has been so much a public one, a comment which fits the careers of the other six.
Franklin retired from editing and publishing at the age of 42, and for the next forty-two years devoted himself to public, scientific, and philanthropic interests.
Washington never had a chance to work for an extended stretch at the occupation he loved best, plantation management.
He served as Commander in Chief during the Revolution without compensation.
John Adams took to heart the advice given him by his legal mentor, Jeremiah Gridley, to pursue the study of the law, rather than the gain of it.
In taking account of seventeen years of law practice, Adams concluded that no lawyer in America ever did so much business as I did and for so little profit.
When the Revolution broke out, he, along with Jefferson and Jay, abandoned his career at the bar, with considerable financial sacrifice.
Hamilton, poorest of the seven, gave up a brilliant law practice to enter Washington's Cabinet.
While he was handling the multi-million-dollar funding operations of the Government he had to resort to borrowing small sums from friends.
If you can conveniently let me have twenty dollars, he wrote one friend in 1791 when he was Secretary of the Treasury.
To support his large family Hamilton went back to the law after each spell of public service.
Talleyrand passed his New York law office one night on the way to a party.
Hamilton was bent over his desk, drafting a legal paper by the light of a candle.
The Frenchman was astonished.
I have just come from viewing a man who had made the fortune of his country, but now is working all night in order to support his family, he reflected.
All seven combined ardent devotion to the cause of revolution with a profound respect for legality.
They fought hard, but they were forgiving to former foes, and sought to prevent vindictive legislatures from confiscating Tory property in violation of the Treaty of 1783.
This sense of moderation and fairness is superbly exemplified in an exchange of letters between John Jay and a Tory refugee, Peter Van Schaack.
Jay had participated in the decision that exiled his old friend Van Schaack.
Yet when, at war's end, the ex-Tory made the first move to resume correspondence, Jay wrote him from Paris, where he was negotiating the peace settlement:
As an independent American I considered all who were not for us, and you amongst the rest, as against us, yet be assured that John Jay never ceased to be the friend of Peter Van Schaack.
The latter in turn assured him that were I arraigned at the bar, and you my judge, I should expect to stand or fall only by the merits of my cause.
All seven recognized that independence was but the first step toward building a nation.
We have now a national character to establish, Washington wrote in 1783.
Think continentally, Hamilton counseled the young nation.
This new force, love of country, super-imposed upon--if not displacing--affectionate ties to one's own state, was epitomized by Washington.
His first inaugural address speaks of my country whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love.
All sought the fruition of that nationalism in a Federal Government with substantial powers.
Save Jefferson, all participated in the framing or ratification of the Federal Constitution.
They supported it, not as a perfect instrument, but as the best obtainable.
Historians have traditionally regarded the great debates of the Seventeen Nineties as polarizing the issues of centralized vs. limited government, with Hamilton and the nationalists supporting the former and Jefferson and Madison upholding the latter position.
The state's rights position was formulated by Jefferson and Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves, but in their later careers as heads of state the two proved themselves better Hamiltonians than Jeffersonians.
In purchasing Louisiana, Jefferson had to adopt Hamilton's broad construction of the Constitution, and so did Madison in advocating the rechartering of Hamilton's bank, which he had so strenuously opposed at its inception, and in adopting a Hamiltonian protective tariff.
Indeed, the old Jeffersonians were far more atune to the Hamilton-oriented Whigs than they were to the Jacksonian Democrats.
When, in 1832, the South Carolina nullifiers adopted the principle of state interposition which Madison had advanced in his old Virginia Resolve, they elicited no encouragement from that senior statesman.
In his political testament, Advice To My Country, penned just before his death, Madison expressed the wish that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.
Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened;
and the disguised one, as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise.
Tobacco Road is dead.
Long live Tobacco Road.
Nostalgic Yankee readers of Erskine Caldwell are today informed by proud Georgians that Tobacco Road is buried beneath a four-lane super highway, over which travel each day suburbanite businessmen more concerned with the Dow-Jones average than with the cotton crop.
Thus we are compelled to face the urbanization of the South--an urbanization which, despite its dramatic and overwhelming effects upon the Southern culture, has been utterly ignored by the bulk of Southern writers.
Indeed, it seems that only in today's Southern fiction does Tobacco Road, with all the traditional trimmings of sowbelly and cornbread and mint juleps, continue to live--but only as a weary, overexploited phantom.
Those writers known collectively as the Southern school have received accolades from even those critics least prone to eulogize;
according to many critics, in fact, the South has led the North in literature since the Civil War, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Such writers as William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren have led the field of somewhat less important writers in a sort of post-bellum renaissance.
of the stereotyped Negro servants chanting hymns as they plow the fields;
of these and a host of other antiquated legends that deny the South its progressive leaps of the past century.
This is not to say that the South is no longer agrarian;
such a statement would be the rankest form of oversimplification.
But the South is, and has been for the past century, engaged in a wide-sweeping urbanization which, oddly enough, is not reflected in its literature.
In 1900 the South was only 15% urban;
in 1950 it had become 47.1% urban.
In a mere half-century the South has more than tripled its urban status.
There is a New South emerging, a South losing the folksy traditions of an agrarian society with the rapidity of an avalanche--especially within recent decades.
As the New South snowballs toward further urbanization, it becomes more and more homogeneous with the North--a tendency which Willard Thorp terms Yankeefication, as evidenced in such cities as Charlotte, Birmingham, and Houston.
It is said that, even at the present stage of Southern urbanization, such a city as Atlanta is not distinctly unlike Columbus or Trenton.
Undoubtedly even the old Southern stalwart Richmond has felt the new wind: William Styron mentions in his latest novel an avenue named for Bankhead McGruder, a Civil War general, now renamed, in typical California fashion, Buena Vista Terrace.
The effects of television and other mass media are erasing regional dialects and localisms with a startling force.
As for progress, the backward South can boast of Baton Rouge, which increased its population between 1940 and 1950 by two hundred and sixty-two percent, to 126,000, the second largest growth of the period for all cities over 25,000.
The field, then, is ripe for new Southerners to step to the fore and write of this twentieth-century phenomenon, the Southern Yankeefication: the new urban economy, the city-dweller, the pains of transition, the labor problems;
the list is, obviously, endless.
But these sources have not been tapped.
Truman Capote is still reveling in Southern Gothicism, exaggerating the old Southern legends into something beautiful and grotesque, but as unreal as--or even more unreal than--yesterday.
William Styron, while facing the changing economy with a certain uneasy reluctance, insists he is not to be classified as a Southern writer and yet includes traditional Southern concepts in everything he publishes.
Even the great god Faulkner, the South's one probable contender for literary immortality, has little concerned himself with these matters;
such are simply not within his bounded province.
Where are the writers to treat these changes?
Has the agrarian tradition become such an addiction that the switch to urbanism is somehow dreaded or unwanted?
Perhaps present writers hypnotically cling to the older order because they consider it useful and reliable through repeated testings over the decades.
Lacking the pioneer spirit necessary to write of a new economy, these writers seem to be contenting themselves with an old one that is now as defunct as Confederate money.
An example of the changes which have crept over the Southern region may be seen in the Southern Negro's quest for a position in the white-dominated society, a problem that has been reflected in regional fiction especially since 1865.
Today the Negro must discover his role in an industrialized South, which indicates that the racial aspect of the Southern dilemma hasn't changed radically, but rather has gradually come to be reflected in this new context, this new coat of paint.
The Negro faces as much, if not more, difficulty in fitting himself into an urban economy as he did in an agrarian one.
This represents a gradual change in an ever-present social problem.
But there have been abrupt changes as well: the sit-ins, the picket lines, the bus strikes--all of these were unheard-of even ten years ago.
Today's evidence, such as the fact that only three Southern states (South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi) still openly defy integration, would have astounded many of yesterday's Southerners into speechlessness.
Other examples of gradual changes that have affected the Negro have been his moving up, row by row, in the buses;
his requesting, and often getting, higher wages, better working conditions, better schools--changes that were slowly emerging even before the Supreme Court decision of 1954.
Then came this decision, which sped the process of gaining equality (or perhaps hindered it;
only historical evolution will determine which): an abrupt change.
Since 1954 the Negro's desire for social justice has led to an ironically anarchical rebellion.
He has frequently refused to move from white lunch counters, refused to obey local laws which he considers unjust, while in other cases he has appealed to federal laws.
This bold self-assertion, after decades of humble subservience, is indeed a twentieth-century phenomenon, an abrupt change in the Southern way of existence.
A new order is thrusting itself into being.
A new South is emerging after the post-bellum years of hesitation, uncertainty, and lack of action from the Negro in defining his new role in the amorphously defined socio-political organizations of the white man.
The modern Negro has not made a decisive debut into Southern fiction.
While there may still be many Faulknerian Lucas Beauchamps scattered through the rural South, such men appear to be a vanishing breed.
Writers openly admit that the Negro is easier to write than the white man;
but they obviously mean by this, not a Negro personality, but a Negro type.
Presenting an individualized Negro character, it would seem, is one of the most difficult assignments a Southern writer could tackle;
and the success of such an endeavor is, as suggested above, glaringly rare.
Just as the Negro situation points up the gradual and abrupt changes affecting Southern life, it also points up the non-representation of urbanism in Southern literature.
The book concerned with the Negro's role in an urban society is rare indeed;
recently only Keith Wheeler's novel, Peaceable Lane, has openly faced the problem.
All but the most rabid of Confederate flag wavers admit that the Old Southern tradition is defunct in actuality and sigh that its passing was accompanied by the disappearance of many genteel and aristocratic traditions of the reputedly languid ante-bellum way of life.
Many earlier writers, mourning the demise of the old order, tended to romanticize and exaggerate this gracious Old South imagery, creating such lasting impressions as Margaret Mitchell's Tara Plantation.
Modern writers, who are supposed to keep their fingers firmly upon the pulse of their subjects, insist upon drawing out this legend, prolonging its burial, when it well deserves a rest after the overexploitation of the past century.
Perhaps these writers have been too deeply moved by this romanticizing;
but they can hardly deny that, exaggerated or not, the old panorama is dead.
Westbrook further bemoans the Southern writers' creation of an unreal image of their homeland, which is too readily assimilated by both foreign readers and visiting Yankees: Our northerner is suspicious of all this crass evidence (of urbanization) presented to his senses.
It bewilders and befuddles him.
He is too deeply steeped in William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren.
The fumes of progress are in his nose and the bright steel of industry towers before his eyes, but his heart is away in Yoknapatawpha County with razorback hogs and night riders.
On this trip to the South he wants, above all else, to sniff the effluvium of backwoods-and-sand-hill subhumanity and to see at least one barn burn at midnight.
Obviously, such a Northern tourist's purpose is somewhat akin to a child's experience with Disneyland: he wants to see a world of make-believe.
In the meantime, while the South has been undergoing this phenomenal modernization that is so disappointing to the curious Yankee, Southern writers have certainly done little to reflect and promote their region's progress.
Willard Thorp, in his new book, American Writing In The Twentieth Century, observes, quite validly it seems: Certain subjects are conspicuously absent or have been only lightly touched.
No Southern novelist has done for Atlanta or Birmingham what Herrick, Dreiser, and Farrell did for Chicago or Dos Passos did for New York.
There are almost no fictional treatments of the industrialized south.
Not a single Southern author, major or minor, has made the urban problems of an urban South his primary source material.
Faulkner, for one, appears to be safe from the accusing fingers of all assailants in this regard.
Faulkner culminates the Southern legend perhaps more masterfully than it has ever been, or could ever be, done.
He has made it his, and his it remains, irrevocably.
He treats it with a mythological, universal application.
As his disciples boast, even though his emphasis is elsewhere, Faulkner does show his awareness of the changing order of the South quite keenly, as can be proven by a quick recalling of his Sartoris and Snopes families.
Even two decades ago in Go Down, Moses Faulkner was looking to the more urban future with a glimmer of hope that through its youth and its new way of life the South might be reborn and the curse of slavery erased from its soil.
Yet his concern even here is with a slowly changing socio-economic order in general, and he never deals with such specific aspects of this change as the urban and industrial impact.
Faulkner traces, in his vast and overpowering saga of Yoknapatawpha County, the gradual changes which seep into the South, building layer upon layer of minute, subtle innovation which eventually tend largely to hide the Old Way.
Thus Faulkner reminds us, and wisely, that the new South has gradually evolved out of the Old South, and consequently its agrarian roots persist.
Yet he presents a realm of source material which may well serve other writers if not himself: the problems with which a New South must grapple in groping through a blind adolescence into the maturity of urbanization.
With new mechanization the modern farmer must perform the work of six men: a machine stands between the agrarian and his soil.
The thousands of city migrants who desert the farms yearly must readjust with even greater stress and tension: the sacred wilderness is gradually surrendering to suburbs and research parks and industrial areas.
Another element to concern the choreographer is that of the visual devices of the theatre.
Most avant-garde creators, true to their interest in the self-sufficiency of pure movement, have tended to dress their dancers in simple lines and solid colors (often black) and to give them a bare cyclorama for a setting.
But Robert Rauschenberg, the neo-dadaist artist, has collaborated with several of them.
He has designed a matching backdrop and costumes of points of color on white for Mr. Cunningham's Summerspace, so that dancers and background merge into a shimmering unity.
For Mr. Taylor's Images And Reflections she made some diaphanous tents that alternately hide and reveal the performer, and a girl's cape lined with grass.
Mr. Nikolais has made a distinctive contribution to the arts of costume and decor.
In fact, he calls his productions dance-theatre works of motion, shape, light, and sound.
To raise the dancer out of his personal, pedestrian self, Mr. Nikolais has experimented with relating him to a larger, environmental orbit.
He began with masks to make the dancer identify himself with the creature he appeared to be.
He went on to use objects--hoops, poles, capes--which he employed as extensions of the body of the dancer, who moved with them.
The depersonalization continued as the dancer was further metamorphosed by the play of lights upon his figure.
In each case, the object, the color, even the percussive sounds of the electronic score were designed to become part of the theatrical being of the performer.
The dancer who never loosens her hold on a parasol, begins to feel that it is part of herself.
Or, clad from head to toe in fabric stretched over a series of hoops, the performer may well lose his sense of self in being a finial.
As the dancer is depersonalized, his accouterments are animized, and the combined elements give birth to a new being.
From this being come new movement ideas that utilize dancer and property as a single unit.
Thus, the avant-garde choreographers have extended the scope of materials available for dance composition.
But, since they have rejected both narrative and emotional continuity, how are they to unify the impressive array of materials at their disposal?
Some look deliberately to devices used by creators in the other arts and apply corresponding methods to their own work.
Others, less consciously but quite probably influenced by the trends of the times, experiment with approaches that parallel those of the contemporary poet, painter, and musician.
An approach that has appealed to some choreographers is reminiscent of Charles Olson's statement of the process of projective verse: one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception.
The creator trusts his intuition to lead him along a path that has internal validity because it mirrors the reality of his experience.
He disdains external restrictions--conventional syntax, traditional metre.
The unit of form is determined subjectively: the Heart, by the way of the Breath, to the Line.
The test of form is fidelity to the experience, a gauge also accepted by the abstract expressionist painters.
An earlier but still influential school of painting, surrealism, had suggested the way of dealing with the dream experience, that event in which seemingly incongruous objects are linked together through the curious associations of the subconscious.
The resulting picture might appear a maze of restless confusions and contradictions, but it is more true to life than a portrait of an artificially contrived order.
The contemporary painter tends to depict not the concrete objects of his experience but their essences as revealed in abstractions of their lines, colors, masses, and energies.
He is still concerned, however, with a personal event.
He accepts the accidents of his brushwork because they provide evidence of the vitality of the experience of creation.
The work must be true to both the physical and the spiritual character of the experience.
Some painters have less interest in the experience of the moment, with its attendant urgencies and ambiguities, than in looking beyond the flux of particular impressions to a higher, more serene level of truth.
Rather than putting their trust in ephemeral sensations they seek form in the stable relationships of pure design, which symbolize an order more real than the disorder of the perceptual world.
The concept remains subjective.
But in this approach it is the artist's ultimate insight, rather than his immediate impressions, that gives form to the work.
Others look to more objective devices of order.
The musician employing the serial technique of composition establishes a mathematical system of rotations that, once set in motion, determines the sequence of pitches and even of rhythms and intensities.
The composer may reverse or invert the order of his original set of intervals (or rhythms or dynamic changes).
He may even alter the pattern by applying a scheme of random numbers.
But he cannot order his elements by will, either rational or inspired.
The system works as an impersonal mechanism.
Musicians who use the chance method also exclude subjective control of formal development.
Again, the composer must select his own materials.
But a tossing of coins, with perhaps the added safeguard of reference to the oracles of the I Ching, the Chinese Book Of Changes, dictates the handling of the chosen materials.
Avant-garde choreographers, seeking new forms of continuity for their new vocabulary of movements, have turned to similar approaches.
Some let dances take their form from the experience of creation.
According to Katherine Litz, the becoming, the process of realization, is the dance.
The process stipulates that the choreographer sense the quality of the initial movement he has discovered and that he feel the rightness of the quality that is to follow it.
The sequence may involve a sharp contrast: for example, a quiet meditative sway of the body succeeded by a violent leap;
or it may involve more subtle distinctions: the sway may be gradually minimized or enlarged, its rhythmic emphasis may be slightly modified, or it may be transferred to become a movement of only the arms or the head.
Even the least alteration will change the quality.
An exploration of these possible relationships constitutes the process of creation and thereby gives form to the dance.
The approach to the depiction of the experience of creation may be analytic, as it is for Miss Litz, or spontaneous, as it is for Merle Marsicano.
She, too, is concerned with the becoming, the process of realization, but she does not think in terms of subtle variations of spatial or temporal patterns.
The design is determined emotionally: I must reach into myself for the spring that will send me catapulting recklessly into the chaos of event with which the dance confronts me.
Looking back, Miss Marsicano feels that her ideas may have been influenced by those of Jackson Pollock.
At one time she felt impelled to make dances that moved all over the stage, much as Pollock's paintings move violently over the full extent of the canvas.
But her conscious need was to break away from constricting patterns of form, a need to let the experience shape itself.
Midi Garth also believes in subjective continuity that begins with the feeling engendered by an initial movement.
It may be a free front-back swing of the leg, leading to a sideways swing of the arm that develops into a turn and the sensation of taking off from the ground.
This became a dance called Prelude To Flight.
A pervading quality of free lyricism and a building from turns close to the ground towards jumps into the air gives the work its central focus.
Alwin Nikolais objects to art as an outpouring of personal emotion.
He seeks to make his dancers more godlike by relating them to the impersonal elements of shape, light, color, and sound.
If his dancers are sometimes made to look as if they might be creatures from Mars, this is consistent with his intention of placing them in the orbit of another world, a world in which they are freed of their pedestrian identities.
It is through the metamorphosed dancer that the germ of form is discovered.
In his recognition of his impersonal self the dancer moves, and this self, in the first revealed stroke of its existence, states the theme from which all else must follow.
The theme may be the formation of a shape from which other shapes evolve.
It may be a reaction to a percussive sound, the following movements constituting further reactions.
It may establish the relation of the figure of the dancer to light and color, in which case changes in the light or color will set off a kaleidescope of visual designs.
Unconcerned with the practical function of his actions, the dancer is engrossed exclusively in their motional content.
Movements unfold freely because they are uninhibited by emotional bias or purposive drive.
But the metamorphosis must come first.
Though he is also concerned with freeing dance from pedestrian modes of activity, Merce Cunningham has selected a very different method for achieving his aim.
He rejects all subjectively motivated continuity, any line of action related to the concept of cause and effect.
He bases his approach on the belief that anything can follow anything.
An order can be chanced rather than chosen, and this approach produces an experience that is free and discovered rather than bound and remembered.
Thus, there is freshness not only in the individual movements of the dance but in the shape of their continuity as well.
Chance, he finds, enables him to create a world beyond imagination.
He cites with pleasure the comment of a lady, who exclaimed after a concert: Why, it's extremely interesting.
But I would never have thought of it myself.
The sequence of movements in a Cunningham dance is unlike any sequence to be seen in life.
At one side of the stage a dancer jumps excitedly;
nearby, another sits motionless, while still another is twirling an umbrella.
A man and a girl happen to meet;
they look straight at the audience, not at each other.
He lifts her, puts her down, and walks off, neither pleased nor disturbed, as if nothing had happened.
If one dancer slaps another, the victim may do a pirouette, sit down, or offer his assailant a fork and spoon.
Events occur without apparent reason.
Their consequences are irrelevant--or there are no consequences at all.
The sequence is determined by chance, and Mr. Cunningham makes use of any one of several chance devices.
He may toss coins;
he may take slips of paper from a grab bag.
The answers derived by these means may determine not only the temporal organization of the dance but also its spatial design, special slips designating the location on the stage where the movement is to be performed.
The other variables include the dancer who is to perform the movement and the length of time he is to take in its performance.
The only factors that are personally set by the choreographer are the movements themselves, the number of the dancers, and the approximate total duration of the dance.
The approximate is important, because even after the order of the work has been established by the chance method, the result is not inviolable.
Each performance may be different.
If a work is divided into several large segments, a last-minute drawing of random numbers may determine the order of the segments for any particular performance.
And any sequence can not only change its positions in the work but can even be eliminated from it altogether.
Mr. Cunningham tries not to cheat the chance method;
he adheres to its dictates as faithfully as he can.
However, there is always the possibility that chance will make demands the dancers find impossible to execute.
Then the choreographer must arbitrate.
He must rearrange matters so that two performers do not bump into each other.
He must construct transitions so that a dancer who is told to lie prone one second and to leap wildly the next will have some physical preparation for the leap.
The North and the South were in greater agreement on sovereignty, through all their dispute about it, than were the Founding Fathers.
The truth in their conflicting concepts was expounded by statesmen of the calibre of Webster and Calhoun, and defended in the end by leaders of the nobility of Lincoln and Lee.
The people everywhere had grown meanwhile in devotion to basic democratic principles, in understanding of and belief in the federal balance, and in love of their Union.
Repeated efforts--beginning with the Missouri Compromise of 1821--were made by such master moderates as Clay and Douglas to resolve the difference peacefully by compromise, rather than clear thought and timely action.
Even so, confusion in this period gained such strength (from compromise and other factors) that it led to the bloodiest war of the Nineteenth century.
Nothing can show more than this the immensity of the danger to democratic peoples that lies in even relatively slight deviation from their true concept of sovereignty.
The present issue in Atlantica--whether to transform an alliance of sovereign nations into a federal union of sovereign citizens--resembles the American one of 1787-89 rather than the one that was resolved by Civil War.
And so I would only touch upon it now (much as I have long wanted to write a book about it).
I think it is essential, however, to pinpoint here the difference between the two concepts of sovereignty that went to war in 1861--if only to see better how imperative is our need today to clarify completely our far worse confusion on this subject.
The difference came down to this: The Southern States insisted that the United States was, in last analysis, what its name implied--a Union of States.
To their leaders the Constitution was a compact made by the people of sovereign states, who therefore retained the right to secede from it.
This right of the State, its upholders contended, was essential to maintain the federal balance and protect the liberty of the people from the danger of centralizing power in the Union government.
The champions of the Union maintained that the Constitution had formed, fundamentally, the united people of America, that it was a compact among sovereign citizens rather than states, and that therefore the states had no right to secede, though the citizens could.
Writing to Speed on August 24, 1855, Lincoln made the latter point clear.
In homely terms whose timeliness is startling today, he thus declared his own right to secede.
We began by declaring that all men are created equal.
We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes.
When the Know-nothings get control, it will read, All men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.
When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy (His emphasis)
When the Southern States exercised their right to secede, they formed what they officially styled The Confederate States of America.
Dictionaries, as we have seen, still cite this government, along with the Articles of Confederation of 1781, as an example of a confederacy.
The fact is that the Southern Confederacy differed from the earlier one almost as much as the Federal Constitution did.
The Confederate Constitution copied much of the Federal Constitution verbatim, and most of the rest in substance.
It operated on, by and for the people individually just as did the Federal Constitution.
It made substantially the same division of power between the central and state governments, and among the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
The difference between confederacy and federal union in 1861
Many believe--and understandably--that the great difference between the Constitution of the Southern Confederacy and the Federal Constitution was that the former recognized the right of each state to secede.
But though each of its members had asserted this right against the Union, the final Constitution which the Confederacy signed on March 11--nearly a month before hostilities began--included no explicit provision authorizing a state to secede.
Its drafters discussed this vital point but left it out of their Constitution.
Their President, Jefferson Davis, interpreted their Constitution to mean that it admits of no coerced association, but this remained so doubtful that there were frequent demands that the right to secede be put into the Constitution.
The other important difference between the two Constitutions was that the President of the Confederacy held office for six (instead of four) years, and was limited to one term.
These are not, however, differences in federal structure.
The only important differences from that standpoint, between the two Constitutions, lies in their Preambles.
The one of 1861 made clear that in making their government the people were acting through their states, whereas the Preamble of 1787-89 expressed, as clearly as language can, the opposite concept, that they were acting directly as citizens.
Here are the two Preambles: Federal Constitution, 1789
Confederate Constitution, 1861
One is tempted to say that, on the difference between the concepts of sovereignty in these two preambles, the worst war of the Nineteenth century was fought.
Lincoln saw that the act of secession made the issue for the Union a vital one: Whether it was a Union of sovereign citizens that should continue to live, or an association of sovereign states that must fall prey either to anarchy or despotism.
Much as he abhorred slavery, Lincoln was always willing to concede to each slave state the right to decide independently whether to continue or end it.
Though his election was interpreted by many Southerners as the forerunner of a dangerous shift in the federal balance in favor of the Union, Lincoln himself proposed no such change in the rights the Constitution gave the states.
After the war began, he long refused to permit emancipation of the slaves by Union action even in the Border States that stayed with the Union.
He issued his Emancipation Proclamation only when he felt that necessity left him no other way to save the Union.
In his Message of December 2, 1862, he put his purpose and his policy in these words--which I would call the Lincoln Law of Liberty-and-Union: In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.
What Lincoln could not concede was that the states rather than the people were sovereign in the Union.
He fought to the end to preserve it as a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
The truth on each side won in the civil war
The fact that the Americans who upheld the sovereignty of their states did this in order to keep many of their people more securely in slavery--the antithesis of individual liberty--made the conflict grimmer, and the greater.
Out of this ordeal the citizen emerged, in the South as in the North, as America's true sovereign, in a new birth of freedom, as Lincoln promised.
But before this came about, 214,938 Americans had given their lives in battle for the two concepts of the sovereign rights of men and of states.
On their decisive battlefield Lincoln did not distinguish between them when he paid tribute to the brave men, living and dead, who fought here.
He understood that both sides were at fault, and he reached the height of saying so explicitly in his Second Inaugural.
It is much less difficult now than in Lincoln's day to see that on both sides sovereign Americans had given their lives in the Civil War to maintain the balance between the powers they had delegated to the States and to their Union.
But the fact that 70,524 other Americans gave the same measure of devotion to an opposing concept served Liberty-and-Union in other essential ways.
Its appeal from ballots to bullets at Fort Sumter ended by costing the Southerners their right to have slaves--a right that was even less compatible with the sovereignty of man.
The very fact that they came so near to winning by the wrong method, war, led directly to their losing both the war and the wrong thing they fought for, since it forced Lincoln to free their slaves as a military measure.
There was a divine justice in one wrong thus undoing another.
There was also a lesson, one that has served ever since to keep Americans, in their conflicts with one another, from turning from the ballot to the bullet.
Yet though the Southern States lost the worst errors in their case, they did not lose the truth they fought for.
The lives so many of them gave, to forestall what they believed would be a fatal encroachment by the Union on the powers reserved to their states have continued ever since to safeguard all Americans against freedom's other foe.
As cells coalesced into organisms, they built new unnatural and internally controlled environments to cope even more successfully with the entropy-increasing properties of the external world.
The useful suggestion of Professor David Hawkins which considers culture as a third stage in biological evolution fits quite beautifully then with our suggestion that science has provided us with a rather successful technique for building protective artificial environments.
One wonders about its applicability to people.
The answer is, of course, yes.
For the family is the simplest example of just such a unit, composed of people, which gives us both some immunity from, and a way of dealing with, other people.
Social invention did not have to await social theory any more than use of the warmth of a fire had to await Lavoisier or the buoyant protection of a boat the formulations of Archimedes.
But it has been during the last two centuries, during the scientific revolution, that our independence from the physical environment has made the most rapid strides.
We have ample light when the sun sets;
the temperature of our homes is independent of the seasons;
we fly through the air, although gravity pulls us down;
the range of our voice ignores distance.
At what stage are social sciences then?
Is the future of psychology akin to the rich future of physics at the time of Newton?
There is a haunting resemblance between the notion of cause in Copernicus and in Freud.
And it is certainly no slight to either of them to compare both their achievements and their impact.
Political theoretical understanding, although almost at a standstill during this century, did develop during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and resulted in a flood of inventions which increased the possibility for man to coexist with man.
Consitutional government, popular vote, trial by jury, public education, labor unions, cooperatives, communes, socialized ownership, world courts, and the veto power in world councils are but a few examples.
Most of these, with horrible exceptions, were conceived as is a ship, not as an attempt to quell the ocean of mankind, nor to deny its force, but as a means to survive and enjoy it.
The most effective political inventions seem to make maximum use of natural harbors and are aware that restraining breakwaters can play only a minor part in the whole scheme.
Just as present technology had to await the explanations of physics, so one might expect that social invention will follow growing sociological understanding.
We are desperately in the need of such invention, for man is still very much at the mercy of man.
In fact the accumulation of the hardware of destruction is day by day increasing our fear of each other.
I want, therefore, to discuss a second and quite different fruit of science, the connection between scientific understanding and fear.
There are certainly large areas of understanding in the human sciences which in themselves and even without political invention can help to dispel our present fears.
Lucretius has remarked: The reason why all Mortals are so gripped by fear is that they see all sorts of things happening in the earth and sky with no discernable cause, and these they attribute to the will of God.
Perhaps things were even worse then.
It is difficult to reconstruct the primeval fears of man.
We get some clue from a few remembrances of childhood and from the circumstance that we are probably not much more afraid of people now than man ever was.
We are not now afraid of atomic bombs in the same way that people once feared comets.
The bombs are as harmless as an automobile in a garage.
We are worried about what people may do with them--that some crazy fool may push the button.
I am certainly not adequately trained to describe or enlarge on human fears, but there are certain features of the fears dispelled by scientific explanations that stand out quite clearly.
They are in general those fears that once seemed to have been amenable to prayer or ritual.
They include both individual fears and collective ones.
They arise in situations in which one believes that what happens depends not only on the external world, but also on the precise pattern of behavior of the individual or group.
Yet often fear persists because, even with the most rigid ritual, one is never quite free from the uneasy feeling that one might make some mistake or that in every previous execution one had been unaware of the really decisive act.
To say that science had reduced many such fears merely reiterates the obvious and frequent statement that science eliminated much of magic and superstition.
But a somewhat more detailed analysis of this process may be illuminating.
The frequently postulated antique worry that the daylight hours might dwindle to complete darkness apparently gave rise to a ritual and celebration which we still recognize.
It is curious that even centuries of repetition of the yearly cycle did not induce a sufficient degree of confidence to allow people to abandon the ceremonies of the winter solstice.
This understanding provides a very simple example of the fact that one can eliminate fear without instituting any controls.
In fact, although we have dispelled the fear, we have not necessarily assured ourselves that there are no dangers.
There is still the remote possibility of planetoid collision.
A meteor could fall on San Francisco.
Solar activities could presumably bring long periods of flood or drought.
Our understanding of the solar system has taught us to replace our former elaborate rituals with the appropriate action which, in this case, amounts to doing nothing.
Yet we no longer feel uneasy.
This almost trivial example is nevertheless suggestive, for there are some elements in common between the antique fear that the days would get shorter and shorter and our present fear of war.
We, in our country, think of war as an external threat which, if it occurs, will not be primarily of our own doing.
And yet we obviously also believe that the avoidance of the disaster depends in some obscure or at least uncertain way on the details of how we behave.
What elements of our behavior are decisive?
Our weapons production, our world prestige, our ideas of democracy, our actions of trust or stubbornness or secrecy or espionage?
We have staved off a war and, since our behavior has involved all these elements, we can only keep adding to our ritual without daring to abandon any part of it, since we have not the slightest notion which parts are effective.
I think that we are here also talking of the kind of fear that a young boy has for a group of boys who are approaching at night along the streets of a large city.
If an automobile were approaching him, he would know what was required of him, even though he might not be able to act quickly enough.
With the group of boys it is different.
He does not know whether to look up or look aside, to put his hands in his pockets or to clench them at his side, to cross the street, or to continue on the same side.
When confronted with a drunk or an insane person I have no notion of what any one of them might do to me or to himself or to others.
I believe that what I do has some effect on his actions and I have learned, in a way, to commune with drunks, but certainly my actions seem to resemble more nearly the performance of a rain dance than the carrying out of an experiment in physics.
I am usually filled with an uneasiness that through some unwitting slip all hell may break loose.
Our inability to explain why certain people are fond of us frequently induces the same kind of ritual and malaise.
We are forced, in our behavior towards others, to adopt empirically successful patterns in toto because we have such a minimal understanding of their essential elements.
Our collective policies, group and national, are similarly based on voodoo, but here we often lack even the empirically successful rituals and are still engaged in determing them.
We use terms from our personal experience with individuals such as trust, cheat, and get tough.
We talk about national character in the same way that Copernicus talked of the compulsions of celestial bodies to move in circles.
We perform elaborate international exhortations and ceremonies with virtually no understanding of social cause and effect.
Small wonder, then, that we fear.
The achievements which dispelled our fears of the cosmos took place three centuries ago.
What additional roles has the scientific understanding of the 19th and 20th centuries played?
In the physical sciences, these achievements concern electricity, chemistry, and atomic physics.
In the life sciences, there has been an enormous increase in our understanding of disease, in the mechanisms of heredity, and in bio- and physiological chemistry.
The major effect of these advances appears to lie in the part they have played in the industrial revolution and in the tools which scientific understanding has given us to build and manipulate a more protective environment.
In addition, our way of dealing directly with natural phenomena has also changed.
Even in domains where detailed and predictive understanding is still lacking, but where some explanations are possible, as with lightning and weather and earthquakes, the appropriate kind of human action has been more adequately indicated.
Apparently the population as a whole eventually acquires enough confidence in the explanations of the scientists to modify its procedures and its fears.
How and why this process occurs would provide an interesting separate subject for study.
In some areas, the progress is slower than in others.
In agriculture, for example, despite the advances in biology, elaborate rituals tend to persist along with a continued sense of the imminence of some natural disaster.
In child care, the opposite extreme prevails;
procedures change rapidly and parental confidence probably exceeds anything warranted by established psychological theory.
There are many domains in which understanding has brought about widespread and quite appropriate reduction in ritual and fear.
Much of the former extreme uneasiness associated with visions and hallucinations and with death has disappeared.
The persistent horror of having a malformed child has, I believe, been reduced, not because we have gained any control over this misfortune, but precisely because we have learned that we have so little control over it.
In fact, the recent warnings about the use of X-rays have introduced fears and ambiguities of action which now require more detailed understanding, and thus in this instance, science has momentarily aggravated our fears.
In fact, insofar as science generates any fear, it stems not so much from scientific prowess and gadgets but from the fact that new unanswered questions arise, which, until they are understood, create uncertainty.
Perhaps the most illuminating example of the reduction of fear through understanding is derived from our increased knowledge of the nature of disease.
The situation with regard to our attitude and control of disease contains close analogies to problems confronting us with respect to people.
The fear of disease was formerly very much the kind of fear I have tried to describe.
Nothing like Godot, he arrived before the hour.
His letter had suggested we meet at my hotel at noon on Sunday, and I came into the lobby as the clock struck twelve.
He was waiting.
My wish to meet Samuel Beckett had been prompted by simple curiosity and interest in his work.
American newspaper reviewers like to call his plays nihilistic.
They find deep pessimism in them.
Even so astute a commentator as Harold Clurman of The Nation has said that Waiting For Godot is the concentrate of the contemporary European mood of despair.
But to me Beckett's writing had seemed permeated with love for human beings and with a kind of humor that I could reconcile neither with despair nor with nihilism.
Could it be that my own eyes and ears had deceived me?
Is his a literature of defeat, irrelevant to the social crises we face?
Or is it relevant because it teaches us something useful to know about ourselves?
I knew that a conversation with the author would not settle such questions, because a man is not the same as his writing: in the last analysis, the questions had to be settled by the work itself.
Nevertheless I was curious.
My curiosity was sharpened a day or two before the interview by a conversation I had with a well-informed teacher of literature, a Jesuit father, at a conference on religious drama near Paris.
When Beckett's name came into the discussion, the priest grew loud and told me that Beckett hates life.
That, I thought, is at least one thing I can find out when we meet.
Beckett's appearance is rough-hewn Irish.
The features of his face are distinct, but not fine.
They look as if they had been sculptured with an unsharpened chisel.
Unruly hair goes straight up from his forehead, standing so high that the top falls gently over, as if to show that it really is hair and not bristle.
One might say it combines the man;
own pride and humility.
For he has the pride that comes of self-acceptance and the humility, perhaps of the same genesis, not to impose himself upon another.
His light blue eyes, set deep within the face, are actively and continually looking.
He seems, by some unconscious division of labor, to have given them that one function and no other, leaving communication to the rest of the face.
The mouth frequently breaks into a disarming smile.
The voice is light in timbre, with a rough edge that corresponds to his visage.
The Irish accent is, as one would expect, combined with slight inflections from the French.
His tweed suit was a baggy gray and green.
He wore a brown knit sports shirt with no tie.
We walked down the Rue De L'Arcade, thence along beside the Madeleine and across to a sidewalk cafe opposite that church.
The conversation that ensued may have been engrossing but it could hardly be called world-shattering.
For one thing, the world that Beckett sees is already shattered.
His talk turns to what he calls the mess, or sometimes this buzzing confusion.
I reconstruct his sentences from notes made immediately after our conversation.
What appears here is shorter than what he actually said but very close to his own words.
The confusion is not my invention.
We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being acutely aware of the confusion.
It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in.
The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess.
It is not a mess you can make sense of.
I suggested that one must let it in because it is the truth, but Beckett did not take to the word truth.
What is more true than anything else?
To swim is true, and to sink is true.
One is not more true than the other.
One cannot speak anymore of being, one must speak only of the mess.
When Heidegger and Sartre speak of a contrast between being and existence, they may be right, I don't know, but their language is too philosophical for me.
I am not a philosopher.
One can only speak of what is in front of him, and that now is simply the mess.
Then he began to speak about the tension in art between the mess and form.
Until recently, art has withstood the pressure of chaotic things.
It has held them at bay.
It realized that to admit them was to jeopardize form.
How could the mess be admitted, because it appears to be the very opposite of form and therefore destructive of the very thing that art holds itself to be?
But now we can keep it out no longer, because we have come into a time when it invades our experience at every moment.
It is there and it must be allowed in.
I granted this might be so, but found the result to be even more attention to form than was the case previously.
And why not?
How, I asked, could chaos be admitted to chaos?
Would not that be the end of thinking and the end of art?
If we look at recent art we find it preoccupied with form.
Beckett's own work is an example.
Plays more highly formalized than Waiting For Godot, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape would be hard to find.
What I am saying does not mean that there will henceforth be no form in art.
It only means that there will be new form, and that this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else.
The form and the chaos remain separate.
The latter is not reduced to the former.
That is why the form itself becomes a preoccupation, because it exists as a problem separate from the material it accommodates.
To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.
Yet, I responded, could not similar things be said about the art of the past?
Is it not characteristic of the greatest art that it confronts us with something we cannot clarify, demanding that the viewer respond to it in his own never-predictable way?
What is the history of criticism but the history of men attempting to make sense of the manifold elements in art that will not allow themselves to be reduced to a single philosophy or a single aesthetic theory?
Isn't all art ambiguous?
Not this, he said, and gestured toward the Madeleine.
The classical lines of the church which Napoleon thought of as a Temple of Glory, dominated all the scene where we sat.
The Boulevard De La Madeleine, the Boulevard Malesherbes, and the Rue Royale ran to it with graceful flattery, bearing tidings of the Age of Reason.
Not this.
This is clear.
This does not allow the mystery to invade us.
With classical art, all is settled.
But it is different at Chartres.
There is the unexplainable, and there art raises questions that it does not attempt to answer.
I asked about the battle between life and death in his plays.
Didi and Gogo hover on the edge of suicide;
Hamm's world is death and Clov may or may not get out of it to join the living child outside.
Is this life-death question a part of the chaos?
Yes.
If life and death did not both present themselves to us, there would be no inscrutability.
If there were only darkness, all would be clear.
It is because there is not only darkness but also light that our situation becomes inexplicable.
Take Augustine's doctrine of grace given and grace withheld: have you pondered the dramatic qualities in this theology?
Two thieves are crucified with Christ, one saved and the other damned.
How can we make sense of this division?
In classical drama, such problems do not arise.
The destiny of Racine's Phedre is sealed from the beginning: she will proceed into the dark.
As she goes, she herself will be illuminated.
At the beginning of the play she has partial illumination and at the end she has complete illumination, but there has been no question but that she moves toward the dark.
That is the play.
Within this notion clarity is possible, but for us who are neither Greek nor Jansenist there is not such clarity.
The question would also be removed if we believed in the contrary--total salvation.
But where we have both dark and light we have also the inexplicable.
The key word in my plays is'perhaps'''.
Given a theological lead, I asked what he thinks about those who find a religious significance to his plays.
Well, really there is none at all.
I have no religious feeling.
Once I had a religious emotion.
It was at my first Communion.
No more.
My mother was deeply religious.
So was my brother.
He knelt down at his bed as long as he could kneel.
My father had none.
The family was Protestant, but for me it was only irksome and I let it go.
My brother and mother got no value from their religion when they died.
At the moment of crisis it had no more depth than an old school tie.
Irish Catholicism is not attractive, but it is deeper.
When you pass a church on an Irish bus, all the hands flurry in the sign of the cross.
One day the dogs of Ireland will do that too and perhaps also the pigs.
But do the plays deal with the same facets of experience religion must also deal with?
Yes, for they deal with distress.
Some people object to this in my writing.
At a party an English intellectual--so-called--asked me why I write always about distress.
As if it were perverse to do so!
He wanted to know if my father had beaten me or my mother had run away from home to give me an unhappy childhood.
I told him no, that I had had a very happy childhood.
Then he thought me more perverse than ever.
I left the party as soon as possible and got into a taxi.
On the glass partition between me and the driver were three signs: one asked for help for the blind, another help for orphans, and the third for relief for the war refugees.
One does not have to look for distress.
It is screaming at you even in the taxis of London.
Lunch was over, and we walked back to the hotel with the light and dark of Paris screaming at us.
The personal quality of Samuel Beckett is similar to qualities I had found in the plays.
He says nothing that compresses experience within a closed pattern.
Perhaps stands in place of commitment.
At the same time, he is plainly sympathetic, clearly friendly.
If there were only the mess, all would be clear;
but there is also compassion.
As a Christian, I know I do not stand where Beckett stands, but I do see much of what he sees.
As a writer on the theater, I have paid close attention to the plays.
Harold Clurman is right to say that Waiting For Godot is a reflection (he calls it a distorted reflection) of the impasse and disarray of Europe's present politics, ethic, and common way of life.
Yet it is not only Europe the play refers to.
Waiting For Godot sells even better in America than in France.
America is now joining Europe in this mature phase of development.
Whether any of us remain in it long will depend on what happens as a result of the technological and economic revolutions now going on in the countries of Asia and Africa, and also of course on how long the cold war remains cold.
Even Hemingway, for all his efforts to formulate a naturalistic morality in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms never maintained that sex was all.
Hemingway's fiction is supported by a moral backbone and in its search for ultimate meaning hints at a religious dimension.
And D. H. Lawrence, in Fantasia Of The Unconscious, protested vehemently against the overestimation of the sexual motive.
Though sex in some form or other enters into all human activity and it was a good thing that Freud emphasized this aspect of human nature, it is fantastic to explain everything in terms of sex.
All is not sex, declared Lawrence.
Man is not confined to one outlet for his vital energy.
The creative urge, for example, transcends the body and the self.
But for the beat generation all is sex.
Nothing is more revealing of the way of life and literary aspirations of this group than their attitude toward sex.
For the beatnik, like the hipster, is in opposition to a society that is based on the repression of the sex instinct.
He has elevated sex--not Eros or libido but pure, spontaneous, uninhibited sex--to the rank of the godhead;
it is Astarte, Ishtar, Venus, Yahwe, Dionysus, Christ, the mysterious and divine orgone energy flowing through the body of the universe.
Jazz is sex, marijuana is a stimulus to sex, the beat tempo is adjusted to the orgiastic release of the sexual impulse.
Lawrence Lipton, in The Holy Barbarians, stresses that for the beat generation sex is more than a source of pleasure;
it is a mystique, and their private language is rich in the multivalent ambiguities of sexual reference so that they dwell in a sexualized universe of discourse.
The singular uncompromising force of their revolt against the cult of restraint is illustrated by their refusal to dance in a public place.
The dance is but a disguised ritual for the expression of ungratified sexual desire.
For this reason, too, their language is more forthright and earthy.
The beatniks crave a sexual experience in which their whole being participates.
It is therefore not surprising that they resist the lure of marriage and the trap of domesticity, for like cats they are determined not to tame their sexual energy.
They withdraw to the underground of the slums where they can defy the precepts of legalized propriety.
Unlike the heroes and flappers of the lost generation, they disdain the art of necking and petting.
That is reserved for the squares.
If they avoid the use of the pungent, outlawed four-letter word it is because it is taboo;
it is sacred.
As Lipton, the prophet of the beat generation, declares: In the sexual act, the beat are filled with mana, the divine power.
This is far from the vulgar, leering sexuality of the middle-class square in heat.
This is the Holy Grail these knights of the orgasm pursue, this is the irresistible cosmic urge to which they respond.
If Wilhelm Reich is the Moses who has led them out of the Egypt of sexual slavery, Dylan Thomas is the poet who offers them the Dionysian dialectic of justification for their indulgence in liquor, marijuana, sex, and jazz.
In addition, they have been converted to Zen Buddhism, with its glorification of all that is natural and mysteriously alive, the sense that everything in the world is flowing.
Thus, paradoxically, the beat writers resort to religious metaphors: they are in search of mana, the spiritual, the numinous, but not anything connected with formal religion.
What they are after is the beatific vision.
And Zen Buddhism, though it is extremely difficult to understand how these internal contradictions are reconciled, helps them in their struggle to achieve personal salvation through sexual release.
The style of life chosen by the beat generation, the rhythm and ritual they have adopted as uniquely their own, is designed to enhance the value of the sexual experience.
Jazz is good not only because it promotes wholeness but because of its decided sexual effect.
Jazz is the musical language of sex, the vocabulary of the orgasm;
indeed, it is maintained that the sexual element in jazz, by freeing the listener of his inhibitions, can have therapeutic value.
That is why, the argument runs, the squares are so fearful of jazz and yet perversely fascinated by it.
Instead of giving themselves spontaneously to the orgiastic release that jazz can give them, they undergo psychoanalysis or flirt with mysticism or turn to prostitutes for satisfaction.
Thus jazz is transmuted into something holy, the sacred road to integration of being.
Jazz, like sex, is a mystique.
It is not a substitute for sex but a dynamic expression of the creative impulse in unfettered man.
The mystique of sex, combined with marijuana and jazz, is intended to provide a design for living.
Those who are sexually liberated can become creatively alive and free, their instincts put at the service of the imagination.
Righteous in their denunciation of all that makes for death, the beat prophets bid all men become cool cats;
let them learn to swing freely, to let go, to become authentically themselves, and then perhaps civilization will be saved.
The beatnik, seceding from a society that is fatally afflicted with a deathward drive, is concerned with his personal salvation in the living present.
If he is the child of nothingness, if he is the predestined victim of an age of atomic wars, then he will consult only his own organic needs and go beyond good and evil.
He will not curb his instinctual desires but release the energy within him that makes him feel truly and fully alive, even if it is only for this brief moment before the apocalypse of annihilation explodes on earth.
That is why the members of the beat generation proudly assume the title of the holy barbarians;
they will destroy the shrines, temples, museums, and churches of the state that is the implacable enemy of the life they believe in.
Apart from the categorical imperative they derive from the metaphysics of the orgasm, the only affirmation they are capable of making is that art is their only refuge.
Their writing, born of their experiments in marijuana and untrammeled sexuality, reflects the extremity of their existential alienation.
The mind has betrayed them, reason is the foe of life;
they will trust only their physical sensations, the wisdom of the body, the holy promptings of the unconscious.
With lyrical intensity they reveal what they hate, but their faith in love, inspired by the revolutionary rhythms of jazz, culminates in the climax of the orgasm.
Their work mirrors the mentality of the psychopath, rootless and irresponsible.
Their rebellion against authoritarian society is not far removed from the violence of revolt characteristic of the juvenile delinquent.
And the life they lead is undisciplined and for the most part unproductive, even though they make a fetish of devoting themselves to some creative pursuit--writing, painting, music.
They are non-conformists on principle.
When they express themselves it is incandescent hatred that shines forth, the rage of repudiation, the ecstasy of negation.
It is sex that obsesses them, sex that is at the basis of their aesthetic creed.
What they discuss with dialectical seriousness is the degree to which sex can inspire the Muse.
Monogamy is the vice from which the abjectly fearful middle class continue to suffer, whereas the beatnik has the courage to break out of that prison of respectability.
One girl describes her past, her succession of broken marriages, the abortions she has had and finally confesses that she loves sex and sees no reason why she must justify her passion.
If it is an honest feeling, then why should she not yield to it?
Most often, she says, it's the monogamous relationship that is dishonest.
There is nothing holy in wedlock.
This girl soon drops the bourgeois pyschiatrist who disapproves of her life.
She finds married life stifling and every prolonged sex relationship unbearably monotonous.
This confession serves to make clear in part what is behind this sexual revolution: the craving for sensation for its own sake, the need for change, for new experiences.
Boredom is death.
In the realm of physical sensations, sex reigns supreme.
Hence the beatniks sustain themselves on marijuana, jazz, free swinging poetry, exhausting themselves in orgies of sex;
some of them are driven over the borderline of sanity and lose contact with reality.
One beat poet composes a poem, Lines On A Tijuana John, which contains a few happy hints for survival.
The new fact the initiates of this cult have to learn is that they must move toward simplicity.
The professed mission of this disaffiliated generation is to find a new way of life which they can express in poetry and fiction, but what they produce is unfortunately disordered, nourished solely on the hysteria of negation.
Who are the creative representatives of this movement?
Nymphomaniacs, junkies, homosexuals, drug addicts, lesbians, alcoholics, the weak, the frustrated, the irresolute, the despairing, the derelicts and outcasts of society.
They embrace independent poverty, usually with a shack-up partner who will help support them.
They are full of contempt for the institution of matrimony.
Their previous legalized marriages do not count, for they hold the laws of the state null and void.
They feel they are leagued against a hostile, persecutory world, faced with the concerted malevolent opposition of squares and their hirelings, the police.
This is the rhetoric of righteousness the beatniks use in defending their way of life, their search for wholeness, though their actual existence fails to reach these religious heights.
One beatnik got the woman he was living with so involved in drugs and self-analysis and all-night sessions of sex that she was beginning to crack up.
What obsessions had she picked up during these long nights of talk?
Sex as the creative principle of the universe, the secret of primitive religion, the life of myth.
Everything in the final analysis reduced itself to sexual symbolism.
In his chapter on The Loveways Of The Beat Generation, Lipton spares the reader none of the sordid details.
No one asks questions about the free union of the sexes in West Venice so long as the partners share the negative attitudes of the group.
The women who come to West Venice, having forsaken radicalism, are interested in living only for the moment, in being constantly on the move.
Others who are attracted to this Mecca of the beat generation are homosexuals, heroin addicts, and smalltime hoodlums.
Those who are sexual deviants are naturally drawn to join the beatniks.
Since the homosexuals widely use marijuana, they do not have to be initiated.
Part of the ritual of sex is the use of marijuana.
As Lipton puts it: The Eros is felt in the magic circle of marijuana with far greater force, as a unifying principle in human relationships, than at any other time except, perhaps, in the mutual metaphysical orgasms.
The magic circle is, in fact, a symbol of and preparation for the metaphysical orgasm.
Under the influence of marijuana the beatnik comes alive within and experiences a wonderfully enhanced sense of self as if he had discovered the open sesame to the universe of being.
Carried high on this charge, he composes magical poetry that captures the organic rhythms of life in words.
If he thus achieves a lyrical, dreamlike, drugged intensity, he pays the price for his indulgence by producing work--Allen Ginsberg's Howl is a striking example of this tendency--that is disoriented, Dionysian but without depth and without Apollonian control.
For drugs are in themselves no royal road to creativity.
How is the beat poet to achieve unity of form when he is at the same time engaged in a systematic derangement of senses.
If love reflects the nature of man, as Ortega Y Gasset believes, if the person in love betrays decisively what he is by his behavior in love, then the writers of the beat generation are creating a new literary genre.
There were fences in the old days when we were children.
Across the front of a yard and down the side, they were iron, either spiked along the top or arched in half circles.
Alley fences were made of solid boards higher than one's head, but not so high as the golden glow in a corner or the hollyhocks that grew in a line against them.
Side fences were hidden beneath lilacs and hundred-leaf roses;
front fences were covered with Virginia creeper or trumpet vines or honeysuckle.
Square corner- and gate posts were an open-work pattern of cast-iron foliage;
they were topped by steeples complete in every detail: high-pitched roof, pinnacle, and narrow gable.
On these posts the gates swung open with a squeak and shut with a metallic clang.
The only extended view possible to anyone less tall than the fences was that obtained from an upper bough of the apple tree.
The primary quality of that view seems, now, to have been its quietness, but that cannot at the time have impressed us.
What one actually remembers is its greenness.
From high in the tree, the whole block lay within range of the eye, but the ground was almost nowhere visible.
One looked down on a sea of leaves, a breaking wave of flower.
Every path from back door to barn was covered by a grape-arbor, and every yard had its fruit trees.
In the center of any open space remaining our grandfathers had planted syringa and sweet-shrub, snowball, rose-of-Sharon and balm-of-Gilead.
That was one epoch: the apple-tree epoch.
Another had ended before it began.
Time is a queer thing and memory a queerer;
the tricks that time plays with memory and memory with time are queerest of all.
From maturity one looks back at the succession of years, counts them and makes them many, yet cannot feel length in the number, however large.
In a stream that turns a mill-wheel there is a lot of water;
the mill-pond is quiet, its surface dark and shadowed, and there does not seem to be much water in it.
Time in the sum is nothing.
And yet--a year to a child is an eternity, and in the memory that phase of one's being--a certain mental landscape--will seem to have endured without beginning and without end.
The part of the mind that preserves dates and events may remonstrate, It could have been like that for only a little while;
but true memory does not count nor add: it holds fast to things that were and they are outside of time.
Once, then--for how many years or how few does not matter--my world was bound round by fences, when I was too small to reach the apple tree bough, to twist my knee over it and pull myself up.
That world was in scale with my own smallness.
I have no picture in my mind of the garden as a whole--that I could not see--but certain aspects of certain corners linger in the memory: wind-blown, frost-bitten, white chrysanthemums beneath a window, with their brittle brown leaves and their sharp scent of November;
ripe pears lying in long grass, to be turned over by a dusty-slippered foot, cautiously, lest bees still worked in the ragged, brown-edged holes;
hot-colored verbenas in the corner between the dining-room wall and the side porch, where we passed on our way to the pump with the half-gourd tied to it as a cup by my grandmother for our childish pleasure in drinking from it.
It was mother who planted the verbenas.
I think that my grandmother was not an impassioned gardener: she was too indulgent a lover of dogs and grandchildren.
My great-grandmother, I have been told, made her garden her great pride;
she cherished rare and delicate plants like oleanders in tubs and wall-flowers and lemon verbenas in pots that had to be wintered in the cellar;
she filled the waste spots of the yard with common things like the garden heliotrope in a corner by the woodshed, and the plantain lilies along the west side of the house.
These my grandmother left in their places (they are still there, more persistent and longer-lived than the generations of man) and planted others like them, that flourished without careful tending.
Three of these only were protected from us by stern commandment: the roses, whose petals might not be collected until they had fallen, to be made into perfume or rose-tea to drink;
the peonies, whose tight sticky buds would be blighted by the laying on of a finger, although they were not apparently harmed by the ants that crawled over them;
and the poppies.
I have more than once sat cross-legged in the grass through a long summer morning and watched without touching while a poppy bud higher than my head slowly but visibly pushed off its cap, unfolded, and shook out like a banner in the sun its flaming vermilion petals.
Other flowers we might gather as we pleased: myrtle and white violets from beneath the lilacs;
the lilacs themselves, that bloomed so prodigally but for the most part beyond our reach;
snowballs;
hollyhock blossoms that, turned upside down, make pink-petticoated ladies;
and the little, dark blue larkspur that scattered its seed everywhere.
Flowers, stones, and small creatures, living and dead.
Pale yellow snapdragons that by pinching could be made to bite;
seed-pods of the balsams that snapped like fire-crackers at a touch;
red-and-yellow columbines whose round-tipped spurs were picked off and eaten for the honey in them;
morning-glory buds which could be so grasped and squeezed that they burst like a blown-up paper bag;
bright flowers from the trumpet vine that made gloves on the ends of ten waggling fingers.
Fuzzy caterpillars, snails with their sensitive horns, struggling grasshoppers held by their long hind legs and commanded to spit tobacco, spit.
Dead fledgling birds, their squashed-looking nakedness and the odor of decay that clung to the hand when they had been buried in our graveyard in front of the purple flags.
And the cast shell of a locust, straw-colored and transparent, weighing nothing, fragile but entire, with eyes like bubbles and a gaping slit down its back.
We collected lucky stones--all the creamy translucent pebbles, worn smooth and round, that we could find in the driveway.
When these had been pocketed, we could still spend a morning cracking open other pebbles for our delight in seeing how much prettier they were inside than their dull exteriors indicated.
We showed them to each other and said Would you have guessed?
Squatting on our haunches beside the flat stone we broke them on, we were safe behind the high closed gates at the end of the drive: safe from interruption and the observation and possible amusement of the passers-by.
Thus shielded, we played many foolish games in comfortable unselfconsciousness;
even when the fences became a part of the game--when a vine-embowered gate-post was the Sleeping Beauty's enchanted castle, or when Rapunzel let down her golden hair from beneath the crocketed spire, even then we paid little heed to those who went by on the path outside.
We enjoyed a paradoxical freedom when we were still too young for school.
In the heat of the summer, the garden solitudes were ours alone;
our elders stayed in the dark house or sat fanning on the front porch.
They never troubled themselves about us while we were playing, because the fence formed such a definite boundary and Don't go outside the gate was a command so impossible of misinterpretation.
We were not, however, entirely unacquainted with the varying aspects of the street.
The street that is full now of traffic and parked cars then and for many years drowsed on an August afternoon in the shade of the curbside trees, and silence was a weight, almost palpable, in the air.
Every slight sound that rose against that pressure fell away again, crushed beneath it.
A hay-wagon moved slowly along the gutter, the top of it swept by the low boughs of the maple trees, and loose straws were left hanging tangled among the leaves.
A wheel squeaked on a hub, was still, and squeaked again.
If a child watched its progress he whispered, Hay, hay, load of hay--make a wish and turn away, and then stared rigidly in the opposite direction until the sound of the horses' feet returned no more.
When the hay wagon had gone, and an interval passed, a huckster's cart might turn the corner.
The horse walked, the reins were slack, the huckster rode with bowed shoulders, his forearms across his knees.
Sleepily, as if half-reluctant to break the silence, he lifted his voice: Rhu-beb-ni-ice nice fresh rhu-beb today!
The lazy sing-song was spaced in time like the drone of a bumble-bee.
No one seemed to hear him, no one heeded.
The horse plodded on, and he repeated his call.
It became so monotonous as to seem a part of the quietness.
After his passage, the street was empty again.
The sun moved slant-wise across the sky and down;
the trees' shadows circled from street to sidewalk, from sidewalk to lawn.
At four-o'clock, or four-thirty, the coming of the newsboy marked the end of the day;
he tossed a paper toward every front door, and housewives came down to their steps to pick them up and read what their neighbors had been doing.
The streets of any county town were like this on any sunshiny afternoon in summer;
they were like this fifty-odd years ago, and yesterday.
But the fences were still in place fifty-odd years ago, and when we stood on the gate to look over, the sidewalk under our eyes was not cement but two rows of paving stones with grass between and on both sides.
The curb was a line of stone laid edgewise in the dirt and tilted this way and that by frost in the ground or the roots of trees.
Opposite every gate was a hitching post or a stone carriage-step, set with a rusty iron ring for tying a horse.
The street was unpaved and rose steeply toward the center;
it was mud in wet weather and dust, ankle-deep, in dry, and could be crossed only at the corner where there were stepping stones.
It had a bucolic atmosphere that it has lost long since.
The hoofmarks of cattle and the prints of bare feet in the mud or in the dust were as numerous as the traces of shod horses.
Cows were kept in backyard barns, boys were hired to drive them to and from the pasture on the edge of town, and familiar to the ear, morning and evening, were the boys' coaxing voices, the thud of hooves, and the thwack of a stick on cowhide.
It is worth dwelling in some detail on the crisis of this story, because it brings together a number of characteristic elements and makes of them a curious, riddling compound obscurely but centrally significant for Mann's work.
The wife, Amra, and her lover are both savagely portrayed, she as incarnate sensuality, voluptuous and indolent, possibly a mischief maker, with a kind of luxurious cunning to set against her apparent simplicity, her birdlike brain.
The trick these two play upon Jacoby reveals their want not simply of decency but of imagination as well.
His appearance as Lizzy evokes not amusement but horror in the audience;
it is a spectacle absolutely painful, an epiphany of the suffering flesh unredeemed by spirit, untouched by any spirit other than abasement and humiliation.
At the same time the multiple transvestitism involved--the fat man as girl and as baby, as coquette pretending to be a baby--touches for a moment horrifyingly upon the secret sources of a life like Jacoby's, upon the sinister dreams which form the sources of any human life.
The music which Lautner has composed for this episode is for the most part rather pretty and perfectly banal.
But it is characteristic of him, we are told, his little artifice, to be able to introduce into a fairly vulgar and humorous piece of hackwork a sudden phrase of genuine creative art.
And this occurs now, at the refrain of Jacoby's song--at the point, in fact, of the name Lizzy --;
a modulation described as almost a stroke of genius.
A miracle, a revelation, it was like a curtain suddenly torn away to reveal something nude.
It is this modulation which reveals to Jacoby his own frightful abjection and, simultaneously, his wife's infidelity.
By the same means he perceives this fact as having communicated itself to the audience;
he collapses, and dies.
In the work of every artist, I suppose, there may be found one or more moments which strike the student as absolutely decisive, ultimately emblematic of what it is all about;
not less strikingly so for being mysterious, as though some deeply hidden constatation of thoughts were enciphered in a single image, a single moment.
So here.
The horrifying humor, the specifically sexual embarrassment of the joke gone wrong, the monstrous image of the fat man dressed up as a whore dressing up as a baby;
the epiphany of that quivering flesh;
the bringing together around it of the secret liaison between indolent, mindless sensuality and sharp, shrewd talent, cleverness with an occasional touch of genius (which, however, does not know how to attack the problem of suffering);
the miraculous way in which music, revelation and death are associated in a single instant--all this seems a triumph of art, a rather desperate art, in itself;
beyond itself, also, it evokes numerous and distant resonances from the entire body of Mann's work.
When I try to work out my reasons for feeling that this passage is of critical significance, I come up with the following ideas, which I shall express very briefly here and revert to in a later essay.
Love is the crucial dilemma of experience for Mann's heroes.
The dramatic construction of his stories characteristically turns on a situation in which someone is simultaneously compelled and forbidden to love.
The release, the freedom, involved in loving another is either terribly difficult or else absolutely impossible;
and the motion toward it brings disaster.
This prohibition on love has an especially poignant relation to art;
it is particularly the artist (Tonio Kroger, Aschenbach, Leverkuhn) who suffers from it.
The specific analogy to the dilemma of love is the problem of the breakthrough in the realm of art.
Again, the sufferings and disasters produced by any transgression against the commandment not to love are almost invariably associated in one way or another with childhood, with the figure of a child.
Finally, the theatrical (and perversely erotic) notions of dressing up, cosmetics, disguise, and especially change of costume (or singularity of costume, as with Cipolla), are characteristically associated with the catastrophes of Mann's stories.
We shall return to these statements and deal with them more fully as the evidence for them accumulates.
For the present it is enough to note that in the grotesque figure of Jacoby, at the moment of his collapse, all these elements come together in prophetic parody.
That this abandonment takes place on a stage, during an'artistic'performance, is enough to associate Jacoby with art, and to bring down upon him the punishment for art;
that is, he is suspect, guilty, punishable, as is anyone in Mann's stories who produces illusion, and this is true even though the constant elements of the artist-nature, technique, magic, guilt and suffering, are divided in this story between Jacoby and Lautner.
It appears that the dominant tendency of Mann's early tales, however pictorial or even picturesque the surface, is already toward the symbolic, the emblematic, the expressionistic.
In a certain perfectly definite way, the method and the theme of his stories are one and the same.
Something of this can be learned from The Way To The Churchyard (1901), an anecdote about an old failure whose fit of anger at a passing cyclist causes him to die of a stroke or seizure.
There is no more plot than that;
only slightly more, perhaps, than a newspaper account of such an incident would give.
The artistic interest, then, lies in what the encounter may be made to represent, in the power of some central significance to draw the details into relevance and meaningfulness.
The first sentence, with its platitudinous irony, announces an emblematic intent: The way to the churchyard ran along beside the highroad, ran beside it all the way to the end;
that is to say, to the churchyard.
And the action is consistently presented with regard for this distinction.
The highroad, one might say at first, belongs to life, while the way to the churchyard belongs to death.
But that is too simple, and won't hold up.
As the first sentence suggests, both roads belong to death in the end.
But the highroad, according to the description of its traffic, belongs to life as it is lived in unawareness of death, while the way to the churchyard belongs to some other sort of life: a suffering form, an existence wholly comprised in the awareness of death.
Thus, on the highroad, a troop of soldiers marched in their own dust and sang, while on the footpath one man walks alone.
This man's isolation is not merely momentary, it is permanent.
He is a widower, his three children are dead, he has no one left on earth;
also he is a drunk, and has lost his job on that account.
This strange person quarrels with a cyclist because the latter is using the path rather than the highroad.
The cyclist, a sufficiently commonplace young fellow, is not named but identified simply as Life--that and a license number, which Piepsam uses in addressing him.
Life points out that everybody uses this path, and starts to ride on.
Piepsam tries to stop him by force, receives a push in the chest from Life, and is left standing in impotent and growing rage, while a crowd begins to gather.
His rage assumes a religious form;
that is, on the basis of his own sinfulness and abject wretchedness, Piepsam becomes a prophet who in his ecstasy and in the name of God imprecates doom on Life--not only the cyclist now, but the audience, the world, as well: all you light-headed breed.
This passion brings on a fit which proves fatal.
Then an ambulance comes along, and they drive Praisegod Piepsam away.
This is simple enough, but several more points of interest may be mentioned as relevant.
The season, between spring and summer, belongs to life in its carefree aspect.
Piepsam's fatal rage arises not only because he cannot stop the cyclist, but also because God will not stop him;
as Piepsam says to the crowd in his last moments: His justice is not of this world.
another wagon has no dog, and therefore is devoid of interest.
Piepsam calls the cyclist cur and puppy among other things, and at the crisis of his fit a little fox-terrier stands before him and howls into his face.
The ambulance is drawn by two charming little horses.
Piepsam is not, certainly, religious in any conventional sense.
His religiousness is intimately, or dialectically, connected with his sinfulness;
the two may in fact be identical.
His unsuccessful strivings to give up drink are represented as religious strivings;
he keeps a bottle in a wardrobe at home, and before this wardrobe Praisegod Piepsam had before now gone literally on his knees, and in his wrestlings had bitten his tongue--and still in the end capitulated.
The cyclist, by contrast, blond and blue-eyed, is simply unreflective, unproblematic Life, blithe and carefree.
He made no claims to belong to the great and mighty of this earth.
Piepsam is grotesque, a disturbing parody;
his end is ridiculous and trivial.
He is a man raving mad on the way to the churchyard.
But he is more interesting than the others, the ones who come from the highroad to watch him, more interesting than Life considered as a cyclist.
It resembles, too, pictures such as Durer and Bruegel did, in which all that looks at first to be solely pictorial proves on inspection to be also literary, the representation of a proverb, for example, or a deadly sin.
Gladius Dei (1902) resembles The Way To The Churchyard in its representation of a conflict between light and dark, between Life and a spirit of criticism, negation, melancholy, but it goes considerably further in characterizing the elements of this conflict.
The monk Savonarola, brought over from the Renaissance and placed against the background of Munich at the turn of the century, protests against the luxurious works displayed in the art-shop of M. Bluthenzweig;
in particular against a Madonna portrayed in a voluptuous style and modeled, according to gossip, upon the painter's mistress.
Hieronymus, like Piepsam, makes his protest quite in vain, and his rejection, though not fatal, is ridiculous and humiliating;
he is simply thrown out of the shop by the porter.
On the street outside, Hieronymus envisions a holocaust of the vanities of this world, such a burning of artistic and erotic productions as his namesake actually brought to pass in Florence, and prophetically he issues his curse: Gladius Dei super terram cito et velociter.
The reality to which they respond is rationally empty and their art is an imitation of the inescapable powerfulness of this unknown and empty world.
Their artistic rationale is given to the witness of unreason.
These polar concerns (imitation vs. formalism) reflect a philosophical and religious situation which has been developing over a long period of time.
The breakdown of classical structures of meaning in all realms of western culture has given rise to several generations of artists who have documented the disintegrative processes.
Thus the image of man has suffered complete fragmentation in personal and spiritual qualities, and complete objectification in sub-human and quasi-mechanistic powers.
The image of the world tends to reflect the hostility and indifference of man or else to dissolve into empty spaces and overwhelming mystery.
The image of God has simply disappeared.
The person of the artist becomes a final bastion of meaning in a world rendered meaningless by the march of events and the decay of classical religious and philosophical systems.
Whatever pole of this contrast one emphasizes and whatever the tension between these two approaches to understanding the artistic imagination, it will be readily seen that they are not mutually exclusive, that they belong together.
Without the decay of a sense of objective reference (except as the imitation of mystery), the stress on subjective invention would never have been stimulated into being.
For better or worse we cannot regard imitation in the arts in the simple mode of classical rationalism or detached realism.
A broader concept of imitation is needed, one which acknowledges that true invention is important, that the artist's creativity in part transcends the non-artistic causal factors out of which it arises.
On the other hand, we cannot regard artistic invention as pure, uncaused, and unrelated to the times in which it occurs.
We need a doctrine of imitation to save us from the solipsism and futility of pure formalism.
Accordingly, it is the aim of this essay to advance a new theory of imitation (which I shall call mimesis in order to distinguish it from earlier theories of imitation) and a new theory of invention (which I shall call symbol for reasons to be stated hereafter).
The mimetic imagination in the arts
The word mimesis (imitation) is usually associated with Plato and Aristotle.
For Plato, imitation is twice removed from reality, being a poor copy of physical appearance, which in itself is a poor copy of ideal essence.
All artistic and mythological representations, therefore, are imitations of imitations and are completely superseded by the truth value of dialectic, the proper use of the inquiring intellect.
In Plato's judgment, the arts play a meaningful role in society only in the education of the young, prior to the full development of their intellectual powers.
Presupposed in Plato's system is a doctrine of levels of insight, in which a certain kind of detached understanding is alone capable of penetrating to the most sublime wisdom.
Aristotle also tended to stratify all aspects of human nature and activity into levels of excellence and, like Plato, he put the pure and unimpassioned intellect on the top level.
The Poetics, in affirming that all human arts are modes of imitation, gives a more serious role to artistic mimesis than did Plato.
But Aristotle kept the principle of levels and even augmented it by describing in the Poetics what kinds of character and action must be imitated if the play is to be a vehicle of serious and important human truths.
For both Plato and Aristotle artistic mimesis, in contrast to the power of dialectic, is relatively incapable of expressing the character of fundamental reality.
The central concern of Erich Auerbach's impressive volume called Mimesis is to describe the shift from a classic theory of imitation (based upon a recognition of levels of truth) to a Christian theory of imitation in which the levels are dissolved.
Following the theme of Incarnation in the Gospels, the Christian artist and critic sees in the most commonplace and ordinary events figures of divine power and reality.
Here artistic realism involves the audience in an impassioned participation in events whose overtones and implications are transcendent.
Artistic mimesis under Christian influence records the involvement of all persons, however humble, in a divine drama.
The artist, unlike the philosopher, is not a removed observer aiming at neutral and rarified high levels of abstraction.
He is the conveyor of a sacred reality by which he has been grasped.
In the first instance, mimesis is here used to mean the recalling of experience in terms of vivid images rather than in terms of abstract ideas or conventional designations.
By image is meant not only a visual presentation, but also remembered sensations of any of the five senses plus the feelings which are immediately conjoined therewith.
This is the primary function of the imagination operating in the absence of the original experiential stimulus by which the images were first appropriated.
Mimesis is the nearest possible thing to the actual re-living of experience, in which the imagining person recovers through images something of the force and depth characteristic of experience itself.
The images themselves, like their counterparts in experience, are not neutral qualities to be surveyed dispassionately;
they are fields of force exerting a unique influence on the sensibilities and a unique relatedness to one another.
They bring an inextricable component of value within themselves, with attractions and repulsions native to their own quality.
As in experience one is seized by given entities and their interrelations and is forced to respond in value feelings to them, so one is similarly seized in the mimetic presentation of images.
Mimesis here is not to be confused with literalism or realism in the conventional sense.
A word taken in its dictionary meaning, a photographic image of a recognizable object, the mere picturing of a scene tends to lose experiential vividness and to connote such conventional abstractions as to invite neutral reception without the incitement of value feelings.
Similarly experience itself can be conventionalized so that people react to certain preconceived clues for behavior without awareness of the vitality of their experiential field.
A truly vivid imagination moves beyond the conventional recollection to a sense of immediacy.
The mimetic character of the imaginative consciousness tends to express itself in the presentation of artistic forms and materials.
These are like the initial ways in which the world forces itself upon the self and thrusts the self into decision and choice.
The presence of genuine mimesis in art is marked by the persistence with which the work demands attention and compels valuation even though it is but vaguely understood.
Underlying these conceptions of mimesis are certain presuppositions concerning the nature of primary human experience which require some exposition before the main argument can proceed.
Experience is not seen, as it is in classical rationalism, as presenting us initially with clear and distinct objects simply located in space and registering their character, movements, and changes on the tabula rasa of an uninvolved intellect.
Neither is primary experience understood according to the attitude of modern empiricism in which nothing is thought to be received other than signals of sensory qualities producing their responses in the appropriate sense organs.
Primary feelings of the world come neither as a collection of clearly known objects (houses, trees, implements, etc.) nor a collection of isolated and neutral sensory qualities.
In contrast to all this, primary data are data of a self involved in environing processes and powers.
The most primitive feelings are rudimentary value feelings, both positive and negative: a desire to appropriate this or that part of the environment into oneself;
a desire to avoid and repel this or that other part.
These desires presuppose a sense of causally efficacious powers in which one is involved, some working for one's good, others threatening ill.
Gone is the tabula rasa of the mind.
In its place is a passionate consciousness grasped and molded to feelings of positive or negative values even as the actions of one's life are determined by constellations of process in which one is caught.
The principal defender of this view of primary experience as causal efficacy is Alfred North Whitehead.
Our most elemental and unavoidable impressions, he says, are those of being involved in a large arena of powers which have a longer past than our own, which are interrelated in a vast movement through the present toward the future.
We feel the quality of these powers initially as in some degree wholesome or threatening.
Later abstractive and rational processes may indicate errors of judgment in these apprehensions of value, but the apprehensions themselves are the primary stuff of experience.
Whitehead is here questioning David Hume's understanding of the nature of experience;
he is questioning, also, every epistemology which stems from Hume's presupposition that experience is merely sense data in abstraction from causal efficacy, and that causal efficacy is something intellectually imputed to the world, not directly perceived.
What Hume calls sensation is what Whitehead calls perception in the mode of presentational immediacy which is a sophisticated abstraction from perception in the mode of causal efficacy.
As long as perception is seen as composed only of isolated sense data, most of the quality and interconnectedness of existence loses its objectivity, becomes an invention of consciousness, and the result is a philosophical scepticism.
In this respect experience is broader and full of a richer variety of potential meanings than the mind of man or any of his arts or culture are capable of making clear and distinct.
A chief characteristic of experience in the mode of causal efficacy is one of derivation from the past.
Both I and my feelings come up out of a chain of events that fan out into the past into sources that are ultimately very unlike the entity which I now am.
After only eighteen years of non-interference, there were already indications of melioration, though in a slight degree, to be sure.
There were more indications by the mid-twentieth century.
I leave it to the statisticians to say what they were, but I noticed several a few years ago, during an automobile ride from Memphis to Hattiesburg.
In town after town my companion pointed out the Negro school and the White school, and in every instance the former made a better appearance (it was newer, for one thing).
It really looked as if a change of the sort predicted by Booker T. Washington had been going on.
But with the renewal of interference in 1954 (as with its beginning in 1835), the improvement was impaired.
For over a hundred years Southerners have felt that the North was picking on them.
It's infuriating, this feeling that one is being picked on, continually, constantly.
By what right of superior virtue, Southerners ask, do the people of the North do this?
In the pre-Civil War years, the South argued that the slave was not less humanely treated than the factory worker of the North.
At the present time, the counter-attack takes the line that there's no more of the true spirit of integration in the North than in the South.
The line is a pretty good one.
People talk about the law of the land.
The expression has become quite a cliche.
But people can't be made to integrate, socialize (the two are inseparable by Southern standards) by law.
They didn't seem to be able to think of any.
A Virginia judge a while back cited a Roman jurist to the effect that ten years might be a reasonable length of time for such a change.
But I suspect that the old Roman was referring to change made under military occupation--the sort of change which Tacitus was talking about when he said, They make a desert, and call it peace (Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Moreover, the law of the land is not irrevocable;
it can be changed;
it has been, many times.
Mr. Justice Taney's Dred Scott decision in 1857 was unpopular in the North, and soon became a dead letter.
Prohibition was the law of the land, but it was unpopular (how many of us oldsters took up drinking in prohibition days, drinking was so gay, so fashionable, especially in the sophisticated Northeast!
) and was repealed.
The cliche loses its talismanic virtue in the light of a little history.
The Declaration of Independence says that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The phrase consent of the governed needs a hard look.
How do we define it?
Is the consent of the governed a numerical majority?
Calhoun dealt with this question in his Disquisition On Government.
Who will say that our country is even now a homogeneous community?
That regional peculiarities do not still exist?
That the Court order does not unequally affect the Southern region?
Who will deny that in a vast portion of the South the Federal action is incompatible with the Jeffersonian concept of the consent of the governed?
Circumstances alter cases.
A friend of mine in New Mexico said the Court order had caused no particular trouble out there, that all had gone as merry as a marriage bell.
He seemed a little surprised that it should have caused any particular trouble anywhere.
I murmured something about a possible difference between New Mexico's history and Mississippi's.
One can meet with aloofness almost anywhere: the THIDIU viewpoint, It Doesn't Affect Us!
Southern Liberals (there are a good many)--especially if they're rich--often exhibit blithe insouciance.
The trouble here is that it's almost too easy to take the high moral ground when it doesn't cost you anything.
You've already sent your daughter to Miss X's select academy for girls and your son to Mr. Y's select academy for boys, and you can be as liberal as you please with strict impunity.
If there's no suitable academy in your own neighborhood, there's always New England.
New England academies welcome fugitives from the provinces, South as well as West.
They may even enroll a colored student or two for show, though he usually turns out to be from Thailand, or any place other than the American South.
It would be interesting to know how much integration there is in the famous, fashionable colleges and prep schools of New England.
A recent newspaper report said there were five Negroes in the 1960 graduating class of nearly one thousand at Yale;
that is, about one-half of one per cent, which looks pretty tokenish to me, especially in an institution which professes to be national.
I must confess that I prefer the Liberal who is personally affected, who is willing to send his own children to a mixed school as proof of his faith.
I leave out of account the question of the best interests of the children, the question of what their best interests really are.
I'm talking about the grand manner of the Liberal--North and South--who is not affected personally.
If these people were denied a voice (do they have a moral right to a voice?
), what voices would be left?
Who is involved willy nilly?
Well, after everybody has followed the New England pattern of segregating one's children into private schools, only the poor folks are left.
And it is precisely in this poorer economic class that one finds, and has always found, the most racial friction.
A dear, respected friend of mine, who like myself grew up in the South and has spent many years in New England, said to me not long ago: I can't forgive New England for rejecting all complicity.
Being a teacher of American literature, I remembered Whittier's Massachusetts To Virginia, where he said: But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown.
There is a legend (Hawthorne records it in his English Notebooks.
And one finds it again in Thomas Nelson Page) to the effect that the Mayflower on its second voyage brought a cargo of Negro slaves.
Whether historically a fact or not, the legend has a certain symbolic value.
Complicity is an embarrassing word.
It is something which most of us try to get out from under.
Like the cowboy in Stephen Crane's Blue Hotel, we run around crying, Well, I didn't do anything, did I?
Robert Penn Warren puts it this way in Brother To Dragons: The recognition of complicity is the beginning of innocence, where innocence, I think, means about the same thing as redemption.
A man must be able to say, Father, I have sinned, or there is no hope for him.
Lincoln understood this better than most when he said in his Second Inaugural that God gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came.
He also spoke of the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years in unrequited toil.
Lincoln was historian and economist enough to know that a substantial portion of this wealth had accumulated in the hands of the descendants of New Englanders engaged in the slave trade.
After how many generations is such wealth (mounting all the while through the manipulations of high finance) purified of taint?
It is a question which New Englanders long ago put out of their minds.
But didn't they get off too easy?
The slaves never shared in their profits, while they did share, in a very real sense, in the profits of the slave-owners: they were fed, clothed, doctored, and so forth;
they were the beneficiaries of responsible, paternalistic care.
Emerson--Platonist, idealist, doctrinaire--sounded a high Transcendental note in his Boston Hymn, delivered in 1863 in the Boston Music Hall amidst thundering applause: Pay ransom to the owner and fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner?
The slave is owner, And ever was.
Pay him!
It is the abstractionism, the unrealism, of the pure idealist.
It ignores the sordid financial aspects (quite conveniently, too, for his audience, who could indulge in moral indignation without visible, or even conscious, discomfort, their money from the transaction having been put away long ago in a good antiseptic brokerage).
Like Pilate, they had washed their hands.
But can one, really?
Can God be mocked, ever, in the long run?
New Englanders were a bit sensitive on the subject of their complicity in Negro slavery at the time of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, as Jefferson explained in his Autobiography:
The clause reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it.
Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures;
for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.
But that was a long time ago.
The New England conscience became desensitized.
George W. Cable (naturalized New Englander), writing in 1889 from Paradise Road, Northampton (lovely symbolic name), agitated continuously the Southern question.
It was nice to be able to isolate it.
New England, as everyone knows, has long been schoolmaster to the Nation.
There one finds concentrated in a comparatively small area the chief universities, colleges, and preparatory schools of the United States.
Why should this be so?
It is true that New England, more than any other section, was dedicated to education from the start.
But I think that something more than this is involved.
How did it happen, for example, that the state university, that great symbol of American democracy, failed to flourish in New England as it did in other parts of the country?
Isn't it a bit odd that the three states of Southern New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) have had state institutions of university status only in the very recent past, these institutions having previously been A & M colleges?
Is it not ironical that Roger Williams's state, Rhode Island, should have been the very last of the forty-eight to establish a state university?
The state universities of Maine, New Hampshire, And Vermont are older and more respectable;
they had less immigration to contend with.
A Yale historian, writing a few years ago in The Yale Review, said: We in New England have long since segregated our children.
He was referring not only to the general college situation but more especially to the preparatory schools.
And what a galaxy of those adorns that fair land!
I don't propose to go into their history, but I have one or two surmises.
One is that they were established, or gained eminence, under pressure provided by these same immigrants, from whom the old families wished to segregate their children.
In the early days of a homogeneous population, the public school was quite satisfactory.
Among the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature more than half are practically unknown to readers of English.
Of these there are surely few that would be more rewarding discoveries than Verner Von Heidenstam, the Swedish poet and novelist who received the award in 1916 and whose centennial was celebrated two years ago.
Equally a master of prose and verse, he recreates the glory of Sweden in the past and continues it into the present.
In the following sketch we shall present a brief outline of his life and let him as much as possible speak for himself.
Heidenstam was born in 1859, of a prosperous family.
On his father's side he was of German descent, on his mother's he came of the old Swedish nobility.
The family estate was situated near Vadstena on Lake Vattern in south central Sweden.
It is a lonely, rather desolate region, but full of legendary and historic associations.
As a boy in a local school he was shy and solitary, absorbed in his fondness for nature and his visions of Sweden's ancient glory.
He liked to fancy himself as a chieftain and to dress for the part.
Being somewhat delicate in health, at the age of sixteen he was sent to Southern Europe, for which he at once developed a passion, so that he spent nearly all of the following ten years abroad, at first in Italy, then in Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Palestine.
In one of his summers at home he married, to the great disapproval of his father, who objected because of his extreme youth.
Deciding to become a painter, he entered the studio of Gerome in Paris, where he enjoyed the life of the artists, but soon found that whatever talent he might have did not lie in that direction.
He gives us an account of this in his lively and humorous poem, The Happy Artists.
I scanned the world through printed symbol swart, And through the beggar's rags I strove to see The inner man.
I looked unceasingly With my cold mind and with my burning heart.
In this final line, we have the key to his nature.
Few writers have better understood their deepest selves.
Heidenstam could never be satisfied by surface.
It may, however, be noted that his gift for color and imagery must have been greatly stimulated by his stay in Paris.
The first result of Heidenstam's long sojourn abroad was a volume of poems, Pilgrimage And Wander-Years (Vallfart och Vandringsar), published in 1888.
It was a brilliant debut, so much so indeed that it aroused a new vitality in the younger poets, as did Byron's Childe Harold.
Professor Fredrik Book, Sweden's foremost critic of the period, acclaims it as follows: In this we have the verse of a painter;
strongly colorful, plastic, racy, vivid.
In a bold, sometimes careless, form there is nothing academic;
all is seen and felt and experienced, the observation is sharp and the imagination lively.
The young poet-painter reproduces the French life of the streets;
he tells stories of the Thousand and One Nights, and conjures up before us the bazaars of Damascus.
In the care-free indolence of the East he sees the last reflection of the old happy existence, and for that reason he loves it.
And yet amid all the gay hedonism in Pilgrimage And Wander-Years is a cycle of short poems, Thoughts In Loneliness, filled with brooding, melancholy, and sombre longing.
Of the longer pieces of the volume none is so memorable as Nameless And Immortal, which at once took rank among the finest poems ever written in the Swedish language.
It celebrates the unknown architect who designed the temple of Neptune at Paestum, next to the Parthenon the noblest example of Grecian classic style now in existence.
On the eve of his return to their native Naxos he speaks with his wife of the masterpiece which rises before them in its completed perfection.
The supreme object of their lives is now fulfilled, says the wife, her husband has achieved immortality.
Not so, he answers, it is not the architect but the temple that is immortal.
The man's true reputation is his work.
The short poems grouped at the end of the volume as Thoughts in Loneliness is, as Professor Book indicated, in sharp contrast with the others.
It consists of fragmentary personal revelations, such as The Spark: There is a spark dwells deep within my soul.
To get it out into the daylight's glow Is my life's aim both first and last, the whole.
It slips away, it burns and tortures me.
That little spark is all the wealth I know, That little spark is my life's misery.
A dominant motive is the poet's longing for his homeland and its boyhood associations: Not men-folk, but the fields where I would stray, The stones where as a child I used to play.
He is utterly disappointed in himself and in the desultory life he has been leading.
What he really wants is to find a sacred cause to which he can honestly devote himself.
This restless individualism found its answer when he returned to live nearly all the rest of his life in Sweden.
His cause was to commemorate the glory of her past and to incite her people to perpetuate it in the present.
He did not, however, find himself at once.
His next major work, completed in 1892, was a long fantastic epic in prose, entitled Hans Alienus, which Professor Book describes as a monument on the grave of his carefree and indolent youth.
The hero, who is himself, is represented as a pilgrim in the storied lands of the East, a sort of Faustus type, who, to quote from Professor Book again, even in the pleasure gardens of Sardanapalus can not cease from his painful search after the meaning of life.
He is driven back by his yearning to the wintry homeland of his fathers in the forest of Tiveden.
From this time on Heidenstam proceeded to find his deeper self.
By the death of his father in 1888 he had come into possession of the family estate and had re-assumed its traditions.
He did not, however, settle back into acquiescence with things as they were.
Like his friend and contemporary August Strindberg he had little patience with collective mediocrity.
He saw Sweden as a country of smug and narrow provincialism, indifferent to the heroic spirit of its former glory.
Strindberg's remedy for this condition was to tear down the old structures and build anew from the ground up.
Heidenstam's conception, on the contrary, was to revive the present by the memories of the past.
Whether in prose or poetry, all of Heidenstam's later work was concerned with Sweden.
With the first of a group of historical novels, The Charles Men (Karolinerna), published in 1897-8, he achieved the masterpiece of his career.
In scope and power it can only be compared to Tolstoy's War And Peace.
About one-third as long, it is less intimate and detailed, but better coordinated, more concise and more dramatic.
Though it centers around the brilliant and enigmatic figure of Charles 12, the true hero is not finally the king himself.
Hence the title of the book, referring to the soldiers and subjects of the king;
on the fatal battlefield of Poltava, to quote from the novel, the wreath he twined for himself slipped down upon his people.
The Charles Men consists not of a connected narrative but of a group of short stories, each depicting a special phase of the general subject.
Somewhat uneven in interest for an average reader, eight or ten of these are among the finest of their kind in literature.
They comprise a great variety of scene and interest: grim episodes of war, idyllic interludes, superb canvases of world-shaking events, and delightfully humorous sketches of odd characters.
The general effect is tragic.
Almost nothing is said of Charles' spectacular victories, the central theme being the heroic loyalty of the Swedish people to their idolized king in misfortune and defeat.
To carry out this exalted conception the author has combined the vivid realism and imaginative power we have noticed in his early poetry and carried them out on a grand scale.
His peculiar gift, as had been suggested before, is his intensity.
George Meredith has said that fervor is the core of style.
Of few authors is this more true than of Heidenstam.
The Charles Men has a tremendous range of characters, of common folk even more than of major figures.
The career of Charles 12, is obviously very similar to that of Napoleon.
His ideal was Alexander of Macedon, as Napoleon's was Julius Caesar.
His purpose, however, was not to establish an empire, but to assert the principle of divine justice.
Each aspired to be a god in human form, but with each it was a different kind of god.
Each failed catastrophically in an invasion of Russia and each brought ruin on the country that worshipped him.
Each is still glorified as a national hero.
The first half of The Charles Men, ending on the climax of the battle of Poltava in 1709, is more dramatically coherent than the second.
After the collapse of that desperate and ill-fated campaign the character of the king degenerated for a time into a futility that was not merely pitiable but often ridiculous.
Like Napoleon, he was the worst of losers.
There are, however, some wonderful chapters at the beginning of the second part, concerning the reactions of the Swedes in adversity.
Then more than ever before did they show their fortitude and patient cheerfulness.
This comes out in When The Bells Ring, which describes the rallying of the peasants in southern Sweden to repel an invasion by the Danes.
In The King's Ride, Charles breaks out of a long period of petulance and inertia, regains his old self, escapes from Turkey, and finally reaches his own land after an absence of eighteen years.
He finds it in utter misery and desolation.
All his people ask for is no more war.
But he plunges into yet another, this time with Norway, and is killed in an assault on the fortress of Fredrikshall, being only thirty-six years of age when he died.
He had become king at fifteen.
Then suddenly there was a tremendous revulsion of popular feeling.
From being a hated tyrant and madman he was now the symbol of all that was noblest and best in the history of Sweden.
This is brought out in the next to last chapter of the book, A Hero's Funeral, written in the form of an impassioned prose poem.
Slowly the procession of warriors and statesmen passes through the snow beside the black water and into the brilliantly lighted cathedral, the shrine of so many precious memories.
The guns are fired, the hymns are sung, and the body of Charles is carried down to the vault and laid beside the tombs of his ancestors.
As he had longed to be, he became the echo of a saga.
Heidenstam wrote four other works of fiction about earlier figures revered in Swedish memory.
Excellent in their way, they lack the wide appeal of The Charles Men, and need not detain us here.
It is different with his volume The Swedes And Their Chieftains (Svenskarna och deras Hovdingar), a history intended for the general reader and particularly suited for high school students.
Admirably written, it is a perfect introduction to Swedish history for readers of other countries.
Some of the earlier episodes have touches of the supernatural, as suited to the legendary background.
These are suggestive of Selma Lagerlof.
Especially touching is the chapter, The Little Sister, about a king's daughter who became a nun in the convent of St. Birgitta.
The record teems with romance and adventure.
Gustaf Vasa is a superb example, and Charles 10, the conqueror of Denmark, hardly less so.
Of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles 12, it is unnecessary to speak.
Today the private detective will also investigate insurance claims or handle divorce cases, but his primary function remains what it has always been, to assist those who have money in their unending struggle with those who have not.
It is from this unpromising background that the fictional private detective was recruited.
The mythological private eye differs from his counterpart in real life in two essential ways.
On the one hand, he does not work for a large agency, but is almost always self-employed.
As a free-lance investigator, the fictional detective is responsible to no one but himself and his client.
For this reason, he appears as an independent and self-reliant figure, whose rugged individualism need not be pressed into the mold of a 9 to 5 routine.
On the other hand, the fictional detective does not break strikes or handle divorce cases;
no client would ever think of asking him to do such things.
Whatever his original assignment, the fictional private eye ends up by investigating and solving a crime, usually a murder.
Operating as a one man police force in fact if not in name, he is at once more independent and more dedicated than the police themselves.
He catches criminals not merely because he is paid to do so (frequently he does not receive a fee at all), but because he enjoys his work, because he firmly believes that murder must be punished.
Thus the fictional detective is much more than a simple businessman.
He is, first and foremost, a defender of public morals, a servant of society.
It is this curious blend of rugged individualism and public service which accounts for the great appeal of the mythological detective.
By virtue of his self-reliance, his individualism and his freedom from external restraint, the private eye is a perfect embodiment of the middle class conception of liberty, which amounts to doing what you please and let the devil take the hindmost.
At the same time, because the personal code of the detective coincides with the legal dictates of his society, because he likes to catch criminals, he is in middle class eyes a virtuous man.
In this way, the private detective gets the best of two possible worlds.
He is an individualist but not an anarchist;
he is a public servant but not a cop.
In short, the fictional private eye is a specialized version of Adam Smith's ideal entrepreneur, the man whose private ambitions must always and everywhere promote the public welfare.
In the mystery story, as in The Wealth of Nations, individualism and the social good are two sides of the same benevolent coin.
There is only one catch to this idyllic arrangement: Adam Smith was wrong.
Not only did the ideal entrepreneur not produce the greatest good for the greatest number, he ended by destroying himself, by giving birth to monopoly capitalism.
The rise of the giant corporations in Western Europe and the United States dates from the period 1880-1900.
Now, although the roots of the mystery story in serious literature go back as far as Balzac, Dickens, and Poe, it was not until the closing decades of the 19th century that the private detective became an established figure in popular fiction.
Sherlock Holmes, the ancestor of all private eyes, was born during the 1890s.
Thus the transformation of Adam Smith's ideal entrepreneur into a mythological detective coincides closely with the decline of the real entrepreneur in economic life.
Driven from the marketplace by the course of history, our hero disguises himself as a private detective.
The birth of the myth compensates for the death of the ideal.
Even on the fictional level, however, the contradictions which give rise to the mystery story are not fully resolved.
The individualism and public service of the private detective both stem from his dedication to a personal code of conduct: he enforces the law without being told to do so.
The private eye is therefore a moral man;
but his morality rests upon that of his society.
The basic premise of all mystery stories is that the distinction between good and bad coincides with the distinction between legal and illegal.
Unfortunately, this assumption does not always hold good.
As capitalism in the 20th century has become increasingly dependent upon force and violence for its survival, the private detective is placed in a serious dilemma.
If he is good, he may not be legal;
if he is legal, he may not be good.
It is the gradual unfolding and deepening of this contradiction which creates the inner dialectic of the evolution of the mystery story.
With the advent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, the development of the modern private detective begins.
Sherlock Holmes is not merely an individualist;
he is very close to being a mental case.
A brief list of the great detective's little idiosyncrasies would provide Dr. Freud with ample food for thought.
Holmes is addicted to the use of cocaine and other refreshing stimulants;
he is prone to semi-catatonic trances induced by the playing of the vioiln;
he is a recluse, an incredible egotist, a confirmed misogynist.
Holmes rebels against the social conventions of his day not on moral but rather on aesthetic grounds.
His eccentricity begins as a defense against boredom.
It was in order to avoid the stuffy routine of middle class life that Holmes became a detective in the first place.
As he informs Watson, My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.
These little problems help me to do so.
Holmes is a public servant, to be sure;
but the society which he serves bores him to tears.
The curious relationship between Holmes and Scotland Yard provides an important clue to the deeper significance of his eccentric behavior.
Although he is perfectly willing to cooperate with Scotland Yard, Holmes has nothing but contempt for the intelligence and mentality of the police.
They for their part are convinced that Holmes is too unorthodox and theoretical to make a good detective.
Why do the police find Holmes unorthodox?
On the face of it, it is because he employs deductive techniques alien to official police routine.
Another, more interesting explanation, is hinted at by Watson when he observes on several occasions that Holmes would have made a magnificent criminal.
The great detective modestly agrees.
Watson's insight is verified by the mysterious link between Holmes and his arch-opponent, Dr. Moriarty.
The two men resemble each other closely in their cunning, their egotism, their relentlessness.
The first series of Sherlock Holmes adventures ends with Holmes and Moriarty grappling together on the edge of a cliff.
They are presumed to have plunged to a common grave in this fatal embrace.
Linked to Holmes even in death, Moriarty represents the alter-ego of the great detective, the image of what our hero might have become were he not a public servant.
Just as Holmes the eccentric stands behind Holmes the detective, so Holmes the potential criminal lurks behind both.
In the modern English whodunnit, this insinuation of latent criminality in the detective himself has almost entirely disappeared.
Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Whimsey (the respective creations of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers) have retained Holmes' egotism but not his zest for life and eccentric habits.
Poirot and his counterparts are perfectly respectable people;
it is true that they are also extremely dull.
Their dedication to the status quo has been affirmed at the expense of the fascinating but dangerous individualism of a Sherlock Holmes.
The latter's real descendents were unable to take root in England;
they fled from the Victorian parlor and made their way across the stormy Atlantic.
In the American hardboiled detective story of the '20s and '30s, the spirit of the mad genius from Baker Street lives on.
Like Holmes, the American private eye rejects the social conventions of his time.
But unlike Holmes, he feels his society to be not merely dull but also corrupt.
Surrounded by crime and violence everywhere, the hardboiled private eye can retain his purity only through a life of self-imposed isolation.
His alienation is far more acute than Holmes';
he is not an eccentric but rather an outcast.
With Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, alienation is represented on a purely physical plane.
Wolfe refuses to ever leave his own house, and spends most of his time drinking beer and playing with orchids.
More profound and more disturbing, however, is the moral isolation of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.
In a society where everything is for sale, Marlowe is the only man who cannot be bought.
His tough honesty condemns him to a solitary and difficult existence.
Beaten, bruised and exhausted, he pursues the elusive killer through the demi-monde of high society and low morals, always alone, always despised.
In the end, he gets his man, but no one seems to care;
virtue is its own and only reward.
A similar tone of underlying futility and despair pervades the spy thrillers of Eric Ambler and dominates the most famous of all American mystery stories, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.
Sam Spade joins forces with a band of adventurers in search of a priceless jeweled statue of a falcon;
but when the bird is found at last, it turns out to be a fake.
Now the detective must save his own skin by informing on the girl he loves, who is also the real murderer.
For Sam Spade, neither crime nor virtue pays;
moreover, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two.
Because the private eye intends to save society in spite of himself, he invariably finds himself in trouble with the police.
The latter are either too stupid to catch the killer or too corrupt to care.
In either case, they do not appreciate the private detective's zeal.
Perry Mason and Hamilton Burger, Nero Wolfe and Inspector Cramer spend more time fighting each other than they do in looking for the criminal.
Frequently enough, the police are themselves in league with the killer;
Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest provides a classic example of this theme.
But even when the police are honest, they do not trust the private eye.
He is, like Phillip Marlowe, too alienated to be reliable.
Finally, in The Maltese Falcon among others, the clash between detective and police is carried to its logical conclusion: Sam Spade becomes the chief murder suspect.
In order to exonerate himself, he is compelled to find the real criminal, who happens to be his girl friend.
What was only a vague suspicion in the case of Sherlock Holmes now appears as a direct accusation: the private eye is in danger of turning into his opposite.
It is the growing contradiction between individualism and public service in the mystery story which creates this fatal dilemma.
By upholding his own personal code of behavior, the private detective has placed himself in opposition to a society whose fabric is permeated with crime and corruption.
That society responds by condemning the private eye as a threat to the status quo, a potential criminal.
If the detective insists upon retaining his personal standards, he must now do so in conscious defiance of his society.
He must, in short, cease to be a detective and become a rebel.
On the other hand, if he wishes to continue in his chosen profession, he must abandon his own code and sacrifice his precious individualism.
Dashiell Hammett resolved this contradiction by ceasing to write mystery stories and turning to other pursuits.
His successors have adopted the opposite alternative.
In order to save the mystery story, they have converted the private detective into an organization man.
The first of two possible variations on this theme is symbolized by Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.
At first glance, this hero seems to be more rather than less of an individualist than any of his predecessors.
For Hammer, nothing is forbidden.
He kills when he pleases, takes his women where he finds them and always acts as judge, jury and executioner rolled into one.
It will be shown that the objectives of the cooperative people in an organization determine the type of network required, because the type of network functions according to the characteristics of the messages enumerated in Table 1.
Great stress is placed on the role that the monitoring of information sending plays in maintaining the effectiveness of the network.
By monitoring, we mean some system of control over the types of information sent from the various centers.
As a word of caution, we should be aware that in actual practice no message is purely one of the four types, question, command, statement, or exclamation.
For example, suppose a man wearing a $200 watch, driving a 1959 Rolls Royce, stops to ask a man on the sidewalk, What time is it?
This sentence would have most of the characteristics of a question, but it has some of the characteristics of a statement because the questioner has conveyed the fact that he has no faith in his own timepiece or the one attached to his car.
If the man on the sidewalk is surprised at this question, it has served as an exclamation.
Also, since the man questioned feels a strong compulsion to answer (and thereby avoid the consequences of being thought queer) the question has assumed some measurable properties of a command.
However, for convenience we will stick to the idea that information can be classified according to Table 1.
On this basis, certain extreme kinds of networks will be discussed for illustrative purposes.
Networks illustrating some special types of organization
the cocktail party.
Presumably a cocktail party is expected to fulfill the host's desire to get together a number of people who are inadequately acquainted and thereby arrange for bringing the level of acquaintance up to adequacy for future cooperative endeavors.
The party is usually in a room small enough so that all guests are within sight and hearing of one another.
The information is furnished by each of the guests, is sent by oral broadcasting over the air waves, and is received by the ears.
Since the air is a continuum, the network of communication remains intact regardless of the positions or motions of the points (the people) in the net.
As shown in Figure 1, there is a connection for communication between every pair of points.
This, and other qualifications, make the cocktail party the most complete and most chaotic communication system ever dreamed up.
All four types of message listed in Table 1 are permitted, although decorum and cocktail tradition require holding the commands to a minimum, while exclamations having complimentary intonations are more than customarily encouraged.
The completeness of the connections provide that, for N people, there are Af lines of communication between the pairs, which can become a large number (1,225) for a party of fifty guests.
Looking at the diagram, we see that Af connection lines come in to each member.
Thus the cocktail party would appear to be the ideal system, but there is one weakness.
In spite of the dreams of the host for oneness in the group, the Af incoming messages for each guest overload his receiving system beyond comprehension if N exceeds about six.
The crowd consequently breaks up into temporary groups ranging in size from two to six, with a half-life for the cluster ranging from three to twenty minutes.
The rural community.
We consider a rural community as an assemblage of inhabited dwellings whose configuration is determined by the location and size of the arable land sites necessary for family subsistence.
We assume for this illustration that the size of the land plots is so great that the distance between dwellings is greater than the voice can carry and that most of the communication is between nearest neighbors only, as shown in Figure 2.
Information beyond nearest neighbor is carried second-, third-, and fourth-hand as a distortable rumor.
In Figure 2, the points in the network are designated by a letter accompanied by a number.
The numbers indicate the number of nearest neighbors.
It will be noted that point f has seven nearest neighbors, h and e have six, and p has only one, while the remaining points have intermediate numbers.
A point like p gets information directly from n, but all information beyond n is indirectly relayed through n.
Since the hazards of poor communication are so great, p can be justified as a habitable site only on the basis of unusual productivity such as is made available by a waterfall for milling purposes, a mine, or a sugar maple camp.
Location theorists have given these matters much consideration.
Military organizations.
The networks for military communications are one of the best examples of networks which not only must be changed with the changes in objectives but also must be changed with the addition of new machines of war.
They also furnish proof that, in modern war, message sending must be monitored.
Without monitoring, a military hookup becomes a noisy party.
The need for monitoring became greater when radio was adopted for military signaling.
Alexander the Great, who used runners as message carriers, did not have to worry about having every officer in his command hear what he said and having hundreds of them comment at once.
As time has passed and science has progressed, the speed of military vehicles has increased, the range of missiles has been extended, the use of target-hunting noses on the projectiles has been adopted, and the range and breadth of message sending has increased.
Next to the old problem of the slowness of decision making, network structure seems to be paramount, and without monitoring no network has value.
On the parade ground the net may be similar to that shown in Figure 3.
The monitoring is the highest and most restrictive of any organization in existence.
No questions, statements, or explanations are permitted--only commands.
Commands go only from an officer to the man of nearest lower rank.
The same command is repeated as many times as there are levels in rank from general to corporal.
All orders originate with the officer of highest rank and terminate with action of the men in the ranks.
Even the officer in charge, be it a captain (for small display) or a general, is restrained by monitoring.
This is done for simplicity of commands and to bring the hidden redundancy up to where misunderstanding has almost zero possibility.
The commands are specified by the military regulations;
are few in number, briefly worded, all different in sound;
and are combinable into sequences which permit any marching maneuver that could be desired on a parade ground.
This monitoring is necessary because, on a parade ground, everyone can hear too much, and without monitoring a confused social event would develop.
With troops dispersed on fields of battle rather than on the parade ground, it may seem that a certain amount of monitoring is automatically enforced by the lines of communication.
Years ago this was true, but with the replacement of wires or runners by radio and radar (and perhaps television), these restrictions have disappeared and now again too much is heard.
In contrast to cocktail parties, military organizations, even in the field, are more formal.
In the extreme and oversimplified example suggested in Figure 3, the organization is more easily understood and more predictable in behavior.
A military organization has an objective chosen by the higher command.
This objective is adhered to throughout the duration of the action.
The connective system, or network, is tailored to meet the requirements of the objective, and it is therefore not surprising that a military body acting as a single coordinated unit has a different communication network than a factory, a college, or a rural village.
The assumptions upon which the example shown in Figure 3 is based are: (A) One man can direct about six subordinates if the subordinates are chosen carefully so that they do not need too much personal coaching, indoctrinating, etc..
(B) A message runs too great a risk of being distorted if it is to be relayed more than about six consecutive times.
(C) Decisions of a general kind are made by the central command.
And (D) all action of a physical kind pertinent to the mission is relegated to the line of men on the lower rank.
These assumptions lead to an organization with one man at the top, six directly under him, six under each of these, and so on until there are six levels of personnel.
The number of people acting as one body by this scheme gives a surprisingly large army of 55,987 men.
This organizational network would be of no avail if there were no regulations pertaining to the types of message sent.
Of types of message listed in Table 1, commands and statements are the only ones sent through the vertical network shown in Figure 3.
A further regulation is that commands always go down, unaccompanied by statements, and statements always go up, unaccompanied by commands.
Questions and, particularly, exclamations are usually channeled along informal, horizontal lines not indicated in Figure 3 and seldom are carried beyond the nearest neighbor.
It will readily be seen that in this suggested network (not materially different from some of the networks in vogue today) greater emphasis on monitoring is implied than is usually put into practice.
Furthermore, the network in Figure 3 is only the basic net through which other networks pertaining to logistics and the like are interlaced.
Not discussed here are some military problems of modern times such as undersea warfare, where the surveillance, sending, transmitting, and receiving are all so inadequate that networks and decision making are not the bottlenecks.
Such problems are of extreme interest as well as importance and are so much like fighting in a rain forest or guerrilla warfare at night in tall grass that we might have to re-examine primitive conflicts for what they could teach.
A team for useful research.
We hear equally fervent concern over the belief that we have not enough generalists who can see the over-all picture and combine our national skills and knowledge for useful purposes.
This problem of the optimum balance in the relative numbers of generalists and specialists can be investigated on a communicative network basis.
Since the difficulty of drawing the net is great, we will merely discuss it.
First, we realize that a pure specialist does not exist.
But, for practical purposes, we have people who can be considered as such.
or persons in the social sciences in the field of anthropology, studying the lung capacity of seven Andean Indians.
So we see that a specialist is a man who knows more and more about less and less as he develops, as contrasted to the generalist, who knows less and less about more and more.
American democratic thought, pointed up the relation between the Protestant movement in this country and the development of a social religion, which he called the American Democratic Faith.
Those familiar with his work will remember that he placed the incipience of the democratic faith at around 1850.
And he describes it as a balanced polarity between the notions of the free individual and what he called the fundamental law.
I want to say more about Gabriel's so-called fundamental law.
But first I want to quote him on the relationship that he found between religion and politics in this country and what happened to it.
He points out that from the time of Jackson on through World War 1, evangelical Protestantism was a dominant influence in the social and political life of America.
He terms this early enthusiasm Romantic Christianity and concludes that its similarity to democratic beliefs of that day is so great that the doctrine of liberty seems but a secular version of its counterpart in evangelical Protestantism.
Let me quote him even more fully, for his analysis is important to my theme.
He specifies, in the middle period of the Nineteenth Century it was colored by Christian supernaturalism, in the Twentieth Century it was affected by naturalism.
But in every period it has been humanism.
And let me add, utopianism, also.
Some fourteen or fifteen years ago, in an essay I called The Leader Follows--Where?
I used his polarity to illustrate what I thought had happened to us in that form of liberalism we call Progressivism.
It seemed to me that the liberals had scrapped the balanced polarity and reposed both liberty and the fundamental law in the common man.
That is to say Gabriel's fundamental law had been so much modified by this time that it was neither fundamental nor law any more.
It is a weakness of Gabriel's analysis that he never seems to realize that his so-called fundamental law had already been cut loose from its foundations when it was adapted to democracy.
And with Progressivism the Religion of Humanity was replacing what Gabriel called Christian supernaturalism.
And the common man was developing mythic power, or charisma, on his own.
The socialism implicit in the slogan of the Roosevelt Revolution, freedom from want and fear, seems a far cry from the individualism of the First Amendment to the Constitution, or of the Jacksonian frontier.
What had happened to the common man?
French Egalitarianism had had only nominal influence in this country before the days of Popularism.
The riotous onrush of industrialism after the War for Southern Independence and the general secular drift to the Religion of Humanity, however, prepared the way for a reception of the French Revolution's socialistic offspring of one sort of another.
The first of which to find important place in our federal government was the graduated income tax under Wilson.
However, it is important to trace the philosophy of the French Revolution to its sources to understand the common democratic origin of individualism and socialism and the influence of the latter on the former.
That John Locke's philosophy of the social contract fathered the American Revolution with its Declaration of Independence, I believe, we generally accept.
Yet, after Rousseau had given the social contract a new twist with his notion of the General Will, the same philosophy, it may be said, became the idea source of the French Revolution also.
The importance of Rousseau's twist has not always been clear to us, however.
This notion of the General Will gave rise to the Commune of Paris in the Revolution and later brought Napoleon to dictatorship.
This is important to understanding the position that doctrinaire liberals found themselves in after World War 2, and our great democratic victory that brought no peace.
The long road that had taken liberals in this country into the social religion of democracy, into a worship of man, led logically to the Marxist dream of a classless society under a Socialist State.
And the ussr existed as the revolutionary experiment in radical socialism, the ultimate exemplar.
And by the time the war ended, liberal leadership in this country was spiritually Marxist.
We will recall that the still confident liberals of the Truman administration gathered with other Western utopians in San Francisco to set up the legal framework, finally and at last, to rationalize war--to rationalize want and fear--out of the world: the United Nations.
We of the liberal-led world got all set for peace and rehabilitation.
Then suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of another fight, an irrational, an indecent, an undeclared and immoral war with our strongest (and some had thought noblest) ally.
During the next five years the leaders of the Fair Deal reluctantly backed down from the optimistic expectations of the New Deal.
In 1952, it will be remembered, the G.O.P. without positive program campaigned on the popular disillusionment with liberal leadership and won overwhelmingly.
All of this, I know, is recent history familiar to you.
But I have been at some pains to review it as the drama of the common man, to point up what happened to him under Eisenhower's leadership.
A perceptive journalist, Sam Lubell, has phrased it in the title of one of his books as the revolt of the moderates.
He opens his discourse, however, with a review of the Eisenhower inaugural festivities at which a sympathetic press had assembled its massive talents, all primed to catch some revelation of the emerging new age.
The show was colorful, indeed, exuberant, but the press for all its assiduity could detect no note of a fateful rendezvous with destiny.
Lubell offers his book as an explanation of why there was no clue.
I will assume that we are all aware of the continuing struggle, with its limited and precarious success, toward conservatism.
It has moved on various levels, it has been clamorous and confused.
Obviously there has been no agreement on what American conservatism is, or rather, what it should be.
For it was neglected, not to say nascent, when the struggle began.
I saw a piece the other day assailing William Buckley, author of Man And God at Yale and publisher of The National Review, as no conservative at all, but an old liberal.
I would agree with this view.
But I'm not here to define conservatism.
What I am here to do is to report on the gyrations of the struggle--a struggle that amounts to self-redefinition--to see if we can predict its future course.
One of the obvious conclusions we can make on the basis of the last election, I suppose, is that we, the majority, were dissatisfied with Eisenhower conservatism.
Though, to be sure, we gave Kennedy no very positive approval in the margin of his preferment.
This is, however, symptomatic of our national malaise.
But before I try to diagnose it, I would offer other evidence.
I will mention two volumes of specific comment on this malaise that appeared last year.
The earlier of them was an unofficial enterprise, sponsored by Life magazine, under the title of The National Purpose.
The contributors to this testament were all well-known: a former Democratic candidate for President, a New Deal poet, the magazine's chief editorial writer, two newspaper columnists, head of a national broadcasting company, a popular Protestant evangelist, etc..
What I want to point out here is that all of them are ex-liberals, or modified liberals, with perhaps one exception.
I suppose we might classify Billy Graham as an old liberal.
And I would further note that they all--with one exception again--sang in one key or another the same song.
Its refrain was: let us return to the individualistic democracy of our forefathers for our salvation.
Adlai Stevenson expressed some reservations about this return.
Others invoked technology and common sense.
Only Walter Lippman envisioned the possibility of our having outlived most of what we used to regard as the program of our national purposes.
But the most notable thing about the incantation of these ex-liberals was that the one-time shibboleth of socialism was conspicuously absent.
The second specific comment was the report of Eisenhower's Commission on National Goals, titled Goals For Americans.
They, perhaps, gave the pitch of their position in the preface where it was said that Eisenhower requested that the Commission be administered by the American Assembly of Columbia University, because it was non-partisan.
The Commission seems to represent the viewpoint of what I would call the unconscious liberal, but not unconscious enough, to invoke the now taboo symbolism of socialism.
And here again we hear the same refrain mentioned above: the paramount goal of the United States set long ago was to guard the rights of the individual, ensure his development, enlarge his opportunity.
This group is secularist and their program tends to be technological.
But it is the need to undertake these testaments that I would submit here as symptom of the common man's malaise.
And let me add Murray's new book as another symptom of it, particularly so in view of the attention Time magazine gave it when it came out recently.
Father Murray goes back to the Declaration of Independence, too, though I may add, with considerably more historical perception.
I will reserve discussion of it for a moment, however, to return to President Kennedy.
As symptomatic of the common man's malaise, he is most significant: a liberal and a Catholic, elected by the skin of his teeth.
Does that not suggest to you an uncertain and uneasy, not to say confused, state of the public mind?
What is the common man's complaint?
Let's take a panoramic look back over the course we have come.
Has not that way been lit always by the lamp of liberalism up until the turning back under Eisenhower?
And the basic character of that liberalism has been spiritual rather than economic.
Ralph Gabriel gave it the name of Protestant philosophy of Progress.
But there's a subjective side to that utopian outlook.
Does our society have a runaway, uncontrollable growth of technology which may end our civilization, or a normal, healthy growth?
Here there may be an analogy with cancer: we can detect cancers by their rapidly accelerating growth, determinable only when related to the more normal rate of healthy growth.
Should the accelerating growth of technology then warn us?
Noting such evidence is the first step;
and almost the only cure is early detection and removal.
One way to determine whether we have so dangerous a technology would be to check the strength of our society's organs to see if their functioning is as healthy as before.
So an objective look at our present procedures may move us to consider seriously this possibly analogous situation.
In any event, whether society may have cancer, or merely a virus infection, the disease, we shall find, is political, economical, social, and even medical.
Have not our physical abilities already deteriorated because of the more sedentary lives we are now living?
Hence the prime issue, as I see it, is whether a democratic or free society can master technology for the benefit of mankind, or whether technology will rule and develop its own society compatible with its own needs as a force of nature.
We are already committed to establishing man's supremacy over nature and everywhere on earth, not merely in the limited social-political-economical context we are fond of today.
Otherwise, we go on endlessly trying to draw the line, color and other, as to which kind of man we wish to see dominate.
We have proved so able to solve technological problems that to contend we cannot realize a universal goal in the immediate future is to be extremely shortsighted, if nothing else.
We must believe we have the ability to affect our own destinies: otherwise why try anything?
So in these pages the term technology is used to include any and all means which could amplify, project, or augment man's control over himself and over other men.
Naturally this includes all communication forms, e.g. languages, or any social, political, economic or religious structures employed for such control.
Properly mindful of all the cultures in existence today throughout the world, we must employ these resources without war or violent revolution.
If we were creating a wholly new society, we could insist that our social, political, economic and philosophic institutions foster rather than hamper man;
best growth.
But we cannot start off with a clean slate.
So we must first analyze our present institutions with respect to the effect of each on man's major needs.
Asked which institution most needs correction, I would say the corporation as it exists in America today.
At first glance this appears strange: of all people, was not America founded by rugged individualists who established a new way of life still inspiring undeveloped societies abroad?
But hear Harrison E. Salisbury, former Moscow correspondent of The New York Times, and author of To Moscow--And Beyond.
They were not diplomats or jazz musicians, or even organizers of reading-rooms and photo-montage displays, but rugged capitalist entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Hugh Cooper, Thomas Campbell, the International Harvester Co., and David W. Griffith.
This favorable image of America in the minds of Russian men and women is still there despite years of energetic anti-American propaganda
corporations now outmoded
Perhaps the public's present attitude toward business stems from the fact that the rugged capitalist entrepreneur no more exists in America.
In his stead is a milquetoast version known as the corporation.
But even if we cannot see the repulsive characteristics in this new image of America, foreigners can;
and our loss of prestige abroad is the direct result.
No amount of ballyhoo will cover up the sordid facts.
If we want respect from ourselves or others, we will have to earn it.
First, let us realize that whatever good this set-up achieved in earlier times, now the corporation per se cannot take economic leadership.
Businesses must develop as a result of the ideas, energies and ambitions of an individual having purpose and comprehensive ability within one mind.
When we forced individuals to assume the corporate structure by means of taxes and other legal statutes, we adopted what I would term pseudo-capitalism and so took a major step toward socialism.
The biggest loss, of course, was the individual's lessened desire and ability to give his services to the growth of his company and our economy.
Socialism, I grant, has a definite place in our society.
But let us not complain of the evils of capitalism by referring to a form that is not truly capitalistic.
Some forms of capitalism do indeed work--superb organizations, a credit to any society.
But the pseudo-capitalism which dictates our whole economy as well as our politics and social life, will not stand close scrutiny.
Its pretense to operate in the public interest is little more than a sham.
It serves only its own stockholders and poorly at that.
As a creative enterprise, its abilities are primarily in swallowing creative enterprises developed outside its own organization (an ability made possible by us, and almost mandatory).
As to benefits to employees, it is notorious for its callous disregard except where it depends on them for services.
The corporation in America is in reality our form of socialism, vying in a sense with the other socialistic form that has emerged within governmental bureaucracy.
So we are faced with a vast network of amorphous entities perpetuating themselves in whatever manner they can, without regard to the needs of society, controlling society and forcing upon it a regime representing only the corporation's needs for survival.
The corporation has a limited, specific place in our society.
Ideally speaking, it should be allowed to operate only where the public has a great stake in the continuity of supply or services, and where the actions of a single proprietor are secondary to the needs of society.
Thus, if corporations are not to run away with us, they must become quasi-governmental institutions, subject to public control and needs.
In all other areas, private initiative of the proprietorship type should be urged to produce the desired goods and services.
Proprietorship
Avoiding runaway technology can be done only by assuring a humane society;
and for this human beings must be firmly in control of the economics on which our society rests.
Such genuine human leadership the proprietorship can offer, corporations cannot.
It can project long-range goals for itself.
Corporations react violently to short-range stimuli, e.g., quarterly and annual dividend reports.
Proprietorships can establish a unity and integrity of control;
corporations, being more amorphous, cannot.
Proprietorships can establish a meaningful identity, representing a human personality, and thus establish sincere relationships with customers and community.
Corporations are apt by nature to be impersonal, inhumane, shortsighted and almost exclusively profit-motivated, a picture they could scarcely afford to present to the public.
The proprietor is able to create a leadership impossible in the corporate structure with its board of directors and stockholders.
Leadership is lacking in our society because it has no legitimate place to develop.
Men continuously at the head of growing enterprises can acquire experiences of the most varied, complicated and trying type so that at maturation they have developed the competence and willingness to accept the personal responsibility so sorely needed now.
Hence government must establish greater controls upon corporations so that their activities promote what is deemed essential to the national interest.
Proprietorships should get the tax advantages now accruing to corporations, e.g. the chance to accumulate capital so vital for growth.
Corporations should pay added taxes, to be used for educational purposes (not necessarily of the formal type).
The right to leave legacies should be substantially reduced and ultimately eliminated.
To perpetuate wealth control led by small groups of individuals who played no role in its creation prevents those with real initiative from coming to the fore, and is basically anti-democratic.
When the proprietor dies, the establishment should become a corporation until it is either acquired by another proprietor or the government decides to drop it.
Strikes threatening the security of the proprietorship, if internally motivated, prevent a healthy relationship.
Certainly external forces should not be applied arbitrarily out of mere power available to do so.
If we cannot stop warfare in our own economic system, how can we expect to abolish it internationally?
One kind of proprietorship
These proposals would go far toward creating the economic atmosphere favoring growth of the individual, who, in turn, would help us to cope with runaway technology.
Individual human strength is needed to pit against an inhuman condition.
The battle is not easy.
We are tempted to blame others for our problems rather than look them straight in the face and realize they are of our own making and possible of solution only by ourselves with the help of desperately needed, enlightened, competent leaders.
Persons developed in today's corporations cannot hope to serve here--a judgment based on experiences of my own in business and in activities outside.
In my own company, in effect a partnership, although legally a corporation, I have been able to do many things for my employees which normal corporations of comparable size and nature would have been unable to do.
Also, I am convinced that if my company were a sole proprietorship instead of a partnership, I would have been even abler to solve long-range problems for myself and my fellow-employees.
Any abilities I may have were achieved in their present shape from experience in sharing in the growth and control of my business, coupled with raising my family.
This combined experience, on a foundation of very average, I assure you, intelligence and background, has helped me do things many well-informed people would bet heavily against.
Perhaps a list of some of the practices of my company will help here.
The company grew out of efforts by two completely inexperienced men in their late twenties, neither having a formal education applicable to, or experience in, manufacturing or selling our type of articles.
From an initial investment of $1,200 in 1943, it has grown, with no additional capital investment, to a present value estimated by some as exceeding $10,000,000 (we don't disclose financial figures to the public).
Its growth continues steadily on a par with past growth;
and no limitation is in evidence.
Our pin-curl clips and self-locking nuts achieved dominance in just a few years time, despite substantial, well established competition.
During the last years of Woodrow Wilson's administration, a red scare developed in our country.
Many Americans reacted irrationally to the challenge of Russia and turned to the repression of ideas by force.
Postmaster General Burleson set about to protect the American people against radical propaganda that might be spread through the mails.
Attorney General Palmer made a series of raids that sent more than 4,000 so-called radicals to the jails, in direct violation of their constitutional rights.
Then, not many years later, the Un-American Activities Committee, under the leadership of Martin Dies, pilloried hundreds of decent, patriotic citizens.
Anyone who tried to remedy some of the most glaring defects in our form of democracy was denounced as a traitorous red whose real purpose was the destruction of our government.
This hysteria reached its height under the leadership of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Demagogues of this sort found communist bogeys lurking behind any new idea that would run counter to stereotyped notions.
New ideas were dangerous and must be repressed, no matter how.
Those who would suppress dangerous thoughts, credit ideas with high potency.
They give strict interpretation to William James' statement that Every idea that enters the mind tends to express itself.
They seem to believe that a person will act automatically as soon as he contacts something new.
Hence, the only defensible procedure is to repress any and every notion, unless it gives evidence that it is perfectly safe.
Despite this danger, however, we are informed on every hand that ideas, not machines, are our finest tools;
they are priceless even though they cannot be recorded on a ledger page;
they are the most valuable of commodities--and the most salable, for their demand far exceeds supply.
So all-important are ideas, we are told, that persons successful in business and happy in social life usually fall into two classes: those who invent new ideas of their own, and those who borrow, beg, or steal from others.
Seemingly, with an unrestricted flow of ideas, all will be well, and we are even assured that an idea a day will keep the sheriff away.
That, however, may also bring the police, if the thinking does not meet with social approval.
Criminals, as well as model citizens, exercise their minds.
Merely having a mental image of some sort is not the all-important consideration.
Of course, there must be clarity: a single distinct impression is more valuable than many fuzzy ones.
But clarity is not enough.
The writer took a class of college students to the state hospital for the mentally ill in St. Joseph, Missouri.
An inmate, a former university professor, expounded to us, logically and clearly, that someone was pilfering his thoughts.
He appealed to us to bring his case to the attention of the authorities that justice might be done.
Despite the clarity of his presentation, his idea was not of Einsteinian calibre.
True, ideas are important, perhaps life's most precious treasures.
But have we not gone overboard in stressing their significance?
Have we not actually developed idea worship?
Ideas we must have, and we seek them everywhere.
We scour literature for them;
here we find stored the wisdom of great minds.
But are all these works worthy of consideration?
Can they stand rigid scrutiny?
Shakespeare's wit and wisdom, his profound insight into human nature, have stood the test of centuries.
But was he infallible in all things?
What of his treatment of the Jew in The Merchant Of Venice?
Shakespeare gives us a vivid picture of Shylock, but probably he never saw a Jew, unless in some of his travels.
The Jews had been banished from England in 1290 and were not permitted to return before 1655, when Shakespeare had been dead for thirty-nine years.
If any had escaped expulsion by hiding, they certainly would not frequent the market-place.
Shakespeare did not usually invent the incidents in his plays, but borrowed them from old stories, ballads, and plays, wove them together, and then breathed into them his spark of life.
Rather than from a first-hand study of Jewish people, his delineation of Shylock stems from a collection of Italian stories, Il Pecorone, published in 1558, although written almost two centuries earlier.
He could learn at second hand from books, but could not thus capture the real Jewish spirit.
Harris J. Griston, in Shaking The Dust From Shakespeare (216), writes: There is not a word spoken by Shylock which one would expect from a real Jew.
He took the story of the pound of flesh and had to fasten it on someone.
The Jew was the safest victim.
No Jew was on hand to boycott his financially struggling theater.
It would have been unwise policy, for instance, to apply the pound-of-flesh characterization to the thrifty Scotchman.
Just as now anyone may hurl insults at a citizen of Mars, or even of Tikopia, and no senatorial investigation will result.
Who cares about them!
Shakespeare does not tell us that Shylock was an aberrant individual.
He sets him forth as being typical of the group.
He tells of his Jewish heart--not a Shylockian heart;
but a Jewish heart.
This would make anyone crafty and cruel, capable of fiendish revenge.
There is no justification for such misrepresentation.
If living Jews were unavailable for study, the Bible was at hand.
Reading the Old Testament would have shown the dramatist that the ideas attributed to Shylock were abhorrent to the Jews.
Are we better off for having Shakespeare's idea of Shylock?
Studying The Merchant Of Venice in high school and college has given many young people their notions about Jews.
Does this help the non-Jew to understand this group?
Thomas De Torquemada, Inquisitor-General of the Spanish Inquisition, put many persons to death.
His name became synonymous with cold-blooded cruelty.
Would we gain by keeping alive his memory and besmirching today's Roman Catholics by saying he had a Catholic heart?
Let his bones and his memory rest in the fifteenth century where they belong;
he is out of place in our times.
Shakespeare's Shylock, too, is of dubious value in the modern world.
Ideas, in and of themselves, are not necessarily the greatest good.
A successful businessman recently prefaced his address to a luncheon group with the statement that all economists should be sent to the hospitals for the mentally deranged where they and their theories might rot together.
Will his words come to be treasured and quoted through the years?
Frequently we are given assurance that automatically all ideas will be sifted and resifted and in the end only the good ones will survive.
But is that not like going to a chemistry laboratory and blindly pouring out liquids and powders from an array of bottles and then, after stirring, expecting a new wonder drug inevitably to result?
What of the efficiency of this natural instrument of free discussion?
Is there some magic in it that assures results?
When Peter B. Kyne (Pride Of Palomar, 43) informed us in 1921 that we had an instinctive dislike for the Japanese, did the heated debates of the Californians settle the truth or falsity of the proposition?
The Leopard's Spots came from the pen of Thomas Dixon in 1902, and in this he announced an unchangeable law.
If a child had a single drop of Negro blood, he would revert to the ancestral line which, except as slaves under a superior race, had not made one step of progress in 3,000 years.
That doctrine has been accepted by many, but has it produced good results?
In the same vein, a certain short-story plot has been overworked.
The son and heir of a prominent family marries a girl who has tell-tale shadows on the half-moons of her finger nails.
In time she presents her aristocratic husband with a coal-black child.
Is the world better for having this idea thrust upon it?
Will argument and debate decide its truth or falsity?
For answers to such questions we must turn to the anthropologists, the biologists, the historians, the psychologists, and the sociologists.
Long ago they consigned the notions of Kyne and Dixon to the scrap heap.
False ideas surfeit another sector of our life.
For several generations much fiction has appeared dealing with the steprelationship.
The stepmother, almost without exception, has been presented as a cruel ogress.
Children, conditioned by this mistaken notion, have feared stepmothers, while adults, by their antagonistic attitudes, have made the role of the substitute parents a difficult one.
Debate is not likely to resolve the tensions and make the lot of the stepchild a happier one.
Research, on the other hand, has shown many stepmothers to be eminently successful, some far better than the real mothers.
Helen Deutsch informed us (The Psychology Of Women, Vol. 2, 434) that in all cultures the term'stepmother'automatically evokes deprecatory implications, a conclusion accepted by many.
Will mere debate on that proposition, even though it be free and untrammeled, remove the dross and leave a residue of refined gold?
That is questionable, to say the least.
Research into several cultures has proven her position to be a mistaken one.
Most assuredly ideas are invaluable.
But ideas, just for the sake of having them, are not enough.
In the 1930's, cures for the depression literally flooded Washington.
For a time the President received hundreds of them every day, most of them worthless.
Ideas need to be tested, and not merely by argument and debate.
When some question arises in the medical field concerning cancer, for instance, we do not turn to free and open discussion as in a political campaign.
We have recourse to the scientifically-trained specialist in the laboratory.
The merits of the Salk anti-polio vaccine were not established on the forensic platform or in newspaper editorials, but in the laboratory and by tests in the field on thousands of children.
Our presidential campaigns provide much debate and argument.
But is the result new barnsful of tested knowledge on the basis of which we can with confidence solve our domestic and international problems?
Man, we are told, is endowed with reason and is capable of distinguishing good from bad.
But what a super-Herculean task it is to winnow anything of value from the mud-beplastered arguments used so freely, particularly since such common use is made of cliches and stereotypes, in themselves declarations of intellectual bankruptcy.
We are reminded, however, that freedom of thought and discussion, the unfettered exchange of ideas, is basic under our form of government.
Assuredly in our political campaigns there is freedom to think, to examine any and all issues, and to speak without restraint.
No holds are barred.
But have the results been heartening?
May we state with confidence that in such an exhibition a republic will find its greatest security?
We must not forget, to be sure, that free discussion and debate have produced beneficial results.
In truth, we can say that this broke the power of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was finally exposed in full light to the American people.
If he had been liquidated in some way, he would have become a martyr, a rallying point for people who shared his ideas.
Debate in the political arena can be productive of good.
But it is a clumsy and wasteful process: it can produce negative results but not much that is positive.
Debate rid us of McCarthy but did not give us much that is positive.
It did something to clear the ground, but it erected no striking new structure;
it did not even provide the architect's plan for anything new.
In the field of the natural sciences, scientifically verified data are quite readily available and any discussion can be shortened with good results.
In the field of the social sciences a considerable fund of tested knowledge has been accumulated that can be used to good advantage.
By no means would we discourage the production of ideas: they provide raw materials with which to work;
they provide stimulations that lead to further production.
We would establish no censorship.
The President's personality would have opened that office to him.
And for the first time a representative of the highest office in the land would have been liable to the charge that he had attempted to make it a successorship by inheritance.
It is testimony to the deep respect in which Mr. Eisenhower was held by members of all parties that the moral considerations raised by his approach to the matter were not explicitly to be broached.
These began to be apparent in a press conference held during the second illness in order that the consulting specialists might clarify the President's condition for the nation.
And if Howard Rutstein felt impelled thereafter to formulate the ethics of the medical profession, his article in the Atlantic Monthly accomplished a good deal more.
It forced us to fix the responsibility for the position in which all medical commentators had been placed.
The discussion of professional ethics inevitably reminded us that in the historical perspective the President's decision will finally clarify itself as a moral, rather than a medical, problem.
Because the responsibility for resolving the issue lay with the President, rather than with his doctors, nothing raises more surely for us the difficulties simple goodness faces in dealing with complex moral problems under political pressure.
For the President had dealt with the matter humbly, in what he conceived as the democratic way.
But the problem is one which gives us the measure of a man, rather than a group of men, whether a group of doctors, a group of party members assembled at a dinner to give their opinion, or the masses of the voters.
It was a response to the conflict between political pressure and the moral intuition which resulted in attempts at prediction.
And though we can look back now and see their errors, we can look back also to the ultimate error.
It recurred in the press conferences: the President's remarks about his running developed a singular tone, one which we find in few statements made by public individuals on such a matter.
The press conference became a stage which betrayed the drift of his private thinking, rather than his convictions.
He commented--thoughtfully, a reporter told us--that it was not too important for the individual how he ends up.
Yet the attitude that the fate of the Presidency demands in such a situation is quite distinct from the simple courage that can proceed with battles to be fought, regardless of the consequences.
In this case others should not have had to raise the doubts and fears.
The Presidency demands an incisive awareness of the larger implications of the death of any incumbent.
It is of the utmost importance to the people of America and of the world how their governing President ends up during the four years of his term.
Only when that term is ended and he is a private citizen again can he be permitted the freedom and the courage to discount the dangers of his death.
Ironically enough, in this instance such personal virtues were a luxury.
At the national and international level, then, what is the highest kind of morality for the private citizen represents an instance of political immorality.
And we had the uneasy sense that the cleavage between the moral and the political progressed amid the events which concern us.
For the tone of the editorials which greeted Mr. Eisenhower's original announcement of his running had been strangely disquieting.
Neither the vibrant enthusiasm which bespeaks a people's intuitive sense of the fitness of things at climactic moments nor the vital argumentation betraying its sense that something significant has transpired was in evidence.
Nothing testifies more clearly to that cleavage than the peculiar editorial page appearing in a July issue of Life Magazine, the issue which also carried the second announcement of the candidacy.
The double editorial on Two Aspects Of The U.S. Spirit was subtly calculated to suggest a moral sanction for gambles great as well as small, reflecting popular approval of this questionable attitude toward the highest office in the land.
The Moral Creed and The Will To Risk live happily together, if we do not examine where the line is to be drawn.
I may possibly be a greater risk than is the normal person of my age, the President had said on February 29th of the election year, ignoring the fact that no one of his age had ever lived out another term.
My doctors assure me that this increased percentage of risk is not great.
But by the time the risk was doubled, events had dismissed from his mind both increased percentages and a previously stated intention of considering carefully anything more serious than a bout of influenza.
Only infrequently did the situation color his thinking.
So it is that we relive his opening statement in the first television address with the dramatic immediacy of the present.
No consideration of risk urges itself upon him now: for this is what the mind does with the ideas on which it has not properly focussed.
Yet with a mind less shallow, if less sharp, than some of the fortune-happy syndicates which back him, he feels what he cannot formulate;
and we watch him amid the overtones which suggest he could never in any conscience urge a risk upon the voters.
Moving as he is into the phase of the campaign which demands conviction of him, he adopts a position that is morally indefensible.
He ascribes to the mercy of God the peace which this personal matter--the assurance that he can physically sustain the burden of the office longer than any individual in the history of our nation has been able to do--has brought him.
What is simply an opinion formed in defiance of the laws of human probability, whether or not it is later confirmed, has become by September of the election year a firm conviction.
As a means of silencing a discussion which ought to have taken place, the statement is an effective one: we sympathize with the universal confusion which gives rise to such convictions.
But it is also the climax to one of the absorbing chapters in our current political history.
In assigning to God the responsibility which he learned could not rest with his doctors, Eisenhower gave evidence of that weakening of the moral intuition which was to characterize his administration in the years to follow.
In any other man this reassurance to the electorate would have caused us a profound moral shock.
About this man we had to think twice.
We knew that it was, as reassurance, the ironic fruit of a deeply moral nature.
But the fact remains that even the unconscious acceptance of himself as a man of destiny divinely protected must be censored in any man who evades the responsibility for his major decisions, and thus for imposing his will on the people.
And in the context of drifting personal utterances we have examined, there was occasional evidence of the origin of all such evasions.
When the possibility that he had not given reconsideration to so weighty a decision seemed to disconcert his questioners, Mr. Eisenhower was known to make his characteristic statement to the press that he was not going to talk about the matter any more.
Thinking had stopped;
it was not to be resumed.
The portrait that had developed, fragmentarily but consistently, was the portrait of a man to whom serious thinking is alien enough that the making of a decision inhibits, when it does not forestall, any ability to review the decision in the light of new evidence.
This does not mean that the decision to run for office should inevitably have been revoked.
Instead it means that the thinking in which decision issues has the power to determine the morality of the decision, as in this instance the pressure for renewed practical or legislative attention to the constitutional problems the decision had uncovered might have done.
Drifting through a third illness, apparently without any provision for the handling of a major national emergency other than a talk with the vice-president, Eisenhower revealed the singularly static quality of his thinking.
Despite three warnings, no sense of moral urgency impelled him to distinguish his situation, and thus his responsibilities, from Wilson's.
By contrast, the energetic reaction of the leader to the full demands his decision imposes upon him strengthens the moral intuition and gives us the measure of the man.
Only by means of an intensive preoccupation with the detailed considerations following from any decision can he ensure attention to the practical details to be dealt with if the implications of immorality in the major decision are effectively to be checked.
In the incessant struggle with recalcitrant political fact he learns to focus the essence of a problem in the significant detail, and to articulate the distinctions which clarify the detail as significant, with what is sometimes astounding rapidity.
Like Lincoln, he can distinguish his relation to God from the constitutional responsibilities a questionable decision exacts of him.
Like Roosevelt, he can distinguish an attitude toward a Russian leader he may share with a host of Americans from the responsibilities diplomatic convention may impose upon him.
He chooses to subordinate one to the other, sometimes reluctantly, accepting criticism for the lesser immoralities facts breed.
The very nature of a choice so grounded in distinction and fact leads to the valid convictions which become force of will in the manifest leader.
The capacity for making the distinctions of which diplomacy is compact, and the facility with language which can render them into validity in the eyes of other men are the leader's means for transforming the moral intuition into moral leadership.
The making of distinctions, like the perception of the great distinctions made, is an inordinately difficult business.
Lincoln's slow progress towards the several marking his achievement is even now unrecognizable as such, and loosely interpreted as the alternation of inconsistency with vision.
But because it is the function of the mind to turn the one into the other by means of the capacities with which words endow it, we do not unwisely examine the type of distinction, in the sphere of politics, on which decisions hang.
Only recently, and perhaps because a television debate can so effectively dramatize President Kennedy's extraordinary mastery of detail, have the abilities on which the capacity for making distinctions depend begun to be clearly discernible at the level of politics.
In his recent evaluation of Kennedy's potentialities for leadership, Walter Lippmann has cited the precision of his mind, his immense command of factual detail, and his instinct for the crucial point as impressive in the extreme;
and it is surely clear that the first of these is the result of the way in which the individual's command of language interacts with the other two.
For this change is not a change from one positive position to another, but a change from order and truth to disorder and negation.
The liberal-conservative division, we might observe in passing, is not of itself directly involved in a private interest conflict nor even in struggle between ruling groups.
Rather it is rooted in a difference of response to the threat of social disintegration.
The division is not between those who wish to preserve what they have and those who want change.
Rather it is a division established by two absolutely different ways of thought with regard to man's life in society.
These ways are absolutely irreconcilable because they offer two different recipes for man's redemption from chaos.
The civilizational crisis, the third type of change raises the question what are we to do?
On the most primitive level.
For the answer cannot be derived from any socially cohesive element in the disrupting community.
There is no socially existential answer to the question.
For the truth formerly experienced by the community no longer has existential status in the community, nor does any answer elaborated by philosophers or theoriticians.
In this phase of change, no idea has social acceptance and so none has ontological status in the community.
An interregnum ensues in which not men but ideas compete for existence.
If we examine the three types of change from the point of view of their internal structure we find an additional profound difference between the third and the first two, one that accounts for the notable difference between the responses they evoke.
The first two types of change occur within the inward and immanent structure of the society.
The first involves a simple shift of interests in the society.
The second involves something deeper, but its characteristic form focuses on a shift in policy for the community, not in the truth on which the community rests.
Thus in both types attention is focused on the community itself, and its phenomenological life.
The third type, however, wrenches attention from the life of action and interests in the community and focuses it on the ground of being on which the community depends for its existence.
Voegelin has analyzed this experience in the case of the stable, healthy community.
There the community, faced with the need to formulate policy on the level of absolute justice, can find the answer to its problem in the absolute truth which it holds as partially experienced.
This, however, cannot be done by a community whose very experience of truth is confused and incoherent: it has no absolute standard, and consequently cannot distinguish the absolute from the contingent.
It has lost its ground of being and floats in a mist of appearances.
Relativism and equality are its characteristic diseases.
Precisely at the moment when it has lost its vision the mind of the community turns out from itself in a search for the ontological standard whereby it can measure itself.
For paradigmatic history breaks rather than unfolds precisely when the movement is from order to disorder, and not from one order to a new order.
The liberal-conservative split, to define it further, derives from a basic difference concerning the existential status of standard sought and about the spiritual experience that leads to its identification.
When disruptive change has penetrated to the third level of social order, the process of disruption rapidly reaches a point of no return.
Indeed, it is probable that this point is reached the moment the third level of change begins.
At that point we reach the closed historical situation: the situation in which man is no longer free to return to a status quo ante.
At that point men become aware of the mystery of history called variously fate, or destiny, or providence, and feel themselves caught helplessly in the writhing of a disrupted society.
The reasons for this experience are rooted in the metaphysical characteristics of such a change.
Of all forms of being, society, or community, has the greatest element of determinability.
Its ontological status is itself most tenuous because apart from individual men, who are its matter, tradition, the form of society exists only as a shared perception of truth.
The ontological status of society thus is constituted by the psychological status of society's members.
The content of that psychological status determines, ultimately, the content of civilization.
Those social, civilizational factors not rooted in the human spirit of the group, ultimately cease to exist.
Civilization itself--tradition--falls out of existence when the human spirit itself becomes confused.
Civilization is what man has made of himself.
Its massive contours are rooted in the simple need of man, since he is always incomplete, to complete himself.
It is not enough for man to be an ontological esse.
He needs existential completion, he needs, that is, to move in the direction of completion.
And the direction of that movement is determined by his perception of the truth about himself.
He must, consequently, exist as a self-perceived substantive, developing agent, or he does not exist as man.
Thus, it is no mystical intuition, but an analyzable conception to say that man and his tradition can fall out of existence.
This happens at the moment man loses the perception of moral substance in himself, of a nature that, in Maritain's words, is perceived as a locus of intelligible necessities.
An existentialist is a man who perceives himself only as esse, as existence without substance.
Thus human perception and human volition is the immanent cause of all social change and this most truly when the change reaches the civilizational level.
Thus with regard to the loss of tradition, in the change from order to disorder the metaphysics of change works itself out as a disruption of the individual soul, a change in which man continues as an objective ontological existent, but no longer as a man.
Further, change is a form of motion, it occurs as the act of a being in potency insofar as it is in potency and has not yet reached the terminus of the change.
With regard to the change we are examining, the question is, at what point does the change become irreversible?
A number of considerations suggest that this occurs early in the process.
Change involves the displacement of form.
This means that the inception of change itself can begin only when the factors conducive to change have already become more powerful than those anchoring the existent form in being.
If the existent form is to be retained new factors that reinforce it must be introduced into the situation.
In the case of social decay, form is displaced simply by the process of dissolution with no form at the terminus of the process.
Now in the mere fact of the beginning of such displacement we have prima-facie evidence of the ontological weakness of the fading form.
And when we consider the tenuous hold tradition has on existence, any weakening of that hold constitutes a crisis of existence.
The retention of a tradition confronted with such a crisis necessitates the introduction of new spiritual forces into the situation.
However, the crisis occurs precisely as a weakening of spiritual forces.
It would seem, therefore, that in a civilizational crisis man cannot save himself.
The emergence of the crisis itself would seem to constitute a warranty for the victory of disorder.
And it would seem that history is a witness to this truth.
As a further characterization of the liberal conservative split we may observe that it involves differences in the formula for escaping inevitabilities in history.
These differences, in turn, derive from prior differences concerning the friendly or hostile character of change.
Unanalyzed responses
anxiety and deep insecurity are the characteristic responses evoked by the crisis in tradition.
To experience them, it is not necessary for a people to be actively aware of what is happening to it.
The process of erosion need only undermine the tradition and a series of consequences begin unfolding within the individual, while in institutions a quiet but deep transformation of processes occurs.
Within the individual the reaction has been called various names, all, however, pointing to the same basic experience.
Weil identifies it as being rootless, Guardini as being placeless, Riesman as being lonely.
Others call it alienation, and mean by that no simple economic experience (as Marx does) but a deep spiritual sense of dislocation.
Within institutions there is a marked decline of the process of persuasion and the substitution of a force-fear process which masquerades as the earlier one of persuasion.
We note the use of rhetoric as a weapon, the manipulation of the masses by propaganda, the mobilization of effort and resources.
Within this context of spontaneous and unanalyzed responses to the experience of civilizational crisis, two basic organizations of response are observable: reaction and ideological progressivism.
These responses are explicable in terms of characteristics inherent in the crisis.
Both are predictably destined to fail.
The response of reaction is dominated by a concern for what is vanishing.
Its essence lies in its attempt to recover previous order through the repression of disruptive forces.
To this end political authority is called upon to exercise its negative and coercive powers.
The implicit assumption of this response is that history is reversible.
Seemingly, order is perceived as a kind of subsistent entity now covered by adventitious accretions.
The problem is to remove the accretions and thereby uncover the order that was always there.
Such a response, of course, misses the point that in crisis order is going out of existence.
Moreover its posture of stubborn but simple resistance is doomed to failure because of the metaphysical weakness of the existent form of order, once the activation of change has reached visible proportions.
The most reaction can achieve is stasis, and a stasis that can be maintained only by the expenditure of an effort which ultimately exhausts itself.
Despite the hopelessness of the response, it is explicable in terms of the crisis of tradition itself.
Since a civilizational crisis involves also a crisis in private interests and in the ruling class, reaction is normally found among those who feel themselves to be among the ruling class.
Their great error is to mingle the responses typical of each of the three types of change.
Since civilizational change is the most difficult to perceive and analyze, it seldom is given adequate attention.
And the anxiety it generates is misinterpreted as anxiety over private interest and threatened social status.
The basic truth in the reactionary response is to be found in its realistic assumption of the primacy of the real over the ideational.
But this truth is distorted by its extreme application: the assumption of the separate existence of tradition.
The reactionary misses the point that tradition exists ontologically only in the form of psychological-intellectual relations.
Reactionary theories, for this reason, usually assume some form of organismic theory.
In its defensive formulations, the theory will attack conscious change on the grounds of the independent existence of the community.
In its dynamic form, it visualizes the community as the embodiment of an ontological force--the race, for instance, which unfolds in history.
In both cases the individual tends to be treated as an instrument of the organic reality.
When the reactionary response is thus bolstered by an intellectual defense, the characteristics of that defense are explicable only in terms of the basic attitudes of unanalyzed reaction.
Reaction is rooted in a perception of tradition as a whole.
It is a total situation that is defended: the good old days.
There is no selectivity;
even the questionable features of the past are defended.
The point is that the reactionary, for whatever motive, perceives himself to have been part or a partner of something that extended beyond himself, something which, consequently, he was not able to accept or reject on the basis of subjective preference.
The reactionary is confused about the existential status of a decaying tradition, but he does perceive the unity tradition had when it was healthy.
All of which brings up another problem in the use of psychoanalytic insight in a literary work.
Is the Oedipus complex, the clinical syndrome, material for a tragedy?
If we remove ourselves for a moment from our time and our infatuation with mental disease, isn't there something absurd about a hero in a novel who is defeated by his infantile neurosis?
I am not making a clinical judgment here, for such personal tragedies are real and are commonplace in the analyst's consulting room, but literature makes a different claim upon our sympathies than tragedy in life.
A man in a novel who is defeated in his childhood and condemned by unconscious forces within him to tiredly repeat his earliest failure in love, only makes us a little weary of man;
his tragedy seems unworthy and trivial.
Now we can argue that the irresistible fate of Oedipus Rex was nothing more than the irresistible unconscious longings of Oedipus projected outward, but this externalization of unconscious conflict makes all the difference between a story and a clinical case history.
We can also argue that the three brothers Karamazov and Smerdyakov were the external representatives of an internal conflict within one man, Dostoevsky, a conflict having to do with father-murder and the wish to possess the father's woman.
But a novel in which one man Karamazov explored the divisions within his personality would scarcely merit publication in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly.
It is a mistake to look upon the Oedipus of Oedipus Complex as a literary descendant of Oedipus Rex.
But a modern Oedipus who is doomed because he cannot oppose his own childhood is only pathetic, and for renouncing the mystery in favor of psychological truth he gives up the claim on our sympathies.
I am suggesting that a case-history approach to the Oedipus complex is a blind alley for a storyteller.
The best gifts of the novelist will be wasted on the reader who is insulated against any surprises the novelist may have in store for him.
Incest is still a durable theme, but if it wants to get written about it will have to find ways to surprise the emotions, and there is no better way to do this than that of concealment and symbolic representation.
And the best way to conceal and disguise the elements of an incest story is not to set out to write an incest story.
Which brings to mind another Lawrence story and some interesting comparisons in the treatment of the Oedipal theme.
The Rocking Horse Winner is also a story about a boy's love for his mother.
If I now risk some comparisons with Sons And Lovers let it be clear that I am not comparing the two works or judging their merits;
I am only singling out differences in treatment of a theme and the resultant effects.
The Rocking Horse Winner is a fantasy with extraordinary power to disturb the reader--but we do not know why.
It is the story of the hopeless love of a little boy for his cold and vain mother.
There are ghostly scenes in which the little boy on his rocking horse rocks madly toward the climax that will magically give him the name of the winning horse.
The child grows rich on his winnings and conspires with his uncle to make secret gifts of his money to his mother.
The story ends in the child's illness and delirium brought on by the feverish compulsion to ride his horse to win for his mother.
The child dies with his mourning mother at his bedside.
I had read the story many times without asking myself why it affected me or caring why it did.
But on one occasion when I encountered a similar fantasy in a little boy who was my patient I began to understand the uncanny effects of this story.
It was, of course, a little boy's fantasy of winning his mother to himself, and replacing the father who could not give her the things she wanted--a classical oedipal fantasy if you like--but if it were only this the story would be banal.
Why does the story affect us?
How does the rocking exert its uncanny effect upon the reader?
The rocking is actually felt in the story, a terrible and ominous rhythm that prophesies the tragedy.
The rocking, I realized, is the single element in the story that carries the erotic message, the unspoken and unconscious undercurrent that would mar the innocence of a child's fantasy and disturb the effects of the work if it were made explicit.
The rocking has the ambiguous function of keeping the erotic undercurrent silent and making it present;
it conceals and yet is suggestive;
a perfect symbol.
And if we understand the rocking as an erotic symbol we can also see how well it serves as the symbol of impending tragedy.
For this love of the boy for his mother is a hopeless and forbidden love, doomed by its nature.
We are also struck by the fact that this story of a boy's love for his mother does not offend, while the incestuous love of the man, Paul Morel, sometimes repels.
It's easy to see why.
This love belongs to childhood;
we accord it its place there, and in Lawrence's treatment we are given the innocent fantasy of a child, in fact, the form in which oedipal love is expressed in childhood.
And when the child dies in Lawrence's story in a delirium that is somehow brought on by his mania to win and to make his mother rich, the manifest absurdity of such a disease and such a death does not enter into our thoughts at all.
We have so completely entered the child's fantasy that his illness and his death are the plausible and the necessary conclusion.
I am sure that none of the effects of this story were consciously employed by Lawrence to describe an oedipal fantasy in childhood.
It is most probable that Freud and the Oedipus complex never entered his head in the writing of this story.
He was simply writing a story that wanted to be told, and in the writing a childhood fantasy of his own emerged.
He would not have cared why it emerged, he only wanted to capture a memory to play with it again in his imagination and somehow to fix and hold in the story the disturbing emotions that accompanied the fantasy.
In our own time we have seen that the novelist's debt to psychoanalysis has increased but that the novel itself has not profited much from this marriage.
Ortega's hope that modern psychology might yet bring forth a last flowering of the novel has only been partially fulfilled.
The young writer seems intimidated by psychological knowledge;
he has lost confidence in his own eyes and in the validity of his own psychological insights.
He borrows the insights of psychology to improve his impaired vision but cannot bring to his work the distinctive vision that should be a novelist's own.
He has been seduced by the marvels of the unconscious and has lost interest in studying the surfaces of character.
The novelist who has been badly baptized in psychoanalysis often gives us the impression that since all men must have an Oedipus complex all men must have the same faces.
I have argued that Oedipus of the Oedipus complex has a doubtful future as a tragic figure in literature.
But a writer who has a taste for irony and who sees incest in all its modern dimensions can let his imagination work on the disturbing joke in the incest myth, the joke that strikes right at the center of man's humanness.
Moral dread is seen as the other face of desire, and here psychoanalysis delivers to the writer a magnificent irony and a moral problem of great complexity.
There is probably some significance in the fact that two of the best incest stories I have encountered in recent years are burlesques of the incest myth.
The ancient types are reassembled in gloom and foreboding to be irresistibly drawn to their destinies, but the myth fails before the modern truth;
the oracle speaks false and the dream speaks true.
In both the farmer's tale in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and in Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner, the incest hero rises above the myth by accepting the wish as motive;
the heroic act is the casting off of pretense.
Thomas Mann wrote The Holy Sinner in 1951.
It was conceived as a leave-taking, a kind of melancholy gathering-in of the myths of the West, bevor die Nacht sinkt, eine lange Nacht vielleicht und ein tiefes Vergessen.
He chose a medieval legend of incest, Gregorius Vom Stein, and freely borrowed and parodied other myths of the West, mixing themes, language, peoples and times in a master myth in which the old forms continually renew themselves, as in his previous treatment of Joseph.
But The Holy Sinner is not simply a retelling of old stories for an old man's entertainment.
Mann understood better than most men the incest comedy at the center of the myth and the psychological truth in which dread is shown as the other face as longing was for him just the kind of deep and complicated joke he liked to tell.
And when he retold the legend of Gregorius he interpolated a modern version in which the medieval players speak contemporary thoughts in archaic language;
while they move through the pageantry of the ancient incest myth and cover themselves through not-knowing, they reveal the unconscious motive in seeking each other and in the last scene make an extraordinary confession of guilt in the twentieth-century manner.
Grigorss is the child of an incestuous union between a royal brother and sister, the twins Sibylla and Wiligis.
He is born in secrecy after the death of his father and cast adrift soon after birth.
The infant is discovered by a fisherman who brings him home to rear him.
An ivory tablet in the infant's cask recounts the story of his sinful origins and is preserved for the child by the monks of a monastery in the fishing village.
Grigorss, at seventeen, learns his story and goes forth as a knight to uncover his origins.
His sailing vessel is guided by fate to the shores of his own country at a time when Sibylla's domain is overrun by the armies of one of her rejected suitors.
Grigorss overcomes the suitor in battle, delivers the city from its oppressors and marries Sibylla who had fallen in love with the beautiful knight the moment she saw him.
Sibylla is pregnant with their second child when she finds the ivory tablet concealed by her husband, and the identities of mother and son are revealed.
Grigorss goes off to do penance on a rock for seventeen years.
At the end of this period two pious Christians in Rome receive the revelation which leads them to seek the next Pope on the rock.
Grigorss comes to Rome and becomes a great and beloved Pope.
In the last pages of the book Sibylla comes to Rome to seek an audience with the great Pope and to give her confession.
Mother and son recognize each other and, in Mann's version of this legend, make a remarkable confession of guilt to each other, the confession of unconscious motive and unconscious knowledge of their true identities from the time they had first set eyes on each other.
In recollection he has said: Natural or man-made objects kept coming into my head, but I would suppress them sternly.
Moreover, he organized the movement of his forms, within his rigorously shaped space, into highly complex equilibriums;
and used gradations of color value as well as sharply contrasting elementary colors.
The worthy Mondrian, seeing these pictures, said in a tone of kindly reproof: But you are really an artist of the naturalistic tradition!
Helion did not realize it at the time, but it was true.
His monumental abstraction, made up of smooth, metallic non-objects acting upon each other with great tension, won Helion much acclaim during the 'thirties.
The play of novel lighting effects also entered into these compositions, whose controlled power and varied activity made them well worth meditating.
As Helion's work showed more and more nostalgia for the world of man and nature, the pure abstractionists expressed some disapproval;
but Leger, Arp, Lipchitz and Alexander Calder, at the time, gave him their blessing.
His canvases nowadays bore titles frankly declaring them to be Figures In Space, or Blue Figure, or Pink Figure;
and they had (vaguely) heads and feet.
Exhibited in shows in London in 1935, and in New York the following year, the new, more elaborated abstracts were much favored in the circles of the modernists as three-dimentional dramas of great intellectual coherence.
At this period the thirty-year old Helion was ranked as one of the mature leaders of the modern movement, according to Herbert Read, and in the direct line of descent from Cezanne, Seurat, Gris and Leger.
In America, Meyer Schapiro observed that, unlike the Mondrian school, Helion sought a return path to the fullness of nature within the framework of abstract art.
It is notable that at this time he was writing with admiration of Cimabue's and Poussin's way of filling space.
Abstract art was still the right path for him;
but, he held, instead of continuing as an art of reduction, it must grow, must make a place for the contributions of the Raphaels and Poussins as well as for those of the early cubists and Mondrian.
Later Helion wrote of this phase: For years I built for myself a subtle instrument of relationships--colors and forms without a name.
I played on it my secret songs, unexplained, passionate and peaceful.
But his own work was evolving further.
The extreme limitations he sensed in all current abstract art made that seem to him increasingly arid and cold.
He was engaged in constant experiments that searched for new directions.
Where would it all lead?
He himself did not know, as he said in 1935.
But he was afraid of the future--he would in fact welcome a way back to social integration, a functional art of some kind.
During the 1920's the Abstractionists, the German Bauhaus group of industrial designers, and the new architects all had the dream of some well ordered utopia, or welfare state, in which their neat and logical constructions might find their proper place.
But whereas the postwar American abstractionists seem to Helion to be determined to escape from the real world, or simply to rebel against it, the ordered abstractions which he and his associates of the 1930's were painting embodied the hope of improving things.
We were possessed by visions of a new civilization to come, very pure and elevated, he has said, in fact some ideal form of socialism such as we had dreamed of since the war of 1914-1918.
Instead of this the 1930's witnessed a tragic economic depression, the rise of Fascist dictators in Europe, the wasting Civil War in Spain.
Very much the political man, Helion felt himself deeply affected by the increasingly pessimistic atmosphere of France and all Europe, whose foundations seemed to him more and more shaky.
In 1936 he decided to migrate to America.
The Rooseveltian America was a haven of liberalism and progress and seemed to him to constitute the last best hope for civilization.
Helion also hoped that America's mastery of technology and industrial efficiency would be accompanied by the production of new and beautiful art works.
I arrived in the United States with the idea of establishing myself there more or less permanently and finding inspiration for new compositions.
In New York he was well received by what was then only a small brave band of non-figurative artists, including Alexander Calder, George K. L. Morris, De Kooning, Holty and a few others.
After a year in a studio on Sheridan Square, having married an American girl who was a native of Virginia, Helion moved to a village in the Blue Ridge mountains, where he produced some of the most imposing of his abstract canvases.
The darkening world scene, at the time of the Munich Pact, continued to trouble his mind even in his remote Virginia studio.
Fear possessed me, and the certainty of war, he has related.
I truly smelled blood, death, heaps of corpses everywhere.
In haste he labored to finish some last abstract paintings: a three-panel frieze, with a flying figure and a fallen figure;
a Double-Figure, which went to the Chicago Art Institute, and is considered by him the most successful of his abstracts;
and in early 1939, a Fallen Figure of very ominous character, which concluded his abstract phase.
I knew I was carrying on with abstraction to its very end--for me, he said of the two years' output in Virginia.
With those paintings of big constructions crashing down, he felt he could stop.
They were, in effect his last testament to non-objective art.
He had taken out first papers for American citizenship;
but after war came to Europe, he decided to return to France, arriving there in January, 1940.
I hated the war, he said, but thought I ought to go because I was, perhaps, one of those who hadn't done enough to prevent it.
In June, 1940, Sergeant Helion, with a company of reserve troops waiting to go into battle, was sketching the hills south of the Loire River, when the war suddenly rolled in upon him.
Its first apparition was a long, gloomy column of refugees riding in farm wagons, or pushing prams.
His company then carried out a confused retreating movement until it was surrounded by the Germans, a few days before France capitulated.
After a sort of death march during four days without food, Helion and his comrades were shipped by cattle-car to a labor camp at an estate farm in East Germany.
A year later they were removed to a Stalag in the harbor of Stettin.
At the time of his capture Helion had on his person a sketchbook he had bought at Woolworth's in New York.
When he was stripped, deloused and numbered by his guards, his much-thumbed sketchbook was seized and thrown on a pile of prisoners' goods to be confiscated.
It was then I knew that they were making war against Man, the individual within!
-- who questioned things when given orders.
At Stettin the university-educated artist, who had studied German, was chosen to serve as interpreter and clerk in the office of the Stalag commander.
In secret he also acted as a member of the prisoners' Central Committee, which plotted sabotage, planned a few escapes, and maintained a hidden control over the wretched French slave-laborers.
In the Stalag, Helion came to know and love his comrades, most of them plain folk, who, in their extremity, showed true courage and ran great risks to help each other.
How much they esteemed him is shown by the fact that their underground committee selected him as one of the few who would be helped to escape.
In the prison camp's Black Market civilian clothes were quietly bought and forged papers were devised for him;
during long weeks the plan for his flight was rehearsed.
Every morning contingents of prisoners would be sent out to labor in nearby factories.
One evening, while a volley-ball game was being played in the yard among the prisoners remaining there, a simulated melee was staged--just as the gates were opened to admit other prisoners returning from work.
As Helion wrote afterward:
Their sentry followed.
Four hands were stretched toward me by my comrades behind me.
Marquet held my briefcase;
Finot held a wallet with my money and papers;
Moineau and David held nothing but their fingers.
They felt rough and kind and warm.
At this moment the volley-ball hit the ground.
Duclos ran toward Desprez with fists raised.
The guards all rushed up to intervene
Shedding his prison cloak, Helion shot through the gates, now clad in civilian garments and with the passport of a Flemish worker.
Riding trains, hitching hikes on trucks across Germany, slipping through guarded frontiers with the help of secret guides, he eventually reached Vichy France, and, by the winter of 1943, was back in Virginia.
He wrote:
To escape from a prison camp required a very special state of mind;
not only loathing of captivity, but a faith, a hope that is even stronger.
I left behind me brave men, whom captivity had robbed of all hope.
They too loved their families, longed for their villages: yet lacked the faith that drove one to dare the fearful chance of escape.
It was a time of revelations for him.
Even the most rational of men, under great stress, may be transported by a new faith and behave like mystics.
Helion knew that he owed his freedom as much to the self-sacrifice of his fellow-men in Arbeitskommando 13, Stettin, as to his own fierce will and love of life.
After that, he declared, to return to freedom was to fall to one's knees before the real world and adore it.
In prison he had been able to sketch nothing but figures from life, his guards, his companions in misery.
Now all his desires centered on rediscovering and singing of the prosaic and yet beautiful world of men and objects so long barred from me by a barbed wire fence.
And, he added: During the many months in prison camp, all abstract images vanished from my mind.
Before leaving for America, he happened to see his old friend Jean Arp and confided to him his new resolutions.
Arp protested: But it is impossible!
Everything in the way of representation has already been done by the old masters.
Helion, however, clung to the belief that in escaping from the Stalag I had also escaped from Abstraction.
It was very widely read, too;
and the author, who seemed the embodiment of France's rising spirit of resistance to her conquerors, was much complimented for his daring military action.
But when he showed his new figurative pictures to his artist friends of the abstract camp, they paid him no compliments and drew long faces.
Between 1944 and 1947 Helion had a series of one-man shows--at the Paul Rosenberg Gallery in New York and in Paris--of his new realistic pictures.
They reincarnated the figures of human beings banished from his canvases since the 1920's.
One of the pictures was of a man with hat drawn over his face ceremoniously lighting a cigarette;
others were of men doffing their hats to each other, carrying umbrellas with pomp, reading newspapers, or simply showing loaves of bread spread out.
Important as was Mr. O'Donnell's essay, his thesis is so restricting as to deny Faulkner the stature which he obviously has.
Faulkner's total works today, and in fact those of his works which existed in 1946 when Mr. Cowley made his comment, or in 1939, when Mr. O'Donnell wrote his essay, reveal no such simple attitude toward the South.
If he is a traditionalist, he is an eclectic traditionalist.
If he condemns the recent or the present, he condemns the past with no less force.
If he sees the heroic in a Sartoris or a Sutpen, he sees also--and he shows--the blind and the mean, and he sees the Compson family disintegrating from within.
If the barn-burner's family produces a Flem Snopes, who personifies commercialism and materialism in hyperbolic crassness, the Compson family produces a Jason Compson 4.
Faulkner is a most untraditional traditionalist.
Others writing on Faulkner have found the phrase traditional moralist either inadequate or misleading.
Among them are Frederick J. Hoffman, William Van O'Connor, and Mrs. Olga Vickery.
They have indicated the direction but they have not been explicit enough, I believe, in pointing out Faulkner's independence, his questioning if not indeed challenging the Southern tradition.
Faulkner's is not the mind of the apologist which Mr. O'Donnell implies that it is.
He is not one to remain more comfortably and unquestioningly within a body of social, cultural, or literary traditions than he was within the traditions--or possibly the regulations--governing his tenure in the post office at Oxford, Mississippi, thirty-five years ago.
That is not to deny that he has been aware of traditions, of course, that he is steeped in them, in fact, or that he has dealt with them, in his books.
It is to say rather, I believe, that he has brought to bear on the history, the traditions, and the lore of his region a critical, skeptical mind--the same mind which has made of him an inveterate experimenter in literary form and technique.
He has employed from his section rich immediate materials which in a loose sense can be termed Southern.
Some of us might be inclined to argue, in fact, that an independence of mind and action and an intolerance of regimentation, either mental or physical, are particularly Southern traits.
There is no necessity, I suppose, to assert that Mr. Faulkner is Southern.
It would not be easy to discover a more thoroughly Southern pedigree than that of his family.
And, after all, he has lived comfortably at both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia.
The young William Faulkner in New Orleans in the 1920's impressed the novelist Hamilton Basso as obviously conscious of being a Southerner, and there is no evidence that since then he has ever considered himself any less so.
It is more difficult with Faulkner than with most authors to say what is the extent and what is the source of his knowledge.
His own testimony is that he has read very little in the history of the South, implying that what he knows of that history has come to him orally and that he knows the world around him primarily from his own unassisted observation.
His denials of extensive reading notwithstanding, it is no doubt safe to assume that he has spent time schooling himself in Southern history and that he has gained some acquaintance with the chief literary authors who have lived in the South or have written about the South.
To believe otherwise would be unrealistic.
But in looking at Faulkner against his background in Mississippi and the South, it is important not to lose the broader perspective.
His earliest work reflected heavy influences from English and continental writers.
His repeated experimentation with the techniques of fiction testifies to an independence of mind and an originality of approach, but it also shows him touching at many points the stream of literary development back of him.
My intention, therefore, is not to say that Faulkner's awareness has been confined within the borders of the South, but rather that he has looked at his world as a Southerner and that presumably his outlook is Southern.
The ingredients of Faulkner's novels and stories are by no means new with him, and most of the problems he takes up have had the attention of authors before him.
A useful comment on his relation to his region may be made, I think, by noting briefly how in handling Southern materials and Southern problems he has deviated from the pattern set by other Southern authors while remaining faithful to the essential character of the region.
The planter aristocracy has appeared in literature at least since John Pendleton Kennedy published Swallow-Barn in 1832 and in his genial portrait of Frank Meriwether presiding over his plantation dominion initiated the most persistent tradition of Southern literature.
The thoroughgoing idealization of the planter society did not come, however, until after the Civil War when Southern writers were eager to defend a way of life which had been destroyed.
As they looked with nostalgia to a society which had been swept away, they were probably no more than half-conscious that they painted in colors which had never existed.
Their books found no less willing readers outside than inside the South, even while memories of the war were still sharp.
The tradition reached its apex, perhaps, in the works of Thomas Nelson Page toward the end of the century, and reappeared undiminished as late as 1934 in the best-selling novel So Red The Rose, by Stark Young.
Although Faulkner was the heir in his own family to this tradition, he did not have Stark Young's inclination to romanticize and sentimentalize the planter society.
The myth of the Southern plantation has had only a tangential relation with actuality, as Francis Pendleton Gaines showed forty years ago, and I suspect it has had a far narrower acceptance as something real than has generally been supposed.
Faulkner has found it useful, but he has employed it with his habitual independence of mind and skeptical outlook.
Faulkner's low-class characters had but few counterparts in earlier Southern novels dealing with plantation life.
They have an ancestry extending back, however, at least to 1728, when William Byrd described the Lubberlanders he encountered in the back country of Virginia and North Carolina.
The chief literary antecedents of the Snopes clan appeared in the realistic, humorous writing which originated in the South and the Southwest in the three decades before the Civil War.
There is evidence to suggest, in fact, that many authors of the humorous sketches were prompted to write them--or to make them as indelicate as they are--by way of protesting against the artificial refinements which had come to dominate the polite letters of the South.
William Gilmore Simms, sturdy realist that he was, pleaded for a natural robustness such as he found in his favorites the great Elizabethans, to vivify the pale writings being produced around him.
Simms admired the raucous tales emanating from the backwoods, but he had himself social affiliations which would not allow him to approve them fully.
Others who wrote of low characters and low life included Thomas Bangs Thorpe, creator of the Big Bear Of Arkansas and Tom Owen, the Bee-Hunter;
Johnson Jones Hooper, whose character Simon Suggs bears a close kinship to Flem Snopes in both his willingness to take cruel advantage of all and sundry and the sharpness with which he habitually carried out his will;
and George Washington Harris, whose Tennessee hillbilly character Sut Lovingood perpetrated more unmalicious mischief and more unintended pain than any other character in literature.
Such a comparison reminds us that in employing low characters in his works Faulkner is recording actuality in the South and moreover is following a long-established literary precedent.
nor is there need to add that among them are some of the most highly individualized and most successful of his characters.
One of the early humorists already mentioned, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, can be used to illustrate another point where Faulkner touches authentic Southern materials and also earlier literary treatment of those materials.
Thorpe came to Louisiana from the East as a young man prepared to find in the new country the setting of romantic adventure and idealized beauty.
But Thorpe saw also the hardships of pioneer existence, the cultural poverty of the frontier settlements, and the slack morality which abounded in the new regions.
As a consequence of the tensions thus produced in his thoughts and feelings, he wrote on the one hand sketches of idealized hunting trips and on the other an anecdote of the village of Hardscrabble, Arkansas, where no one had ever seen a piano;
and he wrote also the masterpiece of frontier humor, The Big Bear Of Arkansas, in which earthy realism is placed alongside the exaggeration of the backwoods tall-tale and the awe with which man contemplates the grandeur and the mysteries of nature.
Some years ago Julian Huxley proposed to an audience made up of members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science that man's supernormal or extra-sensory faculties are (now) in the same case as were his mathematical faculties during the ice age.
This text from Dr. Huxley is sometimes used by enthusiasts to indicate that they have the permission of the scientists to press the case for a wonderful unfoldment of psychic powers in human beings.
There may be a case of this sort, but it is not one we wish to argue, here.
Even if people do, in a not far distant future, begin to read one another's minds, there will still be the question of whether what you find in another man's mind is especially worth reading--worth more, that is, than what you can read in good books.
Even if men eventually find themselves able to look through walls and around corners, one may question whether this will help them to live better lives.
There would be side-conclusions to be drawn, of course;
such capacities are impressive evidence pointing to a conception of the human being which does not appear in the accounts of biologists and organic evolutionists;
but the basic puzzles of existence would still be puzzling, and we should still have to work out the sort of problems we plan to discuss in this article.
All we want from Dr. Huxley's statement is the feeling that this is an open world, in the view of the best scientific opinion, with practically no directional commitments as to what may happen next, and no important confinements with respect to what may be possible.
It seems quite obvious that all the really difficult tasks of human beings arise from the fact that man is not one, but many.
Each man, that is, is both one and many.
He is a dreamer of the good society with a plan to put into effect, and he is an individual craftsman with something to make for himself and the people of his time.
He is a parent with a child to nurture, here and now, and he is an educator who worries about the children half way round the world.
He is a utopian with a stake in tomorrow and he is a vulnerable human made captive by the circumstances of today.
He can sacrifice himself for tomorrow and he can sacrifice tomorrow for himself.
He is a Craig's wife who agonizes about tobacco ash on the living room rug and he is a forgetful genius who goes boating with the town baker when dignitaries from the local university have come to call.
He is the stern guardian of the status quo who has raised the utilitarian structures of the age, and he is the revolutionary poet with a gun in his hand who writes a tragic apologetic to posterity for the men he has killed.
What will be the final symmetry of the good society?
For what do the utopians labor?
Here, on a desk, is a stack of pamphlets representing the efforts of some of the best men of the day to penetrate these questions.
The thing that is notable in all these discussions is the lack of ideological ardor.
There is another kind of ardor, a quiet, sure devotion to the fundamental decencies of human life, but no angry utopian contentions.
Actually, you could wish for some passion, now and then, but when you look around the world and see the little volcanos of current history which partisan social passions have wrought, you are glad that in these pamphlets there is at least some civilized calm.
You could also say that in these pamphlets is a relieving quality of maturity.
There is essential pleasantness in reading the writing of men who are not angry, who can contend without quarreling.
This is the good kind of sophistication, and with all our problems and crises this kind of sophistication has flowered in the United States during recent years.
A characteristic expression of such concern and inquiry is found in Joseph P. Lyford's Introduction To The Agreeable Autocracies, a recent paperback study of the institutions of modern democratic society.
Mr. Lyford gives voice to a temper that represents, we think, an achieved plateau of reflective thinking.
After casting about for a way of describing this spirit, we decided that it would be better to use Mr. Lyford's introduction as an illustration.
He begins:
At one time it seemed as if the Soviet Union had done us a favor by providing a striking example of how not to behave towards other peoples and other nations.
As things turned out, however, we have not profited greatly from the lesson: instead of persistently following a national program of our own we have often been satisfied to be against whatever Soviet policy seemed to be at the moment.
Such activity may or may not have irritated the Kremlin, but it has frequently condemned America to an unnatural defensiveness that has undermined our effort to give leadership to the free world.
The defensiveness has been exaggerated by another bad habit, our tendency to rate the goodness or badness of other nations by the extent to which they applaud the slogans we circulate about ourselves.
Since the slogans have little application to reality and are sanctimonious to boot, the applause is faint even in areas of the world where we should expect to find the greatest affection for free government.
Shocked at the response to our proclamations, we grow more defensive, and worse, we lose our sense of humor and proportion.
Mr. Nehru is subjected to stern lectures on neutralism by our Department of State, and an American President observes sourly that Sweden would be a little less neurotic if it were a little more capitalistic.
One thing you can say about Mr. Lyford is that he does not suffer from any insecurity as an American.
Those who are insecure fear to be candid in self-examination.
Only the strong look squarely at weakness.
The maturity in this point of view lies in its recognition that no basic problem is ever solved without being clearly understood.
Mr. Lyford continues:
Even if the self portrait we distribute for popular consumption were accurate it would be dangerous to present it as a picture of the ideal society.
We would be ignoring the special circumstances of other countries.
The picture is the more treacherous when it misrepresents the facts of American life.
The discrepancy between what we commonly profess and what we practice or tolerate is great, and it does not escape the notice of others.
If our sincerity is granted, and it is granted, the discrepancy can only be explained by the fact that we have come to believe hearsay and legend about ourselves in preference to an understanding gained by earnest self-examination.
What is more, the legends have become so sacrosanct that the very habit of self-examination or self-criticism smells of low treason, and men who practice it are defeatists and unpatriotic scoundrels.
In an ideological argument, the participants tend to thump the table.
They are determined to prove something.
The new spirit, so well illustrated by Mr. Lyford's work, is wholly free of this anxiety.
The Introduction continues:
We experience a vague uneasiness about events, a suspicion that our political and economic institutions, like the genie in the bottle, have escaped confinement and that we have lost the power to recall them.
We feel uncomfortable at being bossed by a corporation or a union or a television set, but until we have some knowledge about these phenomena and what they are doing to us, we can hardly learn to control them.
It does not appear that we will be delivered from our situation by articles on The National Purpose.
The Agreeable Autocracies is an attempt to explore some of the institutions which both reflect and determine the character of the free society today.
These institutions which Mr. Lyford names agreeable autocracies--where did they come from?
Of one thing we can be sure: they were not sketched out by the revolutionary theorists of the eighteenth century who formulated the political principles and originally shaped the political institutions of what we term the free society.
No doubt there are historians who can explain to a great extent what happened to the plans and projects of the eighteenth century.
Going back over this ground and analyzing the composition of forces which have created the present scene is one of the tasks undertaken by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, in Santa Barbara.
The host is the flowing life of the human race.
This life has its own currents and rhythms, its own multiple cycles and adaptations.
On occasion it produces extraordinary novelties.
Should Rousseau have been able to leave room in his social theory for the advent of television, atomic energy, and IBM machines?
How would Thomas Jefferson feel after reading Factories In The Field?
They tell us, sir, that we are free, because we have in one hand a ballot, and in the other a stock certificate.
With these we shape our destiny and own private property, and that, sir, makes ours the best of all possible societies.
The reality of the situation, however, is described by Mr. Lyford:
Many of us may even be secretly relieved at having a plausible excuse to delegate ancient civic responsibilities to a new bureaucracy of experts.
Thus the member of an industrial union comes to regard his officers as business agents who may proceed without interference or recall;
the stockholder delivers his proxy;
and the citizen narrows his political participation to the mere act of voting--if he votes at all.
Copernicus did not question it, Ptolemy could not.
Given the conceptual context within which ancient thought thrived, how could anyone have questioned this principle?
The reasons for this are partly observational, partly philosophical, and reinforced by other aesthetic and cultural factors.
First, the observational reasons.
The obvious natural fact to ancient thinkers was the diurnal rotation of the heavens.
Not only did constellations like Draco, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia spin circles around the pole, but stars which were not circumpolar rose and set at the same place on the horizon each night.
Nor did a constellation's stars vary in brightness during the course of their nocturnal flights.
The conclusion--the distances of the constellations did not vary and their paths were circular.
Moreover, the sun's path over earth described a segment of a great circle;
this was clear from the contour of the shadow traced by a gnomon before and after noon.
As early as the 6th century B.C. the earth was seen to be spherical.
Ships disappear hull-first over the horizon;
approaching shore their masts appeared first.
Earth, being at the center of the universe, would have the same shape as the latter;
so, e.g. did Aristotle argue, although this may not be an observational reason in favor of circularity.
The discoid shapes of sun and moon were also felt to indicate the shape of celestial things.
In light of all this, one would require special reasons for saying that the paths of the heavenly bodies were other than circular.
Why, for example, should the ancients have supposed the diurnal rotation of the heavens to be elliptical?
Or oviform?
Or angular?
There were no reasons for such suppositions then.
This, conjoined with the considerations above, made the circular motions of heavenly bodies appear an almost directly observed fact.
Additional philosophical considerations, advanced notably by Aristotle, supported further the circularity principle.
By distinguishing superlunary (celestial) and sublunary (terrestrial) existence, and reinforcing this with the four-element physics of Empedocles, Aristotle came to speak of the stars as perfect bodies, which moved in only a perfect way, viz. in a perfect circle.
Now what is perfect motion?
It must, apparently, be motion without termini.
Because motion which begins and ends at discrete places would (e.g. for Aristotle) be incomplete.
Circular motion, however, since it is eternal and perfectly continuous, lacks termini.
It is never motion towards something.
Only imcomplete, imperfect things move towards what they lack.
Perfect, complete entities, if they move at all, do not move towards what they lack.
They move only in accordance with what is in their natures.
Thus, circular motion is itself one of the essential characteristics of completely perfect celestial existence.
To return now to the four-element physics, a mixture of muddy, frothy water will, when standing in a jar, separate out with earth at the bottom, water on top, and the air on top of that.
A candle alight in the air directs its flame and smoke upwards.
This gives a clue to the cosmical order of elements.
Thus earth has fallen to the center of the universe.
It is covered (partly) with water, air is atop of that.
Pure fire (the stars) is in the heavens.
The stars constitute an order of existence different from what we encounter on earth.
This is clear when one distinguishes the types of motion appropriate to both regions.
A projectile shot up from earth returns rectlinearly to its'natural'place of rest.
But the natural condition for the heavenly bodies is neither rest, nor rectilinear motion.
Being less encumbered by material embodiments they partake more of what is divine.
Their motion will be eternal and perfect.
Let us re-examine the publicized contrasts between Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy.
Bluntly, there never was a Ptolemaic system of astronomy.
Copernicus' achievement was to have invented systematic astronomy.
The Almagest and The Hypotheses outline Ptolemy's conception of his own task as the provision of computational tables, independent calculating devices for the prediction of future planetary perturbations.
Indeed, in the Halma edition of Theon's presentation of The Hypotheses there is a chart setting out (under six distinct headings) otherwise unrelated diagrams for describing the planetary motions.
No attempt is made by Ptolemy to weld into a single scheme (a-la-Aristotle), these independent predicting-machines.
They all have this in common: the earth is situated near the center of the deferent.
But that one should superimpose all these charts, run a pin through the common point, and then scale each planetary deferent larger and smaller (to keep the epicycles from'bumping '), this is contrary to any intention Ptolemy ever expresses.
He might even suppose the planets to move at infinity.
Ptolemy's problem is to forecast where, against the inverted bowl of night, some particular light will be found at future times.
His problem concerns longitudes, latitudes, and angular velocities.
The distances of these points of light is a problem he cannot master, beyond crude conjectures as to the orderings of the planetary orbits viewed outward from earth.
But none of this has prevented scientists, philosophers, and even historians of science, from speaking of the Ptolemaic system, in contrast to the Copernican.
This is a mistake.
It is engendered by confounding the Aristotelian cosmology in The Almagest with the geocentric astronomy.
Ptolemy recurrently denies that he could ever explain planetary motion.
This is what necessitates the nonsystematic character of his astronomy.
It is the chief merit in Copernicus' work that all his planetary calculations are interdependent.
He cannot, e.g. compute the retrograde arc traveled by Mars, without also making suppositions about the earth's own motion.
He cannot describe eclipses without entertaining some form of a three-body problem.
In Ptolemaic terms, however, eclipses and retrograde motion were phenomena simpliciter, to be explained directly as possible resultants of epicyclical combinations.
In a systematic astronomy, like that of Copernicus, retrogradations become part of the conceptual structure of the system;
they are no longer a puzzling aspect of intricately variable, local planetary motions.
Another contrast stressed when discussing Ptolemaic vs. Copernican astronomy, turns on the idea of simplicity.
It is often stated that Copernican astronomy is'simpler'than Ptolemaic.
Some even say that this is the reason for the ultimate acceptance of the former.
Thus, Margenau remarks: A large number of unrelated epicycles was needed to explain the observations, but otherwise the (Ptolemaic) system served well and with quantitative precision.
Copernicus, by placing the sun at the center of the planetary universe, was able to reduce the number of epicycles from eighty-three to seventeen.
Historical records indicate that Copernicus was unaware of the fundamental aspects of his so-called'revolution ', unaware perhaps of its historical importance, he rested content with having produced a simpler scheme for prediction.
As an illustration of the principle of simplicity the heliocentric discovery has a peculiar appeal because it allows simplicity to be arithmetized;
it involves a reduction in the number of epicycles from eighty-three to seventeen.
Without careful qualification this can be misleading.
If in any one calculation Ptolemy had had to invoke 83 epicycles all at once, while Copernicus never required more than one third this number, then (in the sense obvious to Margenau) Ptolemaic astronomy would be simpler than Copernican.
But no single planetary problem ever required of Ptolemy more than six epicycles at one time.
This, of course, results from the non-systematic,'cellular'character of Ptolemaic theory.
Calculations within the Copernican framework always raised questions about planetary configurations.
These could be met only by considering the dynamical elements of several planets at one time.
This is more ambitious than Ptolemy is ever required to be when he faces his isolated problems.
Thus, in no ordinary sense of'simplicity'is the Ptolemaic theory simpler than the Copernican.
The latter required juggling several elements simultaneously.
This was not simpler but much more difficult than exercises within Ptolemy's astronomy.
Analogously, anyone who argues that Einstein's theory of gravitation is simpler than Newton's, must say rather more to explain how it is that the latter is mastered by student-physicists, while the former can be managed (with difficulty) only by accomplished experts.
In a sense, Einstein's theory is simpler than Newton's, and there is a corresponding sense in which Copernicus' theory is simpler than Ptolemy's.
But'simplicity'here refers to systematic simplicity.
The number of primitive ideas in systematically-simple theories is reduced to a minimum.
The Axioms required to make the theoretical machinery operate are set out tersely and powerfully, so that all permissible operations within the theory can be traced rigorously back to these axioms, rules, and primitive notions.
This characterizes Euclid's formulation of geometry, but not Ptolemy's astronomy.
There are in The Almagest no rules for determining in advance whether a new epicycle will be required for dealing with abberations in lunar, solar, or planetary behavior.
The strongest appeal of the Copernican formulation consisted in just this: ideally, the justification for dealing with special problems in particular ways is completely set out in the basic'rules'of the theory.
The lower-level hypotheses are never'ad hoc ', never introduced ex post facto just to sweep up within the theory some recalcitrant datum.
Copernicus, to an extent unachieved by Ptolemy, approximated to Euclid's vision.
De Revolutionibus is not just a collection of facts and techniques.
It is an organized system of these things.
Solving astronomical problems requires, for Copernicus, not a random search of unrelated tables, but a regular employment of the rules defining the entire discipline.
Hence, noting the simplicity achieved in Copernicus' formulation does not provide another reason for the acceptance of De Revolutionibus, another reason beyond its systematic superiority.
It provides exactly the same reason.
1543 A.D. is often venerated as the birthday of the scientific revolution.
It is really the funeral day of scholastic science.
Granted, the cosmological, philosophical, and cultural reverberations initiated by the De Revolutionibus were felt with increasing violence during the 300 years to follow.
But, considered within technical astronomy, a different pattern can be traced.
In what does the dissatisfaction of Copernicus-the-astronomer consist?
What in The Almagest draws his fire?
Geocentricism per se?
No.
This arrangement was for Copernicus literally monstrous: With (the Ptolemaists) it is as though an artist were to gather the hands, feet, head and other members for his images from divers models, each part excellently drawn, but not related to a single body;
and since they in no way match each other, the result would be a monster rather than a man.
Copernicus required a systematically integrated, physically intelligible astronomy.
His objective was, essentially, to repair those aspects of orthodox astronomy responsible for its deficiencies in achieving these ends.
That such deficiencies existed within Ptolemy's theory was not discovered de novo by Copernicus.
The critical, rigorous examinations of Nicholas of Cusa and Nicholas of Oresme provided the context (a late medieval context) for Nicholas Copernicus' own work.
The latter looked backward upon inherited deficiencies.
Without abandoning too much, Copernicus sought to make orthodox astronomy systematically and mechanically acceptable.
He did not think himself to be firing the first shot of an intellectual revolution.
Henrietta's feeling of identity with Sara Sullam was crowned by her discovery of the coincidence that Sara's epitaph in the Jewish cemetery in Venice referred to her as the Sulamite.
His feeling always exacted sacrifices from her.
One is so accustomed to think of men as the privileged who need but ask and receive, and women as submissive and yielding, that our sympathies are usually enlisted on the side of the man whose love is not returned, and we condemn the woman as a coquette.
The very firmness of her convictions and logical clearness of her arguments captivated and stimulated him to make greater efforts;
usually, this is most exasperating to men, who expect every woman to verify their preconceived notions concerning her sex, and when she does not, immediately condemn her as eccentric and unwomanly.
She had the opportunity that few clever women can resist, of showing her superiority in argument over a man.
Women themselves have come to look upon matters in the same light as the outside world, and scarcely find any wrong in submitting to the importunities of a stronger will, even when their affections are withheld.
She was exposing herself to temptation which it is best to avoid where it can consistently be done.
One who invites such trials of character is either foolhardy, overconfident or too simple and childlike in faith in mankind to see the danger.
In any case but the last, such a course is sure to avenge itself upon the individual;
the moral powers no more than the physical and mental, can bear overstraining.
And, in the last case, a bitter disappointment but too often meets the confiding nature.
Henrietta was discovering in the process of writing, as the born writer does, not merely a channel for the discharge of accumulated information but a stimulus to the development of the creative powers of observation, insight and intuition.
Under her father's influence it did not occur to Henrietta that she might write on subjects outside the Jewish field, but she did begin writing for other Anglo-Jewish papers and thus increased her output and her audience.
And she wrote the libretto for an oratorio on the subject of Judas Maccabeus performed at the Hanukkah festival which came in December.
By her eighteenth birthday her bent for writing was so evident that Papa and Mamma gave her a Life Of Dickens as a spur to her aspiration.
Another source of intellectual stimulus was opened to her at that time by the founding of Johns Hopkins University within walking distance of home.
It was established in a couple of buildings in the shopping district, with only a few professors, but all eminent men, and a few hundred eager students housed in nearby dwellings.
In September '76 Thomas Huxley, Darwin's famous disciple, came from England to speak in a crowded auditorium at the formal opening of the University;
and although it was a school for men only, it afforded Henrietta an opportunity to attend its public lectures.
From Philadelphia came Cyrus Adler and Joseph Jastrow.
Adler, Judge Sulzberger's nephew, came to study Assyriology.
A smart, shrewd and ambitious young man, well connected, and with a knack for getting in the good graces of important people, he was bound to go far.
Joseph Jastrow, the younger son of the distinguished rabbi, Marcus Jastrow, was a friendly, round-faced fellow with a little mustache, whose field was psychology, and who was also a punster and a jolly tease.
His father was a good friend of Rabbi Szold, and Joe lived with the Szolds for a while.
Both these youths, who greatly admired Henrietta, were somewhat younger than she, as were also the neighboring Friedenwald boys, who were then studying medicine;
and bright though they all were, they could not possibly compete for her interest with Papa, whose mind--although he never tried to dazzle or patronize lesser lights with it--naturally eclipsed theirs and made them seem to her even younger than they were.
Besides, Miss Henrietta--as she was generally known since she had put up her hair with a chignon in the back--had little time to spare them from her teaching and writing;
so Cyrus Adler became interested in her friend Racie Friedenwald, and Joe Jastrow--the only young man who when he wrote had the temerity to address her as Henrietta, and signed himself Joe--fell in love with pretty sister Rachel.
Unlike his younger brother, Joe, he never presumed to address her more familiarly than as My dear friend, although he praised and envied the elegance and purity of her style.
And when he complained of the lack of time for all he wanted to do, Henrietta advised him to rise at five in the morning as she and Papa did.
One thing Papa had not taught Henrietta was how to handle a young man as high-spirited and opinionated as herself.
She could not resist the opportunity of showing her superiority in argument over a man which she had remarked as one of the feminine follies of Sara Sullam;
But that did not prevent him from writing more long letters, or from coming to spend his Christmas vacations with the hospitable, lively Szolds in their pleasant house on Lombard Street.
1880s: little women
we've got Father and Mother and each other said Beth on the first page of Louisa Alcott's Little Women;
and, I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world, burst out Jo some five hundred pages later in that popular story of the March family, which had first appeared when Henrietta was eight;
and the Szold family, as it developed, bore a striking resemblance to the Marches.
Mr. March, like Benjamin Szold, was a clergyman, although of an indeterminate denomination;
and Marmee March, like Sophie Szold, was the competent manager of her brood of girls, of whom the Marches had only four to the Szolds' five.
But the March girls had their counterparts in the Szold girls.
Henrietta could easily identify herself with Jo March, although Jo was not the eldest sister.
Neither was Henrietta hoydenish like Jo, who frankly wished she were a boy and had deliberately shortened her name, which, like Henrietta's, was the feminine form of a boy's name.
But both were high-spirited and vivacious, both had tempers to control, both loved languages, especially English and German, both were good teachers and wrote for publication.
Each was her mother's assistant and confidante;
and each stood out conspicuously in the family picture.
Bertha Szold was more like Meg, the eldest March girl, who learned that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it, not as a queen, but a wise wife and mother.
Bertha, blue-eyed like Mamma, was from the start her mother's daughter, destined for her mother's role in life.
Sadie, like Beth March, suffered ill health--got rheumatic fever and had to be careful of her heart--but that never dampened her spirits.
When her right hand was incapacitated by the rheumatism, Sadie learned to write with her left hand.
She wrote gay plays about the girls for family entertainments, like Oh, What Fun!
A Comedy In Three Acts, in which, under Personages, Henrietta appeared as A Schoolmarm, and Bertha, who was only a trifle less brilliant in high school than Henrietta had been, appeared as Dummkopf.
Sadie studied piano;
played Chopin in the Soiree Musicale of Mr. Guthrie's Pupils;
and she recited Hector's Farewell To Andromache most movingly, to the special delight of Rabbi Jastrow at his home in Germantown near Philadelphia, where the Szold girls took turns visiting between the visits of the Jastrow boys at the Szolds' in Baltimore.
Adele, like Amy, the youngest of the Marches, was the rebellious, mischievous, rather calculating and ambitious one.
For Rachel, conceded to be the prettiest of the Szold girls--and she did make a pretty picture sitting in the grape-arbor strumming her guitar and singing in her silvery tones--there was no particular March counterpart;
but both groups were so closely knit that despite individual differences the family life in both cases was remarkably similar in atmosphere if not entirely in content--the one being definitely Jewish and the other vaguely Christian.
The Szolds, like the Marches, enjoyed and loved living together, even in troubled times;
and, as in the March home, any young man who called on the Szolds found himself confronted with a phalanx of femininity which made it rather difficult to direct his particular attention to any one of them.
This included Mamma, jolly, generous, and pretty, with whom they all fell in love, just as Papa had first fallen in love with her Mamma before he chose her;
and when a young man like Morris Jastrow had enjoyed the Szold hospitality, he felt obliged to send his respects and his gifts not merely to Henrietta, in whom he was really interested, but to all the Szold girls and Mamma.
This time he was making no mistake.
Olgivanna--in her country the nickname was a respectful form of address--was not only attractive but shrewd, durable, sensible, and smart.
No wonder Wright was enchanted--no two better suited people ever met.
Almost from that day, until his death, Olgivanna was to stay at his side;
but the years that immediately followed were to be extraordinarily trying, both for Wright and his Montenegrin lady.
It must be granted that the flouting of convention, no matter how well intentioned one may be, is sure to lead to trouble, or at least to the discomfort that goes with social disapproval.
Even so, many of the things that happened to Wright and Olgivanna seem inordinately severe.
Their afflictions centered on one maddening difficulty: Miriam held up the divorce proceedings that she herself had asked for.
Reporters began to trail Miriam everywhere, and to encourage her to make appalling statements about Wright and his doings.
Flocks of writs, attachments, and unpleasant legal papers of every sort began to fly through the air.
The distracted Miriam would agree to a settlement through her legal representative, then change her mind and make another attack on Wright as a person.
At last her lawyer, Arthur D. Cloud, gave up the case because she turned down three successive settlements he arranged.
Cloud made an interesting statement in parting from his client: I wanted to be a lawyer, and Mrs. Wright wanted me to be an avenging angel.
So I got out.
Mrs. Wright is without funds.
The first thing to do is get her some money by a temporary but definite adjustment pending a final disposition of the case.
But every time I suggested this to her, Mrs. Wright turned it down and demanded that I go out and punish Mr. Wright.
I am an attorney, not an instrument of vengeance.
Miriam Noel disregarded the free advice of her departing counselor, and appointed a heavy-faced young man named Harold Jackson to take his place.
There were three years of this strange warfare;
and during the unhappy time, Miriam often would charge that Wright and Olgivanna were misdemeanants against the public order of Wisconsin.
Yet somehow, when officers were prodded into visiting Taliesin to execute the warrants, they would find neither Wright nor Olgivanna at home.
This showed that common sense had not died out at the county and village level--though why the unhappy and obviously unbalanced woman was not restrained remains a puzzle.
The misery of Miriam's bitterness can be felt today by anyone who studies the case--it was hopeless, agonizing, and destructive, with Miriam herself bearing the heaviest burden of shame and pain.
To get an idea of the embarrassment and chagrin that was heaped upon Wright and Olgivanna, we should bear in mind that the raids were sometimes led by Miriam in person.
One of the most distressing of these scenes occurred at Spring Green toward the end of the open warfare, on a beautiful day in June.
At this time Miriam Noel appeared, urging on Constable Henry Pengally, whose name showed him to be a descendant of the Welsh settlers in the neighborhood.
A troop of reporters brought up the rear.
Miriam was stopped at the Taliesin gate, and William Weston, now the estate foreman, came out to parley.
He said that Mr. Wright was not in, and so could not be arrested on something called a peace warrant that Miriam was waving in the air.
Miriam now ordered Pengally to break down the gate, but he said he really couldn't go that far.
At this point Mrs. Frances Cupply, one of Wright's handsome daughters by his first wife, came from the house and tried to calm Miriam as she tore down a no visitors sign and smashed the glass pane on another sign with a rock.
Miriam Noel Wright said, Here I am at my own home, locked out so I must stand in the road!
Then she rounded on Weston and cried, You always did Wright's dirty work!
When I take over Taliesin, the first thing I'll do is fire you.
Madame Noel, I think you had better go, said Mrs. Cupply.
And I think you had better leave, replied Miriam.
Turning to the reporters, she asked, Did you hear her?
' I think you had better leave '!
And this is my own home.
In the silence that followed, Miriam walked close to Mrs. Cupply, who drew back a step on her side of the gate.
Then, with staring eyes and lips drawn thin, Miriam said to the young woman, You are ugly--uglier than you used to be, and you were always very ugly.
You are even uglier than Mr. Wright.
The animosity expressed by such a scene had the penetrating quality of a natural force;
and it gave Miriam Noel a fund of energy like that of a person inspired to complete some great and universal work of art.
As if to make certain that Wright would be unable to pay any settlement at all, Miriam wrote to prospective clients denouncing him;
she also went to Washington and appealed to Senator George William Norris of Nebraska, the Fighting Liberal, from whose office a sympathetic but cautious harrumphing was heard.
Then, after overtures to accept a settlement and go through with a divorce, Miriam gave a ghastly echo of Mrs. Micawber by suddenly stating, I will never leave Mr. Wright.
Under this kind of pressure, it is not surprising that Wright would make sweeping statements to the newspapers.
Miriam had not yet goaded him into mentioning her directly, but one can feel the generalized anger in Wright's remarks to reporters when he was asked, one morning on arrival in Chicago, what he thought of the city as a whole.
First, Wright said, he was choked by the smoke, which fortunately kept him from seeing the dreadful town.
But surely Michigan Avenue was handsome?
That isn't a boulevard, it's a racetrack!
Cried Wright, showing that automobiles were considered to be a danger as early as the 1920's.
This is a horrible way to live, Wright went on.
You are being strangled by traffic.
He was then asked for a solution of the difficulty, and began to talk trenchant sense, though private anguish showed through in the vehemence of his manner.
Take a gigantic knife and sweep it over the Loop, Wright said.
Cut off every building at the seventh floor.
Spread everything out.
You don't need concentration.
If you cut down these horrible buildings you'll have no more traffic jams.
You'll have trees again.
You'll have some joy in the life of this city.
After all, that's the job of the architect--to give the world a little joy.
Little enough joy was afforded Wright in the spring of 1925, when another destructive fire broke out at Taliesin.
The first news stories had it that this blaze was started by a bolt of lightning, as though Miriam could call down fire from heaven like a prophet of the Old Testament.
A storm did take place that night, and fortunately enough, it included a cloudburst that helped put out the flames.
Later accounts blamed defective wiring for starting the fire;
at any rate, heat grew so intense in the main part of the house that it melted the window panes, and fused the K'ang-si pottery to cinders.
Wright set his loss at $200,000, a figure perhaps justified by the unique character of the house that had been ruined, and the faultless taste that had gone into the selection of the prints and other things that were destroyed.
In spite of the disaster, Wright completed during this period plans for the Lake Tahoe resort, in which he suggested the shapes of American Indian tepees--a project of great and appropriate charm, that came to nothing.
Amid a shortage of profitable work, the memory of Albert Johnson's $20,000 stood out in lonely grandeur--the money had quickly melted away.
A series of conferences with friends and bankers began about this time;
and the question before these meetings was, here is a man of international reputation and proved earning power;
how can he be financed so that he can find the work he ought to do?
While this was under consideration, dauntless as ever Wright set about the building of Taliesin 3.
As he made plans for the new Taliesin, Wright also got on paper his conception of a cathedral of steel and glass to house a congregation of all faiths, and the idea for a planetarium with a sloping ramp.
Years were to pass before these plans came off the paper, and Wright was justified in thinking, as the projects failed, that much of what he had to show his country and the world would never be seen except by visitors to Taliesin.
And now there was some question as to his continued residence there.
Billy Koch, who had once worked for Wright as a chauffeur, gave a deposition for Miriam's use that he had seen Olgivanna living at Taliesin.
This might put Wright in such a bad light before a court that Miriam would be awarded Taliesin;
Miriam sniffed at this, and complained that Wright had said unkind things about her to reporters.
His reply was, Everything that has been printed derogatory to you, purporting to have come from me, was a betrayal, and nothing yet has been printed which I have sanctioned.
What irritated Miriam was that Wright had told the papers about a reasonable offer he had made, which he considered she would accept when she tires of publicity.
From her California headquarters, Miriam fired back, I shall never divorce Mr. Wright, to permit him to marry Olga Milanoff.
Then Miriam varied the senseless psychological warfare by suddenly withdrawing a suit for separate maintenance that had been pending, and asking for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, with the understanding that Wright would not contest it.
The Bank of Wisconsin sent a representative to the judge's chambers in Madison to give information on Wright's ability to meet the terms.
He said that the architect might reasonably be expected to carry his financial burdens if all harrassment could be brought to an end, and that the bank would accept a mortgage on Taliesin to help bring this about.
Miriam said that she must be assured that that other woman, Olga, will not be in luxury while I am scraping along.
This exhausted Wright's patience, and in consequence he talked freely to reporters in a Madison hotel suite.
Volstead laws, speed laws, divorce laws, he said, as they now stand, demoralize the individual, make liars and law breakers of us in one way or another, and tend to make our experiment in democracy absurd.
If Mrs. Wright doesn't accept the terms in the morning, I'll go either to Tokyo or to Holland, to do what I can.
I realize, in taking this stand, just what it means to me and mine.
Here Wright gave a slight sigh of weariness, and continued, It means more long years lived across the social grain of the life of our people, making shift to live in the face of popular disrespect and misunderstanding as I best can for myself and those dependent upon me.
Next day, word came that Miriam was not going through with the divorce;
but Wright stayed in the United States.
His mentioning of Japan and Holland had been merely the expression of wishful thinking.
No matter what troubles might betide him, this most American of artists knew in his heart he could not function properly outside his native land.
In a few weeks Miriam made another sortie at Taliesin, but was repulsed at the locked and guarded gates.
More likely, you simply told yourself, as you handed us the book, that it mattered little what we incanted providing we underwent the discipline of incantation.
For pride's sake, I will not say that the coy and leering vade mecum of those verses insinuated itself into my soul.
Besides, that particular message does no more than weakly echo the roar in all fresh blood.
But what you could not know, of course, was how smoothly the Victorian Fitzgerald was to lead into an American Fitzgerald of my own vintage under whose banner we adolescents were to come, if not of age, then into a bright, taut semblance of it.
I do not suppose you ever heard of F. Scott Fitzgerald, living or dead, and moreover I do not suppose that, even if you had, his legend would have seemed to you to warrant more than a cluck of disapproval.
Neither his appetites, his exacerbations, nor his despair were kin to yours.
He might have been the man in the moon for all you could have understood him.
But he was no man in the moon to me.
Although his tender nights were not the ones I dreamed of, nor was it for yachts, sports cars, tall drinks, and swimming pools, nor yet for money or what money buys that I burned, I too was burning and watching myself burn.
The flame was simply of a different kind.
One should not, of course, pluck the head off a flower and expect its perfume to linger on.
Yet this passion for passion, now that I look back on it with passion spent, seems somewhat overblown and operatic, though as a diva Miss Millay perfectly controlled her notes.
Only what else was she singing but the old Song of Songs, that most ancient of tunes that nature plays with such unfailing response upon young nerves?
Perhaps this is not so little.
Perhaps the mere fact that by plucking on the nerves nature can awaken in the most ordinary of us, temporarily anyway, the sleeping poet, and in poets can discover their immortality, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable phenomena to which we can attest?
One can see it as humiliating that an extra hormone casually fed into our chemistry may induce us to lay down our lives for a lover or a friend;
one can take it as no more than another veil torn from the mystery of the soul.
But it could also be looked at from the other end of the spectrum.
One could see this chemical determinant as in itself a miracle.
But all this, I am well aware, is the bel canto of love, and although I have always liked to think that it was to the bel canto and to that alone that I listened, I know well enough that it was not.
If I am to speak the whole truth about my knowledge of love, I will have to stop trying to emulate the transcendant nightingale.
There is another side of love, more nearly symbolized by the croak of the mating capercailzie, or better still perhaps by the mute antics of the slug.
I recoil from the very thought.
At the same time, I am aware that my recoil could be interpreted by readers of the tea leaves at the bottom of my psyche as an incestuous sign, since theirs is a science of paradox: if one hates, they say it is because one loves;
if one bullies, they say it is because one is afraid;
if one shuns, they say it is because one desires;
and according to them, whatever one fancies one feels, what one feels in fact is the opposite.
Well, normally abnormal or normally normal, neurotic or merely fastidious (do the tea-leaf readers, by the way, allow psyches to have moral taste?
), I have never wanted to know what you knew of passion.
I can see us now.
We had been walking quite briskly, for despite your being so small and me so tall, your stride in those days could easily match mine.
We had stopped before a shop window to assess its autumnal display, when you suddenly turned to me, looking up from beneath one of your wrong hats, and with your nervous ahem!
Said: There are things I must tell you about this man you are marrying which he does not know himself.
If you had screamed right there in the street where we stood, I could not have felt more fear.
With scarcely a mumble of excuse, I fled.
I had developed too foolproof a facade to be afraid of self-betrayal.
What I fled from was my fear of what, unwittingly, you might betray, without meaning to, about my father and yourself.
But I can see from this latest trick of memory how much more arbitrary and influential it is than the will.
While my memory holds with relentless tenacity, as I cannot too often stress, to my wrongs, when it comes to my shames, it gestures and jokes and toys with chronology like a prestidigitator in the hope of distracting me from them.
Just as I was about to enlarge upon my discovery of the underside of the leaf of love, memory, displeased at being asked to yield its unsavory secrets, dashed ahead of me, calling back over its shoulder: Skip it.
Cut it out.
But I will not skip it or cut it out.
It is not my intention in this narrative to picture myself as a helpless victim moored to the rock of experience and left to the buffetings of chance.
If to be innocent is to be helpless, then I had been--as are we all--helpless at the start.
But the time came when I was no longer innocent and therefore no longer helpless.
Helpless in that sense I can never be again.
However, I confess my hope that I will be innocent again, not with a pristine, accidental innocence, but rather with an innocence achieved by the slow cutting away of the flesh to reach the bone.
For innocence, of all the graces of the spirit, is I believe the one most to be prayed for.
Although it is constantly made to look foolish (too simple to come in out of the rain, people say, who have found in the innocent an impediment), it does not mind looking foolish because it is not concerned with how it looks.
It assumes that things are as they seem when they seem best, and when they seem worst it overlooks them.
To innocence, a word given is a word that will be kept.
Instinctively, innocence does unto others as it expects to be done by.
But when these expectations are once too often ground into the dust, innocence can falter, since its strength is according to the strength of him who possesses it.
The innocence of which I speak is, I know, not incorruptible.
But I insist upon believing that even when it is lost, it may, like paradise, be regained.
However, it was not of innocence in general that I was speaking, but of perhaps the frailest and surely the least important side of it which is innocence in romantic love.
Here, if anywhere, it is not wholly incontrovertible.
But to me innocence is far less tangible.
I knew this knowledge to be corrupting at the time I acquired it;
today, these many years later, after all the temptations resisted or yielded to, the weasel satisfactions and the engulfing dissatisfactions since endured, I call it corrupting still.
You, I could swear to it, remained innocent in this sense until the end.
Yours, but not mine, was an age in which innocence was fostered and carefully--if not perhaps altogether innocently--preserved.
You had grown up at a time when the most distinguishing mark of a lady was the noli me tangere writ plain across her face.
There was, of course, more to the portrait of a lady you carried in your mind's eye than the sine qua non of her virtue.
With each song he gave verbal footnotes.
The songs Sandburg sang often reminded listeners of songs of a kindred character they knew entirely or in fragments.
Often these listeners would refer Sandburg to persons who had similar ballads or ditties.
In due time Sandburg was a walking thesaurus of American folk music.
After he had finished the first two volumes of his Lincoln, Sandburg went to work assembling a book of songs out of hobo and childhood days and from the memory of songs others had taught him.
He rummaged, found composers and arrangers, collaborated on the main design and outline of harmonization with musicians, ballad singers, and musicologists.
The result was a collection of 280 songs, ballads, ditties, brought together from all regions of America, more than one hundred never before published: The American Songbag.
Each song or ditty was prefaced by an author's note which indicated the origin and meaning of the song as well as special interest the song had, musical arrangement, and most of the chorus and verses.
The book, published in 1927, has been selling steadily ever since.
As Sandburg said at the time: It is as ancient as the medieval European ballads brought to the Appalachian Mountains, it is as modern as skyscrapers, the Volstead Act, and the latest oil well gusher.
Schopenhauer never learned
Sandburg is in constant demand as an entertainer.
Two things contribute to his popularity.
First, Carl respects his audience and prepares his speeches carefully.
Even when he is called upon for impromptu remarks, he has notes written on the back of handy envelopes.
He has his own system of shorthand, devised by abbreviations: humility will be humly, with will be w, and that will be tt.
The second reason for his popularity is his complete spontaneity with the guitar.
It is a mistake, however, to imagine that Sandburg uses the guitar as a prop.
He is no dextrous-fingered college boy but rather a dedicated, humble, and bashful apostle of this instrument.
At age seventy-four, he became what he shyly terms a pupil of Andres Segovia, the great guitarist of the Western world.
It is not easy to become Segovia's pupil.
One needs high talent.
Segovia has written about Carl:
His fingers labor heavily on the strings and he asked for my help in disciplining them.
I found that this precocious, grown-up boy of 74 deserved to be taught.
There has long existed a brotherly affection between us, thus I accepted him as my pupil.
Just as in the case of every prodigy child, we must watch for the efficacy of my teaching to show up in the future--if he should master all the strenuous exercises I inflicted on him.
To play the guitar as he aspires will devour his three-fold energy as a historian, a poet and a singer.
One cause of Schopenhauer's pessimism was the fact that he failed to learn the guitar.
I am certain that Carl Sandburg will not fall into the same sad philosophy.
The heart of this great poet constantly bubbles forth a generous joy of life--with or without the guitar.
The public's identification of Carl Sandburg and the guitar is no happenstance.
Nor does Carl reject this identity.
He is proud of having Segovia for a friend and dedicated a poem to him titled The Guitar.
Carl says it is the greatest poem ever written to the guitar because he has never heard of any other poem to that subtle instrument.
A portable companion always ready to go where you go--a small friend weighing less than a freshborn infant--to be shared with few or many--just two of you in sweet meditation.
The New York Herald Tribune's photographer, Ira Rosenberg, tells an anecdote about the time he wanted to take a picture of Carl playing a guitar.
Carl hadn't brought his along.
Mr. Rosenberg suggested that they go out and find one.
Preferably, said Carl, one battered and worn, such as might be found in a pawnshop.
They went to the pawnshop of Joseph Miller of 1162 Sixth Avenue.
Mr. Miller was in the shop, the Herald Tribune story related, but was reluctant to have anybody's picture taken inside, because his business was too'confidential'for pictures.
But after introductions he asked:'Carl Sandburg?
Well you can pose inside.
He wanted Mr. Sandburg to pose with one of the guitars he had displayed behind glass in the center of his shop, but the poet eyed this somewhat distastefully.
' Kalamazoo guitars ', he said,'used by radio hillbilly singers.
He chose one from Mr. Miller's window, a plain guitar with no fancy polish.
While the picture was taken, Mr. Miller's disposition to be generous to Mr. Sandburg increased to the point where he advised,'I won't even charge you the one dollar rental fee'''.
A knowledgeable celebrity
When someone in the audience rose and asked how does it feel to be a celebrity, Carl said, A celebrity is a fellow who eats celery with celerity.
This has always been Carl's attitude.
Lloyd Lewis wrote that when he first knew Carl in 1916, Sandburg was making $27.50 a week writing features for the Day Book and eating sparse luncheons in one-arm restaurants.
He walked home at night for two miles beyond the end of a suburban trolley.
When fame came it changed Sandburg only slightly.
Lewis remembered another newspaperman asking, Carl, have your ideas changed any since you got all these comforts?
Carl thought the question over slowly and answered: I know a starving man who is fed never remembers all the pangs of his starvation, I know that.
That was all he said, Lewis reports.
That was all he had to say.
In answer to a New York Times query on what is fame (Thoughts On Fame, October 23, 1960), Carl said: Fame is a figment of a pigment.
It comes and goes.
It changes with every generation.
There never were two fames alike.
One fame is precious and luminous;
another is a bubble of a bauble.
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?
The impression you get from Carl Sandburg's home is one of laughter and happiness;
and the laughter and the happiness are even more pronounced when no company is present.
Carl has been married to Paula for fifty-three years, and he has not made a single major decision without careful consideration and thorough discussion with his wife.
Through all these years, Mrs. Sandburg has pointedly avoided the limelight.
She has shared her husband's greatness, but only within the confines of their home;
it is a dedication which began the moment she met Carl.
Mrs. Sandburg received a Phi Beta Kappa key from the University of Chicago and she was busy writing and teaching when she met Sandburg.
You are the'Peoples' Poet'was her appraisal in 1908, and she stopped teaching and writing to devote herself to the fulfillment of her husband's career.
She has rarely been photographed with him and, except for Carl's seventy-fifth anniversary celebration in Chicago in 1953, she has not attended the dozens of banquets, functions, public appearances, and dinners honoring him--all of this upon her insistence.
Even now I will not intrude upon her except to state a few bare facts.
The only way to describe Paula Sandburg is to say she is beautiful in a Grecian sense.
Her clothes, her hair, everything about her is both graceful and simple.
She has small, broad, capable hands and an enormous energy.
She is not only a trained mathematician and Classicist, but a good architect.
She designed and supervised the building of the Harbert, Michigan, house, most of which was constructed by one local carpenter who carried the heavy beams singly upon his shoulder.
As the Sandburg goat herd increased, she also designed the barn alterations to accommodate them.
When erosion threatened the foundation of their home in Harbert, Paula Sandburg planted grapevines and arranged the snow fences which helped hold the sands away.
She was born Lilian Steichen, her parents immigrants from Luxemburg.
Her mother called her Paus'l, a Luxemburg endearment meaning pussycat.
Some of the children of the family could not pronounce this name and called her Paula, a soubriquet Carl liked so much she has been Paula ever since.
But neither was Lilian her baptismal name.
Her parents, pious Roman Catholics, christened her Mary Anne Elizabeth Magdalene Steichen.
My mother read a book right after I was born and there was a Lilian in the book she loved and I became Lilian--and eventually I became Paula.
Lilian Steichen was an exceptional student.
This family of Luxemburg immigrants, in fact, produced two exceptional children.
Paula's older brother is Edward Steichen, a talented artist and, for the past half-century, one of the world's eminent photographers.
(Two years ago the photography editor of Vogue Magazine titled his article about Steichen, The World's Greatest Photographer.
By the time Lilian had been graduated from public school, her parents were doing quite well.
Her mother was a good manager and established a millinery business in Milwaukee.
But her father was not enthusiastic about sending young Paula to high school.
This is no place for a young girl, he said.
The parents compromised, however, on a convent school and Paula went to Ursuline Academy in London, Ontario.
She was pious, too, once kneeling through the night from Holy Thursday to Good Friday, despite the protest of the nuns that this was too much for a young girl.
She knelt out of reverence for having read the Meditations of St. Augustine.
She read everything else she could get her hands on, including an article (she thinks it was in the Atlantic Monthly) by Mark Twain on White Slavery.
Paula was saddened about what was happening to little girls and vowed to kneel no more in Chapel.
She had come to a decision.
If there was ever a thought in her mind she might devote her life to religion, it was now dispelled.
I felt that I must devote myself to the'outside'world.
She passed the entrance examinations to the University of Illinois, but during the year at Urbana felt more important events transpired at the University of Chicago.
And besides, Thorstein Veblen was one of the Chicago professors.
At the University of Chicago she studied Whitman and Shelley, and became a Socialist.
Socialist leaders in Milwaukee recognized her worth, not only because of her dedication but because of her fluency in German, French, and Luxemburg.
She once gave a German recitation before a convention of German-language teachers in Milwaukee.
Carl and Paula met in Milwaukee in 1907 during Paula's Christmas holiday visit to her parents.
Carl was still Charles A. Sandburg.
He legitimized Paula for Lilian Steichen, and it was Paula who insisted on Carl for Charles.
Victor Berger, the panjandrum of Wisconsin Socialism and member of Congress, had asked Paula Steichen to translate some of his German editorials into English.
Carl, who was stationed in Appleton, Wisconsin, organizing for the Social Democrats, was in Berger's office and made it his business to escort Paula to the streetcar.
She left the next day for her teaching job at Princeton, Illinois.
(After graduation from the University of Chicago, Paula taught for two years in the normal school at Valley City, North Dakota, then two years at Princeton (Illinois) Township High School.
) By the time the streetcar pulled away, he had fallen in love with Paula.
A letter awaited her at Princeton.
Paula says that even though Carl's letters usually began, Dear Miss Steichen, there was an understanding from the beginning that they would become husband and wife.
Paula generously lent me one of Carl's love letters, dated February 21, 1908, Hotel Athearn, Oshkosh, Wisconsin:
Dear Miss Steichen: It is a very good letter you send me--softens the intensity of this guerilla warfare I am carrying on up here.
Never until in this work of S-D organization have I realized and felt the attitude and experience of a Teacher.
The United States is always ready to participate with the Soviet Union in serious discussion of these or any other subjects that may lead to peace with justice.
Certainly it is not necessary to repeat that the United States has no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of any nation;
by the same token, we reject any Soviet attempt to impose its system on us or other peoples by force or subversion.
Now this concern for the freedom of other peoples is the intellectual and spiritual cement which has allied us with more than forty other nations in a common defense effort.
Not for a moment do we forget that our own fate is firmly fastened to that of these countries;
we will not act in any way which would jeopardize our solemn commitments to them.
We and our friends are, of course, concerned with self-defense.
Growing out of this concern is the realization that all people of the Free World have a great stake in the progress, in freedom, of the uncommitted and newly emerging nations.
These peoples, desperately hoping to lift themselves to decent levels of living must not, by our neglect, be forced to seek help from, and finally become virtual satellites of, those who proclaim their hostility to freedom.
But they must have technical and investment assistance.
This is a problem to be solved not by America alone, but also by every nation cherishing the same ideals and in position to provide help.
In recent years America's partners and friends in Western Europe and Japan have made great economic progress.
The international economy of 1960 is markedly different from that of the early postwar years.
No longer is the United States the only major industrial country capable of providing substantial amounts of the resources so urgently needed in the newly developed countries.
To remain secure and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend the kind of co-operation to the less fortunate members that will inspire hope, confidence, and progress.
But the enmities it will incur, the isolation into which it will descend, and the internal moral and spiritual softness that will be engendered, will, in the long term, bring it to economic and political disaster.
America did not become great through softness and self-indulgence.
Her miraculous progress in material achievements flows from other qualities far more worthy and substantial: adherence to principles and methods consonant with our religious philosophy;
a satisfaction in hard work;
the readiness to sacrifice for worthwhile causes;
the courage to meet every challenge;
the intellectual honesty and capacity to recognize the true path of her own best interests.
To us and to every nation of the Free World, rich or poor, these qualities are necessary today as never before if we are to march together to greater security, prosperity and peace.
I believe that the industrial countries are ready to participate actively in supplementing the efforts of the developing nations to achieve progress.
The immediate need for this kind of co-operation is underscored by the strain in this nation's international balance of payments.
Our surplus from foreign business transactions has in recent years fallen substantially short of the expenditures we make abroad to maintain our military establishments overseas, to finance private investment, and to provide assistance to the less developed nations.
In 1959 our deficit in balance of payments approached four billion dollars.
Continuing deficits of anything like this magnitude would, over time, impair our own economic growth and check the forward progress of the Free World.
We must meet this situation by promoting a rising volume of exports and world trade.
Further, we must induce all industrialized nations of the Free World to work together to help lift the scourge of poverty from less fortunate.
This co-operation in this matter will provide both for the necessary sharing of this burden and in bringing about still further increases in mutually profitable trade.
New Nations, and others struggling with the problems of development, will progress only--regardless of any outside help--if they demonstrate faith in their own destiny and use their own resources to fulfill it.
Moreover, progress in a national transformation can be only gradually earned;
there is no easy and quick way to follow from the oxcart to the jet plane.
But, just as we drew on Europe for assistance in our earlier years, so now do these new and emerging nations that do have this faith and determination deserve help.
Respecting their need, one of the major focal points of our concern is the South-Asian region.
Here, in two nations alone, are almost five hundred million people, all working, and working hard, to raise their standards, and in doing so, to make of themselves a strong bulwark against the spread of an ideology that would destroy liberty.
I cannot express to you the depth of my conviction that, in our own and free world interest, we must co-operate with others to help these people achieve their legitimate ambitions, as expressed in their different multi-year plans.
Through the World Bank and other instrumentalities, as well as through individual action by every nation in position to help, we must squarely face this titanic challenge.
I shall continue to urge the American people, in the interests of their own security, prosperity and peace, to make sure that their own part of this great project be amply and cheerfully supported.
Free world decisions in this matter may spell the difference between world disaster and world progress in freedom.
Other countries, some of which I visited last month, have similar needs.
A common meeting ground is desirable for those nations which are prepared to assist in the development effort.
During the past year I have discussed this matter with the leaders of several Western nations.
Because of its wealth of experience, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation could help with the initial studies needed.
The goal is to enlist all available economic resources in the industrialized Free World, especially private investment capital.
By extending this help, we hope to make possible the enthusiastic enrollment of these nations under freedom's banner.
No more startling contrast to a system of sullen satellites could be imagined.
If we grasp this opportunity to build an age of productive partnership between the less fortunate nations and those that have already achieved a high state of economic advancement, we will make brighter the outlook for a world order based upon security and freedom.
Otherwise, the outlook could be dark indeed.
We face, indeed, what may be a turning point in history, and we must act decisively and wisely.
As a nation we can successfully pursue these objectives only from a position of broadly based strength.
No matter how earnest is our quest for guaranteed peace, we must maintain a high degree of military effectiveness at the same time we are engaged in negotiating the issue of arms reduction.
Until tangible and mutually enforceable arms reduction measures are worked out we will not weaken the means of defending our institutions.
America possesses an enormous defense power.
It is my studied conviction that no nation will ever risk general war against us unless we should become so foolish as to neglect the defense forces we now so powerfully support.
It is world-wide knowledge that any power which might be tempted today to attack the United States by surprise, even though we might sustain great losses, would itself promptly suffer a terrible destruction.
But I once again assure all peoples and all nations that the United States, except in defense, will never turn loose this destructive power.
During the past year, our long-range striking power, unmatched today in manned bombers, has taken on new strength as the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile has entered the operational inventory.
In fourteen recent test launchings, at ranges of five thousand miles, Atlas has been striking on an average within two miles of the target.
This is less than the length of a jet runway--well within the circle of destruction.
Incidentally, there was an Atlas firing last night.
From all reports so far received, its performance conformed to the high standards I have just described.
Such performance is a great tribute to American scientists and engineers, who in the past five years have had to telescope time and technology to develop these long-range ballistic missiles, where America had none before.
This year, moreover, growing numbers of nuclear powered submarines will enter our active forces, some to be armed with Polaris missiles.
These remarkable ships and weapons, ranging the oceans, will be capable of accurate fire on targets virtually anywhere on earth.
To meet situations of less than general nuclear war, we continue to maintain our carrier forces, our many service units abroad, our always ready Army strategic forces and Marine Corps divisions, and the civilian components.
The continuing modernization of these forces is a costly but necessary process.
It is scheduled to go forward at a rate which will steadily add to our strength.
The deployment of a portion of these forces beyond our shores, on land and sea, is persuasive demonstration of our determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies for collective security.
Moreover, I have directed that steps be taken to program on a longer range basis our military assistance to these allies.
This is necessary for a sounder collective defense system.
Next I refer to our program in space exploration, which is often mistakenly supposed to be an integral part of defense research and development.
We note that, first, America has already made great contributions in the past two years to the world's fund of knowledge of astrophysics and space science.
These discoveries are of present interest chiefly to the scientific community;
but they are important foundation stones for more extensive exploration of outer space for the ultimate benefit of all mankind.
Second, our military missile program, going forward so successfully, does not suffer from our present lack of very large rocket engines, which are necessary in distant space exploration.
I am assured by experts that the thrust of our present missiles is fully adequate for defense requirements.
Third, the United States is pressing forward in the development of large rocket engines to place vehicles of many tons into space for exploration purposes.
Fourth, in the meantime, it is necessary to remember that we have only begun to probe the environment immediately surrounding the earth.
Using launch systems presently available, we are developing satellites to scout the world's weather;
satellite relay stations to facilitate and extend communications over the globe;
for navigation aids to give accurate bearings to ships and aircraft;
and for perfecting instruments to collect and transmit the data we seek.
Fifth, we have just completed a year's experience with our new space law.
I believe it deficient in certain particulars.
Suggested improvements will be submitted to the Congress shortly.
The accomplishment of the many tasks I have alluded to requires the continuous strengthening of the spiritual, intellectual, and economic sinews of American life.
The steady purpose of our society is to assure justice, before God, for every individual.
We must be ever alert that freedom does not wither through the careless amassing of restrictive controls or the lack of courage to deal boldly with the issues of the day.
A year ago, when I met with you, the nation was emerging from an economic downturn, even though the signs of resurgent prosperity were not then sufficiently convincing to the doubtful.
Today our surging strength is apparent to everyone.
1960 promises to be the most prosperous year in our history.
Yet we continue to be afflicted by nagging disorders.
Among current problems that require solutions, participated in by citizens as well as government, are:
the need to protect the public interest in situations of prolonged labor-management stalemate;
the persistent refusal to come to grips with a critical problem in one sector of American agriculture;
the continuing threat of inflation, together with the persisting tendency toward fiscal irresponsibility;
in certain instances the denial to some of our citizens of equal protection of the law.
The group, upon the issuance of its first press release on December 21, 1957, designated itself a Committee of Investigation.
In the course of its inquiry, it took testimony from only seven witnesses.
It heard Bang-Jensen twice and his lawyer, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., once.
Its second press release was on January 15, 1958, and it recommended that the secret papers be destroyed.
It also implied that Paul Bang-Jensen had been irresponsible.
On January 18, Ernest Gross conducted a press conference at the U.N. lasting an hour.
Here, he openly attacked Bang-Jensen and referred to his aberrant conduct.
This conference was held despite Stavropoulos' assurance to Adolf Berle, who was leaving the same day for Puerto Rico, that nothing would be done until his return on January 22, except that the Secretary General would probably order the list destroyed.
On January 24 Paul Bang-Jensen, accompanied by Adolf Berle, was met by Dragoslav Protitch and Colonel Frank Begley, former Police Chief of Farmington, Conn., and now head of U.N. special police.
The four, bundled in overcoats, mounted to the wind-swept roof of the U.N.
There, Begley lit a fire in a wire basket, and Bang-Jensen dropped four sealed envelopes into the flames.
In one of these he said were notes on the identities of the eighty-one refugees.
The method of destroying the evidence embarrassed Paul Bang-Jensen.
He knew it would be implied that it was done in this way at his insistence.
He was right, and Peter Marshall could not help but recall Andrew Cordier's words on the subject, Well, it seemed as good a place as any to do the job.
The Gross group had been formed for the express purpose of advising the Secretary General.
Hammarskjold's supposed desire to seek outside legal advice in the guise of Ernest Gross is illusion, at best.
Gross's, being outside the U.N. applied only to a physical state, not an objective one.
But by the time the papers were finally disposed of, the group had informed the world of its purpose, its recommendations, and its belief that Paul Bang-Jensen was not of sound mind.
Shortly the group would issue its report to the Secretary General, recommending Paul Bang-Jensen's dismissal from the United Nations.
The contents of this 195-page document would become known to many before it would become known to the man it was written about.
Until this Hungarian Committee matter came up, Bang-Jensen was a fine and devoted individual.
I had known him for some years, when I was a delegate and before, and this manner had never been his.
The result was the Gross Report, prepared by Gross, as chairman, with the assistance of two U.N. Under Secretaries, Constantin Stavropoulos and Philippe De Seynes.
Yes, Gross went on, Bang-Jensen was an up-and-coming young man.
He had always done well.
Never well known, but he had done his work competently.
Gross had received Marshall courteously and they were discussing the case.
You know, the lawyer said, it's difficult to talk like this about a man who can't answer back.
Gross was behind a clean-top desk, only a manila folder before him.
Marshall sat in one of the several leather chairs.
Outside the office windows, twenty-four stories above Wall Street, a light rain was falling.
Mr. Gross, your report says that'our function is investigative and advisory and does not in any way derogate from or prejudice Mr. Bang-Jensen's rights as a staff member.
You know, Bang-Jensen characterized your Committee as having prejudged his case.
Gross swung his swivel chair.
Well, how could that have been?
I don't consider that he was prejudged.
We were given a job and we carried it out, and later, his case was taken up by the Disciplinary Committee.
We have nothing to hide under a bushel.
We did our job, Mr. Stavropoulos and Mr. De Seynes and myself, taking evidence from a number of people.
What did you think about his mental state?
I think our report sums up our finding, Gross answered.
Don't forget, here was a man who had been accusing his colleagues for almost a year of willfully attempting to present an incorrect report.
This was not merely alleging errors, but was carried out by day-after-day allegations in memos, written charges of serious consequence.
This is a distressing thing.
Supposing you or I were being accused in this manner, and yet we were doing our level best to carry on our work.
No organization can carry on like that.
I've been in government and I can tell some pretty hairy stories about personnel difficulties, so I know what a problem he was.
What I'd like you to comment on is the criticism leveled at your Committee.
What do you mean?
For instance, regarding the fact that the Gross Committee issued two interim announcements to the press during its investigation.
You know Bang-Jensen was told the Committee was'to convey its views, suggestions and recommendations to the Secretary General.
In his own words, Bang-Jensen'took it for granted that the Group would report to the Secretary General privately and not in public.
He claimed that the release of the preliminary findings was'prejudicial to his position'''.
Gross bristled.
For an instant he glared speechless at Marshall.
Listen, he said.
I thought the entire report was going to be confidential from beginning to end.
But you know Bang-Jensen launched an active campaign against us in the press.
It was getting so that we, the Committee, were being tried.
You can find it in the papers.
Well, as a matter of fact, I've looked through back-issue files of New York papers for December, 1957, and haven't found a great deal --
Gross shot another look at Marshall.
It wasn't necessarily all here in New York.
Don't forget the foreign press.
Then what about the second interim public announcement?
This cited Bang-Jensen's'aberrant conduct'''.
The reason for that report was to settle the matter of the list.
As far as I'm concerned, it was a separate matter from the general Committee study of Bang-Jensen's conduct.
The January fifteen report recommended that Bang-Jensen be instructed to burn the list--the papers--in the presence of a U.N. Security Officer.
How about your press conference three days later--what was the reason for that?
Bang-Jensen said you told correspondents that you had checked in advance to make sure the term'aberrant conduct'was not libelous.
He claimed you made other slanderous allegations.
Gross paused and repeated himself.
The entire object of the press conference was to clarify the problem of the list, since many in the press were querying the U.N. about it.
What was the list?
I don't know.
Bang-Jensen never explained what the documents or papers were that he had in his possession.
It was foolish of him to keep them, whatever they were.
He could have been blackmailed, or his family might have been threatened.
Of course the matter caught the public's attention.
We attempted to conclude this, and did so by having the papers burned.
Hammarskjold didn't like the way it was carried out.
It was a sort of Gotterdammerung affair.
Hammarskjold believes the U.N. is an organization that settles matters in a procedural way.
Peter Marshall reflected.
If Hammarskjold had not wanted the list disposed of in this manner, and if Bang-Jensen had not wanted it--who had ordered it?
Mr. Gross, concerning the formation of your Committee, there's the fact that you have been a legal adviser to the U.N. in the past;
as I understand it, Mr. Hammarskjold wanted outside advice.
Could you comment on that?
I've served as a counsel for the U.N. for some years, specializing particularly in real estate matters or other problems that the regular U.N. legal staff might not be equipped to handle.
Mr. Stavropoulos is the U.N. legal chief and a very good man, but he is not fully versed on some technical points of American law.
What did you think about Bang-Jensen's contention of errors and omissions in the Hungarian report?
Marshall asked.
Those!
Gross answered.
Why, Mick Shann went over and over the report with Alsing Andersen, trying to check them out.
Even after the incident between Bang-Jensen and Shann in the Delegates' Lounge and this was not the way the Chicago Tribune presented it.
Gross reached in his desk and pulled out two newspaper clippings.
One was an article on the U.N. by Alice Widener from the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The other was by Chesly Manley in the Chicago Daily Tribune.
Gross pointed to the Manley story.
I know Ches, he's a friend of mine.
He probably didn't mean to write it this way, or maybe he did.
There wasn't any'violent argument'between Bang-Jensen and Shann, as the Tribune puts it.
That implies that Shann was on the enemy side.
You see what I mean?
How it's phrased there--the word violent.
The case was that Bang-Jensen came up to Shann claiming he had found further errors in the report.
' I've found errors and I want you to look them over.
So once again Shann had to argue with him about this.
But it wasn't a violent discussion.
And after all this, Shann went over all that Bang-Jensen had brought up.
(Shann's own report, Peter Marshall reflected, describes the encounter as immoderate.
Bang-Jensen was in hysterical condition.
Gross stopped briefly, then went on.
Shann was responsible for the report.
He has felt terrible about all this.
It was a good report, he did all he could to make it a good report.
When I speak of how Shann felt, I know well.
Don't forget, I am an old member of the club, a former delegate.
I think you are being unfair to take these things up now.
You know, this hits in many areas.
It appeals to those who were frustrated in the outcome of the Hungarian situation.
Don't forget, the U.N. did no more than the United States did.
It takes a great deal of sophisticated thought to get the impact of this fact.
Chapter 22
from the home of his friend, Henrik Kauffmann, in Washington, D.C., Paul Bang-Jensen sent a telegram dated December 9, 1957, to Ernest Gross.
It said in part:
the matters to be considered are obviously of a grave character, and I therefore respectfully request that the hearing be postponed for two weeks in order that I might make adequate preparation.
Ernest Gross replied the next day, putting the suspended diplomat's fears to rest.
This reveals some misunderstanding on your part.
The group conducting the review is not holding formal hearings.
It wished to pursue, in the course of this review, questions arising from the body of material already in its possession.
It sounded like a fair enough invitation, Peter Marshall reflected, and Bang-Jensen must have thought so too, because on the thirteenth, he met the group of three on the thirty-sixth floor of the U.N..
There, Ernest Gross further assured him:
We were requested by the Secretary General, as I understand it, to discuss with you such matters as appear to us to be relevant, and we are not of course either a formal group or a committee in the sense of being guided by any rules or regulations of the Secretariat.
The only rules which I think we shall follow will be those of common sense, justice, and fairness.
Peter Marshall noted that Bang-Jensen had later referred to his two interviews with the Gross group as unfortunate experiences, and after his second meeting on the sixteenth the Dane refused to attend further hearings without legal counsel.
Marshall pondered the reason for this, and pondered too the replacement of one member of the three-man group.
J. A. C. Robertson, after serving Gross one week, left for England.
Fortunately the hole was found at last and plugged.
Another week passed and even the missionaries were enjoying the voyage.
The sickness was gone and, after all, the two young couples were on their honeymoon.
The only lasting difficulty was the food.
In spite of Pickering Dodge's explicit instructions regarding variation of meals, the food did not seem the same as at home.
Everything tasted differently from what it does on land and those things I was most fond of at home, I loathed the most here, Ann noted.
At last they concluded that the heavy, full feeling in their stomachs was due to lack of exercise.
Walking was the remedy, they decided, but a deck full of chicken coops and pigpens was hardly suitable.
Skipping was the alternative.
A rope was found and, like children in school, the missionaries skipped for hours at a time.
Finally, tiring of so monotonous a form of exercise, they decided to dance instead.
It was much more fun, reminding the girls of their old carefree days in the Hasseltine frolics room at Bradford.
The weather turned warmer and with it came better appetites, although Harriet was still a little off-color.
She could not face coffee or tea without milk, and was always craving types of food that were not available aboard a sailing ship.
By now she was sure she was going to have a baby, deciding it would be born in India or Burma that November.
She was more excited than frightened at the prospect of having her first child in a foreign land.
The crew of the Caravan never failed to amaze Ann, who during her stay in Salem must frequently have overheard strong sailorly language.
She wrote in her journal, I have not heard the least profane language since I have been on board the vessel.
This is very uncommon.
She was now enjoying the voyage very much.
Even the first wave of homesickness had passed, although there were moments when Captain Heard pointed out on his compass the direction of Bradford that she felt a little twinge at her heart.
As for Adoniram, she found him to be the kindest of husbands.
On Sundays, with the permission of Captain Heard, who usually attended with two of his officers, services were held in the double cabin.
Sometimes a ship would be sighted and the Caravan pass so close that people could easily be seen on the distant deck.
Captain Heard did not communicate with any strange vessels because of the possibility of war between the United States and Britain.
As warmer temperatures were encountered Ann and Harriet were introduced to the pleasures of bathing daily in salt water.
When May came the Caravan had already crossed the Equator.
They were sailing round the Cape of Good Hope;
the weather had turned wet and cold.
At this time Harriet wrote in a letter which after their finally landing in India was sent to her mother:
I care not how soon we reach Calcutta, and are placed in a still room, with a bowl of milk and a loaf of Indian bread.
I can hardly think of this simple fare without exclaiming, oh, what a luxury.
I have been so weary of the excessive rocking of the vessel, and the almost intolerable smell after the rain, that I have done little more than lounge on the bed for several days.
But I have been blest with excellent spirits, and to-day have been running about the deck, and dancing in our room for exercise, as well as ever.
While studying at the seminary in Andover, Adoniram had been working on a New Testament translation from the original Greek.
He had brought it along to continue during the voyage.
There was one particular word that troubled his conscience.
This was the Greek word most often translated as baptism.
Born a Congregationalist, he had been baptized as a tiny baby in the usual manner by having a few drops of water sprinkled on his head, yet nowhere in the whole of the New Testament could he find a description of anybody being baptized by sprinkling.
John the Baptist used total immersion in the River Jordan for believers;
even Christ was baptized by this method.
The more Adoniram looked at the Greek word for baptism, the more unhappy he became over its true meaning.
As was only natural he confided his searchings to Ann, conceding ruefully that it certainly looked as if their own Congregationalists were wrong and the Baptists right.
Ann was very troubled.
By this time she had learned that it was futile to argue with her young husband, yet the uncomfortable fact remained: the American Congregationalists were sending them as missionaries to the Far East and paying their salaries.
What would happen if Adoniram changed horses in midstream?
Baptists and Congregationalists in New England were on friendly terms.
How embarrassing it would be if the newly appointed Congregationalist missionaries should suddenly switch their own beliefs in order to embrace Baptist teachings!
If you become a Baptist, I will not, Ann informed her husband, but sweeping her threat aside Adoniram continued to search for an answer to the personal dilemma in which he found himself.
By early June they were a hundred miles off the coast of Ceylon, by which time all four missionaries were hardened seafarers.
Even Harriet could boldly write, I know not how it is;
but I hear the thunder roll;
see the lightning flash;
and the waves threatening to swallow up the vessel;
and yet remain unmoved.
Ann thrilled to the sight of a delicate butterfly and two strange tropical birds.
Land was near, and on June 12, one hundred and fourteen days after leaving America, they actually saw, twenty miles away, the coast of Orissa.
Captain Heard gave orders for the ship to be anchored in the Bay of Bengal until he could obtain the services of a reputable pilot to steer her through the shallow waters.
Sometimes ships waited for days for such a man, but Captain Heard was lucky.
Next day a ship arrived with an English pilot, his leadsman, an English youth, and the first Hindu the Judsons and Newells had ever seen.
A little man with a a dark copper color skin, he was wearing calico trousers and a white cotton short gown.
Ann was plainly disappointed in his appearance.
He looks as feminine as you can imagine, she decided.
The pilot possessed excellent skill at his calling;
all day long the Caravan slowly made her way through the difficult passages.
Alas, to Ann's consternation, his language while thus employed left much to be desired.
He swore so loudly at the top of his voice, that she didn't get any sleep all the next night.
Next morning the Caravan was out of the treacherous Bay.
Relieved of the major part of his responsibility for the safety of the ship, the pilot's oaths became fewer.
Slowly she moved up the Hooghli River, a mouth of the mighty Ganges, toward Calcutta.
Ann was entranced with the view, as were her husband and friends.
Running across the deck, which was empty now that the livestock had been killed and eaten, they sniffed the spice-laden breezes that came from the shore, each pointing out new and exciting wonders to the other.
Out came the journal and in it went Ann's own description of the scene:
On each side of the Hoogli, where we are now sailing, are the Hindoo cottages, as thick together as the houses in our seaports.
They are very small, and in the form of haystacks, without either chimney or windows.
They are situated in the midst of trees, which hang over them, and appear truly romantick.
The grass and fields of rice are perfectly green, and herds of cattle are everywhere feeding on the banks of the river, and the natives are scattered about differently employed.
Some are fishing, some driving the team, and many are sitting indolently on the banks of the river.
The pagodas we have passed are much larger than the houses.
Harriet was just as delighted.
Where were the hardships she had expected?
She was certain now that it would be no harder to bear her child here in such pleasant surroundings than at home in the big white house in Haverhill.
With childlike innocence she wrote of the Indians as walking with fruit and umbrellas in their hands, with the tawny children around them.
This is the most delightful trial I have ever had, she decided.
The Indians who came aboard ship to collect the mail also interested her greatly, even if she was suitably shocked, according to the customs of the society in which she had been reared, to find them naked, except a piece of cotton cloth wrapped around their middle.
At last they saw Calcutta, largest city of Bengal and the Caravan's destination.
Founded August 24, 1690 by Job Charnock of the East India Company, and commonly called The City of Palaces, it seemed a vast and elegant place to Ann Hasseltine Judson.
Solid brick buildings painted dazzling white, large domes and tall, picturesque palms stretched as far as the eye could see, while the wharves and harbor were filled with tall-masted sailing ships.
The noise stunned her.
Crowds flocked through the waterfront streets chattering loudly in their strange-sounding Bengali tongue.
Harriet's mouth watered with anticipation when after months of dreaming she sat down at last to her much-craved milk and fresh bread.
Ann, pleased to see her friend happy, was intrigued by the new fruits a friend of Captain Heard had sent on board for their enjoyment.
Cautiously she sampled her first pineapple and another fruit whose taste she likened to that of a rich pear.
Though she did not then know its name, this strange new fruit was a banana.
Six
The first act of Adoniram and Samuel on reaching Calcutta was to report at the police station, a necessity when landing in East India Company territory.
On the way they tried to discover all they could about Burma, and they were disturbed to find that Michael Symes's book had not presented an altogether true picture.
He had failed to realize that the Burmese were not really treating him as the important visitor he considered himself.
They were in fact quietly laughing at him, for their King wished to have nothing to do with the Western world.
When Captain John Gibault of Salem had visited Burma in 1793 his ship, the Astra, had been promptly commandeered and taken by her captors up the Irrawaddy River.
Although after much trouble he did manage to get it back, he discovered there was no trade to be had.
All Captain Gibault took back to Salem were a few items for the town's East India Museum.
A year later another Salem ship returned from Burma with a cargo of gum lacquer which nobody wanted to buy.
After that Salem ships decided to bypass unfriendly Burma.
The Burmese appeared to have little knowledge of British power or any idea of trade.
They despised foreigners.
Cruel Burmese governors could, on the slightest whim, take a man's life.
As for missionaries, even if they succeeded in getting into the country they probably would not be allowed to preach the Christian faith to the Burmans.
Unspeakable tortures or even execution might well be their fate.
Go back to America or any other place, well-meaning friends of Captain Heard advised them, but put thoughts of going to Burma out of your heads.
Somewhat daunted, the two American missionaries reached the police station where they were questioned by a most unfriendly clerk.
When he discovered they had received from the Company's Court of Directors no permission to live in India, coupled with the fact that they were Americans who had been sent to Asia to convert the heathen, he became more belligerent than ever.
They explained that they desired only to stop in India until a ship traveling on to Burma could be found.
She describes, first, the imaginary reaction of a foreigner puzzled by this unseasonable exultation;
he is answered by a confused, honest Englishman.
The reasons for the Whig joy on this occasion are found to be their expectation of regaining control of the government, their delight at the prospect of a new war, their hopes of having the Tories hanged, and so on.
As for the author of the Englishman, Mrs. Manley sarcastically deplores that the sole defense of the Protestant cause should be left to Ridpath, Dick Steele, and their Associates, with the Apostles of Young Man's Coffee-House.
Another controversy typical of the war between the Englishman and the Examiner centered on Robert (later Viscount) Molesworth, a Whig leader in Ireland and a member of the Irish Privy Council.
Upon complaints from the Lower House of Convocation to the House of Lords, he was removed from the Privy Council, his remark having been represented as a blasphemous affront to the clergy.
Steele, who had earlier praised Molesworth in Tatler No. 189, now defended him in Englishman No. 46, depicting his removal as a setback to the Constitution.
On the other hand, Molesworth was naturally assailed in the Tory press.
Swift, in the Dublin edition of A Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction, indicated his feelings by including Molesworth, along with Toland, Tindal, and Collins, in the group of those who, like Burnet, are engaged in attacking all Convocations of the clergy.
In the same way he coupled Molesworth and Wharton in a letter to Archbishop King, and he had earlier described him as the worst of them in some Observations on the Irish Privy Council submitted to Oxford.
A month later, in The Publick Spirit Of The Whigs, he used Steele's defense of Molesworth as evidence of his disrespect for the clergy, calling Steele's position an affront to the whole Convocation of Ireland.
On this issue, then, as on so many in these months, Steele and Swift took rigidly opposed points of view.
In the early months of 1714, the battle between Swift and Steele over the issue of the Succession entered its major phase.
The preliminaries ended with the publication of Steele's Crisis on January 19, and from that point on the fight proceeded at a rapid pace.
In answer to The Crisis, Swift produced The Publick Spirit Of The Whigs, his most extensive and bitter attack on his old friend.
By this time, as we shall see, the Tories were already planning to punish Steele for his political writing by expelling him from the House of Commons.
Despite his defense of himself in the final paper of the Englishman and in his speech before the House, their efforts were successful.
Steele lost his seat in Parliament, and his personal quarrel with Swift, by now a public issue, thus reached its climax.
Of all the Whig tracts written in support of the Succession, The Crisis is perhaps the most significant.
Certainly it is the most pretentious and elaborate.
Hanoverian agents assisted in promoting circulation, said to have reached 40,000, and if one may judge by the reaction of Swift and other government writers, the work must have had considerable impact.
Steele's main business here is to arouse public opinion to the immediate danger of a Stuart Restoration.
To this end, the first and longest section of the tract cites all the laws enacted since the Revolution to defend England against the Arbitrary Power of a Popish Prince.
In his comment on these laws Steele sounds all the usual notes of current Whig propaganda, ranging from a criticism of the Tory peace to an attack on the dismissal of Marlborough;
but his principal theme is that the intrigues of the Tories, our Popish or Jacobite Party, pose an immediate threat to Church and State.
Like Burnet, he deplores the indifference of the people in the face of the crisis.
Treasonable books striking at the Hanoverian Succession, he complains, are allowed to pass unnoticed.
In this connection, Swift, too, is drawn in for attack: The Author of The Conduct Of The Allies has dared to drop Insinuations about altering the Succession.
It is no time, he writes, to talk with Hints and Innuendos, but openly and honestly to profess our Sentiments before our Enemies have compleated and put their Designs in Execution against us.
Steele apparently professed his sentiments in this book too openly and honestly for his own good, since the government was soon to use it as evidence against him in his trial before the House.
In the final issues of the Englishman, which ended just as the new session of Parliament began, he provided his enemies with still more ammunition.
For example, No. 56 printed the patent giving the Electoral Prince the title of Duke of Cambridge.
In a few months the Duke was to be the center of a controversy of some significance on the touchy question of the Protestant Succession.
Anne was furious, and Bolingbroke advised that the request be refused.
Oxford, realizing that the law required the issuance of the writ, took the opposite view, for which the Queen never forgave him.
Steele in this paper is indicating his sympathy for such a plan.
A few days after this Englishman appeared, Defoe reported to Oxford that Steele was expected to move in Parliament that the Duke be called over;
Defoe then commented, If they Could Draw that young Gentleman into Their Measures They would show themselves quickly, for they are not asham'd to Say They want only a head to Make a beginning.
The final issue of the Englishman, No. 57 for February 15, ran to some length and was printed as a separate pamphlet, entitled The Englishman: Being the Close of the Paper So-called.
Steele's purpose is to present a general defense of his political writing and a resume of the themes which had occupied him in the Englishman;
but there is much here also which bears directly on his personal quarrel with Swift.
Thus he complains, with considerable justice, that the Tory writers have resorted to libel instead of answering his arguments.
His birth, education, and fortune, he says, have all been ridiculed simply because he has spoken with the freedom of an Englishman, and he assures the reader that whoever talks with me, is speaking to a Gentleman born.
As notable examples of this abuse, he quotes passages from the Examiner, that Destroyer of all things, and The Character of Richard Steele, which he here attributes to Swift.
Though put in rather maudlin terms, Steele's defense of himself has a reasonable basis.
His point is simply that the Tories have showered him with personal satire, despite the fact that as a private subject he has a right to speak on political matters without affronting the prerogative of the Sovereign.
He claims, too, that his political convictions are simply those which are called Revolution Principles and which are accepted by moderate men in both parties.
The final section of this pamphlet is of special interest in a consideration of Steele's relations with Swift.
It purports to be a letter from Steele to a friend at court, who, in Miss Blanchard's opinion, could only be meant as Swift.
Steele first answers briefly the charges which his dear old Friend has made about his pamphlet on Dunkirk and his Crisis.
Then he launches into an attack on the Tory ministers, whom he calls the New Converts;
by this term he means to ridicule their professions of acting in the interest of the Church despite their own education and manner of life--a gibe, in other words, at the Presbyterianism in Harley's family and at Bolingbroke's reputed impiety.
The Tory leaders, he insinuates, are cynically using the Church as a political By-word to increase party friction and keep themselves in power.
This is the principal point made in this final section of Englishman No. 57, and it caps Steele's efforts in his other writing of these months to counteract the notion of the Tories as a Church Party supported by the body of the clergy.
Next, Steele turns his attention to the Courtier he is addressing.
He explains that there are sometimes honorable courtiers, but that too often a man who succeeds at court does not hesitate to sacrifice his Sovereign and nation to his own avarice and ambition.
Such, he implies, is the case with his friend, who is not really a new convert himself but merely a favorer of new converts.
He closes his letter by demanding that Dunkirk be demolished, that the Pretender be forced to move farther away from the coast of England, and that the Queen and the House of Hanover come to a better understanding.
The last point was soon to be included in the seditious remarks used against him in Parliament.
The Examiner, during Steele's trial a month later, printed an answer from the Courtier addressed to R. S. at Button's coffee-house.
He reviews Steele's entrance into politics and finds that his present difficulties are due to his habit of attributing to his own abilities and talents achievements which more properly should be credited to the indulgence of his friends.
Once more, in other words, Steele is said to be indebted to Swift for his wit;
this was the form in which their private feud most often appeared in the Tory press, especially the Examiner.
In The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, it may be noted, Swift himself contemptuously dismissed Steele's reference to his friend at court: I suppose by the Style of old Friend, and the like, it must be some Body there of his own Level;
among whom, his Party have indeed more Friends than I could wish.
On February 16, Steele took his seat in Parliament.
By now he was undergoing a fresh torrent of abuse from Tory papers and pamphlets, and action was being taken to effect his punishment by expulsion from Parliament.
On the very day that the parliamentary session began, another Infamous Libel appeared, entitled A Letter From The Facetious Dr. Andrew Tripe, At Bath, To The Venerable Nestor Ironside.
It is filled with the usual personal abuse of Steele, especially of his physical appearance;
in the opening paragraph, too, Steele is accused of extreme egotism, of giving himself the preference to all the learned, his contemporaries, from Dr. Swift himself, even down to Poet Cr--spe of the Customhouse.
When Harold Arlen returned to California in the winter of 1944, it was to take up again a collaboration with Johnny Mercer, begun some years before.
The film they did after his return was an inconsequential bit of nothing titled Out Of This World, a satire on the Sinatra bobby-soxer craze.
The twist lay in using Bing Crosby's voice on the sound track while leading man Eddie Bracken mouthed the words.
If nothing else, at least two good songs came out of the project, Out Of This World and June Comes Around Every Year.
Though they would produce some very memorable and lasting songs, Arlen and Mercer were not given strong material to work on.
Their first collaboration came close.
Early in 1941 they were assigned to a script titled Hot Nocturne.
It purported to be a reasonably serious attempt at a treatment of jazz musicians, their aims, their problems--the tug-of-war between the pure and the commercial--and seemed a promising vehicle, for the two men shared a common interest in jazz.
Johnny Mercer practically grew up with the sound of jazz and the blues in his ears.
He was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1909.
His father, George A. Mercer, was descended from an honored Southern family that could trace its ancestry back to one Hugh Mercer, who had emigrated from Scotland in 1747.
The lyricist's father was a lawyer who had branched out into real estate.
His second wife, Lillian, was the mother of John H. Mercer.
By the age of six young Johnny indicated that he had the call.
One day he followed the Irish Jasper Greens, the town band, to a picnic and spent the entire day listening, while his family spent the day looking.
The disappearance caused his family to assign a full-time maid to keeping an eye on the boy.
But one afternoon Mrs. Mercer met her;
both were obviously on the way to the Mercer home.
The mother inquired, Where's Johnny, and why did you leave him?
There was nothing else I could do, the maid answered, satisfied with a rather vague explanation.
But Mrs. Mercer demanded more.
The maid then told her, Because he fired me.
With her son evidencing so strong a musical bent his mother could do little else but get him started on the study of music--though she waited until he was ten--beginning with the piano and following that with the trumpet.
Young Mercer showed a remarkable lack of aptitude for both instruments.
Still, he did like music making and even sang in the chapel choir of the Woodberry Forest School, near Orange, Virginia, where he sounded fine but did not matriculate too well.
When he was fifteen John H. Mercer turned out his first song, a jazzy little thing he called Sister Susie, Strut Your Stuff.
If his scholarship and formal musicianship were not all they might have been, Mercer demonstrated at an early age that he was gifted with a remarkable ear for rhythm and dialect.
From his playmates in Savannah, Mercer had picked up, along with a soft Southern dialect, traces also of the Gullah dialects of Africa.
Such speech differences made him acutely aware of the richness and expressivness of language.
During the summers, while he was still in school, Mercer worked for his father's firm as a messenger boy.
It generally took well into the autumn for the firm to recover from the summer's help.
We'd give him things to deliver, letters, checks, deeds and things like that, remembers his half-brother Walter, still in the real estate business in Savannah, and learn days later that he'd absent-mindedly stuffed them into his pocket.
There they stayed.
This rather detached attitude toward life's encumbrances has seemed to be the dominant trait in Mercer's personality ever since.
It is, however, a disarming disguise, or perhaps a shield, for not only has Mercer proved himself to be one of the few great lyricists over the years, but also one who can function remarkably under pressure.
He has also enjoyed a successful career as an entertainer (his records have sold in the millions) and is a sharp businessman.
He has also an extraordinary conscience.
In 1927 his father's business collapsed, and, rather than go bankrupt, Mercer senior turned his firm over to a bank for liquidation.
He died before he could completely pay off his debts.
Some years later the bank handling the Mercer liquidation received a check for $300,000, enough to clear up the debt.
The check had been mailed from Chicago, the envelope bore no return address, and the check was not signed.
That's Johnny, sighed the bank president, the best-hearted boy in the world, but absent-minded.
But Mercer's explanation was simple: I made out the check and carried it around a few days unsigned--in case I lost it.
When he remembered that he might have not signed the check, Mercer made out another for the same amount, instructing the bank to destroy the other--especially if he had happened to have absent-mindedly signed both of them.
When the family business failed, Mercer left school and on his mother's urging--for she hoped that he would become an actor--he joined a local little theater group.
When the troupe traveled to New York to participate in a one-act-play competition--and won--Mercer, instead of returning with the rest of the company in triumph, remained in New York.
He had talked one other member of the group to stay with him, but that friend had tired of not eating regularly and returned to Savannah.
But Mercer hung on, living, after a fashion, in a Greenwich Village fourth-flight walk-up.
The place had no sink or washbasin, only a bathtub, his mother discovered when she visited him.
Johnny insisted on cooking a chicken dinner in my honor--he's always been a good cook--and I'll never forget him cleaning the chicken in the tub.
A story, no doubt apocryphal, for Mercer himself denies it, has him sporting a monacle in those Village days.
Though merely clear glass, it was a distinctive trade mark for an aspiring actor who hoped to imprint himself upon the memories of producers.
One day in a bar, so the legend goes, someone put a beer stein with too much force on the monacle and broke it.
The innocent malfeasant, filled with that supreme sense of honor found in bars, insisted upon replacing the destroyed monacle--and did, over the protests of the former owner--with a square monacle.
Mercer is supposed to have refused it with, Anyone who wears a square monacle must be affected!
Everett Miller, then assistant director for the Garrick Gaieties, a Theatre Guild production, needed a lyricist for a song he had written;
he just happened not to need any actor at the moment, however.
For him Mercer produced the lyric to Out Of Breath Scared To Death Of You, introduced in that most successful of all the Gaieties, by Sterling Holloway.
This 1930 edition also had songs in it by Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin, by E. Y. Harburg and Duke, and by Harry Myers.
Entrance into such stellar song writing company encouraged the burgeoning song writer to take a wife, Elizabeth Meehan, a dancer in the Gaieties.
The Mercers took up residence in Brooklyn, and Mercer found a regular job in Wall Street misplacing stocks and bonds.
When he heard that Paul Whiteman was looking for singers to replace the Rhythm Boys, Mercer applied and got the job, not for my voice, I'm sure, but because I could write songs and material generally.
While with the Whiteman band Mercer met Jerry Arlen.
He had yet to meet Harold Arlen, for although they had collaborated on Satan's Li'l Lamb, Mercer and Harburg had worked from a lead sheet the composer had furnished them.
The lyric, Mercer remembers, was tailored to fit the unusual melody.
Mercer's Whiteman association brought him into contact with Hoagy Carmichael, whose Snowball Mercer relyriced as Lazybones, in which form it became a hit and marked the real beginning of Mercer's song-writing career.
After leaving Whiteman, Mercer joined the Benny Goodman band as a vocalist.
With the help of Ziggy Elman, also in the band, he transformed a traditional Jewish melody into a popular song, And The Angels Sing.
The countrywide success of Lazybones and And The Angels Sing could only lead to Hollywood, where, besides Harold Arlen, Mercer collaborated with Harry Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen, Richard Whiting, Walter Donaldson, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz.
Mercer has also written both music and lyrics for several songs.
He may be the only song writer ever to have collaborated with a secretary of the U. S. Treasury;
he collaborated on a song with William Hartman Woodin, who was Secretary of the Treasury, 1932-33.
When Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen began their collaboration in 1940, Mercer, like Arlen, had several substantial film songs to his credit, among them Hooray For Hollywood, Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride, Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?
'', and Too Marvelous For Words (all with Richard Whiting);
with Harry Warren he did The Girl Friend Of The Whirling Dervish, Jeepers Creepers, and You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby.
Mercer's lyrics are characterized by an unerring ear for rhythmic nuances, a puckish sense of humor expressed in language with a colloquial flair.
Though versatile and capable of turning out a ballad lyric with the best of them, Mercer's forte is a highly polished quasi-folk wit.
His casual, dreamlike working methods, often as not in absentia, were an abrupt change from Harburg's, so that Arlen had to adjust again to another approach to collaboration.
There were times that he worked with both lyricists simultaneously.
Speaking of his work with Johnny Mercer, Arlen says, Our working habits were strange.
After we got a script and the spots for the songs were blocked out, we'd get together for an hour or so every day.
While Johnny made himself comfortable on the couch, I'd play the tunes for him.
He has a wonderfully retentive memory.
After I would finish playing the songs, he'd just go away without a comment.
I wouldn't hear from him for a couple of weeks, then he'd come around with the completed lyric.
Arlen is one of the few (possibly the only) composer Mercer has been able to work with so closely, for they held their meetings in Arlen's study.
Some guys bothered me, Mercer has said.
I couldn't write with them in the same room with me, but I could with Harold.
He is probably our most original composer;
he often uses very odd rhythms, which makes it difficult, and challenging, for the lyric writer.
While Arlen and Mercer collaborated on Hot Nocturne, Mercer worked also with Arthur Schwartz on another film, Navy Blues.
Arlen, too, worked on other projects at the same time with old friend Ted Koehler.
Besides doing a single song, When The Sun Comes Out, they worked on the ambitious American-Negro Suite, for voices and piano, as well as songs for films.
The American-Negro Suite is in a sense an extension of the Cotton Club songs in that it is a collection of Negro songs, not for a night club, but for the concert stage.
The work had its beginning in 1938 with an eight-bar musical strain to which Koehler set the words There'll be no more work;
there'll be no more worry, matching the spiritual feeling of the jot.
This grew into the song Big Time Comin'.
By September 1940 the Suite had developed into a collection of six songs, four spirituals, a dream, and a lullaby.
I feel obliged to describe this cubbyhole.
It had a single porcelain stall and but one cabinet for the chairing of the bards.
It was here that the terror-stricken Dennis Moon played an unrehearsed role during the children's party.
A much larger room, adjacent to the lavatory, served as a passageway to and from the skimpy toilet.
That unused room was large enough for--well, say an elephant could get into it and, as a matter of fact, an elephant did.
Something occurred on the morning of the children's party which may illustrate the kind of trouble our restricted toilet facilities caused us.
It so happened that sports writer Arthur Robinson got out of the hospital that morning after promising his doctor that he be back in an hour or two to continue his convalescence.
Arthur Robinson traveled with the baseball clubs as staff correspondent for the American.
He was ghost writer for Babe Ruth, whose main talent for literary composition was the signing of his autograph.
Robbie was a war veteran with battle-shattered knees.
He arrived on crutches at the Newspaper Club with one of his great pals, Oliver Herford, artist, author, and foe of stupidity.
Mr. Herford's appearance was that of a frustrated gnome.
He seemed timid (at first,) wore nose glasses from which a black ribbon dangled, and was no bigger than a jockey.
Robinson asked Herford to escort him to the club's lavatory before they sat down for a highball and a game of cards.
In the jakes, after Robbie and his crutches were properly stowed, Mr. Herford went to the adjoining facility.
He had barely assumed his stance there when a fat fellow charged through the doorway.
Without any regard for rest-room protocol, the hulking stranger almost knocked Herford off his pins.
The artist-author said nothing, but stood to one side.
He waited a long time.
Nothing was said, nothing accomplished.
The unrelieved stranger eventually turned away from the place of his--shall we dare say his Waterloo?
-- to go to the door.
Mr. Herford touched the fat man's arm.
Pardon me, sir.
May I say that you have just demonstrated the truth of an old proverb--the younger Pliny's, if memory serves me--which, translated freely from the archaic Latin, says,'The more haste, the less peed'''.
Governor Alfred E. Smith was the official host at the children's party.
United States Senator Royal S. Copeland was wearing the robes of Santa Claus and a great white beard;
the Honorable Robert Wagner, Sr., at that time a justice of the New York Supreme Court, was on the reception committee.
I was in charge of the arrangements--which were soon enough disarranged.
I had had difficulties from the very first day.
When, in my enthusiasm, I proposed the party, my city editor (who disliked the club and many of its members) tried to block my participation in the gala event.
Even earlier than that he had resented the fact that I had been chosen to edit the club's Reporter.
City editor Victor Watson of the New York American was a man of brooding suspicions and mysterious shifts of mood.
Mr. Hearst's telegraphic code word for Victor Watson was fatboy.
The staff saw in him the qualities of a Don Cossack, hence, as mentioned before, his nickname the Hetman.
The Hetman's physical aspects were not those of a savage rider of the steppes.
Indeed, he looked more like a well-fleshed lay brother of the Hospice of St. Bernard.
Nor were his manners barbaric.
He had a purring voice and poker player's immobility of features which somehow conveyed the feeling that he knew where all the bodies were buried.
He was the son of a Scottish father and an American Jewish mother, long widowed, with whom he lived in a comfortable home in Flushing.
He had worked in the newspaper business since he was nineteen years old, always for the Hearst service.
From the very first he regarded himself as Mr. Hearst's disciple, defender, and afterward his prime minister, self-ordained.
Whatever the Hetman's ambitions, his colleagues were kept ill at ease.
Among the outstanding members of the Hearst cabinet whom he successfully opposed for a time were the great Arthur Brisbane, Bradford Merrill, S.S. Carvalho, and Colonel Van Hamm.
He also disliked Runyon, for no good reason other than the fact that the Demon's talent was so marked as to put him well beyond the Hetman's say-so or his supervision.
Runyon, for his part, had a contemptuous regard for Mr. Watson.
He's a wrong-o, said Runyon, and I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw the Statue of Liberty.
Arthur Bugs Baer wrote to me just recently, Vic wanted to die in harness, with his head towards the wagon.
He supported his mother and his brother, who afterwards committed suicide.
Watson told me that his brother always sent roses to his mother, blossoms bought with Vic's allowance to him.
' And would you believe it ', Vic added,'she likes him better than she does me.
Why'''?
About the only time the Hetman seemed excited was when one of his own pet ideas was born.
Then he would get to his feet, as though rising in honor of his own remarkable powers, and say almost invariably, Gentlemen, this is an amazing story!
It's bigger than the Armistice.
Some of the Hetman's ideas were dream-ridden, vaguely imparted, and at times preposterous.
One day he assigned me to lay bare a plot by the Duponts to supply munitions to a wholly fictitious revolution he said was about to occur in Cuba.
He said that his information was so secret that he would not be able to confide in me the origin of his pipeline tip.
I can tell you this much, he said.
It's bigger than the Armistice.
I worked for a day on this plainly ridiculous assignment and consulted several of my own well-informed sources.
Then I spent the next two days at the baseball park and at Jack Doyle's pool parlors.
When I returned to make my report, the Hetman did not remember having sent me on the secret mission.
He was busy, he said, in having someone submit to a monkey-gland operation.
And I was to go to work on that odd matter.
I shall tell of it later on.
The Hetman had a strong liking for a story, any story which was to be had by means of much sleuthing or by roundabout methods.
Most of my stories were obtained by simply seeking out the person who could give me the facts, and not as a rule by playing clever tricks.
One day I tired of following the Hetman's advice of shadowing and of the ring-around-the-rosie approach to a report that Enrico Caruso had pinched a lady's hip while visiting the Central Park monkey house.
I explained my state of mind to artist Winsor McCay and to Bugs Baer.
Mr. Baer obtained a supply of crepe hair and spirit-gum from an actor at the Friars.
We fashioned beards, put them on, and reported to the Hetman at the city desk.
Mr. Baer had an auburn beard, like Longfellow's.
Mr. McCay had on a sort of Emperor Maximilian beard and mustache.
As for myself, I had on an enormous black muff.
This, together with a derby hat and horn-rim eyeglasses, gave me the appearance of a Russian nihilist.
We are ready for your next mysterious assignment, said Mr. Baer to the Hetman.
Where to, sir?
Mr. Watson did not have much humor in his make-up, but he managed a mirthless smile.
Just then a reporter telephoned in from the Bronx to give the rewrite desk an account of a murder.
The Hetman told me to take the story over the phone and to write it.
While I was sitting at one of the rewrite telephones with my derby and my great beard, Arthur Brisbane whizzed in with some editorial copy in his hand.
He paused for a moment to look at me, then went on to the city desk to deliver his Today column.
I thought it expedient to take off my derby, my glasses, and the beard;
and also to change telephones.
I managed to do this by the time the great A.B. returned to the place where he last had seen the fierce nihilist.
He stood there staring with disbelief at the vacant desk.
Then he wrinkled his huge brow and went slowly out of the room.
He had a somewhat goggle-eyed expression.
He had been seeing things.
The Hetman's ideas for news stories or editorial campaigns were by no means always fruitless or lacking in merit.
He campaigned successfully for the riddance of Death Avenue and also brought about the ending of pollution of metropolitan beaches by sewage.
He exposed the bucket-shop racket with the able assistance of two excellent reporters, Nat Ferber and Carl Helm.
In the conduct of these and many other campaigns, the Hetman proved to be a much abler journalist than his critics allowed.
It seems to me now, in a long backward glance, that many of the Hetman's conceits and odd actions--together with his grim posture when brandishing the hatchet in the name of Mr. Hearst--were keyed with the tragedy which was to close over him one day.
Alone, rejected on every hand, divorced, and in financial trouble, he leaped from an eleventh-floor window of the Abbey Hotel in 1937.
One finds it difficult to pass censure on the lonely figure who waited for days for a saving word from his zealously served idol, W.R. Hearst.
That word was withheld when the need of it seemed the measure of his despair.
The unfinished note, written in pencil upon the back of a used envelope, and addressed to the coroner, makes one wonder about many things: God forgive me for everything.
I cannot
Much to Damon Runyon's amazement, as well as my own, I got along splendidly with the Hetman;
that is, until I became an editor, hence, in his eyes, a rival.
Not long after Colonel Van Hamm had foisted me on the Watson staff I received a salary raise and a contract on the Hetman's recommendation.
During the next years he gave me the second of the five contracts I would sign with the Hearst Service.
It was a somewhat unusual thing for a reporter to have a contract in those days before the epidemic of syndicated columnists.
I would like to believe that my ability warranted this advancement.
Somehow I think that Watson paid more attention to me than he otherwise might have because his foe, Colonel Van Hamm, wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot blue pencil.
I remember one day when Mr. Hearst (and I never knew why he liked me, either) sent the Hetman a telegram: Please find some more reporters like that young man from Denver.
Watson showed this wire to Colonel Van Hamm.
The colonel grunted, then made a remark which might be construed in either of two ways.
Don't bother to look any further.
We already have the only one of its kind.
The Hetman did have friends, but they were mostly outside the newspaper profession.
Sergeant Mike Donaldson, Congressional Medal of Honor soldier, was one of them.
Dr. Menas S. Gregory was another.
I used to go with Watson to call on the eminent neurologist at his apartment, to sit among the doctor's excellent collection of statues, paintings, and books and drink Oriental coffee while Watson seemed to thaw out and become almost affable.
There was one time, however, when his face clouded and he suddenly blurted, Why did my brother commit suicide?
I cannot remember Dr. Gregory's reply, if, indeed, he made one.
If she were not at home, Mama would see to it that a fresh white rose was there.
Sometimes, Mrs. Coolidge would close herself in the Green Suite on the second floor, and play the piano she had brought to the White House.
Mama knew she was playing her son's favorite pieces and feeling close to him, and did not disturb her.
All the rest of the days in the White House would be shadowed by the tragic loss, even though the President tried harder than ever to make his little dry jokes and to tease the people around him.
A little boy came to give the President his personal condolences, and the President gave word that any little boy who wanted to see him was to be shown in.
Backstairs, the maids cried a little over that, and the standing invitation was not mentioned to Mrs. Coolidge.
The President was even more generous with the First Lady than he had been before the tragedy.
He would bring her boxes of candy and other presents to coax a smile to her lips.
He brought her shawls.
Dresses were short in the days of Mrs. Coolidge, and Spanish shawls were thrown over them.
He got her dozens of them.
One shawl was so tremendous that she could not wear it, so she draped it over the banister on the second floor, and it hung over the stairway.
The President used to look at it with a ghost of a smile.
Mrs. Coolidge spent more time in her bedroom among her doll collection.
She kept the dolls on the Lincoln bed.
At night, when Mama would turn back the covers, she would have to take all the dolls off the bed and place them elsewhere for the night.
Mama always felt that the collection symbolized Mrs. Coolidge's wish for a little girl.
Among the dolls was one that meant very much to the First Lady, who would pick it up and look at it often.
It had a tiny envelope tied to its wrist.
An accompanying sympathetic letter explained that inside the envelope was a name for Mrs. Coolidge's first granddaughter.
Mama knew this doll was meant to help Mrs. Coolidge overcome her grief by turning her eyes to the future.
The name inside the envelope was Cynthia.
The Coolidges' life, after the death of their son, was quieter than ever.
John was away at school most of the time.
Mrs. Coolidge would knit, and the President would sit reading, or playing with the many pets around them.
Now and then, the President would call for Little Jack, Master of the Hounds, which was his nickname for a messenger who had worked in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt's administration, and discuss the welfare of some one of the animals.
It was part of Little Jack's work to look after the dogs.
One White House dog was immortalized in a painting.
That was Rob Roy, who posed with Mrs. Coolidge for the portrait by Howard Chandler Christy.
To get him to pose, Mrs. Coolidge would feed him candy, so he enjoyed the portrait sessions as well as she did.
I would like to straighten out a misconception about the dress Mrs. Coolidge is wearing in this painting.
It is not the same dress as the one on her manikin in the Smithsonian.
People think the dress in the picture was lengthened by an artist much later on.
This is not true.
The dress in the painting is a bright red, with rhinestones forming a spray on the right side.
There is a long train flowing from the shoulders.
Mrs. Coolidge gave Mama this dress for me, and I wore it many times.
I still have the dress, and I hope to give it to the Smithsonian Institution as a memento, or, as I more fondly hope, to present it to a museum containing articles showing the daily lives of the Presidents--if I can get it organized.
But to get back to the Coolidge household, Mrs. Coolidge so obviously loved dogs, that the public sent her more dogs--Calamity Jane, Timmy, and Blackberry.
The last two were a red and a black chow.
Rob Roy remained boss of all the dogs.
He showed them what to do, and taught them how to keep the maids around the White House in a state of terror.
The dogs would run through the halls after him like a burst of bullets, and all the maids would run for cover.
Mama didn't know what to do--whether to tell on Rob Roy or not--since she had the ear of Mrs. Coolidge more than the other maids.
But she was afraid the First Lady would not understand, because Rob Roy was a perfect angel with the First Family.
Every day, when the President took his nap, Rob Roy would stretch out on the window seat near him, like a perfect gentleman, and stare thoughtfully out the window, or he would take a little nap himself.
He would not make a sound until the President had wakened and left for the office;
then he would bark to let everyone know the coast was clear.
His signal was for the other dogs to come running, but it was also the signal for Mama and the other maids to watch out.
Rob Roy was self-appointed to accompany the President to his office every morning.
Rob Roy was well aware of the importance of this mission, and he would walk in front of the President, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
At dinner, lunch, or breakfast, the President would call out, Supper!
-- he called all meals supper--after the butler had announced the meal.
All the dogs would dash to get on the elevator with the President and go to the dining room.
They would all lie around on the rug during the meal, a very pretty sight as Rob Roy, Prudence, and Calamity Jane were all snow-white.
When Prudence and Blackberry were too young to be trusted in the dining room, they were tied to the radiator with their leashes, and they would cry.
Mama tried to talk to them and keep them quiet while she tidied up the sitting room before the First Family returned.
Finally, Mama did mention to Mrs. Coolidge that she felt sorry for the little dogs, and then Mrs. Coolidge decided to leave the radio on for them while she was gone, even though her husband disapproved of the waste of electricity.
Mama was now the first maid to Mrs. Coolidge, because Catherine, the previous first maid, had become ill and died.
Mrs. Coolidge chose Mama in her place.
It was a high mark for Mama.
Every First Family seems to have one couple upon whom it relies for true friendship.
For the Coolidges, it was Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Stearns of Boston, Massachusetts, owners of a large department store.
They seemed to be at the White House half the time.
The butlers were amused because when the Stearns were there, the President would say grace at breakfast.
If the Stearns were not there, grace would be omitted.
Speaking of breakfast, the President inaugurated a new custom--that of conducting business at the breakfast table.
The word was that this too was part of an economy move on his part.
A new bill had been passed under Harding that designated the Government, rather than the President, as the tab-lifter for official meals.
So the President would make a hearty breakfast official by inviting Government officials to attend.
He caused a lot of talk when he also chose the breakfast hour to have the barber come in and trim his hair while he ate.
Mama said that if Presidents were supposed to be colorful, Mr. Coolidge certainly made a good president.
He knew exactly how to be colorful!
The favorite guest of the house, as far as the staff was concerned, was Mr. Wrigley, the chewing gum king.
The White House had chewing gum until it could chew no more, and every Christmas, Mr. Wrigley sent the President a check for $100, to be divided among all the help.
You can imagine that he got pretty good service.
Another good friend of the Coolidges' was George B. Harvey, who was the Ambassador to Great Britain from 1921 to 1923.
He had been a friend of the Hardings, and continued to be invited by the Coolidges.
The first royalty whom Mama ever waited on in the White House was Queen Marie of Rumania, who came to a State dinner given in her honor on October 21, 1926.
She was not an overnight guest in the White House, but Mr. Ike Hoover, the chief usher, had Mama check her fur coat when she came in, and take care of her needs.
Mama said she was one of the prettiest ladies she had ever seen.
Mama was very patriotic, and one of the duties she was proudest of was repairing the edges of the flag that flew above the White House.
Actually, two flags were used at the mansion--a small one on rainy days, and a big one on bright days.
The wool would become frazzled around the edges from blowing in the wind, and Mama would mend it.
She would often go up on the roof to see the attendant take down the flag in the evening.
She used to tell me, When I stand there and look at the flag blowing this way and that way, I have the wonderful, safe feeling that Americans are protected no matter which way the wind blows.
Even when Mrs. Coolidge was in mourning for her son, she reached out to help other people in trouble.
One person she helped was my brother.
Mama had told her how Emmett's lungs had been affected when he was gassed in the war.
He was in and out of Mount Alto Hospital for veterans any number of times.
Taking a personal interest, she had the doctor assigned to the White House, Dr. James Coupal, look Emmett over.
As a result, he was sent to a hospital in Arizona until his health improved enough for him to come back to Washington to work in the Government service.
But again, there was danger that his lungs would suffer in the muggy Washington weather, and he had to return to the dry climate of the West to live and work.
When Mrs. Coolidge was in mourning, she did not wear black.
She wore grey every day, and white every evening.
Mama knew that she was out of mourning when she finally wore bright colors.
The President helped her a lot by selecting some lovely colored dresses to get her started.
She opened the boxes with a tear in her eye and a sad smile on her face.
On the social side, the chore Mama had at the formal receptions at the White House thrilled her the most.
It was her job to stand at the foot of the stairs, and, just as the First Lady stepped off the last tread, Mama would straighten out her long train before she marched to the Blue Room to greet her guests with the President.
Mama would enjoy the sight of the famous guests as much as anyone, and would note a gown here and there to tell me about that night.
One night, Mama came home practically in a state of shock.
She had stood at the bottom of the stairs, as usual, when Mrs. Coolidge came down, in the same dress that is now in the Smithsonian, to greet her guests.
Mama stooped down to fix the train, but there was no train there!
She reached and reached around the dress, but there was nothing there.
She looked up and saw that, without knowing it, Mrs. Coolidge was holding it aloft.
Mrs. Coolidge looked down, saw Mama's horrified expression and quickly let the whole thing fall to the floor.
Mama swirled the train in place, and not a step was lost.
The Coolidges did not always live at the White House during the Presidency.
Impressive as this enumeration is, it barely hints at the diverse perceptions of Jews, collectively or individually, that have been attested by their Gentile environment.
It is reasonable to affirm two propositions: Jews have been perceived by non-Jews as all things to all men;
some Jews have in fact been all things to all men.
In the arena of power Jews have at one time or another been somebody's ally;
they have observed correct neutrality;
they have been someone's enemy.
In the market place Jews have in fact under various circumstances been valued customers and suppliers, or clannish monopolists and cutthroat competitors.
And so on through the roles referred to in the previous paragraph.
Diversity of perception, yes;
diversity of fact, yes.
But the two do not invariably or even typically coincide.
The conventional image of a particular time and place is not necessarily congruent with the image of the facts as established over the years by scholarly and scientific research.
Conventional images of Jews have this in common with all perceptions of a configuration in which one feature is held constant: images can be both true and false.
The genuinely interesting question, then, becomes: What factors determine the degree of realism or distortion in conventional images of Jews?
The working test of the facts must always be the best available description obtainable from scholars and scientists who have applied their methods of investigation to relevant situations.
Granted, such functional images are subject to human error;
they are self-correcting in the sense that they are subject to disciplined procedures that check and recheck against error.
In accounting for realism or distortion two sets of factors can be usefully distinguished: current intelligence;
predispositions regarding intelligence.
General Grant may have been the victim of false information in the instance reported in this book;
if so, he would not be the first or last commanding officer who has succumbed to bad information and dubious estimates of the future.
But General Grant may have been self-victimized.
He may have entered the situation with predispositions that prepared him to act uncritically in the press of affairs.
Predispositions, in turn, fall conveniently into two categories for purposes of analysis.
To some extent predispositions are shaped by exposure to group environments.
In some measure they depend upon the structure of individual personality.
The anti-Semitism of Hitler owed something to his exposure to the ideology of Lueger's politically successful Christian socialist movement in Vienna.
But millions of human beings were exposed to Lueger's propaganda and record.
After allowing for group exposures, it is apparent that other factors must be considered if we are to comprehend fanaticism.
These are personality factors;
they include harmonies and conflicts within the whole man, and mechanisms whereby inner components are more or less smoothly met.
Modern psychiatric knowledge provides us with many keys to unlock the significance of behavior of the kind.
The foregoing factors are pertinent to the analysis of perceptual images and the broad conditions under which they achieve realism or fall short of it.
Undoubtedly one merit of the vast panorama of Gentile conceptions of the Jew unfolded in the present anthology is that it provides a formidable body of material that invites critical examination in terms of reality.
Many selections are themselves convincing contributions to this appraisal.
Undoubtedly, however, the significance of the volume is greater than the foregoing paragraphs suggest.
Speaking as a non-Jew I believe that its primary contribution is in the realm of future policy.
Since we can neither undo nor redo the past, we are limited to the events of today and tomorrow.
In this domain the simple fact of coexistence in the same local, national, and world community is enough to guarantee that we cannot refrain from having some effect, large or small, upon Gentile-Jewish relations.
What shall these effects be?
I am deliberately raising the policy problems involved in Gentile-Jewish relations.
Comprehensive examination of any policy question calls for the performance of the intellectual tasks inseparable from any problem-solving method.
The tasks are briefly indicated by these questions: What are my goals in Gentile-Jewish relations?
What are the historical trends in this country and abroad in the extent to which these goals are effectively realized?
What factors condition the degree of realization at various times and places?
What is the probable course of future developments?
What policies if adopted and applied in various circumstances will increase the likelihood that future events will coincide with desired events and do so at least cost in terms of all human values?
It is beyond the province of this epilogue to cover policy questions of such depth and range.
The discussion is therefore limited to a suggested procedure for realizing at least some of the potential importance of this volume for future policy.
As a groundwork for the proposal I give some attention to the first task enumerated above, the clarification of goal.
My reply is that I associate myself with all those who affirm that Gentile-Jewish relations should contribute to the theory and practice of human dignity.
The basic goal finds partial expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a statement initiated and endorsed by individuals and organizations of many religious and philosophical traditions.
If Jews are identified as a religious body in a controversy that comes before a national or international tribunal, it is obviously compatible with the goal of human dignity to protect freedom of worship.
When decision makers act within this frame they determine whether a claim put forward in the name of religion is to be accepted by the larger community as appropriate to religion.
Since the recognition of Israel as a nation state, claims are made in many cases which identify the claimant as a member of the new body politic.
Community decision makers must make up their minds whether a claim is acceptable to the larger community in terms of prevailing expectations regarding members of nation states.
In free countries many controversies involve self-styled Jews who use the symbol in asserting a vaguely cultural rather than religious or political identity.
The decision maker who acts for the community as a whole must decide whether the objectives pursued and the methods used are appropriate to public policy regarding cultural groups.
We know that much is made of the multiplicity and ambiguity of the identities that cluster around the key symbol of the Jew.
Many public and private controversies will undoubtedly continue to reflect these confusions in the mind and usage of Gentile and Jew.
However, in the context of legal and civic policy, these controversies are less than novel.
They involve similar uncertainties regarding the multiple identities of any number of non-Jewish groups.
So far as the existing body of formal principle and procedure is concerned, categorical novelties are not to be anticipated in Jewish-Gentile relationships;
claims are properly disposed of according to norms common to all parties.
It is not implied that formal principles and procedures are so firmly entrenched within the public order of the world community or even of free commonwealths that they will control in all circumstances involving Jews and Gentiles during coming years.
Social process is always anchored in past predisposition;
but it is perennially restructured in situations where anchors are dragged or lost.
It is not difficult to anticipate circumstances in which negative tensions will cumulate;
for instance, imagine the situation if Israel ever joins an enemy coalition.
The formal position of Americans who identify themselves with one or more of the several identities of the Jewish symbol is already clear;
the future weight of informal factors cannot be so easily assessed.
During moments of intense crisis the responsibility of political leaders is overwhelming.
But their freedom of policy is limited by the pattern of predisposition with which they and the people around them enter the crisis.
At such critical moments predispositions favorable to human dignity most obviously pay off.
By the same test predispositions destructive of human personality exercise their most sinister impact, with the result that men of good will are often trapped and nullified.
We are learning how to do these things in some of the vast organized structures of modern society;
the process can be accelerated.
A truism is that the time to prepare for the worst is when times are best.
During intercrisis periods the educational facilities of the community have the possibility of remolding the perspectives and altering the behavior of vast numbers of human beings of every age and condition.
As more men and women are made capable of living up to the challenge of decency the chances are improved that the pattern of predisposition prevailing in positions of strength in future crises can be favorably affected.
Now an abiding difficulty of paragraphs like the foregoing is that they appear to preach;
and in contemporary society we often complain of too much reaffirmation of the goodness of the good.
In any case I do not intend to let the present occasion pass without dealing more directly with the problem of implementing good intentions.
I assume that the number of readers of this anthology who regard themselves as morally perfect is small, and that most readers are willing to consider procedures by which they may gain more insight into themselves and better understanding of others.
Properly used, the present book is an excellent instrument of enlightenment.
Let us not confuse the issue by labeling the objective or the method psychoanalytic, for this is a well established term of art for the specific ideas and procedures initiated by Sigmund Freud and his followers for the study and treatment of disordered personalities.
The traditional method proceeds by the technique of free association, punctuated by interpretations proposed by the psychoanalytic interviewer.
What we have in mind does have something in common with the goals of psychoanalysis and with the methods by which they are sought.
For what we propose, however, a psychoanalyst is not necessary, even though one aim is to enable the reader to get beneath his own defenses--his defenses of himself to himself.
For this purpose a degree of intellectual and emotional involvement is necessary;
but involvement needs to be accompanied by a special frame of mind.
The relatively long and often colorful selections in this anthology enable the reader to become genuinely absorbed in what is said, whether he responds with anger or applause.
But simple involvement is not enough;
self-discovery calls for an open, permissive, inquiring posture of self-observation.
Two facets of this aspect of the literary process have special significance for our time.
One, a reservation on the point I have just made, is the phenomenon of pseudo-thinking, pseudo-feeling, and pseudo-willing, which Fromm discussed in The Escape From Freedom.
In essence this involves grounding one's thought and emotion in the values and experience of others, rather than in one's own values and experience.
There is a risk that instead of teaching a person how to be himself, reading fiction and drama may teach him how to be somebody else.
Clearly what the person brings to the reading is important.
Moreover, if the critic instructs his audience in what to see in a work, he is contributing to this pseudo-thinking;
if he instructs them in how to evaluate a work, he is helping them to achieve their own identity.
The second timely part of this sketch of literature and the search for identity has to do with the difference between good and enduring literary works and the ephemeral mass culture products of today.
In the range and variety of characters who, in their literary lives, get along all right with life styles one never imagined possible, there is an implicit lesson in differentiation.
The reader, observing this process, might ask why not be different?
And find in the answer a license to be a variant of the human species.
The observer of television or other products for a mass audience has only a permit to be, like the models he sees, even more like everybody else.
And this, I think, holds for values as well as life styles.
One would need to test this proposition carefully;
after all, the large (and probably unreliable) Reader's Digest literature on the most unforgettable character I ever met deals with village grocers, country doctors, favorite if illiterate aunts, and so forth.
Scientists often turn out to be idiosyncratic, too.
But still, the proposition is worth examination.
It is possible that the study of literature affects the conscience, the morality, the sensitivity to some code of right and wrong.
I do not know that this is true;
both Flugel and Ranyard West deal with the development and nature of conscience, as do such theologians as Niebuhr and Buber.
It forms the core of many, perhaps most, problems of psychotherapy.
Still, it would be surprising if what one reads did not contribute to one's ideas of right and wrong;
certainly the awakened alarm over the comic books and the continuous concern over prurient literature indicate some peripheral aspects of this influence.
Probably the most important thing to focus on is not the development of conscience, which may well be almost beyond the reach of literature, but the contents of conscience, the code which is imparted to the developed or immature conscience available.
This is in large part a code of behavior and a glossary of values: what is it that people do and should do and how one should regard it.
Literature may be said to give people a sense of purpose, dedication, mission, significance.
This, no doubt, is part of what Gilbert Seldes implies when he says of the arts, They give form and meaning to life which might otherwise seem shapeless and without sense.
Men seem almost universally to want a sense of function, that is, a feeling that their existence makes a difference to someone, living or unborn, close and immediate or generalized.
Feeling useless seems generally to be an unpleasant sensation.
A need so deeply planted, asking for direction, so to speak, is likely to be gratified by the vivid examples and heroic proportions of literature.
The terms renewal and refreshed, which often come up in aesthetic discussion, seem partly to derive their import from the renewal of purpose and a refreshed sense of significance a person may receive from poetry, drama, and fiction.
The notion of inspiration is somehow cognate to this feeling.
How literature does this, or for whom, is certainly not clear, but the content, form, and language of the message, as well as the source, would all play differentiated parts in giving and molding a sense of purpose.
One of the most salient features of literary value has been deemed to be its influence upon and organization of emotion.
Let us differentiate a few of these ideas.
The Aristotelian notion of catharsis, the purging of emotion, is a persistent and viable one.
The idea here is one of discharge but this must stand in opposition to a second view, Plato's notion of the arousal of emotion.
A third idea is that artistic literature serves to reduce emotional conflicts, giving a sense of serenity and calm to individuals.
This is given some expression in Beardsley's notion of harmony and the resolution of indecision.
A fourth view is the transformation of emotion, as in Housman's fine phrase on the arts: they transform and beautify our inner nature.
It is possible that the idea of enrichment of emotion is a fifth idea.
If art is to release us from these postulated things (things we must think symbolically about) and bring us back to the ineffable beauty and richness of the aesthetic component of reality in its immediacy, it must sever its connection with these common sense entities.
I take the central meaning here to be the contrast between the drab empty quality of life without literature and a life enriched by it.
Richards' view of the aesthetic experience might constitute a sixth variety: for him it constitutes, in part, the organization of impulses.
A sketch of the emotional value of the study of literature would have to take account of all of these.
But there is one in particular which, it seems to me, deserves special attention.
In the wide range of experiences common to our earth-bound race none is more difficult to manage, more troublesome, and more enduring in its effects than the control of love and hate.
The study of literature contributes to this control in a curious way.
The rehearsal through literature of emotional life under controlled conditions may be a most valuable human experience.
Here I do not mean catharsis, the discharge of emotion.
I mean something more like Freud's concept of the utility of play to a small child: he plays house or doctor or fireman as a way of mastering slightly frightening experiences, reliving them imaginatively until they are under control.
There is a second feature of the influences of literature, good literature, on emotional life which may have some special value for our time.
In B. M. Spinley's portrayal of the underprivileged and undereducated youth of London, a salient finding was the inability to postpone gratification, a need to satisfy impulses immediately without the pleasure of anticipation or of savoring the experience.
Perhaps it is only an analogy, but one of the most obvious differences between cheap fiction and fiction of an enduring quality is the development of a theme or story with leisure and anticipation.
Anyone who has watched children develop a taste for literature will understand what I mean.
It is at least possible that the capacity to postpone gratification is developed as well as expressed in a continuous and guided exposure to great literature.
These are, if the research is done with subtlety and skill, researchable topics, but the research is missing.
One of the most frequent views of the value of literature is the education of sensibility that it is thought to provide.
Sensibility is a vague word, covering an area of meaning rather than any precise talent, quality, or skill.
Among other things it means perception, discrimination, sensitivity to subtle differences.
Both the extent to which this is true and the limits of the field of perceptual skill involved should be acknowledged.
Its truth is illustrated by the skill, sensitivity, and general expertise of the English professor with whom one attends the theatre.
The limits are suggested by an imaginary experiment: contrast the perceptual skill of English professors with that of their colleagues in discriminating among motor cars, political candidates, or female beauty.
Along these lines, the particular point that sensitivity in literature leads to sensitivity in human relations would require more proof than I have seen.
In a symposium and general exploration of the field of Personal Perception and Interpersonal Behavior the discussion does not touch upon this aspect of the subject, with one possible exception;
Solomon Asch shows the transcultural stability of metaphors based on sensation (hot, sweet, bitter, etc.) dealing with personal qualities of human beings and events.
But to go from here to the belief that those more sensitive to metaphor and language will also be more sensitive to personal differences is too great an inferential leap.
I would say, too, that the study of literature tends to give a person what I shall call depth.
I use this term to mean three things: a search for the human significance of an event or state of affairs, a tendency to look at wholes rather than parts, and a tendency to respond to these events and wholes with feeling.
It is the obverse of triviality, shallowness, emotional anaesthesia.
I think these attributes cluster, but I have no evidence.
In fact, I can only say this seems to me to follow from a wide, continuous, and properly guided exposure to literary art.
The late R. G. Collingwood, a philosopher whose work has proved helpful to many students of literature, once wrote::
We are all, though many of us are snobbish enough to wish to deny it, in far closer sympathy with the art of the music-hall and picture-palace than with Chaucer and Cimabue, or even Shakespeare and Titian.
By an effort of historical sympathy we can cast our minds back into the art of a remote past or an alien present, and enjoy the carvings of cavemen and Japanese colour-prints;
but the possibility of this effort is bound up with that development of historical thought which is the greatest achievement of our civilization in the last two centuries, and it is utterly impossible to people in whom this development has not taken place.
The natural and primary aesthetic attitude is to enjoy contemporary art, to despise and dislike the art of the recent past, and wholly to ignore everything else.
One might argue that the ultimate purpose of literary scholarship is to correct this spontaneous provincialism that is likely to obscure the horizons of the general public, of the newspaper critic, and of the creative artist himself.
There results a study of literature freed from the tyranny of the contemporary.
Such study may take many forms.
The study of ideas in literature is one of these.
Of course, it goes without saying that no student of ideas can justifiably ignore the contemporary scene.
He will frequently return to it.
The continuities, contrasts, and similarities discernible when past and present are surveyed together are inexhaustible and the one is often understood through the other.
When we assert the value of such study, we find ourselves committed to an important assumption.
Most students of literature, whether they call themselves scholars or critics, are ready to argue that it is possible to understand literary works as well as to enjoy them.
Many will add that we may find our enjoyment heightened by our understanding.
This understanding, of course, may in its turn take many forms and some of these--especially those most interesting to the student of comparative literature--are essentially historical.
But the historian of literature need not confine his attention to biography or to stylistic questions of form, texture, or technique.
He may also consider ideas.
It is true that this distinction between style and idea often approaches the arbitrary since in the end we must admit that style and content frequently influence or interpenetrate one another and sometimes appear as expressions of the same insight.
But, in general, we may argue that the student can direct the primary emphasis of his attention toward one or the other.
At this point a working definition of idea is in order, although our first definition will have to be qualified somewhat as we proceed.
The term idea refers to our more reflective or thoughtful consciousness as opposed to the immediacies of sensuous or emotional experience.
It is through such reflection that literature approaches philosophy.
An idea, let us say, may be roughly defined as a theme or topic with which our reflection may be concerned.
In this essay, we are, along with most historians, interested in the more general or more inclusive ideas, that are so to speak writ large in history of literature where they recur continually.
Outstanding among these is the idea of human nature itself, including the many definitions that have been advanced over the centuries;
also secondary notions such as the perfectibility of man, the depravity of man, and the dignity of man.
We need not, to be sure, expect to find such ideas in every piece of literature.
An idea, of the sort that we have in mind, although of necessity readily available to imagination, is more general in connotation than most poetic or literary images, especially those appearing in lyric poems that seek to capture a moment of personal experience.
Thus Burns's My love is like a red, red rose and Hopkins' The thunder-purple sea-beach, plumed purple of Thunder although clearly intelligible in content, hardly present ideas of the sort with which we are here concerned.
On the other hand, Arnold's The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea, taken in its context, certainly does so.
Understanding a work of art involves recognition of the ideas that it reflects or embodies.
Thus the student of literature may sometimes find it helpful to classify a poem or an essay as being in idea or in ideal content or subject matter typical or atypical of its period.
Again, he may discover embodied within its texture a theme or idea that has been presented elsewhere and at other times in various ways.
Our understanding will very probably require both these commentaries.
Very likely it will also include a recognition that the work we are reading reflects or belongs to some way of thought labelled as a school or an -ism, i.e. a complex or syndrome of ideas occurring together with sufficient prominence to warrant identification.
Thus ideas like grace, salvation, and providence cluster together in traditional Christianity.
Usually the work studied offers us a special or even an individualized rendering or treatment of the ideas in question, so that the student finds it necessary to distinguish carefully between the several expressions of an -ism or mode of thought.
After all, Shelley is no orthodox or Hellenic Platonist, and even his romantic Platonism can be distinguished from that of his contemporaries.
Again, Henley's attitude of defiance which colors his ideal of self-mastery is far from characteristic of a Stoic thinker like Marcus Aurelius, whose gentle acquiescence is almost Christian, comparable to the patience expressed in Milton's sonnet on his own blindness.
Here we may observe that at least one modern philosophy of history is built on the assumption that ideas are the primary objectives of the historian's research.
Let us quote once more from R. G. Collingwood: History is properly concerned with the actions of human beings Regarded from the outside, an action is an event or series of events occurring in the physical world;
regarded from the inside, it is the carrying into action of a certain thought The historian's business is to penetrate to the inside of the actions with which he is dealing and reconstruct or rather rethink the thoughts which constituted them.
It is a characteristic of thoughts that in re-thinking them we come, ipso facto, to understand why they were thought.
Such an understanding, although it must seek to be sympathetic, is not a matter of intuition.
This is what was meant, above, by describing history as inferential.
The knowledge in virtue of which a man is an historian is a knowledge of what the evidence at his disposal proves about certain events.
The student of ideas and their place in history will always be concerned with the patterns of transition, which are at the same time patterns of transformation, whereby ideas pass from one area of activity to another.
Let us survey for a moment the development of modern thought--turning our attention from the Reformation toward the revolutionary and romantic movements that follow and dwelling finally on more recent decades.
We may thus trace the notion of individual autonomy from its manifestation in religious practice and theological reflection through practical politics and political theory into literature and the arts.
Finally we may note that the idea appears in educational theory where its influence is at present widespread.
No one will deny that such broad developments and transitions are of great intrinsic interest and the study of ideas in literature would be woefully incomplete without frequent reference to them.
Still, we must remember that we cannot construct and justify generalizations of this sort unless we are ready to consider many special instances of influence moving between such areas as theology, philosophy, political thought, and literature.
The actual moments of contact are vitally important.
These moments are historical events in the lives of individual authors with which the student of comparative literature must be frequently concerned.
Perhaps the most powerful and most frequently recurring literary influence on the Western world has been that of the Old and New Testament.
Certainly one of the most important comments that can be made upon the spiritual and cultural life of any period of Western civilization during the past sixteen or seventeen centuries has to do with the way in which its leaders have read and interpreted the Bible.
This reading and the comments that it evoked constitute the influence.
We may also recognize cases in which the poets have influenced the philosophers and even indirectly the scientists.
English philosopher Samuel Alexander's debt to Wordsworth and Meredith is a recent interesting example, as also A. N. Whitehead's understanding of the English romantics, chiefly Shelley and Wordsworth.
Hegel's profound admiration for the insights of the Greek tragedians indicates a broad channel of classical influence upon nineteenth-century philosophy.
Here an important caveat is in order.
Suppose you take Mr. Hearst's morning American at $10,000 a year, Brisbane proposed.
You could come down to the office once a day, look over a few exchanges, dictate an editorial, and then have the remainder of your time for your more serious literary labors.
If within one year you can make a success out of the American, you can practically name your own salary thereafter.
Of course, if you don't make the American a success, Hearst will have no further use for you.
The blue-eyed Watson decided that he would dislike living in New York, and the deal fell through.
Hearst's luck was even poorer when he had a chat with Franklin K. Lane, a prominent California journalist and reform politician, whom he asked for his support.
Lane was still burning because he had narrowly missed election as governor of California in 1902 and laid his defeat to the antagonism of Hearst's San Francisco Examiner.
Hearst disclaimed blame for this, but the conversation, according to Lane, ended on a tart note.
Mr. Lane, Hearst said, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have to do will be to send me a telegram asking, and it will be done.
Mr. Hearst, Lane replied as he left, if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery.
Hearst took a brief respite to hurry home to New York to become a father.
On April 10, 1904, his first child was born, a son named George after the late Senator.
Hearst saw his wife and child, sent a joyful message to his mother in California, and soon returned to Washington, where on April 22, for the first time, he opened his mouth in Congress.
This was not before the House but before the Judiciary Committee, where he asked for action on one of his pet bills, that calling for an investigation of the coal-railroad monopoly.
Attorney Shearn had worked on this for two years and had succeeded in getting a report supporting his stand from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Hearst had spent more than $60,000 of his own money in the probe, but still Attorney General Knox was quiescent.
Six of the railroads carrying coal to Tidewater from the Pennsylvania fields, Hearst said, not only had illegal agreements with coal operators but owned outright at least eleven mines.
They had watered their stock at immense profit, then had raised the price of coal fifty cents a ton, netting themselves another $20,000,000 in annual profit.
The Attorney General has been brooding over that evidence like an old hen on a doorknob for eighteen months, Hearst said.
He has not acted in any way, and won't let anyone take it away from him.
The Congressman tried hard, but failed.
This was the very sort of legislation that Roosevelt himself had in mind.
There can be little doubt that there was a conspiracy in Washington, overt or implied, to block anything Hearst wanted, even if it was something good.
Hatred tied his hands in Congress.
Roosevelt and others considered him partly responsible for the murder of McKinley.
They were repelled by his noisy newspapers, his personal publicity, his presumptuous campaign for the Presidential nomination, and by the swelling cloud of rumor about his moral lapses.
He might get votes from his constituents, but he would never get a helping hand in Congress.
He was the House pariah.
Even the regular Democrats disowned him.
Inherently incapable of cooperating with others, he ran his own show regardless of how many party-line Democratic toes he stepped on.
He was a political maverick, a reformer with his own program, determined to bulldoze it through or to blazon the infamy of those who balked him.
He showed little interest in measures put forward by the regular Democrats.
He sought to run Congress as he ran his New York American or Journal, a scheme veteran legislators resisted.
For a freshman Congressman to read political Lessons to graybeard Democrats was poor policy for one who needed to make friends.
He soon quarreled with all the party leaders in the House, and came to be regarded with detestation by regular Democrats as a professional radical leading a small pack of obedient terriers whose constant snapping was demoralizing to party discipline.
To old-line Democrats, the Hearst Presidential boom, now in full cry, was the joke of the new century.
Yet no leader had come to the fore who seemed likely to give the puissant T. R. a semblance of a race.
There was talk of dragging old ex-President Cleveland out of retirement for another try.
Some preferred Judge Alton B. Parker of New York.
There was a host of dark horses.
The sneers at Hearst changed to concern when it was seen that he had strong support in many parts of the country.
Platoons of Hearst agents were traveling from state to state in a surprisingly successful search for delegates at the coming convention, and there were charges that money was doing a large part of the persuading.
Just when it was needed for the campaign, Hearst Paper No. 8, the Boston American, began publication.
A Bay State supporter said, Mr. Hearst's fight has been helped along greatly by the starting of his paper in Boston.
His candidacy affected his journalism somewhat.
He ordered his editors to tone down on sensationalism and to refrain from using such words as seduction, rape, abortion, criminal assault and born out of wedlock.
In a story headed, Hearst Offers Cash, the Republican New York Tribune spread the money rumor, quoting an unnamed Hearst supporter as saying:
The argument that is cutting most ice is that Hearst is the only candidate who is fighting the trusts fearlessly and who would use all the powers of government to disrupt them if he were elected.
The Hearst men say that if Hearst is nominated, he and his immediate friends will contribute to the Democratic National Committee the sum of $1,500,000.
This, it is urged, would relieve the national committee from the necessity of appealing to the trust magnates.
The alternative to this is that if a conservative candidate is nominated the national committee will have to appeal to the trusts for their campaign funds, and in doing this will incur obligations which would make a Democratic victory absolutely fruitless.
The average Democratic politician, especially in the country districts, is hungry for the spoils of office.
It has been a long time since he has seen any campaign money, and when the proposition is laid down to him as the friends of Mr. Hearst are laying it down these days he is quite likely to get aboard the Hearst bandwagon.
If anything, the conservative Democrats were more opposed to Hearst than the Republicans.
In his own state of New York, the two Democratic bellwethers, State Leader Hill and Tammany Boss Murphy, were saying nothing openly against Hearst but industriously boosting their own favorites, Murphy being for Cleveland and Hill for Parker.
They had lost twice with the radical Bryan, and were having no part of Hearst, whom they considered more radical than Bryan.
But his increasing strength in the West looked menacing.
It caused Henry Watterson to sound a blast in his Louisville Courier-Journal:
But there is a Hearst barrel.
More splenetic was Senator Edward Carmack of Tennessee, a Parker man.
The nomination of Hearst would compass the ruin of the party, Carmack said.
It would be a disgrace, and, as I have already said to the people of Tennessee, if Hearst is nominated, we may as well pen a dispatch, and send it back from the field of battle:'All is lost, including our honor'''.
A lone pro-Hearst voice from New York City was that of William Devery, who had been expelled as a Tammany leader but still claimed strong influence in his own district.
I understand [ Hearst ] is a candidate for Presidential honors, Devery said without cracking a smile.
There's nothing like buildin' from the bottom up.
If he's going to the St. Louis convention as a delegate we ought to know it.
He's got a lot of friends, and he ought to come along and let us know if he wants our help.
Hearst won the Iowa state convention, but ran into a bitter battle in Indiana before losing to Parker, drawing an angry statement from Indiana's John W. Kern:
We are menaced for the first time in the history of the Republic by the open and unblushing effort of a multi-millionaire to purchase the Presidential nomination.
Our state has been overrun with a gang of paid agents and retainers.
As for the paid Hessians from other states, we are here to instruct the Indiana Democracy in their duty, I have nothing but contempt.
The Hearst dollar mark is all over them.
The talk of a Hearst barrel was increasing.
Another Indiana observer later commented, Perhaps we shall never know how much was spent (by Hearst), but if as much money was expended elsewhere as in Indiana a liberal fortune was squandered.
In his fight for the Illinois and Indiana delegations, Hearst made several trips to Chicago to confer with Andrew Lawrence, the former San Francisco Examiner man who was now his Chicago kingpin, and once to meet with Bryan.
On one visit he stopped at the office of the American, where he was known surreptitiously as the Great White Chief, and for the first time met his managing editor, fat Moses Koenigsberg.
Koenigsberg never did learn what Hearst wanted, for the latter shook hands and moved toward the door.
Never mind, thank you, he said.
I must hurry to catch my train.
Another editor pointed despairingly at a bundle of letters that had accumulated for him, saying, But Mr. Hearst, what shall I do with this correspondence?
I'll show you, Hearst replied, grinning.
He took the stack of mail and tossed it into the waste basket.
Don't bother.
Every letter answers itself in a couple of weeks.
The Hearst barrel
Hearst hopped into a private railroad car with Max Ihmsen and made an arduous personal canvass for delegates in the western and southern states, always wearing a frock coat, listening intently to local politicians, and generally making a good impression.
He laughed at a story that he planned to bolt the party if he was not nominated.
I should, of course, he said, like any other man, be honored and gratified should the Democrats see fit to nominate me.
But I do not have to be bribed by office to be a Democrat.
I have supported the Democratic party in the last five campaigns.
I supported Cleveland three times and Bryan twice.
I intend to support the nominee of the party at St. Louis, whoever he may be.
The Hearst press followed the Chief's progress at the various state conventions with its usual admiring attention, stressing the enthusiasm and loyalty he inspired.
This was historic in its way, for it marked the first time an American Presidential aspirant had advertised his own virtues in his own string of newspapers spanning the land.
Yet his editors did not abandon their sense of story value.
Trevelyan's Liberalism was above all a liberalism of the spirit, a deep feeling of communion with men fighting for country and for liberty.
His passion and enthusiasm convey the courage and high adventure of Garibaldi's exploits and give the reader a unique sense of participation in the events described.
The three volumes brought to the fore a characteristic of Trevelyan's prose which remained conspicuous through his later works--a genius for describing military action with clarity and with authority.
The confused rambling of guerrilla warfare, such as most of Garibaldi's campaigns were, was brought to life by Trevelyan's pen in some of the best passages in the books.
His personal familiarity with the scenes of action undoubtedly contributed much to the final result, but familiarity alone would not have been enough without other qualities.
Military knowledge, love of detail, and a sure feeling for the portrayal of action were the added ingredients.
But the Garibaldi volumes were more than a romantic story.
Trevelyan contributed considerable new knowledge of the issues connected with his subject.
The outstanding example was in Garibaldi And The Thousand, where he made use of unpublished papers of Lord John Russell and English consular materials to reveal the motives which led the British government to permit Garibaldi to cross the Straits of Messina.
In looking back over the volumes, it is possible to find errors of interpretation, some of which were not so evident at the time of writing.
Thus Trevelyan repeats the story which pictured Victor Emmanuel as refusing to abandon the famous Statuto at the insistence of General Radetzky.
Later research has shown this part of the legend of the Re Galantuomo to be false.
Trevelyan accepts Italian nationalism with little analysis, he is unduly critical of papal and French policy, and he is more than generous in assessing British policy.
But fifty years later the trilogy still maintains a firm place in the list of standard works on the unification of Italy, a position cautiously prophesied by the reviewers at the time of publication.
Trevelyan's Manin And The Venetian Revolution Of 1848, his last major volume on an Italian theme, was written in a minor key.
Published in 1923, it did not gain the popular acclaim of the Garibaldi volumes, probably because Trevelyan felt less at home with Manin, the bourgeois lawyer, than with Garibaldi, the filibuster.
The complexities of Venetian politics eluded him, but the story of the revolution itself is told in restrained measures, with no superfluous passages and only an occasional overemphasis of the part played by its leading figure.
If it is not one of his best books, it can only be considered unsatisfactory when compared with his own Garibaldi.
Already Trevelyan had begun to parallel his nineteenth-century Italian studies with several works on English figures of the same period.
First The Life Of John Bright appeared and seven years later Lord Grey Of The Reform Bill.
Of the two, The Life Of Bright is incomparably the better biography.
Trevelyan centers too exclusively on Bright, is insufficiently appreciative of the views of Bright's opponents and critics, and makes light of the genuine difficulties faced by Peel.
Yet he is right when he claims in his autobiography that he drew the real features of the man, his tender and selfless motives and his rugged fearless strength.
Because Bright's speeches were so much a part of him, there are long and numerous quotations, which, far from making the biography diffuse, help to give us the feel of the man.
Associated in a sense with the Manchester School through his mother's family, Trevelyan conveys in this biography something of its moral conviction and drive.
Nineteenth-century virtues, however, seem somehow to have gone out of fashion and the Bright book has never been particularly popular.
The biography of Lord Grey is strictly speaking not a biography at all.
It is a Whig history of the Tory reaction which preceded the Reform Bill of 1832, and it uses the figure of Grey to give some unity to the narrative.
The volume is a piece of passionate special pleading, written with the heat--and often with the wisdom, it must be said--of a Liberal damning the shortsightedness of politicians from 1782 to 1832.
Characteristically, Trevelyan enjoyed writing the work.
The theme of glorious summer coming after a long winter of discontent and repression was, he has told us, congenial to his artistic sense.
And Grey's Northumberland background was close to Trevelyan's own.
The Liberal-Radical heritage which informs all of Trevelyan's interpretations of history here seems clearly to have distorted the issues and oversimplified the period.
For once his touch deserted him.
Research in the period of Grey and Bright led naturally to a more ambitious work.
The plan is admirably fulfilled for the period up to 1832.
His technique is genuinely masterful.
By what one reader called a series of dissolving views, he merges one period into another and gives a sense of continuous growth.
But after 1832, the narrative tends to lose its balanced, many-sided quality and to become a medley of topics, often unconnected by any single thread.
Economic analysis was never Trevelyan's strong point and the England of the industrial transformation cries out for economic analysis.
Yet after 1832, the interrelations of economic and social and political affairs become blurred and the narrative becomes largely a conventional political account.
Finally, the period after 1870 receives little attention and that quite superficial.
Yet Britain In The Nineteenth Century became the vade mecum of beginning students of history, went through edition after edition, and continues to be reprinted up to the very present.
Its success is a tribute, above all, to Trevelyan's brilliance as a literary stylist.
In 1924 Trevelyan traveled to the United States, where he delivered the Lowell lectures at Harvard University.
These lectures formed the nucleus of a general survey of English development which took form afterward as A History Of England.
In short order, the general history became his most popular work and has remained, aside from his later Social history, the work most widely favored by the public.
The History Of England has often been compared with Green's Short History.
Like Green, Trevelyan aimed to write a history not of English kings or English conquests, but of the English people.
The result was fortunate.
The History takes too much for granted to serve as a text for other than English schoolboys, and like Britain in the nineteenth century it deteriorates badly as it goes beyond 1870.
Trevelyan's excursions into contemporary history were rarely happy ones.
But as a stimulating, provocative interpretation of the broad sweep of English development it is incomparable.
Living pictures of the early boroughs, country life in Tudor and Stuart times, the impact of the industrial revolution compete with sensitive surveys of language and literature, the common law, parliamentary development.
The strength of the History is also its weakness.
Trevelyan is militantly sure of the superiority of English institutions and character over those of other peoples.
His nationalism was not a new characteristic, but its self-consciousness, even its self-satisfaction, is more obvious in a book that stretches over the long reach of English history.
And yet the elements which capture his liberal and humanistic imagination are those which make the English story worth telling and worth remembering.
Tolerance and compromise, social justice and civil liberty, are today too often in short supply for one to be overly critical of Trevelyan's emphasis on their central place in the English tradition.
Like most major works of synthesis, The History Of England is informed by the positive views of a first-class mind, and this is surely a major work.
Four years after the publication of The History Of England, the first volume of Trevelyan's Queen Anne trilogy appeared.
By now he had become Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge and had been honored by the award of the Order of Merit.
His academic duties had little evident effect on his prolific pen.
Blenheim was followed in rapid succession by Ramillies And The Union With Scotland and by The Peace And The Protestant Succession, the three forming together a detailed picture of England under Queen Anne.
Like his volume on Wycliffe, the work was accompanied by the publication of a selected group of documents, in this case illustrative of the history of Queen Anne's reign down to 1707.
Trevelyan was at least in part attracted to the period by an almost unconscious desire to take up the story where Macaulay's History Of England had broken off.
In addition, he believed in the dramatic unity and separateness of the period from 1702-14, lying between the Stuart and Hanoverian eras with a special ethos of its own.
He saw the age as one in which Britain settled her free constitution and attained her modern place in the world.
To most observers, there is little doubt that he placed an artificial strait jacket of unity upon the years of Anne's reign which in reality existed only in the pages of his history.
Of the three volumes, Blenheim is easily the best.
In four opening chapters reminiscent of Macaulay's famous third chapter, Trevelyan surveys the state of England at the opening of the eighteenth century.
His delightful picture of society and institutions is filled with warm detail that brings the period vividly to life.
He tends to underestimate--or perhaps to view charitably--the brutality and the violence of the age, so that there is an idyllic quality in these pages which hazes over some of its sharp reality.
Yet as an evocation of time past, there are few such successful portraits in English historical literature.
Once the scene is set, Trevelyan skilfully builds up the tense story until it reaches its climax in the dramatic victory of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy at Blenheim.
The account of the battle is, next to his descriptions of Garibaldi's campaigns, Trevelyan's outstanding military narrative.
The scene is etched in sharp detail, the military problems brilliantly explained, and the excitement and importance of the battle made evident.
If only for this modest masterpiece of military history, Blenheim is likely to be read and reread long after newer interpretations have perhaps altered our picture of the Marlborough wars.
Ramillies And The Union With Scotland has fewer high spots than Blenheim and much less of its dramatic unity.
Yet in several chapters on Scotland in the eighteenth century, Trevelyan copes persuasively with the tangled confusion of Scottish politics against a vivid background of Scottish religion, customs, and traditions.
I stood on a table, surrounded by hundreds of expectant young faces.
Questions came to me from all sides about my world citizenship activities.
After making a short statement about human rights, and the freedom to travel, I told them I would be going to the Kehl bridge the next morning in order to cross the Rhine into Germany.
May we come with you?
Called out a dozen young voices.
Well, I might not get that far, I told them, as actually I have no papers to enter Germany and, as a matter of fact, no permit to return to France once I leave.
That was all they needed.
They would champion me.
We would all meet at ten o'clock at the Kehl bridge, five miles from Strasbourg, and march triumphantly across into Germany.
There was only one hitch: the small town of Kehl, on the other side of the Rhine, was still under French jurisdiction.
The real Franco-German frontier was beyond the town's limits.
In fact, all persons were permitted to cross the Rhine into Kehl, there being no sentry posted on the west side of the river.
That evening, as I learned later, the students, enjoying that spontaneous immodesty in action known only to university students, surged out onto the streets of Strasbourg, overturning empty streetcars, marking up store fronts, and shouting imprudently, Garry Davis to power!
As I got off the trolley at Kehl bridge the next morning, I was met by what looked like 5,000 students, some of whom were carrying sticks apparently for the coming battle with the police.
Alarmed by this display of weapons, I looked toward the bridge and there saw, stretched across the near side, a cordon of policemen, their bicycles forming a roadblock before which stood several French officers in uniform and a small waspish man in a brown derby.
Listen please, I called to the students in French.
I thank you most heartily for being here.
This is full evidence of your support for my principles.
These principles, however, will not be served by violence in any form.
If they are right, they will prevail of and by themselves.
I ask you all to support me in this.
If one finger is raised against the authorities, all our moral power will vanish.
Your self-control in this respect will be the only witness to your understanding of what I am saying.
I have full confidence in you.
Now, let's go.
I marched up to the waiting officials, the students massed behind me.
As usual, the press photographers were on hand.
The waspish man stopped me three paces from the bicycle barricade, and asked me in French if I had papers to leave France.
I replied in the affirmative, taking out my recently acquired titre d'identite et de voyage, on which was stamped a permission to leave France.
He examined it carefully, handed it back and said, Eh bien, you may leave France.
I took one step eastward.
One of the uniformed officers stepped in my way, demanding to know whether I had permission to enter Germany.
No, I have no permission to enter Germany, I told him.
Alors, you may go no farther, he said imperiously.
Is this then the frontier?
I asked him.
Yes.
At this, the students let out a yell, knowing full well the actual frontier was beyond the town of Kehl.
But I have no permission to re-enter France, and I have just left, I told him.
I must then be standing on the line between France and Germany.
The waspish man stepped forward.
Line?
Line?
But there is no line between France and Germany, that is, no actual line.
I mean
No line?
I asked.
But if there is no line, how can there be two countries?
You have just given me permission to leave France, which I did.
I have witnesses.
And as you know, I have no permission to re-enter France once out.
Now I learn I cannot enter Germany.
Obviously I'm stuck on the line between the two countries.
The students were laughing uproariously at this piece of logic, and even the policemen were trying hard not to smile.
Mais non, the Interior Ministry man coaxed, you may come back to Strasbourg, now, if you wish.
Oh?
Then will you give me a visa to re-enter France?
Visa?
But there is no question of a visa.
You are still in France.
Ah, then please tell me where the frontier is because this gentleman here--I indicated the French occupation officer--informs me that Germany is just on the other side of him.
The Interior man looked uneasily at his French compatriot.
From the crowd were coming cries of He's right!
There must be a line!
And Bravo, Garry, continue!
The reporters were questioning the Interior man and the French officer, both of whom remained noncommittal as to what action, if any, would be taken in my regard.
Finally they went off to file their stories, after the photographers had taken pictures of my latest vigil.
The students crowded around asking questions, slapping me on the back, and generally being friendly.
But what will you do this evening, Mr. Davis?
Asked a young mustached Frenchman.
It will be very cold.
I don't know, I told him, except that I will be here.
I shall see about getting you a tent, he said.
I have a small sports shop in Strasbourg.
That would be a great help, I told him, thanking him for his thoughtfulness.
Some students from the University returned around six with a large pot containing enough hot soup to last me a week.
A volunteer food brigade had been arranged, they told me, which would supply me with the necessities as long as I remained at the bridge.
A little later, the sports shop man returned with a small pup tent.
One of the girl students, sitting by while I ate the thick soup, asked me if I had a sleeping bag.
When I informed her that I didn't, she said she would borrow her brother's and bring it to me later that evening.
You do not know me, she said in good English, but my mother was your governess in Philadelphia when you were a child.
Her name was Esther Peter.
I was delighted to make that personal contact in such trying and unusual circumstances.
The Peter family proved wonderful and helpful friends in the following days, Mrs. Peter, little Esther, and Raoul, who generously lent me his sleeping bag for my Watch on the Rhine.
Sighting a line from the bridge to a small field directly to the side, I pitched the tent that evening on the stateless line, digging a small trench around it as best I could with a toy spade donated by a neighborhood child.
The wind from the Rhine was damp and chill, necessitating a fire for warmth.
After scouring around a bit in the open area, I came across what proved to be tar-soaked logs which crackled and burned brightly, giving off vast rolls of smoke into the ashen sky.
Each evening the students appeared with the soup kettle and several petits pains, Esther usually being among them.
I had advised friends to write me to No Man's Land, Pont Kehl, Between Strasbourg and Kehl, France-Germany.
Sure enough, mail began trickling in, delivered by a talkative, highly amused French postman who informed me there had been quite a debate at the post office as to whether that address would be recognized.
On Christmas Eve, students brought out two small Christmas trees which I placed on either side of the tent.
To my great surprise and delight, when they saw the two trees they went rushing off, returning shortly with decorations from their own trees.
It was a merry if somewhat soggy Christmas for me that year.
In the mail were invitations to speak at the universities of Cologne, Heidelberg, and Baden-Baden.
Twenty thousand world citizens at Stuttgart had signed a petition inviting me to visit their town.
When Dr. Adenauer was approached by a world citizen delegation to find out his disposition of my case, he gave them his personal approval of my entry, saying that all men advocating peace should be welcomed into Germany.
The special guard, however, was still posted on Kehl bridge.
As it began raining at around eight o'clock on December 26th, I retired into my tent early, somewhat tired and discouraged, my body reacting sluggishly because of the continued exposure.
No matter how large the fire, I couldn't seem to shake off the chill that day.
Oh, Mr. Davis, are you there?
A voice drifted in to me above the patter of the rain shortly after I had fallen into a fitful sleep.
Who is it?
We're from the Council of Europe, British delegation.
May we have a word with you?
I'm sorry.
I've had a trying day and I just can't make it out again, I told them.
I heard nothing more.
Later I learned that Sir Hugh Dalton had expressed a desire to see me, hence their trip to No Man's Land.
On the evening of December 27th, Esther noticed my pallid look and rasping voice.
She entreated me to see a doctor, and when I refused, brought one out to see me.
He advised immediate hospitalization.
I wouldn't hear of it because it meant giving up the line, though I realized I was in poor shape physically.
Esther, mistaking my hesitation, assured me that the hospital expense would be taken care of by a leading merchant in Strasbourg whom she had already approached.
No, it's not that, I told her.
You see, once I relinquish the position I've already established here, I couldn't regain it without sacrificing the logic of it.
At that moment, up walked a tall young man with glasses who announced himself as a world citizen from Basel, Switzerland.
Without preliminaries, Esther asked him, If you are a world citizen, will you take Garry Davis' place in his tent while he goes to the hospital?
But of course, with pleasure, he replied.
Esther looked at me.
I looked from her to him.
What is your name?
I asked him.
Jean Babel.
Shake, I said.
You have just enlisted for the'Rhine Campaign'''.
Esther jumped up, ran to him and gave him a little hug.
I am so happy.
Now come, Garry, we must go quickly.
There is a police car outside.
Maybe they will take us.
Such were the incongruities of the situation that the very police assigned to check up on me were drafted into driving me to the Strasbourg Hospital while World Citizen Jean Babel waved adieu from the Line!
He remembered every detail of his pre-assault movements but nothing of the final, desperate rush to come to grips with the enemy.
When the victory cheer went up this officer found himself still mounted, with his horse pressed broadside against Cleburne's log parapet in a tangled group of infantrymen.
His hat was gone, the tears were streaming from his eyes.
He never knew how he got there.
Six climactic minutes in an individual's life left no memory.
Eight hundred and sixty-five Rebels surrendered within their works and a thousand more were captured or surrendered themselves that night and the next day.
Eight field guns were captured in position.
Seven battle flags and fourteen officers' swords were sent to Thomas' headquarters.
It was the only sizable assault upon infantry and artillery behind breastworks successfully made by either side during the Atlanta campaign.
The Fourteenth Regiment of Ohio Volunteers lost one-third of its numbers within a few minutes, among them being several men whose time of service had expired but who had volunteered to advance with their regiment.
The Thirty-eighth Regiment of Ohio Volunteers, one of the regiments in Thomas' First Division during Buell's command, suffered its greatest loss of the war in this action.
A popular belief grew up after the war that the only time during the Civil War that Thomas ever put his horse to a gallop was when he went to hurry up Stanley for this assault.
Sherman was responsible for the story when he said in his memoirs that this was the only time he could recall seeing Thomas ride so fast.
While Thomas' injured back led him to restrain his mount from its most violent gait he moved quickly enough when he had to.
It is not in the record, but he must have galloped his horse at Peach Tree Creek when he brought up Ward's guns to save Newton's crumbling line.
While the final combat of the campaign was being worked out at Jonesborough, Thomas, on Sherman's instructions, ordered Slocum, now commanding the Twentieth Corps, to make an effort to occupy Atlanta if he could do so without exposing his bridgehead to a counterattack.
The dispatch must have been sent after sundown on September 1.
Slocum made his reconnaissanace the next morning, found the town empty, accepted the surrender of the mayor and occupied the city a little before noon.
On the morning of September 2 the Fourth Corps and the Armies of the Tennessee and the Ohio followed the line of Hardee's retreat.
About noon they came up with the enemy two miles from Lovejoy's Station and deployed.
The Fourth Corps assaulted and carried a small portion of the enemy works but could not hold possession of the gain for want of cooperation from the balance of the line.
That night a note written in Slocum's hand and dated from inside the captured city came to Sherman stating that the Twentieth Corps was in possession of Atlanta.
Before making the news public Sherman sent an officer with the note to Thomas.
In a short time the officer returned and Thomas followed on his heels.
The cautious Thomas re-examined the note and then, making up his mind that it was genuine, snapped his fingers, whistled and almost danced in his exuberance.
The next day Sherman issued his orders ending the campaign and pulled his armies back to Atlanta.
The measure of combat efficiency in an indecisive campaign is a matter of personal choice.
Sherman laid great store by place captures.
Hood refused to notice anything except captured guns and colors.
By both standards Thomas had the right to be proud.
Thomas thanked his men for their tenacity of purpose, unmurmuring endurance, cheerful obedience, brilliant heroism and high qualities in battle.
Sherman felt that his own part in the campaign was skillful and well executed but that the slowness of a part of his army robbed him of the larger fruits of victory.
He supposed the military world would approve of his accomplishment.
Whatever the military world thought, the political world approved it wholeheartedly.
For some time, despondency in some Northern quarters had been displayed in two ways--an eagerness for peace and a dissatisfaction with Lincoln.
Proposals were in the air for a year's armistice.
Lincoln was sure that he would not be re-elected.
In the midst of this gloom, at 10:05 P.M. on September 2, Slocum's telegram to Stanton, General Sherman has taken Atlanta, shattered the talk of a negotiated peace and boosted Lincoln into the White House.
To the Republicans no victory could have been more complete.
Official congratulations showered upon Sherman and his army.
Lincoln mentioned their distinguished ability, courage and perseverance.
He felt that this campaign would be famous in the annals of war.
Grant called it prompt, skillful and brilliant.
Halleck described it as the most brilliant of the war.
Actually the Atlanta campaign was a military failure.
Next best to destroying an army is to deprive it of its freedom of action.
Sherman had accomplished this much of his job and then inexplicably nullified it by his thirty-mile retreat from Lovejoy's to Atlanta.
But, so far as its territorial objectives were concerned, the campaign was successful.
Within the narrow frame of military tactics, too, the experts agree that the campaign was brilliant.
In seventeen weeks the military front was driven southward more than 100 miles.
There was a battle on an average of once every three weeks.
The skirmishing was almost constant.
In the summary of the principal events of the campaign compiled from the official records there are only ten days which show no fighting.
The casualties in the Army of the Cumberland were 22,807, while for all three armies they were 37,081.
Men were killed in their camps, at their meals and in their sleep.
Rifle fire often kept the opposing gunners from manning their pieces.
The use of map coordinates was begun when the senior officers began to select tactical points by designating a spot as near the letter o in the word mountain.
A few weeks later the maps were being divided into squares and a position was described as being about lots 239, 247 and 272 with pickets forward as far as 196.
This system was dependent upon identical maps and Thomas supplied them from a mobile lithograph press.
Orders of the day began to specify the standard map for the movement.
Sherman proved that a railway base could be movable and the most brilliant feature of the Atlanta campaign was the rapid repair of the tracks.
To the Rebels it seemed as if Sherman carried tunnels and bridges in his pockets.
The whistle of Sherman's locomotives often drowned out the rattle of the skirmish fire.
As always, the ranks worked out new and better tactics, but there was brilliance in the way the field commands adopted these methods and in the way the army commanders incorporated them into their military thinking.
The fossilized, formalized, precedent-based thinking of the legendary military brain was not evident in Sherman's armies.
Sherman could never be accused of sticking too long with the old.
One of Sherman's most serious shortcomings, however, was his mistrust of his cavalry.
He never saw that it was a complement to his infantry and not a substitute for it.
Then, in some way, this lack of faith in the cavalry became mixed up in his mind with the dragging effect of wagon trains and was hardened into a prejudice.
A horse needed twenty pounds of food a day but the infantryman got along with two pounds.
The horseman required eleven times more than the footman.
So Sherman tried a compromise.
He would ship by rail five pounds per day per animal and the other fifteen pounds that were needed could be picked up off the country.
It failed to work.
Already debilitated by the Chattanooga starvation, the quality of Sherman's horseflesh ran downhill as the campaign progressed.
Every recorded request by Thomas for a delay in a flank movement or an advance was to gain time to take care of his horses.
Well led, properly organized cavalry, in its complementary role to infantry, had four functions.
First, it could locate the enemy infantry, learn what they were doing, and hold them until the heavy foot columns could come up and take over.
Second, it could screen its own infantry from the sight of the enemy.
Third, it could threaten at all times, and destroy when possible, the enemy communications.
It could reach key tactical points faster than infantry and destroy them or hold them as the case might be for the foot soldier.
Its climactic role was to pursue and demoralize a defeated enemy but this chance never came in the Atlanta campaign.
Thomas tried hard to have his cavalry ready for the test it was to meet, but his plans were wrecked when it was forced into a campaign without optimum mobility and with its commander stripped from it.
Sherman knew the uses of cavalry as well as Thomas but he imagined a moving base with infantry wings instead of cavalry wings.
His conception proved workable but slower and it enabled his enemy to make clean, deft, well organized retreats with small materiel losses.
Sherman insisted that cavalry could not successfully break up hostile railways, yet Garrard's Covington raid and Rousseau's Opelika raid cut two-thirds of the rail lines he had to break and Sherman lived in mortal fear of what Forrest might do to his communications.
When McPherson pushed blindly through Snake Creek Gap in a potentially decisive movement, the only cavalry in his van was the Ninth Illinois Mounted Infantry, totally inadequate for its role.
It stumbled on infantry where no infantry should have been and McPherson's aggressive impulse faded out, overwhelmed by fears of the unknown.
A proper cavalry command in his front would have developed the fact that he had run into one division of Polk's Army of the Mississippi moving up from the direction of Mobile to join Johnston at Dalton.
From the night of August 30 to the morning of September 2 there was no Union cavalry east of the Macon railway to disclose to Sherman that he was missing the greatest opportunity of his career.
A great part of the time, Thomas' infantry never knew the location of the enemy line.
At such times Thomas wondered when and where a counterattack would strike him.
It was the hard way to fight a war but Thomas did it without making any disastrous mistakes.
Heat during the Atlanta campaign, coupled with unsuitable clothing, caused individual irritation that was compounded by a lack of opportunity to bathe and shift into clean clothing.
To relieve the itch and sweat galls, the men got into the water whenever they could and since each sizable stream was generally the dividing line between the armies the pickets declared a private truce while the men went swimming.
Johnston believed that Sherman put his naked engineers into the swimming parties to locate the various fords.
Lieutenant Colonel James P. Brownlow, who commanded the First Brigade of Thomas' First Cavalry Division, was ordered across one of these fords.
The water was deep and Brownlow took his troopers across naked--except for guns, cartridge boxes and hats.
They kicked their horses through the deep water with their bare heels, drove the Rebels out of their rifle pits and captured four men.
Most of the Rebels got away since they could make better time through the stiff brush than their naked pursuers.
Rank was becoming an explosive issue in all three of Sherman's armies.
Merited recommendations from army commanders were passed over in favor of political appointees from civil life.
In one of the very few letters in which he ever complained of Meynell, Thompson told Patmore of his distress at having had to leave London before this new friendship had developed further:
That was a very absurd and annoying situation in which I was placed by W. M.'s curious methods of handling me.
He never let me know that my visit was about to terminate until the actual morning I was to leave for Lymington.
The result was that I found myself in the ridiculous position of having made a formal engagement by letter for the next week, only two days before my departure from London.
Luckily both women knew my position and if anyone suffered in their opinion it was not I.
It need hardly be remarked that Thompson was not generally known for his scrupulosity about keeping his social engagements, which makes his irritation in this letter all the more significant.
When Thompson and her daughter began a correspondence which included fervent verses from Pantasaph, Mrs. King felt a proper Victorian alarm.
Some, she knew, looked upon Thompson almost as a saint, but others read in The Hound Of Heaven what they took to be the confessions of a great sinner, who, like Oscar Wilde, had--as one pious writer later put it--thrown himself on the swelling wave of every passion.
Consequently, on October 31, 1896, Mrs. King wrote to Thompson, quite against her daughter's wishes, asking him not to recommence a correspondence which I believe has been dropped for some weeks.
Katherine was staying at a convent, and her mother felt that, as Thompson himself seems to have suggested, she might eventually stay there.
This prospect did not please Mrs. King any more than did the possibility that her daughter might marry a Bohemian, but she used it to suggest to Thompson that, It is not in her nature to love you.
For his part, Thompson had explained in a previous letter that there would be nothing but an honorable friendship between Katie and himself.
At no time does he seem to have proposed marriage, and Mrs. King was evidently torn between a concern for her daughter's emotions and the desire to believe that the friendship might be continued without harm to her reputation.
In any case, she told Thompson that she saw no reason why he might not see Katie again, now that this frank explanation has been made & no one can misunderstand.
She ended her letter with the assurance that she considered his friendship for her daughter and herself to be an honor, from which she could not part without still more pain.
After Thompson came to London to live, he received a letter from Katie, which was dated February 8, 1897.
She regretted what she described as the unwarrantable & unnecessary check to their friendship and said that she felt that they understood one another perfectly.
This letter concluded with an invitation:
I am a great deal at the little children's Hospital.
Mr. Meynell knows the way.
I know you are very busy now, you are writing a great deal & your book is coming out, isn't it?
But if you are able & care to come, you know how glad I shall be.
Ever yours sincerely,
Katherine Douglas King The invitation was accepted and other letters followed, in which she spoke of her concern for his health and her delight in seeing him so much at home among the crippled children she served.
In a letter to Meynell, which was written in June, less than a month before Katie's wedding, he was highly melodramatic in his despair and once again announced his intention of returning to the life of the streets:
A week in arrears, and without means to pay, I must go, it is the only right thing.
Perhaps Mrs. Meynell would do me the undeserved kindness to keep my own copy of the first edition of my first book, with all its mementos of her and the dear ones.
Last, not least, there are some poems which K. King sent me (addressed to herself) when I was preparing a fresh volume, asking me to include them.
The terrible blow of the New Year put an end to that project.
I wish you would return them to her.
I have not the heart.
I never had the courage to look at them, when my projected volume became hopeless, fearing they were poor, until now when I was obliged to do so.
O my genius, young and ripening, you would swear,--when I wrote them;
and now!
What has it all come to?
All chance of fulfilling my destiny is over.
I want you to be grandfather to these orphaned poems, dear father-brother, now I am gone;
and launch them on the world when their time comes.
For them a box will be lodgment enough.
Katie cannot mind your seeing them now;
since my silence must have ended when I gave the purposed volume to you.
I ask you to do me the last favour of reading them by 8 to-morrow evening, about which time I shall come to say my sad good-bye.
If you don't think much of them, tell me the wholesome truth.
If otherwise, you will give me a pleasure.
O Wilfrid!
It is strange;
but this--yes, terrible step I am about to take is lightened with an inundating joy by the new-found hope that here, in these poems, is treasure--or at least some measure of beauty, which I did not know of.
Thompson, of course, was persuaded not to take the terrible step;
Meynell once again paid his debts and it was Katie, rather than Thompson, whose life was soon ended, for she died in childbirth in April, 1901, in the first year of her marriage.
The publication of Father Connolly's The Man Has Wings has made more of the group available in print so that a general picture of what it contained can now be had without difficulty.
Some of the poems express a mood of joy in a newly discovered love;
others suggest its coming loss or describe the poet's feelings when he learns of a final separation.
The somewhat Petrarchan love story which these poems suggest cannot obscure the fact that undoubtedly they have more than a little of autobiographical sincerity.
When they were first written, there was evidently no thought of their being published, and those which refer to the writer's love for Mrs. Meynell particularly have the ring of truth.
In My Song's Young Virgin Date, for example, Thompson wrote: Yea, she that had my song's young virgin date Not now, alas, that noble singular she, I nobler hold, though marred from her once state, Than others in their best integrity.
Whose absence dearer comfort is, by far, Than presences of other women are!
Taking into account Thompson's capacity for self-dramatization and the possibility of a wish to identify his own life with the misfortunes of other poets who had known unhappy loves, there can be no doubt about his genuine emotion for Katie King.
The poems which were addressed to her, while they are far more restrained than those of Love In Dian's Lap, show no great technical advance over those of the Narrow Vessel group and are, if anything, somewhat more labored.
Their interest remains chiefly biographical, for they throw some light on the utter despair which overtook Thompson in the spring and early summer of 1900.
Whether or not Danchin is correct in suggesting that Thompson's resumption of the opium habit also dates from this period is, of course, a matter of conjecture.
Reid simply states, without offering any supporting evidence, that after he returned to London, he resumed his draughts of laudanum, and continued this right up to his death.
There is every reason to recognize that in the very last years of his life, as we shall see, Thompson did take the drug in carefully rationed doses to ease the pains of his illness, but the exact date at which this began has never been determined.
If, as Reid says, nearly all his poetry was produced when he was not taking opium, there may be some reason to doubt that he was under its influence in the period from 1896 to 1900 when he was writing the poems to Katie King and making plans for another book of verse.
In any event, the critical productivity of that time is abundant proof that if he was taking laudanum, it was never in command of him to the extent that it had been during his vagrant years.
Meynell's remedy for Thompson's despondent mood was typically practical.
He simply found more work for him to do, and the articles and reviews continued without an evident break.
As a reviewer, Thompson generally displayed a judicious attitude.
That he read some of the books assigned to him with a studied carefulness is evident from his notes, which are often so full that they provide an unquestionable basis for the identification of reviews that were printed without his signature.
On the basis of this careful reading, Thompson frequently gave a clear, complete, and interesting description of a prose work or chose effective quotations to illustrate his discussions of poetry.
It was, of course, in this drawing of the balance sheet of judgment that he most clearly displayed his desire to do full justice to an author.
Reviewing Davidson's The Testament Of An Empire Builder, for example, Thompson found that there was too much metrical dialectic.
Poetry, he said, must be dogmatic: it must not stoop to argue like a K.C. in cloth-of-gold.
Yet Davidson impressed him as a poet capable of sustained power, passion, or beauty, and he cited specific passages to illustrate not only these qualities but Davidson's command of imagery as well.
Similarly, he wrote that Laurence Housman had a too deliberate manner as well as a lack of inevitable felicity in diction.
But he admired Housman's subtle intellectuality and delighted in the inversion by which Divine Love becomes the most fatal allurement in Love The Tempter.
Of course, there were books about which nothing good could be said.
Understanding, as he did, the difficulty of the art of poetry, and believing that the only technical criticism worth having in poetry is that of poets, he felt obliged to insist upon his duty to be hard to please when it came to the review of a book of verse.
As he had done on his first Imperial sortie a year and a half before, Lewis trekked southeast through Red Russia to Kamieniec.
Thence he pushed farther south than he had ever been before into Podolia and Nogay Tartary or the Yedisan.
There, along the east bank of the Southern Bug, opposite the hamlet of Zhitzhakli a few miles north of the Black Sea, he arrived at General Headquarters of the Russian Army.
By June 19, 1788, he had presented himself to its Commander in Chief, the Governor of the Southern Provinces, the Director of the War College--The Prince.
Catherine's first war against the Grand Turk had ended in 1774 with a peace treaty quite favorable to her.
By 1783 her legions had managed to annex the Crimea amid scenes of wanton cruelty and now, in this second combat with the Crescent, were aiming at suzerainty over all of the Black Sea's northern shoreline.
Through most of 1787 operations on both sides had been lackadaisical;
those of 1788 were going to prove decisive, though many of their details are obscure.
To consolidate what her Navy had won, the Czarina was fortunate that, for the first time in Russian history, her land forces enjoyed absolute unity of command under her favorite Giaour.
Potemkin was directing this conflict on three fronts: in the Caucasus;
along the Danube and among the Carpathians, in alliance with the Emperor Joseph's armies;
and in the misty marshlands and shallow coastal waters of Nogay Tartary and Taurida, including the Crimean peninsula.
Here the war would flame to its focus, and here Lewis Littlepage had come.
During a sojourn of slightly more than three months Chamberlain Littlepage could see action on both elements.
As his second in command The Prince had Marshal Repnin, one-time Ambassador to Poland.
Repnin, who had a rather narrow face, longish nose, high forehead, and arching brows, looked like a quizzical Mephistopheles.
Some people thought he lacked both ability and character, but most agreed that he was noble in appearance and, for a Russian, humane.
The Marshal came to know Littlepage quite well.
At General Headquarters the newcomer in turn got to know others.
Then there were the distinguished foreign volunteers.
Representing the Emperor were the Prince De Ligne, still as impetuous as a youth of twenty;
and General the Count Pallavicini, founder of the Austrian branch of that celebrated Italian house, a courtier Littlepage could have met at Madrid in December, 1780.
From Milan came the young Chevalier De Litta, an officer in the service of Malta.
Out of Saxony rode the Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, one of the Czarina's cousins and a lieutenant general in her armies, a frank, sensitive, popular soldier whose kindnesses Littlepage would always recall with the sincerest gratitude.
Though Catherine was vexed at the number of French officers streaming to the Turkish standard, there were several under her own, such as the Prince De Nassau;
the energetic Parisian, Roger De Damas, three year's Littlepage's junior, to whom Nassau had taken a liking;
and the artillerist, Colonel Prevost, whom the Count De Segur had persuaded to lend his technical skills to Nassau.
England contributed a young subaltern named Newton and the naval architect Samuel Bentham, brother to the economist, who for his colonel's commission was proving a godsend to the Russian fleet.
From America were the Messrs. Littlepage and Jones.
Lewis had expected to report at once to Jones's and Nassau's naval command post.
On arrival at headquarters he had, however--in King Stanislas' words to Glayre--found such favor with Pe Potemkin that he made him his aide-de-camp and up to now does not want him to go join Paul Jones.
So of course he stayed put.
Having done so, he began to experience all the frustrations of others who attempted to get along with Serenissimus and do a job at the same time.
The Prince's perceptions were quick and his energy monstrous, but these qualities were sapped by an Oriental lethargy and a policy of letting nothing interfere with personal passions.
At headquarters--sufficiently far from the firing line to make you forget occasionally that you were in a war--Lewis found that the Commander in Chief's only desk was his knees (and his only comb, his fingers).
An entire theater had been set up for his diversion, with a 200-man Italian orchestra under the well-known Sarti.
In the great one's personal quarters, a portable house, almost every evening saw an elegant banquet or reception.
Lewis could let his eye caress The Prince's divan, covered with a rose-pink and silver Turkish cloth, or admire the lovely tapis, interwoven with gold, that spread across the floor.
Filigreed perfume boxes exuded the aromas of Araby.
Around the billiard tables were always at least a couple of dozen beribboned generals.
At dinner the courses were carried in by tall cuirassiers in red capes and black fur caps topped with tufts of feathers, marching in pairs like guards from a stage tragedy.
Among the visitors arriving every now and then there were, of course, women.
For if Serenissimus made the sign of the Cross with his right hand, and meant it, with his left he beckoned lewdly to any lady who happened to catch his eye.
Usually Lewis would find at headquarters one or more of The Prince's various nieces.
Right now he found Sophie De Witt, that magnificent young matron he had spotted at Kamieniec four years ago.
The Prince took her with him on every tour around the area, and it was rumored he was utilizing her knowledge of Constantinople as part of his espionage network.
One evening he passed around the banquet table a crystal cup full of diamonds, requesting every female guest to select one as a souvenir.
When a lady chanced to soil a pair of evening slippers, Brigadier Bauer was dispatched to Paris for replacements.
But if The Prince fancied women and was fascinated by foreigners, he could be haughtiness personified to his subordinates.
He had collared one of his generals in public.
His coat trimmed in sable, diamond stars of the Orders of Saints Andrew or George agleam, he was often prone to sit sulkily, eye downcast, in a Scheherazade trance.
When this happened, everything stopped.
As Littlepage noted: A complete picture of Prince Potemkin may be had in his 1788 operations.
He stays inactive for half the summer in front of Oczakov, a quite second-rate spot, begins to besiege it formally only during the autumn rains, and finally carries it by assault in the heart of winter.
There's a man who never goes by the ordinary road but still arrives at his goal, who gratuitously gets himself into difficulty in order to get out of it with eclat, in a word a man who creates monsters for himself in order to appear a Hercules in destroying them.
To help him do so The Prince had conferred control of his land forces on a soldier who was different from him in almost every respect save one: both were eccentrics of the purest ray serene.
Alexander Vasilievitch Suvorov, now in his fifty-ninth year (ten years Potemkin's senior), was a thin, worn-faced person of less than medium height who looked like a professor of botany.
He had a small mouth with deep furrows on either side, a large flat nose, and penetrating blue eyes.
His gray hair was thin, his face beginning to attract a swarm of wrinkles.
He was ugly.
But Suvorov's face was also a theater of vivacity, and his tough, stooping little frame was briskness embodied.
Like all Russians he was an emotional man, and in him the emotions warred.
Kind by nature, he never refused charity to a beggar or help to anyone who asked him for it (as Lewis would one day discover).
But he was perpetually engaged in a battle to command his own temper.
When Littlepage was introduced, if the General behaved as usual, the newcomer faced a staccato salvo of queries: origin?
Age?
Mission?
Current status?
Woe betide the interviewee if he answered vaguely.
Suvorov's contempt for don't-know's was proverbial;
better to give an asinine answer than none at all.
Despising luxuries of any sort for a soldier, he slept on a pile of hay with his cloak as blanket.
He rose at 4:00 A.M. the year round and was apt to stride through camp crowing like a cock to wake his men.
His breakfast was tea;
his dinner fell anywhere from nine to noon;
his supper was nothing.
He hadn't worn a watch or carried pocket money for years because he disliked both, but highest among his hates were looking glasses: he had snatched one from an officer's grasp and smashed it to smithereens.
He kept several pet birds and liked cats well enough that if one crept by, he would mew at it in friendly fashion.
Passing dogs were greeted with a cordial bark.
Yet General Suvorov--who had never forgotten hearing his adored Czarina declare that all truly great men had oddities--was mad only north, northwest.
He had come to learn that a reputation for peculiarity allowed mere field officers a certain leeway at Court;
in camp he knew it won you the affection of your men.
He had accordingly cultivated eccentricity to the point of second nature.
Underneath, he remained one of the best-educated Russians of his day.
He dabbled in verse, could get along well among most of the European languages, and was fluent in French and German.
He had also mastered the Cossack tongue.
For those little men with the short whiskers, shaven polls, and top knots Suvorov reserved a special esteem.
Potemkin--as King Stanislas knew, and presently informed Littlepage--looked on the Cossacks as geopolitical tools.
Suvorov saw in these scimitar-wielding skirmishers not demographic units but military men of a high potential.
He knew how to channel their exuberant disorderliness so as to transform them from mere plunderers into A-1 guerrilla fighters.
He always kept a few on his personal staff.
He often donned their tribal costumes, such as the one featuring a tall, black sheepskin hat from the top of which dangled a little red bag ornamented by a chain of worsted lace and tassels;
broad red stripes down the trouser leg;
broader leather belt round the waist, holding cartridges and light sabre.
Suvorov played parent not just to his Cossacks but to all his troops.
It was probably at this period that Littlepage got his first good look at the ordinary Russian soldier.
These illiterate boors conscripted from villages all across the Czarina's empire had, Suvorov may have told Lewis, just two things a commander could count on: physical fitness and personal courage.
When their levies came shambling into camp, they were all elbows, hair, and beard.
Mando, pleading her cause, must have said that Dr. Brown was the most distinguished physician in the United States of America, for our man poured out his symptoms and drew a madly waving line indicating the irregularity of his pulse.
He's got high blood pressure, too, and bum kidneys, the doctor said to me.
Transparent look, waxy skin--could well be uremia.
He looked disapprovingly at an ash tray piled high with cigarette stubs, shook his head, and moved his hand back and forth in a strong negative gesture.
The little official hung his head in shame.
Seeing this, his colleague at the next desk gave a short, contemptuous laugh, pushed forward his own ash tray, innocent of a single butt, thumped his chest to show his excellent condition, and looked proud.
The doctor gravely nodded approval.
At this moment Mando came hurrying up to announce that the problem was solved and all Norton had to do was to sign a sheaf of papers.
We went out of the office and down the hall to a window where documents and more officials awaited us, the rest of the office personnel hot upon our heels.
By this time word had got around that an American doctor was on the premises.
One fellow who had liver spots held out his hands to the great healer.
It was funny but it was also touching.
You know, Norton said to me later, I am thinking of setting up the Klinico Brownapopolus.
I might not make any money but I'd sure have patients.
After luncheon we took advantage of the siesta period to try to get in touch with a few people to whom our dear friend Deppy had written.
Deppy is Despina Messinesi, a long-time member of the Vogue staff who, although born in Boston, was born there of Greek parents.
Several years of her life have been spent in the homeland, and she had written to friends to alert them of our coming.
All you have to do, Ilka dear, is to phone on your arrival.
They are longing to see you.
The wear and tear of life have taught me that very few friends of mutual friends long to see foreign strangers, but I planned on being the soul of tact, of giving them plenty of outs was there the tiniest implication that their cups were already running over without us.
My diplomacy was needless.
Greek phone service is worse than French, so that it was to be some little time before contact of any sort was established.
In the late afternoon Mando came back to fetch us, and we drove to the Acropolis.
We stopped first at the amphitheater that lies at the foot of the height crowned by the Parthenon.
The curving benches are broken, chipped, tumbled, but still in place, as are the marble chairs, the seats of honor for the legislators.
The carved statues of the frieze against the low wall are for the most part headless, but their exquisitely graceful nude and draped torsos and the kneeling Atlantes are well preserved in their perfect proportion.
Having completed our camera work, we started our climb.
I suppose the same emotion holds, if to a lesser degree, with any famous monument.
Will it live up to its reputation?
The weight of fame and history is formidable, and dreary steel engravings in schoolbooks do little to quicken interest and imagination.
Uh huh, we think, looking at them, so that's the Parthenon.
And then perhaps one day we get to Athens.
We are here!
We've come a long way and spent a lot of money.
It had better be good.
Don't worry about the Acropolis.
It is awe-inspiring.
Probably every visitor has a favorite time for his first sight of it.
We saw it frequently afterward, but our suggestion for the very first encounter is near sunset.
The light at that time is a benediction.
The serene, majestic columns of the Parthenon, tawny in color against the pure deep blue sky, frame incredible vistas.
All we wanted to do was to stand very quietly and look and look and look.
More than twenty-four hundred years old, bruised, battered, worn and partially destroyed, combining to an astounding degree solidity and grace, it still stands, incomparable testimony to man's aspiration.
In 1687 the Turks, who had been in control of the city since the fifteenth century, with a truly shattering lack of prudence used the Parthenon as a powder magazine.
It was hit by a shell fired by the bombarding Venetian army and the great central portion of the temple was blown to smithereens.
Nearby is the temple of Athena.
The architectural feature, the caryatides upholding the portico, famous around the world as the Porch of the Maidens, was referred to airily by Mando as the Girls' Place.
Another beautiful building is the Propylaea, the entrance gate of the Acropolis.
My other nugget of art and architectural knowledge--besides remembering that it was Ghiberti who designed the doors of the baptistery in Florence--is the three styles of Greek columns.
For some happy reason Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian have always stuck in my mind.
Furthermore I can identify each design.
It remained, however, for Mando to teach me that Doric symbolized strength, Ionic wisdom, and Corinthian beauty, the three pillars of the ancient world.
The columns of the Parthenon are fluted Doric.
Another classic sight that gave us considerable pleasure was the Evzone sentry, in his ballet skirt with great pompons on his shoes, who was patrolling up and down in front of the palace.
Gun on shoulder, he would march smartly for a few yards, bring his heels together with a click, make a brisk pirouette, skirts flaring, and march back to his point of departure.
We did not dare speak to so exalted a being, but Norton aimed his camera and shot him, so to speak, on the rise, the split second between the halt and the turn.
The evening of our first day we drove with Christopher and Judy Sakellariadis, who were friends and patients of Norton, to dine at a restaurant on the shores of the Aegean.
On the way out Mr. Sakellariadis detoured up a special hill from which one may obtain a matchless view of the Acropolis lighted by night.
The great spectacle was a source of rancor, and Son et Lumiere, which the French were trying to promote with the Athenians, was the reason.
These performances were being staged at historical monuments throughout Europe.
By a combination of music, lighting effects, and narration, famous events that have transpired in these locations are evoked and re-created for large audiences usually to considerable acclaim.
The Acropolis had been scheduled for the treatment too, but apparently it was to take place at the time of the full moon when the Athenians themselves, out of respect for the natural beauty of the occasion, were wont to forgo their own usual nocturnal illumination.
Athenian society was split into two factions, the Philistines and the Artists.
The Artists contended that the Philistines, gross of soul, were all for having Son et Lumiere, since the French were footing the bill and the attraction, wherever it had been done, had proven popular.
This was the crassest kind of materialism and they, the Artists, would have no truck with it.
The Acropolis was unique in the world and if that imcomparable work flooded by moonlight wasn't enough for both natives and tourists, then they were quite simply barbarians and the hell with them.
It was very stimulating.
The restaurant to which the Sakellariadises took us on this night of controversy was the Asteria, on Asteria beach.
This is a public bathing beach, easily accessible by tramway from the center of Athens.
Office workers frequently go out there to lunch and swim during the siesta period, which, during the summer, lasts from two until five in the afternoon, when shops and offices are again open for business.
They close sometime after eight.
Nine o'clock is the rush hour, when the busses are jammed, and by nine-thirty the restaurants are beginning to fill.
Bedtime is late, for the balmy evenings are delightful and everyone wants to linger under the stars.
The sand is fine and pleasant, the cabanas are clean, and the parasols, green, raspberry, and butter yellow, are very gay.
Although open to the general public it is not overcrowded;
the atmosphere is that of an attractive private beach club at home.
We went there a couple of times to swim and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
This agreeable state of affairs is explicable, I think, on two counts.
One is Greece is not yet suffering from overpopulation.
The public may still find pleasure in public places.
The other is that the charge for cabanas and parasols, though modest from an American point of view, still is a little high for many Athenians.
We were struck by the notable absence of banana skins and beer cans, but just so that we wouldn't go overboard on Greek refinement, perfection was side-stepped by a couple of braying portable radios.
Greek boys and girls also go for rock-and-roll, and the stations most tuned to are those carrying United States overseas programs.
A good deal of English was spoken on the beach, most educated Greeks learn it in childhood, and there were also American wives and children of our overseas servicemen.
For a delightful drive out of Athens I should recommend Sounion, at the end of the Attic Peninsula.
The road, a comparatively new one, is very good, winding along inlets, coves, and bays of deep and brilliant blue.
I suppose the day will inevitably come when the area will be encrusted with developments, but at present it is deserted and seductive.
Three beneficial hurdles to progress are the lack of water, electricity, and telephones.
At Sounion there is a group of beautiful columns, the ruins of a temple to Poseidon, of particular interest at that time, as active reconstruction was in progress.
Gaunt scaffoldings adjoined the ruins, and on the ground segments of columns two and a half to three feet in thickness were being fitted with sections cunningly chiseled to match exactly the fluting and proportion of the original.
Later they would be hoisted into place.
There is a mediocre restaurant at Sounion and I fed a thin little Grecian cat and gave it two saucers of water--there was no milk--which it lapped up as though it were nectar.
I think its thirst had never been assuaged before.
Norton and I dined one night in a sea-food restaurant in Piraeus right on the water's edge.
To enter it, you go down five or six steps from the road.
Across the road is the kitchen, and waiters bearing great trays of dishes dodge traffic as nimbly as their French colleagues at the restaurant in the Place Du Tertre in Paris.
This restaurant, too, had a cat, a dusty, thin little creature.
How can a cat be thin in a fish restaurant?
But this one was.
When offered a morsel it glanced right and left and winced, obviously frightened and expecting a kick, but too hungry not to snatch the tidbit.
Greece was one of the highlights of our trip, but beginning in Greece and continuing around the world throughout Southeast Asia the treatment of animals was horrifying, ranging from callous indifference to active cruelty.
This of course was not true of the educated and sophisticated people we met, who loved their pets, but kindness is not a basic human instinct.
We met some charming Athenians, and among them our chauffeur Panyotis ranked high.
His English was limited, and the little he knew he found irritating.
A particularly galling phrase was O.K., Panyotis, we have time at our disposal.
This he claimed was the favorite refrain of the English.
They would be lolling under a tree sipping Ouzo, relishing the leisurely life, assuring him that the day was yet young.
Let him become honest, and they discard him.
-- But let him be ready to invent whatever falsehood--to assail whatever character--and to prostitute his paper to whatever ends--and they hug him to their heart.
In proportion to the degradation of his moral worth, is the increase of his worth to them.
To exonerate the legislature and thereby extricate himself from a sticky situation, Pike took another course and made it appear that the legislature had been bilked.
He claimed in his attacks that Woodruff, with scurrilous underhandedness, had deliberately written an ambiguous bid that had so confused the honest members of the legislature that they had awarded him the contract without knowing what they were doing.
The game is not worth the ammunition it would cost.
We therefore leave the writer to the enjoyment of the unenvied reputation which the personal abuse he has heaped on us will entitle him to from the low and vulgar herd to which he belongs.
Despite Woodruff's continuing refusal to debate with Pike through the columns of his newspaper, Pike did not let up his attack for a moment.
Over the months he became a political gadfly with an incessant barrage of satirical poems ridiculing Woodruff, the Casca letters belittling Woodruff, and long analytical articles vilifying Woodruff.
So persistent were these attacks that in March of the following year, Woodruff was finally moved to action, and Pike was to learn his first lesson in frontier politics, the subtle art of diversion.
To attack Pike directly would gain Woodruff little, for as a penniless newcomer Pike had nothing to lose.
By this time Woodruff had accurately measured Pike as a man of great personal pride, a man who would fly into a towering rage if his integrity were questioned, and who would be anxious to avenge himself.
Pike's honor would now come under attack, but not by Woodruff himself.
The charges would be made in The Gazette by an anonymous correspondent, and Pike would be so busy trying to track down the illusive character assassin that he would forget about harassing Woodruff.
The strategy worked perfectly.
Pike was stunned by the first blast against his character, which was published in the March 4th issue of The Gazette under the name Vale.
The anonymous correspondent did not resort to innuendoes.
He called Pike a thief.
He said Pike had stolen mules from Harris during the Santa Fe expedition;
he accused Pike of continuing his sticky-fingered career in Arkansas with the theft of some otter skins in Van Buren.
The charges caught Pike off balance, coming as they did from an unexpected quarter.
Outraged, he used the Advocate of March 7th for a denial, sending immediately to Santa Fe and Van Buren for documents to vindicate himself, and demanding that Woodruff reveal the name of this perfidious slanderer who disguised himself under a pastoral pseudonym.
Woodruff said nothing, and Pike, frustrated, stormed throughout Little Rock in an unsuccessful search for Vale, asking his friends to keep their ears open.
Finally he learned through the grapevine that the culprit might be one James W. Robinson in Pope County.
Without further inquiry, Pike jumped to the conclusion that Robinson was guilty, and, following the honorable route that would eventually lead to the dueling ground, sent a message to Robinson through his friends, demanding that he either confirm or deny his complicity.
Robinson did neither.
To Pike, silence was tantamount to an admission of guilt, and he determined to get Robinson onto the dueling ground at all costs.
On April 11th he wrote an open letter in The Advocate, making it known to the world that Jas. W. Robinson is by his own admission a base liar and a slanderer.
If Robinson was a liar and a slanderer, he was also a very canny gentleman, for nothing that Pike could do would pry so much as a single word out of him.
Preoccupied with his own defense and his attempts to get Robinson to fight, Pike lessened his attacks on Woodruff, and finally stopped them altogether.
And Pike never did find out if Robinson was really responsible for the Vale letter.
Woodruff's strategy had been immensely successful.
It took Pike a long time to realize what Woodruff had done, and it had a profound effect on him.
Once he learned a lesson, he never forgot it.
Shortly after the Vale incident, a rift began to develop between William Woodruff and Governor Pope.
One-armed, gruff, frugally honest, Governor Pope had been the ideal man to assume office in Arkansas after the disgraceful antics of political bosses like Crittenden, and he ruled the state with an iron fist, tolerating no nonsense.
Woodruff had supported him all the way, both as a chief executive and as a man.
Besides being political allies, they were also friends.
Woodruff wanted this political windfall very badly, and everyone assumed that he would get it because he was a close friend of the governor and his stanchest supporter.
After all, Woodruff owned a competent printing plant and was the logical man for the job.
Woodruff was furious.
Considering the governor's act a personal rebuff, he aired his feelings in The Gazette on August 26, 1834::
We think the governor treated us rather shabbily, to say the least of it.
It is but justice to Mr. Steele for us to add that, in the above remarks, nothing is intended to his disparagement, either as a lawyer or as a printer.
He got a good fat job and we congratulate him on his good luck.
We hope that he will execute it in a manner that will entitle him to credit.
As summer cooled into fall and winter, even so the relationship between the two men continued to grow colder by the day, and by December of 1834 it was icy.
It was at this point that Pike decided to capitalize on the bad feelings between the two men.
The eventual prize in this new battle was the public printing contract that Woodruff still held.
From his first bout with the canny Woodruff, Pike had learned that it was better not to attack him directly, so, harping on the theme that the cost of printing was too high, he condemned the governor for permitting such a state of affairs to exist.
To document his charge, Pike set up two parallel columns in The Advocate showing the price charged by The Gazette and the considerably lower price for which the work could be done elsewhere.
Then he called on the governor to explain why.
The governor was not used to having his integrity questioned, and he promptly passed the charges on to Woodruff, demanding that Woodruff answer them.
If Woodruff could not furnish a strong explanation, the governor insisted that he lower his prices in accord with the scale printed in The Advocate.
Woodruff was now impaled on the horns of a dilemma.
As a proud man, his prestige would suffer if he let Pike dictate to him through the governor's office, but to lower his prices would be tantamount to an admission that they had been too high in the first place.
As a consequence, he did neither.
Very angry at Woodruff, the governor used his personal influence to have the printing contract withdrawn from The Gazette and awarded to the lowest bidder, which, by a strange coincidence, happened to be Pike's Advocate.
And, for the moment at least, the governor now found himself allied with the head of the Crittenden faction he had formerly opposed, and Pike was credited with a clear triumph over Woodruff.
But in the confused atmosphere of frontier politics, alliances were as quickly broken as they were formed, and as Pike came to favor with the governor of the Territory, the governor fell out of favor with the President of the United States.
On January 28, 1835, Andrew Jackson removed Pope from office and elevated Territorial Secretary William S. Fulton to the position.
Fulton was a very close friend of Jackson, and had been his private secretary for a number of years in the old days.
As a stanch party man and a rabid Democrat, he had little tolerance for Whigs like Pike, and Pike lost any immediate personal advantage his victory over Woodruff might have gained him.
as Pike proved himself adept in the political arena, he also became a social lion in the village of Little Rock, where he served as a symbol of the culture that the ladies of the town were striving so eagerly to cultivate.
After all, Pike was an established poet and his work had been published in the respectable periodicals of that center of American culture, Boston.
His accomplishments, and the fact that he was resident, did much to offset the unkind words travelers used to describe Little Rock after a visit there.
For some reason, none of them were impressed with the territorial capital.
The internationally known sportsman and traveler Friedrich Gerstacker was typical of its detractors in the mid-thirties.
Little Rock is a vile, detestable place.
He wrote.
Little Rock is, without any flattery, one of the dullest towns in the United States and I would not have remained two hours in the place, if I had not met with some good friends who made me forget its dreariness.
Pike enjoyed his new social position tremendously, and cultivated in himself those traits necessary to its preservation.
He was especially popular with women, for, like the romantic poetry he wrote, he was personally gracious, gallant, and chivalrous.
He again began to play the violin, and tucking the instrument beneath his chin, performed soulful and romantic airs to match the expressions on the faces of the lovely women who gathered to hear him.
His artistic accomplishments guaranteed him entry into any social gathering.
He composed songs and set them to music and sang them in a soft, melodious voice, and when his audience had had enough of music he would discourse on politics or tell stories of his western adventures guaranteed to excite the emotions of men and women alike.
The bulk of his early reputation, however, came not from his poetry or his music, but from his excellence as an orator.
By 1834 the art of oratory had reached a very high level in the United States as a literary form.
The orator of this period, in order to earn a reputation, had to pay close attention to the formal composition of his speech, judging how it would appear in print as well as the effect it would have on the audience that heard it.
Samuel Gorton, founder of Warwick, was styled by the historian Samuel Greene Arnold one of the most remarkable men who ever lived.
A biographer called him the premature John the Baptist of New England Transcendentalism.
The historian Charles Francis Adams called him a crude and half-crazy thinker.
His contemporaries in Massachusetts called him an arch-heretic, a beast, a miscreant, a proud and pestilent seducer, a prodigious minter of exorbitant novelties.
Edward Rawson, secretary of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, described him as a man whose spirit was stark drunk with blasphemies and insolence, a corrupter of the truth, a disturber of the peace wherever he comes.
Nathaniel Morton stated he was deeply leavened with blasphemous and familistical opinions.
He was thrown out, more or less, from Boston, Plymouth, Pocasset, Newport, and Providence.
On the other hand, Dr. Ezra Styles recorded the following testimony of John Angell, the last disciple of Gorton:
He said Gorton was a holy man;
He was universally beloved by his neighbours, and the Indians, who esteemed him, not only as a friend, but one high in communion with God in Heaven.
Gorton sometimes signed himself a professor of the mysteries of Christ.
There is plenty more to recommend Gorton, the facts of whose life are given in The Life And Times Of Samuel Gorton, by Adelos Gorton.
He fought like a fiend for the helpless and oppressed, worked for the abolition of slavery, helped the Quakers and Indians, and worked against the prosecution of witches.
He defied the Boston hierarchy, and after they sent a small army to get him he befuddled the court, including John Cotton, with one of the most complicated religious discourses ever heard.
Samuel Gorton was born at Gorton, England, near the present city of Manchester, about 1592.
Although he did not attend any celebrated schools or universities, he was a master of Greek and Hebrew and could read the Bible in the original.
He worked as a clothier in London, but was greatly concerned with religion.
Gorton left England, he said, to enjoy libertie of conscience in respect to faith towards God, and for no other end.
With his wife and three or more children he arrived in Boston in March, 1637, and soon found it was no place for anyone looking for liberty of conscience.
Roger Williams had recently been thrown out, and Anne Hutchinson and her Antinomians were slugging it out with the powers-that-be.
Gorton and his family moved to Plymouth.
Soon he was in trouble there, for defending a woman who was accused of smiling in church.
She was Ellen Aldridge, a widow of good repute who was employed by Gorton's wife and lived with the family.
The report was:
It had been whispered privately that she had smiled in the congregation, and the Governor Prence sent to knoe her business, and command, after punishment as the bench see fit, her departure and also anyone who brought her to the place from which she came'''.
Gorton said they were preparing to deport her as a vagabond, and to escape the shame she fled to the woods for several days, returning at night.
He advised the poor woman not to appear in court as what she was charged with was not in violation of law.
Gorton appeared for her, however, and what he told the magistrates must have been plenty, for he was charged with deluding the court, fined, and told to leave the colony within fourteen days.
He left in a storm for Pocasset, December 4, 1638.
His wife was in delicate health and nursing an infant with measles.
The unconquerable Mrs. Hutchinson was residing at Pocasset, after having been excommunicated by the Boston church and thrown out of the colony.
One can imagine that with her and Gorton there it was no place for anyone with weak nerves.
William Coddington, who was running the colony, felt constrained to move seven miles south where, with others--as mentioned above--he founded Newport.
When, in March, 1640, the two towns were united under Coddington, Gorton claimed the union was irregular and illegally constituted and that it had never been sanctioned by the majority of freeholders.
Then he became involved in a ruckus remarkably similar to the one in Plymouth.
A cow owned by an old woman trespassed on Gorton's land.
While driving the cow back home the woman was assaulted by a servant maid of Gorton.
The old woman complained to the deputy governor, who ordered the servant brought before the court.
Gorton reverted to his Plymouth tactics, refused to let her go, and appeared himself before the Portsmouth grand jury.
During the trial he told off the jury, called them Just Asses and called a freeman a saucy boy and Jack-an-Apes.
He was jailed and banished.
Gorton then moved to Providence and soon put the town in a turmoil.
He held that no group of colonists could set up or maintain a government without royal sanction.
Since Rhode Island at that time did not have such sanction, his opinion was not popular.
Roger Williams wrote his friend Winthrop as follows:
Some few and myself withstand his inhabitation and town privileges, without confession and reformation of his uncivil and inhuman practices at Portsmouth;
yet the tide is too strong against us, and I fear (if the framer of hearts help not) it will force me to little Patience, a little isle next to your Prudence.
Williams also stated: Our peace was like the peace of a man who hath the tertian ague.
Providence finally managed to get Gorton out of the town, and he and some friends bought land at Pawtuxet on the west side of Narragansett Bay, five miles south but still within the jurisdiction of the Providence colony.
This town should not be confused with Pawtucket, just north of Providence, or Pawcatuck, Connecticut, on the Pawcatuck River, opposite Westerly, Rhode Island.
Up to now, Gorton had been looking for trouble, and now that he was trying to get away from it, trouble started looking for him.
Upon intelligence that the formidable agitator was to favor them with his presence, the benighted inhabitants of Pawtuxet, alas, gave their allegiance to Massachusetts and asked that colony to expel the newcomers.
As it was the custom of that alert colony to take over the property of persons asking for protection, this was an act roughly equivalent to throwing open the door to a pack of wolves and saying Come and get it.
Gorton and company, however, promptly bought land from Miantonomi a few miles south of Pawtuxet, extending from the present Gaspee Point south to Warwick Neck and twenty miles inland.
The settlement was called Shawomet.
It was not within the jurisdiction of anybody or anything, including Providence and Massachusetts.
If Gorton wanted peace and quiet for his complicated meditations this is where he should have had it.
Instead of that he was engulfed by bedlam.
Pomham and Soconoco, a couple of minor sachems (of something less than exalted character) under Miantonomi, declared that they had never assented to the sale of land to Gorton and had never received anything for it.
Following the glorious lead of the heroes of Pawtuxet, they also submitted themselves to the protection of Massachusetts.
One historical authority presents laborious and circuitous testimony tending to arouse suspicion that Massachusetts was behind the clouds settling down on the embattled Gorton.
However, the General Court at Boston ordered the purchasers of Shawomet to appear before them to answer the sachems' claim.
The purchasers rejected the order in two letters written in vigorous terms.
Then Massachusetts switched to its standard tactics.
It pointed out twenty-six instances of blasphemy in the letters, and ordered the writers to submit or force of arms would be used.
The next week, forty soldiers were sent to get the miscreants.
The latter tried to arbitrate through a delegation from Providence, which offer was declined by the invaders.
The Commissioners at Boston wrote the victims to see their misdeeds and repent or they should look upon them as men prepared for slaughter.
At Shawomet, women and children fled in terror across the Bay.
The men fortified a blockhouse and got ready to fight, but meanwhile appealed to the King and again tried to arbitrate.
Gorton evidently still had plenty to learn about Massachusetts, but he was learning fast.
Governor Winthrop wrote:
The attack started on October 2, 1643, and the Gortonists held out for a day and a night.
The attackers sent for more soldiers, and the defenders, to save bloodshed, surrendered under the promise that they would be treated as neighbors.
Promptly their livestock was taken and according to Gorton the soldiers were ordered to knock down anyone who should utter a word of insolence, and run through anyone who might step out of line.
When the captives arrived in Boston, the chaplain (of their captors) went to prayers in the open streets, that the people might take notice what they had done in a holy manner, and in the name of the Lord.
Gorton and ten of his friends were thrown in jail.
On Sunday they refused to attend church.
The magistrates were determined to compel them.
The prisoners agreed, provided they might speak after the sermon, which was permitted.
Here was Gorton's chance to indulge in something at which he was supreme.
The Boston elders were great at befuddling the opposition with torrents of ecclesiastical obscurities, but Gorton was better.
Reverend Cotton preached to them about Demetrius and the shrines of Ephesus.
Gorton replied with blasts that scandalized the congregation.
At the trial which took place later, the Pomham matter was completely omitted.
The Gortonists were charged with blasphemy and tried for their lives.
Four ecclesiastical questions were presented by the General Court to Gorton: 1.
Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and saved only by the blood which he shed, and the death which he suffered after his incarnation?
Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ on the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obediences, in the time of his life here, after he was born of the Virgin Mary?
Who was the God whom he thinke we serve?
What he means when he saith, wee worship the starre of our God Remphan, Chion, Moloch?
Gorton answered in writing.
All of the elders except three voted for death, but a majority of the deputies refused to sanction the sentence.
Seven of the prisoners were sentenced to be confined in irons for as long as it pleased the court, set to work and, if they broke jail or proclaimed heresy, to be executed if convicted.
The three others got off easier.
The convicts were put in chains, paraded before the congregation at the Reverend Cotton's lecture as an example, and sent to prisons in various towns, where they languished all winter, chains included.
When Fred wheeled him back into his room, the big one looking out on the back porch, and put him to bed, Papa told him he was very tired but that he had enjoyed greatly the trip downtown.
I've been cooped up so long, he added.
Getting out again, seeing old friends, had given his spirits a lift.
That night after supper I went back over to 48 Spruce Street--Ralph and I at that time were living at 168 Chestnut--and Ralph went with me.
Papa was still elated over his afternoon visit downtown.
Baby, I saw a lot of old friends I hadn't seen in a long time, he told me, his eyes bright.
It was mighty good for the old man to get out again.
The next day he seemed to be in fairly good shape and still in excellent spirits.
But a few days after Fred's return he began hemorrhaging and that was the beginning of early and complete disintegration.
It began in the morning, and very quickly the hemorrhage was a massive one.
We got Dr. Glenn to him as quickly as we could, and we wired Tom of Papa's desperate condition.
The hemorrhage was in the prostate region;
Dr. Glenn saw at once what had happened.
He has lost much blood, he said.
It'll take a lot to replace it.
Dr. Glenn, I've got a lot of blood, Fred spoke up, plenty of it.
Let me give Papa blood.
The doctor agreed, but explained that it would be necessary first to check Fred's blood to ascertain whether or not it was of the same type as Papa's.
To give a patient the wrong type of blood, said the doctor, would likely kill him.
That was in the days before blood banks, of course, and transfusions had to be given directly from donor to patient.
One had to find a donor, and usually very quickly, whose blood corresponded with the patient's.
And then it took considerably longer to make preparations for giving transfusions.
They had to take blood samples to the laboratory to test them, for one thing, and there was much required preliminary procedure.
They made the tests and came to Fred;
by now it was perhaps two days or longer after Papa had begun hemorrhaging.
Fred, your blood matches your father's, all right, Dr. Glenn said.
But we aren't going to let you give him any.
But why in the name of God can't I give my father blood?
Fred demanded.
Why can't I, Doctor?
Because, Fred, it could do him no good.
It's too late now.
He's past helping.
He's as good as gone.
And in a few minutes Papa was dead.
It was well past midnight.
Papa had left us about the same hour of the night that Ben had passed on.
The date was June 20, 1922.
W. O. Wolfe, prominent business man and pioneer resident of this section, died shortly after midnight Tuesday at his home 48 Spruce Street, the Asheville Times of Wednesday, June 21, announced.
Mr. Wolfe had been in declining health for many years and death was not unexpected.
A biographical sketch followed.
Funeral services were held Thursday afternoon at four o'clock at the home.
Beloved Dr. R. F. Campbell, our First Presbyterian Church pastor, was in charge.
The burial was out in Riverside Cemetery.
All about him stood tombstones his own sensitive great hands had fashioned.
A few years before his death Papa had agreed with Mama to make a joint will with her in which it would be provided that in the event of the death of either of them an accounting would be made to their children whereby each child would receive a bequest of $5000 cash.
At his death Fred and Ralph, my husband, were named executors of the estate under the terms of the will.
Fred and Ralph qualified as executors and paid off what debts were currently due, and they were all current, since Papa was never one to allow bills to go unpaid.
The bills were principally for hospitalization and doctors' fees during the last years of his life, and when he died he owed in the main only current doctor's bills.
After they had paid all his debts and the funeral costs, Ralph and Fred had some fourteen thousand dollars, as I remember, with which to pay the bequests.
This, manifestly, would not provide $5000 to each of the surviving five children.
So what Fred and Ralph did was to attempt to prorate the money fairly by taking into account what each of the five had received, if anything, from the estate before Papa's death.
Consequently, Fred and Tom, the two who had been provided college educations, signed statements to the effect that each had received his bequest in full, and Effie and I were each allotted $5000.
Frank had been given about half his legacy to use in a business venture before Papa's death;
he was given the difference between that amount and $5000.
Tom had received four years of education at the University of North Carolina and two at Harvard, and Fred had been in and out of Georgia Tech and Carneigie Tech and part of the time had been a self-help student.
So, because he had received less than Tom, it was felt proper that Fred should receive the few hundred dollars that remained.
And that's how Papa's estate was divided.
Papa, I should emphasize, had been an invalid the last several years of his life;
his hospital and doctor bills had been large and his income had been cut until he was receiving little except small rentals on some properties he still owned.
Had he been able to escape this long siege of invalidism, I'm convinced, Papa would have left a sizable estate.
But he had succeeded well, we agreed.
He had left us a legacy far more valuable than houses and lands and stocks and bonds.
For years Papa and Mama had been large taxpayers.
I recall that several years their taxes exceeded $800.
In those years of lower property valuations and lower tax rates, that payment represented ownership of much property.
Merciful God, Julia!
I have known Papa to exclaim on getting his tax bill, we're going to the dogs!
But he never expected to do that.
And he didn't, by a long shot!
35.
In the spring of his second year at Harvard, Tom had been offered a job at Northwestern University as an instructor in the English Department.
But he had delayed accepting this job, and as he was leaving to come home to Papa in response to our telegram, he dropped a postcard to Miss McCrady, head of the Harvard Appointment Office, asking her please to write Northwestern authorities and explain the circumstances.
Actually Tom had been postponing giving them an answer, I'm confident, because he did not want to go out there to teach.
In fact, he didn't want to teach anywhere.
He wanted to go back to Harvard for another year of playwriting.
But Papa's death had further complicated the financing of Tom's hoped-for third year, and for the weeks following it Tom did not know whether his return to Harvard could be arranged.
But he was happy to tell her that his finances were now in such condition that he could go back to Harvard for a third year with Professor Baker.
And that's what he did.
That third year he wrote plays with a fury.
I believe there are seventeen short plays by Tom now housed in the Houghton Library at Harvard;
I think I'm right in that figure.
Later this play would be called Welcome To Our City.
In the spring, it must have been, he began working on the play that he called The House, which later would be Mannerhouse.
That spring Welcome To Our City was selected for production by the 47 Workshop and it was staged in the middle of May.
It ran two nights, and though it was generally praised, there was considerable criticism of its length.
It ran until past one o'clock.
That was Tom's weakness;
it was demonstrated, many critics would later point out, in the length of his novels.
In this play there were so many characters and so much detail.
Tom never knew how to condense, to boil down.
He was always concerned with life, and he tried to picture it whole;
he wanted nothing compressed, tight.
He was a big man, and he wanted nothing little, squeezed;
he despised parsimony, and particularly of words.
In this play there were some thirty or more named characters and I don't know how many more unnamed.
In describing it to Professor Baker after it had been chosen for production, he defended his great array of characters by declaring that he had included that many not because I didn't know how to save paint, but because the play required them.
And he threatened someday to write a play with fifty, eighty, a hundred people--a whole town, a whole race, a whole epoch.
He said he would do it, though probably nobody would produce it, for his own soul's ease and comfort.
That summer Tom attended the summer session at Harvard, but he did not ask Mama to send him back in the fall.
Instead, he went down to New York and submitted Welcome To Our City to the Theatre Guild, which had asked him to let them have a look at it after Professor Baker had recommended it highly.
He hung around New York, waiting to hear whether they would accept it for production and in that time came down to Asheville and also paid a short visit to Chapel Hill, where with almost childish delight he visited old friends and favorite campus spots.
On returning to New York he had a job for several weeks;
it was visiting University of North Carolina alumni in New York to ask them for contributions to the Graham Memorial Building fund.
The Graham Memorial would be the campus student union honoring the late and much beloved Edward Kidder Graham, who had been president when Tom entered the university.
Well, the Theatre Guild kept that play, and kept it, and finally in December they turned it down.
But they would reconsider it, they assured him, if he would rewrite it.
Tom told me about it, how one evening he went over to see the Theatre Guild man.
This man, Tom said, had the play shut up in his desk, I believe, and when Tom sat down, he pulled it out and apologetically told Tom that they wouldn't be able to use it.
Tom said he almost burst into tears, he was so disappointed and put out.
The man, Tom said, explained that it was not only too long and detailed but that as it stood it wasn't the sort of thing the public wanted.
The public, Tom said the man told him, wanted realism, and his play wasn't that.
It was fantastic writing, beautiful writing, the man declared, but the public, he insisted, wanted realism.
Tom was not willing to revise the play according to the plan the man suggested.
Such a revision, he said, would ruin it, would change his whole conception of the play as well as the treatment.
He thought about it and he told the man he just couldn't do it over in accordance with the suggestions he had made.
It was not until we had returned to the city to live, while I was still at Brown and Sharpe's, that I felt the full impact of evangelical Christianity.
I came under the spell of a younger group in the church led by the pastor's older son.
The spirit of this group was that we were--and are--living in a world doomed to eternal punishment, but that God through Jesus Christ has provided a way of escape for those who confess their sins and accept salvation.
There are millions who accept this doctrine, but few indeed are those who accept it so truly that the fate of humanity lies as a weight on their souls night and day.
This group in Park Place Church was made up of the earnest few.
I was drawn deeper and deeper into these concerns and responsibilities.
I engaged more and more in religious activities.
Besides Church and Sunday School I went to out-of-door meetings on the sidewalk at the church door.
I went to an afternoon service at the Aj.
I went to the Christian Endeavor Society and to the evening service of the church.
Much of this lacked the active support of the pastor.
The young people were self-energizing, and I was energized.
Once or twice my father asked me if I wasn't overdoing a bit in my churchgoing.
Meanwhile I myself was not yet saved.
At least I had been unable to lay hold on the experience of conversion.
Try as I might to confess my sins and accept salvation, no answer came to me from heaven.
Finally, after years, I gave up.
The basic difficulty, I suppose, was in my ultimate inability to feel a burden of sin from which I sought relief.
I was familiar with Pilgrim's Progress, which I read as literature.
No load of sin had been laid on my shoulders, nor did earnest effort enable me to become conscious of one.
There is, of course, the doctrine of original sin, which asserts that each of us as individuals partakes of the guilt of our first ancestor.
In the rhyming catechism this doctrine is worded thus: In Adam's fall We sin-ned all.
This doctrine was repugnant to my moral sense.
I did not feel it presumptuous to expect that the Creator would be at least as just as the most righteous of His creatures;
and the doctrine of original sin is compounded of injustice.
Some of these thoughts--not all of them--have taken organized form in later years.
The actual impelling force which severed me from evangelical effort was of another sort.
I became disgusted at being so preoccupied with the state of my own miserable soul.
I found myself becoming one of that group of people who, in Carlyle's words, are forever gazing into their own navels, anxiously asking'Am I right, am I wrong'''?
I bethought me of the Lord's Prayer, and these words came to mind: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
They have remained on the opened page of my mind in all the years which since have passed.
From that time to this my religious concern is that I might give effective help to the bringing in of God's kingdom on earth.
I do not claim to be free from sin, or from the need for repentance and forgiveness.
In my experience the assurance of forgiveness comes only when I have confessed to the wronged one and have made as full reparation as I can devise.
There was one further step in my religious progress.
This was taken after I came to live in Springfield, and it was made under the guidance of the Reverend Raymond Beardslee, a young preacher who came to the Congregational Church there at about the same time that I moved from New York.
His father was a professor at Hartford Theological Seminary, and from him he acquired a conviction, which he passed along to me, that there is in the universe of persons a moral law, the law of love, which is a natural law in the same sense as is the physical law.
It is most important that we recognize the law of love as being unbreakable in all personal relationships, whether individually, socially or as between whole nations of people.
If obeyed, the law brings order and satisfaction.
If disobeyed, the result is turmoil and chaos.
As we observe moral law and physical law they appear as being inevitable.
We can conceive of no alternatives.
Their basis seems deeper than mere authority.
They are not true because scientists or prophets say they are true.
It is not the authority of God Himself which makes them true.
Because God is what He is, the laws of the universe, material and spiritual, are what they are.
Deity and Law are one and inseparable.
With this conviction, the partition between the sacred and the secular disappears.
One's daily work becomes sacred, since it is performed in the field of influence of the moral law, dealing as it does with people as well as with matter and energy.
In his book Civilization And Ethics Albert Schweitzer faces the moral problems which arise when moral law is recognized in business life, for example.
His Ethics defines possessions as the property of the community, of which the individual is sovereign steward.
One serves society by conducting a business from which a certain number of employees draw their means of subsistence;
another by giving away his property in order to help his fellow man.
Each will decide on his own course somewhere between these two extreme cases according to the sense of responsibility which is determined for him by the particular circumstances of his own life.
No one is to judge others.
He is uncompromising in assigning guilt to the man who finds it necessary to inflict or permit injury to one individual or group for the sake of a larger good.
For this decision a man must take personal responsibility.
Says he, I may never imagine that in the struggle between personal and supra-personal responsibility it is possible to make a compromise between the ethical and the purposive in the shape of a relative ethic;
or to let the ethical be superseded by the purposive.
On the contrary it is my duty to make my own decision as between the two.
Schweitzer seems, in fact, to acquire for himself a burden of sin, not bequeathed by Adam, but accumulated in the inevitable judgments which life requires of him as between greater and lesser responsibilities.
This viewpoint I find interesting, but it has never weighed on my soul.
Perhaps it should have.
My own experience has followed simpler lines.
An uncompromising belief in the moral law has the advantage of making religion natural, even as physical law is natural.
Neither the engineer nor the ordinary citizen feels any self-consciousness in obeying the laws of matter and energy, nor can he achieve a sense of self-righteousness in such obedience.
To obey the moral law is just ordinary common sense, applied to a neglected field.
Religion thus becomes integrated with life.
This truth that the moral law is natural has other important corollaries.
One of them is that it gives meaning and purpose to life.
In seeking for such meaning and purpose, Albert Schweitzer seized upon the concept of the sacredness of life.
It is puzzling to the occidental mind (to mine at least) to assign sacredness to animal, insect, and plant life.
These lives are in themselves outside of the moral order and are unburdened with moral responsibility.
There is indeed a moral responsibility on man himself, for his own soul's sake, to respect lower life and to avoid the infliction of suffering, but this viewpoint Schweitzer rejects.
So far as sacredness inheres in any aspect of creation it seems to me to be found in human personality, whether in Lambarene, Africa, or in Washington, D.C..
One cannot read the records of scientists, officials and travelers who have penetrated to the minds of the most savage races without realizing that each individual met with is a person.
Read, for instance, in Malcolm MacDonald's Borneo People of Segura and her wise father Tomonggong Koh, and her final adjustment to encroaching civilization.
Above all read in Jens Bjerre's The Last Cannibal Show the old man of the Wailbri tribe (not cannibals) in central Australia gave to the white man his choicest possession, while the tears streamed down his face.
The Australian aborigine is the conventional exemplar of degraded humanity;
yet here was a depth of sensibility which is lacking in a considerable portion of the beneficiaries of our civilization.
Persons, whether white, black, brown or yellow, are a concern of God.
Respect for personality is a privilege and a duty for us as brothers.
Such is the field for exercising our reverence.
As to our action, let us align ourselves with the purpose expressed by Jesus in the Lord's Prayer: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
With the knowledge that the kingdom comes by obedience to the moral law in our relations with all people, we have a firm intellectual grasp on both the means and the ends of our lives.
This intellectual approach to spiritual life suited me well, because I was never content to lead a divided life.
As I have said, words from Tennyson remain ever in my memory: That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.
Let us now give some thought to the soul.
When the young biologist, Dr. Ballard, began to show interest in our daughter Elizabeth, this induced a corresponding interest, on our part, in him.
I asked one day what he was doing.
He told me that he had a big newt and a little newt and that he was transplanting a big eye of the big newt onto the little newt and a little eye of the little newt onto the big newt.
He was then noting that the big eye on the little newt hung back until the little eye had grown up to it, while the little eye on the big newt grew rapidly until it was as big as the other.
Then I asked, What does that teach you?
Said he, It teaches me to wonder.
This was a profound statement.
In the face of the unfolding universe, our ultimate attitude is that of wonder.
Wonder is indeed the intellectual gateway to the spiritual world.
Gone are the days when, in the nineteenth century, scientists thought that they were close to the attainment of complete knowledge of the physical universe.
For them only a little more needed to be learned, and then all physical knowledge could be neatly sorted, packaged and put in the inventory to be drawn on for the solution of any human problem.
This complacency was blown to bits by the relativity of Einstein, the revelation of the complex anatomy of the atom and the discovery of the expanding universe.
None of these discoveries were neatly rounded off bits of knowledge.
Each faded out into the unexplored areas of the future.
It is as if we, in our center of human observation, from time to time penetrate more deeply into the unknown.
As our radius of penetration, R, increases, the area of new knowledge increases by Af, and the total of human knowledge becomes measured in terms of Af.
Wonder grows.
It is endless.
There are some people, intelligent people, who seem to be untouched by the sea of wonder in which we are immersed and in which we spend our lives.
One such is Abraham Meyer, the writer of a recent book, Speaking Of Man.
This is a straightforward denial of the spiritual world and a vigorous defense of pure materialism.
His inability to wonder vitiates his argument.
The subject of immortality brings to mind a vivid incident which took place in 1929 at Montreux in Switzerland.
Criticism is as old as literary art and we can set the stage for our study of three moderns if we see how certain critics in the past have dealt with the ethical aspects of literature.
I have chosen five contrasting pairs, ten men in all, and they are arranged in roughly chronological order.
Such a list must naturally be selective, and the treatment of each man is brief, for I am interested only in their general ideas on the moral measure of literature.
Altogether, the list will give us considerable variety in attitudes and some typical ones, for these critics range all the way from censors to those who consider art above ethics, all the way from Plato to Poe.
And most of the great periods are represented, because we will compare Plato and Aristotle from the golden age of Greece;
Stephen Gosson and Sir Philip Sidney from renaissance England;
Dr. Johnson and William Hazlitt of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England;
and James Russell Lowell and Edgar Allan Poe of nineteenth century American letters.
Plato and Aristotle
Plato and Aristotle agree on some vital literary issues.
They both measure literature by moral standards, and in their political writings both allow for censorship, but the differences between them are also significant.
While Aristotle censors literature only for the young, Plato would banish all poets from his ideal state.
Even more important, in his Poetics, Aristotle differs somewhat from Plato when he moves in the direction of treating literature as a unique thing, separate and apart from its causes and its effects.
All through The Republic, Plato attends to the way art relates to the general life and ultimately to a good life for his citizens.
In short, he is constantly concerned with the ethical effects.
When he discusses the subject matter of poetry, he asks what moral effect the scenes will have.
When he turns briefly to literary style, in the Third Book, he again looks to the effect on the audience.
He explains that his citizens must not be corrupted by any of the misrepresentations of the gods or heroes that one finds in much poetry, and he observes that all these pantomimic gentlemen will be sent to another state.
Only those story tellers will remain who can imitate the style of the virtuous.
Plato is, at times, just as suspicious of the poets themselves as he is of their work.
When he discusses tyrants in the Eighth Book of The Republic, he pictures the poets as willing to praise the worst rulers.
But the most fundamental objection he has to poets appears in the Tenth Book, and it is derived from his doctrine of ideal forms.
In Plato's mind there is an irresolvable conflict between the poet and the philosopher, because the poet imitates only particular objects and is incapable of rising to the first level of abstraction, much less the highest level of ideal forms.
True reality, of course, is the ideal, and the poet knows nothing of this;
only the philosopher knows the truth.
Poets, moreover, dwell on human passions.
And with this point about the passions, we encounter Plato's dualism.
The same sort of thinking plays so large a part in both Babbitt and More, that we must examine it in some detail.
Plato feels that man has two competing aspects, his rational faculty and his irrational.
We can be virtuous only if we control our lower natures, the passions in this case, and strengthen our rational side;
and poetry, with all its emphasis on the passions, encourages the audience to give way to emotion.
For this reason, then, poetry tends to weaken the power of control, the reason, because it tempts one to indulge his passions, and even the best of men, he maintains, may be corrupted by this subtle influence.
Plato's attitude toward poetry has always been something of an enigma, because he is so completely sensitive to its charm.
His whole objection, indeed, seems to rise out of a deep conviction that the poets do have great power to influence, but Plato seldom pays any attention to what might be called the poem itself.
He is, rather, concerned with the effect on society and he wants the poets to join his fight for justice.
He wants them to use their great power to strengthen man's rational side, to teach virtue, and to encourage religion.
While Plato finally allows a few acceptable hymns to the gods and famous men, still he clearly leaves the way open for further discussion of the issue.
He even calls upon the poets to defend the Muse and to show that poetry may contribute to virtue.
He says:
for if this can be proved we shall surely be the gainers--I mean, if there is a use in poetry as well as a delight.
When we turn to Aristotle's ideas on the moral measure of literature, it is at once apparent that he is at times equally concerned about the influence of the art.
In the ideal state, for instance, he argues that the young citizens should hear only the most carefully selected tales and stories.
For this reason, he would banish indecent pictures and speeches from the stage;
and the young people should not even be permitted to see comedies till they are old enough to drink strong wine and sit at the public tables.
By the time they reach that age, however, Aristotle no longer worries about the evil influence of comedies.
In Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in the Poetics, we find an attempt to isolate the art, to consider only those things proper to it, to discover how it differs from other arts, and to deal with the effects peculiar to it.
He assures us, early in the Poetics, that all art is imitation and that all imitation gives pleasure, but he distinguishes between art in general and poetic art on the basis of the means, manner, and the objects of the imitation.
Once the poetic arts are separated from the other forms, he lays down his famous definition of tragedy, which sets up standards and so lends direction to the remainder of the work.
A tragedy, by his definition, is an imitation of an action that is serious, of a certain magnitude, and complete in itself.
It should have a dramatic form with pleasing language, and it should portray incidents which so arouse pity and fear that it purges these emotions in the audience.
Any tragedy, he maintains, has six elements: plot, character, and thought (the objects of imitation), diction and melody (the means of imitation), and spectacle (the manner of imitation).
Throughout the rest of the Poetics, Aristotle continues to discuss the characteristics of these six parts and their interrelationship, and he refers frequently to the standards suggested by his definition of tragedy.
Aristotle's method in the Poetics, then, does suggest that we should isolate the work.
The Chicago contingent of modern critics follow Aristotle so far in this direction that it is hard to see how they can compare one poem with another for the purpose of evaluation.
But there are, however, several features of Aristotle's approach which open the way for the moral measure of literature.
For one thing, Aristotle mentions that plays may corrupt the audience.
In addition, his definition of a tragedy invites our attention, because a serious and important action may very well be one that tests the moral fiber of the author or of the characters.
And there is one other point in the Poetics that invites moral evaluation: Aristotle's notion that the distinctive function of tragedy is to purge one's emotions by arousing pity and fear.
He rejects certain plots because they do not contribute to that end.
The point is that an ethical critic, with an assist from Freud, can seize on this theory to argue that tragedy provides us with a harmless outlet for our hostile urges.
In his study Samuel Johnson, Joseph Wood Krutch takes this line when he says that what Aristotle really means by his theory of catharsis is that our evil passions may be so purged by the dramatic ritual that it is less likely that we shall indulge them through our own acts.
In Krutch's view, this is one way to show how literature may be moral in effect without employing the explicit methods of a moralist.
And we can add that Krutch's interpretation of purgation is also one answer to Plato's fear that poetry will encourage our passions.
If Krutch is correct, tragedy may have quite the opposite effect.
It may allay our passions and so restore the rule of reason.
Or in more Freudian terms, the experience may serve to sublimate our destructive urges and strengthen the ego and superego.
Gosson and Sidney
The second half of the sixteenth century in England was the setting for a violent and long controversy over the moral quality of renaissance literature, especially the drama.
No one suggested that the ethical effects of the art were irrelevant.
Both sides agreed that the theater must stand a moral test, but they could not agree on whether the poets were a good or a bad influence.
Both sides claimed that Plato and Aristotle supported their cause.
Those who wanted to close the theaters, for example, pointed to Plato's Republic and those who wished to keep them open called on the Plato of the Ion to testify in their behalf.
The most famous document that comes out of this dispute is perhaps Sir Philip Sidney's An Apologie For Poetrie, published in 1595.
Many students of literature know that classical defense.
What is not so well known, however, and what is quite important for understanding the issues of this early quarrel, is the kind of attack on literature that Sidney was answering.
For this reason, then I want to describe, first, two examples of the puritanical attacks: Stephen Gosson's The School Of Abuse, 1579, and his later Playes Confuted, published in 1582.
Second, we will see how Sidney answered the charges, for while Sidney's essay was not specifically a reply to Gosson, his arguments do support the new theater.
According to William Ringler's study, Stephen Gosson, the theater business in London had become a thriving enterprise by 1577, and, in the opinion of many, a thoroughly bad business.
With that act of Parliament the opponents of the stage won the day, and for more than two decades after that England had no legitimate public drama.
In the early days of this controversy over the theater one of the interested parties, Stephen Gosson, published a little tract in which he objected mildly to the abuses of art, rather than the art itself.
But his opposition hardened and by 1579, in The School Of Abuse, he was ready to banish all players.
He advises women to beware of those places which in sorrows cheere you and beguile you in mirth.
He does not really approve of levity and laughter, but sex is the deadly sin.
He warns that a single glance can lead us into temptation, for Looking eies have lyking hartes, and lyking hartes may burne in lust.
But it would not be very satisfactory to leave our conclusions at the point just reached.
Fortunately, it is possible to be somewhat more concrete and factual in diagnosing the involvement of values in education.
For this purpose we now draw upon data from sociological and psychological studies of students in American colleges and universities, and particularly from the Cornell Values Studies.
In the latter research program, information is available for 2,758 Cornell students surveyed in 1950 and for 1,571 students surveyed in 1952.
Of the latter sample, 944 persons had been studied two years earlier;
hence changes in attitudes and values can be analyzed for identical individuals at two points in time.
In addition, the 1952 study collected comparable data from 4,585 students at ten other colleges and universities scattered across the country: Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Wesleyan, North Carolina, Fisk, Texas, University of California at Los Angeles, Wayne, and Michigan.
It is not our impression that these evaluations are naively uncritical resultants of blissful ignorance;
rather, the generality of these students find their university experience congenial to their own sense of values.
Students are approximately equally divided between those who regard vocational preparation as the primary goal of an ideal education and those who chose a general liberal education.
Other conceivable goals, such as character-education and social adjustment, are of secondary importance to them.
The ideal of a liberal education impresses itself upon the students more and more as they move through college.
Even in such technical curricula as engineering, the senior is much more likely than the freshman to choose, as an ideal, liberal education over specific vocational preparation.
In the university milieu of scholarship and research, of social diversity, of new ideas and varied and wide-ranging interests, socialization into a campus culture apparently means heightened appreciation of the idea of a liberal education in the arts and sciences.
Students' choices of ideal educational goals are not arbitrary or whimsical.
There is a clear relationship between their educational evaluations and their basic pattern of general values.
The same patterned consistency shows itself in occupational choices.
There is impressive consistency between specific occupational preferences and the student's basic conception of what is for him a good way of life.
And, contrary to many popular assertions, the goal-values chosen do not seem to us to be primarily oriented to materialistic success nor to mere conformity.
Our students want occupations that permit them to use their talents and training, to be creative and original, to work with and to help other people.
They also want money, prestige, and security.
But they are optimistic about their prospects in these regards;
they set limits to their aspirations--few aspire to millions of dollars or to imperial power and glory.
Within the fixed frame of these aspirations, they can afford to place a high value on the expressive and people-oriented aspects of occupation and to minimize the instrumental-reward values of power, prestige, and wealth.
Occupational choices are also useful--and interesting--in bringing out clearly that values do not constitute the only component in goals and aspirations.
For there is also the face of reality in the form of the individual's perceptions of his own abilities and interests, of the objective possibilities open to him, of the familial and other social pressures to which he is exposed.
We find reluctant recruits whose values are not in line with their expected occupation's characteristics.
Students develop occupational images--not always accurate or detailed--and they try to fit their values to the presumed characteristics of the imagined occupation.
The purely cognitive or informational problems are often acute.
Furthermore, many reluctant recruits are yielding to social demands, or compromising in the face of their own limitations of opportunity, or of ability and performance.
Thus, many a creativity-oriented aspirant for a career in architecture, drama, or journalism, resigns himself to a real estate business;
many a people-oriented student who dreams of the M.D. decides to enter his father's advertising agency;
and many a hopeful incipient business executive decides it were better to teach the theory of business administration than to practice it.
The old ideal of the independent entrepreneur is extant--but so is the recognition that the main chance may be in a corporate bureaucracy.
In their views on dating, courtship, sex, and family life, our students prefer what they are expected to prefer.
For them, in the grim words of a once-popular song, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.
Their expressed standards concerning sex roles, desirable age for marriage, characteristics of an ideal mate, number of children desired are congruent with the values and stereotypes of the preceding generation--minus compulsive rebellion.
They even accept the double standard of sex morality in a double sense, i.e., both sexes agree that standards for men differ from standards for women, and women apply to both sexes a standard different from that held by men.
Conservatism and traditionalism seem implied by what has just been said.
But these terms are treacherous.
In the field of political values, it is certainly true that students are not radical, not rebels against their parents or their peers.
And as they go through college, the students tend to bring their political position in line with that prevalent in the social groups to which they belong.
Yet they have accepted most of the extant welfare state provisions for health, security, and the regulation of economic affairs, and they overwhelmingly approve of the traditional liberalism of the Bill of Rights.
When their faith in civil liberties is tested against strong pressures of social expediency in specific issues, e.g., suppression of dangerous ideas, many waver and give in.
The students who are most willing to acquiesce in the suppression of civil liberties are also those who are most likely to be prejudiced against minority groups, to be conformist and traditionalistic in general social attitudes, and to lack a basic faith in people.
As one looks at the existing evidence, one finds a correlation, although only a slight one, between high grades and libertarian values.
But the correlation is substantial only among upperclassmen.
In other words, as students go through college, those who are most successful academically tend to become more committed to a Bill of Rights orientation.
College in gross--just the general experience--may have varying effects, but the students who are successful emerge with strengthened and clarified democratic values.
This finding is consistent also with the fact that student leaders are more likely to be supporters of the values implicit in civil liberties than the other students.
There is now substantial evidence from several major studies of college students that the experience of the college years results in a certain, selective homogenization of attitudes and values.
Detached from their prior statuses and social groups and exposed to the pervasive stimuli of the university milieu, the students tend to assimilate a new common culture, to converge toward norms characteristic of their own particular campus.
Furthermore, in certain respects, there are norms common to colleges and universities across the country.
For instance, college-educated people consistently show up in study after study as more often than others supporters of the Bill of Rights and other democratic rights and liberties.
The interesting thing in this connection is that the norms upon which students tend to converge include toleration of diversity.
In a real sense they are admittedly conservative, but their conservatism incorporates a traditionalized embodiment of the original radicalism of 1776.
Although we have no measures of its strength or intensity, the heritage of the doctrine of inalienable rights is retained.
As they move through the college years our young men and women are socialized into a broadly similar culture, at the level of personal behavior.
In this sense also, they are surely conformists.
It is even true that some among them use the sheer fact of conformity--everyone does it--as a criterion for conduct.
But the extent of ethical robotism is easily overestimated.
Few students are really so faceless in the not-so-lonely crowd of the swelling population in our institutions of higher learning.
And it may be well to recall that to say conformity is, in part, another way of saying orderly human society.
In the field of religious beliefs and values, the college students seem to faithfully reflect the surrounding culture.
Their commitments are, for the most part, couched in a familiar idiom.
Students testify to a felt need for a religious faith or ultimate personal philosophy.
Avowed atheists or freethinkers are so rare as to be a curiosity.
The religious quest is often intense and deep, and there are students on every campus who are seriously wrestling with the most profound questions of meaning and value.
At the same time, a major proportion of these young men and women see religion as a means of personal adjustment, an anchor for family life, a source of emotional security.
These personal and social goals often overshadow the goals of intellectual clarity, and spiritual transcendence.
The cult of adjustment does exist.
It exists alongside the acceptance of traditional forms of organized religion (church, ordained personnel, ritual, dogma).
Still another segment of the student population consists of those who seek, in what they regard as religion, intellectual clarity, rational belief, and ethical guidance and reinforcement.
Our first impression of the data was that the students were surprisingly orthodox and religiously involved.
Upon second thought we were forced to realize that we have very few reliable historical benchmarks against which we might compare the present situation, and that conclusions that present-day students are more or less religious could not be defended on the basis of our data.
As we looked more intently at the content of our belief and the extent of religious participation, we received the impression that many of the religious convictions expressed represented a conventional acceptance, of low intensity.
But, here again, comparative benchmarks are lacking, and we do not know, in any case, what measure of profoundity and intensity to expect from healthy, young, secure and relatively inexperienced persons;
after all, feelings of immortality and invulnerability are standard illusions of youth.
Nor are optimistic and socially-oriented themes at all rare in the distinctive religious history of this country.
Kluckhohn recently has summarized evidence regarding changes in values during a period of years, primarily 1935-1955, but extending much farther back in some instances.
From New Jersey, Morgan hastened to the headquarters of Washington at Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, arriving there on November 18th.
There was much sickness in the corps, and the men were, in addition, without the clothing, shoes, and blankets needed for the winter weather.
Morgan himself had sciatica again.
Even on his tough constitution, the exposure and strenuous activity were beginning to tell in earnest.
On the morning of November 17th, Cornwallis and 2,000 men had left Philadelphia with the object of capturing Fort Mercer at Red Bank, New Jersey.
In order to prevent this, Washington hastened to dispatch several units to reinforce the fort, including a force under the Marquis De Lafayette containing some 160 of Morgan's riflemen, all who were fit for duty at this time, the rest having no shoes.
Although the fort was evacuated in the face of the force of Cornwallis, Morgan and his men did have a chance to take another swing at the redcoats.
A picket guard of about 350, mostly Hessians, were attacked by the Americans under Lafayette, and driven back to their camp, some twenty to thirty of them falling before the riflemen's fire.
I never saw men, Lafayette declared in regard to the riflemen, so merry, so spirited, and so desirous to go on to the enemy, whatever force they might have, as that small party in this fight.
Nathanael Greene told Washington that Lafayette was charmed with the spirited behavior of the militia and riflemen.
A few days later it was learned that General Howe was planning an attack upon the American camp.
The British general moved his forces north from Philadelphia to Chestnut Hill, near the right wing of the patriot encampment.
Here the Pennsylvania militia skirmished with the British, but soon fled.
Morgan was ordered to attack the enemy, who had meantime moved to Edge Hill on the left of the Americans.
Similar orders were given to the Maryland militia.
Morgan immediately disposed his troops for action and found he had not long to wait.
A body of redcoats were seen marching down a nearby slope, a tempting target for the riflemen, who threw a volley into their ranks and messed up the smart formation considerably.
Now the riflemen and the Marylanders followed up their beginning and closed in on the British, giving them another telling round of fire.
The redcoats ran like rabbits.
But the Maryland militia had likewise fled, all too typical of this type of soldier during the Revolution, an experience which gave Morgan little confidence in militia in general, as he watched other instances of their breaking in hot engagements.
The British, although suffering considerable losses, noted the defection of the Marylanders, made a stand, then turned and attacked Morgan who became greatly outnumbered and had to retire.
The Americans lost forty-four men, among them Major Joseph Morris of Morgan's regiment, an officer who was regarded with high esteem and affection, not only by his commander, but by Washington and Lafayette as well.
The latter was so upset on learning of the death of Morris, that he wrote Morgan a letter, showing his own warmhearted generosity.
As Mrs. Morris may be in some want before that time, Lafayette continued, I am going to trouble you with a commission which I beg you will execute with the greatest secrecy.
If she wanted to borrow any sum of money in expecting the arrangements of Congress, it would not become a stranger, unknown to her, to offer himself for that purpose.
But you could (as from yourself) tell her that you had friends who, being with the army, don't know what to do with their money and would willingly let her have one or many thousand dollars.
This was accordingly done, and the plight of the grateful Mrs. Morris was much relieved as a result of the generous loan, the amount of which is not known.
Apparently still sensitive about the idea with which General Gates had approached him at Saratoga, namely, that George Washington be replaced, Morgan was vehement in his support of the commander-in-chief during the campaign around Philadelphia.
Richard Peters, Secretary of the Board of War, thought Morgan was so extreme on the subject that he accused him of trying to pick a quarrel.
Morgan hotly denied this and informed the Board of War that the men in camp linked the name of Peters with the plot against Washington.
Peters insisted that this impression was a great misunderstanding, and evidently, from the quarrel, obtained an unfavorable impression of Morgan's judgment.
Such a situation regarding the Board of War could hardly have helped Morgan's chances for promotion when that matter came before the group later on.
In late December, the American army moved from Whitemarsh to Valley Forge, and although the distance was only 13 miles, the journey took more than a week because of the bad weather, the barefooted and almost naked men.
The position of the new camp was admirably selected and well fortified, its easily defensible nature being one good reason why Howe did not attack it.
In order to see that this hindering situation remained effective, Washington detached several bodies of his troops to the periphery of the Philadelphia area.
Morgan and his corps were placed on the west side of the Schuylkill River, with instructions to intercept all supplies found going to the city and to keep a close eye on the movements of the enemy.
In his dealings with offenders, however, Morgan was typically firm but just.
For example, he captured some persons from York County, who with teams were taking to Philadelphia the furniture of a man who had just been released from prison through the efforts of his wife, and who apparently was helpless to prevent the theft of his household goods.
Morgan took charge of the furniture and restored it to its thankful owners, but he let the culprits who had stolen it go free.
Morgan complained to Washington about the men detailed to him for scouting duty, most of them he said being useless.
They straggle at such a rate, he told the commander-in-chief, that if the enemy were enterprising, they might get two from us, when we would take one of them, which makes me wish General Howe would go on, lest any incident happen to us.
If the hardships of the winter at Valley Forge were trying for healthy men, they were, of course, much more so for those not in good health.
Daniel Morgan's rheumatic condition worsened with the increase of the cold and damp weather.
He had braved the elements and the enemy, but the strain, aided by the winter, was catching up with him at last.
Also, he was now forty-three years old.
In his absence, the rifle regiment was under the command of Major Thomas Posey, another able Virginian.
If there be a disinterested patriot in America, 'tis General Washington, and his bravery, none can question.
It is doubtful if Morgan was able to take home much money to his wife and children, for his pay, as shown by the War Department Abstracts of early 1778 was $75 a month as a colonel, and that apt to be delayed.
He was shown a warm welcome regardless, and spent the time in Winchester recuperating from his ailment, enjoying his family and arranging his private affairs which were, of course, run down.
There must have been special feelings of joy and patriotism in the heart of Daniel Morgan too, when the news was received on April 30th of the recognition by France of the independence of the United States.
His fellow Virginian, George Washington, had stated, I believe no event was ever received with more heartfelt joy.
The dreary camp at Valley Forge was turned into an arena of rejoicing.
Even the dignified Washington indulged in a game of wickets with some children.
His soldiers on the whole did not celebrate so mildly.
On May 6th, Morgan, who had returned, received from Washington orders to send out patrols under vigilant officers to keep near the enemy.
The reason for this, the orders said, is that the enemy may think to take advantage of the celebration of this day.
The troops must have more than the common quantity of liquor, and perhaps there will be some little drunkenness among them.
Apparently no serious disorders resulted from the celebration, and within a few days, Morgan joined the force of Lafayette who now had command of some 2,000 men at Barren Hill, not far above Philadelphia on the Schuylkill.
The Frenchman had been ordered to approach the enemy's lines, harass them and get intelligence of their movements.
Interestingly enough, the order transmitted to Morgan through Alexander Hamilton also informed him that A party of Indians will join the party to be sent from your command at Whitemarsh, and act with them.
These were Oneida Indians.
Washington evidently was anxious for Morgan to be cautious as well as aggressive, for on May 17th, 18th and 20th he admonished the leader of the riflemen-rangers to be on the alert.
Meantime, however, this same General Smallwood seemed to be serving chivalry as well as the American army.
Ford urged Morgan to capture these men, who, he thought, might be disguised as Quakers or peasants.
Morgan took the suggested steps, but when Mrs. Sanderson appeared, there was nobody with her but her husband, whom he promptly sent to headquarters to be questioned.
But Morgan evidently reported matters of intelligence much more important to his commanding general.
A letter of a few days later from Washington's aide to Morgan stated, His Excellency is highly pleased with your conduct upon this occasion.
Even so, Edward's ambassadors can scarcely have foreseen that five years of unremitting work lay ahead of them before peace was finally made and that when it did come the countless embassies that left England for Rome during that period had very little to do with it.
It is hard not to lay most of the blame for their failures on the pope.
Nogaret is hardly an impartial witness, and even he did not make his charges against Boniface until the latter was dead, but there is some truth in what he said and more in what he did not say.
It was not merely a hunger for money, gold and precious objects that delayed the papal pronouncement that could have brought the war to an end;
the pope was playing a dangerous game, with so many balls in the air at once that a misstep would bring them all about his ears, and his only hope was to temporize so that he could take advantage of every change in the delicate balance of European affairs.
On the other hand, he did not want to offend Edward either, and he found himself in a very difficult position.
On the surface, the whole question was purely feudal.
The French were now occupying Gascony and Flanders on the technical grounds that their rulers had forfeited them by a breach of the feudal contract.
But Edward was invading Scotland for precisely the same reason, and his insubordinate vassal was the ally of the king of France.
But when the situation was so complicated that even Nogaret, one of the principal actors in the drama, could misinterpret the pope's motives, it is possible that Othon and his companions, equally baffled, attributed their difficulties to a more immediate cause.
This was Boniface's monumental tactlessness.
They had risen from humble beginnings by their own diligence and astuteness, they were unfettered by the codes that bound nobles like Othon or even the older generation of clerks like Hotham, and they were working for an end that their opponents had never even visualized.
Boniface was later to explain to the English that Robert of Burgundy and Guy De St.-Pol were easy enough to do business with;
it was the clerks who caused the mischief and who made him say that the ruling passion of their race was covetousness and that in dealing with them he never knew whether he had to do with a Frenchman or with a devil.
And yet he made no pretense about it;
when the pope, trying no doubt to appeal to his better nature, said to him, You have already taken Normandy.
Do you want to drive the king of England from all his overseas possessions?
The Frenchman's answer was a terse Vous dites vrai.
The English, relying on a prejudiced arbiter and confronted with superior diplomatic skill, were also hampered in their negotiations by the events that were taking place at home.
The Scots had found a new leader in William Wallace, and Edward's yearly expeditions across the Border called for evermounting taxes, which only increased his difficulties with the barons and the clergy.
He was unable to send any more help to his allies on the Continent, and during the next few years many of them, left to resist French pressure unaided, surrendered to the inevitable and made their peace with Philip.
The defeat and death of Adolf of Nassau at the hands of Albert of Habsburg also worked to the disadvantage of the English, for all the efforts to revive the anti-French coalition came to nothing when Philip made an alliance with the new king of the Romans.
These shifts in alliance and allegiance not only increased the difficulties confronting the English embassy as a whole, but also directly involved the two Savoyards, Amadee and Othon.
But although in many of these discussions Othon and Amadee might have been tempted to consider their own interests as well as those of the king, Edward's confidence in them was so absolute that they were made the acknowledged leaders of the embassy.
Amadee may have owed this partly to his relationship with the king, but Othon, who at sixty seems still to have been a simple knight, merited his position solely by his own character and ability.
This also gave them the unpleasant duty of being spokesmen for the mission, and they could foresee that that would not be easy.
This was a doubly bitter blow to the king.
In the eyes of those who still cared for such things, it was a reflection on his honor, and it gave further grounds for complaint to his overtaxed subjects, who were already grumbling--although probably not in Latin--Non est lex sana Quod regi sit mea lana.
These chatty merchants made amusing and instructive traveling companions, for their business took them to all four corners of the globe, and Florentine gossip had already reached a high stage of development as even a cursory glance at the Inferno will prove.
A northern ambassador, willing to keep his mouth shut and his ears open, could learn a lot that would stand him in good stead at the Curia.
They had other topics of conversation, besides their news from courts and fairs, which were of interest to Othon, the builder of castles in Wales and churches in his native country.
the Low Countries, where the Middle Ages were to last for another two centuries and die out only when Charles the Bold of Burgundy met his first defeat in the fields and forests below the walls of Grandson.
It usually turned out well for him because either he liked the right people or there were only a few wrong people in the town.
Alfred wanted to invest in my father's hotel and advance enough money to build a larger place.
It was a very tempting offer.
My father would have done it if it hadn't been for my mother, who had a fear of being in debt to anyone--even Alfred Alpert.
In spite of his being well liked there were a few people who were very careful about Alfred.
They had my mother's opinion of him: that he was too sharp or a little too good to be true.
One of the people who was afraid of Alfred was his own brother, Lew.
I don't know how and I don't know why but the two stores, the one in Margaretville and the one in Fleischmanns that had been set up as a partnership, were dissolved, separated from each other.
Everything was all very friendly, except when it came to Harry, the youngest brother.
Alfred, who was a good deal older than Harry, had treated him like a son, and when Harry decided to stay in business with Lew instead of going with Alfred, Alfred looked on the decision as a betrayal.
From that day on he never spoke to Harry or to Lew, or to Lew's two boys, Mort and Jimmy.
The six miles between the towns became an ocean and the Alperts became a family of strangers.
Time went on and everybody got older.
I became fifteen, sixteen, then twenty, and still Tessie Alpert sat on the porch with a rose in her hair, and Alfred got richer and sicker with diabetes.
It was in the spring of the year when he took to his bed and Tessie and Alfred found out that they didn't know each other.
They were like two strangers.
The store was their marriage, and when Alfred had to leave it there was nothing to hold them together.
Tessie, everybody thought, was a strong woman, but she was only strong because she had Alfred to lean on.
And when Alfred was forced into his bed, Tessie left the front porch of the store and sat at home, rocking in her rocker in the living room, staring out the window--the rose still in her hair.
Tessie could do nothing for Alfred.
She couldn't cook or clean or make him comfortable.
Instead she waited for Alfred to get better and take care of her.
Spring was life--and Alfred Alpert in his sickroom was death.
Alfred knew that, too.
I remember him pointing out of the window and saying that he wished he could live to see another spring but that he wouldn't.
Alfred began to put his affairs in order, and he went about it like a man putting his things into storage.
My father, who liked Alfred very much, was a constant visitor.
One day Alfred told him that he had decided to leave everything to me.
My father, a wise man, asked him not to.
He knew Alfred liked me;
if he wanted to leave me something let it be a trinket, nothing else.
By leaving me everything he wouldn't be doing me a favor, my father told him, and he didn't want to see his daughter involved in a lawsuit.
He didn't want Alfred to leave me trouble because that's all it would be, and Alfred understood.
Alfred was getting too sick to stay in his own home.
The doctor wanted him in a hospital;
the nearest one was forty miles away in Kingston.
The day Alfred left his home and Fleischmanns he gave up the convictions of a lifetime.
He sent me for Meltzer the Butcher, whom he wanted not as a friend but as a rabbi.
Meltzer knew why I had come for him.
Solemnly he walked me back to Alfred's house without a word passing between us.
He entered the house in silence, walked into Alfred's room, and closed the door behind him.
I sat down to wait, and I watched Tessie Alpert, who hadn't moved or said a word but kept staring out of the window.
For a few minutes there was nothing to hear.
Then Meltzer's voice, quiet, calm, strong, started the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead.
I could hear Alfred's voice a few words behind Meltzer's like a counterpoint, punctuated by sobs of sorrow and resignation.
There was a finality in the rhythm of the prayer--it was the end of a life, the end of hope, and the wondering if there would ever be another beginning.
Meltzer stayed with Alfred, and when the door opened they both came out.
Alfred was dressed for his trip to the hospital.
The car was waiting for him.
Alfred, leaning on Meltzer, stopped for a minute to look at Tessie.
She didn't turn away from the window.
Alfred nodded a little nod and went out through the door.
Outside, his brother Harry was waiting for him--he had come to say good-bye.
Alfred walked past him without a word and got into the car.
Harry ran to the side of the car where Alfred was sitting and looked at him, begging him to speak.
Alfred looked straight ahead.
The car began to move and Harry ran after it crying, Alfred!
Alfred!
Speak to me.
But the car moved off and Alfred just looked straight ahead.
Harry followed the car until it reached the main road and turned towards Kingston.
He stood there watching until it had gone from his sight.
I went to visit Alfred in the Kingston Hospital a few times.
The first time I went there he asked me to bring him water from Flagler's well--water that reminded him of his first days in the mountains--and before I came the next time I filled a five-gallon jug for him and brought it to the hospital.
I don't think he ever got to drink any of it.
The jug stayed at the hospital and the water--what can happen to water?
-- it evaporated, disappeared, and came back to the earth as rain--maybe for another well or another stream or another Alfred Alpert.
12 where is it written?
Mr. Banks was always called Banks the Butcher until he left town and the shop passed over to Meltzer the Scholar who then became automatically Meltzer the Butcher.
Meltzer was a boarder with the Banks family.
He came to Fleischmanns directly from the boat that brought him to America from Russia.
He was a learned man and a very gentle soul.
He was filled with knowledge of the Bible and the Talmud.
He knew the whyfores and the wherefores but he was weak, very weak, on the therefores.
Banks the Butcher took Meltzer the Scholar as an apprentice and he made it very clear that a man of learning must be able to do more than just quote the Commentaries of the Talmud in order to live.
So Meltzer learned a new trade from Banks, who supplied the town and the hotels with meat.
Banks had a family--a wife, a daughter, and a son.
The daughter, Lilly, was a very good friend of mine and I always had hopes that someday she and Meltzer would find each other.
They lived in the same house and it didn't seem to be such a hard thing to do, but the sad realities of Lilly's life and the fact that Meltzer didn't love her never satisfied my wishful thinking.
Banks the Butcher was a hard master and a hard father, a man who didn't seem to know the difference between the living flesh of his family and the hanging carcasses of his stock in trade.
He treated both with equal indifference and with equal contempt;
perhaps he was a little more sympathetic to the sides of beef that hung silently from his hooks.
Lilly Banks and I became friends.
She was the opposite of everything she should have been--a positive pole in a negative home, a living reaction of warmth and kindness to the harsh reality of her father.
And Lilly's whole family seemed to be an apology for Mr. Banks.
Her brother Karl was a very gentle soul, her mother was a quiet woman who said little but who had hard, probing eyes.
For every rude word of Mr. Banks's the family had five in apology.
Every chance I got I left the hotel to visit Lilly.
I was free but she was bound to her duties that not even the coming of Meltzer lightened.
She had to clean the glass on the display cases in the butcher shop, help her brother scrub the cutting tables with wire brushes, mop the floors, put down new sawdust on the floors and help check the outgoing orders.
When these chores were finished, only then, was she allowed whatever freedom she could find.
I helped Lilly in the store.
To me it was a game, to her it was the deadly seriousness of life.
I wanted to help so that we could find time to play.
And Lilly allowed me to help so that she could have her few little hours of escape.
When the work was finished, we would walk.
The road past the butcher shop took us along the side of a stream.
It ran north, away from the town and the people, through woods and past the nothingness of a graveyard.
Lilly preferred the loneliness of that walk.
I would have liked the town and the busyness of its people but I always followed Lilly into the peace of the silent and unstaring road.
It wasn't hard to understand.
To me Lilly was a fine and lovely girl.
To people who didn't know her she was a gawky, badly dressed kid whose arms were too long, whose legs were a little too bony.
She had the hips of a boy and a loose-jointed walk that reminded me of a string of beads strolling down the street.
And she had the kind of crossed eyes that shocked.
It was unexpected, unexpected because Lilly walked with her head bent down, down, and her mark of friendship was to look into your face.
I accepted her crossed eyes as she accepted my childishness;
childishness compared to her grown-up understanding that life was a punishment for as yet undisclosed sins.
We were almost the same age, she was fifteen, I was twelve, and where I felt there was a life to look forward to Lilly felt she had had as much of it as was necessary.
When we went for our walks Lilly's brother would come along every once in a while.
Karl was an almost exact copy of his father physically and it was strange to see the expected become the unexpected.
This huge hulk played the guitar and he would take it along on our walks and play for us as we sat alone in the woods or by the stream.
Karl played well and his favorite song was a Schubert lullaby.
He spoke no German but he could sing it and the words of the song were the only ones he knew in a foreign language.
The song, he said, was called The Stream's Lullaby, and when he sang, Gute ruh, Gute ruh, Mach't die augen zu, there was such longing and such simple sadness that it frightened me.
Later, when I was older, I found the song was part of Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin.
And even hearing it in a concert hall surrounded by hundreds of people the words and the melody would make me a little colder and I would reach out for my husband's hand.
The brother and sister seemed to be a sort of mutual-aid society, a little fortress of kindness for each other in a hard world.
I felt very flattered to be included in the protection of their company even though I had nothing to be protected from.
The turn of the century, or to be more precise, the two decades preceeding and following it, marks a great change in the history of early English scholarship.
At the bottom of this change were great strides forward in the technical equipment and technical standards of the historian.
And with the publication of E. T. Leeds' Archaeology Of The Anglo-Saxon Settlements the student was presented with an organized synthesis of the archaeological data then known.
What was true for archaeology was also true of place-name studies.
The value of place-names in the reconstruction of early English history had long been recognized.
Place-names, in fact, had been extensively utilized for this purpose from the time of Camden onwards.
Without a precise knowledge of Germanic philology, however, it is debatable whether their use was not more often a source of confusion and error than anything else.
Even in the nineteenth century such accomplished philologists as Kemble and Guest were led into what now seem ludicrous errors because of their failure to recognize that modern forms of place names are not necessarily the result of logical philological development.
It was therefore not until the publication of J.H. Round's The Settlement Of The South And East Saxons, and W.H. Stevenson's Dr. Guest And The English Conquest Of South Britain, that a scientific basis for place-name studies was established.
Diplomatic is another area for which the dawn of the twentieth century marks the beginning of modern standards of scholarship.
In sum, it can be said that the techniques and standards of present day have their origin at the turn of the century.
And it is this, particularly the establishment of archaeology and place-name studies on a scientific basis, which are immediately pertinent to the Saxon Shore.
Almost inevitably, the first result of this technological revolution was a reaction against the methods and in many cases the conclusions of the Oxford school of Stubbs, Freeman and (particularly) Green regarding the nature of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain.
Even before the century was out the tide of reaction had set in.
Charles Plummer in the introduction and notes to his splendid edition of Bede voiced some early doubts concerning the elaborate superstructure they raised up over the slim foundations afforded by the traditional narratives of the conquest.
It was Plummer, in fact, who coined the much quoted remark: Mr. Green indeed writes as if he had been present at the landing of the Saxons and had watched every step of their subsequent progress.
Sir Henry Howorth, writing in 1898, put himself firmly in the Lappenburg-Kemble tradition by attacking the veracity of the West Saxon annals.
Early in the present century, W. H. Stevenson continued the attack with a savage article against Guest.
Following him in varying degrees of scepticism were T.W. Shore, H.M. Chadwick, Thomas Hodgkin and F. G. Beck.
By 1913, Ferdinand Lot could begin an article subtitled La Conquete De La Grande-Bretagne par Les Saxons with the words, Il est difficile aujourd'hui d'entretenir des illusions sur la valeur du recit traditionnel de la conquete de la Grande-Bretagne.
It is also worthy of note that Lot cited both Kemble and Lappenberg with favor in that article.
It would seem that the wheel had turned full circle.
In fact, modern scholarly opinion in the main has not retreated all the way back to the destructive scepticism of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Although one meets with occasional extremists like Zachrisson or, very recently, Arthur Wade-Evans the majority of scholars have taken a middle position between the extremes of scepticism and gullibility.
Most now admit that Bede, Gildas, Nennius and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles cannot be the infallible guides to early English history that Guest, Freeman and Green thought them to be.
As R.H. Hodgkin has remarked: The critical methods of the nineteenth century shattered most of this picturesque narrative.
On the other hand, the consensus of opinion is that, used with caution and in conjunction with other types of evidence, the native sources still provide a valid rough outline for the English settlement of southern Britain.
As Sir Charles Oman once said, it is no longer fashionable to declare that we can say nothing certain about Old English origins.
Therefore, in one way Kemble and Lappenberg have been vindicated.
Their conclusions concerning the untrustworthiness of the West Saxon annals, the confused chronology of Bede, the unreliability of the early positions of the Anglo-Saxon genealogies and the mythological elements contained in Nennius are now mostly accepted.
Nevertheless, in another way modern historians still labor in the vineyard of the Oxford school.
For it is their catastrophic concept of the Anglo-Saxon invasions rather than Kemble's gradualist approach which dominates the field.
Despite the rejection of the traditional accounts on many points of detail, as late as 1948 it was still possible to postulate a massive and comparatively sudden (beginning in ca. 450) influx of Germans as the type of invasions.
At this point, of course, the issue has become complicated by a development unforeseen by Lappenberg and Kemble.
They, however much they were in disagreement with the late Victorians over the method by which Britain was Germanized, agreed with them that the end result was the complete extinction of the previous Celtic population and civilization.
Against Seebohm formidable foes have taken the field, notably F. W. Maitland, whose Domesday Book And Beyond was written expressly for this purpose, and Sir Paul Vinogradoff whose The Growth Of The Manor had a similar aim.
Largely due to their efforts the catastrophic invasion-theory has maintained its position although Seebohm has always found supporters.
H.L. Gray in his English Field Systems and Zachrisson's Romans, Kelts And Saxons defended in part the Seebohm thesis while at the present time H.P.R. Finberg and Gordon Copley seem to fall into the Celtic survivalist camp.
This is nevertheless a minority view.
Most scholars, while willing to accept a survival (revival?
) of Celtic art forms and a considerable proportion of the Celtic population, reject any institutional legacy from pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain.
Therefore, it is plain that the clear distinctions of the nineteenth century are no longer with us.
In the main stream of historical thinking is a group of scholars, H.M. Chadwick, R.H. Hodgkin, Sir Frank Stenton et al. who are in varying degrees sceptical of the native traditions of the conquest but who defend the catastrophic type of invasion suggested by them.
They, in effect, have compromised the opposing positions of the nineteenth century.
On the other side are the Celtic survivalists who have taken a tack divergent from both these schools of nineteenth century thought.
As a group they should be favorable to a concept of gradual Germanic infiltration although the specialist nature of much of their work, e.g. Seebohm, Gray and Finberg, tends to obscure their sympathies.
Those who do have occasion to deal with the invasions in a more general way, like T.W. Shore and Arthur Wade-Evans, are on the side of a gradual and often peaceful Germanic penetration into Britain.
Wade-Evans, in fact, denies that there were any Anglo-Saxon invasions at all other than a minor Jutish foray in A.D. 514.
Now omitting for a moment some recent developments we can say the Saxon Shore hypothesis of Lappenberg and Kemble has undergone virtual eclipse in this century.
It is no longer possible to say that a sceptical attitude towards the received accounts of the invasions almost automatically produces a shore occupied by interpretation.
Everyone is more or less sceptical and virtually no one has been willing to accept Lappenberg or Kemble's position on that point.
One reason is, of course, that the new scepticism has been willing to maintain the general picture of the invasions as portrayed in the traditional sources.
The few scholars who have adopted the shore occupied by interpretation, Howorth, Shore, and Wade-Evans, have all been Celtic survivalists.
Moreover, they have done so in rather special circumstances.
The primary reason for the abandonment of the shore occupied by thesis has been the assimilation and accumulation of archaeological evidence, the most striking feature of early English studies in this century.
Again omitting recent developments, E.T. Leeds' dictum of 1913 has stood unchallenged: So far as archaeology is concerned, there is not the least warrant for the second (shore occupied by) of these theories.
Even earlier Haverfield had come to the same conclusion.
What they meant was that there was no evidence to show that the south and east coasts of Britain received Germanic settlers conspicuously earlier than some other parts of England.
That is, there was no trace of Anglo-Saxons in Britain as early as the late third century, to which time the archaeological evidence for the erection of the Saxon Shore forts was beginning to point.
In the face of a clear judgment from archaeology, therefore, it became impossible for a time for scholars to re-adopt the shore settled by theory.
In recent years, however, a wind of change seems to be blowing through early English historical circles.
The great increase in the amount of archaeological activity, and therefore information, in the years immediately preceeding and following the Second World War has brought to light data which has changed the complection of the Saxon Shore dispute.
Where there were none fifteen years ago, several scholars currently are edging their way cautiously towards the acceptance of the shore occupied by position.
We must, therefore, have a look at the new archaeological material and re-examine the literary and place-name evidence which bears upon the problem.
What exactly are we trying to prove?
We know that the Saxon Shore was a phenonenon of late Roman defensive policy;
in other words its existence belongs to the period of Roman Britain.
So whenever the Romans finally withdrew from the island, the Saxon Shore disappeared in the first decade of the fifth century.
We also know that the Saxon Shore as reflected in the Notitia was created as a part of the Theodosian reorganization of Britain (post A.D. 369).
My argument is that there was no Saxon Shore prior to that time even though the forts had been in existence since the time of Carausius.
Therefore, what we must prove or disprove is that there were Saxons, in the broad sense in which we must construe the word, in the area of the Saxon Shore at the time it was called the Saxon Shore.
That is, we must find Saxons in East Anglia, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire in the last half of the fourth century.
The problem, in other words, is strictly a chronological one.
In Gaul the Saxon element on its Saxon Shore was plainly visible because there the Saxons were an intrusive element in the population.
In Britain, obviously, the archaeological and place-name characteristics of the Saxon Shore region are bound to be Saxon.
It is a matter of trying to sort out an earlier fourth-century Saxon element from the later, fifth-century mainstream of Anglo-Saxon invasions.
This, naturally, will be difficult to do since both the archaeological and place-name evidence in this period, with some fortunate exceptions, is insufficient for precise chronological purposes.
It might be well to consider the literary evidence first because it can provide us with an answer to one important question;
namely, is the idea that there were Saxon mercenaries in England at all reasonable?
To do so, something was necessary beyond volunteering because there was little glamour or romance in the European war;
it meant instead hardship, dirt, and death.
Baker gave Leonard Wood credit for the initiation of the draft of soldiers;
from the General's idea a chain reaction occurred.
Wood took the proposal to Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott, who passed it on to Baker a month before the actual declaration of war against Germany.
The Secretary of War gave his assent after studying the history of the draft in the American Civil War as well as the British volunteer system in World War 1.
Baker took the plan to Wilson who said: Baker, this is plainly right on any ground.
Start to prepare the necessary legislation so that if I am obliged to go to Congress the bills will be ready for immediate consideration.
The result was that by secret agreement draft machinery was actually ready long before the country knew that the device was to take the place of the volunteering method which Theodore Roosevelt favored.
Before the Draft Act was passed Baker had confidentially briefed governors, sheriffs, and prospective draft board members on the administration of the measure--and the confidence was kept so well that only one newspaper learned what was going on.
General Crowder proposed that Regular Army officers select the draftees in cities and towns throughout the nation;
it was Baker who thought of lessening the shock, which conscription always brings to a country, by substituting Greetings from your neighbors for the recruiting sergeant, and registration in familiar voting places rather than at military installations.
Even so, the Draft Act encountered rough sledding in its progress through the Congress.
Democratic Speaker Champ Clark saw little difference between a conscript and a convict.
Democrat Stanley H. Dent, Chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, declined to introduce the bill.
Democratic Floor Leader Claude Kitchin would have no part of the measure.
In the judgment of Chief of Staff Scott it was ironic that the draft policy of a Democratic President, aimed at Germany, had to be pushed through the House of Representatives by the ranking minority member of the Military Affairs Committee--a Republican Jew born in Germany!
He was Julius Kahn for whom the Chief of Staff thought no honor could be too great.
After Kahn's death in 1924 Scott wrote: May he rest in peace with the eternal gratitude of his adopted country.
In spite of powerful opposition the Draft Act finally passed Congress on May 17, 1917.
In early June ten million young men registered by name and number.
The day passed without incident in spite of the warning of Senator James A. Reed of Missouri: Baker, you will have the streets of our American cities running with blood on registration day.
On July 20, the first drawing of numbers occurred in the Senate Office Building before a distinguished group of congressmen and high Army officers.
Secretary of War Baker, blindfolded, put his hand into a large glass bowl and drew the initial number of those to be called.
It was 258.
A man in Mississippi wired: Thanks for drawing 258--that's me.
He was the first of 2,800,000 called to the Army through the selective service system.
It was one thing to call men to the colors;
it was another to house, feed, and train them.
The existing Army posts were wholly inadequate.
In a matter of months the War Department built thirty-two camps, each one accommodating fifty thousand men--sixteen were under canvas in the South and sixteen with frame structures in the North.
It was a gargantuan task;
a typical cantonment in the North had twelve hundred buildings, an electric-sewer-water system, and twenty-five miles of roads.
At Camp Taylor in Kentucky a barracks was built in an hour and a half from timber that had been standing in Mississippi forests one week before.
The total operation was a construction project comparable in magnitude with the Panama Canal, but in 1917 time was in short supply;
in three months the Army spent three-quarters as much as had been expended on the big Ditch in ten years.
In later years Josephus Daniels was to claim that World War 1, was the first in American history in which there was great concern for both the health and morals of our soldiers.
To the middle of September 1918, there had been fewer than 10,000 deaths from disease in the new army.
This enviable record would have been maintained but for a great and unexpected disaster which struck the world with murderous stealth.
It was the influenza pandemic of 1918-19.
The malady was popularly known as the Spanish flu from the alleged locale of its origin.
The world-wide total of deaths from Spanish flu was around twenty million;
in the United States 300,000 succumbed to it.
In mid-September 1918, the influenza-pneumonia pandemic swept through every American military camp;
during the eight-week blitz attack 25,000 soldiers died from the disease and the death rate (formerly 5 per year per 1,000 men) increased almost fifty times to 4 per week per 1,000 men.
In spite of this catastrophe the final mortality figure from disease in the American Army during World War 1, was 15 per 1,000 per year, contrasted with 110 per 1,000 per year in the Mexican War, and 65 in the American Civil War.
Both Secretary of War Baker and Secretary of Navy Daniels devoted much time and effort to the problem of providing reasonably normal and wholesome activities in camp for the millions of men who had been removed from their home environment.
Their policy ran counter to the traditional idea that a good fighter was usually a libertine, and that in sex affairs God-given passion was a proof of manliness.
Baker moved first;
six days after war was declared he appointed Raymond Fosdick chairman of the Commission on Training Camp Activities (the CTCA).
Fosdick, a brother of minister Harry Emerson Fosdick, was a graduate of Princeton, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association.
His assignment was not a new one because Baker had sent him to the Mexican border in 1916 to investigate lurid newspaper stories about lack of discipline, drunkenness, and venereal disease in American military camps.
Fosdick had found the installations surrounded by a battery of saloons and houses of prostitution, with filles de joie from all over the country flocking to San Antonio, Laredo, and El Paso to woman the cribs.
He also ascertained that many officers were indifferent to the problem, including Commanding General Frederick Funston who gave Fosdick the nickname of Reverend.
On the basis of the long chronicle of military history Funston and his brethren assumed that the issue was insoluble and that anyone interested in a mission like Fosdick's was an impractical idealist or a do-gooder.
During the brief Mexican venture Fosdick's report to the Secretary recommended a definite stand by the War Department against the saloon and the excesses of prostitution.
The problem involved military necessity as much as morality, for in pre-penicillin days venereal disease was a crippling disability.
Fosdick insisted that a strong word was needed from Washington, and it was immediately forthcoming.
Baker put the cribs and the saloons out of bounds, ordered the co-operation of military officers with local law authorities, and told communities that the troops would be moved unless wholesome conditions were restored.
Both Baker and Fosdick knew that a substitute was necessary, that a verboten approach was not the real answer.
They were aware that soldiers went to town, in more ways than one, because of the monotony of camp life, to find the only release available in the absence of movies, reading rooms, and playing fields with adequate athletic equipment.
Both knew that when trains stopped at Texan crossroads bored soldiers would sometimes enter to ask the passengers if they had any reading material to spare, even a newspaper.
There was no time in the short Mexican encounter to evolve a solution but the area provided a proving ground for new departures in the near future.
When the United States entered the First World War Baker made certain that the Draft Act of 1917 prohibited the sale of liquor to men in uniform and that it provided for broad zones around the camps in which prostitution was outlawed.
Even so Fosdick, as the new Chairman of the Commission on Training Camp Activities, encountered strong and vociferous opposition.
New Orleans had a notorious red-light district extending over twenty-eight city blocks, and the business-minded mayor of the city journeyed to Washington to present the case for the God-given right of men to be men.
In Europe, Premier Clemenceau, showing his animal proclivities as the Tiger of France, asked Pershing by letter for the creation of special houses where the sexual desires of American men could be satisfied.
When Fosdick showed the letter to Baker his negative response was: For God's sake, Raymond, don't show this to the President or he'll stop the war.
Ultimately Fosdick's Fit to fight slogan swept across the country and every well-known red-light district in the United States was closed, a hundred and ten of them.
The result was that the rate of venereal disease in the American Army was the lowest in our military history.
This was the negative side of the situation.
Affirmatively Baker worked on the premise that young men spontaneously prefer to be decent, and that opportunities for wholesome recreation are the best possible cure for irregularities in conduct which arise from idleness and the baser temptations.
Over these voluntary agencies, in 1917-18, the CTCA served as a co-ordinating body in carrying out what Survey called the most stupendous piece of social work in modern times.
Under Fosdick the first executive officer of the CTCA was Richard Byrd, whose name in later years was to become synonymous with activities at the polar antipodes.
From the point of view of popularity the best-known member of the Commission was Walter Camp, the Yale athlete whose sobriquet was the father of American football.
He was placed in charge of athletics, and among other things adapted the type of calisthenics known as the daily dozen.
The CTCA distributed a khaki-bound songbook that provided the impetus for spirited renditions of the selections found therein, plus a number of others whose lyrics were more earthy--from Johnny Get Your Gun to Keep The Home Fires Burning to Mademoiselle From Armentieres.
In the imagination of the nineteenth century the Greek tragedians and Shakespeare stand side by side, their affinity transcending all the immense contrarieties of historical circumstance, religious belief, and poetic form.
We no longer use the particular terms of Lessing and Victor Hugo.
But we abide by their insight.
The word tragedy encloses for us in a single span both the Greek and the Elizabethan example.
The sense of relationship overreaches the historical truth that Shakespeare may have known next to nothing of the actual works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
It transcends the glaring fact that the Elizabethans mixed tragedy and comedy whereas the Greeks kept the two modes severely distinct.
It overcomes our emphatic awareness of the vast difference in the shape and fabric of the two languages and styles of dramatic presentation.
The intimations of a related spirit and ordering of human values are stronger than any sense of disparity.
Comparable visions of life are at work in Antigone and Romeo And Juliet.
We see at once what Victor Hugo means when he calls Macbeth a northern scion of the house of Atreus.
Elsinore seems to lie in a range of Mycenae, and the fate of Orestes resounds in that of Hamlet.
The hounds of hell search out their quarry in Apollo's sanctuary as they do in the tent of Richard 3.
Oedipus and Lear attain similar insights by virtue of similar blindness.
It is not between Euripides and Shakespeare that the western mind turns away from the ancient tragic sense of life.
It is after the late seventeenth century.
I say the late seventeenth century because Racine (whom Lessing did not really know) stands on the far side of the chasm.
The image of man which enters into force with Aeschylus is still vital in Phedre and Athalie.
It is the triumph of rationalism and secular metaphysics which marks the point of no return.
Shakespeare is closer to Sophocles than he is to Pope and Voltaire.
To say this is to set aside the realness of time.
But it is true, nevertheless.
The modes of the imagination implicit in Athenian tragedy continued to shape the life of the mind until the age of Descartes and Newton.
It is only then that the ancient habits of feeling and the classic orderings of material and psychological experience were abandoned.
With the Discours de la methode and the Principia the things undreamt of in Horatio's philosophy seem to pass from the world.
In Greek tragedy as in Shakespeare, mortal actions are encompassed by forces which transcend man.
The reality of Orestes entails that of the Furies;
the Weird Sisters wait for the soul of Macbeth.
We cannot conceive of Oedipus without a Sphinx, nor of Hamlet without a Ghost.
The shadows cast by the personages of Greek and Shakespearean drama lengthen into a greater darkness.
And the entirety of the natural world is party to the action.
The thunderclaps over the sacred wood at Colonus and the storms in King Lear are caused by more than weather.
In tragedy, lightning is a messenger.
But it can no longer be so once Benjamin Franklin (the incarnation of the new rational man) has flown a kite to it.
The tragic stage is a platform extending precariously between heaven and hell.
Those who walk on it may encounter at any turn ministers of grace or damnation.
Oedipus and Lear instruct us how little of the world belongs to man.
Mortality is the pacing of a brief and dangerous watch, and to all sentinels, whether at Elsinore or on the battlements at Mycenae, the coming of dawn has its breath of miracle.
It banishes the night wanderers to fire or repose.
But at the touch of Hume and Voltaire the noble or hideous visitations which had haunted the mind since Agamemnon's blood cried out for vengeance, disappeared altogether or took tawdry refuge among the gaslights of melodrama.
Modern roosters have lost the art of crowing restless spirits back to Purgatory.
In Athens, in Shakespeare's England, and at Versailles, the hierarchies of worldly power were stable and manifest.
The wheel of social life spun around the royal or aristocratic centre.
From it, spokes of order and degree led to the outward rim of the common man.
Tragedy presumes such a configuration.
Its sphere is that of royal courts, dynastic quarrels, and vaulting ambitions.
The same metaphors of swift ascent and calamitous decline apply to Oedipus and Macbeth because they applied also to Alcibiades and Essex.
And the fate of such men has tragic relevance because it is public.
Agamemnon, Creon, and Medea perform their tragic actions before the eyes of the polis.
Similarly the sufferings of Hamlet, Othello, or Phedre engage the fortunes of the state.
They are enacted at the heart of the body politic.
Hence the natural setting of tragedy is the palace gate, the public square, or the court chamber.
Greek and Elizabethan life and, to a certain extent, the life of Versailles shared this character of intense publicity.
Princes and factions clashed in the open street and died on the open scaffold.
With the rise to power of the middle class the centre of gravity in human affairs shifted from the public to the private.
The art of Defoe and Richardson is founded on an awareness of this great change.
Heretofore an action had possessed the breadth of tragedy only if it involved high personages and if it occurred in the public view.
Behind the tragic hero stands the chorus, the crowd, or the observant courtier.
In the eighteenth century there emerges for the first time the notion of a private tragedy (or nearly for the first time, there having been a small number of Elizabethan domestic tragedies such as the famous Arden Of Feversham).
In La Nouvelle-Heloise and Werther tragedy is made intimate.
And private tragedy became the chosen ground not of drama, but of the new, unfolding art of the novel.
The novel was not only the presenter of the new, secular, rationalistic, private world of the middle class.
It served also as a literary form exactly appropriate to the fragmented audience of modern urban culture.
I have said before how difficult it is to make any precise statements with regard to the character of the Greek and Elizabethan public.
But one major fact seems undeniable.
Until the advent of rational empiricism the controlling habits of the western mind were symbolic and allegoric.
Available evidence regarding the natural world, the course of history, and the varieties of human action were translated into imaginative designs or mythologies.
Classic mythology and Christianity are such architectures of the imagination.
They order the manifold levels of reality and moral value along an axis of being which extends from brute matter to the immaculate stars.
There had not yet supervened between understanding and expression the new languages of mathematics and scientific formulas.
The poet was by definition a realist, his imaginings and parables being natural organizations of reality.
And in these organizations certain primal notions played a radiant part, radiant both in the sense of giving light and of being a pole toward which all perspectives converge.
I mean such concepts as the presence of the supernatural in human affairs, the sacraments of grace and divine retribution, the idea of preordainment (the oracle over Oedipus, the prophecy of the witches to Macbeth, or God's covenant with His people in Athalie).
I refer to the notion that the structure of society is a microcosm of the cosmic design and that history conforms to patterns of justice and chastisement as if it were a morality play set in motion by the gods for our instruction.
These conceptions and the manner in which they were transposed into poetry or engendered by poetic form are intrinsic to western life from the time of Aeschylus to that of Shakespeare.
And although they were, as I have indicated, under increasing strain at the time of Racine, they are still alive in his theatre.
They are the essential force behind the conventions of tragedy.
They are as decisively present in the Oresteia and Oedipus as in Macbeth, King Lear, and Phedre.
After the seventeenth century the audience ceased to be an organic community to which these ideas and their attendant habits of figurative language would be natural or immediately familiar.
Concepts such as grace, damnation, purgation, blasphemy, or the chain of being, which are everywhere implicit in classic and Shakespearean tragedy, lose their vitality.
They become philosophic abstractions of a private and problematic relevance, or mere catchwords in religious customs which had in them a diminishing part of active belief.
After Shakespeare the master spirits of western consciousness are no longer the blind seers, the poets, or Orpheus performing his art in the face of hell.
They are Descartes, Newton, and Voltaire.
And their chroniclers are not the dramatic poets but the prose novelists.
The romantics were the immediate inheritors of this tremendous change.
They were not yet prepared to accept it as irremediable.
From this action sprang the idea of somehow uniting Greek and Shakespearean drama into a new total form, capable of restoring to life the ancient moral and poetic responses.
The dream of achieving a synthesis between the Sophoclean and the Shakespearean genius inspired the ambitions of poets and composers from the time of Shelley and Victor Hugo to that of Bayreuth.
It could not really be fulfilled.
The conventions into which the romantics tried to breath life no longer corresponded to the realities of thought and feeling.
But the attempt itself produced a number of brilliant works, and these form a transition from the early romantic period to the new age of Ibsen and Chekhov.
The wedding of the Hellenic to the northern genius was one of the dominant motifs in Goethe's thought.
His Italian journey was a poet's version of those perennial thrusts across the Alps of the German emperors of the Middle Ages.
The dream of a descent into the gardens of the south always drew German ambitions toward Rome and Sicily.
Goethe asks in Wilhelm Meister whether we know the land where the lemon trees flower, and the light of the Mediterranean glows through Torquato Tasso and the Roman Elegies.
Goethe believed that the Germanic spirit, with its grave strength but flagrant streaks of brutality and intolerance, should be tempered with the old sensuous wisdom and humanism of the Hellenic.
On the narrower ground of poetic form, he felt that in the drama of the future the Greek conception of tragic fate should be joined to the Shakespearean vision of tragic will.
The wager between God and Satan brings on the destiny of Faust, but Faust assumes his role voluntarily.
The third Act of Faust 2, is a formal celebration of the union between the Germanic and the classic, between the spirit of Euripides and that of romantic drama.
The motif of Faust's love for Helen of Troy goes back to the sources of the Faustian legend.
It tells us of the ancient human desire to see the highest wisdom joined to the highest sensual beauty.
There can be no greater magic than to wrest from death her in whom the flesh was all, in whom beauty was entirely pure because it was entirely corruptible.
It is thus that the brightness of Helen passes through Marlowe's Faustus.
Goethe used the fable to more elaborate ends.
Faust rescuing Helen from Menelaus' vengeance is the genius of renaissance Europe restoring to life the classic tradition.
The necromantic change from the palace at Sparta to Faust's Gothic castle directs us to the aesthetic meaning of the myth--the translation of antique drama into Shakespearean and romantic guise.
This translation, or rather the fusion of the two ideals, creates the Gesamtkunstwerke, the total art form.
The Bishop of Gloucester described the elder Thomas in 1577 as the richest recusant in his diocese, worth five hundred pounds a year in lands and goods.
When Quiney and William Parsons wrote to Greville in 1593 asking his consent in the election for bailiff, they sent the letter to Mr. William Sawnders, attendant on the worshipful Mr. Thomas Bushell at Marston.
Mr. Bushell was mentioned in 1602 in the will of Joyce Hobday, widow of a Stratford glover.
Thomas the elder married twice, had seventeen children, and died in 1615.
His daughter Elinor married Quiney's son Adrian in 1613, and his son Henry married Mary Lane of Stratford in 1609.
His son Thomas, aged fifteen when he entered Oxford in 1582, married as his first wife Margaret, sister of Sir Edward Greville.
Bridges, a son by his second wife, was christened at Pebworth in 1607, but Thomas the younger was living at Packwood two years later and sold Broad Marston manor in 1622.
A third Thomas Bushell (1594-1674), much loved by Bacon, called himself The Superlative Prodigall in The First Part of Youths Errors (1628) and became an expert on silver mines and on the art of running into debt.
Edward Greville, born about 1565, had inherited Milcote on the execution of his father Lodowick for murder in 1589.
He refused his consent to the election of Quiney as bailiff in 1592, but gave it at the request of the recorder, his cousin Sir Fulke Greville.
The corporation entertained him for dinner at Quiney's house in 1596/7, with wine and sugar sent by the bailiff, Sturley.
At Milcote on November 3, 1597, the aldermen asked him to support their petition for a new charter.
Greville proposed Quiney as the fittest man for the following of the cause and to attend him in the matter, and at his suggestion the corporation allowed Quiney two shillings a day.
If you can firmly make the good knight sure to pleasure our Corporation, Sturley wrote, besides that ordinary allowance for your diet you shall have 20 for recompence.
Sir Ed. Gre. is gonne to Brestowe and from thence to Lond. as I heare, who verie well knoweth our estates and wil be willinge to do us ani good.
The knights for Warwickshire in this parliament, which ended its session on February 9, were Fulke Greville (the poet) and William Combe of Warwick, as Fulke Greville and Edward Greville had been in 1593.
The corporation voted on September 27, 1598, that Quiney should ride to London about the suit to Sir John Fortescue, chancellor of the Exchequer, for discharging of the tax and subsidy.
He had been in London for several weeks when he wrote to Shakespeare on October 25.
Allso that if monei might be had for 30 or 40 a lease & might be procured.
Sturley quoted Quiney as having written on November 1 that if he had more monei presente much might be done to obtaine our Charter enlargd, ij faires more, with tole of corne, bestes, and sheepe, and a matter of more valewe then all that.
Sturley thought that this matter might be the rest of the tithes and the College houses and landes in our towne.
He suggested offering half to Sir Edward, fearing lest he shall thinke it to good for us and procure it for himselfe, as he served us the last time.
This refers to what had happened after the Earl of Warwick died in 1590, when the town petitioned Burghley for the right to name the vicar and schoolmaster and other privileges but Greville bought the lordship for himself.
Adrian Quiney wrote to his son Richard on October 29 and again perhaps the next day, since the bearer of the letter, the bailiff, was expected to reach London on November 1.
In his second letter the old mercer advised his son to bye some such warys as yow may selle presentlye with profet.
Yff yow bargen with Wm. Sha. (so in the MS) or Receave money ther or brynge your money home yow maye see howe knite stockynges be sold ther ys gret byinge of them at Aysshom.
Wherefore I thynke yow maye doo good yff yow can have money.
This seems to refer, not to the loan Richard had asked for, but to a proposed bargain with Shakespeare.
Richard Quiney the younger, a schoolboy of eleven, wrote a letter in Latin asking his father to buy copybooks (chartaceos libellos)) for him and his brother.
His mother Bess, who could not write herself, reminded her husband through Sturley to buy the apron he had promised her and a suite of hattes for 5 boies the yongst lined & trimmed with silke (for John, only a year old).
A letter signed Isabell Bardall entreated Good Cozen Quiney to find her stepson Adrian, son of George Bardell, a place in London with some handicraftsman.
William Parsons and William Walford, drapers, asked Quiney to see to business matters in London.
Daniel Baker deluged his Unckle Quyne with requests to pay money for him to drapers in Watling Street and at the Two Cats in Canning Street.
His letter of October 26 named two of the men about whom Quiney had written to Shakespeare the day before.
Baker wrote: I tooke order with Sr. E. Grevile for the payment of Ceartaine monei beefore his going towardes London.
& synce I did write unto him to dessier him to paie 10 for mee which standeth mee greatly uppon to have paide.
& 20 more Mr. Peeter Rowswell tooke order with his master to paie for mee.
He asked Quiney to find out whether the money had been paid and, if not, to send to the lodging of Sir Edward and entreat him to pay what he owed.
Baker added: I pray you delivre these inclosed Letters And Comend mee to Mr. Rychard Mytton whoe I know will ffreind mee for the payment of this monei.
Further letters in November mention that Sir Edward paid forty pounds.
Stratford's petition to the queen declared that two great fires had burnt two hundred houses in the town, with household goods, to the value of twelve thousand pounds.
The chancellor of the Exchequer wrote on the petition: in myn opinion it is very resonable and conscionable for hir maiestie to graunt in relief of this towne twise afflicted and almost wasted by fire.
The queen agreed on December 17, a warrant was signed on January 27, and the Exchequer paid Quiney his expenses on February 27, 1598/9.
He listed what he had spent for My own diet in London eighteen weeks, in which I was sick a month;
my mare at coming up 14 days;
another I bought there to bring me home 7 weeks;
and I was six days going thither and coming homewards;
all which cost me at the least 20 pounds.
He was allowed forty-four pounds in all, including fees to the masters of requests, Mr. Fanshawe of the Exchequer, the solicitor general, and other officials and their clerks.
If he borrowed money from Shakespeare or with his help, he would now have been able to repay the loan.
Since more is known about Quiney than about any other acquaintance of Shakespeare in Stratford, his career may be followed to its sudden end in 1602.
During 1598 and 1599 he made manye Guiftes of myne owne provision bestowed uppon Cowrtiers & others for the better effectinge of our suites in hande.
He was in London searching records for our town's causes in 1600 with young Henry Sturley, the assistant schoolmaster.
When Sir Edward Greville enclosed the town commons on the Bancroft, Quiney and others leveled his hedges on January 21, 1600/1, and were charged with riot by Sir Edward.
He also sued them for taking toll of grain at their market.
He set down that I gave Mr. Greene a pynte of muskadell and a roll of bread that last morning I went to have his company to Master Attorney.
After returning Stratford he drew up a defense of the town's right to toll corn and the office of collecting it, and his list of suggested witnesses included his father and Shakespeare's father.
No one, he wrote, took any corn of Greville's, for his bailiff of husbandry swore a greate oathe thatt who soe came to put hys hande into hys sackes for anye corne shuld leave hys hande behynde hym.
Quiney was in London again in June, 1601, and in November, when he rode up, as Shakespeare must often have done, by way of Oxford, High Wycombe, and Uxbridge, and home through Aylesbury and Banbury.
Asked by the townsmen to cease his suit, Greville had answered that hytt shulde coste hym 500 first & sayed it must be tried ether before my Lorde Anderson in the countrey or his uncle Ffortescue in the exchequer with whom he colde more prevaile then we.
The corporation proposed Chief Justice Anderson for an arbiter, sending him a gift of sack and claret.
Lady Greville, daughter of the late Lord Chancellor Bromley and niece of Sir John Fortescue, was offered twenty pounds by the townsmen to make peace;
she labored & thought she shuld effecte it but her husband said that we shuld wynne it by the sworde.
His servant Robin Whitney threatened Quiney, who had Whitney bound to the good abaringe to keep the peace.
The fall of Rome, the discovery of precious metals, and the Protestant Reformation were all links and could only be explained and understood by comprehending the links that preceded and those that followed.
Often the historian must consider the use of intuition or instinct by those individuals or nations which he is studying.
Unconsciously, governments or races or institutions may enter into some undertaking without fully realizing why they are doing so.
They react in obedience to an instinct or urge which has itself been impelled by natural law.
A court may strike down a law on the basis of an intuitive feeling that the law is inimical to the numerical majority.
A nation may go to war on some trifling pretext, when in reality it may have been guided by an unconscious instinct that its very life was at stake.
When the historian encounters a situation in which he can perceive no visible cause and effect sequence, he should be alert to intuition and unconscious instinct as possible guides.
Adams firmly contended that the historian must never underrate the impact of the geographical environment on history.
Here was another indispensable tool.
Indeed, he concluded that geographical conditions have exercised a great, possibly a preponderating, influence over man's destiny.
The failure of Greece to reach the imperial destiny that Periclean Athens had seemed to promise was almost directly attributable to her physical conformation.
All areas of history were either favorably or adversely affected by the geographical environment, and no respectable historian could pursue the study of history without a thorough knowledge of geography.
Brooks Adams was consistent in his admonishments to historians about the necessary tools or insights they needed to possess.
However, as a practicing historian, he, himself, has left few clues to the amount of professional scholarship that he used when writing history.
In fact, if judgments are to be rendered upon the soundness of his historicism, they must be based on scanty evidence.
What evidence is available would seem to indicate that Brooks, unlike his older brother Henry, had most of the methodological vices usually found in the amateur.
This is not to assume that his work was without merit, but the validity of his assumptions concerning the meaning of history must always be considered against this background of an unprofessional approach.
Much criticism has been leveled at this rather forced analogy, but what is equally significant is Adams' complete acceptance of the Biblical record as good and trustworthy history.
In light of the scholarly reappraisals engendered by the higher criticism this is a most remarkable statement, particularly coming from one who was well known for his antifundamentalist views.
The desire to substantiate a thesis at the expense of sound research technique smacks more of the propagandist than the historian.
A similar amateurish characteristic is revealed in Adams' failure to check the accuracy and authenticity of his informational sources.
If he found data that fitted his general plan, he used it and counted his sources trustworthy.
Conversely, if statistics were uncovered which contradicted a cherished theory, the sources were denounced as faulty.
Such manipulations are frequently encountered in his essay on the suppression of the monasteries during the English reformation.
Adams depended largely on the dispatches of foreign ambassadors and observers in England, claiming that the reports of such agents had to be accurate because there were no newspapers.
This is certainly an irrational dogmatism, in which the modern mind attempts to understand the spirit of the sixteenth century on twentieth-century terms.
Moreover, he rejects the contemporary accounts of Englishmen, casually adjudging them to be distorted by prejudice because the opinions of Englishmen are of no great value.
What is exposited by this observation is not the inherent prejudices of Englishmen but the Anglophobia of Brooks Adams.
In all fairness it must be admitted that Adams made no pretense at being an impartial historian.
Impartiality to him meant an unwillingness to generalize and to search for a synthesis.
He deplored the impact of German historiography on the writing of history, terming it a dismal monster.
Ranke and his disciples had reduced history to a profession of dullness;
Brooks Adams preferred the chronicles of Froissart or the style and theorizing of Edward Gibbon, for at least they took a stand on the issues about which they wrote.
He wrote eloquently to William James that impartial history was not only impossible but undesirable.
If the historian was convinced of his own correctness, then he should not allow his vision to become fogged by disturbing facts.
It was history that must be in error, not the historian.
All of Adams' work reflects this dogmatic characteristic.
No page seems to be complete without the statement of at least one unproved generalization.
One example of this was his assertion that all servile revolts must be dealt with by physical force.
There is no explanation of terms nor a qualification that most such revolts have been dealt with by force--only a bald dogmatism that they must, because of some undefined compulsion, be so repelled.
On matters of race he was similarly inflexible: Most of the modern Latin races seem to have inherited the rigidity of the Roman mind.
He cites the French Revolution as typifying this rigidity but makes no mention of the Italians, who have been able to adapt to all types of circumstances.
He pontificates that one of the first signs of advancing civilization is the fall in the value of women in men's eyes.
It made no difference that most evidence points to an opposite conclusion.
For Adams had made up his mind before all the facts were available.
All critics of Adams and his methods have observed this particular deficiency.
A. M. Wergeland called the Adams method literally antihistorical, while Clive Day maintained that the assumptions were not confined to theories alone but were also applicable to straight factual evidence.
Moreover, stated Day, He always omits facts which tend to disprove his hypothesis.
Even D. A. Wasson, who compared The Emancipation Of Massachusetts to the lifting of a fog from ancient landscapes, was also forced to admit the methodological deficiencies of the author.
In summary, Brooks Adams felt that the nature of history was order and that the order so discovered was as much subject to historical laws as the forces of nature.
Moreover, he believed that most professional historians lacked some of the essential instruments for a proper study of history.
However, despite the insight of many of his observations, his own conclusions are open to suspicion because of his failure to employ at all times the correct research methods.
This should not prejudice an evaluation of his findings, but they were not the findings of a completely impartial investigator.
What was perhaps more important than his concept of the nature of history and the historical method were those forces which shaped the direction of his thought.
In the final analysis his contribution to American historiography was founded on almost intuitive insights into religion, economics, and Darwinism, the three factors which conditioned his search for a law of history.
Religion without supernaturalism
Brooks Adams considered religion as an extremely significant manifestation of man's fear of the unknown.
But it was nothing more than that.
Religion and the churches were institutions which had been created by man, not God.
He did not deny God;
he simply did not believe that a Creator intervened or interfered in human affairs.
The historian need not be concerned with the philosophical problems suggested by religion.
There was no evidence, either of a positive or negative type, of the actions of a Divine Being in this world;
and, since the historian should only be interested in strictly terrestrial activity, his research should eliminate the supernatural.
Furthermore, he must regard religion as the expression of human forces.
Certainly, he must recognize its power and attempt to ascertain its influence on the flow of history, but he must not confuse the natural and the mundane with the divine.
Adams was not breaking new ground when he claimed that the worship of an unseen power was in reality a reflection of man's inability to cope with his environment.
Students of anthropology and comparative religion had long been aware that there was, indeed, a direct connection.
But Adams was one of the first to suggest that this human incompetence was the only motivating factor behind religion.
It was this fear which explained the development of a priestly caste whose function in society was to mollify and appease the angry deities.
To keep themselves entrenched in power, the priests were forced to demonstrate their unique status through the miracle.
It was the use of the supernatural that kept them in business.
The German barbarians of the fourth century offered an excellent example:
The Germans in the fourth century were a very simple race, who comprehended little of natural laws, and who therefore referred phenomena they did not understand to supernatural intervention.
This intervention could only be controlled by priests, and thus the invasions caused a rapid rise in the influence of the sacred class.
The power of every ecclesiastical organization has always rested on the miracle, and the clergy have always proved their divine commission as did Elijah.
Adams contended that once such a special class had been created it became a vested interest and sought to maintain itself by assuming exclusive control over the relationships between God and man.
Thus, the Church was born and because of its intrinsic character was soon identified as a conservative institution, determined to resist the forces of change, to identify itself with the political rulers, and to maintain a kind of splendid isolation from the masses.
Doctrine was not only mysterious;
it was also sacred, and no believer in an inspired church could tolerate having her canons examined as we should examine human laws.
These basic ideas concerning the nature of religion were, Adams believed, some of the major keys to the understanding of history and the movement of society.
The dark views about the Puritans found in The Emancipation Of Massachusetts were never altered.
Despite their adherence to the status quo, the forces of organized religion were compelled to make adjustments as increasing civilization augmented human knowledge.
In The Law Of Civilization And Decay Brooks Adams traced this evolution, always pointing to the fact that although the forms became more rational, the substance remained unchanged.
The relic worship and monasticism of the Middle Ages were more advanced forms than were primitive fetish worship and nature myths.
Yet, the idea imbedded in each was identical: to surround the unknown with mystery and to isolate that class which had been given special dominion over the secrets of God.
To Adams that age in which religion exercised power over the entire culture of the race was one of imagination, and it is largely the admiration he so obviously held for such eras that betrays a peculiar religiosity--a sentiment he would have probably denied.
Stephens had written his classic incidents of travel about these regions a hundred years before, and Catherwood, who had studied Piranesi in London and the great ruins of Egypt and Greece, had drawn the splendid illustrations that accompanied the text.
Catherwood, an architect in New York, had been forgotten, like Stephens, and Victor reconstructed their lives as one reconstructs, for a museum, a dinosaur from two or three petrified bones.
He had unearthed Stephens's letters in a New Jersey farmhouse and he discovered Stephens's unmarked grave in an old cemetery on the east side of New York, where the great traveller had been hastily buried during a cholera epidemic.
Victor had been stirred by my account of him in Makers And Finders, for Stephens was one of the lost writers whom Melville had seen in his childhood and whom I was bent on resurrecting.
Victor had led an adventurous life.
His metier was the American tropics, and he had lived all over Latin America and among the primitive tribes on the Amazon river.
Well he knew the sleepless nights, the howling sore-ridden dogs and the biting insects in the villages of the Kofanes and Huitotoes.
As a naturalist living for two years at the headwaters of the Amazon, he had collected specimens for Mexican museums, and he had taken to the London zoo a live quetzal, the sacred bird of the old Mayans.
In fact, he had raised quetzal birds in his camp in the forest of Ecuador.
Moreover, he had spent six months on the Galapagos islands, among the great turtles that Captain Cook had found there, and now and then he would disappear into some small island of the West Indies.
Victor's book on John Lloyd Stephens was largely written in my study in the house at Weston.
I had had my name taken out of the telephone book, and this was partly because of a convict who had been discharged from Sing Sing and who called me night after night.
But one day came the voice of a man I had known when he was a boy, and I later remembered that this boy, thirty years before, had struck me as coming to no good.
There had been something sinister about him that warned me against him,--I had never felt that way about any other boy,--but when he uttered his name on the telephone I had forgotten this and I was glad to do what he asked of me.
He was a captain, he said, in the army, and on the train to New York his purse and all his money had been stolen, and would I lend him twenty-five dollars to be given him at the General Delivery window?
Never hearing from him again, I remembered the little boy of whom I had had such doubts when he was ten years old.
We lived for a while in a movie melodrama with a German cook and her son who turned out to be Nazis.
Finally we got them out of the house, after the boy had run away four times looking for other Nazis, threatening to murder village schoolchildren and bragging that he was to be the next Fuhrer.
Then he began to have epileptic fits.
We found that a charitable society in New York had a long case-history of the two;
and they agreed to see that the tragic pair would not put poison in anybody else's soup.
To the Weston house came once William Allen Neilson, the president of Smith College who had been one of my old professors and who still called me Boy when I was sixty.
I had always thought of that lovable man as many years older than myself, although he was perhaps only twenty years older, and he confirmed my feeling, along with the feeling of both my sons, that teachers of the classics are invariably endearing.
He had written to me about a dinner he had had with the Benedictine monks at St. Anselm's Priory in Washington.
There had been reading at table, especially from two books, Pope Gregory The Great's account of St. Scholastica in his Dialogues and my own The World Of Washington Irving.
He said, Some have criticized your book as being neither literary criticism nor history.
Of course it was not meant to be.
Some have felt that Washington Irving comes out rather slimly, but let them look at the title of the book.
He felt as I felt about this best of all my books, that it was really tops.
Two or three times, C. C. Burlingham came to lunch with us in Weston, that wonderful man who lived to be more than a hundred years old and whose birthplace had been my Wall Street suburb.
His reading ranged from Agatha Christie to The Book Of Job and he had an insatiable interest in his fellow-creatures, while his letters were full of gossip about new politicians and old men of letters with whom he had been intimately thrown six decades before.
I could never forget the gaiety with which, when he was both blind and deaf, he let me lead him around his rooms to look at some of the pictures;
and once when he came to see us in New York he walked away in a rainstorm, unwilling to hear of a taxi or even an umbrella, although he was at the time ninety years old.
There were several men of ninety or more whom I knew first or last, all of whom were still productive and most of whom knew one another as if they had naturally come together at the apex of their lives.
I never met John Dewey, whose style was a sort of verbal fog and who had written asking me to go to Mexico with him when he was investigating the cause of Trotsky;
but I liked to think of him at ninety swimming and working at Key West long after Hemingway had moved to Cuba.
At Lee Simonson's house, I had dined with Edith Hamilton, the nonogenarian rationalist and the charming scholar who had a great popular success with The Greek Way.
Then there was Mark Howe and there was Henry Dwight Sedgwick, an accomplished man of letters who wrote in the spirit of Montaigne and produced in the end a formidable body of work.
I saw Sedgwick often before his death at ninety-five,--he had remarried at the age of ninety,--and he asked me, when once I returned from Rome, if I knew the Cavallinis in the church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere.
I had to confess that I had missed these frescoes, recently discovered, that he had studied in his eighties.
Sedgwick had chosen to follow the philosophy of Epicurus whom, with his followers, Dante put in hell;
but he defended the doctrine in The Art Of Happiness, and what indeed could be said against the Epicurean virtues, health, frugality, privacy, culture and friendship?
Of Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe the philosopher Whitehead said the Earth's first visitors to Mars should be persons likely to make a good impression, and when he was asked, Whom would you send?
He replied, My first choice would be Mark Howe.
This friend of many years came once to visit us in the house at Weston.
Then I spoke at the ninetieth birthday party of W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, who embarked on a fictional trilogy at eighty-nine and who, with The Crisis, had created a Negro intelligentsia that had never existed in America before him.
As their interpreter and guide, he had broken with Tuskegee and become a spokesman of the coloured people of the world.
Mr. Burlingham,--C.C.B.--wrote to me once about an old friend of mine, S. K. Ratcliffe, whom I had first met in London in 1914 and who also came out for a week-end in Weston.
Did you ever know a man with greater zest for information?
And his memory, like an elephant's, stored with precise knowledge of men and things and happenings.
His wife, Katie, as gay as a lark and as lively as a gazelle,--she was then seventy-six,--had a sense of humour that has been denied S.K., but neither has any aesthetic perceptions.
People and books are enough for them.
S.K. was visiting C.C.B. and, not waiting for breakfast, he was off to the University Club, where he spent hours writing obituaries of living Americans for The Manchester Guardian or The Glasgow Herald.
Later, rising ninety, he was beset by publishers for the story of his life and miracles, as he put it, but, calling himself the Needy Knife-grinder, he had spent his time writing short articles and long letters and could not get even a small popular book done.
Then, all but blind, he said there was nothing in Back to Methuselah --,--G.B.S. ought to have known that,--and I look at my bookshelves despairingly, knowing that I can have nothing more to do with them.
However, at eighty-five, he had still been busy writing articles, reviewing and speaking, and I had never before known an Englishman who had visited and lectured in three quarters of the United States.
Finally, colleges and clubs took the line that speakers from England were not wanted any longer, even speakers like S.K., so unlike the novelists and poets who had patronized the Americans for many years.
With their facile generalizations about the United States, these mediocrities, as they often were, had been great successes.
While S.K. did not like Dylan Thomas, I liked his poems very much, but I made the mistake of telling Dylan Thomas so, whereupon he said to me, I suppose you think you know all about me.
I should have replied, I probably know something about the best part of you.
But I only thought of that in the middle of the night.
Many years later I went to see S.K. in England, where he was living at Whiteleaf, near Aylesbury, and he showed me beside his cottage there the remains of the road on which Boadicea is supposed to have travelled.
He was convinced that George Orwell's 1984 was nearly all wrong as it applied to England, which was driving forward into uncharted waters, with the danger of a new tyranny ahead.
But however we go, whatever our doom, it will not take the Orwellian shape.
With facts mainly in his mind, he was often acute in the matter of style, and he said, The young who have as yet nothing to say will try larks with initial letters and broken lines.
But put them before a situation which they are forced to depict,--he was speaking of the Spanish civil war,--and they have no hesitation;
they merely do their best to make it real for others.
He looked at her as she spoke, then got up as she was speaking still, and, simply and wordlessly, walked out.
And that was the end.
Or nearly.
He went to the Hotel Mayflower and telegraphed Mencken.
Would he meet him in Baltimore in Drawing Room A, Car Three on the train leaving Washington at nine o'clock next morning?
They would go to New York together, where parties would be piled on weariness and on misery.
But not for long.
Both Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace had written him enthusiastic praise of Elmer Gantry (any changes could be made in proof, which was already coming from the printer) and they had ordered 140,000 copies--the largest first printing of any book in history.
But none of this could soothe the exacerbated nerves.
On New Year's Eve, Alfred Harcourt drove him up the Hudson to Bill Brown's Training Camp, a well-known establishment for the speedy if temporary rehabilitation of drunkards who could no longer help themselves.
But, in departing, Lewis begged Breasted that there be no liquor in the apartment at the Grosvenor on his return, and he took with him the first thirty galleys of Elmer Gantry.
On January 4, with the boys back at school and college, Mrs. Lewis wrote Harcourt to say that she was through, quite through.
This whole Washington venture was my last gesture, and it has failed.
Physically as well as mentally I have reached the limit of my endurance.
My last gift to him is complete silence until the book is out and the first heated discussion dies down.
For him to divorce God and wife simultaneously would be bad publicity.
I am really ill at the present moment, and I will go to some sort of a sanitarium to normalize myself.
And she withdrew then to Cromwell Hall, in Cromwell, Connecticut.
Harcourt replied: I do really hope you can achieve serenity in the course of time.
Of course I hope Hal can also, but those hopes are much more faint.
on January 8, 1927, he returned to the Grosvenor in high spirits, and looking fit.
He had been, he wrote Mencken at once, in the country, a euphemism for an experience that had not greatly changed him.
Charles Breasted remembers that, before unpacking his bag, he telephoned his bootlegger with a generous order, and almost at once the familiar procession of people began milling through our living room at any hour between two P.M. and three A.M..
When he came home from his office at the end of the afternoon, Breasted never knew what gathering he should expect to find, but there almost always was one.
He did not neglect his wife in Cromwell Hall, but telephoned her and wrote her with assurances of his continuing interest and of his wish to stand behind her in their separation and of his hope that there would be no bitterness between them.
She was occupying herself in an attempt to write an article about the variety of houses that they had rented abroad.
He was of unsettled mind as to whether he should go abroad when the Gantry galleys were finished.
For a time, urging Breasted to give up his public relations work and take up writing instead, he hoped to persuade him to become his assistant in research for the labor novel;
if Breasted agreed, they would get a car and tour the country, visiting every kind of industrial center.
When Breasted insisted that this was impossible for him, Lewis decided to go abroad.
He telephoned L. M. Birkhead and asked him and his wife to come to Europe as his guests, but Birkhead declined on the grounds that one of them must be in the United States when Elmer Gantry was published.
Before he made that retreat, he telephoned Earl Blackman in Kansas City and asked him to come to Europe with him.
Blackman was to be in New York by February 2, because they were sailing at 12:01 next morning.
Lewis told him what clothes he should bring along, and enjoined him not to buy anything that he did not already own, they would do that in New York.
Blackman arrived a day or two early, and Lewis took him to a department store immediately and outfitted him, luggage and all, and then he took him to a party at the Woodwards that went on until four in the morning.
On the evening that they were to sail, Lewis himself gave a party, but he was too indisposed to appear at it.
Woodward took occasion to warn Blackman about Lewis's drinking and urged him to try to keep him sober.
After a dinner party for which she had come down to New York, Mrs. Lewis and Casanova arrived to see them off, and Elinor Wylie made tart observations that indicated that Lewis had been less discreet than he had promised to be about the real nature of their separation.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Lewis was still solicitous of his condition: let him do as he wished, let him sleep with chambermaids if he must, but, she begged Blackman, try to keep him from drinking a great deal and bring him back in good health.
As they stood at the first-class rail, waving down to his wife and Casanova below, Lewis said, Earl, there is Gracie's future husband.
And when questioned by ship's reporters about the separation, she said, I adore him, and he adores me.
Blackman had brought news from Kansas City.
Before his departure, a group of his friends, the Reverend Stidger among them, had given him a luncheon, and Stidger had seen advance sheets of Elmer Gantry.
He was outraged by the book and announced that he had discovered fifty technical errors in its account of church practices.
L. M. Birkhead challenged him to name one and he was silent.
But that sermon, like those of hundreds of other ministers, was yet to be delivered.
In London Lewis took the usual suite in Bury Street.
The Manchester Guardian wondered how anyone in a railway carriage would have an opportunity to talk to Mr. Lewis, since it was well known that Mr. Lewis always did all of the talking.
His English friends, it said, had gone into training to keep up with him vocally and with his allegro movements around the luncheon table.
The New York Times editorialist wondered just who would stop Mr. Lewis and make him write a book.
There, to the Evening Post, she emphatically denied the divorce rumors and explained that she had stayed behind because of the schooling of their son, which henceforth would be strictly American.
These rumors of permanent separation started up a whole crop of stories about her.
One had it that a friend, protesting her snobbery, said, But, Gracie, you are an American, aren't you?
And she replied, I was born in America, but I was conceived in Vienna.
Lewis himself furthered these tales.
He is said to have reported that once, when she went to a hospital to call on a friend after a serious operation, and the friend protested that it had been nothing, she replied, Well, it was your healthy American peasant blood that pulled you through.
With these and similar tales he was entertaining his English friends, all of whom he was seeing when he was not showing Blackman the sights of London and its environs.
At once upon his arrival, he telephoned Lady Sybil Colefax who invited them to tea, and then Lewis decided to give a party as a quick way of rounding up his friends.
He invited Lady Sybil, Lord Thomson, Bechhofer Roberts, and a half dozen others.
It was a dinner party, Lewis had been drinking during the afternoon, and long before the party really got under way, he was quite drunk, with the result that the party broke up even before dinner was over.
Lewis, at the head of the table, would leap up and move around behind the chairs of his guests making remarks that, when not highly offensive, were at least highly inappropriate, and then presently he collapsed and was put to bed.
When Blackman emerged from the bedroom, everyone was gone except the tolerant Lord Thomson, who stayed and chatted with him for half an hour, and then Blackman lay awake most of that night, despairing of what he must expect on the Continent.
Finally, at dawn, he fell asleep, and when he awoke and came into the living room, he found Lewis in his pajamas before the fire, smoking a cigarette.
Blackman said that he wanted to apologize for not having prevented Lewis from making that horrible spectacle of himself, that he should have seized him by the neck at once and forcibly hauled him into his bedroom.
Lewis warned him never to lay a hand on him, and then Blackman asked for his fare back to the United States.
Lewis looked at him and began to cry, and then, saying that he was going to make a promise, he asked Blackman to call the porter and to tell him to take out all the liquor that he did not want.
And from now on, for the rest of this trip, I will only drink what you agree that I should drink.
Blackman called the porter and had him remove everything but one bottle of brandy, and after that they would have a cocktail or two before dinner, or, on one of their walking trips, beer, or, in France and Italy, wine in moderation.
Lewis gave him a guidebook tour of London and, motoring and walking, took him to Stratford, but the London stay was for only ten days, and on the twentieth they took the train for Southampton, where they spent the night for an early morning Channel crossing.
Near Southampton, in a considerable establishment, lived Homer Vachell, a well-known pulp writer, and his brother, Horace--both friends of Lewis's.
He suggested that they call on these brothers, who received them pleasantly.
Then they returned to their hotel and got ready for bed.
It was late, and Blackman was ready to go to sleep, but Lewis was not.
He said, We had a good time tonight, didn't we, Earl?
Earl agreed, and Lewis said that it would have been very different if his wife had been with him.
Then he kept Blackman awake for more than an hour while he did an imaginary dialogue between his wife and himself in which, discussing the evening, he was continually berated.
He began the dialogue by having his wife announce that one does not invade people's homes without warning them that one is coming, and went on from that with the entire catalogue of his social gaucheries.
From 1613 on, if the lists exist, they contain between twenty to thirty names.
There were four from St. John's and four from Christ's, three from Pembroke, and two from each of the colleges, Jesus, Peterhouse, Queens', and Trinity, with Caius, Clare, King's, Magdalene, and Sidney supplying one each in the ordo senioritatis.
The list was headed by (Henry) Hutton of St. John's who was matriculated from St. John's at Easter, 1625.
He became a fellow of Jesus in 1629, proceeded M.A. from Jesus in 1632, and was proctor in 1639-40.
The second name was (Edward) Kempe, matriculated from Queens' College at Easter, 1625.
He proceeded M.A. in 1632, and B.D. in 1639, being made fellow in 1632.
He was ordained deacon 16 June and priest 22 December 1633.
The third name was (John) Ravencroft, who was admitted to the Inner Temple in November 1631.
The fourth name was (John) Milton of Christ's College, followed by (Richard) Manningham of Peterhouse, who matriculated 16 October 1624.
Venn gave his B.A. as 1624, a mistake for 1629.
Manningham also proceeded M.A. in 1632 and became a fellow of his college in that year.
(John) Boutflower of Christ's was twelfth in the list, coming from Perse School under Mr. Lovering as pensioner 20 April 1625 under Mr. Alsop.
The fourteenth name was (Richard) Buckenham, written Buckman, admitted to Christ's College under Scott 2 July 1625.
The fifteenth name was (Thomas) Baldwin, admitted to Christ's 4 March 1625 under Alsop.
Christ's College was well represented that year in the ordo, and the name highest on the list from that college was Milton's, fourth in the entire university.
Small wonder that Milton later boasted of how well his work had been received there, since he attained a rank in the order of commencing bachelors higher than that of any other inceptor from Christ's of that year.
It is not possible to reconstruct fully the arrangements whereby these honors lists were then made up or even how the names that they contained assumed the order in which we find them.
The process usually began with a tutor boasting about a boy, as Chappell had boasted about Lightfoot, to the higher officers of the college and university.
Then the various officers of the college might take up the case.
Of course the higher officials could add or place a name on the list wherever they wished.
Milton's name being fourth is neither too high nor too low to be assigned to the arbitrary action of vice-chancellor, proctor, master, or other mighty hand.
He evidently earned the place assigned him.
Recapitulation of Milton's undergraduate career
Looking back from the spring of 1629 over the four years of Milton's undergraduate days, certain phases of his college career stand out as of permanent consequence to him and hence to us.
Of course the principal factor in the whole experience was the kind of education he received.
It differed from what an undergraduate receives today from any American college or university mainly in the certainty of what he was forced to learn compared with the loose and widely scattered information obtained today by most of our undergraduates.
Milton was required to absorb and display an intensive and accurate knowledge of Latin grammar, logic-rhetoric, ethics, physics or natural philosophy, metaphysics, and Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
He had also sampled various special fields of learning, being unable to miss some study of divinity, Justinian (law), and Galen (medicine).
Above all, he had learned to write formal Latin prose and verse to a remarkable degree of artistry.
He had learned to dispute devastatingly, both formally and informally in Latin, and according to the rules on any topic, pro or con, drawn from almost any subject, more especially from Aristotle's works.
He could produce carefully constructed orations, set and formal speeches, artfully and prayerfully made by writing and rewriting with all the aid his tutor and others could provide, and then delivered verbatim from memory.
He had also learned to dispute extempore remarkably well, the main evidence for which of course is the presence of his name in the honors list of 1628/29.
He also displayed the ability to write Latin verse on almost any topic of dispute, the verses, of course, to be delivered from memory.
Then we have surviving at least one instance of a poem prepared for another, in Naturam non Pati Senium, and perhaps also the De Idea Platonica.
But his greatest achievement, in his own eyes and in the eyes of his colleagues and teachers, was his amazing ability to produce literary Latin pieces, and he was often called on to do so.
These were his public academic activities, domi forisque, in the college and in the university.
And his performances attracted much attention, as the frequency of his surviving pieces in any calendar that may be set up for his undergraduate activities testifies.
His other activities are not so easily recovered.
His statements about sports and exercises of a physical nature are suggestive, but inconclusive.
His later boastings of his skill with the small sword are indicative of much time and practice devoted to the use of that weapon.
Venn and others have dealt with sports and pastimes at Cambridge in Milton's day with not very specific results.
Milton himself, uncommunicative as he is about his lesser and nonliterary activities, at least gives us some evidence that he was a great walker, under any and all conditions.
His early poems and some of his prose prolusions speak of wanderings in the city and the neighboring country that may be extended to Cambridge and its surrounding countryside.
The town itself and the reedy Cam he often visited, as did all in the university.
The churches, the taverns, and the various other places of the town must have known his figure well as he roved to and about them.
The tiny hamlet of Chesterton to the north, with the fens and marshes lying on down the Ouse River, may have attracted him often, as it did many other youths of the time.
The Gog Magog Hills to the southeast afforded him and all other students a vantage point from which to view the town and university of their dwelling.
The country about Cambridge is flat and not particularly spectacular in its scenery, though it offers easy going to the foot traveler.
Ball games, especially football, required some attention, and other organized sports may have attracted him as participant or spectator.
What manner of person does Milton appear to have been when as an undergraduate he resided at Christ's College?
He was then a slightly built young man of pleasing appearance, medium stature, and handsome face.
Graceful as his fencing and dancing lessons had taught him to be in addition to the natural grace of his slight, wiry frame, he cut enough of a figure to have evoked a nickname in the college, to which he himself referred in Prolusion 6::
A quibusdam, audivi nuper Domina.
That is, if we can trust that most specious of prolusions, packed as it is with wit and persiflage.
The Domina sounds real enough, if we could only trust the conditions under which we learn of its use;
but anyone who would put much trust in any phase of Prolusion 6, except its illusive allusiveness deserves whatever fate may be meted out to him by virtue of the egregiously stilted banter.
In short, the traditional epithet for Milton of'Lady of Christ's ', while eminently fitting, rests only on this baffling passage in the midst of the most treacherous piece of writing Milton left us.
Aubrey's mention of it (2:67, and Bodleian MS Aubr. 8, F. 63) comes from this prolusion, through Christopher Milton or Edward Phillips.
It is not a question of truth or falsity;
the prolusion in which the autobiographic statement about the epithet occurs is such a mass of intentionally buried allusions that almost nothing in it can be accepted as true--or discarded as false.
The entire exercise, Latin and English, is most suggestive of the kind of person Milton had become at Christ's during his undergraduate career;
the mere fact that he was selected, though as a substitute, to act as interlocutor or moderator for it, or perhaps we should say with Buck as'father of the act ', is in itself a difficult phase of his development to grasp.
Milton was to act as the archfool, the supreme wit, the lightly bantering pater, Pater Liber, who could at once trip lightly over that which deserved such treatment, or could at will annihilate the common enemies of the college gathering, and with words alone.
From an exercise involving merely raucous, rough-and-tumble comedy, in his hands the performance turned into a revel of wit and word play, indecent at times, but always learned, pointed, and carefully aimed at some individuals present, and at the whole assembly.
To do this successfully required great skill and a special talent for both solemn and ribald raillery, a talent not bestowed on many persons, but one with which Milton was marked as being endowed and in which, at least in this performance, he obviously reveled.
All western Europe would hear and listen to him in this same vein about the middle of the century.
But these prolusions that we have surviving from the Christ's College days are only one phase of his existence then.
Perhaps his most important private activity was the combination of reading, discussion with a few--if we can trust his writings to Diodati and the younger Gill, very few--congenial companions.
Lines 23-36 of Lycidas later point to a friendship with Edward King, who entered Christ's College 9 June 1626.
No other names among the young men in residence at the time seem to have been even suggested by Milton as those of persons with whom he in any way consorted.
But that scarcely means that he was the aloof, forbidding type of student who shared few if any activities with his fellows, the banter of the surviving prolusions providing enough evidence to deny this.
Apparently he was not a participant in the college or university theatricals, which he once attacked as utterly unworthy performances (see Apology, 3:300);
but even in that famous passage, Milton was aiming not at the theatricals as such but at their performance by'persons either enter'd, or presently to enter into the ministry.
The fact that he nowhere mentioned theatrical performances as part of the activities of the boys later in his hypothetical academy (1644) should not be taken too seriously as evidence that he desired them to eschew such performances.
Perhaps, in that short piece or letter written to Hartlib in which he sketched his scheme for educating young men, he merely overlooked that phase of their exercises.
Writers of this class of science fiction have clearly in mind the assumptions that man can master the principles of this cause-and-effect universe and that such mastery will necessarily better the human lot.
In Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), though written after the present flood of dystopias began, we can see the bright vision of science fiction clearly defined.
Arriving just in time to stop men from turning their planet into a radioactive wasteland, the Overlords unite earth into one world in which justice, order, and benevolence prevail and ignorance, poverty, and fear have ceased to exist.
Under their rule, earth becomes a technological utopia.
A man could travel anywhere he pleased, eat whatever he fancied--without handing over any money.
Mankind, as a result, attains previously undreamed of levels of civilization and culture, a golden age which the Overlords, a very evident symbol of science, have helped produce by introducing reason and the scientific method into human activities.
Thus science is the savior of mankind, and in this respect Childhood's End only blueprints in greater detail the vision of the future which, though not always so directly stated, has nevertheless been present in the minds of most science-fiction writers.
And they have done this on a very large scale, with a veritable flood of novels and stories which are either dystopias or narratives of adventure with dystopian elements.
Among the dystopias, for example, Isaac Asimov's The Caves Of Steel (1954) portrays the deadly effects on human life of the super-city of the future;
James Blish's A Case Of Conscience (1958) describes a world hiding from its own weapons of destruction in underground shelters;
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1954) presents a book-burning society in which wall television and hearing-aid radios enslave men's minds;
Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s, A Canticle For Leibowitz (1959) finds men, after the great atomic disaster, stumbling back to their previous level of civilization and another catastrophe;
Frederick Pohl's The Midas Touch (1954) predicts an economy of abundance which, in order to remain prosperous, must set its robots to consuming surplus production;
Clifford D. Simak's How-2 (1954) tells of a future when robots have taken over, leaving men nothing to do;
and Robert Sheckley's The Status Civilization (1960) describes a world which, frightened by the powers of destruction science has given it, becomes static and conformist.
What makes the current phenomenon unique is that so many science-fiction writers have reversed a trend and turned to writing works critical of the impact of science and technology on human life.
Not all recent science fiction, however, is dystopian, for the optimistic strain is still very much alive in Mission Of Gravity and Childhood's End, as we have seen, as well as in many other recent popular novels and stories like Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud (1957);
and among works of dystopian science fiction, not all provide intelligent criticism and very few have much merit as literature--but then real quality has always been scarce in science fiction.
In addition, there are many areas of the human situation besides the impact of science and technology which are examined, for science-fiction dystopias often extrapolate political, social, economic tendencies only indirectly related to science and technology.
Nevertheless, with all these qualifications and exceptions, the current dystopian phenomenon remains impressive for its criticism that science and technology, instead of bringing utopia, may well enslave, dehumanize, and even destroy men.
How effectively these warnings can be presented is seen in Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants, Vonnegut's Player Piano and Wyndham's Re-Birth.
Like ours, the economy of the space merchants must constantly expand in order to survive, and, like ours, it is based on the principle of ever increasing everybody's work and profits in the circle of consumption.
The consequences, of course, have been dreadful: reckless expansion has led to overpopulation, pollution of the earth and depletion of its natural resources.
For example, even the most successful executive lives in a two-room apartment while ordinary people rent space in the stairwells of office buildings in which to sleep at night;
soyaburgers have replaced meat, and wood has become so precious that it is saved for expensive jewelry;
and the atmosphere is so befouled that no one dares walk in the open without respirators or soot plugs.
While The Space Merchants indicates, as Kingsley Amis has correctly observed, some of the impending consequences of the growth of industrial and commercial power and satirizes existing habits in the advertising profession, its warning and analysis penetrate much deeper.
What is wrong with advertising is not only that it is an outrage, an assault on people's mental privacy or that it is a major cause for a wasteful economy of abundance or that it contains a coercive tendency (which is closer to the point).
Rather what Kornbluth and Pohl are really doing is warning against the dangers inherent in perfecting a science of man and his motives.
The Space Merchants, like such humanist documents as Joseph Wood Krutch's The Measure Of Man and C. S. Lewis's The Abolition Of Man, considers what may result from the scientific study of human nature.
Thus we will have a society consisting of the planners or conditioners, and the controlled.
And this, of course, is exactly what Madison Avenue has been accused of doing albeit in a primitive way, with its hidden persuaders and what the space merchants accomplish with much greater sophistication and precision.
As the hero, Mitchell Courtenay, explains before his conversion, the job of advertising is to convince people without letting them know that they're being convinced.
And the second requirement for convincing people without their knowledge is artistic talent to prepare the words and pictures which persuade by using the principles which the scientists have discovered.
Thus the copywriter in the world of the space merchants is the person who in earlier ages might have been a lyric poet, the person capable of putting together words that stir and move and sing.
As Courtenay explains, Here in this profession we reach into the souls of men and women.
And we do it by taking talent--and redirecting it.
Now the basic question to be asked in this situation is what motivates the manipulators, that is, what are their values?
-- since, as Courtenay says, Nobody should play with lives the way we do unless he's motivated by the highest ideals.
But the only ideal he can think of is Sales!
Indeed, again and again, the space merchants confirm the prediction of the humanists that the conditioners and behavioral scientists, once they have seen through human nature, will have nothing except their impulses and desires to guide them.
We often say of a person that he looks young for his age or old for his age.
Yet even in the more extreme of such cases we seldom go very far astray in guessing what his age actually is.
And this means, I suppose, that almost invariably age reveals itself by easily recognizable signs engraved on both the body and the mind.
Young for his age means only the presence of some minor characteristic not quite usual.
Stigmata quite sufficient for diagnosis are nevertheless there.
An assumption of youth, or the presence of a few youthful characteristics, deceives no more successfully than rouge or dyed hair.
Looking young for your age means for your age and it means no more.
A mind expressing itself in words may reveal itself a little less obviously as old or young.
Its surface loses its bloom and submits to its wrinkles in ways less immediately obvious than the body does.
Youth may be, and often is, skeptical, cynical or despairing;
age may be idealistic, believing and much given to professions of optimism.
But there is, nevertheless, always a subtle difference in the way in which supposedly similar opinions are held.
The pessimism of the young is defiant, anxious to confess or even exaggerate its ostensible gloom, and so exuberant as to reveal the fact that it regards its ability to face up to the awful truth as more than enough to compensate for the awfulness of that truth.
Similarly the optimism of age protests too much.
If it proclaims that the best is yet to be, it always arouses, at least in the young, either a suspicious question or perhaps the exclamation of the Negro youth who saw on a tombstone the inscription, I am not dead but sleeping.
Boy, you ain't fooling nobody but yourself.
We may say of some unfortunates that they were never young.
We cannot truthfully say of anyone who has succeeded in entering deep into his sixties that he was never old.
Those famous lines of the Greek Anthology with which a fading beauty dedicates her mirror at the shrine of a goddess reveal a wise attitude: Venus, take my votive glass, Since I am not what I was, What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see.
No good can come of contemplating the sad, inevitable fact that once youth has passed a worse and worse time still succeeds the former.
But there are at least two reasons for contemplating one's mind in even a cracked mirror.
One is that there sometimes are real although inadequate compensations in growing old.
Serenity, if one is fortunate enough to achieve it, is not so good as joy, but it is something.
Even to be from hope and fear set free is at least better than to have lost the first without having got rid of the second.
One may be exasperatingly aware that if the answer is favorable it will be judged such only by those of one's own age.
But at least the question has been raised.
Many readers of this department no doubt discount certain of my opinions for the simple reason that they can guess pretty accurately, even if they have never actually been told, what my age is.
At least I should like them to know that I know these discounts are being made.
Let me then (and in public) glance into the mirror.
I have known some men and women who said that the selves they are told about or even remember seem utter strangers to them now;
that their remote past is as discontinuous with their present selves, as lacking in any conscious likeness to their mature personality, as the self of a butterfly may be imagined discontinuous with that of the caterpillar it once was.
For my part I find it difficult to conceive such a state of affairs.
I have changed and I have reversed opinions;
but I am so aware of an uninterrupted continuity of the persona or ego that I see only as absurd the tendency of some psychologists from Heraclitus to Pirandello and Proust to regard consciousness as no more than a flux amid which nothing remains unchanged.
So far as I am concerned, the child is unmistakably father to the man, despite the obvious fact that child and father differ greatly--sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Fundamental values, temperament and the way in which one approaches a conviction change less, of course, than specific opinions.
But I will also remind them that I have always been inclined to skepticism, to a kind of Laodicean lack of commitment so far as public affairs are concerned;
so that, although not as eager as I once was to be disapproved of, I can still resist prevailing opinions.
At about the age of twelve I became a Spencerian liberal, and I have always considered myself a liberal of some kind even though the definition has changed repeatedly since Spencer became a reactionary.
Several times in my youth I voted the Socialist ticket, but less because I was Socialist than because I was not either a Republican or a Democrat, and I voted for Franklin Roosevelt every time he was a candidate.
Yet during the years when I was on the staff of The Nation, I tried to the limit the patience of the editors on almost every occasion when I was permitted to write an editorial having a bearing on a political or social question.
Never once during the trying thirties did I come so close to succumbing to the private climate of opinion as to grant Russian communism even that most weasel-worded of encomiums an interesting experiment.
There are few things of which I am prouder than of that unblemished record.
Many of my friends at the time thought that I had received a well-deserved condemnation when Lincoln Steffens denounced me in a review of one of my books as a perfect example of the obsolete man who could understand and sympathize only with the dead past.
But he, as I can now retort, was the man who could see so short a distance ahead that after a visit to Russia he gave voice to the famous exclamation: I have seen the future and it works.
The favorite excuse of those who have now recanted their approval of communism is that they did not know how things would develop.
With this excuse I have never been much impressed.
There was, it seems to me, enough in the openly declared principles and intentions of Russian leaders to alienate honorable men without their having to wait to see how it would turn out.
Once many years ago I sat at dinner next to Arthur Train, and the subject of The Nation came up.
He asked me suddenly, What are your political opinions?
Well, I replied, some of my colleagues on the paper regard me as a rank reactionary.
After a moment's thought he replied, That still leaves you a lot of latitude.
And I suppose it did.
I never have been, and am not now, any kind of utopian.
When I first came across Samuel Johnson's pronouncement, the remedy for the ills of life is palliative rather than radical, it seemed to me to sum up the profoundest of political and social truths.
It will probably explain more of my attitudes toward society than any other phrase or principle could.
Why did I choose to fill these pages in this particular issue with this mixture of rather tenuous reflections and autobiography?
The reason is, I think, my awareness that my remarks last quarter on pacifism may well have served to confirm the opinion of some that my tendency to skepticism and dissent gets us nowhere, and that I am simply too old to hope.
I would, however, like to suggest that, wrong though I may be, the tendency to see dilemmas rather than solutions is one of which I have been a victim ever since I can remember, and therefore not merely a senile phenomenon.
I know that one must act.
But one need not always be sure that the action is either wise or conclusive.
Apropos of what some would call cynicism, I remember an anecdote the source of which I forget.
It concerns a small-town minister who staged an impressive object lesson by confining a lion and a lamb together in the same cage outside his church door.
Not only his parishioners, but the whole town and, ultimately, the whole county were enormously impressed by this object lesson.
One day he was visited by a delegation of would-be imitators who wanted to know his secret.
How on earth do you manage it?
What is the trick?
Why, he replied, it is perfectly simple;
there is no trick involved.
All you have to do is put in a fresh lamb from time to time.
Cynical?
Blasphemous?
Not really, it seems to me.
The promise that the lion and the lamb will lie down together was given in the future tense.
It is not something that can be expected to happen now.
namely, the law that prescribes the death penalty for murder when there seem to be no extenuating circumstances.
It is not that I am unaware of the force of their strongest contention.
Life, they say, should be regarded as sacred and, therefore, as something that neither an individual nor his society has a right to take away.
In fact I cannot imagine myself condemning a man to the noose or the electric chair if I had to take, as an individual, the responsibility for his death.
Just as I know I would make a bad soldier even though I cannot sincerely call myself a pacifist, so too I would not be either a hangman by profession or, if I could avoid it, even a member of a hanging jury.
Despite these facts the question::
Should no murderer ever be executed?
Seems to me to create a dilemma not to be satisfactorily disposed of by a simple negative answer.
Punishment of the wrongdoer, so liberals are inclined to say, can have only three possible justifications: revenge, reformation or deterrent example.
Andre Malraux's The Walnut Trees Of Altenburg was written in the early years of the second World War, during a period of enforced leisure when he was taken prisoner by the Germans after the fall of France.
The manuscript, presumably after being smuggled out of the country, was published in Switzerland in 1943.
The work as it stands is not the entire book that Malraux wrote at that time--it is only the first section of a three-part novel called La Lutte avec l'Ange;
and this first section was somehow preserved (there are always these annoying little mysteries about the actual facts of Malraux's life) when the Gestapo destroyed the rest.
If we are to believe the list of titles printed in Malraux's latest book, La Metamorphose Des Dieux, Vol. 1 ((1957), he is still engaged in writing a large novel under his original title.
But as he remarks in his preface to The Walnut Trees, a novel can hardly ever be rewritten, and when this one appears in its final form, the form of the first part will no doubt be radically changed.
Malraux pretends, perhaps with a trifle too self-conscious a modesty, that his fragmentary work will accordingly appeal only to the curiosity of bibliophiles and to connoisseurs of what might have been.
Even in its present form, however, the first part of Malraux's unrecoverable novel is among the greatest works of mid-twentieth century literature;
and it should be far better known than it is.
The theme of The Walnut Trees Of Altenburg is most closely related to its immediate predecessor in Malraux's array of novels: Man's Hope (1937).
Even so apparently impartial a critic as W. H. Frohock has taken for granted that the book was originally intended as a piece of Loyalist propaganda;
and has then gone on to argue, with unimpeachable consistency, that all the obviously non-propagandistic aspects of the book are simply inadvertent contradictions.
Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth.
The whole purpose of Man's Hope is to portray the tragic dialectic between means and ends inherent in all organized political violence--and even when such violence is a necessary and legitimate self-defense of liberty, justice and human dignity.
Man engages only a small part of himself in an action says old Alvear the art-historian;
and the more the action claims to be total, the smaller is the part of man engaged.
These lines never cease to haunt the book amidst all the exaltations of combat, and to make an appeal for a larger and more elemental human community than one based on the brutal necessities of war.
It is this larger theme of the quality of man, a quality that transcends the ideological and flows into the human, which now forms the pulsating heart of Malraux's artistic universe.
Malraux, to be sure, does not abandon the world of violence, combat and sudden death which has become his hallmark as a creative artist, and which is the only world, apparently, in which his imagination can flame into life.
The Walnut Trees Of Altenburg includes not one war but two, and throws in a Turkish revolution along with some guerrilla fighting in the desert for good measure.
On the contrary, the frenzy and furor of combat is only the sombre foil against which the sudden illuminations of the human flash forth with the piercing radiance of a Caravaggio.
The Walnut Trees Of Altenburg is composed in the form of a triptych, with the two small side panels framing and enclosing the main central episode of the novel.
This central episode consists of a series of staccato scenes set in the period from the beginning of the present century up to the first World War.
The framing scenes, on the other hand, both take place in the late Spring of 1940, just at the moment of the defeat of France in the second great world conflict.
The narrator is an Alsatian serving with the French Army, and he has the same name (Berger) that Malraux himself was later to use in the Resistance;
like Malraux he was also serving in the tank corps before being captured, and we learn as well that in civilian life he had been a writer.
These biographical analogies are obvious, and far too much time has been spent speculating on their possible implications.
Much more important is to grasp the feelings of the narrator (whose full name is never given) as he becomes aware of the disorganized and bewildered mass of French prisoners clustered together in a temporary prison camp in and around the cathedral of Chartres.
For as his companions gradually dissolve back into a state of primitive confrontation with elemental necessity, as they lose all the appanage of their acquired culture, he is overcome by the feeling that he is at last being confronted with the essence of mankind.
As a writer, by what have I been obsessed these last ten years, if not by mankind?
Here I am face to face with the primeval stuff.
The intuition about mankind conveyed in these opening pages is of crucial importance for understanding the remainder of the text;
and we must attend to it more closely than has usually been done.
What does the narrator see and what does he feel?
A good many pages of the first section are taken up with an account of the dogged determination of the prisoners to write to their wives and families--even when it becomes clear that the Germans are simply allowing the letters to blow away in the wind.
Awkwardly and laboriously, in stiff, unemotional phrases, the soldiers continue to bridge the distance between themselves and those they love;
they instinctively struggle to keep open a road to the future in their hearts.
This new vision of man that the narrator acquires is also accompanied by a re-vision of his previous view.
I thought I knew more than my education had taught me, notes the narrator, because I had encountered the militant mobs of a political or religious faith.
Is this not Malraux himself alluding to his own earlier infatuation with the ideological?
But now he knows that an intellectual is not only a man to whom books are necessary, he is any man whose reasoning, however elementary it may be, affects and directs his life.
From this point of view the militant mobs of the past, stirred into action by one ideology or another, were all composed of intellectuals--and this is not the level on which the essence of mankind can be discovered.
The men around him, observes the narrator, have been living from day to day for thousands of years.
The human is deeper than a mass ideology, certainly deeper than the isolated individual;
and the narrator recalls the words of his father, Vincent Berger: It is not by any amount of scratching at the individual that one finally comes down to mankind.
The entire middle section of The Walnut Trees is taken up with the life of Vincent Berger himself, whose fragmentary notes on his encounters with mankind are now conveyed by his son.
He was not much older than myself, writes the narrator, when he began to feel the impact of that human mystery which now obsesses me, and which makes me begin, perhaps, to understand him.
For the figure of Vincent Berger Malraux has obviously drawn on his studies of T. E. Lawrence (though Berger fights on the side of the Turks instead of against them), and like both Lawrence and Malraux himself he is a fervent admirer of Nietzsche.
A professor at the University of Constantinople, where his first course of lectures was on Nietzsche and the philosophy of action, Vincent Berger becomes head of the propaganda department of the German Embassy in Turkey.
As an Alsatian before the first World War he was of course of German nationality;
but he quickly involves himself in the Young Turk revolutionary movement to such an extent that his own country begins to doubt his patriotism.
And, after becoming the right-hand man of Enver Pasha, he is sent by the latter to pave the way for a new Turkish Empire embracing the union of all Turks throughout Central Asia from Adrianople to the Chinese oases on the Silk Trade Route.
Vincent Berger's mission is a failure because the Ottoman nationalism on which Enver Pasha counted does not exist.
Central Asia is sunk in a somnolence from which nothing can awaken it;
and amid a dusty desolation in which nothing human any longer seemed to survive, Vincent Berger begins to dream of the Occident.
Oh, for the green of Europe!
Trains whistling in the night, the rattle and clatter of cabs.
Finally, after almost being beaten to death by a madman--he could not fight back because madmen are sacred to Islam--he throws up his mission and returns to Europe.
This has been his first encounter with mankind, and, although he has now become a legendary figure in the popular European press, it leaves him profoundly dissatisfied.
Despite Berger's report, Enver Pasha refuses to surrender his dream of a Turkish Blood Alliance;
and Vincent Berger learns that political ambition is more apt to hide than to reveal the truth about men.
But as he discovers shortly, on returning among intellectuals obsessed by le culte du moi, his experience of action had also taught him a more positive lesson.
For six years my father had had to do too much commanding and convincing, writes the narrator, not to understand that man begins with'the other'''.
And when Vincent Berger returns to Europe, this first result of his encounters with mankind is considerably enriched and deepened by a crucial revelation.
For a dawning sense of illumination occurs in consequence of two events which, as so often in Malraux, suddenly confront a character with the existential question of the nature and value of human life.
One such event is the landing in Europe itself, when the mingled familiarity and strangeness of the Occident, after the blank immensities of Asia, shocks the returning traveller into a realization of the infinite possibilities of human life.
In a pessimistic assessment of the cold war, Eden declared: There must be much closer unity within the West before there can be effective negotiation with the East.
Ordinary methods of diplomacy within the free world are inadequate, said the former Prime Minister.
Something much more thorough is required.
Citing the experience of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in World War 2, Eden said that all would have been confusion and disarray without them.
This, he said, is exactly what has been happening between the politically free nations in the postwar world.
We need joint chiefs of a political general staff.
Citing the advances of Communist power in recent years, Sir Anthony observed: This very grave state of affairs will continue until the free nations accept together the reality of the danger that confronts them and unite their policies and resources to meet it.
While I fully agree with Sir Anthony's contention, I think that we must carry the analysis farther, bearing in mind that while common peril may be the measure of our need, the existence or absence of a positive sense of community must be the measure of our capacity.
While it is hazardous to project the trend of history, it seems clear that a genuine community is painfully emerging in the Western world, particularly among the countries of Western Europe.
At the end of World War 2, free Europe was ready for a new beginning.
The excesses of nationalism had brought down upon Europe a generation of tyranny and war, and a return to the old order of things seemed unthinkable.
Under these conditions a new generation of Europeans began to discover the bonds of long association and shared values that for so long had been subordinated to nationalist xenophobia.
A slow and painful trend toward unification has taken hold, a trend which may at any time be arrested and reversed but which may also lead to a binding federation of Europe.
It may well be that the unification of Europe will prove inadequate, that the survival of free society will require nothing less than the confederation of the entire Western world.
The movement toward European unity has been expressed in two currents: federalism and functionalism, one looking to the constitution of a United States of Europe, the other building on wartime precedents of practical cooperation for the solution of specific problems.
Thus far the advances made have been almost entirely along functional lines.
Many factors contributed to the growth of the European movement.
In 1946 Sir Winston Churchill, who had spoken often of European union during the war, advocated the formation of a kind of United States of Europe.
Had Churchill been returned to office in 1945, it is just possible that Britain, instead of standing fearfully aloof, would have led Europe toward union.
In 1947 and 1948 the necessity of massive coordinated efforts to achieve economic recovery led to the formation of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation to supervise and coordinate the uses of American aid under the Marshall Plan.
Another powerful factor in the European movement was the threat of Soviet aggression.
The Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was followed immediately by the conclusion of the Brussels Treaty, a 50-year alliance among Britain, France and the Benelux countries.
And of course the Soviet threat was responsible for NATO, the grand alliance of the Atlantic nations.
New organs of unification proliferated in the decade following the conclusion of the NATO alliance.
In 1949 the Council of Europe came into existence, a purely consultative parliamentary body but the first organ of political rather than functional unity.
In 1952, the European Coal and Steel Community was launched, placing the coal and steel production of France, West Germany, Italy and Benelux under a supranational High Authority.
For a time it appeared that a common European army might be created, but the project for a European Defense Community was rejected by the French National Assembly in 1954.
In 1957 the social-economic approach to European integration was capped by the formation among the Six of a tariff-free European Common Market, and Euratom for cooperation in the development of atomic energy.
The overseas democracies have generally encouraged the European unification movement without seriously considering the wisdom of their own full participation in a broader Atlantic community.
The United States and Canada belong only to NATO and the new O.E.C.D..
Britain until recently went along in some areas with all of the enthusiasm of the groom at a shotgun wedding.
In other areas it held back, pleading its Commonwealth bonds.
Now Britain has decided to seek admission to the European Economic Community and it seems certain that she will be joined by some of her partners in the loose Free Trade Area of the Outer Seven.
Besides its historical significance as a break with the centuries-old tradition of British insularity, Britain's move, if successful, will constitute an historic landmark of the first importance in the movement toward the unification of Europe and the Western world.
If a broader Atlantic community is to be formed--and my own judgment is that it lies within the realm of both our needs and our capacity--a ready nucleus of machinery is at hand in the NATO alliance.
The time is now ripe, indeed overdue, for the vigorous development of its non-military potentialities, for its development as an instrument of Atlantic community.
They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any and all of them.
As Lester Pearson wrote in 1955::
NATO cannot live on fear alone.
It cannot become the source of a real Atlantic community if it remains organized to deal only with the military threat which first brought it into being.
The problem of NATO is not one of machinery, of which there is an abundance, but of the will to use it.
The NATO Council is available as an executive agency, the Standing Group as a high military authority.
The unofficial Conference of Parliamentarians is available as a potential legislative authority.
This machinery will not become the instrument of an Atlantic community by fiat, but only when that community evolves from potentiality to reality.
The existence of a community is a state of mind--a conviction that goals and values are widely shared, that effective communication is possible, that mutual trust is reasonably assured.
An equally promising avenue toward Atlantic community may lie through the development and expansion of the O.E.C.D..
Conceived as an organ of economic cooperation, there is no reason why O.E.C.D. cannot evolve into a broader instrument of union if its members so desire.
Underlying these hopes and prescriptions is a conviction that the nations of the North Atlantic area do indeed form a community, at least a potential community.
There is nothing new in this;
what is new and compelling is that the West is now but one of several powerful civilizations, or systems, and that one or more of the others may pose a mortal danger to the West.
For centuries the North Atlantic nations dominated the world and as long as they did they could afford the luxury of fighting each other.
That time is now past and the Atlantic nations, if they are to survive, must develop a full-fledged community, and they must also look beyond the frontiers of Western civilization toward a world-wide concert of free nations.
The burden of these reflections is that a broader unity among the free nations is at the core of our needs.
And if we do not aspire to too much, it is also within our capacity.
A realistic balancing of the need for new forms of international organization on the one hand, and our capacity to achieve them on the other, must be approached through the concept of community.
History has demonstrated many times that concerts of nations based solely on the negative spur of common danger are unlikely to survive when the external danger ceases to be dramatically urgent.
Only when a concert of nations rests on the positive foundations of shared goals and values is it likely to form a viable instrument of long-range policy.
It follows that the solution to the current disunity of the free nations is only to a very limited extent a matter of devising new machinery of consultation and coordination.
It is very much a matter of building the foundations of community.
It is for these reasons that proposals for a new world order, through radical overhaul of the United Nations or through some sort of world federation, are utterly fatuous.
In a recent book called World Peace Through World Law, two distinguished lawyers, Grenville Clark and Louis Sohn, call for just such an overhaul of the U.N., basing their case on the world-wide fear of a nuclear holocaust.
I believe that these proposals, however meritorious in terms of world needs, go far beyond our capacity to realize them.
Such proposals look to an apocalyptic act, a kind of Lockian social contract on a world-wide scale.
The defect of these proposals is in their attempt to outrun history and their assumption that because something may be desirable it is also possible.
A working concept of the organic evolution of community must lead us in a different direction.
The failures of the U.N. and of other international organs suggest that we have already gone beyond what was internationally feasible.
Our problem, therefore, is to devise processes more modest in their aspirations, adjusted to the real world of sovereign nation states and diverse and hostile communities.
The history of the U.N. demonstrates that in a pluralistic world we must develop processes of influence and persuasion rather than coercion.
It is possible that international organization will ultimately supplant the multi-state system, but its proper function for the immediate future is to reform and supplement that system in order to render pluralism more compatible with an interdependent world.
New machinery of coordination should not be our primary objective in the foreseeable future--though perhaps the political general staff of Western leaders proposed by Sir Anthony Eden would serve a useful purpose.
Generally, however, there is an abundance of available machinery of coordination--in NATO, in O.E.C.D., in the U.N. and elsewhere.
The trouble with this machinery is that it is not used and the reason that it is not used is the absence of a conscious sense of community among the free nations.
Our proper objective, then, is the development of a new spirit, the realization of a potential community.
A concert of free nations should take its inspiration from the traditions of the nineteenth century Concert of Europe with its common values and accepted rules of the game.
Constitutions of and by themselves mean little;
the history of both the League of Nations and the United Nations demonstrates that.
But a powerful sense of community, even with little or no machinery, means a great deal.
That is the lesson of the nineteenth century.
A realistic concert of free nations might be expected to consist of an inner community of the North Atlantic nations and an outer community embracing much or all of the non-Communist world.
The recent experiments in the new poetry-and-jazz movement seen by some as part of the San Francisco Renaissance have been as popular as they are notorious.
It might well start a craze like swallowing goldfish or pee-wee golf, wrote Kenneth Rexroth in an explanatory note in the Evergreen Review, and he may have been right.
Under the general heading poetry-and-jazz widely divergent experiments have been carried out.
Lawrence Ferlenghetti and Bruce Lippincott have concentrated on writing a new poetry for reading with jazz that is very closely related to both the musical forms of jazz, and the vocabulary of the musician.
Even musicians themselves have taken to writing poetry.
(Judy Tristano now has poems as well as ballads written for her.
But the best known exploiters of the new medium are Kenneth Rexroth and Kenneth Patchen.
Rexroth and Patchen are far apart musically and poetically in their experiments.
Rexroth is a longtime jazz buff, a name-dropper of jazz heroes, and a student of traditional as well as modern jazz.
In San Francisco he has worked with Brew Moore, Charlie Mingus, and other swinging musicians of secure reputation, thus placing himself within established jazz traditions, in addition to being a part of the San Francisco School.
Although Patchen has given previous evidence of an interest in jazz, the musical group that he works with, the Chamber Jazz Sextet, is often ignored by jazz critics.
(Downbeat did not mention the Los Angeles appearance of Patchen and the Sextet, although the engagement lasted over two months.
) The stated goal of the CJS is the synthesis of jazz and serious music.
Patchen's musicians are outsiders in established jazz circles, and Patchen himself has remained outside the San Francisco poetry group, maintaining a self-imposed isolation, even though his conversion to poetry-and-jazz is not as extreme or as sudden as it may first appear.
He had read his poetry with musicians as early as 1951, and his entire career has been characterized by radical experiments with the form and presentation of his poetry.
However, his subject matter and basic themes have remained surprisingly consistent, and these, together with certain key poetic images, may be traced through all his work, including the new jazz experiments.
From the beginning of his career, Patchen has adopted an anti-intellectual approach to poetry.
His first book, Before The Brave (1936), is a collection of poems that are almost all Communistic, but after publication of this book he rejected Communism, and advocated a pacifistic anarchy, though retaining his revolutionary idiom.
He spoke for a proletariat that included all the lost and sick and hunted of the earth.
Patchen believes that the world is being destroyed by power-hungry and money-hungry people.
Running counter to the destroying forces in the world are all the virtues that are innate in man, the capacity for love and brotherhood, the ability to appreciate beauty.
Beauty as well as love is redemptive, and Patchen preaches a kind of moral salvation.
This salvation does not take the form of a Christian Heaven.
In Patchen's eyes, organized churches are as odious as organized governments, and Christian symbols, having been taken over by the moneyed classes, are now agents of corruption.
Patchen envisions a Dark Kingdom which stands above the waters as a sentinel warning man of danger from his own kind.
The Dark Kingdom sends Angels of Death and other fateful messengers down to us with stern tenderness.
Actually Heaven and the Dark Kingdom overlap;
they form two aspects of heavenly life after death.
Patchen has almost never used strict poetic forms;
he has experimented instead with personal myth-making.
Much of his earlier work was conceived in terms of a pseudo-anthropological myth reference, which is concerned with imaginary places and beings described in grandiloquent and travelogue-like language.
These early experiments were evidently not altogether satisfying to Patchen.
Art makings or pseudo-anthropological myths did not meet all of Patchen's requirements for a poetic frame of reference.
Many of his poems purported to be exactly contemporary and political;
so during the period approximately from 1941 to 1946, Patchen often used private detective stories as a myth reference, and the private eye as a myth hero.
Speaking in terms of sociological stereotype, the private eye might appeal to the poet in search of a myth for many reasons.
The private detective (at least in the minds of listeners and readers all over the country) is an individual hero fighting injustice.
He is usually something of an underdog, he must battle the organized police force as well as recognized criminals.
The private detective must rely, as the Youngest Son or Trickster Hero does in primitive myth, on his wits.
The private detective is militant against injustice, a humorous and ironic explorer of the underworld;
most important to Patchen, he was a non-literary hero, and very contemporary.
In 1945, probably almost every American not only knew who Sam Spade was, but had some kind of emotional feeling about him.
In The Memoirs Of A Shy Pornographer (1945) Patchen exploited this national sentiment by making his hero, Albert Budd, a private detective.
But since 1945, Sam Spade has undergone a metamorphosis;
he has become Friday on Dragnet, a mouthpiece of arbitrary police authority.
He has, like so many other secular and religious culture symbols, gone over to the side of the ruling classes.
Obviously, the private eye can have no more appeal for Patchen.
To fill the job of contemporary hero in 1955, Patchen needed someone else.
It was logical that he would come up with the figure of the modern jazz musician.
The revolution in jazz that took place around 1949, the evolution from the bebop school of Dizzy Gillespie to the cool sound of Miles Davis and Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and the whole legend of Charlie Parker, had made an impression on many academic and literary men.
The immense amount of interest that the new jazz had for the younger generation must have impressed him, and he began working toward the merger of jazz and poetry, as he had previously attempted the union of graphic art and poetry.
In addition to his experiments in reading poetry to jazz, Patchen is beginning to use the figure of the modern jazz musician as a myth hero in the same way he used the figure of the private detective a decade ago.
In this respect, his approach to poetry-and-jazz is in marked contrast to Kenneth Rexroth's.
Rexroth uses many of his early poems when he reads to jazz, including many of his Chinese and Japanese translations;
Rexroth may sometimes achieve an effective juxtaposition, but he rarely makes any effort to capture any jazz feeling in the text of his poems, relying on his very competent musicians to supply this feeling.
Patchen does read some of his earlier works to music, but he has written an entire book of short poems which seem to be especially suited for reading with jazz.
These new poems have only a few direct references to jazz and jazz musicians, but they show changes in Patchen's approach to his poetry, for he has tried to enter into and understand the emotional attitude of the jazz musician.
It is difficult to draw the line between stereotype and the reality of the jazz musician.
Everyone knows that private detectives in real life are not like Sam Spade and Pat Novak, but the real and the imaginary musician are closely linked.
Seen by the public, the musician is the underdog par excellence.
He is forced to play for little money, and must often take another job to live.
His approach to music is highly individualistic;
the accent is on improvisation rather than arrangements.
While he is worldly, the musician often cultivates public attitudes of childlike astonishment and naivete.
The musician is non-intellectual and non-verbal;
he is far from being a literary hero, yet is a creative artist.
Many of these aspects will be seen as comparable to those of the ideal detective, but where the detective is active and militant, the jazz musician is passive, almost a victim of society.
In order to write with authority either about musicians, or as a musician, Patchen would have to soft pedal his characteristically outspoken anger, and change (at least for the purposes of this poetry) from a revolutionary to a victim.
He must become one who knows all about the injustice in the world, but who declines doing anything about it.
This involves a shift in Patchen's attitude and it is a first step toward writing a new jazz poetry.
He has shown considerable ingenuity in adapting his earliest symbols and devices to the new work, and the fact that he has kept a body of constant symbols through all of his experiments gives an unexpected continuity to his poetry.
Perhaps tracing some of these more important symbols through the body of his work will show that Patchen's new poetry is well thought out, and remains within the mainstream of his work, while being suited to a new form.
Henry Miller characterized Patchen as a man of anger and light.
His revolutionary anger is apparent in most of his early poems.
The following passage from The Hangman's Great Hands illustrates the directness of this anger.
Anger won't help.
I was born angry.
Angry that my father was being burnt alive in the mills;
Angry that none of us knew anything but filth and poverty.
Angry because I was that very one somebody was supposed To be fighting for.
This angry and exasperated stance which Patchen has maintained in his poetry for almost fifteen years has been successfully modulated into a kind of woe that is as effective as anger and still expresses his disapproval of the modern world.
In his recent book, Hurray For Anything (1957), one of the most important short poems--and it is the title poem for one of the long jazz arrangements--is written for recital with jazz.
Although it does not follow the metrical rules for a blues to be sung, the phrases themselves carry a blues feeling.
I went to the city And there I did Weep, Men a-crowing like asses, And living like sheep.
Oh, can't hold the han' of my love!
Can't hold her little white han'!
Yes, I went to the city, And there I did bitterly cry, Men out of touch with the earth, And with never a glance at the sky.
Oh, can't hold the han' of my love!
Can't hold her pure little han'!
Patchen is still the rebel, but he writes in a doleful, mournful tone.
Neither of these poems is an aberration;
each is so typical that it represents a prominent trend in the poet's development.
Patchen is repeatedly preoccupied with death.
In many of his poems, death comes by train: a strongly evocative visual image.
Perhaps Patchen was once involved in a train accident, and this passage from First Will And Testament may have been how the accident appeared to the poet when he first saw it--if he did:
Lord, love us, look at all the disconnected limbs floating hereabouts, like bloody feathers at that--and all the eyes are talking and all the hair are moving and all the tongue are in all the cheek.
Let us see just how typical Krim is.
He is New York-born and Jewish.
He spent one year at the University of North Carolina because Thomas Wolfe went there.
He returned to New York to work for The New Yorker, to edit a Western pulp, to duck the war in the OWI, to write publicity for Paramount Pictures and commentary for a newsreel, then he began his career as critic for various magazines.
Now he has abandoned all that to be A Writer.
I do not want to quibble about typicality;
in a certain sense, one manner of experience will be typical of any given group while another will not.
But I've got news for Krim: he's not typical, he's pretty special.
His may typify a certain kind of postwar New York experience, but his experience is certainly not typical of his generation's.
In any case, who ever thought that New York is typical of anything?
Men of Krim's age, aspirations, and level of sophistication were typically involved in politics before the war.
They did not duck the war but they fought in it, however reluctantly;
they sweated out some kind of formal education;
they read widely and eclectically;
they did not fall into pseudo-glamorous jobs on pseudo-glamorous magazines, but they did whatever nasty thing they could get in order to eat;
they found out who they were and what they could do, then within the limits of their talent they did it.
They did not worry about experience, because experience thrust itself upon them.
And they traveled out of New York.
Only a native New Yorker could believe that New York is now or ever was a literary center.
It is a publishing and public relations center, but these very facts prevent it from being a literary center because writers dislike provincialism and untruth.
Krim's typicality consists only in his New Yorker's view that New York is the world;
he displays what outlanders call the New York mind, a state that the subject is necessarily unable to perceive in himself.
The New York mind is two parts abstraction and one part misinformation about the rest of the country and in fact the world.
In his fulminating against the literary world, Krim is really struggling with the New Yorker in himself, but it's a losing battle.
Closely related to his illusions about his typicality is Krim's complicated feeling about his Jewishness.
He writes, Most of my friends and I were Jewish;
we were also literary;
the combination of the Jewish intellectual tradition and the sensibility needed to be a writer created in my circle the most potent and incredible intellectual-literary ambition I have ever seen or could ever have imagined.
Within themselves, just as people, my friends were often tortured and unappeasably bitter about being the offspring of this unhappily unique-ingrown-screwedup breed;
Krim says, in short, that he is a suffering Jew.
The only possible answer to that is, I am a suffering Franco-Irishman.
We all love to suffer, but some of us love to suffer more than others.
Had Krim gone farther from New York than Chapel Hill, he might have discovered that large numbers of American Jews do not find his New York version of the Jews' lot remotely recognizable.
More important is the simple human point that all men suffer, and that it is a kind of anthropological-religious pride on the part of the Jew to believe that his suffering is more poignant than mine or anyone else's.
In their stupidity and arrogance they believe they are called upon to remind the gentile continually of pogroms and ghettos.
Some of us have imagination and sensibility too.
Finally, there is the undeniable fact that some of the finest American fiction is being written by Jews, but it is not Jewish fiction;
Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, through intellectual toughness, perception, through experience in fact, have obviously liberated themselves from any sentimental Krim self-indulgence they might have been tempted to.
Krim's main attack is upon the aesthetic and the publishing apparatus of American literary culture in our day.
Krim was able to get an advance for a novel, and time and opportunity to write at Yaddo, but it was no good.
And again, how can you write when you haven't yet read'Bartleby The Scrivener'''?
Krim came to believe that the novel as a form had outlived its vital meaning.
His articulate Jewish friends convinced him that education (read reading) was a must.
He moved in a highly intellectual group in Greenwich Village in the late forties, becoming internationalized overnight.
Then followed a period in which he wrote reviews for The New York Times Book Review, The Commonweal, Commentary, had a small piece in Partisan Review, and moved on to Hudson, The Village Voice, and Exodus.
The work for Commonweal was more satisfying than work for Commentary because of the staff's tiptoeing fear of making a booboo.
Commentary was a mere suburb of Partisan Review, the arch-enemy.
Both magazines were rigid with reactionary what-will-T. S. Eliot-or-Martin Buber-think?
fear.
Partisan has failed, Krim says, for being snob-clannish, overcerebral, Europeanish, aristocratically alienated from the U.S..
It was the creation of a monstrous historical period wherein it thought it had to synthesize literature and politics and avant-garde art of every kind with its writers crazily trying to outdo each other in Spenglerian inclusiveness.
Kenyon, Sewanee, and Hudson operated in an Anglo-Protestant New Critical chill;
their example caused Krim and his friends to put on Englishy airs, affect all sorts of impressive scholarship and social-register unnaturalness in order to slip through their narrow transoms and get into their pages.
Qui s'excuse s'accuse, as the French Jewish intellectuals used to say.
Through all this raving, Krim is performing a traditional and by now boring rite, the attack on intelligence, upon the largely successful attempt of the magazines he castigates to liberate American writing from local color and other varieties of romantic corn.
God knows that Partisan and the rest often were, and remain, guilty of intellectual flatulence.
Sociological jargon, Germano-Slavic approximations to English, third-rate but modish fiction, and outrages to common sense have often disfigured Partisan, and in lesser degree, the other magazines on the list.
What Krim ignores, in his contempt for history and for accuracy, is that these magazines, Partisan foremost, brought about a genuine revolution in the American mind from the mid-thirties to approximately 1950.
The most obvious characteristic of contemporary American writing, apart from the beat nonsense, is its cosmopolitanism.
The process of cosmopolitanism had begun in earnest about 1912, but the First War and the depression virtually stalled that process in its tracks.
Screwed, stewed, and tattooed, as Krim might say after reading a book about sailors.
When Partisan and Kenyon set up shop, Mencken was still accepted as an arbiter of taste (remember Hergesheimer?
), George Jean Nathan and Alexander Woollcott were honored in odd quarters, and the whole Booth Tarkington, Willa Catheter (sic),) Pearl, Buck, Amy Lowell, William Lyon Phelps atmosphere lay thick as Los Angeles smog
over, the, country --.
Politics, economics, sociology--the entire area of life that lies between--literature and what Krim calls experience--urgently needed to be dug into.
The universities certainly were not doing it, nor were the popular magazines of the day.
This Partisan above all did;
if it had never printed a word of literature its contribution to the politico-sociological area would still be historic.
But it did print good verse and good fiction.
Partisan Review and the other literary magazines helped to educate, in the best sense, an entire generation.
That these magazines also deluded the Krims of the world is unfortunate but inevitable.
It is a fact of life that magazines are edited by groups: they have to be or they wouldn't be published at all.
And it is also a fact of life that there will always (be youngish half-educated people around, who will be dazzled by the glitter of what looks like a literary movement.
(there are no) literary movements, there are only writers doing their work.
Literary movements are the, creation of pimps who live off writers.
) when Krim says mine was as severe a critical-intellectual, environment as can be imagined, he is off his rocker.
He indicates that he has none of the, disciplines that criticism requires, including education;
the result was his inevitable bedazzlement through, ignorance.
He wasn't being, educated in those Village bull-sessions, as he claims.
No one was ever educated through bull-sessions in anything other than, to quote him again, perfumed bullshit.
Only a New York hick would expect to find the literary life in Greenwich Village, at any point, later than Walt Whitman's day.
The highly intellectual minds that Krim says he encountered, in the Village did their work in spite of, not because of, any Village atmosphere.
But Krim's complaint is important because not only in New York, but in other cities and in universities throughout this country, young and not, so young men at
this moment are being bedazzled by half-digested ideas.
Those who have quality will outgrow the experience;
the, rest will turn beat, or into dentists, or into beat, dentists.
For the sad truth is that while one might write well without having read Bartleby The Scrivener, one is more likely, to write well if one has read it, and much else.
The most appalling aspect of Krim's piece is his reflection of the beat aesthetic.
Krim's (aesthetic combines anti-intellectualism, conscious and unconscious naivete), and a winsome reliance upon the, natural and upon experience.
Ideas are the thruway to nowhere.
My touchstones, had, been strictly literature and, humanly enough, American literature (because that was what I wanted to write).
He alludes to something called direct writing, and he finds that criticism gets in the way of his truer, realer, imaginative bounce.
There had been signs and portents like the regular toppling over and defacing of the bust of Lauro Di Bosis near the Villa Lante and in the Gianicolo.
Something was happening all right, slowly it is true, but you could feel it.
The Italians felt it.
Little things.
An Italian poet had noticed plainclothes policemen lounging around the area of Quirinal Palace, the first time since the war.
At least they hadn't stepped up and asked to see papers in the hated, flat, dialect mispronunciation of Mussolini's home district--Dogumenti, per favore.
But, who knew, that might be coming one of these days.
There were other Italians who still bore scars they had earned in police station basements, resisting.
They laughed and, true to national form and manners, never talked long or solemnly on any subject at all, but some of them worried out loud about short memories and ghosts.
We saw Giuseppe Berto at a party once in a while, tall, lean, nervous and handsome, and, in our opinion, the best novelist of them all except Pavese, and Pavese is dead.
Berto's The Sky Is Red had been a small masterpiece and in its special way the best book to come out of the war.
Now he was married to a beautiful girl, had a small son, and lived in an expensive apartment and worked for the movies.
On his desk was a slowly accumulating treatment and script of The Count Of Monte Cristo.
On his bookshelves were some of the latest American novels, including Bellow's Seize The Day, but he hadn't read them (they were sent by American publishers) and wasn't especially interested in what the American writers were up to.
He was interested in Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.
So were a lot of other people.
He was interested in Italo Svevo.
He was thinking his way into a new novel, a big one, one that people had been waiting for.
It was going to be hard going all the way because he hadn't written seriously for a while, except for a few stories, was tired of the old method of realismo he had so successfully used in The Sky Is Red.
This one was going to be different.
He had bought a little piece of property down along the coast of the hard country of Calabria that he knew so well.
He was going to do one or two more films for cash and then chuck it all, leave Rome and its intellectual cliques and money-fed life, go back to Calabria.
Berto seemed worried, too.
He knew all about it and had put it down in journal form in The War In A Black Shirt, a wonderful book not, for some strange reason, published in the U.S..
He knew all about the appeal of a black shirt and jackboots to a poor, southern, peasant boy.
He knew all about the infection and the fever, and, too, the moment of realization when he saw for himself, threw up his hands and quit, ended the war as a prisoner in Texas.
Berto knew all about Fascism.
So did his friend, the young novelist Rimanelli.
Rimanelli is tough and square-built and adventurous, says what he thinks.
He had put it down in a war novel, The Day Of The Lion.
These people were not talking much about it, but you, a foreigner, sensed their apprehension and disappointment.
So there we were talking around and about it.
The English lady said she had to go to Vienna for a while.
It was a pity because she had planned to lay a wreath at the foot of the Garibaldi statue, towering over Rome in spectacular benediction from the highpoint of the Gianicolo.
When they lost it, the French artillery moved in, and that was the end for Garibaldi that time, on 30 April 1849.
Once out of the gate they had charged straight up the narrow lane.
We had walked it many times and shivered, figuring what a fish barrel it had been for the French.
Now the park is filled with marble busts and all the streets in the immediate area have the full and proper names of the men who fell.
We were at a party once and heard an idealistic young European call that awful charge glorious.
Our companion was a huge, plain-spoken American sculptor who had been a sixteen-year-old rifleman all across France in 1944.
He said it was stupid butchery to order men to make a charge like that, no matter who gave the order and what for.
Oh, it would be butchery all right, the European said.
We would see it that way, but it was glorious then.
It was the last time in history anybody could do something gloriously like that.
I thought: Who is older now?
Old world and new world.
The sculptor looked at him, bugeyed and amazed, angry.
He had made an assault once with 180 men.
It was a picked assault company.
They went up against an SS unit of comparable size, over a little rise of ground, over an open field.
Object--a village crossroads.
They made it, killed every last one of the Krauts, took the village on schedule.
When it was over, eight of his company were still alive and all eight were wounded.
The whole thing, from the moment when they jumped heavily off the trucks, spread out and moved into position just behind the cover of that slight rise of ground and then jumped off, took maybe between twenty and thirty minutes.
The sculptor looked at him, let the color drain out of his face, grinned, and looked down into his drink, a bad Martini made with raw Italian gin.
Bullshit, he said softly.
Excuse me, the European said.
I am not familiar with the expression.
The apartment where we were talking that afternoon in March faced onto the street Garibaldi's men had charged up and along.
Across the way from the apartment building is a ruined house, shot to hell that day in 1849, and left that way as a memorial.
There is a bronze wreath on the wall.
Like everything else in Rome, ruins and monuments alike, that house is lived in.
I have seen diapers strung across the ruined roof.
The English lady really wanted to put a wreath on the Garibaldi monument on the 30th of April.
She had her reasons for this.
For one thing, there wasn't going to be any ceremony at all this year.
There were a few reasons for that, too: Garibaldi had been taken up and exploited by the Communists nowadays.
Therefore the government wanted no part of him.
(It is sort of as if our government should decide to disown Washington or Lincoln for the same reason.
) And then there were ecclesiastical matters, the matter of Garibaldi's anti-clericalism.
There was a new Pope and the Vatican was making itself heard and felt these days.
As it happens the English lady is a good Catholic herself, but of more liberal political persuasion.
Nothing was going to be done this year to celebrate Garibaldi's bold and unsuccessful defense of Rome.
All that the English lady wanted to do was to walk up to the monument and lay a wreath at its base.
This would show that somebody, even a foreigner living in Rome, cared.
And then there were other things.
Some of the marble busts in the park are of young Englishmen who fought and died for Garibaldi.
She also mentioned leaving a little bunch of flowers at the bust of Lauro Di Bosis.
It is hard for me to know how I feel about Lauro Di Bosis.
I suffer from mixed feelings.
He was a well-to-do, handsome, and sensitive young poet.
His bust shows an intense, mustached, fine-featured face.
He flew over Rome one day during the early days of Mussolini and scattered leaflets over the city, denouncing the Fascists.
He was never heard of again.
He is thought either to have been killed by the Fascists as soon as he landed or to have killed himself by flying out to sea and crashing his plane.
He was, thus, an early and spectacular victim.
And there is something so wonderfully romantic about it all.
He really didn't know how to fly.
He had crashed on takeoff once before.
Gossip had it (for gossip is the soul of Rome) that a famous American dancer of the time had paid for both the planes.
It was absurd and dramatic.
It is remembered and has been commemorated by a bust in a park and a square in the city which was renamed Piazzo Lauro Di Bosis after the war.
Most Romans, even some postmen, know it by the old name.
Faced with a gesture like Di Bosis', I find usually that my sentiments are closer to those of my sculptor friend.
The things that happened in police station basements were dirty, grubby, and most often anonymous.
No poetry, no airplanes, no dancers.
That is how the real routine of resistance goes on, and its strength is directly proportionate to the number of insignificant people who can let themselves be taken to pieces, piece by piece, without quitting.
It is an ugly business and there are few, if any, wreaths for them.
I keep thinking of a young woman I knew during the Occupation in Austria.
She was from Prague.
She had been picked up by the Russians, questioned in connection with some pamphlets, sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage.
She escaped, crawled through the usual mine fields, under barbed wire, was shot at, swam a river, and we finally picked her up in Linz.
She showed us what had happened to her.
No airplanes, no Nathan Hale statements.
Just no spot, not even a dimesize spot, on her whole body that wasn't bruised, bruise on top of bruise, from beatings.
I understand very well about Lauro Di Bosis and how his action is symbolic.
The trouble is that like many symbols it doesn't seem a very realistic one.
The English lady wanted to pay tribute to Garibaldi and to Lauro Di Bosis, but she wasn't going to be here to do it.
Were any of us interested enough in the idea to do it for her, by proxy so to speak?
There was a pretty thorough silence at that point.
My spoon stirring coffee, banging against the side of the cup, sounded as loud as a bell.
I thought: What the hell?
Why not?
I said I would do it for her.
I had some reasons, too.
I admire the English lady.
I hate embarrassing silences and have been known to make a fool out of myself just to prevent one.
I also had and have feelings about Garibaldi.
Like every Southerner I can't escape the romantic tradition of brave defeats, forlorn lost causes.
Though Garibaldi's fight was small shakes compared to Pickett's Charge--which, like all Southerners, I view in almost Miltonic terms, fallen angels, etc.--I associated the two.
And to top it all I am often sentimental on purpose, trying to prove to myself that I am not afraid of sentiment.
So much for all that.
The English lady was pleased and enthusiastic.
She gave me the names of some people who would surely help pay for the flowers and might even march up to the monument with me.
The idea of the march pleased her.
Maybe twenty, thirty, fifty.
Maybe I could call Rimanelli at the magazine Rottosei where he worked.
The Office of Business Economics (OBE) of the U.S. Department of Commerce provides basic measures of the national economy and current analysis of short-run changes in the economic situation and business outlook.
It develops and analyzes the national income, balance of international payments, and many other business indicators.
Such measures are essential to its job of presenting business and Government with the facts required to meet the objective of expanding business and improving the operation of the economy.
Contact
For further information contact Director, Office of Business Economics, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington 25, D.C..
Printed material
Economic information is made available to businessmen and economists promptly through the monthly Survey Of Current Business and its weekly supplement.
This periodical, including weekly statistical supplements, is available for $4 per year from Commerce Field Offices or Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C..
Technical assistance to small business community
The Small Business Administration (SBA) provides guidance and advice on sources of technical information relating to small business management and research and development of products.
Small business management
Practical management problems and their suggested solutions are dealt with in a series of SBA publications.
These publications, written especially for the managers or owners of small businesses, indirectly aid in community development programs.
They are written by specialists in numerous types of business enterprises, cover a wide range of subjects, and are directed to the needs and interests of the small firm.
SBA offers Administrative Management Courses, which are designed to improve the management efficiency and know-how of small business concerns within a community.
SBA cosponsors these courses with educational institutions and community groups.
Through the SBA's Management Counseling Program, practical, personalized advice on sound management principles is available upon request to both prospective and established businessmen in a community.
One-day conferences covering some specific phase of business management, also part of the continuing activities of the Small Business Administration, aid community economic development programs.
These short, streamlined meetings usually are sponsored by local banks, Chambers of Commerce, trade associations, or other civic organizations.
Product research and development
Production specialists in SBA regional offices are available to help individual small business concerns with technical production problems.
Guidance and advice are available on new product research and development;
new product potential;
processing methods;
product and market developments;
new industrial uses for raw, semi-processed and waste, materials;
and industrial uses for agricultural products.
SBA serves also as a clearing house for information on products and processes particularly adaptable for exploitation by small firms.
This may be helpful in improving the competitive position of established firms through diversification and expansion or through more economical utilization of plant capacity.
Production assistance
Production specialists are available in SBA regional offices to help individual small business concerns with technical production problems.
These problems frequently arise where a firm is making items for the Government not directly along the lines of its normal civilian business or where the Government specifications require operations that the firm did not understand when it undertook the contract.
Production assistance often takes the form of locating tools or materials which are urgently needed.
Advice is given also on problems of plant location and plant space.
Property sales assistance
The property sales assistance program is designed to assist small business concerns that may wish to buy property offered for sale by the Federal Government.
SBA works closely with the principal property disposal installations of the Federal Government in reviewing proposed sales programs and identifying those types of property that small business concerns are most likely to be interested in purchasing.
Proposed property sales of general interest to small business concerns are publicized through SBA regional news releases, and by flyers directed to the small business concerns.
Each SBA regional office also maintains a want list of surplus property, principally machinery and equipment, desired by small business concerns in its area.
When suitable equipment is located by the SBA representative, the small business concern is contacted and advised on when, where, and how to bid on such property.
Facilities inventory
Section 8-b-2 of the Small Business Act, as amended, authorizes the SBA to make a complete inventory of the productive facilities of small business concerns.
The Administration maintains a productive facilities inventory of small business industrial concerns that have voluntarily registered.
It is kept in each Regional office for the small firms within the region.
These services include procurement and technical assistance and notice of surplus sales and invitations to bid on Government contracts for products and services within the registrants' field of operations.
SBA can make complete facilities inventories of all small business concerns in labor surplus areas within budgetary and staff limitations.
Contact
For further information, contact Small Business Administration Regional Offices in Atlanta, Ga.;
Boston, Mass.;
Chicago, Ill.;
Cleveland, Ohio;
Dallas, Tex.;
Denver, Colo.;
Detroit, Mich.;
Kansas City, Mo.;
Los Angeles, Calif.;
Minneapolis, Minn.;
New York, N.Y.;
Philadelphia, Pa.;
Richmond, Va.;
San Francisco, Calif.;
and Seattle, Wash..
Branch Offices are located in other large cities.
Printed material
New Product Introduction For Small Business Owners, 30 cents;
Developing And Selling New Products, 45 cents;
U.S. Government Purchasing, Specifications, And Sales Directory, 60 cents, are available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C..
Loans
to small business
SBA makes loans to individual small business firms, providing them with financing when it is not otherwise available through private lending sources on reasonable terms.
Many such loans have been made to establish small concerns or to aid in their growth, thereby contributing substantially to community development programs.
Loan policies
the purchase of equipment, facilities, machinery, supplies, or materials;
or to supply working capital.
Evidence that other sources of financing are unavailable must be provided.
Types of loans
SBA business loans are of two types: participation and direct.
Participation loans are those made jointly by the SBA and banks or other private lending institutions.
Direct loans are those made by SBA alone.
To qualify for either type of loan, an applicant must be a small business or approved small business pool and must meet certain credit requirements.
A small business is defined as one which is independently owned and operated and which is not dominant in its field.
In addition, the SBA uses such criteria as number of employees and dollar volume of the business.
Credit requirements
The credit requirements stipulate that the applicant must have the ability to operate the business successfully and have enough capital in the business so that, with loan assistance from the SBA, it will be able to operate on a sound financial basis.
A proposed loan must be for sound purposes or sufficiently secured so as to assure a reasonable chance of repayment.
The record of past earnings and prospects for the future must indicate it has the ability to repay the loan out of current and anticipated income.
Loan amount
The amount which may be borrowed from the SBA depends on how much is required to carry out the intended purpose of the loan.
The maximum loan which SBA may make to any one borrower is $350,000.
Business loans generally are repayable in regular installments--usually monthly, including interest at the rate of 5-1/2 percent per annum on the unpaid balance--and have a maximum maturity of 10 years;
the term of loans for working capital is 6 years.
Contact
For further information, contact SBA Regional Offices in Atlanta, Ga.;
Boston, Mass.;
Chicago, Ill.;
Cleveland, Ohio;
Dallas, Tex.;
Denver, Colo.;
Detroit, Mich.;
Kansas City, Mo.;
Los Angeles, Calif.;
Minneapolis, Minn.;
New York, N.Y.;
Philadelphia, Pa.;
Richmond, Va.;
San Francisco, Calif.;
and Seattle, Wash..
Branch Offices are located in other large cities.
Printed material
Small Business Administration, What It Is, What It Does;
SBA Business Loans;
and Small Business Pooling are available, on request, from Small Business Administration, Washington 25, D.C., and its regional offices.
To cooperatives
The Farm Credit Administration, an independent agency located within the Department of Agriculture, supervises and coordinates a cooperative credit system for agriculture.
The system is composed of three credit services, Federal Land Banks and National Farm Loan Associations, Federal Intermediate (short-term) Credit Banks, and Banks for Cooperatives.
This system provides long- and short-term credit to farmers and their cooperative marketing, purchasing, and business service organizations.
As a source of investment capital, the system is beneficial to local communities and encourages the development of industries in rural areas.
The credit provdied by the first two services in the system outlined above is primarily for general agricultural purposes.
The third credit service, Banks for Cooperatives, exists under authority of the Farm Credit Act of 1933.
The Banks for Cooperatives were established to provide a permanent source of credit on a sound basis for farmers' cooperatives.
Types of loans
Three distinct classes of loans are made available to farmers' cooperatives by the Banks for Cooperatives: Commodity loans, operating capital loans, and facility loans.
Eligibility
Interest rates
Interest rates are determined by the board of directors of the bank with the approval of the Farm Credit Administration.
Contact
For further information, contact the Bank for Cooperatives serving the region, or the Farm Credit Administration, Research and Information Division, Washington 25, D.C..
Printed material
Available, on request, from U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington 25, D.C., are: Cooperative Farm Credit Can Assist In Rural Development (Circular No. 44), and The Cooperative Farm Credit System (Circular No. 36-A).
Minerals exploration
Requirements
This help is offered to applicants who ordinarily would not undertake the exploration under present conditions or circumstances at their sole expense and who are unable to obtain funds from commercial sources on reasonable terms.
Each applicant is required to own or have sufficient interest in the property to be explored.
The Government will contract with an eligible applicant to pay up to one-half of the cost of approved exploration work as it progresses.
The applicant pays the rest of the cost, but his own time spent on the work and charges for the use of equipment which he owns may be applied toward his share of the cost.
Repayment
Funds contributed by the Government are repaid by a royalty on production from the property.
If nothing is produced, there is no obligation to repay.
A 5-percent royalty is paid on any production during the period the contract is in effect;
if the Government certifies that production may be possible from the property, the royalty obligation continues for the 10-year period usually specified in the contract or until the Government's contribution is repaid with interest.
The royalty applies to both principal and interest, but it never exceeds 5 percent.
Contact
Information, application forms, and assistance in filing may be obtained from the Office of Minerals Exploration, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington 25, D.C., or from the appropriate regional office listed below.
In most of the less developed countries, however, such programing is at best inadequate and at worst nonexistent.
Only a very few of the more advanced ones, such as India and Pakistan, have developed systematic techniques of programing.
Others have so-called development plans, but some of these are little more than lists of projects collected from various ministries while others are statements of goals without analysis of the actions required to attain them.
Only rarely is attention given to accurate progress reports and evaluation.
We can help in the planning process
Neither growth nor a development program can be imposed on a country;
it must express the nation's own will and goal.
Nevertheless, we can administer an aid program in such a manner as to promote the development of responsible programing.
First, we can encourage responsibility by establishing as conditions for assistance on a substantial and sustained scale the definition of objectives and the assessment of costs.
Second, we can make assistance for particular projects conditional on the consistency of such projects with the program.
Third, we can offer technical help in the formulation of programs for development which are adapted to the country's objectives and resources.
This includes assistance in--assembling the basic economic, financial, technological, and educational information on which programing depends;
surveying the needs and requirements over time of broad sectors of the economy, such as transport, agriculture, communication, industry, and power;
designing the financial mechanisms of the economy in ways that will promote growth without inflation;
and administrative practices which will make possible the more effective review and implementation of programs once established.
We must use common sense in applying conditions
The application of conditions in the allocation of aid funds cannot, of course, be mechanical.
It must be recognized that countries at different stages of development have very different capabilities of meeting such conditions.
To insist on a level of performance in programing and budgeting completely beyond the capabilities of the recipient country would result in the frustration of the basic objective of our development assistance to encourage more rapid growth.
In the more primitive areas, where the capacity to absorb and utilize external assistance is limited, some activities may be of such obvious priority that we may decide to support them before a well worked out program is available.
Thus, we might provide limited assistance in such fields as education, essential transport, communications, and agricultural improvement despite the absence of acceptable country programs.
Encouraging self-help
The reasons for stressing self-help
A systematic approach to development budgeting and programing is one important kind of self-help.
There are many others.
It is vitally important that the new U.S. aid program should encourage all of them, since the main thrust for development must come from the less developed countries themselves.
External aid can only be marginal, although the margin, as in the case of the Marshall plan, can be decisive.
External aid can be effective only if it is a complement to self-help.
U.S. aid, therefore, should increasingly be designed to provide incentives for countries to take the steps that only they themselves can take.
Aid advice is not interference
In establishing conditions of self-help, it is important that we not expect countries to remake themselves in our image.
Open societies can take many forms, and within very broad limits recipients must be free to set their own goals and to devise their own institutions to achieve those goals.
On the other hand, it is no interference with sovereignty to point out defects where they exist, such as that a plan calls for factories without power to run them, or for institutions without trained personnel to staff them.
Once we have made clear that we are genuinely concerned with a country's development potential, we can be blunt in suggesting the technical conditions that must be met for development to occur.
The range of self-help
The major areas of self-help are the following: (A) the effective mobilizing of resources.
This includes not only development programing, but also establishing tax policies designed to raise equitably resources for investment;
fiscal and monetary policies designed to prevent serious inflation;
and regulatory policies aimed to attract the financial and managerial resources of foreign investment and to prevent excessive luxury consumption by a few.
(B) the reduction of dependence on external sources.
This includes foreseeing balance-of-payments crises, with adequate attention to reducing dependence on imports and adopting realistic exchange rates to encourage infant industries and spur exports.
It also includes providing for the training of nationals to operate projects after they are completed.
(C) tapping the energies of the entire population.
For both economic and political reasons all segments of the population must be able to share in the growth of a country.
Otherwise, development will not lead to longrun stability.
(D) honesty in government.
Yet an economy cannot get the most out of its resources if dishonesty, corruption, and favoritism are widespread.
Moreover, tolerance by us of such practices results in serious waste and diversion of aid resources and in the long run generates anti-American sentiment of a kind peculiarly damaging to our political interest.
Some of the most dramatic successes of Communism in winning local support can be traced to the identification--correct or not--of Communist regimes with personal honesty and pro-Western regimes with corruption.
A requirement of reasonably honest administration may be politically uncomfortable in the short run, but it is politically essential in the long run.
U.S. position on self-help
The United States can use its aid as an incentive to self-help by responding with aid on a sustained basis, tailored to priority needs, to those countries making serious efforts in self-help.
In many instances it can withhold or limit its aid to countries not yet willing to make such efforts.
There are other countries where, with skillful diplomacy, we may be able by our aid to give encouragement to those groups in government which would like to press forward with economic and social reform measures to promote growth.
Governments are rarely monolithic.
But there will be still other countries where, despite the inadequacy of the level of self-help, we shall deem it wise, for political or military reasons, to give substantial economic assistance.
Even in these cases we should promote self-help by making it clear that our supporting assistance is subject to reduction and ultimately to termination.
Encouraging a long-term approach
Development requires a long-term approach
The most fundamental concept of the new approach to economic aid is the focusing of our attention, our resources, and our energies on the effort to promote the economic and social development of the less developed countries.
This is not a short-run goal.
To have any success in this effort, we must ourselves view it as an enterprise stretching over a considerable number of years, and we must encourage the recipients of our aid to view it in the same fashion.
Most of our aid will go to those nearing self-sufficiency
How long it will take to show substantial success in this effort will vary greatly from country to country.
In several significant cases, such as India, a decade of concentrated effort can launch these countries into a stage in which they can carry forward their own economic and social progress with little or no government-to-government assistance.
These cases in which light is already visible at the other end of the tunnel are ones which over the next few years will absorb the bulk of our capital assistance.
Gradually others will move up to the same level
The number of countries thus favorably situated is small, but their peoples constitute over half of the population of the underdeveloped world.
Meantime, over the decade of the sixties, we can hope that many other countries will ready themselves for the big push into self-sustaining growth.
Aid is a long-term process
The whole program must be conceived of as an effort, stretching over a considerable number of years, to alter the basic social and economic conditions in the less developed world.
It must be recognized as a slow-acting tool designed to prevent political and military crises such as those recently confronted in Laos and Cuba.
It is not a tool for dealing with these crises after they have erupted.
The specific reasons for a long-term approach
(A) the need to budget a period of years.
Many of the individual projects for which development assistance is required call for expenditures over lengthy periods.
Dams, river development schemes, transportation networks, educational systems require years to construct.
Moreover, on complex projects, design work must be completed and orders for machinery and equipment placed months or even years before construction can commence.
Thus, as a development program is being launched, commitments and obligations must be entered into in a given year which may exceed by twofold or threefold the expenditures to be made in that year.
The capital expansion programs of business firms involve multi-year budgeting and the same is true of country development programs.
(B) the need to plan investment programs.
Without such forward planning, investment funds are wasted because manufacturing facilities are completed before there is power to operate them or before there is transport to service them;
or a skilled labor force is trained before there are plants available in which they can be employed.
(C) the need to allocate country resources.
Most important of all, the less developed countries must be persuaded to take the necessary steps to allocate and commit their own resources.
They must be induced to establish the necessary tax, fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies.
They must be persuaded to adopt the other necessary self-help measures which are described in the preceding section.
The taking of these steps involves tough internal policy decisions.
Moreover, once these steps are taken, they may require years to make themselves felt.
They must, therefore, be related to long-range development plans.
Providing an incentive
If the less developed countries are to be persuaded to adopt a long-term approach, the United States, as the principal supplier of external aid, must be prepared to give long-term commitments.
In this, as in so many aspects of our development assistance activities, the incentive effects of the posture we take are the most important ones.
If they feel that we are taking a long-term view of their problems and are prepared to enter into reasonably long-term association with them in their development activities, they will be much more likely to undertake the difficult tasks required.
Perhaps the most important incentive for them will be clear evidence that where other countries have done this kind of home work we have responded with long-term commitments.
Then I have seen the pride of country well in the eyes of these young people.
So, I say, Mr. Speaker, God bless you and keep you for many years not only for this body but for the United States of America and the free world.
You remember the words of President Kennedy a week or so ago, when someone asked him when he was in Canada, and Dean Rusk was in Europe, and Vice President Johnson was in Asia, Who is running the store?
And he said, The same fellow who has been running it, Sam Rayburn.
General leave to extend
Mr. McCormack.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members who desire to do so may extend their remarks at this point in the record;
and also that they may have 5 legislative days in which to extend their remarks.
The speaker pro tempore.
Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Massachusetts?
There was no objection.
Remarks of Hon. Joseph P. Addabbo of New York
Mr. Addabbo.
It is notably significant that so many Members from both sides of the aisle express their respect and admiration for our beloved Speaker, the Honorable Sam Rayburn.
I purposely refrained from adding the usual distinction of saying that he was from the State of Texas.
I did so because I agree with so many here today, that he is the beloved Speaker of all the people of the United States.
For the dignity, the influence, and the power of the legislative branch of our Government--it is a privilege for us to do honor to this great man who represents not alone his own district but all the people of our country.
To honor him is to honor ourselves.
In this my first year as a Member of this body I have experienced many memorable moments.
Many of these experiences are so important that they will be cherished forever by me.
And, like many of you here present, I hold as the highlight of all, the occasion of my first meeting with the honorable Speaker of the House.
At that time, he afforded me the courtesy of his busy workday for such length as I may need, to speak about my background, my hopes, my views on various national and local topics, and any problems that I may have been vexed with at the time.
He was fatherly in his handling of all subjects with me and tremendously wise in his counsel.
In conclusion, he wished me well--and as kindly and humbly as this humane gentleman could express himself, he asked to be remembered to my wife and children.
In my short period here I believe that at no time has he been otherwise than the most popular man on both sides of the aisle.
I am highly privileged today to commemorate the brilliant career of this parliamentary giant.
He will ever be my example as a true statesman;
one who is thoroughly human, who affects no dignity, and who is endowed with real ability, genuine worth, and sterling honesty--all dedicated to secure the best interests of the country he has loved and served so long.
May the Divine Speaker in Heaven bless this country with Sam Rayburn's continued service here for years to come.
Remarks of Hon. Wayne L. Hays of Ohio
Mr. Hays.
It is a matter of deep personal satisfaction for me to add my voice to the great and distinguished chorus of my colleagues in this paean of praise, respect, and affection for Speaker Sam Rayburn.
In this hour of crisis, the wisdom, the dedication, the stabilizing force that he represents in current American government is an almost indispensable source of strength.
He has become in this half century the grand old man of American history.
It seems to me that the prayers of the whole free world must rise like some vast petition to Providence that Sam Rayburn's vigor and his life remain undiminished through the coming decades.
Here briefly in this humble tribute I have sought for some simple and succinct summation that would define the immense service of this patriot to his country.
It happens that I am a legislator from Ohio and that I feel deeply about the needs, the aspirations, the interests of my district and my State.
For Sam Rayburn never forgot Bonham, his home community, and he never forgot Texas.
In the same way I like to think we owe our loyalty as legislators to our community, our district, our State.
And, if we follow the Rayburn pattern, as consciously or by an instinctual political sense I like to think I have followed it, then the very nature of our loyalty to our own immediate areas must necessarily be reflected in the devotion of our services to our country.
For what Sam Rayburn's life in this House teaches us is that loyalty and character are not divisive and there is no such thing as being for your country and neglecting your district.
There is no such thing as being diligent about national affairs but indifferent about home needs.
The two are as one.
This may not be the greatest but it certainly comes close to being the greatest lesson Sam Rayburn's career, up to this hour, teaches all of us who would aspire to distinction in political life under our processes of government.
More than that, Sam Rayburn is the very living symbol of an iron-clad integrity so powerful in his nature and so constantly demonstrated that he can count some of his best friends in the opposition.
Through the most rancorous battles of political controversy and the most bitterly fought national and presidential campaigns his character shines as an example of dignity and honesty, forthrightness and nobility.
Sam Rayburn has never had to look back at any of his most devastating fights and ever feel ashamed of his conduct as a combatant under fire or his political manners in the heat of conflicting ambitions.
This means much to the American tradition.
It is an answer in its way, individual and highly dramatic, to the charge that the democratic process is necessarily vicious in its campaign characteristics.
And the name Rayburn is one of the most dominant in the history of American politics for the last half century.
It is, I insist, hard to define the Rayburn contribution to our political civilization because it is so massive and so widespread and so complicated, and because it goes so deep.
But this we know: Here is a great life that in every area of American politics gives the American people occasion for pride and that has invested the democratic process with the most decent qualities of honor, decency, and self-respect.
I pray to God that he may be spared to us for many years to come for this is an influence the United States and the whole world can ill afford to lose.
Remarks of Hon. Melvin Price of Illinois
Mr. Price.
All but two of my nine terms in the House of Representatives has been served under the Speakership of Sam Rayburn.
Of this I am proud.
I have a distinct admiration for this man we honor today because of the humility with which he carries his greatness.
And Sam Rayburn is a great man--one who will go down in American history as a truly great leader of the Nation.
He will be considered not only great among his contemporaries, but as great among all the Americans who have played a part in the country's history since the beginning.
Speaker Rayburn has not limited his leadership as a statesman to his direction of the House in the Speaker's chair.
He had an outstanding record as a legislator since the start of his career in the House in 1913, the 63d Congress.
No one has sponsored more progressive and important legislation than has Sam Rayburn.
He is the recognized father of the Rural Electrification Administration and the Security and Exchange Commission.
But to run the gauntlet of the programs Sam Rayburn brought into being through his legislative efforts would fill the pages of today's Record.
No greater pleasure has come to me in my own service in this House than to be present today to participate in this tribute to this great Speaker, this great legislator, this great Texan, this great American.
My sincere wish is that he continues to add to this record he sets here today.
Remarks of Hon. John S. Monagan of Connecticut
Mr. Monagan.
Others may speak of Speaker Rayburn's uniquely long and devoted service;
I prefer to speak, however, of Sam Rayburn, the person, rather than Sam Rayburn, the American institution.
Although Sam Rayburn affects a gruff exterior in many instances, nevertheless he is fundamentally a man of warm heart and gentle disposition.
Above all, he is a person to whom a fledgling Representative can go to discuss the personal and professional problems which inevitably confront a new Congressman.
In this role of father confessor, he has always been most characteristic and most helpful.
On September 16, Sam Rayburn will have served as Speaker twice as long as any predecessor and I am proud to join with others in marking this date, and in expressing my esteem for that notable American, Sam Rayburn.
Origin of state automobile practices.
The practice of state-owned vehicles for use of employees on business dates back over forty years.
At least one state vehicle was in existence in 1917.
The state presently owns 389 passenger vehicles in comparison to approximately 200 in 1940.
The automobile maintenance unit, or motor pool, came into existence in 1942 and has been responsible for centralized maintenance and management of state-owned transportation since that time.
The motor pool has made exceptional progress in automotive management including establishment of cost billing systems, records keeping, analyses of vehicle use, and effecting economies in vehicle operation.
Cars were operated in 1959 for an average $.027 per mile.
Purchase of state vehicles is handled similarly to all state purchases.
Unit prices to the state are considerably lower than to the general public because of quantity purchases and no payment of state sales or federal excise taxes.
Vehicle purchase, assignment and use policies.
The legislature's role in policy determination concerning state-owned vehicles has been confined almost exclusively to appropriating funds for vehicles.
The meaningful policies governing the purchase, assignment, use and management of state vehicles have been shaped by the state's administrative officers.
A review of these policies indicates: (1)
The state purchases and assigns grades of cars according to need and position status of driver and use of vehicle.
(2)
The purchase of compact (economy) cars is being made currently on a test basis.
(3)
Cars are traded mostly on a three-year basis in the interest of economy.
(4)
The factors governing need and assignment of cars are flexible according to circumstances.
(5)
Unsuccessful efforts have been made to replace high mileage allowances with state automobiles.
(6)
It is reasonably economical for the state to have drivers garage state cars at their homes.
(7)
The state has recently undertaken liability insurance for drivers of state cars.
Automobile practices in other states.
A survey of practices and/or policies in other states concerning assignment and use of state automobiles reveals several points for comparison with Rhode Island's practices.
Forty-seven states assign or provide vehicles for employees on state business.
Two other states provide vehicles, but only with legislative approval.
States which provide automobiles for employees assign them variously to the agency, the individual, or to a central pool.
Twenty-six states operate a central motor pool for acquisition, allocation and/or maintenance of state-owned vehicles.
Nineteen states report laws, policies or regulations for assigning state vehicles in lieu of paying mileage allowances.
Of these states the average change-over point (at which a car is substituted for allowances) is 13,200 miles per year.
Mileage allowances.
Mileage allowances for state employees are of two types: (A) actual mileage and (B) fixed monthly allowances.
Actual mileage allowances are itemized reimbursements allowed employees for the use of personally-owned vehicles on state business at the rate of $.07 per mile.
Fixed monthly allowances are reimbursements for the same purpose except on a non-itemized basis.
Both allowances are governed by conditions and restrictions set forth in detail in the state's Travel Regulations.
Rhode Island's reimburseable rate of $.07 per mile for use of personally-owned cars compares favorably with other states' rates.
The average of states' rates is $.076 per mile.
Rhode Island's rate of $.07 per mile is considerably lower than reimburseable rates in the federal government and in industry nationally which approximate a $.09 per mile average.
Actual mileage allowances are well-administered and not unduly expensive for the state.
The travel regulations, requirements and procedures governing reimbursement are controlled properly and not overly restrictive.
Fixed monthly allowances are a controversial subject.
They have a great advantage in ease of audit time and payment.
However, they lend themselves to abuse and inadequate control measures.
Flat payments over $50 per month are more expensive to the state than the assignment of state-owned vehicles.
Travel allowances.
Travel allowances, including subsistence, have been revised by administrative officials recently and compare favorably with other states' allowances.
With few exceptions travelers on state business are allowed actual travel expenses and $15 per day subsistence.
Travel allowances are well-regulated and pose little problem in administration and/or audit control.
Origin of state automobile practices
general background.
It is difficult to pinpoint the time of origin of the state purchasing automobiles for use of employees in Rhode Island.
Few records are available concerning the subject prior to 1940.
Those that are available shed little light.
The Registry of Motor Vehicles indicates that at least one state automobile was registered as far back as 1917.
It should be enough to say that the practice of the state buying automobiles is at least forty years old.
The best reason that can be advanced for the state adopting the practice was the advent of expanded highway construction during the 1920s and '30s.
At that time highway engineers traveled rough and dirty roads to accomplish their duties.
Using privately-owned vehicles was a personal hardship for such employees, and the matter of providing state transportation was felt perfectly justifiable.
Once the principle was established, the increase in state-owned vehicles came rapidly.
And reasons other than employee need contributed to the growth.
Table 1 immediately below shows the rate of growth of vehicles and employees.
This rate of increase does not signify anything in itself.
It does not indicate loose management, ineffective controls or poor policy.
But it does show that automobiles have increased steadily over the years and in almost the same proportion to the increase of state employees.
In the past twenty years the ratio of state-owned automobiles per state employees has varied from 1 to 22 then to 1 to 23 now.
Whether there were too few automobiles in 1940 or too many now is problematical.
The fact is simply that state-owned vehicles have remained in practically the same proportion as employees to use them.
History and operation of the motor pool.
While the origin of state-owned automobiles may be obscured, subsequent developments concerning the assignment, use, and management of state automobiles can be related more clearly.
Prior to 1942, automobiles were the individual responsibility of the agency to which assigned.
This responsibility included all phases of management.
It embraced determining when to purchase and when to trade vehicles, who was to drive, when and where repairs were to be made, where gasoline and automobile services were to be obtained and other allied matters.
In 1942, however, the nation was at war.
Gasoline and automobile tires were rationed commodities.
The state was confronted with transportation problems similar to those of the individual.
It met these problems by the creation of the state automobile maintenance unit (more popularly called the motor pool), a centralized operation for the maintenance and control of all state transportation.
The motor pool then, as now, had headquarter facilities in Providence and other garages located throughout the state.
It was organizationally the responsibility of the Department of Public Works and was financed on a rotary fund basis with each agency of government contributing to the pool's operation.
In 1951 the pool's operation was transferred to the newly-created Department of Administration, an agency established as the central staff and auxiliary department of the state government.
The management of state-owned vehicles since that time has been described in a recent report in the following manner:
Under this new management considerable progress appears to have been made.
The agencies of government are now billed for the actual cost of services provided to each passenger car rather than the prior uniform charge for all cars.
Whereas the maintenance rotary fund had in the past sustained losses considerably beyond expectations, the introduction of the cost-billing system plus other control refinements has resulted in keeping the fund on a proper working basis.
One indication of the merits of the new management is found in the fact that during the period 1951-1956, while total annual mileage put on the vehicles increased 35%, the total maintenance cost increased only 11%.
In order to further refine the management of passenger vehicles, on July 1, 1958, the actual title to every vehicle was transferred, by Executive Order, to the Division of Methods, Research and Office Services.
The objective behind this action was to place in one agency the responsibility for the management, assignment, and replacement of all vehicles.
(Note: So far as State Police cars are concerned, only their replacement is under this division).
This tied in closely with the current attempt to upgrade state-owned cars to the extent that vehicles are not retained beyond the point where maintenance costs (in light of depreciation) become excessive.
Moreover, it allows the present management to reassign vehicles so that mileage will be more uniformly distributed throughout the fleet;
The motor pool is a completely centralized and mechanized operation.
It handles all types of vehicle maintenance, but concentrates more on service station activities than on extensive vehicle repairs.
It contracts with outside repair garages for much of the latter work.
Where the pool excels is in its compilation of maintenance and cost-data studies and analyses.
Pool records reveal in detail the cost per mile and miles per gallon of each vehicle, the miles traveled in one year or three years, the periods when vehicle costs become excessive, and when cars should be traded for sound economies.
From this, motor pool personnel develop other meaningful and related data.
In 1959-60, vehicles averaged an operating cost of $.027 per mile.
Based on this figure and considering depreciation costs of vehicles, pool personnel have determined that travel in excess of 10,000 miles annually is more economical by state car than by payment of allowances for use of personally-owned vehicles.
They estimate further that with sufficient experience and when cost-data of compact cars is compiled, the break-even point may be reduced to 7,500 miles of travel per year.
Table 2 shows operating cost data of state vehicles selected at random.
One matter of concern to the complete effectiveness of pool operations is the lack of adequate central garage facilities.
Present pool quarters at two locations in Providence are crowded, antiquated and, in general, make for inefficient operation in terms of dispersement of personnel and duplication of such operational needs as stock and repair equipment.
Good facilities would be a decided help to pool operations and probably reduce vehicle costs even more.
Purchasing practices.
The purchase of state-owned vehicles is handled in the same manner as all other purchases of the state.
Requests are made by the motor pool along with any necessary cooperation from the agencies to which assignments of cars will be made.
Bids are evaluated by the Division of Purchases with the assistance of pool staff, and awards for the purchase of the automobiles are made to the lowest responsible bidders.
Unit prices for state vehicles are invariably lower than to the general public.
The reasons are obvious: (1) the state is buying in quantity, and (2) it has no federal excise or state sales tax to pay.
Until 1958 the state was also entitled to a special type of manufacturers' discount through the dealers.
In that ownership of all vehicles rests with the state motor pool, cars are paid for with funds appropriated to the agencies but transferred to the rotary fund mentioned earlier.
This is a normal governmental procedure which reflects more accurately cost-accounting principles.
The assignment and use of vehicles after purchase is another matter to be covered in detail later.
Vehicle purchase, assignment, and use policies
Probably the most important of all matters for review are the broad administrative policies governing the purchase, assignment, use, and management of state vehicles.
The legislature's role in policy determination in this area for years has been confined almost solely to the amount of funds appropriated annually for the purchase and operation of vehicles.
The more meaningful policies have been left to the judgment of the chief administrative officer of the state--the Director of Administration.
The Rhode Island property tax
There was a time some years ago when local taxation by the cities and towns was sufficient to support their own operations and a part of the cost of the state government as well.
For many years a state tax on cities and towns was paid by the several municipalities to the state from the proceeds of the general property tax.
This tax was discontinued in 1936.
Since that time the demands of the citizens for new and expanded services have placed financial burdens on the state which could not have been foreseen in earlier years.
At the same time there has been an upgrading and expansion of municipal services as well.
Thus, there has come into being a situation in which the state must raise all of its own revenues and, in addition, must give assistance to its local governments.
This financial assistance from the state has become necessary because the local governments themselves found the property tax, or at least at the rates then existing, insufficient for their requirements.
Consequently there have developed several forms of grants-in-aid and shared taxes, as well as the unrestricted grant to local governments for general purposes whose adoption accompanied the introduction of a sales tax at the state level.
Notwithstanding state aid, the local governments are continuing to seek additional revenue of their own by strengthening the property tax.
This is being done both by the revaluation of real property and by seeking out forms of personal property hitherto neglected or ignored.
Problems of taxing personal property.
Among the many problems in the taxing of personal property, and of movable tangible property in particular, two are significant: (1) situs, (2) fair and equitable assessment of value.
These problems are not local to Rhode Island, but are recognized as common to all states.
Situs of property.
Rhode Island law specifies that all real estate is taxable in the town in which it is situated.
It also provides for the taxation of all personal property, belonging to inhabitants of the state, both tangible and intangible, and the tangible personal property of non-residents in this state.
In defining personal property, it specifically mentions all ships or vessels, at home or abroad.
Intangible property is taxable wherever the owner has a place of abode the greater portion of the year.
Although a similar situs for tangible property is mentioned in the statute, this is cancelled out by the provision that definite kinds of property and all other tangible property situated or being in any town is taxable where the property is situated.
This would seem to fix the tax situs of all movable personal property at its location on December 31.
Both boats and aircraft would fall within this category, as well as motor vehicles.
The location of the latter now is determined for tax purposes at the time of registration, and it is now accepted practice to consider a motor vehicle as being situated where it is garaged.
Obviously, it would be impossible to determine where every vehicle might be on the 31st day of December.
In view of the acceptance accorded the status of motor vehicles for tax purposes, in the absence of any specific provision it would seem entirely consistent to apply the same interpretation to boats or aircraft.
A recent example of this problem is the flying of six airplanes, on December 31, 1960, from the Newport Airpark in Middletown, to the North Central Airport in Smithfield.
This situation resulted in both towns claiming the tax, and probably justifiably.
The Smithfield tax assessor, in turn, claims the tax under the provision of law and all other tangible personal property situated or being in any town, in or upon any place of storage shall be taxed to such person in the town where said property is situated.
Assessment of value.
This problem of fair and equitable assessment of value is a difficult one to solve in that the determination of fair valuation is dependent on local assessors, who in general are non-professional and part-time personnel taking an individualistic approach to the problem.
This accounts for the wide variance in assessment practices of movable tangible property in the various municipalities in Rhode Island.
This condition will undoubtedly continue until such time as a state uniform system of evaluation is established, or through mutual agreement of the local assessing officials for a method of standard assessment practice to be adopted.
The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council in its publication once commented:
The most realistic way of facing up to this problem would be to have the State take over full responsibility for assessing all taxable property.
An adequately staffed and equipped State assessing office could apply uniform methods and standards which would go far toward producing equitable assessments on all properties throughout the State.
A single statewide assessing unit would eliminate the differences and complications that are inherent in a system of 39 different and independent assessing units.
The Institute of Public Administration, in its report to the State Fiscal Study Commission in 1959, recommended consolidating and centralizing all aspects of property tax administration in a single state agency professionally organized and equipped for the job.
The resulting setup, it was declared, would be similar to that which is in successful operation in a number of metropolitan counties as large or larger than Rhode Island.
Practices in Rhode Island.
To determine the practice and attitude of municipal governments concerning tangible movable property, a questionnaire was sent to all local government assessors or boards of assessors in Rhode Island.
The replies from each individual town are not given in detail because the questions asked the personal opinion of the several assessors and are not necessarily the established policy of the town in each case.
There are legitimate reasons for differences of opinion among the assessors as a whole and among the public officials in each town.
These opinions of the assessors are of significance in indicating what their thinking seems to be at the present time.
In reply to a question of whether they now tax boats, airplanes and other movable property excluding automobiles, nineteen said that they did and twenty that they did not.
The wording of the question was quite general and may have been subject to different interpretations.
One assessor checked boats only, another trailers and tractors, one mentioned house trailers, and two others referred to trailers without specifying the type.
In two cases, airplanes only were indicated.
It is difficult to tabulate exactly what was meant in each individual situation, but the conclusion may be drawn that 21 towns do not assess movable personal property, and of the remainder only certain types are valued for tax purposes.
Boats were indicated specifically by only one of the five towns known to tax boats.
It would seem, then, that movable property and equipment is not taxed as a whole but that certain types are taxed in towns where this is bound to be expedient for that particular kind of personal property.
So few answered the question relating to their efforts to assess movable property that the results are inconclusive.
Only four towns indicated that they made any more than a normal effort to list property of this kind.
Of greater interest is a question as to whether movable property was assessed according to its location or ownership.
Fifteen stated that it was according to location, four by residence of the owner, and nineteen did not answer.
Twenty-seven assessors stated that they were in favor of improved means for assessing movable personal property, and only five were opposed.
Seven others expressed no opinion.
On this point there was fairly general agreement that assessors would like to do more than they are doing now.
It is not clear, however, whether they are thinking of all movable property or only of boats, trailers, aircraft or certain other types of personal property whose assessment would be advantageous to their particular towns.
Another question that was asked of the assessors was whether they favored the assessment of movable property at its location or at the residence of the owner.
Eighteen voted for assessment by the town in which it is located and eleven preferred assessment by the town in which the owner resides.
Ten others made no reply.
Of those who have an opinion, it seems that assessment by location is preferred.
There was one vote for location being the place where the property is situated for the greater portion of the twelve months preceding the assessment date.
The need for greater knowledge is evident from their replies.
Boats as personal property
taxing of boats.
Interest has been shown for a number of years by local assessors in the possibility of taxing boats.
Assessors in Rhode Island are charged not only with placing a valuation upon real and personal property, but they also have the responsibility to raise by a tax a sum not less than nor more than a specified amount as ordered by a city council or financial town meeting.
It has been obvious to the assessors, particularly those in shore communities, that boats comprise the largest category of tangible personal property which they have been unable to reach.
Through their professional organization, the Rhode Island Tax Officials Association the question of taxing boats long has been debated and discussed.
No satisfactory solution has been found, but this is due more to the difficulties inherent in the problem than to a lack of interest or diligence on the part of the assessors.
It has been estimated that the value of boats in Rhode Island waters is something in excess of fifty million dollars, excluding commercial boats.
It is obvious that this is a potential and lucrative source of revenue for the assessors of those towns where a substantial amount of such property would be subject to taxation.
It is known that at least five towns (Barrington, Bristol, Narragansett, Newport and Westerly) place some value on some boats for tax purposes.
However, few are taxed, and the owners and location of most boats are unknown to the assessors on the date of assessment of town valuations.
No one really knows how many boats there actually are or what their aggregate value may be.
Slightly more than 5,000 boats were registered with the Coast Guard prior to the recent passage of the state boating law.
Only a few more than 10,000 boats had been registered with the Division of Harbors and Rivers at the end of the 1960 boating season, but many had been taken out of the water early when the threat of a hurricane brought the season to an early close.
The assessors' association, meeting at Narragansett in September 1960, devoted its session to a discussion of the boat problem.
Local industry's investment in Rhode Island was the big story in 1960's industrial development effort.
Fifty-two companies started or committed themselves to new plant construction, totaling 1,418,000 square feet and representing an investment of $11,900,000;
a new post-World War 2, record.
With minor exceptions, this expansion was instituted either by firms based in Rhode Island or out-of-state manufacturers already operating here.
What made these new location figures particularly impressive was the fact that although 1960 was a year of mild business recession throughout the nation, Rhode Island scored marked progress in new industry, new plants, and new jobs.
Of the major expansions in 1960, three were financed under the R. I. Industrial Building Authority's 100% guaranteed mortgage plan: Collyer Wire, Leesona Corporation, and American Tube & Controls.
Leading firms that arranged their own financing included Speidel Corporation, Cornell-Dubilier, Photek, Inc. Division of Textron, Narragansett Gray Iron Foundry, W. R. Cobb Company, and Mays Manufacturing Company.
Expansion and relocation of industry in Rhode Island is the direct responsibility of the Development Council's Industrial Division, and the figures quoted above indicate a successful year's operation.
Industrial Division personnel worked with 54 out-of-state and 97 Rhode Island concerns during 1960, many of whom are still interested in a Rhode Island location.
They are conscious of this state's new feeling of optimism and assurance and are definitely impressed by the number of new plants and construction projects in Rhode Island.
Aids to small business
Although much of the Industrial Division's promotional effort is devoted to securing new locations and expansions by major industries, small business is also afforded considerable attention.
Our Office of Foreign and Domestic Commerce carries on a vigorous program, directly aimed at solving and expediting the problems of manufacturers in the lower employment categories.
A primary function is the operation of a Government Bid Center, which receives bids daily from the Federal Government's principal purchasing agencies.
Assistance is rendered to interested Rhode Island businessmen concerning interpretation of bid invitations, where to obtain specifications, and follow-ups concerning qualification.
During the past year, 10,517 government bid invitations were received and 4,427 procurement leads were mailed to Rhode Island manufacturers.
In addition, the Office's domestic trade program provided consultant services to those seeking information on establishment of new businesses;
how and where to apply for financial assistance;
details on marketing;
information concerning patents, copyrights and trade marks, availability of technical reports, and other subjects of interest to small business.
The Office of Foreign and Domestic Commerce is also active in the field of international trade, assisting Rhode Island firms in developing and enlarging markets abroad.
This office cooperates with the U. S. Department of Commerce in giving statewide coverage to services which include: statistics on markets abroad;
locating foreign agents, buyers, distributors, etc.;
information on foreign and domestic import duties and regulations, licensing, investments, and establishing of branch representatives or plants abroad, and documentary requirements concerning export shipments and arrangements for payment.
During the year 1960, this office supplied 954 visitors with information related to foreign and domestic commerce, and made 73 field visits.
Advertising program
Our media advertising continued, during 1960, its previous effective program that stressed such specifics as 100% financing, plant availabilities, and location advantages.
We also continued to run a series of ads featuring endorsement of Rhode Island by industrialists who had recently established new plants here.
To reach a still greater audience of location-minded manufacturers, our industrial advertising budget for the fiscal year was increased from $32,000 to $40,000, and the Industrial Building Authority's financial participation was upped from $17,000 to $20,000.
In addition to the regular schedule, advertisements were run for maximum impact in special editions of the New York Times, Boston Herald, American Banker, Electronic News and, for local promotion, the Providence Sunday Journal.
Magazine advertising included Management Methods, The New Englander, U. S. Investor, and Plant Location.
The direct mail campaign consisted of 3 intra-state mailings of 1680 letters each and 6 out-of-state directed to electronics, plastics, pharmaceutical, and business machine manufacturers, and to publishers.
These totaled 6,768 pieces of correspondence.
The 1960 advertising campaign brought a total of 239 inquiries;
164 from media and 75 from direct mail.
Two hundred and nineteen were received from 35 of our 50 United States and 11 came from foreign countries.
New York led in the number of inquiries, followed by California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
Among foreign countries responding were Germany, Canada, Brazil and India.
Industrial promotion
An important operation in soliciting industrial locations involves what we term Missionary calls by one of this Division's industrial promotion specialists.
These consist of visits, without previous announcement, on top officials of manufacturing concerns located in highly industrialized areas.
More than 25 carefully selected cities were visited, including New York, Brooklyn, Long Island City, Newark, Elizabeth, Stamford, Waterbury, New Haven, Bridgeport, Boston, Cambridge, Worcester, and Waltham.
Out of a total of 603 calls, 452 contacts were established with top executive personnel.
We received 76 out-of-state visitors interested in investigating Rhode Island's industrial advantages, and Industrial Division personnel made 55 out-of-state follow-up visits.
Industrial conferences
During 1960, two important conferences were organized by the Development Council's Industrial Division.
In June, the Office of Foreign and Domestic Commerce--in conjunction with local trade associations, chambers of commerce, and bank officials--sponsored a World Trade Conference at the Sheraton-Biltmore Hotel.
Its purpose was to find ways of offsetting the United States' declining balance of trade for 1958 and 1959.
Approximately 100 representatives of business attended this conclave and the R. I. Export Conference Committee later voted to continue the activity as an annual event.
On October 8th of last year, the Industrial Division sponsored the Governor's Conference on Industrial Development at the former Henry Barnard School.
A comprehensive program devoted to the various phases of the development effort attracted 143 interested individuals.
Morning sessions included addresses by Ward Miller, Jr. of the U. S. Dept. of Commerce.
Richard Preston, executive director of the New Hampshire State Planning and Development Commission, and Edwin C. Kepler of General Electric Company.
Workshop sessions in the afternoon featured development executives from Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maine, and rounded out a rewarding program.
In connection with this conference, a 64-page supplement was published in the October 2nd edition of The Providence Sunday Journal.
Devoted to the improvement in business climate and increase in industrial construction in Rhode Island, it has proved a valuable mailing piece for this Division.
More than 2000 copies have been sent out to prospective clients.
Mailings and publications
1184 copies of the R. I. Directory Of Manufacturers were distributed: 643 in-state and 541 out-of-state.
The Industrial Division published, in 1960, a new, attractive industrial brochure, Rhode Island--Right For Industry, and prepared copy for a new edition of the Directory Of Manufacturers (to be printed shortly), and for a new space catalogue.
Planning division
Stated in its simplest terms, the main job of the Planning Division is to plan for the future of the State of Rhode Island.
The activities of the Planning Division are defined in considerable detail in the enabling act of the Development Council, which assigns to the agency both broad responsibilities and specific duties in the field of planning.
Two years ago, the Institute of Public Administration issued an extremely comprehensive report entitled State-Local Relations In Metropolitan Rhode Island.
As the result of an exhaustive review of the recommendations contained in this report, plus an analysis of our own enabling act, the Planning Division developed a number of basic planning objectives which caused a reorientation of its work program.
These objectives are stated here because of their importance in understanding the current activities of the Planning Division.
(1)
First priority will be given to the preparation of a meaningful state guide plan to serve as a background for all other planning activities in the state.
(2)
Recognizing the truth of the statement by the Institute of Public Administration that Metropolian Planning (in Rhode Island) means, or should mean, state planning, the state guide plan will take into account the metropolitan nature of many of Rhode Island's problems.
(3)
It will continue to be an objective of this division to encourage the acceptance of planning as a proper and continuing responsibility of local government.
To this end, the community assistance program of the planning division will continue to be operated as a staff function to make available, on a shared cost basis, technical planning assistance to those communities in the state unable to maintain their own planning staff.
(4)
The planning division will take the initiative in encouraging planning cooperation at all levels of government;
among the operating departments of the state;
between the cities and towns of the state;
and on a regional basis between the six New England states.
(5)
(6)
The state development budget will reflect the capital needs of all the state agencies and the priority of the projects in the budget will be based on the state plan.
(7)
In preparing the state guide plan, particular attention will be given means of strengthening the economy of the state through the development of industry and recreation.
Functionally the planning division carries out four activities: long-range state planning, current state planning, local planning assistance;
and the preparation of the state development budget.
Long-range state planning
The planning division has embarked on the most complete and comprehensive state planning program in the nation.
The long-range aspects of this program are divided into four distinct phases: basic mapping, inventory, analysis and plan and policy formation.
The work program, as it was originally proposed, was to take five years to complete.
Recent events--particularly the necessity of providing planning information for the statewide origin/destination study of the Department of Public Works--indicate that this schedule will have to be accelerated.
The basic mapping phase of the program has been completed and the inventory phase is scheduled for completion July 1, 1961.
Basic mapping
With these maps completed, the inventory phase of the plan has been started.
Inventory
With the aid of matching federal funds available under Section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954 as amended, the planning division began a one year program July 1, 1960 to complete the inventory phase of the state planning program.
This phase consists of four items: urban land use, rural land use, physical features and public utility service areas.
Since the validity of all subsequent planning depends on the accuracy of the basic inventory information, great care is being taken that the inventory is as complete as possible.
The urban land use study carried out by the planning division staff has consisted of identifying and mapping all urban land uses which are of significance to statewide planning.
The rural land use study is being carried out under contract by the University of Rhode Island and identifies all agricultural land uses in the state by type of use.
Analysis
The collection of information is meaningless unless it is understood and used for a definite purpose.
Special districts in Rhode island.
It is not within the scope of this report to elaborate in any great detail upon special districts in Rhode Island.
However, a word should be mentioned in regard to them as independent units of government.
There are forty-seven special district governments in Rhode Island (excluding two regional school districts, four housing authorities, and the Kent County Water Authority).
These forty-seven special purpose governments have the authority to levy taxes, to borrow money, own property, sue and be sued, and in general to exercise normal corporate powers.
Unlike cities and towns, however, they do not have to submit any financial statements to the state Bureau of Audits.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the state government has little or no fiscal control over these units of government.
In addition to the collection of service charges, the special districts levy annual property taxes of approximately $450,000.
Fiscal years in other states
comparative data.
A review of practices in other states regarding fiscal uniformity is pertinent to this report.
Included in the findings are: 1.
Forty-six states, including Rhode Island, end their fiscal year on June 30.
The other four states end on varying dates: Alabama (Sept. 30), New York (March 31), Pennsylvania (May 31), and Texas (August 31).
In eleven states, the fiscal year of the cities ends on December 31, while the state fiscal year ends on June 30 (Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin).
In eight states whose fiscal years close on June 30, a majority of their cities close their fiscal year on December 31::
(Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Virginia, and South Carolina).
One state, Alabama, closes its fiscal year on September 30, and all cities in the state, with one exception, also close fiscal years on September 30.
Mississippi closes its fiscal year on June 30, while all of its cities close their fiscal years on September 30.
Pennsylvania closes its fiscal year on May 31.
All of its cities close their fiscal years on December 31.
The remaining twelve states have varying fiscal years for the state, city and local governments.
However, only Illinois, Oregon, Louisiana and Rhode Island have a situation in which the sundry units of government vary widely in relation to fiscal uniformity.
Fiscal uniformity: advantages and disadvantages
advantages.
An excellent summary of advantages concerning the uniform fiscal year and coordinated fiscal calendars was contained in a paper presented by a public finance authority recently.
He listed among the values of fiscal uniformity: 1.
The uniform fiscal year requires compliance with common sense administration of local finances: adoption of the budget, or financial plan, in advance of spending.
The uniform fiscal year ensures conformance with another common sense rule, that of having cash in the bank before checks are drawn.
It enables towns to make more economical purchases and to take advantage of cash discounts.
The uniform fiscal year promotes more careful budgeting and strengthens control over expenditures.
By fixing the tax rate in advance of spending, upper limits are set on expenditures.
The uniform fiscal year brings the town's fiscal year into line with that of the schools, which expend the largest share of local disbursements.
This greatly simplifies the town's bookkeeping and financial reporting.
The uniform fiscal year eliminates interest charges on money borrowed in the form of tax anticipation notes.
Furthermore, tax collections not immediately needed for current expenditures may be invested in short-term treasury notes, augmenting the town's miscellaneous revenues and reducing the tax levy.
The uniform fiscal year facilitates inter-town comparison of revenues and expenditures.
When towns have the same fiscal year it is relatively easy to make meaningful comparisons;
and as the cost of local government increases, the demand for such comparison also increases.
Towns having different fiscal years are difficult to compare.
Of all advantages, probably none is more important than the elimination of tax anticipation notes.
Borrowing in anticipation of current taxes and other revenues is a routine procedure of the majority of municipalities at all times.
It may be by bank loans, sale of notes or warrants, or by the somewhat casual method of issuance and registration of warrants.
In any event it is a form of borrowing which could be and should be rendered unnecessary.
Its elimination would result in the saving of interest costs, heavy when short-term money rates are high, and in freedom from dependence on credit which is not always available when needed most.
This type of borrowing can be reduced to a minimum if quarterly installment payment of taxes is instituted and the first payment placed near the opening of the fiscal year.
Any approach toward such a system looks toward saving and security.
It should be noted that there are other and equally important reasons for establishing meaningful intergovernmental reporting bases on a uniform fiscal year.
Both the federal and state governments commence their fiscal years on July 1.
Both units of government contribute increasingly large sums of money to the several local governments in this state as indicated below:
It has been said that when local government revenues were mostly produced locally from the property tax, the lack of a uniform fiscal year was no great handicap;
but with the growth of state and federal fiscal aid, the emphasis on equalization, and the state-local sharing of responsibility for certain important functions, this is no longer true.
The haphazard fiscal year calendar is an obstacle to the planning of clear and efficient state-local revenue and expenditure relationships.
Disadvantages.
Although there are many sound reasons for adopting uniform and coordinated fiscal years in Rhode Island, there are also certain difficulties encountered.
These involve more the mechanics employed in adjusting to fiscal uniformity than they do actual disadvantages to the principle.
One problem is a matter of shifting dates;
the other, is how to finance the transition.
Little can be done about the changing of dates.
This is an inherent part of adjusting fiscal calendars.
It usually means a confused and disgruntled tax-paying public for a period of time.
But cooperation and understanding between local officials and the citizenry help lessen this problem.
The other problem is the matter of financing the transition period in the several cities and towns.
This will be covered more fully later.
It should be kept in mind that the ease or difficulty with which a town or city can convert to the proposed plan is directly dependent upon the financial condition of that town or city.
Fortunately, there are no cities or towns in the state, with one or two possible exceptions that are in too difficult a position to finance the proposed change.
Sacrifice will have to be made in some cases, but it is to the municipality's advantage to finance the change-over for a short period of time rather than pay interest on tax anticipation notes indefinitely.
Adjusting the fiscal calendars
The advantages of a uniform fiscal year and well synchronized fiscal and tax collection calendars are sufficiently great for Rhode Island municipalities to exert effort to secure them.
The type of program desired can be determined by the nature and extent of the adjustments needed.
Two features are immediately evident.
First, the present situation is too varied to be systematized by any single formula.
Second, the shift to a uniform July 1 to June 30 fiscal year will, of itself, improve the tax collection calendars of the great majority of cities and towns.
There are at least two problems to consider: one is a matter of adjusting the fiscal calendar;
the other is how to finance the adjustments when necessary.
The latter matter is considered in detail in a later section.
Twelve cities and towns in Rhode Island presently indicate some plans to establish a uniform and/or coordinated fiscal tax year calendar.
Plans vary from the talking stage to establishing special committees to accomplish this end.
What is important here is that many of the cities and towns recognize the need for improved fiscal practices and are taking the initiative to obtain them.
An analysis of the fiscal tax collection year calendars throughout the state indicates that transition may not be as painful as is commonly thought.
However, it must be stressed that much depends upon the financial condition of the individual cities and towns involved.
The adjustments needed to establish a uniform and coordinated fiscal tax collection year calendar throughout Rhode Island, based on a July 1 to June 30 year, are shown below.
No adjustment needed.
Six cities and towns are presently on a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year and have coordinated their tax collection year with it.
No change is required for these towns.
These municipalities include: Barrington, Lincoln, Middletown, Newport, North Kingstown, and South Kingstown.
Adjustment of fiscal year.
One town and one city, Coventry and East Providence, require an adjustment of their fiscal year only.
This change will automatically adjust their tax collection year calendar so as to make all tax installments due and payable in the fiscal year collectible within that year.
Adjustment of tax collection year.
Six cities and towns are now on a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year and will need only to adjust their tax collection year calendar to establish uniformity.
These cities and towns include Bristol, Glocester, Pawtucket, Cumberland, Central Falls, and Woonsocket.
Simultaneous adjustments.
Two cities to be considered, Providence and Cranston, are an enigma.
Both have excellent integration of their fiscal tax collection year calendars.
However, neither of these two cities is on the desired July 1 to June 30 fiscal year.
The adjustment to a uniform and coordinated fiscal period could be accomplished relatively easily for them.
In that both cities end their fiscal years on September 30, they could levy taxes for an interim period of nine months, commencing with September 30 and ending with June 30.
These three installment dates would be: October 26, January 26, and April 25 (Providence) and November 15, February 16 and May 15 (Cranston).
Both would start their new fiscal year on July 1.
Their tax collection calendar could then be: July 25, October 26, January 26, and April 25, (Providence);
and August 15, November 15, February 17, and May 15, (Cranston).
Under this plan both Cranston and Providence would be on the uniform fiscal year but would still be using the same installment periods.
Varying adjustments.
The remaining twenty-three towns have fiscal years which end prior to June 30.
All of these towns will require adjustments of both their fiscal and tax collection years.
Assuming an adjustment to the July 1 to June 30 fiscal year, the required adjustment of the tax collection years and the towns involved are shown in Table 3.
Methods of financing adjustments
Aside from the matter of adjusting the fiscal and tax calendars, there is the problem of financing the adjustment when this is necessary.
It should be emphasized strongly that adjustments in fiscal dates or adoption of interim budgets do not necessarily mean financing over and above normal governmental requirements.
In many communities there is simply no financial problem;
it is only a matter of adjusting accounting methods, careful fiscal planning and management, or some like combination of techniques.
In other municipalities the difficulties in overcoming the financial burden have been sufficiently great to dishearten proponents of fiscal year changes.
Fortunately, such cases in Rhode Island are more the exception than the rule.
As shown earlier in Table 1, the several cities and towns use widely varied fiscal and tax collection calendars.
In addition, no two Rhode Island communities are identical in relation to their over-all financial condition.
These factors practically insure that no single financing formula is feasible;
each situation must be studied and a plan developed that takes into consideration such factors as the effect of the existing and prospective tax calendars, the financial condition of the treasuries, and the length of the transition interval.
Suitable plans range from those that are very easy to develop to those that are difficult to formulate and require borrowing ranging from short-term serial notes to long-term bonds.
The financial problem, where it exists, usually stems from the adoption of a budget for the transitional or adjustment period.
For those communities which have financial difficulties in effecting adjustments, there are a number of alternatives any one of which alone, or in combination with others, would minimize if not even eliminate the problem.
Rhode Island Heritage Week proclamation by John A. Notte, Jr., governor
The theme of Rhode Island Heritage Week for 1961 will be Independence and Union.
It commemorates the 185th anniversary of Rhode Island's Independence when, upon May 4, 1776, the General Assembly, by its action, established the first free republic in the New World.
On April 30, ceremonies commemorating the departure of these volunteers will take place at 1:00 P.M. at the Dexter Training Grounds in Providence.
The Independence Day celebration will be properly observed with a big military and civic parade from West Warwick to the Greene Homestead in Anthony;
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 21st day of April, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one and on Independence, the one hundred and eighty-fifth.
Governor
Armed Forces Day Proclamation by John A. Notte, Jr., Governor
The year 1961 marks the fourteenth anniversary of the unification of our Armed Forces under the National Security Act of 1947.
National defense, like the continuing search for peace with freedom and justice for all, is everybody's business.
Our investment in this effort, the greatest in our Nation's history, reflects our determination to ensure the peace and the future of freedom.
It is a sound investment.
As the President has said, only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain that they will never be employed.
It is the purpose of Armed Forces Day to give Americans an opportunity to honor men of the Armed Forces, those who have made the supreme sacrifice, those who remain to preserve our security.
Freedom depends upon them;
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 17th day of May, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, and of Independence, the one hundred and eighty-sixth.
Governor
National Maritime Day proclamation by John A. Notte, Jr., Governor
The President of the United States, pursuant to a Joint Resolution of Congress, has issued a proclamation each year since 1933 declaring May 22nd to be National Maritime Day.
This date in 1819 marked the sailing of the S. S. Savannah from Savannah, Georgia, for Liverpool.
This voyage was the first successful crossing of the Atlantic under steam propulsion.
The day is now appropriately set aside to honor the American men and women who have contributed to the success of our merchant marine fleet in peace and war.
The Merchant Marine is the Fourth Arm of Defense, for a strong and effective American Merchant Marine is essential to the economy and security of our Nation.
Through trade and travel across the seas the American Merchant Marine is carrying out its historic mission of linking the United States of America with friendly nations across the seas;
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 20th day of April, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, and of Independence, the one hundred and eighty-fifth.
Governor
Miss Rhode Island Pageant Week proclamation by John A. Notte, Jr., Governor
The Miss Rhode Island Pageant is sponsored by the Rhode Island Junior Chamber of Commerce as a part of the nation-wide search for the typical American girl--a Miss America from Rhode Island.
This is an official preliminary contest of the Miss America Pageant held each September in Atlantic City.
The ideal girl--possessed of talent, poise, intelligence, personality and beauty of face and figure--is chosen each year to represent Rhode Island.
Many hours are given free by the Jaycees to make this and all local pageants outstanding events.
Proceeds realized from these pageants are used by the Jaycees to help support their various youth, health, welfare and community betterment activities throughout the state.
Miss Sally May Saabye, (Miss Rhode Island 1960) says that within a short time--on June 17th--her reign will come to an end.
She hopes that all will support the contestants from our own community by attending our Pageants and the State Pageant June 17;
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 11th day of June, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, and of Independence, the one hundred and eighty-sixth.
Governor
United Nations Day proclamation by John A. Notte, Jr., governor
For the purpose of maintaining international peace and promoting the advancement of all people, the United States of America joined in founding the United Nations.
The United Nations Charter sets forth standards which, if adhered to, will promote peace and justice throughout the world.
It is extremely important for each American to realize that the theme The United Nations Is Your Business applies to him personally.
The world desperately needs the United Nations.
United Nations Day is the birthday of the United Nations, mankind's noblest attempt to establish lasting peace with justice;
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 5th day of July, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, and of Independence, the one hundred and eighty-sixth.
Governor
The State Ballet of Rhode Island Week proclamation by John A. Notte, Jr., Governor
The ballet originated in Italy about 1450.
At that time it was a series of sophisticated social dances whose steps were often combined with other steps devised by the choreographer.
Ballet flowered in Italy during the next hundred years, and about 1550 was carried to France when the Italian princess, Catherine De Medicis, married the King of France.
The most famous ballet of that time was called Ballet Comique De La Reine (1581).
Dances alternated with sung or spoken verses.
Ballets were used in opera from its beginning.
They were placed either in the middle of the acts or in the intermissions.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 23d day of October, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, and of Independence, the one hundred and eighty-sixth.
Governor
Proclamation Thanksgiving Day by John A. Notte, Jr., Governor
As another Thanksgiving draws near, let us take time out from the often hectic pace of our lives to try and recapture the feelings that filled the hearts of the Pilgrims on the first Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims gathered to thank the Lord for His benevolence during their first year in the new land.
They had been through trying times, but their faith in the Almighty had given them the courage and the strength to meet and overcome the many problems and difficulties that were the price they had to pay for freedom.
And as the Pilgrims bowed their heads in humble gratitude, they shared another feeling--the anticipation of what the future held for them and their posterity.
They could not guess that from their concepts of liberty and freedom would some day be born a new nation that for years would be the symbol of hope to the oppressed countries of the world.
They simply turned to God filled with gratitude and faith.
We who are living today may learn a valuable lesson from those who celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day.
The Lord has shown time and time again His love for us.
We have only to compare the liberty and high standard of living we enjoy in this great country with the oppression and frugality of other nations to realize with humble gratitude that God's Providence has been with us since the very beginning of our country.
And yet, accompanying our gratitude is the realization that we are living in a crucial time.
With world peace constantly being threatened, most of us regard the future skeptically, and even with fear.
It is at this time that we should imitate the Pilgrims by accompanying our prayers of thanks with the conviction that we shall continue to be in dire need for the Lord's protection in the future, if we are to have peace;
now, therefore, do I, John A. Notte, Jr., governor of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, proclaim Thursday, November 23rd, 1961, as Thanksgiving Day,
And so, let us remember on this day not only to thank the Almighty Who gave hope and courage to the Pilgrims, but also to place our trust in Him that He will continue to protect us in the future as He has in the past.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the State to be affixed this 21st day of November, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one and of Independence, the one hundred and eighty-sixth.
John A. Notte Jr.,
Governor
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Act of July 3, 1952 (66 Stat. 328) as amended (42 U.S.C. 1952-1958), is further amended to read as follows: Section 1.
Sec. 2.
In order to accomplish the purposes of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall--(A)
conduct, encourage, and promote fundamental scientific research and basic studies to develop the best and most economical processes and methods for converting saline water into water suitable for beneficial consumptive purposes;
(B)
(C)
(D)
study methods for the recovery and marketing of commercially valuable byproducts resulting from the conversion of saline water;
and (E)
undertake economic studies and surveys to determine present and prospective costs of producing water for beneficial consumptive purposes in various parts of the United States by the leading saline water processes as compared with other standard methods.
Sec. 3.
In carrying out his functions under Section 2 of this Act, the Secretary may--(A)
acquire the services of chemists, physicists, engineers, and other personnel by contract or otherwise;
(B)
enter into contracts with educational institutions, scientific organizations, and industrial and engineering firms;
(C)
make research and training grants;
(D)
utilize the facilities of Federal scientific laboratories;
(E)
establish and operate necessary facilities and test sites at which to carry on the continuous research, testing, development, and programing necessary to effectuate the purposes of this Act;
(F)
acquire secret processes, technical data, inventions, patent applications, patents, licenses, land and interests in land (including water rights), plants and facilities, and other property or rights by purchase, license, lease, or donation;
(G)
assemble and maintain pertinent and current scientific literature, both domestic and foreign, and issue bibliographical data with respect thereto;
(H)
cause on-site inspections to be made of promising projects, domestic and foreign, and, in the case of projects located in the United States, cooperate and participate in their development in instances in which the purposes of this Act will be served thereby;
(I)
foster and participate in regional, national, and international conferences relating to saline water conversion;
(J)
coordinate, correlate, and publish information with a view to advancing the development of low-cost saline water conversion projects;
and (K)
cooperate with other Federal departments and agencies, with State and local departments, agencies, and instrumentalities, and with interested persons, firms, institutions, and organizations.
Sec. 4.
(A)
The fullest cooperation by and with Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Department of State, and other concerned agencies shall also be carried out in the interest of achieving the objectives of this Act.
(B)
This subsection shall not be so construed as to deprive the owner of any background patent relating thereto of such rights as he may have thereunder.
Sec. 5.
(A)
The Secretary may dispose of water and byproducts resulting from his operations under this Act.
All moneys received from dispositions under this section shall be paid into the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts).
(B)
Nothing in the Act shall be construed to alter existing law with respect to the ownership and control of water.
Sec. 6.
The Secretary shall make reports to the President and the Congress at the beginning of each regular session of the action taken or instituted by him under the provisions of this Act and of prospective action during the ensuing year.
Sec. 7.
The Secretary of the Interior may issue rules and regulations to effectuate the purposes of this Act.
Sec. 8.
There are authorized to be appropriated such sums, to remain available until expended, as may be necessary, but not more than $75,000,000 in all, (A) to carry out the provisions of this Act during the fiscal years 1962 to 1967, inclusive;
(B) to finance, for not more than two years beyond the end of said period, such grants, contracts, cooperative agreements, and studies as may theretofore have been undertaken pursuant to this Act;
Sec. 2.
Section 4 of the joint resolution of September 2, 1958 (72 Stat. 1707;
42 U. S. C. 1958 ()), is hereby amended to read:
The authority of the Secretary of the Interior under this joint resolution to construct, operate, and maintain demonstration plants shall terminate upon the expiration of twelve years after the date on which this joint resolution is approved.
Upon such sale, there shall be returned to any State or public agency which has contributed financial assistance under Section 3 of this joint resolution a proper share of the net proceeds of the sale.
Approved September 22, 1961.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized and directed to make or cause to be made a study covering--(1)
the causes of injuries and health hazards in Metal and nonmetallic mines (excluding coal and lignite mines);
(2)
the relative effectiveness of voluntary versus mandatory reporting of accident statistics;
(3)
the relative contribution to safety of inspection programs embodying--(A)
right-of-entry only and (B)
right-of-entry plus enforcement authority;
(4)
the effectiveness of health and safety education and training;
(5)
the magnitude of effort and costs of each of these possible phases of an effective safety program for metal and nonmetallic mines (excluding coal and lignite mines);
and (6)
the scope and adequacy of State mine-safety laws applicable to such mines and the enforcement of such laws.
Sec. 2.
(A)
(B)
As used in this section--(1)
the term State includes the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and any possession of the United States;
and (2)
the term commerce means commerce between any State and any place outside thereof, or between points within the same State but through any place outside thereof.
Sec. 3.
Approved September 26, 1961.
Sec. 2.
(A)
Payments shall be made only with respect to the metal content as determined by assay.
(B)
(C)
(D)
The maximum amount of payments which may be made pursuant to this Act on account of sales of newly mined ores or concentrates produced therefrom made during the calendar year 1962 shall not exceed $4,500,000;
the maximum amount of such payments which may be made on account of such sales made during the calendar year 1963 shall not exceed $4,500,000;
the maximum amount of such payments which may be made on account of such sales made during the calendar year 1964 shall not exceed $4,000,000;
and the maximum amount of such payments which may be made on account of such sales made during the calendar year 1965 shall not exceed $3,500,000.
In the same period, 431 presentations by members of the staff were made to local, national, and international medical groups.
Education:
The education function of the Institute is carried on by the staff in the departments of pathology and its consultants.
During fiscal year 1959, six courses were conducted: Forensic Pathology, Application of Histochemistry to Pathology, Pathology of Diseases of Laboratory Animals, Ophthalmic Pathology, Pathology of the Oral Regions, and a Cardiovasculatory Pathology Seminar.
During fiscal year 1960, seven courses were conducted: Application of Histochemistry to Pathology, Forensic Pathology, Pathology of Diseases of Laboratory Animals, Pathology of the Oral Regions, Ophthalmic Pathology, Forensic Sciences Symposium, and Orthopedic Pathology.
During fiscal years 1959 and 1960, there were 139 military and civilian students who came to the Institute for varying periods of special instruction.
Research:
The Institute is engaged in an extensive program of medico-military scientific research in both morphological and experimental pathology.
Among the specific areas of concentration in which the staff is engaged, are such projects as biological and biochemical studies of the effects of microwaves;
study of motor end plates in man and animals;
investigation of respiratory diseases of laboratory animals;
metabolic responses to reduced oxygen tension;
neuropathology of nuclear and cosmic radiation;
carcinoma of prostate;
evaluation of histochemical techniques;
and hip dysplasia in dogs.
There has been an increase in cooperative research with other Federal agencies and civilian institutions.
Also, the Defense Atomic Support Agency sponsored a long-range study at this Institute on the response of massive suspension cultures of mammalian cells to acute radiation.
Other scientific agencies, both Federal and civilian, supported studies in quantitative electron microscopical approach to microchemistry and microcytochemistry;
the investigation of the relationship of diphosphopyridine nucleotide synthesizine enzyme to tumor growth;
morphological study and classification of leukemia and lymphoma cases in animals;
and the study of structural changes in M. leprae and other mycobacteria.
Medical Illustration Service
The Medical Illustration Service is responsible for the collection, publication, exhibition, and file of medical illustration material of medico-military importance to the Armed Forces.
It also maintains shops for the design and fabrication of exhibits, training aids and instruments and libraries for the loan of films and teaching lantern slide sets.
During this period, a total of 762 exhibits were presented at 442 medical and scientific meetings.
Of these exhibits, 154 were newly constructed.
Twenty-nine exhibits received awards.
Visual and operable training aids developed by the Medical Illustration Service, were used in support of Army Medical Service mass casualty exercises.
Members of the Medical Illustration Service lectured and conducted demonstrations on the use of training aids to military personnel and various civilian medical organizations.
Demonstrations of new and projected training aids were conducted at the Medical Service Instructor's Conference, Brooke Army Medical Center, Texas.
In support of the emphasis placed by the Department of Defense on instruction in emergency medical care, the Medical Illustration Service developed casualty simulation kits and rescue breathing manikins which are being field tested;
and overhead projector transparency sets on the subjects of Military Sanitation: First Aid For Soldiers;
Bandaging And Splinting;
The Emergency Medical Treatment Unit, Phase 1;
and Emergency War Surgery in support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Handbook.
Fifty lantern slide teaching sets on the subject of Emergency War Surgery (NATO) were assembled and distributed to the Medical Military Services of foreign Governments associated with NATO and South-East Asia Treaty Organization.
The British and Canadian Liaison Officers, as well as Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization, the American Red Cross, and similar interested organizations were informed from time to time as training aids were developed.
Nine veterinary lantern slide teaching sets were developed and distributed, and lantern slide teaching sets on 21 pathology subjects were added to the loan library of the Medical Illustration Service.
Illustrations were prepared for 11 Department of the Army manuals and one Graphic Training Aid.
Sixteen lantern slide sets were loaned to the Government of India and eight sets were forwarded to the U.S. Embassy, Managua, Nicaragua for the Educational Exchange Program.
The Senate Subcommittee on Reorganization and International Organizations was provided samples of visual aids on first aid and personal health produced by the Medical Illustration Service.
Six fascicles (10,000 copies each) of the Atlas Of Tumor Pathology were completed during the period of this report.
The American Registry Of Pathology
This consists of 25 individual registries, two of which were added during fiscal years 1959-1960 (The Registry Of Forensic Pathology and The Testicular Tumor Registry).
The staff utilized the collected material in these registries for numerous lectures to national and international meetings, exhibits, and published studies.
During the period of this report, 37,470 new cases were entered into the various registries.
These were selected carefully and included not only detailed clinical information but adequate pathology of value for research and educational purposes.
In this same period, six new fascicles of the Atlas Of Tumor Pathology were published and distributed to medical centers world-wide.
There were 54,320 copies of fascicles sold and 642 copies distributed free during this period.
Forty-five new Clinico-pathologic Conferences were prepared, bringing the total to 61 available for loan distribution.
Nine new teaching Clinico-pathologic Conference sets were prepared, which makes a total of 70 types of teaching sets for loan.
During this period, 7,827 teaching sets were distributed on loan.
The Clinico-pathologic Conferences have been acknowledged as of great value and in consequent great demand by the small isolated military hospitals.
The Medical Museum
In fiscal year 1959, the Medical Museum was moved to Chase Hall, a temporary building on Independence Avenue at Ninth Street, Southwest, and continued to display to the public the achievements of the Armed Forces Medical Services.
During the period of this report, 63 panel exhibits depicting the latest developments in medical research were displayed.
Of the 375 exhibits (of all types) shown, 161 were new or refurbished.
Of the 885 specimens newly mounted or refurbished, 254 were prepared for other agencies.
Eighty-five specimens were loaned for study purposes.
An exhibit, Macropathology--An Ancient Art, A New Science, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association.
A three-dimensional exhibit depicting A Century Of Naval Medicine was formally presented to The Director by George S. Squibb, great-grandson of the founder of E. R. Squibb and Sons, for permanent display in the Museum.
Space was provided for short-time guest medical exhibits, and the Museum collected new accessions of microscopes, medical, surgical, and diagnostic instruments, uniform, and similar items of historical medico-military significance.
During the period, the laboratory rendered centralized macropathological service to qualified requesters.
Specimens were mounted for military installations, governmental agencies, and medical schools.
Three hundred five copies of the Manual Of Macropathological Techniques were distributed.
Thirty-five military and civilian students received laboratory training.
During fiscal years 1959 and 1960, there were 795,586 visitors to the Museum.
During the period from 1 July 1960 through 31 January 1961, the Medical Museum was required to move to Temporary Building S on the Mall from Chase Hall.
Throughout the period and during the movement operation, the Museum continued its functional support of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
Armed Forces Medical Publication Agency
Its supplement, The Medical Technicians Bulletin, supplied similar material to enlisted medical personnel.
These publications replaced the U. S. Naval Medical Bulletin, published continuously from 1907 through 1959, as well as the Navy's Hospital Corps Quarterly and the Bulletin of the U. S. Army Medical Department, published from 1922 to 1949.
In addition, their establishment made it unnecessary to begin publication of a contemplated Air Force medical bulletin.
Estimated annual savings resulting from publication of the Journal and Bulletin on a triservice basis, as compared with the cost of producing separate periodicals for each service, were between $65,000 and $70,000.
From 1 July 1958 to 30 June 1960, 24 numbers of the Journal and nine of the Bulletin were published.
Each Journal contained articles of professional and clinical interest, and departments devoted to military medical news, reviews of new books, and other features of interest to officers of the medical services.
The Council on National Defense of the American Medical Association contributed a brief article to each issue entitled, This Is Your A.M.A..
Beginning with the October 1959 issue of the Journal, the method of production of copy for photo-offset reproduction was changed from varityping to hot typesetting.
This resulted in an improved appearance, but was followed by an increase in printing cost that necessitated the institution of major economies to keep within the total of allocated funds.
The use of 100 instead of 140 substance paper plus the adoption of side stapling beginning with the May 1960 issue reduced costs sufficiently to allow completion of the fiscal year with nearly $4,000 in unexpended funds.
Two special issues were published, one for November 1959 on Space Medicine, the other the Tenth Anniversary issue for January 1960.
The February 1960 issue marked the reinstitution of the section entitled, The Medical Officer Writes.
Replacing the discontinued Medical Technicians Bulletin, publication of which was suspended with the November-December 1959 issue, a section called Technical Notes was inaugurated on a bimonthly basis beginning with the April 1960 issue.
Occasional features were published on historical medicine, special reports, bibliography, and Collector's Items.
In May 1960, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology began a series of articles on the Medical Museum, and in June, the Institute started contributing a regular monthly Case For Diagnosis.
The Institute also planned to furnish a regular series of articles, beginning in the fall of 1960, on its more significant Scientific Exhibits.
The Armed Forces Epidemiological Board agreed to submit each month a report for one of its 12 commissions, so that each commission will report once a year on some phase of its work calculated to be of particular interest and value to medical officers of the Armed Forces.
The first report in this continuing series appeared in the September 1960 issue of the Journal.
Another recent achievement was the successful development of a method for the complete combustion in a bomb calorimeter of a metal in fluorine when the product is relatively non-volatile.
This work gave a heat of formation of aluminum fluoride which closely substantiates a value which had been determined by a less direct method, and raises this property to 15 percent above that accepted a few years ago.
Similar measurements are being initiated to resolve a large discrepancy in the heat of formation of another important combustion product, beryllium fluoride.
The development and testing of new apparatus to measure other properties is nearing completion.
In one of these, an exploding-wire device to study systems thermodynamically up to 6,000 Af and 100 atmospheres pressure, a major goal was achieved.
The accuracy of measuring the total electrical energy entering an exploding wire during a few microseconds was verified when two independent types of comparison with the heat energy produced had an uncertainty of less than 2 percent.
This agreement is considered very good for such short time intervals.
The method of calibration employs a fixed resistance element as a calorimeter.
The element is inserted in the discharge circuit in place of the exploding wire, and the calorimetric heating of the element is measured with high accuracy.
This is used as a reference for comparing the ohmic heating and the electrical energy obtained from the measured current through the element and the measured voltage across the element.
A high-speed shutter has been developed in order to permit photographic observation of any portion of the electrical wire explosion.
The shutter consists of two parts: a fast-opening part and a fast-closing part.
Using Edgerton's method, the fast-closing action is obtained from the blackening of a window by exploding a series of parallel lead wires.
The fast-opening of the shutter consists of a piece of aluminum foil (approximately Af) placed directly in front of the camera lens so that no light may pass into the camera.
The opening action is obtained when a capacitor, charged to high voltage, is suddenly discharged through the foil.
During the discharge the magnetic forces set up by the passage of current cause the edges of the foil to roll inward toward its center line, thus allowing light to pass into the camera.
Experiments have shown that the shutter is 75 percent open in about 60-80 microseconds.
The shutter aperture may be made larger or smaller by changing the foil area and adjusting the electrical energy input to the foil.
Laboratory measurements of interstellar radio spectra.
Besides the well-known hydrogen line at 21 cm wavelength, the spectra of extraterrestrial radio sources may contain sharp lines characteristic of other atoms, ions, and small molecules.
The detection and study of such line spectra would add considerably to present information on interstellar gas clouds and, perhaps, planetary atmospheres.
Among the most likely producers of detectable radio line spectra are the light diatomic hydrides OH and CH;
somewhat less likely sources are the heavier hydrides SH, SiH, and Aj.
Very small concentrations of these hydrides should be detectable;
in interstellar gas, concentrations as low as Af molecules per Af may be sufficient, as compared to the Af hydrogen atom's Af required for detection of the 21-cm line.
High sensitivity in radio telescopes is achieved by reducing the bandwidth of the receiver;
therefore, only with precise foreknowledge of the line frequencies is an astronomical search for the radio spectra of these molecules feasible.
To secure precise measurements of these frequencies, a research program in free radical microwave spectroscopy has been started.
Since conventional methods are insensitive at the low frequencies of these molecular transitions, the paramagnetic resonance method is being used instead.
This involves the application of a strong magnetic field to the radical vapor, which shifts the low-frequency spectra to a conveniently high microwave range, where they may be measured with optimum sensitivity.
The first diatomic hydride investigated by the paramagnetic resonance method was the OH radical.
Results of this experiment include the frequencies of the two strong spectral lines by which OH may be identified in interstellar gas;
the frequencies are 1665.32 and 1667.36 Af, with an uncertainty of 0.10 Af.
Success in observing these spectral lines has so far, apparently, been confined to the laboratory;
extraterrestrial observations have yet to be reported.
Preparations are being made for similar experiments on CH and SH radicals.
Low temperature thermometry.
The Bureau is pursuing an active program to provide a temperature scale and thermometer calibration services in the range 1.5 to 20 Af.
Acoustical interferometer.
An acoustical interferometer has been constructed and used, with helium gas as the thermometric fluid, to measure temperatures near 4.2 and 2.1 Af.
Such an interferometer provides a means of absolute temperature measurement, and may be used as an alternative to the gas thermometer.
When values of temperature derived with this instrument were compared with the accepted values associated with liquid helium-4 vapor pressures, differences of about 10 and 7 millidegrees respectively were found.
This result is preliminary, and work is continuing.
Resistance thermometers.
Carbon resistors and impurity-doped germanium resistors have been investigated for use as precision secondary thermometers in the liquid helium temperature region.
Preliminary calibrations of the resistors have been made from 4.21 to 2.16 Af at every 0.1 Af.
The estimated standard deviations of the data for two of the resistors were 1 millidegree;
and for the third resistor, 3.3 millidegrees.
Vapor pressure method.
The reproducibilities of helium vapor-pressure thermometers have been investigated in conjunction with a constant temperature liquid helium bath from 4.2 to 1.8 Af.
Surface temperature gradients have been found to exist in liquid helium baths contained in 15- and 25-liter metallic storage dewars.
The gradient was about one half of a millidegree at 4.2 Af but increased to several millidegrees for bath temperatures slightly greater than the **yl point.
A hydrostatic head correction has been neither necessary nor applicable in the determination of vapor pressures or temperatures for the bulk liquid helium.
However, the surface temperature gradient can produce erroneous vapor-pressure measurements for the bulk liquid helium unless precautions are taken to isolate the tube (which passes through the surface to the vapor pressure bulb) from the liquid helium surface.
It has also been observed, in helium 2, that large discrepancies can exist between surface vapor pressures and those pressures measured by a vapor pressure thermometer.
This has been attributed to helium film flow in the vapor pressure thermometer.
In this case also the design of the thermometer can be modified to reduce the helium film flow.
Pressure transducer for pvt measurements.
Precise pressure-volume-temperature measurements on corrosive gases are dependent on a sensitive yet rugged pressure transducer.
A prototype which fulfills the requirements was developed and thoroughly tested.
The transducer is a null-type instrument and employs a stretched diaphragm, 0.001 in. thick and 1 in. in diameter.
A small pressure unbalance displaces the diaphragm and changes the capacitance between the diaphragm and an electrically insulated plate spaced 0.001 in. apart (for Af).
Spherical concave backing surfaces support the diaphragm when excessive pressures are applied and prevent the stresses within the diaphragm from exceeding the elastic limit.
Over a temperature range from 25 to 200 Af and at pressures up to 250 atm, an overload of 300 psi, applied for a period of one day, results in an uncertainty in the pressure of, at most, one millimeter of mercury.
Transport properties of air.
A 6-year study of the transport properties of air at elevated temperatures has been completed.
This project was carried out under sponsorship of the Ballistic Missile Division of the Air Research and Development Command, U.S. Air Force, and had as its goal the investigation of the transport by diffusion of the heat energy of chemical binding.
A significant effect discovered during the study is the existence of Prandtl numbers reaching values of more than unity in the nitrogen dissociation region.
Another effect discovered is the large coefficient of thermal diffusion tending to separate nitrogen from the oxygen when temperature differences straddling the nitrogen dissociation region are present.
International cooperative activities.
In March, 1961, representatives of the national laboratories of Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, U.S.S.R., United States, and West Germany, met at the NBS to devise means for reaching international agreement on a temperature scale between 10 and 90 Af.
As a first step toward this goal, arrangements were worked out for comparing the scales now in use through circulation of a group of standard platinum resistance thermometers for calibration by each national laboratory.
Such a group of thermometers was obtained and calibrated at the Aj.
These thermometers have now been sent to the United Kingdom for calibration at the National Physical Laboratory.
Temperature symposium.
During the last week of march 1961, Columbus, Ohio was the site of the Fourth Symposium on Temperature, Its Measurement And Control In Science And Industry.
The Symposium, which was jointly sponsored by the American Institute of Physics, the Instrument Society of America, and the National Bureau of Standards, attracted nearly one thousand registrants, including many from abroad.
The Bureau contributed to the planning and success of the Symposium through the efforts of Mr. W. A. Wildhack, General Chairman, and Dr. C. M. Herzfeld, Program Chairman.
Dr. A. V. Astin, NBS Director, opened the 5-day session with introductory remarks, following which a total of twenty-six papers were given throughout the week by NBS scientists, from both the Washington and Boulder Laboratories.
2.1.6.
Atomic physics
The programs in infrared spectroscopy are undergoing reorientation toward wavelength standards in the far infrared, the application of infrared techniques to solid state studies, and increased emphasis on high resolution instrumentation.
Two data centers have been established for the collection, indexing, critical evaluation, and dissemination of bibliographies and critical values in the fields of transition probabilities and collision cross sections.
Laboratory astrophysics.
Transition probabilities.
Under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a data center was established to gather and index all published information on atomic transition probabilities.
An exhaustive survey was made of the literature, and a primary reference file of approximately 600 references was catalogued.
Selected bibliographies and tables of available data are now in preparation.
A wall-stabilized high-current arc source was constructed and used to study transition probabilities of atomic hydrogen and oxygen.
This apparatus will also be used to measure transition probabilities of a large number of other elements.
A study of the hydrogen line profiles indicates that a measurement of these profiles can be used to calculate a temperature for the arc plasma that is reliable to about Af percent.
A set of tables containing spectral intensities for 39,000 lines of 70 elements, as observed in a copper matrix in a d-c arc, was completed and published.
Studies of the intensity data indicate that they may be converted to approximate transition probabilities.
These data are not of the precision obtainable by the methods previously mentioned, but the vast number of approximate values available will be useful in many areas.
Atomic energy levels.
Research continues on the very complex spectra of the rare earth elements.
New computer and automation techniques were applied to these spectra with considerable success.
(E)
(F)
Any fee so determined shall be entered as a part of such award, and payment thereof shall be made by the Secretary of the Treasury by deducting the amount thereof from the total amount paid pursuant to the award.
Any agreement to the contrary shall be unlawful and void.
The Commission is authorized and directed to mail to each claimant in proceedings before the Commission notice of the provisions of this subsection.
(G)
The Attorney General shall assign such officers and employees of the Department of Justice as may be necessary to represent the United States as to any claims of the Government of the United States with respect to which the Commission has jurisdiction under this title.
Any and all payments required to be made by the Secretary of the Treasury under this title pursuant to any award made by the Commission to the Government of the United States shall be covered into the Treasury to the credit of miscellaneous receipts.
(H)
The Commission shall notify all claimants of the approval or denial of their claims, stating the reasons and grounds therefor, and if approved, shall notify such claimants of the amount for which such claims are approved.
Any claimant whose claim is denied, or is approved for less than the full amount of such claim, shall be entitled, under such regulations as the Commission may prescribe, to a hearing before the Commission, or its duly authorized representatives, with respect to such claim.
Upon such hearing, the Commission may affirm, modify, or revise its former action with respect to such claim, including a denial or reduction in the amount theretofore allowed with respect to such claim.
(I)
The Commission may in its discretion enter an award with respect to one or more items deemed to have been clearly established in an individual claim while deferring consideration and action on other items of the same claim.
(J)
The Commission shall comply with the provisons of the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 except as otherwise specifically provided by this title.
Sec. 5.
The Commission shall certify to the Secretary of State, upon his request, copies of the formal submissions of claims filed pursuant to subsection (B) of Section 4 of this Act for transmission to the foreign government concerned.
Sec. 6.
The Commission shall complete its affairs in connection with settlement of United States-Yugoslav claims arising under the Yugoslav Claims Agreement of 1948 not later than December 31, 1954::
Provided, That nothing in this provision shall be construed to limit the life of the Commission, or its authority to act on future agreements which may be effected under the provisions of this legislation.
Sec. 7.
(A)
Such payments, and applications for such payments, shall be made in accordance with such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe.
(B)
There shall be deducted from the amount of each payment made pursuant to subsection (C) of Section 8, as reimbursement for the expenses incurred by the United States, an amount equal to 5 per centum of such payment.
All amounts so deducted shall be covered into the Treasury to the credit of miscellaneous receipts.
(C)
Payments made pursuant to this Title shall be made only to the person or persons on behalf of whom the award is made, except that--(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
and (5)
(D)
(E)
Any person who makes application for any such payment shall be held to have consented to all the provisions of this Title.
(F)
Nothing in the Title shall be construed as the assumption of any liability by the United States for the payment or satisfaction, in whole or in part, of any claim on behalf of any national of the United States against any foreign government.
Sec. 8.
(A)
There are hereby created in the Treasury of the United States (1) a special fund to be known as the Yugoslav Claims Fund;
There shall be covered into the Treasury to the credit of the proper special fund all funds hereinafter specified.
(B)
The Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to cover into--(1)
the Yugoslav Claims Fund the sum of $17,000,000 being the amount paid by the Government of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia pursuant to the Yugoslav Claims Agreement of 1948;
(2)
(C)
The Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed out of the sums covered into any of the funds pursuant to subsection (B) of this section, and after making the deduction provided for in Section 7 (B) of this Title--(1)
to make payments in full of the principal of awards of $1,000 or less, certified pursuant to Section 5 of this Title;
(2)
to make payments of $1,000 on the principal of each award of more than $1,000 in principal amount, certified pursuant to Section 5 of this Title;
(3)
to make additional payment of not to exceed 25 per centum of the unpaid principal of awards in the principal amount of more than $1,000;
(4)
and (5)
after payment has been made of the principal amounts of all such awards, to make pro rata payments on account of accrued interest on such awards as bear interest.
(D)
The Secretary of State shall certify to the Secretary of the Treasury the total cost of adjudication, not borne by the claimants, attributable to the Yugoslav Claims Agreement of 1948.
Such certification shall be final and conclusive and shall not be subject to review by any other official or department, agency, or establishment of the United States.
Sec. 9.
There is hereby authorized to be appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such sums as may be necessary to enable the Commission to carry out its functions under this Title.
Mr. Dooley.
Mr. Speaker, for several years now the commuter railroads serving our large metropolitan areas have found it increasingly difficult to render the kind of service our expanding population wants and is entitled to have.
The causes of the decline of the commuter railroads are many and complex--high taxes, losses of revenue to Government subsidized highway and air carriers, to name but two.
And the solutions to the problems of the commuter lines have been equally varied, ranging all the way from Government ownership to complete discontinuance of this important service.
There have been a number of sound plans proposed.
But none of these has been implemented.
Instead we have stood idly by, watched our commuter railroad service decline, and have failed to offer a helping hand.
Though the number of people flowing in and out of our metropolitan areas each day has increased tremendously since World War 2, total annual rail commutation dropped 124 million for 1947 to 1957.
Nowhere has this decline been more painfully evident than in the New York City area.
Here the New York Central Railroad, one of the Nation's most important carriers, has alone lost 47.6 percent of its passengers since 1949.
At this time of crisis in our Nation's commuter railroads, a new threat to the continued operations of the New York Central has appeared in the form of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad's proposal for control of the Baltimore & Ohio railroads.
The New York Central has pointed out that this control, if approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, would give the combined C. & O. - B. & O. Railroad a total of 185 points served in common with the New York Central.
Not only is this kind of duplication wasteful, but it gives the combined system the ability to take freight traffic away from the New York Central and other railroads serving the area.
The New York Central notes:
The freight traffic most susceptible to raiding by the C. & O. - B. & O. provides the backbone of Central's revenues.
These revenues make it possible to provide essential freight and passenger service over the entire New York Central system as well as the New York area commuter and terminal freight services.
If these services are to be maintained, the New York Central must have the revenues to make them possible.
The New York Central today handles 60 percent of all southbound commuter traffic coming into New York City.
This is a $14 million operation involving 3,500 employees who work on commuter traffic exclusively.
A blow to this phase of the Central's operations would have serious economic consequences not only to the railroad itself, but to the 40,000 people per day who are provided with efficient, reasonably priced transportation in and out of the city.
There is a workable alternative to this potentially dangerous and harmful C. & O. - B. & O. merger scheme --
The Central has pointed out.
The logic of creating a strong, balanced, competitive two-system railroad service in the East is so obvious that B. & O. was publicly committed to the approach outlined here.
Detailed studies of the plan were well underway.
Though far from completion, these studies indicated beyond a doubt that savings would result which would be of unprecedented benefit to the railroads concerned, their investors, their customers, their users, and to the public at large.
Then, abandoning the studies in the face of their promising outlook for all concerned, B. & O. entered on-again-off-again negotiations with C. & O. which resulted in the present situation.
In the light of the facts at hand, however, New York Central intends to pursue the objective of helping to create a healthy two-system eastern railroad structure in the public interest.
The Interstate Commerce Commission will commence its deliberations on the proposed C. & O. - B. & O. merger on June 18.
Obviously, the Interstate Commerce Commission will not force the New York Central to further curtail its commuter operations by giving undue competitive advantages to the lines that wish to merge.
However, there is a more profound consideration to this proposed merger than profit and loss.
That is, will it serve the long-range public interest?
For the past 40 years Congress has advocated a carefully planned, balanced and competitive railway system.
We must ask ourselves which of the two alternatives will help the commuter--the two-way B. & O. - C. & O. merger, or the three-way New York Central - B. & O. - C. & O. merger.
Which will serve not only the best interest of the stockholders, but the interests of all the traveling public?
Mr. Lindsay.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a great newspaper, the New York Times, on the occasion of a major change in its top executive command.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger has been a distinguished publisher of this distinguished newspaper and it is fitting that we take due notice of his major contribution to American journalism on the occasion of his retirement.
I am pleased to note that Mr. Sulzberger will continue to serve as chairman of the board of the New York Times.
Mr. Sulzberger's successor as publisher is Mr. Orvil E. Dryfoos, who is president of the New York Times Co., and who has been with the Times since 1942.
Mr. Dryfoos' outstanding career as a journalist guarantees that the high standards which have made the Times one of the world's great newspapers will be maintained.
I am also pleased to note that Mr. John B. Oakes, a member of the Times staff since 1946, has been appointed as editorial page editor.
Mr. Oakes succeeds Charles Merz, editor since 1938, who now becomes editor emeritus.
I should like at this time, Mr. Speaker, to pay warm tribute to Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Charles Merz on the occasion of their retirement from distinguished careers in American journalism.
My heartiest congratulations go to their successors, Orvil E. Dryfoos and John B. Oakes, who can be counted upon to sustain the illustrious tradition of the New York Times.
The people of the 17th District of New York, and I as their Representative in Congress, take great pride in the New York Times as one of the great and authoritative newspapers of the world.
Mr. Stratton.
Mr. Speaker, in my latest newsletter to my constituents I urged the imposition of a naval blockade of Cuba as the only effective method of preventing continued Soviet armaments from coming into the Western Hemisphere in violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of reading a thoughtful article in the U.S. News & World Report of May 8 which discussed this type of action in more detail, including both its advantages and its disadvantages.
Under leave to extend my remarks, I include the relevant portion of my newsletter, together with the text of the article from the U.S. News & World Report: your Congressman, Samuel S. Stratton, reports from Washington, May 1, 1961
In fact, one of the major reasons for the failure of the ill-starred expedition appears to have been a lack of full information on the extent to which Cuba has been getting this Russian military equipment.
Somehow, the pictures and stories of Soviet T-34 tanks on Cuban beaches and Russian Mig jet fighters strafing rebel troops has brought home to all of us the stark, blunt truth of what it means to have a Russian military base 90 miles away from home.
Russian tanks and planes in Cuba jeopardize the security of the United States, violate the Monroe Doctrine, and threaten the security of every other Latin American republic.
Once the full extent of this Russian military penetration of Cuba was clear, President Kennedy announced we would take whatever action was appropriate to prevent this, even if we had to go it alone.
But the Latin American republics who have been rather inclined to drag their feet on taking action against Castro also reacted swiftly last week by finally throwing Cuba off the Inter-American Defense Board.
For years the United States had been trying to get these countries to exclude Castro's representative from secret military talks.
But it took the pictures of the Migs and the T-34 tanks to do the job.
There is a new atmosphere of urgency in Washington this week.
You can see it, for example, in the extensive efforts President Kennedy has made to enlist solid bipartisan support for his actions toward both Cuba and Laos;
efforts, as I see it, which are being directed, by the way, toward support for future actions, not for those already past.
What the next move will be only time, of course, will tell.
Personally, I think we ought to set up an immediate naval blockade of Cuba.
We simply can't tolerate further Russian weapons, including the possibility of long-range nuclear missiles, being located in Cuba.
Obviously, we can't stop them from coming in, however, just by talk.
A naval blockade would be thoroughly in line with the Monroe Doctrine, would be a relatively simple operation to carry out, and would bring an abrupt end to Soviet penetration of our hemisphere.
(from U.s. News & World Report, May 8, 1961)
next for Cuba: an arms blockade?
Look at Castro now--cockier than ever with arms and agents to threaten the Americas.
How can the United States act?
Blockade is one answer offered by experts.
In it they see a way to isolate Cuba, stop infiltration, maybe finish Castro, too.
This is the question now facing President Kennedy: How to put a stop to the Soviet buildup in Cuba and to Communist infiltration of this hemisphere?
On April 25, the White House reported that a total embargo of remaining U.S. trade with Cuba was being considered.
Its aim: To undermine further Cuba's economy.
Weaken Castro.
Another strategy--bolder and tougher--was also attracting notice in Washington: a naval and air blockade to cut Cuba off from the world, destroy Castro.
Blockade, in the view of military and civilian experts, could restore teeth to the Monroe Doctrine.
It could halt a flood of Communist arms and strategic supplies now reaching Castro.
It could stop Cuban re-export of guns and propaganda materials to South America.
It would be the most severe reprisal, short of declared war, that the United States could invoke against Castro.
It is the strategy of blockade, therefore, that is suddenly at the center of attention of administration officials, Members of Congress, officers in the Pentagon.
As a possible course of action, it also is the center of debate and is raising many questions.
Among these questions: what would a Cuba blockade take?
Military experts say a tight naval blockade off Cuban ports and at the approaches to Cuban waters would require two naval task forces, each built around an aircraft carrier with a complement of about 100 planes and several destroyers.
The Navy, on April 25, announced it is bringing back the carrier Shangri-La from the Mediterranean, increasing to four the number of attack carriers in the vicinity of Cuba.
More than 36 other big Navy ships are no less than a day's sailing time away.
To round out the blockading force, submarines would be needed--to locate, identify and track approaching vessels.
Land-based radar would help with this task.
So would radar picket ships.
A squadron of Navy jets and another of long-range patrol planes would add support to the carrier task forces.
Three requirements go with a blockade: It must be proclaimed;
the blockading force must be powerful enough to enforce it;
and it must be enforced without discrimination.
Once these conditions of international law are met, countries that try to run the blockade do so at their own risk.
Blockade runners can be stopped--by gunfire, if necessary--searched and held, at least temporarily.
They could be sent to U.S. ports for rulings whether cargo should be confiscated.
What could a blockade accomplish?
Plenty, say the experts.
In a broad sense, it would reaffirm the Monroe Doctrine by opposing Communist interference in the Western Hemisphere.
It could, by avoiding direct intervention, provide a short-of-war strategy to meet short-of-war infiltration.
Primary target would be shipments of tanks, guns, aviation gasoline and ammunition coming from Russia and Czechoslovakia.
Shipments of arms from Western countries could similarly be seized as contraband.
In a total blockade, action could also be taken against ships bringing in chemicals, oils, textiles, and even foodstuffs.
At times, three ships a day from the Soviet bloc are unloading in Cuban ports.
From its inception in 1920 with the passage of Public Law 236, 66th Congress, the purpose of the vocational rehabilitation program has been to assist the States, by means of grants-in-aid, to return disabled men and women to productive, gainful employment.
The authority for the program was renewed several times until the vocational rehabilitation program was made permanent as Title 5, of the Social Security Act in 1935.
Up to this time and for the next eight years, the services provided disabled persons consisted mainly of training, counseling, and placement on a job.
Recognizing the limitations of such a program, the 78th Congress in 1943 passed P. L. 113, which broadened the concept of rehabilitation to include the provision of physical restoration services to remove or reduce disabilities, and which revised the financing structure.
Recent changes.
Despite the successful rehabilitation of over a half million disabled persons in the first eleven years after 1943, the existing program was still seen to be inadequate to cope with the nation's backlog of an estimated two million disabled.
To assist the States, therefore, in rehabilitating handicapped individuals, so that they may prepare for and engage in remunerative employment to the extent of their capabilities, the 83rd Congress enacted the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments of 1954 (P. L. 565).
Financial aspects.
Under the law as it existed until 1943, the Federal Government made grants to the States on the basis of population, matching State expenditures on a 50-50 basis.
Throughout these years, the statutory authorization was for such sums as were necessary to carry out the provisions of the Act.
The 1954 Amendments completely changed the financing of the vocational rehabilitation program, providing for a three-part grant structure--for (1) basic support;
(2) extension and improvement;
and (3) research, demonstrations, training and traineeships for vocational rehabilitation--and in addition for short-term training and instruction.
The first part of the new structure--that for supporting the basic program of vocational rehabilitation services--is described in this Section.
Subsequent sections on grants describe the other categories of the grant structure.
The following table shows, for selected years, the authorizations, appropriations, allotment base, Federal grants to States and State matching funds for this part of the grant program:
method of distributing funds
description of formula.
The Act further provides for a floor or minimum allotment, set at the 1954 level, which is called the base allotment, and a ceiling or maximum allotment, for each State.
It stipulates, in addition, that all amounts remaining as a result of imposing the ceiling, and not used for insuring the floor, be redistributed to those States still below their maximums.
The provisions are also designed to avoid disruption in State programs already in operation, which might otherwise result from the allotment of funds on the basis of wealth and population alone.
Method of computing allotments.
The method used in computing the allotments is specifically set forth in the Act.
The term State means the several States, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico;
the term United States includes the several States and the District of Columbia, and excludes the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico, and, prior to 1962, Alaska and Hawaii.
The following steps are employed in calculations: 1.
For each State (except Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and, prior to 1962, Alaska and Hawaii) determine average per capita income based on the last three years.
(See Source of Data, below for per capita income data to be used in this step.
) 2.
Determine the average per capita income for the U. S. based on the last three years.
(See Source of Data, below, for per capita income data to be used in this step.
) 3.
Determine the ratio of 50% to the average per capita income of the U. S. (Divide 50 by the result obtained in item 2 above.
) 4.
Determine for each State (except the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico, and, prior to 1962, Alaska and Hawaii) that percentage which bears the same ratio to 50% as the particular State's average per capita income bears to the average per capita income of the U. S..
(Multiply the result obtained in item 3 above by the result obtained for each State in item 1 above.
) 5.
Determine the particular State's allotment percentage.
By law this is 75% for the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.
(Alaska and Hawaii had fixed allotment percentages in effect prior to fiscal year 1962.
In all other States it is the difference obtained by subtracting from 100 the result obtained in item 4 above;
except that no State shall have an allotment percentage less than 33-1/3% nor more than 75%.
If the resulting difference for the particular State is less or more than these extremes, the State's allotment percentage must be raised or lowered to the appropriate extreme.
Square each State's allotment percentage.
Determine each State's population.
(See Source of Data, below for population data to be used in this step.
) 8.
Multiply the population of each State by the square of its allotment percentage.
(Multiply result obtained in item 7 above, by result obtained in item 6 above.
) 9.
Determine the sum of the products obtained in item 8 above, for all the States.
(For each State, make all computations set forth in items 1 to 8 above, and then add the results obtained for each State in item 8.
) 10.
Determine the ratio that the amount being allotted is to the sum of the products for all the States.
(Divide the amount being allotted by the result obtained in item 9 above.
) 11.
Determine the particular State's unadjusted allotment for the particular fiscal year.
(Multiply the State product in item 8 above by the result obtained in item 10 above.
) 12.
Determine if the particular State's unadjusted allotment (result obtained in item 11 above) is greater than its maximum allotment, and if so lower its unadjusted allotment to its maximum allotment.
) 13.
Determine if the particular State's unadjusted allotment (result obtained in item 11 above) is less than its minimum (base) allotment, and if so raise its unadjusted allotment to its minimum allotment.
14.
The funds recouped by reductions in item 12 above are used: first, to increase the unadjusted allotments to the specified minimum in those States where the unadjusted allotment is less than the minimum allotment (item 13 above);
and second, to increase uniformly the allotments to those States whose allotments are below their maximums, with adjustments to prevent the allotment of any State from thereby exceeding its maximum.
Additional note on allotments.
Funds allotted in addition to their minimum allotment are apportioned to the two agencies as they may determine.
Matching requirements
explanation of matching formula.
As is the case with the allotment provisions for support of vocational rehabilitation services, the matching requirements are also based on a statutory formula.
Prior to 1960, in order to provide matching for the minimum (base) allotment, State funds had to equal 1954 State funds.
Prior to and since 1960 the rest of the support allotment is matched at rates related to the fiscal capacity of the State, with a pivot of 40% State (or 60% Federal) participation in total program costs.
The percentage of Federal participation in such costs for any State is referred to in the law as that State's Federal share.
For purposes of this explanation, this percentage is referred to as the State's unadjusted Federal share.
The pre-1960 rate of Federal participation with respect to any State's base allotment, as well as the adjusted rate in effect during the 1960 - 1962 period, is designated by the statute as that State's adjusted Federal Share.
The provisions for determining a State's unadjusted Federal share are designed to reflect the varying financial resources among the States.
The purpose of the adjusted Federal share relating to the base allotment and of the transition provisions for reaching the unadjusted Federal share is to prevent dislocations from abrupt changes in matching rates.
Method of computing Federal shares.
The method used for computing the respective Federal and State shares in total program costs is specifically set forth in the Act.
The term State means the several States, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico;
the term United States includes the several States and the District of Columbia and excludes the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico, and, prior to 1962, Alaska and Hawaii.
The following steps are employed in the calculations: 1.
For each State (except the Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and, prior to 1962, Alaska and Hawaii), determine the average per capita income for the last three years.
(the same amount used in item 1 under Method Of Computing Allotments, above.
) 2.
Determine the average per capita income for the United States for the last three years.
(The same amount used in item 2 under Method Of Computing Allotments, above.
) 3.
Determine the ratio of 40% to the average per capita income of the United States.
(Divide 40 by the amount used in item 2 above.
) 4.
(Multiply the result obtained in item 3 above by the amount used for each State in item 1 above.
) 5.
Determine the particular State's Federal Share.
By law this is 70% for the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.
(Alaska and Hawaii had fixed Federal share percentages in effect prior to fiscal year 1962.
In all other States it is the difference obtained by subtracting from 100 the result obtained in item 4 above;
except that no State shall have a Federal share less than 50% nor more than 70%.
If the resulting difference for the particular State is less or more than these extremes, the State's Federal share must be raised or lowered to the appropriate extreme.
At the entrance side of the shelter, each roof beam is rested on the inside 4 inches of the block wall.
The outside 4-inch space is filled by mortaring blocks on edge.
The wooden bracing between the roof beams is placed flush with the inside of the wall.
Mortar is poured between this bracing and the 4-inch blocks on edge to complete the wall thickness for radiation shielding.
(For details see inset, fig. 5.
The first one or two roof boards (marked E in fig. 6) are slipped into place across the roof beams, from outside the shelter.
These boards are nailed to the roof beams by reaching up through the open space between the beams, from inside the shelter.
Concrete blocks are passed between the beams and put on the boards.
The roof blocks are in two layers and are not mortared together.
Work on the roof continues in this way.
The last roof boards are covered with blocks from outside the shelter.
When the roof blocks are all in place, the final rows of wall blocks are mortared into position.
The structure is complete.
(See fig. 7.
) Building plans are on page 21.
Solid concrete blocks, relatively heavy and dense, are used for this shelter.
These blocks are sold in various sizes so it seldom is necessary to cut a block to fit.
Solid blocks are recommended because hollow blocks would have to be filled with concrete to give effective protection.
Bricks are an alternative.
If they are used, the walls and roof should be 10 inches thick to give the same protection as the 8-inch solid concrete blocks.
The illustrations in fig. 8 show how to lay a concrete block wall.
More detailed instructions may be obtained from your local building supply houses and craftsmen.
Other sources of information include the National Concrete Masonry Association, 38 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, Ill., the Portland Cement Association, 33 West Grand Avenue, Chicago, Ill., and the Structural Clay Products Association, Washington, D.C..
Aboveground double-wall shelter
An outdoor, aboveground fallout shelter also may be built with concrete blocks.
(See fig. 9, double-wall shelter.
) Most people would have to hire a contractor to build this shelter.
Plans are on pages 22 and 23.
This shelter could be built in regions where water or rock is close to the surface, making it impractical to build an underground shelter.
Two walls of concrete blocks are constructed at least 20 inches apart.
The space between them is filled with pit-run gravel or earth.
The walls are held together with metal ties placed in the wet mortar as the walls are built.
The roof shown here (fig. 9) is a 6-inch slab of reinforced concrete, covered with at least 20 inches of pit-run gravel.
An alternate roof, perhaps more within do-it-yourself reach, could be constructed of heavy wooden roof beams, overlaid with boards and waterproofing.
It would have to be covered with at least 28 inches of pit-run gravel.
The materials for a double-wall shelter would cost about $700.
Contractors' charges would be additional.
The shelter would provide almost absolute fallout protection.
Pre-shaped metal shelter
Pre-shaped corrugated metal sections or pre-cast concrete can be used for shelters either above or below ground.
These are particularly suitable for regions where water or rock is close to the surface.
They form effective fallout shelters when mounded over with earth, as shown in figure 10.
Materials for this shelter would cost about $700.
A contractor probably would be required to help build it.
His charges would be added to the cost of materials.
This shelter, as shown on page 24, would provide almost absolute protection from fallout radiation.
An alternate hatchway entrance, shown on page 25, would reduce the cost of materials $50 to $100.
The National Lumber Manufacturers Association, Washington, D. C., is developing plans to utilize specially treated lumber for underground shelter construction.
The Structural Clay Products Institute, Washington, D.C., is working to develop brick and clay products suitable for shelter construction.
Underground concrete shelter
An underground reinforced concrete shelter can be built by a contractor for about $1,000 to $1,500, depending on the type of entrance.
The shelter shown would provide almost absolute fallout protection.
The illustration (fig. 11) shows this shelter with the roof at ground level and mounded over.
The same shelter could be built into an embankment or below ground level.
Plans for the shelter, with either a stairway or hatchway entrance, are shown on pages 26 and 27.
Another type of shelter which gives excellent fallout protection can be built as an added room to the basement of a home under construction.
It would add about $500 to the total cost of the home.
The shelter illustrated in figure 12 is based on such a room built in a new home in the Washington, D.C. area in the Spring of 1959.
Important considerations common to each type of shelter are: 1.
Arrangement of the entrance.
Ventilation.
Radio reception.
Lighting.
The entrance must have at least one right-angle turn.
Radiation scatters somewhat like light.
Some will go around a corner.
The rest continues in a straight line.
Therefore, sharp turns in a shelter entrance will reduce radiation intensity inside the shelter.
Ventilation is provided in a concrete block basement shelter by vents in the wall and by the open entrance.
A blower may be installed to increase comfort.
A blower is essential for the double-wall shelter and for the underground shelters.
It should provide not less than 5 cubic feet per minute of air per person.
Vent pipes also are necessary (as shown in figs. 9, 10, and 11), but filters are not.
Radio reception is cut down by the shielding necessary to keep out radiation.
As soon as the shelter is completed a radio reception check must be made.
It probably will be necessary to install an outside antenna, particularly to receive CONELRAD broadcasts.
Lighting is an important consideration.
Continuous low-level lighting may be provided in the shelter by means of a 4-cell hot-shot battery to which is wired a 150-milliampere flashlight-type bulb.
Tests have shown that such a device, with a fresh battery, will furnish light continuously for at least 10 days.
With a spare battery, a source of light for 2 weeks or more would be assured.
A flashlight or electric lantern also should be available for those periods when a brighter light is needed.
There should be a regular electrical outlet in the shelter as power may continue in many areas.
Other considerations.
-- If there are outside windows in the basement corner where you build a shelter, they should be shielded as shown in the Appendix, page 29.
Other basement windows should be blocked when an emergency threatens.
Basement walls that project above the ground should be shielded as shown in the Appendix, page 29.
In these shelters the entrance should be not more than 2 feet wide.
Bunks, or materials to build them, may have to be put inside the enclosure before the shelter walls are completed.
The basement or belowground shelters also will serve for tornado or hurricane protection.
Living in a shelter
The radioactivity of fallout decays rapidly at first.
Forty-nine hours after an atomic burst the radiation intensity is only about 1 percent of what it was an hour after the explosion.
But the radiation may be so intense at the start that one percent may be extremely dangerous.
Therefore, civil defense instructions received over CONELRAD or by other means should be followed.
A battery-powered radio is essential.
Radiation instruments suitable for home use are available, and would be of value in locating that portion of the home which offers the best protection against fallout radiation.
There is a possibility that battery-powered radios with built-in radiation meters may become available.
One instrument thus would serve both purposes.
Your local civil defense will gather its own information and will receive broad information from State and Federal sources.
It will tell you as soon as possible:
How long to stay in your shelter;
How soon you may go outdoors;
How long you may stay outside.
You should be prepared to stay in your shelter full time for at least several days and to make it your home for 14 days or longer.
A checklist in the Appendix ((page 30) tells what is needed.
Families with children will have particular problems.
They should provide for simple recreation.
There should be a task for everyone and these tasks should be rotated.
Part of the family should be sleeping while the rest is awake.
To break the monotony it may be necessary to invent tasks that will keep the family busy.
Records such as diaries can be kept.
The survival of the family will depend largely on information received by radio.
A record should be kept of the information and instructions, including the time and date of broadcast.
Family rationing probably will be necessary.
Blowers should be operated periodically on a regular schedule.
There will come a time in a basement shelter when the radiation has decayed enough to allow use of the whole basement.
However, as much time as possible should be spent within the shelter to hold radiation exposure to a minimum.
The housekeeping problems of living in a shelter will begin as soon as the shelter is occupied.
Food, medical supplies, utensils, and equipment, if not already stored in the shelter, must be quickly gathered up and carried into it.
After the family has settled in the shelter, the housekeeping rules should be spelled out by the adult in charge.
Sanitation in the confines of the family shelter will require much thought and planning.
Provision for emergency toilet facilities and disposal of human wastes will be an unfamiliar problem.
A covered container such as a kitchen garbage pail might do as a toilet.
A 10-gallon garbage can, with a tightly fitting cover, could be used to keep the wastes until it is safe to leave the shelter.
Water rationing will be difficult and should be planned carefully.
A portable electric heater is advisable for shelters in cold climates.
It would take the chill from the shelter in the beginning.
Even if the electric power fails after an attack, any time that the heater has been used will make the shelter that much more comfortable.
Body heat in the close quarters will help keep up the temperature.
Warm clothing and bedding, of course, are essential.
Open-flame heating or cooking should be avoided.
A flame would use up air.
Some families already have held weekend rehearsals in their home shelters to learn the problems and to determine for themselves what supplies they would need.
If an attack finds you without a prepared shelter
Few areas, if any, are as good as prepared shelters but they are worth knowing about.
A family dwelling without a basement provides some natural shielding from fallout radiation.
On the ground floor the radiation would be about half what it is outside.
The best protection would be on the ground floor in the central part of the house.
A belowground basement can cut the fallout radiation to one-tenth of the outside level.
The safest place is the basement corner least exposed to windows and deepest below ground.
If there is time after the warning, the basement shielding could be improved substantially by blocking windows with bricks, dirt, books, magazines, or other heavy material.
Shelter in apartment buildings
Large apartment buildings of masonry or concrete provide better natural shelter than the usual family dwellings.
In general, such apartments afford more protection than smaller buildings because their walls are thick and there is more space.
The central area of the ground floor of a heavily constructed apartment building, with concrete floors, should provide more fallout protection than the ordinary basement of a family dwelling.
The basement of such an apartment building may provide as much natural protection as the specially constructed concrete block shelter recommended for the basement of a family dwelling.
The Federal Government is aiding local governments in several places to survey residential, commercial and industrial buildings to determine what fallout protection they would provide, and for how many people.
The problem for the city apartment dweller is primarily to plan the use of existing space.
Such planning will require the cooperation of other occupants and of the apartment management.
A former Du Pont official became a General Motors vice president and set about maximizing Du Pont's share of the General Motors market.
Lines of communications were established between the two companies and several Du Pont products were actively promoted.
Within a few years various Du Pont manufactured items were filling the entire requirements of from four to seven of General Motors' eight operating divisions.
Competitors came to receive higher percentage of General Motors business in later years, but it is likely that this trend stemmed at least in part from the needs of General Motors outstripping Du Pont's capacity.
The fact that sticks out in this voluminous record is that the bulk of Du Pont's production has always supplied the largest part of the requirements of the one customer in the automobile industry connected to Du Pont by a stock interest.
The inference is overwhelming that Du Pont's commanding position was promoted by its stock interest and was not gained solely on competitive merit.
353 U. S., at 605.
This Court agreed with the trial court that considerations of price, quality and service were not overlooked by either Du Pont or General Motors.
353 U. S., at 606.
This claim, as submitted to the District Court and dismissed by it, 126 F.Supp.235, alleged violation not only of 7 of the Clayton Act, but also of 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
The latter provisions proscribe any contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of interstate or foreign trade, and monopolization of, or attempts, combinations, or conspiracies to monopolize, such trade.
However, this Court put to one side without consideration the Government's appeal from the dismissal of its Sherman Act allegations.
It rested its decision solely on 7, which reads in pertinent part:
This section shall not apply to corporations purchasing such stock solely for investment and not using the same by voting or otherwise to bring about, or in attempting to bring about, the substantial lessening of competition.
The purpose of this provision was thus explained in the Court's opinion:
The section is violated whether or not actual restraints or monopolies, or the substantial lessening of competition, have occurred or are intended.
353 U. S., at 589.
Thus, a finding of conspiracy to restrain trade or attempt to monopolize was excluded from the Court's decision.
This, however, did not bar finding that Du Pont had become pre-eminent as a supplier of automotive fabrics and finishes to General Motors;
that these products constituted a line of commerce within the meaning of the Clayton Act;
that General Motors' share of the market for these products was substantial;
and that competition for this share of the market was endangered by the financial relationship between the two concerns:
The statutory policy of fostering free competition is obviously furthered when no supplier has an advantage over his competitors from an acquisition of his customer's stock likely to have the effects condemned by the statute.
We repeat, that the test of a violation of 7 is whether, at the time of suit, there is a reasonable probability that the acquisition is likely to result in the condemned restraints.
The conclusion upon this record is inescapable that such likelihood was proved as to this acquisition.
353 U. S., at 607.
On the basis of the findings which led to this conclusion, the Court remanded the case to the District Court to determine the appropriate relief.
The sole guidance given the Court for discharging the task committed to it was this:
The judgment must therefore be reversed and the cause remanded to the District Court for a determination, after further hearing, of the equitable relief necessary and appropriate in the public interest to eliminate the effects of the acquisition offensive to the statute.
The District Courts, in the framing of equitable decrees, are clothed'with large discretion to model their judgements to fit the exigencies of the particular case.
International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U. S. 392, 400-401.
353 U. S., at 607-608.
This brings us to the course of the proceedings in the District Court.
This Court's judgment was filed in the District Court on July 18, 1957.
The first pretrial conference--held to appoint amici curiae to represent the interest of the stockholders of Du Pont and General Motors and to consider the procedure to be followed in the subsequent hearings--took place on September 25, 1957.
At the outset, the Government's spokesman explained that counsel for the Government and for Du Pont had already held preliminary discussions with a view to arriving at a relief plan that both sides could recommend to the court.
Du Pont, he said, had proposed disenfranchisement of its General Motors stock along with other restrictions on the Du Pont - General Motors relationship.
The Government, deeming these suggestions inadequate, had urged that any judgment include divestiture of Du Pont's shares of General Motors.
Counsel for Du Pont indicated a preference for the submission of detailed plans by both sides at an early date.
No previous antitrust case, he said, had involved interests of such magnitude or presented such complex problems of relief.
The submission of detailed plans would place the issues before the court more readily than would discussion of divestiture or disenfranchisement in the abstract.
The Court adopted this procedure with an appropriate time schedule for carrying it out.
The Government submitted its proposed decree on October 25, 1957.
The plan called for divestiture by Du Pont of its 63,000,000 shares of General Motors stock by equal annual distributions to its stockholders, as a dividend, over a period of ten years.
If, in the trustee's judgment, reasonable market conditions did not prevail during any given year, he was to be allowed to petition the court for an extension of time within the ten-year period.
In addition, the right to vote the General Motors stock held by Du Pont was to be vested in Du Pont's stockholders, other than Christiana and Delaware and the stockholders of Delaware;
Du Pont, Christiana, and Delaware were to be enjoined from acquiring stock in or exercising control over General Motors;
Du Pont, Christiana, and Delaware were to be prohibited to have any director or officer in common with General Motors, and vice versa;
On motion of the Amici Curiae, the court directed that a ruling be obtained from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue as to the federal income tax consequences of the Government's plan.
On May 9, 1958, the Commissioner announced his rulings.
The annual dividends paid to Du Pont stockholders in shares of General Motors stock would be taxable as ordinary income to the extent of Du Pont's earnings and profits.
The measure, for federal income tax purposes, of the dividend to individual stockholders would be the fair market value of the shares at the time of each annual distribution.
In the case of taxpaying corporate stockholders, the measure would be the lesser of the fair market value of the shares or Du Pont's tax basis for them, which is approximately $2.09 per share.
The forced sale of the General Motors stock owned by or allocable to Christiana, Delaware, and the stockholders of Delaware, and deposited with the trustee, would result in a tax to those parties at the capital gains rate.
Du Pont's counterproposal was filed on May 14, 1958.
Under its plan Du Pont would retain its General Motors shares but be required to pass on to its stockholders the right to vote those shares.
Christiana and Delaware would, in turn, be required to pass on the voting rights to the General Motors shares allocable to them to their own stockholders.
Du Pont would be enjoined from having as a director, officer, or employee anyone who was simultaneously an officer or employee of General Motors, and no director, officer, or employee of Du Pont could serve as a director of General Motors without court approval.
Du Pont would be denied the right to acquire any additional General Motors stock except through General Motors' distributions of stock or subscription rights to its stockholders.
On June 6, 1958, General Motors submitted its objections to the Government's proposal.
that there would be a similar decline in the market values of other automotive and chemical stocks, with similar losses to the stockholders of those companies;
that the tremendous volume of General Motors stock hanging over the market for ten years would hamper the efforts of General Motors and other automobile manufacturers to raise equity capital;
and that all this would have a serious adverse effect on the entire stock market and on general business activity.
General Motors comprehensively contended that the Government plan would not be in the public interest as required by the mandate of this Court.
The decrees proposed by the amici curiae were filed in August of 1958.
Both plans also prohibited common directors, officers, or employees between Du Pont, Christiana, and Delaware, on the one hand, and General Motors on the other.
It is not a medieval mental quirk or an attitude unnourished by sense to believe that husbands and wives should not be subjected to such a risk, or that such a possibility should not be permitted to endanger the confidentiality of the marriage relationship.
One need not waver in his belief in virile law enforcement to insist that there are other things in American life which are also of great importance, and to which even law enforcement must accommodate itself.
One of these is the solidarity and the confidential relationship of marriage.
The Court's opinion dogmatically asserts that the husband-wife conspiracy doctrine does not in fact protect this relationship, and that hence the doctrine enthrones an unreality into a rule of law.
I am not easily persuaded that a rule accepted by so many people for so many centuries can be so lightly dismissed.
But in any event, I submit that the power to depose belongs to Congress, not to this Court.
I dissent.
Petitioner, who claims to be a conscientious objector, was convicted of violating 12a of the Universal Military Training and Service Act by refusing to be inducted into the armed forces.
Held: On the record in this case, the administrative procedures prescribed by the Act were fully complied with;
petitioner was not denied due process;
and his conviction is sustained.
Pp. 60-66.
(A)
Petitioner was not denied due process in the administrative proceedings, because the statement in question was in his file, to which he had access, and he had opportunities to rebut it both before the hearing officer of the Department of Justice and before the appeal board.
Pp. 62-63.
(B)
Petitioner was not entitled to have the hearing officer's notes and report, especially since he failed to show any particular need for them and he did have a copy of the Department of Justice's recommendation to the appeal board.
Pp. 63-64.
(C)
Pp. 64-66.
Haydn C. Covington argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner.
Daniel M. Friedman argued the cause for the United States.
On the brief were Solicitor General Rankin, Assistant Attorney General Wilkey, Beatrice Rosenberg and J. F. Bishop.
Mr. Justice Clark delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a prosecution for refusal to be inducted into the armed services, in violation of the provisions of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, 62 Stat. 604,622, 50, U.S.C. App. Aj 462 (A).
Petitioner, who claims to be a conscientious objector, contends that he was denied due process, both in the proceedings before a hearing officer of the Department of Justice and at trial.
The trial judge decided that the administrative procedures of the Act were fully complied with and refused to require the production of such documents.
Petitioner was found guilty and sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment.
The Court of Appeals affirmed.
269 F. 2d 613.
We granted certiorari in view of the importance of the questions in the administration of the Act.
361 U. S. 899.
We have concluded that petitioner's claims are controlled by the rationale of Gonzales v. United States, 348 U.S. 407 (1955), and United States v. Nugent, 346 U.S. 1 (1953), and therefore affirm the judgment.
Petitioner registered with Local Board No. 9, Boulder, Colorado, on March 17, 1952.
His answers to the classification questionnaire reflected that he was a minister of Jehovah's Witnesses, employed at night by a sugar producer.
He claimed 4-d classification as a minister of religion, devoting a minimum of 100 hours a month to preaching.
On November 13, 1952, he was classified in Class 1-a.
On November 22, 1952, he wrote the Board, protesting this classification.
He again stated that he was a regular minister;
that he was devoting an average of 100 hours a month to actual preaching publicly, in addition to 50 to 75 hours in other ministerial duties, and that he opposed war in any form.
Thereafter he was classified 1-o.
On April 1, 1953, after some six months of full-time pioneering, petitioner discontinued devoting 100 hours a month to preaching, but failed to so notify his local board.
In a periodic review, the local board on July 30, 1953, reclassified him 1-a and upheld this classification after a personal appearance by petitioner, because of his willingness to kill in defense of his church and home.
Upon administrative approval of the reclassification, he was ordered to report for induction on June 11, 1956, but failed to do so.
He was not prosecuted, however, and his case was subsequently reopened, in the light of Sicurella v. United States, 348 U.S. 385 (1955).
He was again reclassified 1-a by the local board.
There followed a customary Department of Justice hearing, at which petitioner appeared.
In his report to the Attorney General, the hearing officer suggested that the petitioner be exempt only from combatant training and service.
On March 21, 1957, however, the Department recommended approval of the 1-a classification.
It reported that he now devoted only some 6-1/2 hours per month to public preaching and from 20 to 25 hours per month to church activities.
His claim was therefore so highly exaggerated, the Department concluded, that it cast doubt upon his veracity and, consequently, upon his sincerity and good faith.
The appeal board furnished petitioner a copy of the recommendation.
In his answer thereto, he advised the Board that he had made no such statement in 1956, and asserted that his only claim to pioneering was in 1952.
The appeal board, however, unanimously concurred in the Department's recommendation.
Upon return of the file to the local board, petitioner was again ordered to report for induction and this prosecution followed his failure to do so.
Petitioner first contends that the Department denied him procedural due process by not giving him timely opportunity, before its final recommendation to the appeal board, to answer the statement of the local board as to his claim of devoting 100 hours to actual preaching.
But the statement of the local board attributing this claim to petitioner was in his file.
He admitted that he knew it was open to him at all times, and he could have rebutted it before the hearing officer.
This he failed to do, asserting that he did not know it to be in his file.
Apparently he never took the trouble to find out.
Nevertheless he had ample opportunity to contest the statement before the appeal board.
After the recommendation of the Department is forwarded to the appeal board, that is the appropriate place for a registrant to lodge his denial.
This he did.
We found in Gonzales v. United States, supra, that this was the controlling reason why copies of the recommendation should be furnished a registrant.
We said there that it was necessary that a registrant be given an opportunity to rebut (the Department's) recommendation when it comes to the Appeal Board, the agency with the ultimate responsibility for classification.
348 U.S., at 412.
We fail to see how such procedure resulted in any prejudice to petitioner's contention, which was considered by the appeal board and denied by it.
As was said in Gonzales, it is the Appeal Board which renders the selective service determination considered'final'in the courts, not to be overturned unless there is no basis in fact.
Estep v. United States, 327 U.S. 114.
348 U. S., at 412-413.
But there are other contentions which might be considered more difficult.
At his trial, petitioner sought to secure through subpoena duces tecum the longhand notes of the Department's hearing officer, Evensen, as well as his report thereon.
Petitioner also claimed at trial the right to inspect the original Federal Bureau of Investigation reports to the Department of Justice.
He alleged no specific procedural errors or evidence withheld;
nor did he elaborate just what favorable evidence the Federal Bureau of Investigation reports might disclose.
Section 6(j) of the Act, as we have held, does require the Department's recommendation to be placed in a registrant's file.
Gonzales v. United States, supra.
But there is nothing in the Act requiring the hearing officer's report to be likewise turned over to the registrant.
While the regulations formerly required that the hearing officer's report be placed in the registrant's file, this requirement was eliminated in 1952.
Moreover, the hearing officer's report is but intradepartmental, is directed to the Attorney General and, of course, is not the recommendation of the Department.
It is not essentially different from a memorandum of an attorney in the Department of Justice, of which the Attorney General receives many, and to which he may give his approval or rejection.
It is but part of the whole process within the Department that goes into the making of the final recommendation to the appeal board.
It is also significant that neither this report nor the hearing officer's notes were furnished to the appeal board.
Hence the petitioner had full opportunity to traverse the only conclusions of the Department on file with the Board.
Petitioner knew that the Department's recommendation was based not on the hearing officer's report but on the statement of the local board in his file.
Having had every opportunity to rebut the finding of the local board before both the hearing officer and the appeal board, petitioner cannot now claim that he was denied due process because he did not succeed.
It appears to us that the same reasoning applies to the production of the hearing officer's report and notes at the trial.
In addition, petitioner has failed to show any particular need for the report and notes.
While there are now allegations of the withholding of favorable evidence developed at the hearing and a denial of a full and fair hearing, no such claim was made by petitioner at any stage of the administrative process.
Moreover, his testimony at trial never developed any such facts.
Finally petitioner says that he was entitled to inspect the FBI report during the proceedings before the hearing officer as well as at the trial.
He did receive a resume of it--the same that was furnished the appeal board--and he made no claim of its inaccuracy.
Even now no such claim is asserted.
He bases his present contention on the general right to explore, indicating that he hopes to find some discrepancy in the resume.
But this is fully answered by United States v. Nugent, supra.
There we held that the statutory scheme for review, within the selective service system, entitles [ conscientious objectors ] to no guarantee that the FBI reports must be produced for their inspection.
346 U.S., at 5-6.
Even if we were not bound by Nugent, petitioner here would not be entitled to the report.
The recommendation of the Department--as well as the decision of the appeal board--was based entirely on the local board file, not on an FBI report.
Foreign policy in its total context
With this enlarged role in mind, I should like to make a few suggestions: What we in the United States do or do not do will make a very large difference in what happens in the rest of the world.
We in this Department must think about foreign policy in its total context.
We cannot regard foreign policy as something left over after defense policy or trade policy or fiscal policy has been extracted.
Foreign policy is the total involvement of the American people with peoples and governments abroad.
That means that, if we are to achieve a new standard of leadership, we must think in terms of the total context of our situation.
It is the concern of the Department of State that the American people are safe and secure--defense is not a monopoly concern of the Department of Defense.
It is also the concern of the Department of State that our trading relationships with the rest of the world are vigorous, profitable, and active--this is not just a passing interest or a matter of concern only to the Department of Commerce.
We can no longer rely on interdepartmental machinery somewhere upstairs to resolve differences between this and other departments.
Assistant Secretaries of State will now carry an increased burden of active formulation and coordination of policies.
Means must be found to enable us to keep in touch as regularly and as efficiently as possible with our colleagues in other departments concerned with foreign policy.
I think we need to concern ourselves also with the timeliness of action.
Every policy officer cannot help but be a planning officer.
Unless we keep our eyes on the horizon ahead, we shall fail to bring ourselves on target with the present.
The movement of events is so fast, the pace so severe, that an attempt to peer into the future is essential if we are to think accurately about the present.
If there is anything which we can do in the executive branch of the Government to speed up the processes by which we come to decisions on matters on which we must act promptly, that in itself would be a major contribution to the conduct of our affairs.
Action taken today is often far more valuable than action taken several months later in response to a situation then out of control.
There will of course be times for delay and inaction.
What I am suggesting is that when we delay, or when we fail to act, we do so intentionally and not through inadvertence or through bureaucratic or procedural difficulties.
I also hope that we can do something about reducing the infant mortality rate of ideas--an affliction of all bureaucracies.
We want to stimulate ideas from the bottom to the top of the Department.
We want to make sure that our junior colleagues realize that ideas are welcome, that initiative goes right down to the bottom and goes all the way to the top.
I hope no one expects that only Presidential appointees are looked upon as sources of ideas.
The responsibility for taking the initiative in generating ideas is that of every officer in the Department who has a policy function, regardless of rank.
Further, I would hope that we could pay attention to little things.
While observing the operations of our Government in various parts of the world, I have felt that in many situations where our policies were good we have tended to ignore minor problems which spoiled our main effort.
To cite only a few examples: The wrong man in the wrong position, perhaps even in a junior position abroad, can be a source of great harm to our policy;
the attitudes of a U.N. delegate who experiences difficulty in finding adequate housing in New York City, or of a foreign diplomat in similar circumstances in our Capital, can easily be directed against the United States and all that it stands for.
Dozens of seemingly small matters go wrong all over the world.
Sometimes those who know about them are too far down the line to be able to do anything about them.
I would hope that we could create the recognition in the Department and overseas that those who come across little things going wrong have the responsibility for bringing these to the attention of those who can do something about them.
If the Department of State is to take primary responsibility for foreign policy in Washington, it follows that the ambassador is expected to take charge overseas.
This does not mean in a purely bureaucratic sense but in an active, operational, interested, responsible fashion.
He is expected to know about what is going on among the representatives of other agencies who are stationed in his country.
He is expected to supervise, to encourage, to direct, to assist in any way he can.
If any official operation abroad begins to go wrong, we shall look to the ambassador to find out why and to get suggestions for remedial action.
The problems of a policy officer
I tried to do so by calling to their attention some of the problems that a senior departmental policy officer faces.
This means practically everybody in this room.
Whether it will strike home for you or not will be for you to determine.
The policy officer lives with his antennae alerted for the questions which fall within his range of responsibility.
His first thought is about the question itself: Is there a question here for American foreign policy, and, if so, what is it?
For he knows that the first and sometimes most difficult job is to know what the question is--that when it is accurately identified it sometimes answers itself, and that the way in which it is posed frequently shapes the answer.
Meanwhile he has been thinking about the facts surrounding the problem, facts which he knows can never be complete, and the general background, much of which has already been lost to history.
He is appreciative of the expert help available to him and draws these resources into play, taking care to examine at least some of the raw material which underlies their frequently policy-oriented conclusions.
He knows that he must give the expert his place, but he knows that he must also keep him in it.
He is already beginning to box the compass of alternative lines of action, including doing nothing.
He knows that he is thinking about action in relation to a future which can be perceived but dimly through a merciful fog.
He will not be surprised to find that general principles produce conflicting results in the factual situation with which he is confronted.
He must think about which of these principles must take precedence.
He will know that general policy papers written months before may not fit his problem because of crucial changes in circumstance.
He is aware that every moderately important problem merges imperceptibly into every other problem.
He must deal with the question of how to manage a part when it cannot be handled without relation to the whole--when the whole is too large to grasp.
He must think of others who have a stake in the question and in its answer.
Who should be consulted among his colleagues in the Department or other departments and agencies of the Government?
Which American ambassadors could provide helpful advice?
Are private interests sufficiently involved to be consulted?
What is the probable attitude of other governments, including those less directly involved?
How and at what stage and in what sequence are other governments to be consulted?
If action is indicated, what kind of action is relevant to the problem?
The selection of the wrong tools can mean waste, at best, and at worst an unwanted inflammation of the problem itself.
Can the President or the Secretary act under existing authority, or will new legislation and new money be required?
Should the action be unilateral or multilateral?
Is the matter one for the United Nations or some other international body?
For, if so, the path leads through a complex process of parliamentary diplomacy which adds still another dimension to the problem.
Respect for the opinions of mankind
What type of action can hope to win public support, first in this country and then abroad?
For the policy officer will know that action can almost never be secret and that in general the effectiveness of policy will be conditioned by the readiness of the country to sustain it.
He is interested in public opinion for two reasons: first, because it is important in itself, and, second, because he knows that the American public cares about a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.
And, given probable public attitudes--about which reasonably good estimates can be made--what action is called for to insure necessary support?
May I add a caution on this particular point?
We do not want policy officers below the level of Presidential appointees to concern themselves too much with problems of domestic politics in recommending foreign policy action.
In the first place our business is foreign policy, and it is the business of the Presidential leadership and his appointees in the Department to consider the domestic political aspects of a problem.
Mr. Truman emphasized this point by saying, You fellows in the Department of State don't know much about domestic politics.
This is an important consideration.
If we sit here reading editorials and looking at public-opinion polls and other reports that cross our desks, we should realize that this is raw, undigested opinion expressed in the absence of leadership.
What the American people will do turns in large degree on their leadership.
We cannot test public opinion until the President and the leaders of the country have gone to the public to explain what is required and have asked them for support for the necessary action.
I doubt, for example, that, 3 months before the leadership began to talk about what came to be the Marshall plan, any public-opinion expert would have said that the country would have accepted such proposals.
And the policy officer has the hounds of time snapping at his heels.
While there should be no general age limit or restriction to one sex, there will be particular projects requiring special maturity and some open only to men or to women.
The Peace Corps should not pay the expenses of a wife or family, unless the wife is also accepted for full-time Peace Corps work on the same project.
There should be no draft exemption because of Peace Corps service.
In most cases service in the Corps will probably be considered a ground for temporary deferment.
Peace Corps volunteers obviously should not be paid what they might earn in comparable activities in the United States.
Nor would it be possible in many cases for them to live in health or any effectiveness on what their counterparts abroad are paid.
The guiding principle indeed should not be anything like compensation for individual services.
Rather the principle should be akin to that of the allowance.
Peace Corps volunteers should be given just enough to provide a minimum decent standard of living.
They should live in modest circumstances, avoiding all conspicuous consumption.
Wherever possible they should live with their host country counterparts.
Some special health requirements might have to be met.
For example, it probably will be necessary for the Corps to have authority to pay medical expenses of volunteers.
Perhaps existing Public Health Service, State Department and Armed Services medical facilities can be utilized.
For readjustment to the U.S., volunteers should be given some separation allowance at the end of their overseas service, based on the length of time served.
In what part of the government should the Peace Corps be established?
The idea of a Peace Corps has captured the imagination of a great many people.
Support for it cuts across party, regional, ethnic and other lines.
The Peace Corps, therefore, offers an opportunity to add a new dimension to our approach to the world--an opportunity for the American people to think anew and start afresh in their participation in world development.
For this, the Peace Corps should be administered by a small, new, alive agency operating as one component in our whole overseas operation.
Pending the reorganization of our foreign aid structure and program, the Peace Corps should be established as an agency in the Department of State.
When the aid operations are reorganized the Peace Corps should remain a semi-autonomous, functional unit.
Meanwhile, the Peace Corps could be physically located in ICA's facilities and depend on the State Department and ICA for administrative support and, when needed, program assistance.
In this way the Peace Corps can be launched with its own identity and spirit and yet receive the necessary assistance from those now responsible for United States foreign policy and our overseas operations.
How and when should the Peace Corps be launched?
The Peace Corps should be launched soon so that the opportunity to recruit the most qualified people from this year's graduating classes will not be lost.
Nor should we lose the opportunity to use this summer for training on university campuses.
If launched in a careful but determined way within the next few weeks, the Peace Corps could have several hundred persons in training this summer for placement next fall.
Within a year or two several thousand might be in service.
It can then grow steadily as it proves itself and as the need for it is demonstrated.
What would the first projects be?
In the first year there should probably be considerable emphasis on teaching projects.
The need here is most clearly felt and our capacity to recruit and train qualified volunteers in a short period of time is greatest.
There would, however, be a variety of other skills--medical, agricultural, engineering--which would be called for in the first year through the private agency programs and through the provision of technician helpers to existing development projects.
The first year's projects should also be spread through several countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
10.
How will the Peace Corps be received abroad?
Although the need for outside trained manpower exists in every newly developing nation, the readiness to receive such manpower, or to receive it from the United States will vary from country to country.
A certain skepticism about the coming of Americans is to be expected in many quarters.
Unfriendly political groups will no doubt do everything in their power to promote active hostility.
But there are indications that many developing nations will welcome Peace Corps volunteers, and that if the volunteers are well chosen, they will soon demonstrate their value and make many friends.
It is important, however, that the Peace Corps be advanced not as an arm of the Cold War but as a contribution to the world community.
In presenting it to other governments and to the United Nations, we could propose that every nation consider the formation of its own peace corps and that the United Nations sponsor the idea and form an international coordinating committee.
We should hope that peace corps projects will be truly international and that our citizens will find themselves working alongside citizens of the host country and also volunteers from other lands.
In any case, our Peace Corps personnel should be offered as technician helpers in development projects of the U.N. and other international agencies.
The Peace Corps is not a diplomatic or propaganda venture but a genuine experiment in international partnership.
Our aim must be to learn as much as we teach.
The Peace Corps offers an opportunity to bring home to the United States the problems of the world as well as an opportunity to meet urgent host country needs for trained manpower.
If presented in this spirit, the response and the results will be immeasurably better.
11.
How will it be financed?
The already appropriated funds within the discretion of the President and Secretary of State under the Mutual Security Act are the only immediately available source of financing this summer's pilot programs of the Peace Corps.
If it is decided to make a small shift which may be required from military aid or special assistance funds, in order to carry out the purposes of the Mutual Security Act through this new peaceful program, this will be a hopeful sign to the world.
Congress should then be asked to give the Peace Corps a firm legislative foundation for the next fiscal year.
Specifically, Congress should consider authorizing the Peace Corps to receive contributions from American businesses, unions, civic organizations and the public at large.
For this must be the project of the whole American people.
An Advisory Council of outstanding public figures with experience in world affairs should be formed to give the program continuing guidance and to afford a focal point for public understanding.
Steps should also be taken to link the Food for Peace Program with the Peace Corps, so that foreign currencies accumulated by the sale of U.S. surplus food under P.L. 480 can be put to use to pay some of the host country expenses of Peace Corps personnel.
The extent to which participating bodies such as U. S. voluntary agencies, universities, international organizations, and the host country or institutions in the host country can and should share the cost of the Peace Corps programs must be fully explored.
12.
Is it worth the cost and the risks?
No matter how well conceived and efficiently run, there probably will be failures.
These could be costly and have a serious effect both at home and abroad.
But as the popular response suggests, the potentiality of the Peace Corps is very great.
It can contribute to the development of critical countries and regions.
It can promote international cooperation and good will toward this country.
It can also contribute to the education of America and to more intelligent American participation in the world.
With thousands of young Americans going to work in developing areas, millions of Americans will become more directly involved in the world than ever before.
With colleges and universities carrying a large part of the program, and with students looking toward Peace Corps service, there will be an impact on educational curriculum and student seriousness.
And this is meeting the world's need, too, since what the world most needs from this country is better understanding of the world.
The Peace Corps thus can add a new dimension to America's world policy--one for which people here and abroad have long been waiting.
As you said in your State of the Union message, The problems are towering and unprecedented--and the response must be towering and unprecedented as well.
To the Congress of the United States:
I recommend to the Congress the establishment of a permanent Peace Corps--a pool of trained American men and women sent overseas by the U.S. Government or through private organizations and institutions to help foreign countries meet their urgent needs for skilled manpower.
I have today signed an Executive Order establishing a Peace Corps on a temporary pilot basis.
The temporary Peace Corps will be a source of information and experience to aid us in formulating more effective plans for a permanent organization.
In addition, by starting the Peace Corps now we will be able to begin training young men and women for overseas duty this summer with the objective of placing them in overseas positions by late fall.
This temporary Peace Corps is being established under existing authority in the Mutual Security Act and will be located in the Department of State.
Its initial expenses will be paid from appropriations currently available for our foreign aid program.
Throughout the world the people of the newly developing nations are struggling for economic and social progress which reflects their deepest desires.
Our own freedom, and the future of freedom around the world, depend, in a very real sense, on their ability to build growing and independent nations where men can live in dignity, liberated from the bonds of hunger, ignorance and poverty.
To meet this urgent need for skilled manpower we are proposing the establishment of a Peace Corps--an organization which will recruit and train American volunteers, sending them abroad to work with the people of other nations.
This organization will differ from existing assistance programs in that its members will supplement technical advisers by offering the specific skills needed by developing nations if they are to put technical advice to work.
They will help provide the skilled manpower necessary to carry out the development projects planned by the host governments, acting at a working level and serving at great personal sacrifice.
There is little doubt that the number of those who wish to serve will be far greater than our capacity to absorb them.
Wildlife habitat resources
In 1960 one-quarter of the 92.5 million recreation visits to the National Forests and Grasslands were for the primary purpose of hunting and fishing.
Hunter and fisherman visits since 1949 have increased 8 times faster than the nationwide sale of hunting and fishing licenses.
This use is expected to increase to about 50 million visits by 1972.
The long-range objective of habitat management is to make it fully productive so as to support fish and game populations to contribute to the need for public use and enjoyment.
The wildlife habitat management proposals for the 10-year period are: 1.
Revise and complete wildlife habitat management and improvement plans for all administrative units, assuring proper coordination between wildlife habitat management and other resources.
Improve food and cover on 1.5 million acres of key wildlife areas.
Develop wildlife openings, food patches, and game ways in dense vegetation by clearing or controlled burning on 400,000 acres.
Improve 7,000 miles of fishing streams and 56,000 acres of lakes by stabilizing banks, planting streamside cover, and constructing channel improvements.
Protection
The total adverse impact of disease, insects, fire, weather, destructive animals, and other forces on the uses and values of forest resources is not generally recognized.
They kill and destroy, retard or prevent reproduction and growth, impair and damage values, and disrupt uses.
The loss in growth of sawtimber because of damage by destructive agencies in the United States in 1952 was estimated to be about 44 billion board feet.
If it were not for the effect of destructive agencies, sawtimber growth would have been nearly twice as great as the 47 billion board feet in 1952.
About 45 percent of the loss in growth was attributable to disease, 20 percent to insects, 17 percent to fire, and 18 percent to weather, animals, and various other causes.
These destructive forces also have a seriously adverse effect upon the watersheds and their life-supporting waterflows, and upon the other renewable forest resources.
The long-range objective is to hold the damage from destructive agencies below the level which would seriously interfere with intensive management of the National Forest System under principles of multiple use and high-level sustained yield of products and services.
In addition to direct protection measures, more intensive management of timber resources will assist in reduction of losses from insects and disease.
Protection from insects and disease
This will require about a 40 percent increase over the present level of protection.
The work will consist of: 1.
Intensification of present activities through (A) quicker, more extensive, and more thorough surveys to detect incipient outbreaks;
(B) more reliable evaluation of the potential of initial outbreaks to cause widespread damage;
(C) quicker and more effective control action in the initial stages to prevent a large-scale epidemic.
The initial suppression activities would cover about twice the acreage currently being treated.
Continuation of present blister rust control work plus extension of control to 250,000 acres not now protected but which should be managed for white pine production.
The objective is to achieve sufficient effectiveness of control on all of the area now under treatment plus the additional acres so that after the initial period only maintenance control will be needed.
Initiating a program to control dwarf mistletoe on several hundred thousand acres of selected better stands of young softwood sawtimber on better growing sites.
Coordination of pest control objectives with timber management activities to reduce losses.
Protection from fire
This will include 125 million acres compared with 23 million acres now receiving such protection.
An additional 15 million acres will be given a lesser degree of protection but adequate to meet the average fire situation.
Meeting these levels of protection from fire calls for: 1.
Expansion, modernization, and development of fire control to a proficiency and strength of force which will prevent as many fires as possible and suppress fires before they spread beyond permitted standards.
This is to be accomplished by nearly doubling the present level of preventive effort, detection, skilled fire-fighting crews, and equipment use.
This will include a stepped-up program of training and development of personnel.
Adoption and use of new and modern techniques being developed for prevention, for suppression of fires while small, and for stopping large fires while running and burning intensely.
Reduction of hazardous fuel conditions to minimize the chances of large fires developing and spreading to high-value areas.
Protection from other damage
Rodent control work for the 10-year period will be aimed at control of the most serious infestations of harmful rodents, such as porcupines and mice, on high-value areas of forage and commercial timberlands.
These areas comprise about half of the total area of rodent infestation on the National Forests.
Approximately 1.8 million acres of rangelands and 9.4 million acres of timberlands would be treated in this period.
Control would be limited to those rodents for which economical means of control are known.
Roads and trails
The transportation system which serves the National Forests is a complex of highways and access roads and trails under various ownerships and jurisdictions.
This system is divided into a forest highway system, administered by the Secretary of Commerce, and a forest development road and trail system, administered by the Secretary of Agriculture.
Both of these systems are essential for the production, development, and use of the National Forests.
In the forest highway system, there are now 24,400 miles of public roads.
These are mostly through highways that carry traffic going from one destination to another.
It is estimated that about 70,000 miles of forest highways will eventually be needed to fully serve the National Forests.
In the forest development road and trail system, there are now 162,400 miles of roads and 106,500 miles of supplemental foot and horse trails.
These roads are largely of less than highway standards, and usually carry traffic which is related to use of the National Forests.
Construction and maintenance of this system is a responsibility of the Secretary of Agriculture.
The ultimate trail system will be of value primarily for recreation and wildlife utilization and fire protection.
It will be carefully planned to maintain optimum service to these important resources and watersheds.
The presence or lack of access by road or trail has a direct and controlling influence on all phases of forest management and utilization such as: (A)
the protection of forage, timber, and wildlife resources from fire, insects, and disease;
(B)
the balanced use of recreation, hunting, and fishing areas;
(C)
the volume of timber that can be marketed, especially for small sales and the support of dependent communities and small business enterprises;
(D)
the level of salvage cutting in dead and dying timber stands and the opportunity to promptly salvage losses resulting from fire, windstorm, insects, and disease;
(E)
the protection of watershed lands from erosion and overgrazing by animals.
The existence of road systems permits an intensity of management and use for all National Forest purposes that is not otherwise possible.
Furthermore, roads that give access to National Forest timber are investments which pay their own way over a period of years.
Use of these roads by the public results in substantial benefits to the localities the roads serve.
The long-range objective of this Department is to provide and maintain a system of forest development roads and trails which will adequately service the National Forest System at the levels needed to meet expected needs and optimum production of products and services.
Service at these levels of production and utilization will eventually require the construction of about 379,900 miles of new roads and 6,000 miles of new trails, along with the reconstruction to higher standards of about 105,000 miles of roads and 10,500 miles of trails.
About 26,500 miles of existing trails will be replaced in service by the construction of new roads.
About 80 percent of these long-range requirements should be met by the year 2000.
Program proposals for forest development roads and trails for the 10-year period 1963-1972 are as follows: 1.
Complete the construction and reconstruction of about 79,400 miles of multiple-purpose roads and 8,000 miles of trails.
This constitutes about 17 percent of the long-range requirements for these facilities.
Approximately 40 percent of the value of the work on roads for access to timber which are planned for this period will be constructed by purchasers of National Forest timber, but paid for by the Government through adjustment of stumpage prices.
Provide maintenance to full standards on the 268,900 miles of existing access roads and trails and on the new roads and trails constructed during the period.
Land adjustment, land purchase, land use
Within the units in the National Forest System the pattern of land ownership is quite irregular.
In some units, National Forest ownership is well blocked together.
In many others, the previous patenting of land under the public land laws, or the way in which land was available for purchase, resulted in a scattered pattern of ownership.
Within exterior boundaries of National Forests and National Grasslands, there are about 40,000,000 acres in non-Federal ownership.
Some privately held inholdings are a source of direct damage to these Federal lands.
And some, which are suitable for tree growing and for other National Forest purposes, are unmanaged or in need of expensive rehabilitation, and are contributing nothing to the economy;
there are no reasonable prospects that these conditions will be corrected or changed.
Lands in this last category are situated largely in the mountainous portions of the Eastern States.
Strategy and tactics of the U.S. military forces are now undergoing one of the greatest transitions in history.
The change of emphasis from conventional-type to missile-type warfare must be made with care, mindful that the one type of warfare cannot be safely neglected in favor of the other.
Our military forces must be capable of contending successfully with any contingency which may be forced upon us, from limited emergencies to all-out nuclear general war.
Forces and military personnel strength.
-- This budget will provide in the fiscal year 1961 for the continued support of our forces at approximately the present level--a year-end strength of 2,489,000 men and women in the active forces.
The forces to be supported include an Army of 14 divisions and 870,000 men;
a Navy of 817 active ships and 619,000 men;
a Marine Corps of 3 divisions and 3 air wings with 175,000 men;
and an Air Force of 91 combat wings and 825,000 men.
If the reserve components are to serve effectively in time of war, their basic organization and objectives must conform to the changing character and missions of the active forces.
Quality and combat readiness must take precedence over mere numbers.
Under modern conditions, this is especially true of the ready reserve.
I have requested the Secretary of Defense to reexamine the roles and missions of the reserve components in relation to those of the active forces and in the light of the changing requirements of modern warfare.
Last year the Congress discontinued its previously imposed minimum personnel strength limitations on the Army Reserve.
Similar restrictions on the strength of the Army National Guard contained in the 1960 Department of Defense Appropriation Act should likewise be dropped.
I strongly recommend to the Congress the avoidance of mandatory floors on the size of the reserve components so that we may have the flexibility to make adjustments in keeping with military necessity.
I again proposed a reduction in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve--from their present strengths of 400,000 and 300,000, respectively, to 360,000 and 270,000 by the end of the fiscal year 1961.
These strengths are considered adequate to meet the essential roles and missions of the reserves in support of our national security objectives.
Military personnel costs.
-- About 30% of the expenditures for the Department of Defense in 1961 are for military personnel costs, including pay for active, reserve, and retired military personnel.
Retired pay costs are increased by $94 million in 1961 over 1960, partly because of a substantial increase in the number of retired personnel.
These increased costs are partially offset by a decrease of $56 million in expenditures for the reserve forces, largely because of the planned reduction in strength of the Army Reserve components during 1961.
Traditionally, rates of pay for retired military personnel have been proportionate to current rates of pay for active personnel.
The 1958 military pay act departed from this established formula by providing for a 6% increase rather than a proportionate increase for everyone retired prior to its effective date of June 1, 1958.
I endorse pending legislation that will restore the traditional relationship between retired and active duty pay rates.
Operation and maintenance.
-- Expenditures for operating and maintaining the stations and equipment of the Armed Forces are estimated to be $10.3 billion in 1961, which is $184 million more than in 1960.
The increase stems largely from the growing complexity of and higher degree of maintenance required for newer weapons and equipment.
A substantial increase is estimated in the cost of operating additional communications systems in the air defense program, as well as in all programs where speed and security of communications are essential.
Also, the program for fleet modernization will be stepped up in 1961 causing an increase in expenditures.
Further increases arise from the civilian employee health program enacted by the Congress last year.
Other factors increasing operating costs include the higher unit cost of each flying hour, up 11% in two years, and of each steaming hour, up 15%.
In the budget message for 1959, and again for 1960, I recommended immediate repeal of section 601 of the Act of September 28, 1951 (65 Stat. 365).
As I have stated previously, the Attorney General has advised me that this section violates fundamental constitutional principles.
Accordingly, if it is not repealed by the Congress at its present session, I shall have no alternative thereafter but to direct the Secretary of Defense to disregard the section unless a court of competent jurisdiction determines otherwise.
Basic long-line communications in Alaska are now provided through Federal facilities operated by the Army, Air Force, and Federal Aviation Agency.
The growing communications needs of this new State can best be met, as they have in other States, through the operation and development of such facilities by private enterprise.
Legislation has already been proposed to authorize the sale of these Government-owned systems in Alaska, and its early enactment is desirable.
Procurement, research, and construction.
-- Approximately 45% of the expenditures for the Department of Defense are for procurement, research, development, and construction programs.
In 1961, these expenditures are estimated at $18.9 billion, compared to $19.3 billion in 1960.
The decreases, which are largely in construction and in aircraft procurement, are offset in part by increases for research and development and for procurement of other military equipment such as tanks, vehicles, guns, and electronic devices.
Expenditures for shipbuilding are estimated at about the same level as in 1960.
New obligational authority for 1961 recommended in this budget for aircraft procurement (excluding amounts for related research and construction) totals $4,753 million, which is $1,390 million below that enacted for 1960.
On the other hand, the new authority of $3,825 million proposed for missile procurement (excluding research and construction) in 1961 is $581 million higher than for 1960.
These contrasting trends in procurement reflect the anticipated changes in the composition and missions of our Armed Forces in the years ahead.
The Department of Defense appropriation acts for the past several years have contained a rider which limits competitive bidding by firms in other countries on certain military supply items.
As I have repeatedly stated, this provision is much more restrictive than the general law, popularly known as the Buy American Act.
I urge once again that the Congress not reenact this rider.
The task of providing a reasonable level of military strength, without endangering other vital aspects of our security, is greatly complicated by the swift pace of scientific progress.
The last few years have witnessed what have been perhaps the most rapid advances in military technology in history.
Some weapons systems have become obsolescent while still in production, and some while still under development.
Furthermore, unexpectedly rapid progress or a technological break-through on any one weapon system, in itself, often diminishes the relative importance of other competitive systems.
This has necessitated a continuous review and reevaluation of the defense program in order to redirect resources to the newer and more important weapons systems and to eliminate or reduce effort on weapons systems which have been overtaken by events.
Thus, in the last few years, a number of programs which looked very promising at the time their development was commenced have since been completely eliminated.
Another example is the recent cancellation of the F-108, a long-range interceptor with a speed three times as great as the speed of sound, which was designed for use against manned bombers in the period of the mid-1960's.
The substantial progress being made in ballistic missile technology is rapidly shifting the main threat from manned bombers to missiles.
Considering the high cost of the F-108 system--over $4 billion for the force that had been planned--and the time period in which it would become operational, it was decided to stop further work on the project.
Meanwhile, other air defense forces are being made effective, as described later in this message.
The size and scope of other important programs have been reduced from earlier plans.
The impact of technological factors is also illustrated by the history of the high-energy fuel program.
This project was started at a time when there was a critical need for a high-energy fuel to provide an extra margin of range for high performance aircraft, particularly our heavy bombers.
Continuing technical problems involved in the use of this fuel, coupled with significant improvements in aircraft range through other means, have now raised serious questions about the value of the high-energy fuel program.
As a result, the scope of this project has been sharply curtailed.
These examples underscore the importance of even more searching evaluations of new major development programs and even more penetrating and far-ranging analyses of the potentialities of future technology.
Strategic forces.
-- The deterrent power of our Armed Forces comes from both their nuclear retaliatory capability and their capability to conduct other essential operations in any form of war.
The first capability is represented by a combination of manned bombers, carrier-based aircraft, and intercontinental and intermediate range missiles.
The second capability is represented by our deployed ground, naval, and air forces in essential forward areas, together with ready reserves capable of effecting early emergency reinforcement.
The Strategic Air Command is the principal element of our long-range nuclear capability.
One of the important and difficult decisions which had to be made in this budget concerned the role of the B-70, a long-range supersonic bomber.
This aircraft, which was planned for initial operational use about 1965, would be complementary to but likewise competitive with the four strategic ballistic missile systems, all of which are scheduled to become available earlier.
The first Atlas ICBM's are now operational, the first two Polaris submarines are expected to be operational this calendar year, and the first Titan ICBM's next year.
The Minuteman solid-fueled ICBM is planned to be operational about mid-1963.
By 1965, several or all of these systems will have been fully tested and their reliability established.
Thus, the need for the B-70 as a strategic weapon system is doubtful.
However, I am recommending that development work on the B-70 air-frame and engines be continued.
It is expected that in 1963 two prototype aircraft will be available for flight testing.
By that time we should be in a much better position to determine the value of that aircraft as a weapon system.
I am recommending additional acquisitions of the improved version of the B-52 (the B-52H with the new turbofan engine) and procurement of the B-58 supersonic medium bomber, together with the supporting refueling tankers in each case.
These additional modern bombers will replace some of the older B-47 medium bombers;
one B-52 can do the work of several B-47's which it will replace.
Funds are also included in this budget to continue the equipping of the B-52 wings with the Hound Dog air-to-surface missile.
In the coming fiscal year additional quantities of Atlas, Titan, and Polaris missiles also will be procured.
Purchase authorizations will include provisions relating to the sale and delivery of commodities, including the classes, types and/or varieties of food grain, the time and circumstances of deposit of the rupees accruing from such sale, and other relevant matters.
The United States recognizes the desire of India to accumulate, as quickly as possible, a substantial part of the one million ton reserve stock of rice provided for in this Agreement to assist in stabilizing the internal markets for this commodity in India.
Under this Agreement the first annual review of rice availabilities will be made in August 1960.
The United States Government shall have the right to terminate the financing of further sales under this Agreement of any commodity if it determines at any time after June 30, 1961, that such action is necessitated by the existence of an international emergency.
Article 2, uses of rupees
For United States expenditures under subsections (A), (B), (D), (E), (F), (H) through (R) of Section 104 of the Act or under any of such subsections, the rupee equivalent of $200 million.
(B)
For grant to the Government of India under subsection (E) of Section 104 of the Act, the rupee equivalent of not more than $538 million for financing such projects to promote balanced economic development as may from time to time be mutually agreed.
(C)
For loan to the Government of India under subsection (G) of Section 104 of the Act, the rupee equivalent of not more than $538 million for financing such projects to promote balanced economic development as may be mutually agreed.
The terms and conditions of the loan and other provisions will be set forth in a separate agreement by the two Governments.
In the event that agreement is not reached on the use of the rupees for grant or loan purposes within six years from the date of this Agreement, the Government of the United States of America may use the local currency for any purposes authorized by Section 104 of the Act.
Article 3, deposit of rupees
Article 4, general undertakings
Article 5, consultation
The two Governments will, upon the request of either of them, consult regarding any matter relating to the application of this Agreement or to the operation of arrangements carried out pursuant to this Agreement.
Article 6, entry into force
The agreement shall enter into force upon signature.
In witness whereof, the respective representatives, duly authorized for the purpose, have signed the present Agreement.
Done at Washington in duplicate this fourth day of May 1960.
For the government of the United States of America:
Dwight D. Eisenhower
for the government of India:
S. K. Patil Excellency:
With respect to Article 2, Paragraph 1 (A) of the Agreement: (1)
This facility is needed for the purpose of securing funds to finance agricultural market development activities of the Government of the United States in other countries.
The Government of the United States of America may utilize rupees in India to pay for goods and services, including international transportation needed in connection with market development and other agricultural projects and activities in India and other countries.
(2)
It is understood that: (A)
(B)
Loans will be mutually agreeable to the Export-Import Bank of Washington and the Government of India acting through the Department of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance.
The Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, or his designate, will act for the Government of India, and the President of the Export-Import Bank of Washington, or his designate, will act for the Export-Import Bank of Washington.
(C)
(D)
When the Export-Import Bank is prepared to act favorably upon an application, it will so notify the Department of Economic Affairs and will indicate the interest rate and the repayment period which would be used under the proposed loan.
The interest rate will be similar to those prevailing in India on comparable loans and the maturities will be consistent with the purposes of the financing.
(E)
Unless within the sixty-day period the Export-Import Bank has received such a communication from the Department of Economic Affairs it shall be understood that the Department of Economic Affairs has no objection to the proposed loan.
When the Export-Import Bank approves or declines the proposed loan, it will notify the Department of Economic Affairs.
Agriculture;
Industry, including the production of fertilizer, irrigation and power, transport and communications, and credit institutions;
Public health, education, and rehabilitation;
Other economic development projects consistent with the purposes of Sections 104 (E) and 104 (G) of the Act.
With regard to the rupees accruing to uses indicated under Article 2, of the Agreement, the understanding of the Government of the United States of America, with respect to both paragraphs 1 (B) and 1 (C) of Article 2, is as follows: (1)
Local currency will be advanced or reimbursed to the Government of India for financing agreed projects under paragraphs 1 (B) and 1 (C) of Article 2, of the Agreement upon the presentation of such documentation as the United States may specify.
(2)
The books and records with respect to each project shall be maintained for the duration of the project, or until the expiration of three years after final disbursement for the project has been made by the United States, whichever is later.
The two Governments shall have the right at all reasonable times to examine such books and records and all other documents, correspondence, memoranda and other records involving transactions relating to agreed projects.
This broad delegation leaves within our discretion (subject to the always-present criterion of the public interest) both the determination of what degree of interference shall be considered excessive, and the methods by which such excessive interference shall be avoided.
The present proceeding is concerned with the standard broadcast (AM) band, from 540 kc. to 1600 kc..
Whenever two or more standard broadcast stations operate simultaneously on the same or closely adjacent frequencies, each interferes to some extent with reception of the other.
Other factors playing a part in the extent of AM service and interference are the frequency involved, the time of year, the position of the year in the sunspot cycle, ground conductivity along the transmission path, atmospheric and manmade noise, and others.
With the existence of these many factors, some of them variable, it obviously has never been and is not now possible for the Commission to make assignments of AM stations on a case-to-case basis which will insure against any interference in any circumstances.
An example of the overall standards applied is the 20-to-1 ratio established for the determination of that degree of cochannel interference which is regarded as objectionable.
A second fundamental principle is that involved particularly in the present proceeding--the difference between nighttime and daytime propagation conditions with respect to the standard broadcast frequencies.
This is a phenomenon familiar to all radio listeners, resulting from reflection of skywave signals at night from the ionized layer in the upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere.
All AM stations radiate both skywave and groundwave signals, at all hours;
but during the middle daytime hours these skywave radiations are not reflected in any substantial quantity, and during this portion of the day both skywave service and skywave interference are, in general, negligible.
Because of the difference between daytime and nighttime propagation conditions, it has been necessary to evolve different allocation structures for daytime and nighttime broadcasting in the AM band, with many more stations operating during the day than at night.
During the period of about 4 hours around sunset, skywave transmission conditions are building up until full nighttime conditions prevail;
during the same period around sunrise, skywave transmission is declining, until at about 2 hours after sunrise it reaches a point where it becomes of little practical significance.
It was determined that the hours of sunrise and sunset, respectively, should be used for this purpose.
Accordingly, the 1938-39 rules adopted these hours as limitations upon the operation of daytime stations.
The same restrictions apply after local sunset in the case of class 3, stations operating on regional channels, which after that time are required to operate under nighttime restrictions in order to protect each other.
With respect to nighttime assignments, the degree of skywave service and interference is determined by skywave curves (figs. 1 and 2 of sec. 3.190 of the rules) giving average skywave values.
These curves were derived by an analysis of extensive skywave measurement data.
It was recognized that skywave signals, because of their reflected nature, are of great variability and subject to wide fluctuations in strength.
Allocation policies
As mentioned, the allocation of AM stations represents a balance between protection against interference and the provision of opportunity for an adequate number of stations.
The rules and policies to be applied in this process of course must be based on objectives which represent what is to be desired if radio service is to be of maximum use to the Nation.
Our objectives, as we have stated many times, are--(1)
To provide some service to all listeners;
(2)
To provide as many choices of service to as many listeners as possible;
(3)
To provide service of local origin to as many listeners as possible.
Accordingly, the Commission has recognized that an optimum allocation pattern for one frequency does not necessarily represent the best pattern for other frequencies, and has assigned different frequencies for use by different classes of stations.
In dealing with these frequencies, the objective listed first above--provision of service to all listeners--was predominant;
the other objectives were subordinated to it.
The class 1, stations on these clear channels are protected to their 0.1-mv./m. groundwave contours against daytime cochannel interference.
class 1,--B stations are protected at night to their 0.5-mv./m. 50-percent time skywave contours against cochannel interference.
Since the provision of skywave service requires adequate freedom from interference, only class 1, stations are capable of rendering skywave service.
But nighttime operation by stations of other classes of course entails skywave interference to groundwave service, interference which is substantial unless steps are taken to minimize it.
With respect to other frequencies, these are designated as regional or local, and assigned for use by class 3, and class 4, stations, respectively, stations operating generally with lower power.
In the allocation pattern worked out for these frequencies, the provision of long-range service has to some extent been subordinated to the other two objectives--assignment of multiple facilities, and assignment of stations in as many communities as possible.
As mentioned, the primary allocation objective to be followed in the allocation of stations on clear channels is the provision of widespread service, free from destructive interference.
Therefore, under our longstanding allocation rules, on some of these channels no station other than the dominant (class 1)--A) station is permitted to operate at night, so that the 1,--A station can render service, interference free, wherever it can be received.
In the daytime, on the other hand, since skywave transmission is relatively inefficient, it is possible to assign a substantially larger number of stations on these channels.
Such additional daytime class 2, assignments are appropriate if optimum use is to be made of these frequencies, and the Commission has over the years made a large number of them.
Similarly, on the regional channels many class 3, stations have been assigned either to operate daytime only or to operate nighttime with directional antennas and/or lower power.
The history of the proceeding
10.
The decision reached in 1938-39 was made after the accumulation of a large amount of data and thorough study thereof.
Since then, there has been a notable increase in the number of stations and also the accumulation of additional data and the development of new techniques for using it, leading to a better understanding of propagation phenomena.
If you elect to use the Standard Deduction or the Tax Table, and later find you should have itemized your deductions, you may do so by filing an amended return within the time prescribed for filing a claim for refund.
See You May Claim A Refund, Page 135.
The same is true if you have itemized your deductions and later decide you should have used the Standard Deduction or Tax Table.
The words amended return should be plainly written across the top of such return.
When and where to file
April 15 is usually the final date for filing income tax returns for most people because they use the calendar year ending on December 31.
If you use a fiscal year, a year ending on the last day of any month other than December, your return is due on or before the 15th day of the 4th month after the close of your tax year.
Saturday, Sunday, or holiday.
If the last day (due date) for performing any act for tax purposes, such as filing a return or making a tax payment, etc., falls on Saturday, Sunday, or a legal holiday, you may perform that act on the next succeeding day which is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.
Since April 15, 1962, is on Sunday your return for the calendar year 1961 will be timely filed if it is filed on or before Monday, April 16, 1962.
If you mail A return or tax payment, you must place it in the mails in ample time to reach the district director on or before the due date.
Declaration of estimated tax.
The filing of an original or amended declaration, otherwise due on January 15, 1962, is also waived, if you file your Form 1040 for 1961 and pay the full tax by January 31, 1962.
Farmers, for these purposes, have until February 15, 1962, to file Form 1040 and pay the tax in full for the calendar year 1961.
Fiscal year taxpayers have until the last day of the first month following the close of the fiscal year (farmers until the 15th day of the 2d month).
See Chapter 38.
Nonresident aliens living in Canada or Mexico who earn wages in the United States may be subject to withholding of tax on their wages, the same as if they were citizens of the United States.
Their United States tax returns are due April 16, 1962.
However, if their United States income is not subject to the withholding of tax on wages, their returns are due June 15, 1962, if they use a calendar year, or the 15th day of the 6th month after the close of their fiscal year.
Nonresident aliens in Puerto Rico.
If you are a nonresident alien and a resident of Puerto Rico, your return is also due June 15, 1962, or the 15th day of the 6th month after the close of your fiscal year.
If A taxpayer dies, the executor, administrator, or legal representative must file the final return for the decedent on or before the 15th day of the 4th month following the close of the deceased taxpayer's normal tax year.
Suppose John Jones, who, for 1960, filed on the basis of a calendar year, died June 20, 1961.
His return for the period January 1 to June 20, 1961, is due April 16, 1962.
The return for a decedent may also serve as a claim for refund of an overpayment of tax.
In such a case, Form 1310 should be completed and attached to the return.
This form may be obtained from the local office of your district director.
Returns of estates or trusts are due on or before the 15th day of the 4th month after the close of the tax year.
Extensions of time for filing.
Under unusual circumstances a resident individual may be granted an extension of time to file a return.
You may apply for such an extension by filing Form 2688, Application For Extension Of Time To File, with the District Director of Internal Revenue for your district, or you may make your application in a letter.
Any failure to file timely returns or make estimated tax payments when due must be fully explained.
Extensions are not granted as a matter of course, and the reasons for your request must be substantial.
If you are unable to sign the request, because of illness or other good cause, another person who stands in close personal or business relationship to you may sign the request on your behalf, stating the reason why you are unable to sign.
You should make any request for an extension early so that if it is refused, your return may still be on time.
See also Interest On Unpaid Taxes, below.
Extensions while abroad.
Citizens of the United States who, on April 15, are not in the United States or Puerto Rico, are allowed an extension of time until June 15 for filing the return for the preceding calendar year.
An extension of 2 months beyond the regular due date for filing is also available to taxpayers making returns for a fiscal year.
Alaska and Hawaii.
Taxpayers residing or traveling in Alaska are also allowed this extension of time for filing, but those residing or traveling in Hawaii are not allowed this automatic extension.
Military or Naval Personnel on duty in Alaska or outside the United States and Puerto Rico are also allowed this automatic extension of time for filing their returns.
You must attach a statement to your return, if you take advantage of this automatic extension, showing that you were in Alaska or were outside the United States or Puerto Rico on April 15 or other due date.
Interest on unpaid taxes.
Interest at the rate of 6% a year must be paid on taxes that are not paid on or before their due date.
Such interest must be paid even though an extension of time for filing is granted.
When payment is due.
If your computation on Form 1040 or Form 1040A shows you owe additional tax, it should be remitted with your return unless you owe less than $1, in which case it is forgiven.
If payment is by cash, you should ask for a receipt.
If you file Form 1040A and the District Director computes your tax, you will be sent a bill if additional tax is due.
This bill should be paid within 30 days.
Payment by check or money order.
Whether the check is certified or uncertified, the tax is not paid until the check is paid.
If the check is not good and the April 15 or other due date deadline elapses, additions to the tax may be incurred.
Furthermore, a bad check may subject the maker to certain penalties.
All checks and money orders should be made payable to Internal Revenue Service.
Refunds.
An overpayment of income and social security taxes entitles you to a refund unless you indicate on the return that the overpayment should be applied to your succeeding year's estimated tax.
If you file Form 1040A and the District Director computes your tax, any refund to which you are entitled will be mailed to you.
If you file a Form 1040, you should indicate in the place provided that there is an overpayment of tax and the amount you want refunded and the amount you want credited against your estimated tax.
Refunds of less than $1 will not be made unless you attach a separate application to your return requesting such a refund.
Where to file.
Send your return to the Director of Internal Revenue for the district in which you have your legal residence or principal place of business.
If you have neither a legal residence nor a principal place of business in any Internal Revenue district, your return should be filed with the District Director of Internal Revenue, Baltimore 2, Md..
Adjusted gross income
The deductions allowed in determining Adjusted Gross Income put all taxpayers on a comparable basis.
It is the amount you enter on line 9, page 1 of Form 1040.
Some deductions are subtracted from Gross Income to determine Adjusted Gross Income.
Other deductions are subtracted only from Adjusted Gross Income in arriving at Taxable Income.
To compute your adjusted gross income you total all items of income.
(See Chapter 6.
) From this amount deduct the items indicated below.
Businessmen deduct all ordinary and necessary expenses attributable to a trade or business.
Rents or royalties.
If you hold property for the production of rents or royalties you subtract, in computing Adjusted Gross Income, ordinary and necessary expenses and certain other deductions attributable to the property.
(See Chapter 15.
Outside salesmen deduct all expenses attributable to earning a salary, commission, or other compensation.
(See Chapter 10.
Employees deduct expenses of travel, meals and lodging while away from home in connection with the performance of their services as employees.
They also deduct transportation expenses incurred in connection with the performance of services as employees even though they are not away from home.
(See Chapter 12.
) If your employer reimburses you for expenses incurred, you deduct such expenses if they otherwise qualify.
(See Chapter 10.
Sick pay, if included in your Gross Income, is deducted in arriving at Adjusted Gross Income.
If your sick pay is not included in your Gross Income, you may not deduct it.
(See Chapter 9.
) income from estates and trusts.
If you are a life tenant, you deduct allowable depreciation and depletion.
If you are an income beneficiary of property held in trust or an heir, legatee, or devisee, you may deduct allowable depreciation and depletion, if not deductible by the estate or trust.
Deductible losses on sales or exchanges of property are allowable in determining your Adjusted Gross Income.
(See Chapter 20.
) 50% of capital gains.
You also deduct 50% of the excess of net long-term capital gains over net short-term capital losses in determining Adjusted Gross Income.
(See Chapter 24.
) other deductions.
Certain other deductions are not allowed in determining Adjusted Gross Income.
They may be claimed only by itemizing them on page 2 of Form 1040.
These deductions may not be claimed if you elect to use the Standard Deduction or Tax Table.
(See Chapters 30 through 37.
Minors minors must also file returns if they earn $600 or more during the year.
A minor is subject to tax on his own earnings even though his parent may, under local law, have the right to them and might actually have received the money.
His income is not required to be included in the return of his parent.
A minor child is allowed A personal exemption of $600 on his own return regardless of how much money he may earn.
Exemption also allowed parent.
If your child is under 19 or is a student you may also claim an exemption for him if he qualifies as your dependent, even though he earns $600 or more.
See Chapter 5.
Example.
Your 16 year old son earned $720 in 1961.
You spent $800 for his support.
Since he had gross income of $600 or more, he must file a return in which he may claim an exemption deduction of $600.
Since you contributed more than half of his support, you may also claim an exemption for him on your return.
He may get a tax refund.
A minor who has gross income of less than $600 is entitled to a refund if income tax was withheld from his wages.
Generally, the refund may be obtained by filing Form 1040A accompanied by the withholding statement (Form W-2).
If he had income other than wages subject to withholding, he may be required to file Form 1040.
See Chapter 1.
If your child works for you, you may deduct reasonable wages you paid to him for services he rendered in your business.
You may deduct these payments even though your child uses the money to purchase his own clothing or other necessities which you are normally obligated to furnish him, and even though you may be entitled to his services.
The one- or two-season hunt, of which there have been too many recently, may do more harm than good;
for such programs raise hopes of assistance toward achieving excellence in scholarship and the arts which are dashed when the programs are discontinued;
and they are dashed, no less, by lack of skill in making selections of men and women for development toward the highest reaches of the mind and spirit.
The central group of the Foundation's advisors are, at any one period of time, the members of our Advisory Board, consisting, now, of thirty-six men and women.
They are chosen by the Foundation's Board of Trustees on the bases of their own first-rate accomplishments in their different fields of scholarship and the arts.
Their locations in all parts of the United States, and their locations in the several kinds of educational and research institutions that are the principal homes of our intellectual and artistic strengths also are factors in the Trustees' minds.
For this concept of an Advisory Board, ancillary to the Board of Trustees, we are indebted to the late President of Harvard University, A. Lawrence Lowell, a master of the subject of the structure of cultural institutions and their administration.
That we had the wit and wisdom to adopt Mr. Lowell's concept and make it the base for our processes of selection is one reason why our selections have been, it may be said truly, pretty uniformly good.
For, in accordance with Mr. Lowell's concept of an advisory board, our selections are made by experienced selectors who give both constancy and consistency to our processes and our choices.
And lest we should become too consistent, in the sense of becoming heedless of new fields of scholarship and new points of view in the arts, the Foundation's Board of Trustees maintains a trickle--not a flow!
-- of new members through the Advisory Board.
To the members of our Advisory Board, and most specially to its members who constitute our committees of selection, the Foundation is indebted for its successes of choice of Fellows.
We are, as we know, utterly dependent on the quality of advice we get;
and quality of advice, added to devotion to the Foundation's purposes and ideals, we do get from our Advisory Board in measures so full that they can be appreciated only by those of us who work here every day.
But the facts about our Advisory Board and its members' duties are only one of several sets of facts about the quest for advice, both reliable and imaginative, on which to base our selections of Fellows.
For example, the interest of past members of the Foundation's Advisory Board remains such that they place their knowledge and judgments at our disposal much as they had done when they were, formally, members of that Board.
To all, the Foundation gives the kind of thanks which are more than thanks: to them we are grateful beyond the possibility of conveying in words how grateful we are.
It is a truism of business that no business can be better than its board of directors and its top management.
The same is true of every foundation.
During the biennium reviewed in this Report, our Board of Trustees named able men, younger than the rest of us, to the Board and to top management to insure future continuance of the first-class administration of the Foundation's affairs:
Dr. James Brown Fisk, physicist, President of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, was elected to the Board of Trustees.
He is a member both of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society;
and he has served our country well as a scientific statesman on international commissions.
Dr. Gordon N. Ray, Provost, Vice-President and Professor of English in the University of Illinois, was appointed Associate Secretary General.
The Trustees of the Foundation appointed Dr. Ray to that position with the stated expectation that he would succeed the present Secretary General upon the latter's eventual retirement.
Referring further to the Foundation's officers, Dr. James F. Mathias, for eleven years our discerning colleague as Associate Secretary, was promoted to be Secretary.
He is a historian, with the great merit of a historian's long view.
Also appointed to the Foundation's staff, as Assistant Secretary, is Mr. J. Kellum Smith, Jr..
Mr. Smith, like the present Secretary General, is a lawyer;
and lawyers--with the great virtues that they are trained to read the fine print carefully and are able out of professional experience to arrive at imaginative solutions to difficult problems in many fields--are indispensable even in a foundation office.
The present Secretary General has been the Foundation's principal administrative officer continuously since the Foundation's establishment thirty-five years ago.
But even he will not last indefinitely and the above-noted new arrangements are, quite simply, made to assure qualitative continuity in the Foundation's policies and practices.
The effective recognition of excellence and its nurture has to be learned and is not learned in a day, nor even in a year.
We are not given to lamentations, neither personally nor in these Reports.
On the contrary, if this be an apocalyptic era as is commonly said, we see it as an era of opportunity.
For, granting that there are great present-day problems to be solved, these problems make great demands;
and by their demanding tend to create resources of men's minds and hearts which problems with easy answers do not bring forth.
Of this, examples are legion: Pericles speaking his funeral oration in Ancient Greece's extremity after Thermopylae and making it a testament of freedom;
Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence amid the catastrophes of revolution;
Christ preaching the Sermon on the Mount, close to his ultimate sacrifice;
Shakespeare speaking with the indescribable gusto of the Elizabethan voice --;
Keats's words--in the days of the Spanish Armada's threats;
Isaac Newton, at the age of twenty-three, industriously calculating logarithms to two and fifty places during the great plague year in England, 1665;
Winston Churchill's Olympian, optimistic and resolute sayings when Britain stood alone against the armed forces of tyranny less than twenty years ago;
the present-day explorations of outer space, answering age-old questions of science and philosophy, in the face of possible wars of extinction.
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit, as the Roman poet, Virgil, declared with much more historical sense than most writers of today.
It gives, indeed, cause for rejoicing to remember what many catastrophes of the past produced;
and it is to be noted also that confidence should grow from remembering that great men often appeared in the past to turn local catastrophe into future good for all mankind.
For example, out of the social evils of the English industrial revolution came the novels of Charles Dickens;
and his genius moved his readers to seek solutions of those evils for all Western men--until today --, in the industrialized West, these social evils substantially do not exist.
The solutions were not arrived at by any theoreticians of the Karl Marx stripe but by men of government--lawyers, most of them--and men of business.
These were educated men, who, as Mr. Justice Holmes was fond of saying, formed their inductions out of experience under the burden of responsibility.
That is, to put it realistically, they had to run their businesses at a profit, or they had to get the votes to get elected.
But as all understand who have eyes to see, nothing of the kind has happened;
indeed, the contrary has happened.
The gulf between the rich and the poor has narrowed, in the industrialized Western world, to the point that the word poor is hardly applicable.
And the reason this could happen is clear: men of government, business men, lawyers and all who concerned themselves with the welfare of their fellow men did not let their concern to run their businesses at a profit restrict the development of freedom and opportunity.
Some would say that they were not permitted to run their businesses only for profit;
and even putting it that way would not prove that Marx was anything but wrong.
Sir Henry Sumner Maine, a hundred years before Communism was a force to be reckoned with, wrote his brilliant legal generalization, that the progress of society is from status to contract.
The essence of contract is that one is free to make a choice of what one will or will not do.
Hence, the condition of freedom is a necessary condition for choice.
The greater the range of freedom for individual men, the greater the range of choice;
the greater the range of choice, the greater the rate of change.
For change is dependent on the possibilities that individual men glimpse for the future.
But when there is not freedom and opportunity to choose, men--individual men--must remain in status and society does not, cannot, progress.
The eternal truth is that progress--due, as it always is, to individual creative genius--is just as dependent on freedom as human life is dependent on the beating of the heart.
During the year 1959, we granted 354 Fellowships;
in 1960, we granted 334.
As heretofore, our Fellowships are available to assist research in all fields of knowledge and creative effort in all the arts.
We do not favor one field over another: we think that all inquiry, all scholarly and artistic creation, is good--provided only that it contributes to a sense and understanding of the true ends of life, as all first-rate scholarship and artistic creation does.
Indeed, if pressed, we would say what the late Robert Henri, American painter, said to a pupil, Anything will do for a subject: it's what you do with it that counts.
Thus, we have no part, and want none, in current discussions of the relative importance of science, the social studies, the humanities, the creative arts.
We want no part in such discussions, because we think them largely futile;
and we think them largely futile because, for true excellence of accomplishment, every scholar and every artist must cross boundaries of knowledge and boundaries of points of view.
When the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company reached its 125th year as a going industrial concern during 1958, it became an almost unique institution in the mechanical world.
Joseph R. Brown grew up in the bustle and enterprise of New England between 1810 and 1830.
He was early exposed to the mechanical world, and in his youth often helped his father, David Brown, master clock and watchmaker, as he plied his trade.
At the age of 17 he became an apprentice machinist at the shop of Walcott & Harris in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, and following two or three other jobs in quick succession after graduation, he went into business for himself in 1831, making lathes and small tools.
This enterprise led to a father-and-son combination beginning in 1833, under the name D. Brown & Son, a business which eventually grew into the modern corporation we now call Brown & Sharpe.
The years of Joseph's partnership with his father were numbered.
In 1838, a devastating fire gutted their small shop and soon thereafter David Brown moved west to Illinois, settling on a land grant in his declining years.
Joseph Brown continued in business by himself, quickly rebuilding the establishment which had been lost in the fire and beginning those first steps which were to establish him as a pioneer in raising the standards of accuracy of machine shop practice throughout the world.
Much of his genius, of course, sprang from his familiarity with clock movements.
During these early years the repair of watches and clocks and the building of special clocks for church steeples formed an important part of the young man's occupation.
He became particularly interested in graduating and precision measurement during the 1840's, and his thinking along these lines developed considerably during this period.
But his business also grew, and we are told that Mr. Brown found it increasingly difficult to devote as much time to his creative thinking as his inclinations led him to desire.
It must have been with some pleasure and relief that on September 12, 1848, Joseph Brown made the momentous entry in his job book, in his characteristically cryptic style, Lucian Sharpe came to work for me this day as an apprentice.
The young apprentice apparently did well by Mr. Brown, for in the third year of his apprenticeship Lucian was offered a full partnership in the firm;
the company became J. R. Brown & Sharpe, and entered into a new and important period of its development.
Mr. Sharpe's arrival in the business did indeed provide what Mr. Brown had most coveted--time for tinkering, and the opportunity of carrying out in the back room those developments in precision graduation which most interested him at that time.
By 1853, the new partnership announced the precision vernier caliper as the first fruit of their joint efforts.
The basic significance of this invention helped them to follow it rapidly in 1855 by the development of a unique precision gear cutting and dividing engine.
That development, in turn, formed the foundation of still more significant expansions in later years--in gear cutting, in circular graduating, in index drilling, and in many other fields where accuracy was a paramount requirement.
Throughout their careers, both Mr. Brown and Mr. Sharpe were interested in the problem of setting up standards of measurement for the mechanical trades.
Several efforts were made in this direction, and though not all of them survive to this day, the Brown & Sharpe wire gage system was eventually adopted as the American standard and is still in common use today.
As one development followed another, the company's reputation for precision in the graduating field brought it broader and broader opportunities for expansion in precision manufacture.
In 1858, the partnership began manufacturing the Willcox & Gibbs sewing machine.
As the story goes, Mr. Gibbs, who originally came from the back counties of the Commonwealth of Virginia, saw an illustration in a magazine of the famous Howe sewing machine.
Curious as to what made it work, he built a crude model of it in wood, and filed a piece of steel until he succeeded in making a metal pickup for the thread, enabling the crude machine to take stitches.
When he showed this model as his solution as to how the Howe sewing machine operated, he was told he was wrong, and discovered to his amazement that the Howe Machine, which was unknown to him in detail, used two threads while the one that he had perfected used only one.
Thus was invented the single thread sewing machine, which Mr. Gibbs in partnership with Mr. Willcox decided to bring to Brown & Sharpe with the proposal that the small company undertake its manufacture.
The new work was a boon to the partnership, not only for its own value but particularly for the stimulation it provided to the imagination of J. R. Brown toward yet further developments for production equipment.
The turret screw machine, now known as the Brown & Sharpe hand screw machine, takes its ancestry directly from Mr. Brown's efforts to introduce equipment to simplify the manufacture of the sewing machine.
Mr. Brown made important additions to the arts in screw machine design by drastically improving the means for revolving the turret, by introducing automatic feeding devices for the stock, and reversible tap and die holders.
In 1861, Mr. Brown's attention was called to yet another basic production problem--the manufacture of twist drills.
At that time, during the Civil War, Union muskets were being manufactured in Providence and the drills to drill them were being hand-filed with rattail files.
This process neither satisfied the urgent production schedules nor Mr. Brown's imagination of the possibilities in the situation.
The child of this problem was Mr. Brown's famous Serial No. 1 Universal Milling Machine, the archtype from which is descended today's universal knee-type milling machine used throughout the world.
The original machine, bearing its famous serial number, is still on exhibition at the Brown & Sharpe Precision Center in Providence.
During the Civil War period Mr. Brown also invented the Brown & Sharpe formed tooth gear cutter, a basic invention which ultimately revolutionized the world's gear manufacturing industry by changing its basic economics.
Up until that time it had been possible to make cutters for making gear teeth, but they were good for only one sharpening.
As soon as the time came for re-sharpening, the precise form of the gear tooth was lost and a new cutter had to be made.
This process made the economical manufacture of gears questionable until some way could be found to permit the repeated re-sharpening of gear tooth cutters without the loss of the precision form.
Mr. Brown's invention achieved this and, as a byproduct, formed the cornerstone of Brown & Sharpe's position of leadership in the gear making equipment field which lasted until the 1920's when superceded by other methods.
The micrometer caliper, as a common workshop tool, also owes much to J. R. Brown.
Although Mr. Brown was not himself its inventor (it was a French idea), it is typical that his intuition first conceived the importance of mass producing this basic tool for general use.
So it was that when Mr. Brown and Mr. Sharpe first saw the French tool on exhibition in Paris in 1868, they brought a sample with them to the United States and started Brown & Sharpe in yet another field where it retains its leadership to this day.
The final achievement of Mr. Brown's long and interesting mechanical career runs a close second in importance to his development of the universal milling machine.
That achievement was his creation of the universal grinding machine, which made its appearance in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
This machine, like its milling counterpart, was the antecedent of a machine-family used to this very day in precision metalworking shops throughout the world.
Along with J. R. Brown's other major developments, the universal grinding machine was profoundly influential in setting the course of Brown & Sharpe for many years to come.
Following Mr. Brown's death, there came forward in the Brown & Sharpe organization many other men who contributed greatly to the development of the company.
One such man was Samuel Darling.
As head of the firm Darling & Swartz, Mr. Darling began by challenging Brown & Sharpe to its keenest competition during the 1850's and early 60's.
In 1868, however, a truce was called between the companies, and the partnership of Darling, Brown & Sharpe was formed.
Also important on the Brown & Sharpe scene, at the turn of the century, was Mr. Richmond Viall, Works Superintendent of the company from 1876 to 1910.
Mr. Viall possessed remarkable talents for the leadership and development of men.
He was an ardent champion of the Brown & Sharpe Apprentice Program and personal counselor to countless able men who first developed their industrial talents with the company.
In one sense it can be said that one of the most important Brown & Sharpe products over the years has been the men who began work with the company and subsequently came to places of industrial eminence throughout the nation and even abroad.
Commencing with the death of Lucian Sharpe in 1899, the name of Henry D. Sharpe was for more than 50 years closely interwoven with the destiny of the company.
During his presidency, the company's physical plant was enormously expanded, and the length and breadth of the Brown & Sharpe machine tool line became the greatest in the world.
During the early part of this century, the Brown & Sharpe works in Providence were unchallenged as the largest single manufacturing facility devoted exclusively to precision machinery and tool manufacture anywhere in the world.
During these years the company's product line followed the basic tenets laid down by Mr. Brown.
In the grinding machine field, expansion went far from universal grinders alone and took in cylindrical grinders, surface grinders, and a wide variety of special and semi-special models.
In 1951, Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. succeeded his father and continued the company's development as a major factor in the metal-working equipment business.
The company is still broadening its line and is now active on four major fronts.
The Machine Tool Division is currently producing Brown & Sharpe single spindle automatic screw machines, grinding machines of many types, and knee and bed-type milling machines.
Recently added is the Brown & Sharpe turret drilling machine which introduces the company to an entirely new field of tool development.
In the Industrial Products Division, the company manufactures and markets a wide line of precision gaging and inspection equipment, machinists' tools--including micrometers, Vernier calipers, and accessories.
In the Cutting Tool Division, the principal products include a wide variety of high speed steel milling cutters, end mills and saws.
Sales and net income for the year ended December 31, 1960 showed an improvement over 1959.
Net income was $2,557,111, or $3.11 per share on 821,220 common shares currently outstanding, as compared to $2,323,867 or $2.82 per share in 1959, adjusted to the same number of shares.
Sales and other operating income increased 25.1% from $24,926,615 in 1959 to $31,179,816 in 1960.
This increase was sufficient to overcome the effect on net income of higher costs of manufacture and increased expenditures on research and development.
In spite of the fact that our largest market, the textile industry, was affected substantially by the current decline in business activity, we have been able to produce and deliver our machines throughout the year 1960 at a rate materially higher than during 1959.
Outlook for current year
Our current rate of incoming orders has now contracted and unless this trend can be reversed, our production for 1961 will be lower than for 1960.
However, the healthy inventory position of the textile industry lends support to the broadly expressed belief that improvement in that industry can be expected by the second half of 1961.
Need for sound tax policy
Such a depreciation policy would also, we believe, prove a very important factor in strengthening the competitive position of the U. S. textile and other industries, thus helping to strengthen the position of the dollar in foreign exchange.
Research and development
Our research and development program, serving as it does an industry which must compete against low-cost production throughout the world, continues to have primary emphasis at Leesona.
This program is based on the policy of designing and building efficient machines which will help produce better textile values--fabrics whose cost in relation to quality, fashion and utility provide the consumer with better textile products for the money.
Such policy involves continuing effort to improve on existing mill equipment, in terms of efficiency and versatility.
But more important, we believe, it must concentrate on the development of entirely new concepts in textile processing as do the Unifil loom winder and our more recent Uniconer automatic coning machine.
Budget increased
On this basis, our already substantial budget for research and development has been further increased in recent years in order to finance the continuing engineering and design work essential to Leesona's future growth in sales and earnings.
Much of this necessary increase in research and development, though properly chargeable to current expenses, is not reflected in earnings until projects are completed and the new machines sold in quantity, usually over a period of several years.
Stretch yarn machines
In December we began to ship our ultra-high-speed stretch yarn machines.
These machines produce the higher quality stretch yarns required in weaving stretch and textured fabrics.
During the past year, great progress has been made by the weaving mills in creating new stretch and textured fabrics.
Fashion centers are now predicting broad acceptance of sports apparel and improved wash and wear dresses and blouses made from these fabrics.
This machine, operating at speeds up to 350,000 revolutions per minute, is believed to provide one of the fastest mechanical operations in industry today.
It transfers yarn directly from the producers' largest package into ideal supply packages for use on Unifil loom winders in weaving stretch yarn fabrics.
Large-package twister
Our new large-package ring twister for glass fiber yarns is performing well in our customers' mills.
Later in the year, additional types of this Leesona twister will be made available to mills for other man-made fibers and natural yarns.
These machines are designed to provide higher operating speeds, larger yarn packages, and greater flexibility of application to different types of yarn.
This we believe will substantially broaden the potential market for the equipment.
Uniconer
Major activity at Providence in 1961 will involve the scheduled completion of tooling for production of the Uniconer automatic coning machine.
This work is progressing on schedule and we expect to make initial shipments in the fourth quarter of this year.
This machine was demonstrated in two textile machinery exhibitions last year and was well received by the industry.
The potential market for the machine should be comparable to that of the Unifil loom winder.
The Uniconer has several outstanding features--it operates with much greater efficiency than existing equipment;
it incorporates an automatic knot-tying device on each spindle, and it will knot a break in the yarn in 10 seconds as well as tie in new bobbins as the running end is exhausted.
Because the bobbin-to-cone winding process is a relatively high-cost operation for the mill, the almost complete automation provided by the Uniconer can mean important economies in textile production, at the same time upgrading quality.
Many mills have already placed firm orders for this machine.
New Unifil application
A new application for the Unifil loom winder, running single filling for box looms, will broaden mill use of this equipment.
Take-up machines
A new spinning take-up machine has been developed to facilitate the use of our take-up machine in the production of thermoplastic yarns.
It is equipped with electronic controls that can be set to hold precise tension and speed.
This new machine takes up filament yarn from spinneret or extruder and winds large packages at speeds up to 6,000 feet per minute.
It is equipped with an automatic threading device to reduce waste and handling time.
Our take-up machines and our twister-coners are undergoing important pilot plant testing for application with new high polymer yarns, in several fiber producing plants.
We look forward to a stronger position in this expanding field.
Diversification plans
We are interested in further diversification into other fields of capital goods, or components for industrial products, and have recently intensified our efforts in that direction.
Patterson Moos research
Our Patterson Moos Research Division has made further very encouraging progress in development of fuel cells.
The cooperation of our exclusive American licensee, Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Division of United Aircraft Corporation, has been important in this work.
In addition to its major effort on fuel cells, Patterson Moos Research Division is continuing to carry on research in other fields, both under contract for the Defense Department, other government agencies and for our own account.
PMR is currently supplying components vital to the Titan and Minuteman programs.
We have recently entered into an agreement with Compagnie Generale De Telegraphie Sans Fil (CSF) of France for the exclusive exchange of technical information on thermoelectric materials.
The agreement gives us rights for manufacturing and marketing of such materials in the United States.
Initially we will import the thermoelectric materials and modules from France but later we will manufacture in this country.
There is a rapidly growing demand for this material, primarily from the military.
Further research, we believe, will develop important commercial applications.
A project for the Air Force has been completed in which the NAIR infrared detecting device was developed for area monitoring of noxious or dangerous gases.
We are initiating research on the use of solid state materials for infrared detection using a method which will not require cooling of materials to attain high sensitivity.
The rapid advance in science today suggests many other avenues of investigation.
Our plan is to keep abreast of these advances, and select for development those fields which seem most promising for our special capabilities.
New plant facilities
Early in August we broke ground for a new $3,500,000 plant in Warwick, Rhode Island, which will house our textile and coil winding machinery operations.
Construction is well along, and the plant is scheduled for completion in November of this year.
All operations now carried on at our plant at Cranston will be transferred to Warwick.
Operations in the new plant should be producing efficiently early in 1962.
An architect's sketch of the new plant is shown on the front cover.
The building will contain 430,000 square feet, approximately the same as our present plant.
However, its modern one-story layout is designed to increase our production capacity, permit more efficient manufacturing, and substantially reduce current repair and maintenance costs.
A major consideration in the choice of the Warwick site, four miles from Cranston, was the fact that it permits retention of our present trained and highly skilled work force.
We have entered into an agreement for the sale of the present Cranston properties, effective as soon as we have completed removal to our new plant.
British subsidiary
During the year our British subsidiary, Leesona-Holt, Limited, expanded its plant in Darwen, England, and added machine tool capacity.
The operations of its other plant in Rochdale and Leesona's former operations in Manchester were transferred to a recently acquired plant in the adjoining town of Heywood.
Layout and equipment were modernized and improved to obtain increased production on an efficient basis.
The area available at Heywood is approximately three times the size of the former Rochdale and Manchester locations.
In addition, land has been purchased to permit doubling the size of the plant in the future.
Financial developments
The new Warwick plant is being built at our expense and under our direction.
It will be transfered on completion to The Industrial Foundation of Rhode Island, a non-profit organization, which will reimburse us for the cost of construction.
We will then occupy the new plant under lease, with an option to purchase.
These arrangements are, in our opinion, very favorable to Leesona.
Interim financing of construction costs is provided by a short term loan from The Chase Manhattan Bank.
In addition to expenditures on the Warwick plant, we have invested approximately $1,961,000 for machinery and equipment at Cranston, and for new machinery, plant and equipment at Leesona-Holt, Limited.
We believe that these improved facilities will contribute income and effect savings which will fully justify the investment.
Long term loans have been reduced by $395,000 to $2,461,000.
Inventories increased $625,561 to $8,313,514 during the year and should decline in coming months.
Thus we enter 1961 in a strong financial position.
Employee contracts
In accordance with the two-year contract signed in May, 1959, with the International Association of Machinists, AFL-CIO, wages of hourly employees were increased by 4% in May, 1960, and pay levels for non-exempt salaried employees were increased proportionately.
In addition, Blue Cross coverage for all employees and their dependents was extended to provide the full cost of semi-private hospital accommodations.
Personnel benefits
In addition to direct salaries and wages, the Company paid or accrued during the year the following amounts for the benefit of employees:
During the pension year ended December 31, 1960, 23 employees retired, making a total of 171 currently retired under the Company's pension plan.
At December 13, 1960 the fund held by the Industrial National Bank of Providence, as trustee for payment of past and future service pensions to qualified members of the plan, totaled $2,412,616.
The basic market for textiles is growing with the expansion of the population that began 20 years ago.
Another growth factor is increased consumer demand for better quality and larger quantities of fabrics that go with a rising standard of living.
As in many other industries, rising costs and intense competition, both domestic and foreign, have exerted increasing pressure on earnings of the textile industry in recent years.
Increased efficiency
In textiles, as elsewhere, a major part of the solution lies in greater efficiency and higher productivity.
As a designer and manufacturer of textile production machinery, Leesona and other companies in its industry have sought to meet this challenge with new or improved equipment and methods that would increase production, yet maintain both quality and flexibility.
Problems of shifting styles
The problem of efficient production in textiles is complicated by the fact that the industry serves large markets which shift quickly with changes of fashion in apparel or home decoration.
Production must be adjusted accordingly, at minimum cost and quickly.
In addition, production machinery must in many cases be designed to handle with equal efficiency both natural fibers and the increasing number of synthetics, as well as blends.
Following the term of service in Japan, each emissary returns for a brief visit to the campus to interpret his experience to the college community.
The Carleton Service Fund provides the financial support for this program.
Musical activities
the college was one of the first to recognize the importance of music not only as a definite part of the curriculum but as a vital adjunct to campus life.
Extensive facilities for group performance are provided by maintaining, under skilled direction, the Choir, the Orchestra, the Band, the Glee Club, and smaller ensembles of wind and string players.
All students are invited to participate in any of the musical organizations for which they qualify.
Orchestra, Band, and Choir have auditions during the week preceding the first day of classes.
The Glee Club is open to all students and faculty with no auditions necessary for membership.
In addition to the many appearances of these organizations throughout the college year, there are concerts by students of the music department, by members of the music faculty, and by visiting artists.
Student musical organizations are the Knights of Carleton and the Overtones (men's vocal groups), and the Keynotes (a women's singing group).
These student-directed organizations include eight to ten members each;
they perform at many campus social events.
Religious activities
Courses are offered in ethics, the philosophy and history of religion, Christian thought and history, and the Bible.
Carleton aims throughout its entire teaching program to represent a point of view and a spirit which will contribute to the moral and religious development of its students.
A college service of worship is held each Sunday morning at eleven o'clock in the Chapel.
The sermons are given by the College Chaplain, by members of the faculty, or by guest preachers.
Music is furnished by the Carleton College Choir.
Chapel services are held weekly.
These services at which attendance is voluntary are led by the Chaplain, by the President of the College, by selected faculty members, students, and visitors.
The service is brief and variety in forms of worship is practiced.
A Sunday evening program provides theological lectures, music, drama, and films related to the issues of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Attendance is required at the College Service of Worship or at the Sunday Evening Program or at any regularly organized service of public worship.
Each semester every student must attend ten of the services or religious meetings.
Attendance at the Chapel Service is voluntary.
Religious organizations include the groups described below.
The Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. at Carleton are connected with the corresponding national organizations and carry out their general purposes.
Occasional meetings are held for the whole membership, usually with a guest speaker, while smaller discussion groups meet more frequently.
The Associations sponsor many traditional campus events and provide students with opportunities to form new friendships, to broaden their interests, and to engage in worthwhile service projects.
There are other organizations representing several of the denominational groups.
Student religious organizations are co-ordinated under the Religious Activities Committee, a standing committee of the Carleton Student Association.
The Northfield churches include the following: Alliance, Congregational-Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran (Norwegian, Danish, Missouri Synod, and Bethel), Methodist, Moravian, Pentecostal, and Roman Catholic.
Theater
the purpose of producing plays at the College is three-fold: to provide the Carleton students with the best possible opportunity for theater-going within the limits set by the maturity and experience of the performers and the theatrical facilities available;
to encourage the practice of attending the theater;
and to develop a discriminating audience for good drama and sensitive performance.
Dramatic activity at the College is organized and carried on by The Carleton Players, which is to say by all students who are so inclined to advance these aims.
Student workshop
this workshop, located in Boliou Hall, provides facilities for students to work in ceramics, weaving, enameling, welding, woodworking, textile printing, printmaking, and lapidary.
These extra-curricular activities are conducted under supervision of the Director of the Student Workshop.
The workshop is open five afternoons and two evenings each week.
A student organization, Bottega, is open to any student interested in increasing his understanding and appreciation of the graphic and ceramic arts in their historical, technical, and productive contexts.
The group meets once a week in the Boliou Student Workshop.
They are assisted and advised by members of the Art Department.
Athletics
the Athletic program at Carleton is considered an integral part of the activities of the College and operates under the same budgetary procedure and controls as the academic work.
The physical education program for men recognizes the value of participation in competitive sports in the development of the individual student and aims to give every man an opportunity to enter some form of athletic competition, either intercollegiate or intramural.
The same standards for admission, for eligibility to receive scholarships or grants-in-aid, and for scholastic performance at college apply to all students.
A faculty committee on athletics, responsible to the faculty as a whole, exercises control over the athletic program of the College.
It concerns itself with: 1.
The policies which govern the program 2.
The preservation of desirable balance between the athletic and academic programs of the College 3.
The approval of athletic schedules 4.
The maintenance of Midwest Conference eligibility standards
Carleton is a member of the Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference and abides by its eligibility rules.
In addition to these rules, Carleton has added the following: 1.
The school year does not end for any student until he has completed his last examination of the semester.
A student to be eligible for the captaincy of any Carleton team must have a scholastic record of at least 1.00.
The C club is composed of the men of the College who have won an official letter in Carleton athletics.
The purpose of the Club is to promote better athletic teams at Carleton and to increase interest in them among the student body.
This is done by encouraging the entire male student body to participate in either the intercollegiate or intramural sports program and by sponsoring the Carleton cheerleaders.
Soccer Club.
The Soccer Club was organized by undergraduate men interested in playing soccer and promoting the sport.
Membership consists of both beginners and experienced players.
Practices are held regularly and the schedule of games is prepared by the student coach and the officers of the club.
Women's Recreation Association.
This Association, organized in 1920, is affiliated with the Athletic Federation of College Women.
The purpose of the organization is to further the interest of women students in recreational activities as a means of promoting physical efficiency, sportsmanship, and play for play's sake.
The Association is governed by a board made up of representatives from each of the four classes.
Membership is open to any woman student in the College.
Active groups sponsored by the organization include the Saddle Club, Orchesis, Golf Club, Tennis Club, and Dolphins.
The Saddle Club, open to students proficient in horsemanship, presents the Annual Spring Riding Exhibition, and during the year it offers speakers, movies, breakfast rides, and trips to broaden their knowledge of the sport.
Orchesis, for students interested in the modern dance, contributes to the May Fete and offers earlier in the year a modern dance demonstration.
Tennis Club participates in a dual tennis tournament with the University of Minnesota each fall, and also sponsors a two-day state invitational tennis meet at Carleton in May.
The Dolphins present a three-night water show the week of the May Fete.
Under the auspices of the Women's Recreation Association, interclass competition is organized in badminton, basketball, field hockey, golf, tennis, and swimming.
The Association participates in the winter sports carnival and sponsors several Play Days with St. Olaf and other nearby colleges.
With the co-operation of the Department of Physical Education for Men, the Women's Recreation Association arranges mixed tournaments in tennis and golf in the fall and spring.
Throughout the year there are social events, such as picnics, breakfast hikes, canoe trips, banquets, and indoor parties.
College publications
in addition to the miscellaneous pamphlets and other printed matter which it issues, the College maintains regular publications, as follows:
The Bulletin, in five issues: The Report Of The President in August;
The Alumni Fund Report in September;
the Annual Catalog in March;
an Alumni Reunion Bulletin in April;
and a special Bulletin in June.
The College also publishes each year The Report Of The Treasurer and a monthly newsletter entitled Carleton College Comments.
In co-operation with the Alumni Association of Carleton College, an alumni magazine, The Voice Of The Carleton Alumni, is edited and mailed seven times a year by the College's Publications Office and the Alumni Office.
At intervals an alumni directory is issued.
These publications may be secured as follows: The Annual Catalog from the Director of Admissions and other issues from the Publications Office.
In January, 1960, the first issue of The Carleton Miscellany, a quarterly literary magazine, was published by the College.
The magazine, edited by members of the Carleton Department of English, includes contributions by authors from both within and beyond the Carleton community.
Student publications
The Carletonian, the college newspaper, is edited by students and published by the College under the supervision of the Publications Board.
(See page 100.
) It is issued weekly throughout the college year.
The Publications Board holds annual competitive examinations for places on the editorial and business staffs.
The editor, sports editor, and student business manager are chosen in December, the new staff assuming responsibility for the paper at the beginning of the second semester.
The paper affords excellent practice for students interested in the field of journalism.
The Algol, the college annual, is published in the fall of each year.
The Algol serves as a record of campus organizations and student activities during the year.
The Publications Board receives applications for the positions of editor and business manager and makes the appointments in the spring previous to the year of publication.
Members of The Algol staff are nominated by the editor and business manager and appointed by the Publications Board.
Manuscript, a quarterly literary magazine, is published by the students of the College.
It is the purpose of this magazine to serve as an outlet for student creative writing.
The editor and business manager of Manuscript are appointed by the Publications Board.
Campus broadcasting station
Over a hundred students participate in the planning and production of the daily program schedule.
KARL provides experience for students who wish to pursue careers in radio.
Student government
The Carleton Social Co-operative is a standing committee of the Carleton Student Association.
Week-end activities for the entire campus are planned by the Co-op Board.
In recent months, much attention has been given to the probable extent of the current downtrend in business and economists are somewhat divided as to the outlook for the near future.
And yet, despite some disappointment with the performance of this first year of the new decade, 1960 has been a good year in many ways, with many overall measures of business having reached new peaks for the year as a whole.
The shift in sentiment from excessive optimism early in the year to the present mood of caution has probably been a good thing, in that it has prevented the accumulation of the burdensome inventories that have characterized many previous swings in the business cycle.
In the electronics industry, this tendency is well illustrated by inventories of TV sets.
Factory stocks in recent months have been the highest they have been in three years, while those at retail are below 1959.
The total value of our industry's shipments, at factory prices, increased from $9.2 billion in 1959 to approximately $10.1 billion as a result of increases in all of the major segments of our business--home entertainment, military, industrial, and replacement.
I believe a further gain is in prospect for 1961.
Home entertainment sales up
Reflecting the largest percentage of high-end sets such as consoles and combinations since 1953, dollar value of home entertainment electronics in 1960 was about $1.9 billion, compared to $1.7 billion in 1959.
Sales of TV sets at retail ran ahead of the like months of 1959 through July;
set production (excluding those destined for the export market) also ran ahead in the early months, but was curtailed after the usual vacation shutdowns in the face of growing evidence that some of the early production plans had been overly optimistic.
For the year as a whole, retail sales of TV sets probably came to 5.8 million against 5.7 million in 1959;
however, production came to only 5.6 million compared to 6.2 million.
In contrast to the lower turnout of TV, total radio production increased from 15.4 million sets to 16.7 million (excluding export).
Both home and auto radios were in excellent demand, with retail sales of home sets ahead of 1959 in every month of the first eleven;
sales and production of home sets were about equal at 10.4 million units.
Auto set production came to about 6.3 million compared to 5.6 million in 1959.
Separate phonographs also had a good year, reflecting the growing popularity of stereo sound and the same tendency on the part of the consumer to upgrade that characterized the radio-TV market.
The outlook for entertainment electronics in 1961 is certainly far from clear at present, but recent surveys have shown a desire on the part of consumers to step up their buying plans for durable goods.
I look for TV sales and production to be approximately equal at 5.7 million sets for the year, but I look for some decline in radios from the high rate in 1961 to more nearly the 1959 level of 15.0 - 15.5 million sets.
I therefore believe it is realistic to assume a modest drop in the total value of home entertainment electronics to about $1.8 million, slightly below 1960, but above 1959.
Military electronics to grow
1960 witnessed another substantial increase in our industry's shipments of military electronics, which totalled about $5.4 billion compared to $4.9 billion in 1959.
It is interesting to note that the present level of military electronics procurement is greater than the industry's total sales to all markets in 1950-1953, which were good years for our industry with television enjoying its initial period of rapid consumer acceptance.
Among the items scheduled for acceleration in the near future are the Polaris and B70 programs, strengthening of the airborne alert system of the Strategic Air Command, and improved battlefield surveillance systems.
Research and development expenditures connected with the reconnaissance satellite SAMOS and the future development of ballistic missile defense systems such as Nike-Zeus are expected to increase substantially.
Research, development test and evaluation funds, devoted to missiles in 1960 were 3 to 4 times as large as those devoted to aircraft, and actual missile procurement is expected to exceed aircraft procurement by 1963.
Still later, the realm of space technology will show substantial gains;
Although the impact of these increases on our industry's shipments will be gradual, on balance I look for another good increase in shipments in the coming year, to at least $6 billion.
Industrial electronic equipment
Paced by the continuing rapid growth of electronic data processing, sales of industrial and commercial electronic equipment totalled $1.8 billion compared to $1.6 billion in 1959.
The market for computers and other data-handling continues to expand at the rate of about 30% annually, reaching some $450 million in 1960.
Informed estimates look for this market to approximately quadruple by the late 1960's, under the stimulus of new applications in the fields of banking and retailing, industrial process control, and information storage and retrieval.
In the industrial field, prospects for higher expenditures on electronic testing and measuring equipment are also quite bright.
sales should slightly exceed 1960, however, and reach $1.9 billion.
Replacement parts
In addition to the three major original equipment segments of the electronics business, the steady growth in the market for replacement parts continues year by year.
This is now a $1.0 billion business, up from $0.9 billion in 1959, and should reach $1.1 billion in 1961.
The markets for electronic parts in 1960 have reflected the changing patterns of the various end equipment segments of the industry.
Demand for parts for home entertainment was strong in the first half, but purchases were cut back to lower levels during the fall as set manufacturers reduced their own operating rates.
In the military field, incoming orders turned down early in the year, and remained rather slow until late fall when the upturn in procurement of equipment began to make itself felt in rising orders for components.
Sales of transistors in 1960 exceeded $300 million, compared to $222 million in 1959 despite substantial price reductions in virtually all types.
Production totalled about 123 million units against 82 million in 1959, and I look for a further gain to 188 million units worth approximately $380 million in 1961.
Sales of passive components, such as capacitors and resistors, although not growing as fast as those of semi-conductors were ahead of 1959 this year, and should increase again in 1961.
In sum, I look for another good year for the electronics industry in 1961, with total sales increasing about 7% to $10.8 billion, despite the uncertainties in the business outlook generally.
on prospects for continued increases in defense spending;
and on continued growth in the applications of electronics to the complex problems of manufacturing and trade in the expanding but competitive economy of the 1960's.
The appointment of Gilbert B. Devey as General Manager of VecTrol Engineering, Inc., of Stamford, Connecticut, a leading manufacturer of thyratron and silicon controlled rectifier electrical controls, has been announced by David B. Peck, Vice President, Special Products.
Mr. Brown will at the same time undertake expansion of VecTrol's custom design program for electronic control users with a greatly increased engineering staff.
Mr. Devey's new responsibilities are in addition to those of his present post as marketing manager of Sprague's Special Products Group, which manufactures a wide line of digital electronic components, packaged component assemblies, and high temperature magnet wires.
Mr. Devey first came to Sprague in 1953 as a Product Specialist in the Field Engineering Department, coming from the Office of Naval Research in Washington, D. C., where he was an electronic scientist engaged in undersea warfare studies.
During World War 2, he was a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.
Mr. Devey is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and attended the United States Naval Academy Post-Graduate School specializing in electronic engineering.
He was named Product Manager of the Special Products Division of Sprague when it was founded in 1958, and was later promoted to his present post.
Mr. Devey is a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers, and is chairman of the Electronic Industries Association Committee on Printed and Modular Components.
Mr. Brown, well-known, English-born inventor, prior to founding VecTrol was at various times section leader in radio research at Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Co., Ltd.;
chief engineer of the radio set division of Electric and Musical Industries, Ltd., the largest electronic equipment manufacturer in Great Britain;
director of engineering at Philco of Great Britain, Ltd., and vice president in charge of production and assistant to the president at The Brush Development Co., Cleveland, Ohio.
He has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Manchester, England.
Mr. Brown presently has over 130 patents to his credit dating back to 1923.
He is a fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and a senior member of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
He is a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, a registered professional engineer in Connecticut and Ohio, and a chartered electrical engineer in Great Britain.
The promotion of Robert E. Swift to the position of Assistant Manager of the Interference Control Field Service Department was announced early in December by Frederick S. Scarborough, Manager of Interference Control Field Service.
The appointment was made in a move to expand the engineering services offered to the designers of electronic systems through assistance in electro-magnetic compatability problems.
Between meetings he helps the president keep track of delegated matters.
Since these duties fit neatly with those of the proposed presidential aide, one person, with adequate staff assistance, could fill both jobs.
Since faculty see themselves as self-employed professionals rather than as employees, enthusiasm in a common enterprise is proportionate to the sense of ownership they have in it by virtue of sharing in the decisions that govern its course.
The faculty believes that broad autonomy is necessary to preserve its freedom in teaching and scholarship.
The president expects faculty members to remember, in exercising their autonomy, that they share no collective responsibility for the university's income nor are they personally accountable for top-level decisions.
He may welcome their appropriate participation in the determination of high policy, but he has a right to expect, in return, that they will leave administrative matters to the administration.
How well do faculty members govern themselves?
There is little evidence that they are giving any systematic thought to a general theory of the optimum scope and nature of their part in government.
They sometimes pay more attention to their rights than to their own internal problems of government.
They, too, need to learn to delegate.
Letting the administration take details off their hands would give them more time to inform themselves about education as a whole, an area that would benefit by more faculty attention.
Although faculties insist on governing themselves, they grant little prestige to a member who actively participates in college or university government.
There are, nevertheless, several things that the president can do to stimulate participation and to enhance the prestige of those who are willing to exercise their privilege.
He can, for example, present significant university-wide issues to the senate.
He can encourage quality in faculty committee work in various ways: by seeing to it that the membership of each committee represents the thoughtful as well as the action-oriented faculty;
by making certain that no faculty member has too many committee assignments;
by assuring good liaison between the committees and the administration;
by minimizing the number of committees.
Despite the many avenues for the exchange of ideas between faculty and administration, complaints of a lack of communication persist.
The cause is as often neglect as hesitance to disclose.
A busy president, conversant with a problem and its ramifications and beset by pressures to meet deadlines, tends naturally to assume that others must be as familiar with a problem as he is.
The need for interchange and understanding makes vital the full use of all methods of consultation.
To increase faculty influence and decrease tension, many presidents have established a standing advisory committee with which they can discuss problems frankly.
Success will require tact, sensitivity to faculty prerogatives, patience, and persistence.
The critical task for every president and his academic administrative staff is to assure that the college or university continually rebuilds and regenerates itself so that its performance will match changing social demands.
Great professors do not automatically reproduce themselves.
Deans can form an important bridge between the president and the faculty.
They serve not only as spokesmen for their areas, but they also contribute to top-level decision making.
The president who appoints strong men who have an all-college or university point of view and a talent and respect for administration can count on useful assistance.
Faculty members depend on their department chairmen to promote their interests with the administration.
The administration at the same time, looks to the chairmen for strategic aid in building stronger departments.
One way that this can be done, other than by hiring new high-priced professors, is by constantly encouraging the department members to raise their standards of performance.
The quality of a president's leadership is measured first by his success in building up the faculty.
By supporting the efforts of the many faculty members who are working to attain ever higher standards, the president can encourage faculty leadership.
Indirectly he can best help them by insuring that rigorous criteria for appointment and promotion are clearly set forth and adhered to.
The academic dean should take a direct, long-term interest in faculty development.
An alert dean will confer all through the year on personnel needs, plans for the future, qualifications of those on the job, and bright prospects elsewhere.
For the maintenance of a long-term program, the departments, and particularly their chairmen, are strategic.
They evaluate and nominate candidates for appointment and promotion.
To provide an independent judgment for the president, the academic dean also investigates candidates thoroughly.
At some colleges and universities, a faculty committee reviews and reports to the administration on the qualifications of candidates.
Some faculty members and many administrators oppose faculty review groups because they either repeat department's actions or act pro forma.
They can be effective, however, if their members set high standards for candidates and devote substantial time to the work.
At one university, the president cites the faculty review committee as a valued partner of the administration in guarding and promoting the quality of the faculty.
Before the president recommends a candidate to the trustees, the administration collects the views of colleagues in the same field of knowledge on campus and elsewhere.
The president or dean reads some of his publications to form the truest possible evaluation of the quality of his mind.
No good way to evaluate teaching ability has yet been discovered, although some institutions use inventory sheets for a list of criteria.
There are certain aspects of personnel development in which a president must involve himself directly.
He should personally consider the potential of a faculty member proposed for tenure, to guard against the mistake of making this profoundly serious commitment turn solely upon the man's former achievements.
No one can be as effective as the president in inspiring older men to welcome imaginative new teachers whose philosophy or approach to their specialties is quite different.
In particular, the president may have to summon all his oratorical powers to persuade department members to accept an outstanding man above the normal salary scale.
On those rare occasions when a faculty member on tenure is not meeting the standards of the institution, the president must also bear the ultimate burden of decision and action.
Recently colleges and universities have begun to translate their educational philosophy into institution-wide goals.
Each year a few more institutions are deciding such questions as: Shall we require a liberal education built around a humanities core for all undergraduates?
Or shall we permit early specialization in scientific and technological subjects?
In the first instance, adequate appropriate reading materials and library accommodations must be planned.
In the second, more shops, laboratories, and staff will be required.
For the president, a master plan looking ahead five years (the maximum reach for sound forecasting), offers several practical advantages.
Trustees, faculty, and administration can consider the consequences of decisions before they are made, instead of afterwards.
Physical plant and equipment can be efficiently developed.
Proposed new programs can be examined for appropriateness to goals and for present and future financial fitness.
More than one president has found that a long-range plan helps him to attract major gifts.
It inspires confidence in his institution's determination to establish goals and to achieve them.
Before deciding where it is going, however, a college or university must know where it is.
The first step is a comprehensive self study made by faculty, by outside consultants, or by a combination of the two.
It should sternly appraise curricula, faculty, organization, buildings, faculty work loads, and potential for growth in stature and size.
Implementation of the master plan will inevitably be uneven.
Some departments will attack their new goals enthusiastically;
others may drag their feet.
Funds may be readily donated for some purposes but not others.
A plan must therefore be brought up to date periodically, possibly with the assistance of a permanent planning officer.
To provide the continuous flow of information basic to administrative decisions, a number of institutions have established offices of institutional research.
Some offices have very broad responsibilities, touching on almost all aspects of a university's instructional program.
Their duties include evaluation of the information collected and preparation of recommendations.
More often, these offices are restricted to the gathering of empirical data.
The president's opportunity for influencing education reaches its highest point, as he decides which projects he will cut back, which he will advance by increased allowances or new fund-raising efforts.
No matter how high the hopes and dreams of educators, budget making adjusts them to the cold realities of dollars and cents.
When the budget goes to trustees for approval it is the president's budget, to which his faith and credit are committed;
its principal features should be a product of his most considered judgment.
He cannot, of course, examine each proposal from scratch.
He reviews and shapes the work of others to mold a single joint product that will best promote the aims of the institution.
Budgeting must be flexible to allow adaptation to the rapid changes in scientific and technological scholarship.
Because scientific instruction and research involve increasingly large sums of money, an institution should choose its fields of prominence.
Otherwise it will be headed for bankruptcy, at worst, and at best towards starvation of other less dramatic but socially and culturally indispensable branches of learning.
In the national interest even the affluent universities must consider some division of labor among them to replace their present ambitions to keep up with the Joneses in all branches.
Supporting activities--business management, public relations, fund-raising--offer presidents one of their best chances to buy freedom for attention to education.
Here the reasonable mastery of the elements of administration can do much to free a president for his primary role.
In the areas that do not relate directly to the educational program, expert subordinates will serve the college or university better than close presidential attention.
The president should find strong subordinates and delegate the widest discretion to them.
Higher education cannot compete with the salary scales of the business world, but an educational institution can offer many potent intangible attractions to members of the business community that will offset the differences in income.
Just as the entire faculty should know the president's educational philosophy and objectives, so should non-academic officers.
They will better understand the relationship of their activities to the academic program and they will be able to explain their actions to faculty in terms of mutual goals.
A president is frequently besieged to serve in non-academic civic and governmental capacities, to make speeches to lay groups, and to make numerous ceremonial appearances on and off campus.
Since he can neither accept nor reject them all, he must be governed by the time and energy available for his prime professional obligations.
Declinations and substitutions are better received when he explains why his obligations to his institution preclude his acceptance.
By sharing the load of important speeches with his colleagues, the president can develop a cadre of able spokesmen who will help to create a public perception of the university as an institution, something more than the lengthened shadow of one man.
Introduction
It has recently become practical to use the radio emission of the moon and planets as a new source of information about these bodies and their atmospheres.
The results of present observations of the thermal radio emission of the moon are consistent with the very low thermal conductivity of the surface layer which was derived from the variation in the infrared emission during eclipses (e.g., Garstung, 1958).
When sufficiently accurate and complete measurements are available, it will be possible to set limits on the thermal and electrical characteristics of the surface and subsurface materials of the moon.
Radio observations of Venus and Jupiter have already supplied unexpected experimental data on the physical conditions of these planets.
The observed intensity of the radio emission of Venus is much higher than the expected thermal intensity, although the spectrum indicated by measurements at wave lengths near 3 cm and 10 cm is like that of a black body at about 600-degrees.
For the case of Jupiter, the radio emission spectrum is definitely not like the spectrum of a black-body radiator, and it seems very likely that the radiation reaching the earth is a combination of thermal radiation from the atmosphere and non-thermal components.
Of the remaining planets, only Mars and Saturn have been observed as radio sources, and not very much information is available.
Mars has been observed twice at about 3-cm wave length, and the intensity of the observed radiation is in reasonable agreement with the thermal radiation which might be predicted on the basis of the known temperature of Mars.
The low intensity of the radiation from Saturn has limited observations, but again the measured radiation seems to be consistent with a thermal origin.
In spite of this, the very large radio reflectors and improved amplifying techniques which are now becoming available should make it possible to observe the radio emission of most of the planets in a few years.
The study of the radio emission of the moon and planets began with the detection of the thermal radiation of the moon at 1.25-cm wave length by Dicke and Beringer (1946).
This was followed by a comprehensive series of observations of the 1.25-cm emission of the moon over three lunar cycles by Piddington and Minnett (1949).
They deduced from their measurements that the radio emission from the whole disk of the moon varied during a lunation in a roughly sinusoidal fashion;
that the amplitude of the variation was considerably less than the amplitude of the variation in the infrared emission as measured by Pettit and Nicholson (1930) and Pettit (1935);
and that the maximum of the radio emission came about 3-1/2 days after Full Moon, which is again in contrast to the infrared emission, which reaches its maximum at Full Moon.
Piddington and Minnett explained their observations by pointing out that rocklike materials which are likely to make up the surface of the moon would be partially transparent to radio waves, although opaque to infrared radiation.
The infrared emission could then be assumed to originate at the surface of the moon, while the radio emission originates at some depth beneath the surface, where the temperature variation due to solar radiation is reduced in amplitude and shifted in phase.
Since the absorption of radio waves in rocklike material varies with wave length, it should be possible to sample the temperature variation at different depths beneath the surface and possibly detect changes in the structure or composition of the lunar surface material.
The radio emission of a planet was first detected in 1955, when Burke and Franklin (1955) identified the origin of interference-like radio noise on their records at about 15 meters wave length as emission from Jupiter.
This sporadic type of planetary radiation is discussed by Burke (chap. 13) and Gallet (chap. 14).
Steady radiation which was presumably of thermal origin was observed from Venus at 3.15 and 9.4 cm, and from Mars and Jupiter at 3.15 cm in 1956 (Mayer, McCullough, and Sloanaker, 1958, A, B, C), and from Saturn at 3.75 cm in 1957 (Drake and Ewen, 1958).
In the relatively short time since these early observations, Venus has been observed at additional wave lengths in the range from 0.8 to 10.2 cm, and Jupiter has been observed over the wave-length range from 3.03 to 68 Aj.
The observable characteristics of planetary radio radiation are the intensity, the polarization, and the direction of arrival of the waves.
The maximum angular diameter of any planetary disk as observed from the earth is about 1 minute of arc.
This is much smaller than the highest resolution of even the very large reflectors now under construction, and consequently the radio emission of different regions of the disk cannot be resolved.
It should be possible, however, to put useful limits on the diameters of the radio sources by observing with large reflectors or with interferometers.
Measurements of polarization are presently limited by apparatus sensitivity and will remain difficult because of the low intensity of the planetary radiation at the earth.
There have been few measurements specifically for the determination of the polarization of planetary radiation.
The measurements made with the NRL 50-foot reflector, which is altitude-azimuth-mounted, would have shown a systematic change with local hour angle in the measured intensities of Venus and Jupiter if a substantial part of the radiation had been linearly polarized.
Recent interferometer measurements (Radhakrishnan and Roberts, 1960) have shown the 960-mc emission of Jupiter to be partially polarized and to originate in a region of larger diameter than the visible disk.
Other than this very significant result, most of the information now available about the radio emission of the planets is restricted to the intensity of the radiation.
The concept of apparent black-body temperature is used to describe the radiation received from the moon and the planets.
The received radiation is compared with the radiation from a hypothetical black body which subtends the same solid angle as the visible disk of the planet.
The apparent black-body disk temperature is the temperature which must be assumed for the black body in order that the intensity of its radiation should equal that of the observed radiation.
The use of this concept does not specify the origin of the radiation, and only if the planet really radiates as a black body, will the apparent black-body temperature correspond to the physical temperature of the emitting material.
The radio radiation of the sun which is reflected from the moon and planets should be negligible compared with their thermal emission at centimeter wave lengths, except possibly at times of exceptional outbursts of solar radio noise.
The quiescent level of centimeter wave-length solar radiation would increase the average disk brightness temperature by less than 1-degree.
At meter wave lengths an increase of the order of 10-degrees in the average disk temperatures of the nearer planets would be expected.
Therefore, neglecting the extreme outbursts, reflected solar radiation is not expected to cause sizable errors in the measurements of planetary radiation in the centimeter- and decimeter-wave-length range.
The moon
2.1 observations
Radio observations of the moon have been made over the range of wave lengths from 4.3 mm to 75 cm, and the results are summarized in Table 1.
Observations have also been made at 1.5 mm using optical techniques (Sinton, 1955, 1956,;
see also chap. 11).
In the observations at 4.3 mm (Coates, 1959), the diameter of the antenna beam, 6'.7, was small enough to allow resolution of some of the larger features of the lunar surface, and contour diagrams have been made of the lunar brightness distribution at three lunar phases.
These observations indicate that the lunar maria heat up more rapidly and also cool off more rapidly than do the mountainous regions.
Mare Imbrium seems to be an exception and remains cooler than the regions which surround it.
These contour diagrams also suggest a rather rapid falloff in the radio brightness with latitude.
Very recently, observations have been made at 8-mm wave length with a reflector 22 meters in diameter with a resultant beam width of only about 2' (Amenitskii, Noskova, and Salomonovich, 1960).
The constant-temperature contours are much smoother than those observed at 4.3 mm by Coates (1959) and apparently the emission at 8 mm is not nearly so sensitive to differences in surface features.
Such high-resolution observations as these are needed at several wave lengths in order that the radio emission of the moon can be properly interpreted.
The observations of Mayer, McCullough, and Sloanaker at 3.15 cm and of Sloanaker at 10.3 cm have not previously been published and will be briefly described.
Measurements at 3.15 cm were obtained on 11 days spread over the interval May 3 to June 19, 1956, using the 50-foot reflector at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.
The half-intensity diameter of the antenna beam was about 9', and the angle subtended by the moon included the entire main beam and part of the first side lobes.
The antenna patterns and the power gain at the peak of the beam were both measured (Mayer, McCullough, and Sloanaker, 1958), so that the absolute power sensitivity of the antenna beam over the solid angle of the moon was known.
The measured brightness temperature is a good approximation to the brightness temperature at the center of the lunar disk because of the narrow antenna beam and because the temperature distribution over the central portion of the moon's disk is nearly uniform.
The result of the observations is Af where the phase angle, Q, is measured in degrees from new moon and the probable errors include absolute as well as relative errors.
This result is plotted along with the 8.6-mm observations of Gibson (1958) in figure 1, A.
The variation in the 3-cm emission of the moon during a lunation is very much less than the variation in the 8.6-mm emission, as would be expected from the explanation of Piddington and Minnett (1949).
In the discussion which follows, the time average of the radio emission will be referred to as the constant component, and the superimposed periodic variation will be called the variable component.
The 10.3-cm observation of Sloanaker was made on May 20, 1958, using the 84-foot reflector at the Maryland Point Observatory of the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory.
The age of the moon was about 2 days.
The half-intensity diameter of the main lobe of the antenna was about 18'.5, and the brightness temperature was reduced by assuming a Gaussian shape for the antenna beam and a uniformly bright disk for the moon.
Abstract
Experiments were made on an electric arc applying a porous graphite anode cooled by a transpiring gas (Argon).
Thus, the energy transferred from the arc to the anode was partly fed back into the arc.
It was shown that by proper anode design the net energy loss of the arc to the anode could be reduced to approximately 15% of the total arc energy.
A detailed energy balance of the anode was established.
The anode ablation could be reduced to a negligible amount.
The dependence of the arc voltage upon the mass flow velocity of the transpirating gas was investigated for various arc lengths and currents between 100 Amp and 200 Aj.
Qualitative observations were made and high-speed motion pictures were taken to study flow phenomena in the arc at various mass flow velocities.
Introduction
The high heat fluxes existing at the electrode surfaces of electric arcs necessitate extensive cooling to prevent electrode ablation.
The cooling requirements are particularly severe at the anode.
In free-burning electric arcs, for instance, approximately 90% of the total arc power is transferred to the anode giving rise to local heat fluxes in excess of Af as measured by the authors--the exact value depending on the arc atmosphere.
In plasma generators as currently commercially available for industrial use or as high temperature research tools often more than 50% of the total energy input is being transferred to the cooling medium of the anode.
The higher heat transfer rates at the anode compared with those at the cathode can be explained by the physical phenomena occurring in free burning arcs.
In plasma generators the superimposed forced convection may modify the picture somewhat.
The heat transfer to the anode is due to the following effects: 1.
Heat of condensation (work function) plus kinetic energy of the electrons impinging on the anode.
This energy transfer depends on the current, the temperature in the arc column, the anode material, and the conditions in the anode sheath.
Heat transfer by molecular conduction as well as by radiation from the arc column.
The heat transfer to the anode in free burning arcs is enhanced by a hot gas jet flowing from the cathode towards the anode with velocities up Af.
This phenomenon has been experimentally investigated in detail by Maecker (Ref. 1).
The pressure gradient producing the jet is due to the nature of the magnetic field in the arc (rapid decrease of current density from cathode to the anode).
Hence, the flow conditions at the anode of free burning arcs resemble those near a stagnation point.
It is apparent from the above and from experimental evidence that the cooling requirements for the anode of free burning arcs are large compared with those for the cathode.
The gas flow through a plasma generator will modify these conditions;
however, the anode is still the part receiving the largest heat flux.
An attempt to improve the life of the anodes or the efficiency of the plasma generators must, therefore, aim at a reduction of the anode loss.
The following possibilities exist for achieving this: 1.
The use of high voltages and low currents by proper design to reduce electron heat transfer to the anode for a given power output.
Continuous motion of the arc contact area at the anode by flow or magnetic forces.
Feedback of the energy transferred to the anode by applying gas transpiration through the anode.
The third method was, to our knowledge, successfully applied for the first time by C. Sheer and co-workers (Ref. 2).
The purpose of the present study is to study the thermal conditions and to establish an energy balance for a transpiration cooled anode as well as the effect of blowing on the arc voltage.
Gas injection through a porous anode (transpiration cooling) not only feeds back the energy transferred to the anode by the above mentioned processes, but also modifies the conditions in the arc itself.
A detailed study of this latter phenomenon was not attempted in this paper.
Argon was used as a blowing gas to exclude any effects of dissociation or chemical reaction.
The anode material was porous graphite.
Sintered porous metals should be usable in principle.
However, technical difficulties arise by melting at local hot spots.
The experimental arrangement as described below is based on the geometry of free burning arcs.
Thus, direct comparisons can be drawn with free burning arcs which have been studied in detail during the past years and decades by numerous investigators (Ref. 3).
Experimental apparatus
Figures 1 to 3 show photographic and schematic views of the test stand and of two different models of the anode holder.
The cathode consisted of a 1/4diameter thoriated tungsten rod attached to a water cooled copper tube.
This tube could be adjusted in its axial direction by an electric drive to establish the required electrode spacing.
The anode in figure 2 was mounted by means of the anode holder which was attached to a steel plug and disk.
The transpiring gas ejected from the anode formed a jet directed axially towards the cathode below.
Inflow of air from the surrounding atmosphere was prevented by the two disks shown in figure 2.
Argon was also blown at low velocities (mass flow rate Af) through a tube coaxial with the cathode as an additional precaution against contamination of the arc by air.
The anode consisted of a 1/2 inch diameter porous graphite plug, 1/4 inch long.
The graphite was National Carbon NC 60, which has a porosity of 50% and an average pore size of 30.
This small pore size was required to ensure uniformity of the flow leaving the anode.
The anode plug (Figure 2) was inserted into a carbon anode holder.
A shielded thermocouple was used to measure the upstream temperature of the transpiring gas.
It was exposed to a high velocity gas jet.
A plug and a tube with holes in its cylindrical walls divided the chamber above the porous plug into two parts.
This arrangement had the purpose to prevent heated gas to reach the thermocouple by natural convection.
Two pyrometers shown in figure 1 and 2 (Pyrometer Instrument Co. Model 95) served for simultaneous measurement of the anode surface temperature and the temperature distribution along the anode holder.
Three thermocouples were placed at different locations in the aluminum disk surrounding the anode holder to determine its temperature.
Another anode holder used in the experiments is shown in figure 3.
In this design the anode holder is water cooled and the heat losses by conduction from the anode were determined by measuring the temperature rise of the coolant.
To reduce heat transfer from the hot gas to this anode holder outside the regime of the arc, a carbon shield was attached to the surface providing an air gap of 1/16 inch between the plate and the surface of the anode holder.
In addition, the inner surface of the carbon shield was covered with aluminum foil to reduce radiation.
Temperatures of the shield and of the surface of the water-cooled anode holder were measured by thermocouples to account for heat received by the coolant but not originating from the anode plug.
The argon flow from commercial bottles was regulated by a pressure regulator and measured with a gas flow rator.
The power source was a commercial D. C. rectifier.
At 100 Amp the 360 cycle ripple was less than 0.5 V (peak to peak) with a resistive load.
The current was regulated by means of a variable resistor and measured with a 50 mV shunt and millivoltmeter.
The arc voltage was measured with a voltmeter whose terminals were connected to the anode and cathode holders.
Because of the falling characteristic of the rectifier, no ballast resistor was required for stability of operation.
A high frequency starter was used to start the arc.
Experimental procedure and error analysis
Transpiration cooled anode with carbon anode holder
The anode holder shown in figure 2 was designed with two goals in mind.
The heat losses of the holder were to be reduced as far as possible and they should be such that an accurate heat balance can be made.
In order to reduce the number of variable parameters, all experiments were made with a constant arc length of 0.5and a current of 100 Aj.
The argon flow through the porous anode was varied systematically between Af and Af.
The lower limit was determined by the fact that for smaller flow rates the arc started to strike to the anode holder instead of to the porous graphite plug and that it became highly unstable.
The upper limit was determined by the difficulty of measuring the characteristic anode surface temperature (see below) since only a small region of the anode was struck by the arc.
This region which had a higher temperature than the rest of the anode surface changed size and location continuously.
For each mass flow rate the arc voltage was measured.
To measure the surface temperature of the anode plug, the surface was scanned with a pyrometer.
As it turned out, a very hot region occurred on the plug.
Its temperature was denoted by Af.
The size of this hot region was estimated by eye.
The rest of the surface had a temperature which decreased towards the outer diameter of the plug.
The mean temperature of this region was approximated by the temperature measured halfways between the edge of the hot spot and the rim of the plug.
It was denoted by Af.
The mean temperature of the surface was then computed according to the following relation: Af where x is the fraction of the plug area covered by the hot spot.
Assuming thermal equilibrium between the anode surface and the transpiring argon, the gas enthalpy rise through the anode was calculated according to the relation Af whereby the specific heat of argon was taken as Af.
This calculation results in an enthalpy rise which is somewhat high because it assumes a mass flow equally distributed over the plug cross section whereas in reality the mass velocity is expected to be smaller in the regions of higher temperatures.
The upstream gas temperature measured with the thermocouple shown in figure 2 was Af.
The Af values are listed in Table 1 together with the measured surface temperatures and arc voltages.
Simultaneously with the anode surface temperature and voltage measurements pyrometer readings were taken along the cylindrical surface of the carbon anode holder as indicated on figure 2.
Some of these temperatures are plotted in figure 4.
They showed no marked dependence on the flow rate within the accuracy of these measurements.
Thus, the dotted line shown in figure 4 was taken as typical for the temperature distribution for all blowing rates.
The thermocouples in the aluminum disk shown in figure 2 indicated an equilibrium temperature of the surface of Af.
This temperature was taken as environmental temperature to which the anode holder was exposed as far as radiation is concerned.
It is sufficiently small compared with the surface temperature of the anode holder, to make the energy flux radiated from the environment toward the anode holder negligible within the accuracy of the present measurements.
The reflection of radiation originating from the anode holder and reflected back to it by the surrounding metal surfaces should also be small because of the peculiar characteristic of the metal surfaces and of the specific geometry.
The total heat loss through the anode holder included also the heat conducted through the base of the cylindrical piece into the adjacent metal parts.
It was calculated from the temperature gradient Af at Af inch as Af.
The total heat flux from the porous plug into the plug holder is thereby Af.
The temperature distribution of figure 4 gives Af for all blowing rates, assuming Af.
The temperature dependent value of **ye was taken from Ref. 7.
The radiation loss from the anode surface was computed according to Af where Af is the mean of the fourth powers of the temperatures Af and Af calculated analogously to equation (1).
A band viscometer is shown in Figure 2.
It consists of two blocks with flat surfaces held apart by shims.
There is a small well in the top in which the fluid or paste to be tested is placed.
A tape of cellulose acetate is pulled between the blocks and the tape pulls the fluid or paste with it between the parallel faces of the blocks.
In normal use weights are hung on the end of the tape and allowed to pull the tape and the material to be tested between the blocks.
After it has reached terminal velocity, the time for the tape to travel a known distance is recorded.
By the use of various weights, data for a force-rate of shear graph can be obtained.
The instrument used for this work was a slight modification of that previously described.
In this test a Af tape was pulled between the blocks with a motor and pulley at a rate of Af with a clearance of 0.002on each side of the tape.
This gives a rate of shear of Af.
This, however, can only be considered approximate, as the diameter of the pulley was increased by the build-up of tape and the tape was occasionally removed from the pulley during the runs.
The face of one block contained a hole 1/16in diameter which led to a manometer for the measurement of the normal pressure.
Although there were only four fluids tested, it was apparent that there were two distinct types.
Two of the fluids showed a high-positive normal pressure when undergoing shear, and two showed small negative pressures which were negligible in comparison with the amount of the positive pressures generated by the other two.
Figure 3 shows the data on a silicone fluid, labeled 12,500 cps which gave a high positive normal pressure.
Although the tape was run for over 1 hr., a steady state was not reached, and it was concluded that the reason for this was that the back pressure of the manometer was built up from the material fed from between the blocks and this was available at a very slow rate.
A system had to be used which did not depend upon the feeding of the fluid into the manometer if measurements of the normal pressure were to be made in a reasonable time.
A back pressure was then introduced, and the rise or fall of the material in the manometer indicated which was greater, the normal pressure in the block or the back pressure.
By this method it was determined that the normal pressure exerted by a sample of polybutene (molecular weight reported to be 770) was over half an atmosphere.
The actual pressure was not determined because the pressure was beyond the upper limit of the apparatus on hand.
The two fluids which gave the small negative pressures were polybutenes with molecular weights which were stated to be 520 and 300.
These are fluids which one would expect to be less viscoelastic or more Newtonian because of their lower molecular weight.
The maximum suction was 3.25of test fluid measured from the top of the block, and steady states were apparently reached with these fluids.
It is presumed that this negative head was associated with some geometric factor of the assembly, since different readings were obtained with the same fluid and the only apparent difference was the assembly and disassembly of the apparatus.
This negative pressure is not explained by the velocity head Af since this is not sufficient to explain the readings by several magnitudes.
These experiments can be considered exploratory only.
However, they do demonstrate the presence of large normal pressures in the presence of flat shear fields which were forecast by the theory in the first part of the paper.
They also give information which will aid in the design of a more satisfactory instrument for the measurement of the normal pressures.
Such an instrument would be useful for the characterization of many commercial materials as well as theoretical studies.
The elasticity is a parameter of fluids which is not subject to simple measurement at present, and it is a parameter which is probably varying in an unknown manner with many commercial materials.
The actual change Af caused by a shear field is calculated by multiplying the pressure differential times the volume, just as it is for any gravitational or osmotic pressure head.
If the volume is the molal volume, then Af is obtained on a molal basis which is the customary terminology of the chemists.
Although the Af calculation is obvious by analogy with that for gravitational field and osmotic pressure, it is interesting to confirm it by a method which can be generalized to include related effects.
Consider a shear field with a height of H and a cross-sectional area of A opposed by a manometer with a height of H (referred to the same base as H) and a cross-sectional area of A.
If Af is the change per unit volume in Gibbs function caused by the shear field at constant P and T, and **yr is the density of the fluid, then the total potential energy of the system above the reference height is Af.
Af is the work necessary to fill the manometer column from the reference height to H.
The total volume of the system above the reference height is Af, and H can be eliminated to obtain an equation for the total potential energy of the system in terms of H.
The minimum total potential energy is found by taking the derivative with respect to H and equating to zero.
This gives Af, which is the pressure.
This is interesting for it combines both the thermodynamic concept of a minimum Gibbs function for equilibrium and minimum mechanical potential energy for equilibrium.
This method can be extended to include the concentration differences caused by shear fields.
The relation between osmotic pressure and the Gibbs function may also be developed in an analogous way.
In the above development we have applied the thermodynamics of equilibrium (referred to by some as thermostatics) to the steady state.
This can be justified thermodynamically in this case, and this will be done in a separate paper which is being prepared.
This has an interesting analogy with the assumption stated by Philippoff that the deformational mechanics of elastic solids can be applied to flowing solutions.
There is one exception to the above statement as has been pointed out, and that is that fluids can relax by flowing into fields of lower rates of shear, so the statement should be modified by stating that the mechanics are similar.
If the mechanics are similar, we can also infer that the thermodynamics will also be similar.
The concept of the strain energy as a Gibbs function difference Af and exerting a force normal to the shearing face is compatible with the information obtained from optical birefringence studies of fluids undergoing shear.
Essentially these birefringence studies show that at low rates of shear a tension is present at 45-degrees to the direction of shear, and as the rate of shear increases, the direction of the maximum tension moves asymptotically toward the direction of shear.
According to Philippoff, the recoverable shear S is given by Af where **yc is the angle of extinction.
From this and the force of deformation it should be possible to calculate the elastic energy of deformation which should be equal to the Af calculated from the pressure normal to the shearing face.
There is another means which should show the direction and relative value of the stresses in viscoelastic fluids that is not mentioned as such in the literature, and that is the shape of the suspended drops of low viscosity fluids in shear fields.
These droplets are distorted by the normal forces just as a balloon would be pulled or pressed out of shape in one's hands.
These droplets appear to be ellipsoids, and it is mathematically convenient to assume that they are.
If they are not ellipsoids, the conclusions will be a reasonable approximation.
The direction of the tension of minimum pressure is, of course, given by the direction of the major axis of the ellipsoids.
Mason and Taylor both show that the major axis of the ellipsoids is at 45-degrees at low rates of shear and that it approaches the direction of shear with increased rates of shear.
(Some suspensions break up before they are near to the direction of shear, and some become asymptotic to it without breakup.
) This is, of course, a similar type of behavior to that indicated by birefringence studies.
The relative forces can be calculated from the various radii of curvature if we assume: (A) The surface tension is uniform on the surface of the drop.
(B) That because of the low viscosity of the fluid, the internal pressure is the same in all directions.
(C) The kinetic effects are negligible.
(D) Since the shape of the drop conforms to the force field, it does not appreciably affect the distribution of forces in the fluid.
These are reasonable assumptions with low viscosity fluids suspended in high viscosity fluids which are subjected to low rates of shear.
This formula is given by Rumscheidt and Mason.
If A is the major axis of an ellipsoid and B and C are the other two axes, the radius of curvature in the ab plane at the end of the axis Af, and the difference in pressure along the A and B axes is Af.
There are no data published in the literature on the shape of low viscosity drops to confirm the above formulas.
However, there are photographs of suspended drops of cyclohexanol phthalate (viscosity 155 poises) suspended in corn syrup of 71 poises in a paper by Mason and Bartok.
This viscosity of the material in the drops is, of course, not negligible.
Measurements on the photograph in this paper give Af at the maximum rate of shear of Af.
If it is assumed that the formula given by Lodge of cosec Af applies, the pressure difference along the major axes can be calculated from the angle of inclination of the major axis, and from this the interfacial tension can be calculated.
Its value was Af from the above data.
This appears to be high, as would be expected from the appreciable viscosity of the material in the drops.
It is appropriate to call attention to certain thermodynamic properties of an ideal gas that are analogous to rubber-like deformation.
The internal energy of an ideal gas depends on temperature only and is independent of pressure or volume.
In other words, if an ideal gas is compressed and kept at constant temperature, the work done in compressing it is completely converted into heat and transferred to the surrounding heat sink.
This means that work equals Q which in turn equals Af.
There is a well-known relationship between probability and entropy which states that Af, where **zq is the probability that state (i.e., volume for an ideal gas) could be reached by chance alone.
This is known as conformational entropy.
This conformational entropy is, in this case, equal to the usual entropy, for there are no other changes or other energies involved.
Note that though the ideal gas itself contains no additional energy, the compressed gas does exert an increased pressure.
The energy for any isothermal work done by the perfect gas must come as thermal energy from its surroundings.
A proton magnetic resonance study of polycrystalline Af as a function of magnetic field and temperature is presented.
Af is paramagnetic, and electron paramagnetic dipole as well as nuclear dipole effects lead to line broadening.
The lines are asymmetric and over the range of field Af gauss and temperature Af the asymmetry increases with increasing Af and decreasing T.
An isotropic resonance shift of Af to lower applied fields indicates a weak isotropic hyperfine contact interaction.
The general theory of resonance shifts is used to derive a general expression for the second moment Af of a polycrystalline paramagnetic sample and is specialized to Af.
The theory predicts a linear dependence of Af on Af, where J is the experimentally determined Curie-Weiss constant.
The experimental second moment Af conforms to the relation Af in agreement with theory.
Hence, the electron paramagnetic effects (slope) can be separated from the nuclear effects (intercept).
The paramagnetic dipole effects provide some information on the particle shapes.
The nuclear dipole effects provide some information on the motions of the hydrogen nuclei, but the symmetry of the Af bond in Af remains in doubt.
Introduction
the magnetic moment of an unpaired electron associated nearby may have a tremendous influence on the magnetic resonance properties of nuclei.
It is important to consider and experimentally verify this influence since quantitative nuclear resonance is becoming increasingly used in investigations of structure.
Af appeared to be well suited for the study of these matters, since it is a normal paramagnet, with three unpaired electrons on the chromium, its crystal structure is very simple, and the unknown position of the hydrogen in the strong Af bond provides structural interest.
We first discuss the Af bond in Af.
We then outline the theory of the interaction of paramagnetic dipoles with nuclei and show that the theory is in excellent agreement with experiment.
Indeed it is possible to separate electron paramagnetic from nuclear effects.
The information provided by the electron paramagnetic effects is then discussed, and finally the nuclear effects are interpreted in terms of various motional-modified models of the Af bond in Af.
Af bond in Af
Theoretical studies of the hydrogen bond generally agree that the Af bond will be linear in the absence of peculiarities of packing in the solid.
Moreover, it will be asymmetric until a certain critical Af distance is reached, below which it will become symmetric.
There is ample evidence from many sources that the Af bond in Af is symmetric.
The Af distance in Af is 2.26 Aj.
There is evidence, though less convincing than for Af, that the Af bond in nickel dimethylglyoxime is symmetric.
Here the Af distance is 2.44 Aj.
Douglass has studied the crystal structure of Af by x-ray diffraction.
He finds the structure contains an Af bond with the Af distance of Af.
There is, then, the possibility that this Af bond is symmetric, although Douglass was unable to determine its symmetry from his x-ray data.
Douglass found Af to be trigonal, Laue symmetry Af, with Af, Af.
X-ray and experimental density showed one formula unit in the unit cell, corresponding to a paramagnetic ion density of Af.
The x-ray data did not permit Douglass to determine uniquely the space group, but a negative test for piezoelectricity led him to assume a center of symmetry.
Under this assumption the space group must be Af and the following are the positions of the atoms in the unit cell.
Af.
This space group requires the hydrogen bond to be symmetric.
Douglass found powder intensity calculations and measurements to agree best for Af.
These data lead to a structure in which sheets of Cr atoms lie between two sheets of O atoms.
The O atoms in each sheet are close packed and each Cr atom is surrounded by a distorted octahedron of O atoms.
The Af layers are stacked normal to the (111) axis with the lower oxygens of one layer directly above the upper oxygens of the neighboring lower layer, in such a manner that the repeat is every three layers.
The separate layers are joined together by hydrogen bonds.
A drawing of the structure is to be found in reference 6.
The gross details of the structure appear reasonable.
The structure appears to be unique among OOH compounds, but is the same as that assumed by Af.
The bond angles and distances are all within the expected limits and the volume per oxygen is about normal.
However, any oxygen nonequivalence would shorten either the already extremely short Af interlayer distance of 2.55 A or the non-hydrogen-bonded Af interlayer interactions which are already quite short at 2.58 Aj.
Hence it is difficult to conceive of a packing of the atoms in this material in which the oxygen atoms are far from geometrical equivalence.
The only effect of lack of a center would then be to release the hydrogen atoms to occupy general, rather than special, positions along the (111) axis.
If the Af bond is linear then there are three reasonable positions for the hydrogen atoms: (1) The hydrogen atoms are centered and hence all lie on a sheet midway between the oxygen sheets;
(2) all hydrogen atoms lie on a sheet, but the sheet is closer to one oxygen sheet than to the other;
(3) hydrogen atoms are asymmetrically placed, either randomly or in an ordered way, so that some hydrogen atoms are closer to the upper oxygen atoms while others are closer to the lower oxygen atoms.
Position (2) appears to us to be unlikely in view of the absence of a piezoelectric effect and on general chemical structural grounds.
Therefore, the only unknown structural feature would appear to be whether the hydrogen atoms are located symmetrically (1) or asymmetrically (3).
Experimental procedures
samples
Douglass prepared his sample of Af by thermal decomposition of aqueous chromic acid at 300 - 325-degrees-C.
Dr. Douglass was kind enough to lend us about 5 grams of his material.
This material proved to be unsatisfactory, since we could not obtain reproducible results on various portions of the sample.
Subsequently, we learned from Douglass that his sample contained a few percent Af impurity.
Since Af is ferromagnetic, we felt that any results obtained from the magnetically contaminated Af would be suspect.
Plane suggested another preparation of Af which we used here.
500 ml of 1M aqueous Af with 1 Af added are heated in a bomb at 170-degrees-C for 48 hours.
A very fine, gray solid (about 15 g) is formed, water-washed by centrifugation, and dried at 110-degrees-C).
Differential thermal analysis showed a very small endothermic reaction at 340-degrees-C and a large endothermic reaction at 470-degrees-C.
This latter reaction is in accord with the reported decomposition of Af.
Thermogravimetric analysis showed a weight loss of 1.8% centered at 337-degrees-C and another weight loss of 10.8% at 463-degrees-C.
The expected weight loss for Af going to Af and Af is 10.6%.
Mass spectrometric analysis of gases evolved upon heating to 410-degrees-C indicated nitrogen oxides and water vapor.
The small reaction occurring at 337-degrees-C is probably caused by decomposition of occluded nitrates, and perhaps by a small amount of some hydrous material other than Af.
All subsequent measurements were made on material which had been heated to 375-degrees-C for one hour.
Emission spectra indicated Af calcium and all other impurities much lower.
Chromium analysis gave 58.8% Cr as compared with 61.2% theory.
However, Af adsorbs water from the atmosphere and this may account for the low chromium analysis and high total weight loss.
The x-ray diffraction pattern of the material, taken with CuK**ya radiation, indicated the presence of no extra lines and was in good agreement with the pattern of Douglass.
Magnetic analyses by R. G. Meisenheimer of this laboratory indicated no ferromagnetic impurities.
Af was found to be paramagnetic with three unpaired electrons per chromium atom and a molecular susceptibility of Af, where Af.
For exactly three unpaired electrons the coefficient would be 3.10.
An infrared spectrum, obtained by H. A. Benesi and R. G. Snyder of this laboratory, showed bands in the positions found by Jones.
Electron microscopic examination of the Af sample showed it to be composed of nearly isotropic particles about 0.3M in diameter.
The particles appeared rough and undoubtedly the single-crystal domains are smaller than this.
The x-ray data are consistent with particle sizes of 1000 A or greater.
We found no obvious effects due to preferred orientation of the crystallites in this sample nor would we expect to on the basis of the shape found from electron microscopic examination.
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements
The magnetic resonance absorption was detected by employing a Varian model Af broad line spectrometer and the associated 12-inch electromagnet system.
One measurement at 40 Mc/sec was obtained with the Varian model Af unit.
A bridged-T type of bridge was used in the 10 - 16 Mc/sec range.
The rf power level was maintained small enough at all times to prevent obvious line shape distortions by saturation effects.
A modulation frequency of 40 cps with an amplitude as small as possible, commensurate with reasonably good signal-to-noise quality, was used.
Background spectra were obtained in all cases.
The spectrometer was adjusted to minimize the amount of dispersion mode mixed in with the absorption signal.
A single value of the thermal relaxation time Af at room temperature was measured by the progressive saturation method.
The value of Af estimated at 470 gauss was Af microseconds.
A single measurement of the spin - spin relaxation time Af was obtained at 10 Mc/sec by pulse methods.
This measurement was obtained by W. Blumberg of the University of California, Berkeley, by observing the breadth of the free induction decay signal.
The value derived was 16 microseconds.
Field shifts were derived from the mean value of the resonance line, defined as the field about which the first moment is zero.
Second moments of the spectra were computed by numerical integration.
Corrections were applied for modulation broadening, apparatus background, and field shift.
Spectra were obtained over the temperature range of 77 - 294-degrees-K.
For the low-temperature measurements the sample was cooled by a cold nitrogen gas flow method similar to that of Andrew and Eades.
The temperature was maintained to within about Af for the period of time required to make the measurement (usually about one hour).
The data reported here are either from spectra from which the adsorbed water resonance could easily be eliminated or from spectra of samples evacuated and sealed off at 375-degrees-C which contain no adsorbed water.
The measured powder density of the Af used here was about Af, approximately one-third that of the crystal density (Af).
Such a density corresponds to a paramagnetic ion density of about Af.
Spectra were obtained from a powdered sample having the shape of a right circular cylinder with a height-to-diameter ratio of 4::
The top of the sample was nearly flat and the bottom hemispherical.
Spectra were also obtained from a sample in a spherical container which was made by blowing a bubble on the end of a capillary glass tube.
The bubble was filled to the top and special precautions were taken to prevent any sample from remaining in the capillary.
Spectra were also obtained from a third sample of Af which had been diluted to three times its original volume with powdered, anhydrous alundum (Af).
This sample was contained in a cylindrical container similar to that described above.
The market today for detergent builders is quite diverse.
The best known field of application for builders is in heavy-duty, spray-dried detergent formulations for household use.
In the household market, there are also low-sudsing detergent formulations based on nonionic actives with about the same amount of phosphate builder;
light-duty synthetic detergents with much less builder;
and the dwindling built-soap powders as well as soap flakes and granules, none of which are now nationally advertised.
A well-publicized entrant which has achieved success only recently is the built liquid detergent, with which the major problem today is incorporation of builder and active into a small volume using a sufficiently high builder/active ratio.
Hard-surface cleaning in household application is represented by two classes of alkaline products: (1) the formulations made expressly for machine dishwashers, and (2) the general-purpose cleaners used for walls and woodwork.
The better quality products in both of these lines contain phosphate builders.
In addition, many of the hard-surface cleaners used for walls and woodwork had their genesis in trisodium orthophosphate, which is still the major ingredient of a number of such products.
Many scouring powders now also contain phosphates.
These hard-surface cleaners are discussed in Chapter 28.
The cleaning process
Cleaning or detergent action is entirely a matter of surfaces.
Wet cleaning involves an aqueous medium, a solid substrate, soil to be removed, and the detergent or surface-active material.
An oversimplified differentiation between soft- and hard-surface cleaning lies in the magnitude and kind of surface involved.
One gram of cotton has been found to have a specific surface area of Af.
In contrast, a metal coupon Af in size would have a magnitude from 100,000 to a million less.
Even here there is room for some variation, for metal surfaces vary in smoothness, absorptive capacity, and chemical reactivity.
Spring used a Brush surface-analyzer in a metal-cleaning study and showed considerable differences in soil removal, depending upon surface roughness.
There are considerable differences between the requirements for textile and hard-surface cleaning.
Exclusive of esthetic values, such as high- or low-foam level, perfume content, etc., the requirements for the organic active used in washing textiles are high.
No matter how they are formulated, a large number of organic actives are simply not suitable for this application, since they do not give adequate soil removal.
This is best demonstrated by practical washing tests in which cloth articles are repeatedly washed with the same detergent formulation.
A good formulation will keep the clothes clean and white after many washings;
whereas, with a poor formulation, the clothes exhibit a build-up of tattle-tale grey and dirty spots--sometimes with bad results even after the first wash.
Since practical washing procedures are both lengthy and expensive, a number of laboratory tests have been developed for the numerical evaluation of detergents.
Harris has indicated that two devices, the Launder-Ometer and Terg-O-Tometer are most widely used for rapid detergent testing, and he has listed the commercially available standard soiled fabrics.
Also given are several laboratory wash procedures in general use.
The soiled fabrics used for rapid testing of detergent formulations are made in such a way that only part of the soil is removed by even the best detergent formulation in a single wash.
In this way, numerical values for the relative efficacy of various detergent formulations can be obtained by measuring the reflectance (whiteness) of the cloth swatches before and after washing.
Soil redeposition is evaluated by washing clean swatches with the dirty ones.
As is the case with the surface-active agent, the requirements for builders to be used in detergent compositions for washing textiles are also high.
Large numbers of potential builders have been investigated, but none have been found to be as effective as the polyphosphates over the relatively wide range of conditions met in practice.
The problems of hard-surface cleaning are not nearly as complex.
In hard-surface cleaning, the inorganic salts are more important than the organic active.
Indeed, when the proper inorganic constituents are employed, practically any wetting or surface-active agent will do a reasonably good job when present in sufficient amount in a hard-surface cleaning formulation.
Hydroxides, orthophosphates, borates, carbonates, and silicates are important inorganic ingredients of hard-surface cleaners.
In addition, the polyphosphates are also used, probably acting more as peptizing agents than anything else.
The importance of the inorganic constituents in hard-surface cleaning has been emphasized in a number of papers.
Physical chemistry of washing
The purpose of washing is, obviously, to remove soils which are arbitrarily classed in the four major categories given below: 1.
Dirt, which is here defined as particulate material which is usually inorganic and is very often extremely finely divided so as to exhibit colloidal properties.
Greasy soils, which are typified by hydrocarbons and fats (esters of glycerol with long-chain organic acids).
Stains, which include the wide variety of nonparticulate materials which give color even when present in very low concentration on the soiled object.
Miscellaneous soils, which primarily include sticky substances and colorless liquids which evaporate to leave a residue.
The dirt on the soiled objects is mechanically held by surface irregularities to some extent.
However, a major factor in binding dirt is the attraction between surfaces that goes under the name of Van der Waal's forces.
This is a theoretically complicated dipole interaction which causes any extremely small uncharged particle to agglomerate with other small uncharged particles, or to stick to an uncharged surface.
Obviously, if colloidal particles bear charges of opposite sign or, if one kind is charged and the other kind is not, the attraction will be intensified and the tendency to agglomerate will be greatly reinforced.
Likewise, a charged particle will tend to stick to an uncharged surface and vice versa, and a charged particle will be very strongly attracted to a surface exhibiting an opposite charge.
In addition, dirt particles can be held onto a soiled surface by sticky substances or by the surface tension of liquids, including liquid greases.
Greases, stains, and miscellaneous soils are usually sorbed onto the soiled surface.
In most cases, these soils are taken up as liquids through capillary action.
In an essentially static system, an oil cannot be replaced by water on a surface unless the interfacial tensions of the water phase are reduced by a surface-active agent.
The washing process whereby soils are removed consists basically of applying mechanical action to loosen the dirt particles and dried matter in the presence of water which helps to float off the debris and acts, to some extent, as a dissolving and solvating agent.
Greasy soils are hardly removed by washing in plain water;
and natural waters, in addition, often contain impurities such as calcium salts which can react with soils to make them more difficult to remove.
Therefore, detergents are used.
The detergent active is that substance which primarily acts to remove greasy soils.
The other constituents in a built detergent assist in this and in the removal of dirty stains and the hydrophilic sticky or dried soils.
As is well known, detergent actives belong to the chemical class consisting of moderately high molecular weight and highly polar molecules which exhibit the property of forming micelles in solution.
Physicochemical investigations of anionic surfactants, including the soaps, have shown that there is little polymerization or agglomeration of the chain anions below a certain region of concentration called the critical micelle concentration.
(1) Below the critical micelle concentration, monomers and some dimers are present.
(2) In the critical micelle region, there is a rapid agglomeration or polymerization to give the micelles, which have a degree of polymerization averaging around 60 - 80.
(3) For anionics, these micelles appear to be roughly spherical assemblages in which the hydrocarbon tails come together so that the polar groups (the ionized ends) face outward towards the aqueous continuous phase.
Obviously hydrophobic (oleophilic) substances such as greases, oils, or particles having a greasy or oily surface are more at home in the center of a micelle than in the aqueous phase.
Micelles can imbibe and hold a considerable amount of oleophilic substances so that the micelle volume may be increased as much as approximately two-fold.
Although the matter has not been unequivocally demonstrated, the available data show that micelles in themselves do not contribute significantly to the detergency process.
In the cleaning process, sorbed greasy soils become coated in this manner with an oriented film of surfactant.
Then during washing, the greasy soil rolls back at the edges so that emulsified droplets can disengage themselves from the sorbed oil mass, with the aid of mechanical action, and enter the aqueous phase.
Obviously, a substance which is permanently or temporarily sorbed on the surface in place of the soil will tend to accelerate this process and effectively push off the greasy soil.
Substances other than detergent actives also tend to be strongly sorbed from aqueous media onto surfaces of other contiguous condensed phases.
This is particularly true of highly charged ions, especially those ions which fall into the class of polyelectrolytes.
Whereas the usual organic surface-active agent is strongly sorbed at oil - water interfaces, the highly charged ions are most strongly sorbed at interfaces between water and insoluble materials exhibiting an ionic structure (see Table 26-2 on p. 1678).
Thus, for aqueous media, we can think of the idealized organic active as an oleophilic or hydrophobic surface-active agent, and of an idealized builder as a oleophobic or hydrophilic surface-active agent.
From the equilibrium sorption data which are available, it seems logical to expect that polyphosphate ions would be strongly sorbed on the surface of the dirt (especially clay soils) so as to give it a greatly increased negative charge.
The charged particles then repel each other and are also repelled from the charged surface, which almost invariably bears a negative charge under washing conditions.
The negatively charged dirt particles then leave the surface and go into the aqueous phase.
This hypothesis is evolved in analogy to the demonstrated action of organic actives in detergency.
It does not consider the kinetic effects of the phosphate builders on sorption-desorption phenomena which will be discussed later (see pp. 1746 - 1748).
The crude picture of the detergency process thus far developed can be represented as: Af.
The influence of mechanical action on the particles of free soil may be compared to that of kinetic energy on a molecular scale.
Freed soil must be dispersed and protected against flocculation.
Cleaned cloth must be protected against the redeposition of dispersed soil.
It is evident that the requirements imposed by these effects upon any one detergent constituent acting alone are severe.
Upon consideration of the variety of soils and fabrics normally encountered in the washing process, it is little wonder that the use of a number of detergent constituents having synergistic properties has gained widespread acceptance.
In the over-all process, it is difficult to assign a pure role to each constituent of a built-detergent formulation;
and, indeed, there is no more reason to separate the interrelated roles of the active, builder, antiredeposition agent, etc. than there is to assign individual actions to each of the numerous isomers making up a given commercial organic active.
The thermal exchange of chlorine between Af and liquid Af is readily measurable at temperatures in the range of 180-degrees and above.
The photochemical exchange occurs with a quantum yield of the order of unity in the liquid phase at 65-degrees using light absorbed only by the Af.
In the gas phase, with Af of Af and Af of Af, quantum yields of the order of Af have been observed at 85-degrees.
Despite extensive attempts to obtain highly pure reagents, serious difficulty was experienced in obtaining reproducible rates of reaction.
It appears possible to set a lower limit of about Af for the activation energy of the abstraction of a chlorine atom from a carbon tetrachloride molecule by a chlorine atom to form Af radical.
Introduction
Because of the simplicity of the molecules, isotopic exchange reactions between elemental halogens and the corresponding carbon tetrahalides would appear to offer particularly fruitful possibilities for obtaining unambiguous basic kinetic data.
The reaction of chlorine with carbon tetrachloride seemed particularly suited for such studies.
It should be possible to prepare very pure chlorine by oxidation of inorganic chlorides on a vacuum system followed by multiple distillation of the liquid.
It should be possible to free carbon tetrachloride of any interfering substances by the usual purification methods followed by prechlorination prior to addition of radioactive chlorine.
Furthermore, the exchange would not be expected to be sensitive to trace amounts of impurities because it would not be apt to be a chain reaction since the activation energy for abstraction of chlorine by a chlorine atom would be expected to be too high;
also it would be expected that Af would compete very effectively with any impurities as a scavenger for Af radicals.
Contrary to these expectations we have found it impossible to obtain the degree of reproducibility one would wish, even with extensive efforts to prepare especially pure reagents.
Experimental
reagents.
-- Matheson highest purity tank chlorine was passed through a tube of resublimed Af into an evacuated Pyrex system where it was condensed with liquid air.
It was then distilled at least three times from a trap at -78-degrees to a liquid air trap with only a small middle fraction being retained in each distillation.
The purified product was stored at -78-degrees in a tube equipped with a break seal.
Of several methods employed for tagging chlorine with radiochlorine, the exchange of inactive chlorine with tagged aluminum chloride at room temperature was found to be the most satisfactory.
To prepare the latter, silver chloride was precipitated from a solution containing Af obtained from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The silver chloride was fused under vacuum in the presence of aluminum chips with the resultant product of Af which was sublimed into a flask on the vacuum line.
Previously purified chlorine was subsequently admitted and the exchange was allowed to take place.
The radiochlorine was stored at -78-degrees in a tube equipped with a break seal.
Liter quantities of Mallinckrodt, low sulfur, reagent grade carbon tetrachloride were saturated with Af and Af and illuminated for about 50 hours with a 1000 watt tungsten lamp at a distance of a few inches.
The mixture was then extracted with alkali and with water following which the carbon tetrachloride was distilled on a Vigreux column, a 25% center cut being retained which was then degassed under vacuum in the presence of Af.
Purified inactive chlorine was then added from one of the tubes described above and the mixture frozen out and sealed off in a flask equipped with a break seal.
This chlorine-carbon tetrachloride solution was illuminated for a day following which the flask was resealed onto a vacuum system and the excess chlorine distilled off.
The required amount of carbon tetrachloride was distilled into a series of reaction cells on a manifold on a vacuum line.
The desired amounts of inactive chlorine and radioactive chlorine were likewise condensed in these cells on the vacuum line following which they were frozen down and the manifold as a whole was sealed off.
The contents of the manifold for liquid phase experiments were then mixed by shaking, redistributed to the reaction tubes, frozen down, and each tube was then sealed off.
The reactants for the gas phase experiments were first frozen out in a side-arm attached to the manifold and then allowed to distil slowly into the manifold of pre-cooled reaction cells before sealing off.
This method in general solved the problem of obtaining fairly equal concentrations of reactants in each of the six cells from a set.
Reaction conditions and analysis.
-- The samples for liquid phase thermal reaction studies were prepared in Pyrex capillary tubing 2.5 mm. i.d. and about 15 cm. long.
In a few experiments the tubes were made from standard 6 mm. i.d. Pyrex tubing of 1 mm. wall thickness.
Both types of tube withstood the pressure of approximately 20 atmospheres exerted by the carbon tetrachloride at 220-degrees.
The photochemical reaction cells consisted of 10 mm. i.d. Pyrex tubing, 5.5 cm. long, diffraction effects being minimized by the fact that the light passed through only liquid-glass interfaces and not gas-glass interfaces.
These cells were used rather than square Pyrex tubing because of the tendency of the latter to shatter when thawing frozen carbon tetrachloride.
The round cells were reproducibly positioned in the light beam which entered the thermostated mineral oil-bath through a window.
Two types of light source were used, a thousand watt projection lamp and an AH6 high pressure mercury arc.
The light was filtered by the soft glass window of the thermostat thus ensuring that only light absorbed by the chlorine and not by the carbon tetrachloride could enter the reaction cell.
Relative incident light intensities were measured with a thermopile potentiometer system.
Changes of intensity on the cell were achieved by use of a wire screen and by varying the distance of the light source from the cell.
Following reaction the cells were scratched with a file and opened under a 20% aqueous sodium iodide solution.
Carrier Af was added and the aqueous and organic phases were separated (cells containing gaseous reactants were immersed in liquid air before opening under sodium iodide).
After titration of the liberated Af with Af, aliquots of the aqueous and of the organic phase were counted in a solution-type Geiger tube.
In the liquid phase runs the amount of carbon tetrachloride in each reaction tube was determined by weighing the tube before opening and weighing the fragments after emptying.
Results
the thermal reaction.
-- In studying the liquid phase thermal reaction, some 70 tubes from 12 different manifold fillings were prepared and analyzed.
Experiments were done at 180, 200, 210, and 220-degrees.
In addition to the method described in the section above, chlorine and radiochlorine were prepared by the electrolysis of a Af eutectic on the vacuum line, and by exchange of Af with molten Af.
Calcium hydride was substituted for Af as a drying agent for carbon tetrachloride.
No correlation between these variables and the irreproducibility of the results was found.
The reaction rates observed at 200-degrees ranged from Af of the chlorine exchanged per hour to 0.7 exchanged per hour.
In most cases the chlorine concentration was about Af.
Sets of reaction tubes containing 0.2 of an atmosphere of added oxygen in one case and added moisture in another, both gave reaction rates in the range of 0.1 to 0.4 of the chlorine exchanged per hour.
No detectable reaction was found at room temperature for reaction mixtures allowed to stand up to 5 hours.
The liquid phase photochemical reaction.
The liquid phase photochemical exchange between chlorine and carbon tetrachloride was more reproducible than the thermal exchange, although still erratic.
The improvement was most noticeable in the greater consistency among reaction cells prepared as a group on the same manifold.
Rather large differences were still found between reaction cells from different manifold fillings.
Some 80 reaction tubes from 13 manifold fillings were illuminated in the temperature range from 40 to 85-degrees in a further endeavor to determine the cause of the irreproducibility and to obtain information on the activation energy and the effect of light intensity.
In all cases there was readily measurable exchange after as little as one hour of illumination.
By comparing reaction cells sealed from the same manifold temperature dependency corresponding to activation energies ranging from 11 to 18 Af was observed while dependence on the first power of the light intensity seemed to be indicated in most cases.
These estimates indicated that the quantum yield for the exchange of chlorine with liquid carbon tetrachloride at 65-degrees is of the order of magnitude of unity.
When typical reaction cells to which 0.3 of an atmosphere of oxygen had been added were illuminated, chlorine and phosgene were produced.
Exchange was also observed in these cells, which had chlorine present at Af.
The photochemical exchange in the gas phase.
Data on such comparisons together with data on the effect of light intensity are given in Table 1.
In series 1, the relative light intensity was varied by varying the distance of the lamp from the reaction cell over the range from 14.7 to 29.2 cm..
Direct proportionality of the rate to the incident intensity has also been assumed in obtaining the value in the last column for the fourth sample of series 2, where the light intensity was reduced by use of a screen.
The Poynting-Robertson effect (Robertson, 1937;
Wyatt and Whipple, 1950), which is a retardation of the orbital motion of particles by the relativistic aberration of the repulsive force of the impinging solar radiation, causes the dust to spiral into the sun in times much shorter than the age of the Earth.
The radial velocity varies inversely as the particle size--a 1000-m-diameter particle near the orbit of Mars would reach the sun in about 60 million years.
Whipple (1955) extends the effects to include the solar-corpuscular-radiation pressure, which increases both the minimum particle size and the drag.
The Poynting-Robertson effect causes the semi-major axis of orbits to diminish more rapidly than the semi-minor axis, with a consequent tendency toward circular orbits as the particles move toward the sun.
Also, planetary gravitational attraction increases the dust concentration near the plane of the ecliptic as the sun is approached.
At one astronomical unit from the sun (the Earth's distance) the dust orbits are probably nearly circular.
If such is the case, the particles within a distance of about Af of the Earth will have, relative to the Earth, a kinetic energy less than their potential energy and they will be captured into orbits about the Earth.
De Jager (1955) has calculated the times required for these particles to reach the atmosphere under the influence of the Poynting-Robertson effect, which in this case causes the orbits to become more and more eccentric without changing the semi-major axis.
This effect can give rise to a blanket of micrometeorites around the Earth.
Since there is a continual loss of micrometeoritic material in space because of the radiation effects, there must be a continual replenishment: otherwise, micrometeorites would have disappeared from interplanetary space.
There are several possible sources.
According to Whipple (1955), cometary debris is sufficient to replenish the material spiraling into the sun, maintaining a fairly steady state.
Asteroidal collisions are also thought to contribute material.
It is also possible that some of the dust in the vicinity of the Earth originated from meteoritic impacts upon the moon.
5.3 direct measurements of micrometeorite flux
One cannot make a very satisfactory guess about the micrometeorite flux in space.
Even in the neighborhood of the Earth, where information has been obtained both directly and indirectly, the derived flux values vary by at least four orders of magnitude.
This large discrepancy demonstrates the inadequacies of the experimental methods and the lack of understanding of the various phenomena involved.
Beyond a few million kilometers from the Earth, but still in the region of the Earth's orbit, a prediction of the flux of dust is even more unreliable.
At greater distances from the sun, the situation is still less certain.
There are several sources of evidence on the micrometeorite environment.
Direct information has been obtained from rockets and satellites equipped with impact sensors.
In addition, the size distribution obtained from visual and radar observations of meteors may be extrapolated to the micrometeorite domain.
From the brightness of the F component of the solar corona and the brightness of the zodiacal light, an estimate of the particle sizes, concentrations, and spatial distribution can be derived for regions of space near the ecliptic plane.
Another important source of evidence only recently receiving much attention is the analysis of atmospheric dust for a meteoritic component.
The cores of deep-sea sediments and content of collectors in remote regions are valuable in this category.
The data provide a measure of the total mass of cosmic material incident upon the Earth.
The direct evidence on the micrometeorite environment near the Earth is obtained from piezoelectric sensors (essentially microphones) and from wire gages;
these instruments are installed on rockets, satellites, and space probes.
Statistically, the most significant data have been collected from the sensors on 1958 Alpha (Explorer 1), 1958 Delta 2 (Sputnik 3), and 1959 Eta (Vanguard 3).
These vehicles, with large sensitive areas, have collected data for long enough times to give reliable impact rates for the periods of exposure.
Many other vehicles with smaller sensitive-area exposure-time products contribute some information.
The impact rate on 1958 Alpha for 153 events was Af for particles of mass greater than Af (Dubin, 1960);
this mass threshold was derived from the detector calibration and an assumed impact velocity of Af.
The data show daily and diurnal variations.
Ninety per cent of the 153 recorded impacts occurred between midnight and noon, and from day to day the variation of the rate was as much as an order of magnitude.
One may conclude that most of the detected micrometeoritic material is concentrated in orbital streams which intersect the Earth's orbit.
There have been contradictory reports from 1958 Delta 2, and the data quoted here are believed to be the more reliable.
On May 15, a very large increase occurred with Af of mass between Af and Af;
for the next two days, the impact rate was Af;
and for the next nine days, the impact rate was less than Af (Nazarova, 1960).
The data for the first day indicate a meteor stream with a very high concentration of particles and may have led to the high estimates of micrometeorite flux.
Preliminary data from 1959 Eta give an average impact rate of Af for masses larger than Af for about 1000 events in a 22-day period (LaGow and Alexander, 1960).
The day-to-day rate varied by less than a factor of 4.5.
The data have not yet been analyzed for diurnal variations.
Note that the mass threshold is four times that of 1958 Alpha and that the flux is one fifth as large.
If one assumes that the average flux did not change between measurements, a mass-distribution curve is obtained which relates the flux of particles larger than a given radius to the inverse 7/2 power of the radius.
Space probes have yielded little information.
Pioneer 1, recorded a decrease in flux with distance from the Earth on the basis of 11 counts in 9 hours.
With detectors sensitive to three mass intervals and based on a few counts, the second and third Russian space probes indicate that the flux of the smallest particles detected is less than that of larger ones.
Being based on so few events, these results are of dubious validity.
The calibration of piezoelectric sensors in terms of the particle parameters is very uncertain.
Many workers believe that the response is proportional to the incident momentum of the particles, a relation deduced from laboratory results linearly extrapolated to meteoritic velocities.
However, one must expect that vaporization and ejection of material by hypervelocity impacts would cause a deviation from a linear relationship.
In the United States, most of the sensors are calibrated by dropping small spheres on their sensitive surfaces.
The Russian experimenters claim that only a small fraction of the impulse from the sensors is caused by the incident momentum with the remainder being momentum of ejected material from the sensor.
This ejection momentum is linearly related to the particle energy.
They quote about the same mass threshold as that of the U.S. apparatus, but a momentum threshold about 40 times greater.
There is a difference in the experimental arrangement, in that the U.S. microphones are attached directly to the vehicle skin while the Russian instruments are isolated from the skin.
The threshold mass is derived from the momentum threshold with the assumption of a mean impact velocity of Af in the U.S. work and Af in the U.S.S.R. work.
The threshold mass of about Af corresponds to a 10-M-diameter sphere of density Af.
However, the conversion from mass to size is unreliable, since many photographic meteors give evidence of a fluffy, loosely bound meteorite structure with densities as low as Af.
To what extent such low density applies to micrometeorites is unknown.
The velocity value used is also open to some question;
if a substantial fraction of the dust is orbiting about the Earth, only about one third the above-mentioned average velocity should be used in deriving the mass.
Zodiacal light and the gegenschein give some evidence for such a dust blanket, a phenomenon also to be expected if the dust before capture is in circular orbits about the sun, as indicated by the trend of the smaller visible meteors.
The diurnal variation in the observed flux may be partly due to the dependence of the detector sensitivity on the incident velocity.
The flux of micrometeorites in the neighborhood of the Earth can be estimated by extrapolation from radar and visual meteor data.
A summary of meteorite data, prepared by Whipple (1958) on the basis of photographic, visual, and radar evidence, is given in Table 5-1.
From an estimated mass of 25 g for a zero-magnitude meteorite, the other masses are derived with the assumption of a mass decrease by a factor of 2.512 for each unit increase in magnitude.
The radius is calculated from the mass by assuming spheres of density Af except for the smallest particles, which must have a higher mass density to remain in the solar system in the presence of solar-radiation pressure.
The flux values are for all particles with masses greater than the given mass and are based on an estimate of the numbers of visual meteors.
It is assumed that the flux values increase by a factor of 2.512 per magnitude, in accordance with the opinion that the total mass flux in each unit range in magnitude is constant.
The values agree with the data from 1958 Alpha and 1959 Eta.
The figures in the next-to-last column are derived with the assumption of 50 per cent shielding by the Earth;
hence, these figures apply immediately above the Earth's atmosphere.
The unshielded flux is given in the last column;
these figures constitute the best estimate for the flux in interplanetary space near the Earth.
Of course, if there is a dust blanket around the Earth, the fluxes in interplanetary space should be less than the figures given here.
Note that the mass scale is one to two orders of magnitude greater than some previously used;
for example, Jacchia (1948) derived a scale of 0.15 g for a Af, zero-magnitude meteorite.
The older scales were based on theoretical estimates of the conversion efficiency of kinetic energy into light.
The mass scale used in Table 5-1 was derived on the assumption that the motion of the glowing trail is related to the momentum transfer to the trail by the meteorite, permitting the calculation of the mass if the velocity is known (Cook and Whipple, 1958).
A concentration distribution has been derived from radar observations sensitive to the fifteenth magnitude (Manning and Eshleman, 1959).
Extrapolation of this relationship through the thirtieth magnitude covers the range of micrometeorites.
The approximate equation is Af, where N is the number of Af with electron line-density greater than or equal to Af, and Q is proportional to the mass of the meteorite.
Therefore, N is inversely proportional to the radius cubed and in fair agreement with the inverse 7/2 power derived from 1958 Alpha and 1959 Eta data.
At the fifteenth magnitude, Af, and at the twenty-fifth magnitude, Af.
These extrapolated fluxes are about an order of magnitude less than the values from the satellite data and the figures in Whipple's table.
The extrapolation may be in error for several reasons.
The observational data determining the concentration distribution have a range of error which is magnified in the extension into the micrometeorite region.
The solar-electromagnetic- and corpuscular-radiation pressure and the associated Poynting-Robertson effect increase in effectiveness as the particle size decreases and modify the distribution and limit sizes to larger than a few microns.
Also, it has been suggested that the source of all or part of the dust may not be the same as that for visual or radar meteorites (Best, 1960), and the same distribution would not be expected.
5.4.
Indirect indications of micrometeorite flux
A measure of the total mass accretion of meteoritic material by the Earth is obtained from analyses of deep-sea sediments and dust collected in remote regions (Pettersson, 1960).
Most meteoritic material, by the time it reaches the Earth's surface, has been reduced to dust or to spherules of ablated material in its passage through the atmosphere.
For all meteorites, the average nickel content is about 2.5 per cent.
This is much higher than the nickel content of terrestrial dusts and sediments and provides a basis for the determination of the meteoritic mass influx.
Present data indicate an accretion of about Af tons per year over the entire globe, or about Af.
Biological warfare
Biological warfare is the intentional use of living microorganisms or their toxic products for the purpose of destroying or reducing the military effectiveness of man.
It is the exploitation of the inherent potential of infectious disease agents by scientific research and development, resulting in the production of BW weapons systems.
Man may also be injured secondarily by damage to his food crops or domestic animals.
Biological warfare is considered to be primarily a strategic weapon.
The major reason for this is that it has no quick-kill effect.
The incubation period of infectious disease, plus a variable period of illness even before a lethal effect, render this weapon unsuitable for hand-to-hand encounter.
A man can be an effective fighting machine throughout the incubation period of most infectious diseases.
Thus, an enemy would probably use this weapon for attack on static population centers such as large cities.
An important operational procedure in BW for an enemy would be to create an areosol or cloud of agent over the target area.
This concept has stimulated much basic research concerning the behavior of particulate biological materials, the pathogenesis of respiratory infections, the medical management of such diseases and defense against their occurrence.
The biological and physical properties of infectious particles have been studied intensively during the past fifteen years.
Much new equipment and many unique techniques have been developed for the quantitative exposure of experimental animals to aerosols of infectious agents contained in particles of specified dimensional characteristics.
Much information has been gathered relative to quantitative sampling and assesment techniques.
Much of the older experimental work on respiratory infections was accomplished by very artificial procedures.
The intranasal instillation of a fluid suspension of infectious agent in an anesthetized animal is far different from exposure, through natural respiration, to aerosolized organisms.
The importance of particle size in such aerosols has been thoroughly demonstrated.
Very small particles, however, in a size range of 1 to 4 microns in diameter are capable of passing these impinging barriers and entering the alveolar bed of the lungs.
This area is highly susceptible to infection.
The entrance and retention of infectious particles in the alveoli amounts almost to an intratissue inoculation.
The relationship between particle size and infectious dose is illustrated in Table 1.
In considering BW defense, it must be recognized that a number of critical meterological parameters must be met for an aerosol to exhibit optimum effect.
For example, bright sunlight is rapidly destructive for living microorganisms suspended in air.
There are optimal humidity requirements for various agents when airborne.
Neutral or inversion meteorological conditions are necessary for a cloud to travel along the surface.
It will rise during lapse conditions.
There are, of course, certain times during the 24-hour daily cycle when most of these conditions will be met.
Certain other properties of small particles, in addition to those already mentioned in connection with penetration of the respiratory tract, are noteworthy in defense considerations.
The smaller the particle the further it will travel downwind before settling out.
An aerosol of such small particles, moreover, diffuses through structures in much the same manner as a gas.
There may be a number of secondary effects resulting from diffusion through buildings such as widespread contamination of kitchens, restaurants, food stores, hospitals, etc..
Depending on the organism, there may be multiplication in some food or beverage products, i.e., in milk for example.
The secondary consequences from this could be very serious and must be taken into consideration in planning for defense.
Something of the behavior of clouds of small particles can be illustrated by the following field trials:
In the first trial an inert substance was disseminated from a boat travelling some ten miles off shore under appropriately selected meteorological conditions.
Zinc cadmium sulfide in particles of 2 microns in size were disseminated.
This material fluoresces under ultraviolet light which facilitates its sampling and assessment.
Four hundred and fifty pounds was disseminated while the ship was traveling a distance of 156 miles.
Figure 1 describes the results obtained in this trial.
The particles traveled a maximum detected distance of some 450 miles.
From these dosage isopleths it can be seen that an area of over 34,000 square miles was covered.
These dosages could have been increased by increasing the source strength which was small in this case.
The behavior of a biological aerosol, on a much smaller scale, is illustrated by a specific field trial conducted with a non-pathogenic organism.
An aqueous suspension of the spores of B. subtilis, var. niger, generally known as Bacillus globigii, was aerosolized using commercially available nozzles.
A satisfactory cloud was produced even though these nozzles were only about 5 per cent efficient in producing an initial cloud in the size range of 1 to 5 microns.
In this test, 130 gallons of a suspension, having a count of Af organisms per ml, or a total of approximately Af spores, was aerosolized.
The spraying operation was conducted from the rear deck of a small Naval vessel, cruising two miles off-shore and vertical to an on-sure breeze.
Spraying continued along a two-mile course.
This operation was started at 5:00 p.m. and lasted for 29 minutes.
There was a slight lapse condition, a moderate fog, and 100 per cent relative humidity.
A network of sampling stations had been set up on shore.
These were located at the homes of Government employees, in Government Offices, buildings and reservations within the trial area.
A rough attempt was made to characterize the vertical profile of the cloud by taking samples from outside the windows on the first, ninth, and fifteenth floors of a Government office building.
All samplers were operated for a period of two hours except one, which was operated for four hours.
In this instance, there was a dosage of 562 during the first two hours and a total dosage of 1980 for the four-hour period, a four-fold increase.
This suggests that the sampling period, particularly at the more distant locations, should have been increased.
As can be seen from Figure 2, an extensive area was covered by this aerosol.
The maximum distance sampled was 23 miles from the source.
As can be seen from these dosage isopleths, approximately 100 square miles was covered within the area sampled.
It is quite likely that an even greater area was covered, particularly downwind.
The dosages in the three levels of the vertical profile were: Af
This was not, of course, enough sampling to give a satisfactory description of the vertical diffusion of the aerosol.
A number of unique medical problems might be created when man is exposed to an infectious agent through the respiratory route rather than by natural portal of entry.
Some agents have been shown to be much more toxic or infectious to experimental animals when exposed to aerosols of optimum particle size than by the natural portal.
Botulinal toxin, for example, is several thousand-fold more toxic by this route than when given per os.
In some instances a different clinical disease picture may result from this route of exposure, making diagnosis difficult.
In tularemia produced by aerosol exposure, one would not expect to find the classical ulcer of rabbit fever on a finger.
An enemy would obviously choose an agent that is believed to be highly infectious.
Agents that are known to cause frequent infections among laboratory workers such as those causing Q fever, tularemia, brucellosis, glanders, coccidioidomycosis, etc., belong in this category.
An agent would likely be selected which would possess sufficient viability and virulence stability to meet realistic minimal logistic requirements.
It is, obviously, a proper goal of research to improve on this property.
In this connection it should be capable of being disseminated without excessive destruction.
Moreover, it should not be so fastidious in its growth requirements as to make production on a militarily significant scale improbable.
An aggressor would use an agent against which there was a minimal naturally acquired or artificially induced immunity in a target population.
A solid immunity is the one effective circumstance whereby attack by a specific agent can be neutralized.
It must be remembered, however, that there are many agents for which there is no solid immunity and a partial or low-grade immunity may be broken by an appropriate dose of agent.
There is a broad spectrum of organisms from which selection for a specified military purpose might be made.
An enemy might choose an acutely debilitating microorganism, a chronic disease producer or one causing a high rate of lethality.
It is possible that certain mutational forms may be produced such as antibiotic resistant strains.
Mutants may also be developed with changes in biochemical properties that are of importance in identification.
All of these considerations are of critical importance in considering defense and medical management.
Biological agents are, of course, highly host-specific.
They do not destroy physical structures as is true of high explosives.
This may be of overriding importance in considering military objectives.
The question of epidemic disease merits some discussion.
Only a limited effort has been devoted to this problem.
Some of those who question the value of BW have assumed that the only potential would be in the establishment of epidemics.
They then point out that with our present lack of knowledge of all the factors concerned in the rise and fall of epidemics, it is unlikely that a planned episode could be initiated.
They argue further (and somewhat contradictorily) that our knowledge and resources in preventive medicine would make it possible to control such an outbreak of disease.
This is why this approach to BW defense has not been given major attention.
Our major problem is what an enemy might accomplish in an initial attack on a target.
This, of course, does not eliminate from consideration for this purpose agents that are associated naturally with epidemic disease.
A hypothetical example will illustrate this point.
Let us assume that it would be possible for an enemy to create an aerosol of the causative agent of epidemic typhus (Rickettsia prowazwki) over City A and that a large number of cases of typhus fever resulted therefrom.
No epidemic was initiated nor was one expected because the population in City A was not lousy.
Lousiness is a prerequisite for epidemic typhus.
In this case, then, the military objective was accomplished with an epidemic agent solely through the results secured in the initial attack.
This was done with full knowledge that there would be no epidemic.
On the other hand, a similar attack might have been made on City B whose population was known to be lousy.
One might expect some spread of the disease in this case resulting in increased effectiveness of the attack.
The major defensive problems are concerned with the possibility of overt military delivery of biological agents from appropriate disseminating devices.
It should be no more difficult to deliver such devices than other weapons.
The same delivery vehicles--whether they be airplanes, submarines or guided missiles--should be usable.
If it is possible for an enemy to put an atomic bomb on a city, it should be equally possible to put a cloud of biological agent over that city.
Biological agents are, moreover, suitable for delivery through enemy sabotage which imposes many problems in defense.
A few obvious target areas of great importance might be mentioned.
The air conditioning and ventilating systems of large buildings are subject to attack.
America is rapidly becoming a nation that uses processed, precooked and even predigested foods.
This is an enormous industry that is subject to sabotage.
One must include the preparation of soft drinks and the processing of milk and milk products.
Huge industries are involved also in the production of biological products, drugs and cosmetics which are liable to this type of attack.
A variety of techniques have been directed toward the isolation and study of blood group antibodies.
These include low-temperature ethanol (Cohn) fractionation, electrophoresis, ultracentrifugation and column chromatography on ion exchange celluloses.
Modifications of the last technique have been applied by several groups of investigators.
Abelson and Rawson, using a stepwise elution scheme, fractionated whole sera containing ABO and Rh antibodies on diethylaminoethyl DEAE cellulose and carboxymethyl cellulose.
Speer and coworkers, in a similar study of blood group antibodies of whole sera, used a series of gradients for elution from Aj.
Fahey and Morrison used a single, continuous gradient at constant pH for the fractionation of anti-A and anti-B agglutinins from preisolated **yg-globulin samples.
Materials and methods
samples.
Serum samples were obtained from normal group A, group B and group O donors.
Three of the anti-Rh sera used were taken from recently sensitized individuals.
One contained complete antibody and had a titer of 1: 512 in saline.
The second contained incomplete antibody and showed titers of 1: 256 in albumin and 1: 2048 by the indirect Coombs test.
The third, containing the mixed type of complete and incomplete antibodies, had titers of 1: 256 in saline, 1: 512 in albumin and 1: 1024 by the indirect Coombs test.
In addition one serum was obtained from a donor (R. E.) who had been sensitized 6 years previously.
This serum exhibited titers of 1: 16 in albumin and 1: 256 by the indirect Coombs test.
These antibody titers were determined by reaction with homozygous Af red cells.
Serological technique.
Anti-A and anti-B activities were determined in fractions from the sera of group A, group B or group O donors by the following tube agglutination methods.
One drop of each sample was added to one drop of a 2% suspension of group Af or group B red cells in a small Af test tube.
In several instances group O cells were also used as controls.
The red cells were used within 2 days after donation and were washed with large amounts of saline before use.
The mixtures of sample plus cell suspension were allowed to stand at room temperature for 1 Aj.
The tubes were then centrifuged at 1000 rpm for 1 min and examined macroscopically for agglutination.
For the albumin method, equal volumes of 30% bovine albumin, sample and 2% cells suspended in saline were allowed to stand at room temperature for 1 hr and then were centrifuged at 1000 rpm for 1 Aj.
All samples were tested by both the saline and albumin methods.
The activities of fractions of sera containing Rh antibodies were tested by the saline, albumin and indirect Coombs techniques.
Homozygous and heterozygous Af cells, Af and homozygous and heterozygous Af cells were used to test each sample;
however, in the interest of clarity and conciseness only the results obtained with homozygous Af and homozygous Af cells will be presented here.
The saline and albumin tests were performed as described for the ABO samples except that the mixture was incubated for 1 hr at 37-degrees-C before centrifugation.
The saline tubes were saved and used for the indirect Coombs test in the following manner.
The cells were washed three times with saline, anti-human serum was added, the cells were resuspended, and the mixture was centrifuged at 1000 rpm for 1 min and examined for agglutination.
The anti-human sera used were prepared by injecting whole human serum into rabbits.
Those antisera shown by immunoelectrophoresis to be of the broad spectrum type were selected for use in the present study.
The red cells for the Rh antibody tests were used within 3 days after drawing except for the Af cells, which had been glycerolized and stored at -20-degrees-C for approximately 1 year.
These cells were thawed at 37-degrees-C for 30 min and were deglycerolized by alternately centrifuging and mixing with descending concentrations of glycerol solutions (20, 18, 10, 8, 4 and 2%).
The cells were then washed three times with saline and resuspended to 2% in saline.
Chromatography.
Blood samples were allowed to clot at room temperature for 3 hr, centrifuged and the serum was removed.
The serum was measured volumetrically and subsequently dialyzed in the cold for at least 24 hr against three to four changes, approximately 750 ml each, of starting buffer.
This buffer, pH 8.6, was 0.005 M in Af and 0.039 M in tris(hydroxymethyl)-aminometha (Tris).
After dialysis the sample was centrifuged and the supernatant placed on a Af cm column of EEAE-cellulose equilibrated with starting buffer.
The DEAE-cellulose, containing 0.78 mEq of N/g, was prepared in our laboratory by the method of Peterson and Sober (7) from powdered cellulose, 100 - 230 mesh.
The small amount of insoluble material which precipitated during dialysis was suspended in approximately 5 ml of starting buffer, centrifuged, resuspended in 2.5 ml of isotonic saline and tested for antibody activity.
The chromatography was done at 6-degrees-C using gradient elution, essentially according to Sober and Peterson.
The deep concave gradient employed (fig. 2) was obtained with a nine-chambered gradient elution device (Varigrad, reference (8)) and has been described elsewhere.
The other, a shallow concave gradient (Fig. 1), was produced with a so-called cone-sphere apparatus, the cone being a 2-liter Erlenmeyer flask and the sphere, a 2-liter round-bottom flask.
Each initially contained 1700 ml of buffer;
in the sphere was starting buffer and in the cone was final buffer, 0.50 M in both Af and Tris, pH 4.1.
A flow rate of 72 Af was used and 12 ml fractions were collected.
Approximately 165 fractions were obtained from each column.
These were read at 280 m**ym in a Beckman model DU spectrophotometer and tested for antibody activity as described above.
Paper electrophoresis.
For protein identification, fractions from the column were concentrated by pervaporation against a stream of air at 5-degrees-C or by negative pressure dialysis in an apparatus which permitted simultaneous concentration of the protein and dialysis against isotonic saline.
During the latter procedure the temperature was maintained at 2-degrees-C by surrounding the apparatus with ice.
Because negative pressure dialysis gave better recovery of proteins, permitted detection of proteins concentrated from very dilute solutions and was a gentler procedure, it was used in all but the earliest experiments.
Paper electrophoresis was carried out on the concentrated samples in a Spinco model R cell using barbital buffer, pH 8.6, ionic strength 0.075, at room temperature on Whatman 3MM filter paper.
Five milliamperes/cell were applied for 18 hr, after which the strips were stained with bromphenol blue and densitometry was carried out using a Spinco Analytrol.
When paper electrophoresis was to be used for preparation, eight strips of a whole serum sample or a chromatographic fraction concentrated by negative pressure dialysis were run/chamber under the conditions described above.
At the end of the run, the strips in the third and sixth positions in each chamber were dried, stained for 1 hr, washed and dried, while the other strips were maintained in a horizontal position at 1-degree-C.
The unstained strips were then marked, using the stained ones as a guide, and cut transversely so as to separate the various protein bands.
The strip sections containing a given protein were pooled, eluted with 0.5 ml of isotonic saline, and the eluates were tested for antibody activity.
Ultracentrifugation.
Fractions from the column which were to be subjected to analytical ultracentrifugation were concentrated by negative pressure dialysis and dialyzed for 16 hr in the cold against at least 500 volumes of phosphate-buffered saline, pH 7.2, ionic strength 0.154.
They were then centrifuged at 59,780 Pm for 35 to 80 min at 20-degrees-C in a Spinco model E ultracentrifuge at a protein concentration of 1.00 to 1.25%.
Sedimentation coefficients were computed as Af values and relative amounts of the various components were calculated from the Schlieren patterns.
For preparative ultracentrifugation, fractions from the column were concentrated by negative pressure dialysis to volumes of 1 ml or less, transferred to cellulose tubes and diluted to 12 ml with isotonic saline.
Ultracentrifugation was then carried out in a Spinco model L ultracentrifuge at 40,000 rpm for 125 to 150 min, refrigeration being used throughout the run.
Successive 1-ml fractions were then drawn off with a hypodermic syringe, starting at the top of the tube, and tested for agglutinin activity.
Other methods will be described below.
Experimental and results
The insoluble material which precipitated during dialysis against starting buffer always showed intense agglutinin activity, regardless of the blood group of the donor.
These have been labeled Regions 1, 2, and 4, respectively, in Fig. 1.
The latter procedure gave rise to a small active protein peak (Region 1a) between Regions 1 and 2.
In 2 of 15 experiments on whole serum a region of agglutinin activity with intermediate anionic binding capacity was detected (Region 3, Fig. 1).
Moreover, after concentration using negative pressure dialysis, agglutinin activity could sometimes be detected in the region designated 2a (donors P. J., D. A., and J. F., Fig. 1).
Not all these regions exhibited equal agglutinating activity, as evidenced by titer and the extent of the active areas.
In all cases, most of the activity lay in the region of high anionic binding capacity.
This was particularly noticeable in group A and group B sera, in which cases activity in Regions 1 and 2 was usually not detectable without prior concentration and occasionally could not be detected at all.
There appeared to be no difference in the distribution of anti-A and anti-B activity in group O serum, though in two group O donors (J. F. and E. M.) only one type of agglutinin was found in the regions of low anionic binding capacity (Figs. 1 and 2).
Several samples of citrated plasma were fractionated in our laboratory by Method 6 of Cohn et al.
These fractions were tested for ABO agglutinin activity, using fractions from group AB plasma as a control.
As expected, most of the activity was found in Fraction Af, with slight activity seen in Fraction 4-1.
A sample of Fraction Af from group O plasma was dissolved in starting buffer, dialyzed against this buffer and subjected to chromatography using the gradient shown in Fig. 2.
Once again, both anti-A and anti-B activities were found in the insoluble material precipitated during dialysis.
Similarly, both types of antibodies were found in three regions of the chromatographic eluate, having extremely low, low, and high anionic binding capacity, respectively (Fig. 3).
Chromatography of whole sera revealed that the areas of Rh antibody activity were generally continuous and wide.
The incomplete antibody activity appeared in the early part of the chromatogram;
the complete, in the latter part.
The serum containing the mixed type of complete and incomplete antibodies showed activity in both regions (Fig. 1).
In all cases the activity against Af cells was spread over a wider area than that with Af cells, regardless of the type of test (saline, albumin, indirect Coombs) used for comparison.
The insoluble material resulting from dialysis against starting buffer always showed strong activity.
In fact agglutination of Af cells in saline could be produced by the insoluble material from sera containing only incomplete antibody activity.
This was later known to be the result of concentrating the minute amount of complete antibody found in these sera;
when the insoluble fraction was suspended in a volume of saline equal to that of the original serum sample, no complete antibody activity could be detected.
Apart from the honeybee, practically all bees and bumblebees hibernate in a state of torpor.
Occasionally, you may come across one or two bumblebees in the cold season, when you are turning over sods in your garden, but you have to be a really keen observer to see them at all.
They keep their wings and feet pressed tightly against their bodies, and in spite of their often colorful attire you may very well mistake them for lumps of dirt.
I must add at once that these animals are what we call queens, young females that have mated in the previous summer or autumn.
It is on them alone that the future of their race depends, for all their relatives (mothers, husbands, brothers, and unmated sisters) have perished with the arrival of the cold weather.
Even some of the queens will die before the winter is over, falling prey to enemies or disease.
The survivors emerge on some nice, sunny day in March or April, when the temperature is close to 50-degrees and there is not too much wind.
The blooms of Ribes and of the willow and sloe are the places where large numbers of our early insects will assemble: honeybees, bumblebees, and other wild bees, and also various kinds of flies.
It is a happy, buzzing crowd.
Each male willow catkin is composed of a large number of small flowers.
It is not difficult to see that the stamens of the catkin are always arranged in pairs, and that each individual flower is nothing but one such pair standing on a green, black-tipped little scale.
By scrutinizing the flowers, one can also notice that the scale bears one or two tiny warts.
Those are the nectaries or honey glands (Fig. 26, page 74).
The staminate willow catkins, then, provide their visitors with both nectar and pollen;
a marvelous arrangement, for it provides exactly what the bee queens need to make their beebread, a combination of honey and pollen with which the young of all species are fed.
The only exception to this is certain bees that have become parasites.
I will deal with these later on.
Quite often, honeybees form a majority on the willow catkins.
As we have already seen in the first chapter, bumblebees are bigger, hairier, and much more colorful than honeybees, exhibiting various combinations of black, yellow, white and orange.
Let us not try to key them out at this stage of the game, and let us just call them Bombus.
There must be several dozen species in the United States alone.
If you really insist on knowing their names, an excellent book on the North American species is Bumblebees And Their Ways by O. E. Plath.
If we manage to keep track of a Bombus queen after she has left her feeding place, we may discover the snug little hideout which she has fixed up for herself when she woke up from her winter sleep.
As befits a queen, a bumblebee female is rather choosy and may spend considerable time searching for a suitable nesting place.
Most species seem to prefer a ready-made hollow such as a deserted mouse nest, a bird house, or the hole made by a woodpecker;
some show a definite liking for making their nest in moss.
Once she has made up her mind, the queen starts out by constructing, in her chosen abode, a small floor of dried grass or some woolly material.
On this, she builds an egg compartment or egg cell which is filled with that famous pollen-and-nectar mixture called beebread.
She also builds one or two waxen cups which she fills with honey.
Then, a group of eggs is deposited in a cavity in the beebread loaf and the egg compartment is closed.
The queen afterward keeps incubating and guarding her eggs like a mother hen, taking a sip from time to time from the rather liquid honey in her honey pots.
When the larvae hatch, they feed on the beebread, although they also receive extra honey meals from their mother.
She continues to add to the pollen supply as needed.
The larvae, kept warm by the queen, are full grown in about ten days.
Each now makes a tough, papery cocoon and pupates.
After another two weeks, the first young emerge, four to eight small daughters that begin to play the role of worker bees, collecting pollen and nectar in the field and caring for the new young generation while the queen retires to a life of egg laying.
The first worker bees do not mate or lay eggs;
males and mating females do not emerge until later in the season.
The broods of workers that appear later tend to be bigger than the first ones, probably because they are better fed.
By the middle of the summer, many of the larvae apparently receive such a good diet that it is optimal, and it is then that young queens begin to appear.
Simultaneously, males or drones are produced, mostly from the unfertilized eggs of workers, although a few may be produced by the queen.
The young queens and drones leave the nest and mate, and after a short period of freedom, the fertilized young queens will begin to dig in for the winter.
It is an amazing fact that in some species this will happen while the summer is still in full swing, for instance, in August.
The temperature then is still very high.
At the old nest, the queen will in the early fall cease to lay the fertilized eggs that will produce females.
As a result, the proportion of males (which leave the nest) increases, and eventually the old colony will die out completely.
The nest itself, the structure that in some cases housed about 2,000 individuals when the season was at its peak, is now rapidly destroyed by the scavenging larvae of certain beetles and moths.
Not always, though, does the development of a bumblebee colony take place in the smooth fashion we have just described.
Some members of the bee family have become idlers, social parasites that live at the expense of their hardworking relatives.
Bumblebees can thus suffer severely from the onslaughts of Psithyrus, the cuckoo-bumblebee as it is called in some European countries.
Female individuals of Psithyrus look deceptively like the workers and queens of the bumblebees they victimize.
The one sure way to tell victim and villain apart is to examine the hind legs which in the case of the idler, Psithyrus, lack the pollen baskets--naturally!
The female parasite spends much time in her efforts to find a nest of her host.
When she succeeds, she usually manages to slip in unobtrusively, to deposit an egg on a completed loaf of beebread before the bumblebees seal the egg compartment.
The hosts never seem to recognize that something is amiss, so that the compartment afterward is sealed normally.
Thus, the larvae of the intruder can develop at the expense of the rightful inhabitants and the store of beebread.
Later on, they and the mother Psithyrus are fed by the Bombus workers.
Worse still, in a number of cases it has been claimed that the Psithyrus female kills the Bombus queen.
But let us return, after this gruesome interlude, to our willow catkins in the spring;
there are other wild bees that command our attention.
It is almost certain that some of these, usually a trifle smaller than the honeybees, are andrenas or mining bees.
There are about 200 different kinds of Andrena in Europe alone.
One of my favorites is A. armata, a species very common in England, where it is sometimes referred to as the lawn bee.
The females like to burrow in the short turf of well-kept lawns, where their little mounds of earth often appear by the hundreds.
Almost equal in size to a honeybee, A. armata is much more beautiful in color, at least in the female of the species: a rich, velvety, rusty red.
The males are much duller.
After having mated, an Andrena female digs a hole straight down into the ground, forming a burrow about the size of a lead pencil.
The bottom part of a burrow has a number of side tunnels or cells, each of which is provided with an egg plus a store of beebread.
The development of the Andrena larvae is very rapid, so that by the end of spring they have already pupated and become adults.
But they are still enclosed in their larval cells and remain there throughout the summer, fall, and winter.
Their appearance, next spring, coincides in an almost uncanny way with the flowering of their host plants.
In the Sacramento valley in California, for instance, it has been observed that there was not one day's difference between the emergence of the andrenas and the opening of the willow catkins.
This must be due to a completely identical response to the weather, in the plant and the animal.
After the male and female andrenas have mated, the cycle is repeated.
Although Andrena is gregarious, so that we may find hundreds and hundreds of burrows together, we must still call it a solitary bee.
Its life history is much simpler than that of the truly colonial bumblebees and can serve as an example of the life cycle of many other species.
After all, social life in the group of the bees is by no means general, although it certainly is a striking feature.
On the basis of its life history, we like to think that Andrena is more primitive than the bumblebees.
The way in which it transports its pollen is not so perfect, either.
It lacks pollen baskets and possesses only a large number of long, branched hairs on its legs, on which the pollen grains will collect.
Still Andrena will do a reasonably good job, so that an animal with a full pollen load looks like a gay little piece of yellow down floating in the wind.
Closely related to the andrenas are the nomias or alkali bees.
Nomia melanderi can be found in tremendous numbers in certain parts of the United States west of the Great Plains, for example, in Utah and central Washington.
In the United States Department of Agriculture's Yearbook Of Agriculture, 1952, which is devoted entirely to insects, George E. Bohart mentions a site in Utah which was estimated to contain 200,000 nesting females.
Often the burrows are only an inch or two apart, and the bee cities cover several acres.
The life history of the alkali bee is similar to that of Andrena, but the first activity of the adults does not take place until summer, and the individuals hibernate in the prepupal stage.
In most places, there are two generations a year, a second brood of adults appearing late in the summer.
I must plead guilty to a special sympathy for nomias.
This may just be pride in my adopted State of Washington, but certainly I love to visit their mound cities near Yakima and Prosser in July or August, when the bees are in their most active period.
The name alkali bee indicates that one has to look for them in rather inhospitable places.
Sometimes, although by no means always, these are indeed alkaline.
The thing is that these bees love a fine-grained soil that is moist;
yet the water in the ground should not be stagnant either.
They dislike dense vegetation.
Where does one find such conditions?
The best chance, of course, is offered by gently sloping terrain where the water remains close to the surface and where the air is dry, so that a high evaporation leaves salty deposits which permit only sparse plant growth.
Many other (probably nearly all) snakes at maturity are already more than half their final length.
Laurence M. Klauber put length at maturity at two thirds the ultimate length for some rattlesnakes, and Charles C. Carpenter's data on Michigan garter and ribbon snakes (Thamnophis) show that the smallest gravid females are more than half as long as the biggest adults.
Felix Kopstein states that when the snake reaches its maturity it has already reached about its maximal length, but goes on to cite the reticulate python as an exception, with maximum length approximately three times that at maturity.
It is hard to understand how he concluded that most snakes do not grow appreciably after attaining maturity;
he was working with species of Java, so perhaps some tropical snakes are unusual in this respect.
Certain individual giants recorded later did fail to show a reasonable difference after maturity, but it is impossible to know whether this is due to captive conditions.
Additional records of slow growth have been omitted.
It is possible to make a few generalizations about the six giants themselves.
There seems to be a rough correlation between the initial and ultimate lengths, starting with the smallest (boa constrictor) and ending with the largest (anaconda).
Data on the former are scanty, but there can be little doubt that the latter is sometimes born at a length greater than that of any of the others, thereby lending support to the belief that the anaconda does, indeed, attain the greatest length.
For four of the six (the anaconda and the amethystine python cannot be included for lack of data) there is also a correlation between size at maturity and maximum length, the boa constrictor being the smallest and the Indian python the next in size at the former stage.
Let us speculate a little on the maximum size of the anaconda.
If, in a certain part of the range, it starts life 1 foot longer than do any of the other (relatively large) giants, and reaches maturity at, let us guess, 18 inches longer than the others, a quadrupling of the maturity length would result in a maximum of (nearly) 40 feet.
When it comes to rate of early growth, the Indian python leads with a figure of about 3 feet 6 inches per year for the first two years, more or less.
The African rock python, a close second, is followed in turn by the reticulate python.
There are few data on the boa constrictor, those for the anaconda are unconvincing, and there is nothing at all on the amethystine python.
It seems likely that the Indian python comes out ahead because records of its growth have been made more carefully and frequently;
it responds exceptionally well to captivity and does not reach proportions that make it hard to keep.
I cannot make sense out of the figures for post maturity growth;
at best the annual increase appears to be a matter of inches rather than feet.
Until better records have been kept over longer periods of time and much more is known about the maximum dimensions, it will be wise to refrain from drawing conclusions.
It is often stated that the largest snakes require five years to attain maturity, but this apparently is an overestimation.
The best way to determine the correct figure (in captives) is by direct observation of pairs isolated from birth, a method that produced surprising results: maturing of a male Indian python in less than two years, his mate in less than three;
data on the boa constrictor about match this.
Another approach is to estimate from the rate of growth and the smallest size at maturity.
Results from this approach amply confirm the direct observations: about three years are required, there being a possible slight difference between males and females in the time required.
Only the amethystine python and the anaconda must be excluded for lack or paucity of data.
The following information on snakes varying greatly in size (but all with less than a 10-foot maximum) shows, when considered with the foregoing, that there is probably no correlation between the length of a snake and the time required for it to mature.
Oliver, in his summary of the habits of the snakes of the United States, could supply data on the maturing period for only three species in addition to the rattlers, which I shall consider separately.
These three were much alike: lined snake (Tropidoclonion), one year and nine months;
red-bellied snake (Storeria), two years;
cottonmouth (Ancistrodon), two years.
Klauber investigated the rattlesnakes carefully himself and also summarized what others have found.
He concluded that in the southern species, which are rapidly growing types, females mate at the age of two and a half and bear the first young when they are three.
Other herpetologists have ascertained that in the northern United States the prairie rattlesnake may not give first birth until it is four or even five years old, and that the young may be born every other year, rather than annually.
Carpenter's study showed that female common garter and ribbon snakes of Michigan mature at about the age of two.
Maximum length
Oversized monsters are never brought home either alive or preserved, and field measurements are obviously open to doubt because of the universal tendency to exaggerate dimensions.
Measurements of skins are of little value;
every snake hide is noticeably longer than its carcass and intentional stretching presents no difficulty to the unscrupulous explorer.
In spite of all the pitfalls, there is a certain amount of agreement on some of the giants.
The anaconda proves to be the fly in the ointment, but the reason for this is not clear;
the relatively wild conditions still found in tropical South America might be responsible.
There are three levels on which to treat the subject.
The first is the strictly scientific, which demands concrete proof and therefore may err on the conservative side by waiting for evidence in the flesh.
This approach rejects virtually all field measurements.
The next level attempts to weigh varied evidence and come to a balanced, sensible conclusion;
field measurements by experienced explorers are not rejected, and even reports of a less scientific nature are duly evaluated.
The third level leans on a belief that a lot of smoke means some fire.
The argument against this last approach is comparable to that which rejects stories about hoop snakes, about snakes that break themselves into many pieces and join up again, or even of ghosts that chase people out of graveyards;
the mere piling up of testimony does not prove, to the scientific mind, the existence of hoop snakes, joint snakes, or ghosts.
Bernard Heuvelmans also treats of the largest snakes, but on the third level, and is chiefly concerned with the anaconda.
He reasons that as anacondas 30 feet long are often found, some might be 38, and occasional monstrous freaks over 50.
He rejects dimensions of 70 feet and more.
His thirteenth chapter includes many exciting accounts of huge serpents with prodigious strength, but these seem to be given to complete his picture, not to be believed.
Detailed information on record lengths of the giants is given in the section that follows.
Growth of the six giants
Discussions of the giants one by one will include, as far as possible, data on these aspects of growth: size at which life is started and at which sexual maturity is reached;
time required to reach maturity;
rate of growth both before and after this crucial stage;
and maximum length, with confirmation or amplification of Oliver's figures.
Definite information on the growth of senile individuals is lacking.
Anaconda:
At birth, this species varies considerably in size.
A brood of twenty-eight born at Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, ranged in length from 22 to 33-1/2 inches and averaged 29 inches.
Lawrence E. Griffin gives measurements of nineteen young anacondas, presumably members of a brood, from South America;
the extreme measurements of these fall between the lower limit of the Brookfield brood and its average.
Raymond L. Ditmars had two broods that averaged 27 inches.
R. R. Mole and F. W. Urich give approximately 20 inches as the average length of a brood of thirty from the region of the Orinoco estuaries.
William Beebe reports 26 inches and 2.4 ounces (this snake must have been emaciated) for the length and the weight of a young anaconda from British Guiana.
In contrast, Ditmars recorded the average length of seventy-two young of a 19-foot female as 38 inches, and four young were born in London at a length of 35 or 36 inches and a weight of from 14 to 16 ounces.
Beebe had a 3-foot anaconda that weighed only 9.8 ounces.
A difference between subspecies might explain the great range in size.
I have little information on the anaconda's rate of growth.
Hans Schweizer had one that increased from 19-1/2 inches to 5 feet 3 inches in five years, and J. J. Quelch records a growth of from less than 4 feet to nearly 10 in about six years.
It is very unlikely that either of these anacondas was growing at a normal rate.
In 1948, Afranio Do Amaral, the noted Brazilian herpetologist, wrote a technical paper on the giant snakes.
He concluded that the anaconda's maximum length is 12 or 13 (perhaps 14) meters, which would approximate from 39 to 42 feet (14 meters is slightly less than 46 feet).
Thus, his estimate lies between Oliver's suggestion of at least 37 feet and the 50-foot monstrous freaks intimated by Heuvelmans.
The most convincing recent measurement of an anaconda was made in eastern Colombia by Roberto Lamon, a petroleum geologist of the Richmond Oil Company, and reported in 1944 by Emmett R. Dunn.
However, as a field measurement, it is open to question.
Oliver's 37-1/2 feet is partly based on this report and can be accepted as probable.
However, many herpetologists remain skeptical and would prefer a tentative maximum of about 30 feet.
It is possible that especially large anacondas will prove to belong to subspecies limited to a small area.
In snakes difference in size is a common characteristic of subspecies.
Boa constrictor:
A Colombian female's brood of sixteen boa constrictors born in the Staten Island Zoo averaged 20 inches.
This birth length seems to be typical.
When some thirteen records of newly and recently born individuals are collated, little or no correlation between length and distribution can be detected.
The range is from 14 to 25 inches;
the former figure is based on a somewhat unusual birth of four by a Central American female (see chapter on Laying, Brooding, Hatching, and Birth), the latter on a normal newly born individual.
However, as so many of the records are not certainly based on newborn snakes, these data must be taken tentatively;
final conclusions will have to await the measurements of broods from definite localities.
Alphonse R. Hoge's measurements of several very young specimens from Brazil suggest that at birth the female is slightly larger than the male.
I have surprisingly little information on the size and age at maturity.
Carl Kauffeld has written to me of sexual activity in February 1943 of young born in March 1940.
One female, collected on an island off the coast of Nicaragua, was gravid and measured 4 feet 8 inches from snout to vent (her tail should be between 6 and 7 inches long).
The female from Central America which gave birth to four was only 3 feet 11 inches long.
What data there are on growth indicate considerable variation in rate;
unfortunately, no one has kept complete records of one individual, whereas many have been made for a very short period of time.
The results are too varied to allow generalization.
The bronchus and pulmonary artery in this lung type maintain a close relationship throughout.
The pulmonary vein, however, without the limiting supportive tissue septa as in type 1, follows a more direct path to the hilum and does not maintain this close relationship (figs. 8, 22).
Another marked difference is noted here.
The pulmonary artery, in addition to supplying the distal portion of the respiratory bronchiole, the alveolar duct, and the alveoli, continues on and directly supplies the thin pleura (fig. 8).
The bronchial artery, except for a small number of short branches in the hilum, contributes none of the pleural blood supply.
It does, as in type 1, supply the hilar lymph nodes, the pulmonary artery, the pulmonary vein, the bronchi, and the bronchioles--terminating in a common capillary bed with the pulmonary artery at the level of the respiratory bronchiole.
No bronchial artery-pulmonary artery anastomoses were noted in this group.
Lung type 3 ((fig. 3) is to some degree a composite of types 1, and 2.
It is characterized by the presence of incompletely developed secondary lobules;
well defined, but haphazardly arranged, interlobular septa and a thick, remarkably vascular pleura (fig. 9).
The most distal airways are similar to those found in type 1, being composed of numerous, apparently true terminal bronchioles and occasional, poorly developed respiratory bronchioles (figs. 14, 15).
In this instance, because of incomplete septation, the secondary lobule does not constitute in itself what appears to be a small individual lung as in type 1.
Air-drifts from one area to another are, therefore, conceivable.
Distally the bronchus is situated between a pulmonary artery on one side and a pulmonary vein on the other, as in type 1 ((fig. 24).
This relationship, however, is not maintained centrally.
Here the pulmonary vein, as in type 2, is noted to draw away from the bronchus, and to follow a more direct, independent course to the hilum (figs. 23, 24).
The bronchial artery in its course and distribution differs somewhat from that found in other mammals.
As seen in types 1, and 2, it supplies the hilar lymph nodes, vasa vasorum to the pulmonary artery and vein, the bronchi and the terminal bronchioles.
As in type 1, it provides arterial blood to the interlobular septa, and an extremely rich anastomotic pleural supply is seen (figs. 9, 10).
This pleural supply is derived both from hilar and interlobular bronchial artery branches.
Such a dual derivation was strikingly demonstrated during the injection process where initial filling would be noted to occur in several isolated pleural vessels at once.
Some of these were obviously filling from interlobular branches of the bronchial arteries while others were filling from direct hilar branches following along the pleural surface.
With completion of filling, net-like anastomoses were noted to be present between these separately derived branches.
An unusual increase in the number of bronchial arteries present within the substance of the lung was noted.
This was accounted for primarily by the presence of a bronchial artery closely following the pulmonary artery.
The diameter of this bronchial artery was much too large for it to be a mere vasa vasorum (figs. 16, 23, 24).
In distal regions its diameter would be one-fourth to one-fifth that of the pulmonary artery.
This vessel could be followed to the parenchyma where it directly provided bronchial arterial blood to the alveolar capillary bed (figs. 17, 18).
Also three other direct pathways of alveolar bronchial arterial supply were noted: via the pleura;
through the interlobular septa;
and along the terminal bronchiole (figs. 14, 17, 18, 19).
One bronchial arteriolar-pulmonary arteriolar anastomosis was noted at the terminal bronchiolar level (fig. 26).
Discussion
It is evident that many marked and striking differences exist between lungs when an inter-species comparison is made.
The significance of these differences has not been studied nor has the existence of corresponding physiologic differences been determined.
However, the dynamics of airflow, from morphologic considerations alone, may conceivably be different in the monkey than in the horse.
The volume and, perhaps, even the characteristics of bronchial arterial blood flow might be different in the dog than in the horse.
Also, interlobular air drifts may be all but nonexistent in the cow;
probably occur in the horse much as in the human being;
and, in contrast, are present to a relatively immense degree on a segmental basis in the dog where lobules are absent (Van Allen and Lindskog, '31).
A reason for such wide variation in the pulmonary morphology is entirely lacking at present.
Within certain wide limits anatomy dictates function and, if one is permitted to speculate, potential pathology should be included in this statement as well.
One might also wonder if monkeys are capable of developing bronchiolitis as we know it in man or the horse.
In addition, it would be difficult to imagine chronic generalized emphysema occurring in a cow, considering its marked lobular development but, conversely, not difficult to imagine this occurring in the horse or the dog.
Anatomically, the horse lung appears to be remarkably like that of man, insofar as this can be ascertained from comparison of our findings in the horse with those of others (Birnbaum, '54) in the human being.
The only area in which one might find major disagreement in this matter is in regard to the alveolar distribution of the bronchial arteries.
As early as 1858, Le Fort claimed an alveolar distribution of the bronchial arteries in human beings.
In 1951, this was reaffirmed by Cudkowicz.
The opposition to this point of view has its staunchest support in the work of Miller ('50).
Apparently, however, Miller has relied heavily on the anatomy in dogs and cats, and he has been criticized for using pathologic human material in his normal study (Loosli, '38).
'25).
The meaning of this variation in distribution of the bronchial artery as found in the horse is not clear.
However, this artery is known to be a nutrient vessel with a distribution primarily to the proximal airways and supportive tissues of the lung.
The alveoli and respiratory bronchioles are primarily diffusing tissues.
Theoretically, they are capable of extracting their required oxygen either from the surrounding air (Ghoreyeb and Karsner, '13) or from pulmonary arterial blood (Comroe, '58).
Therefore, an explanation of this alveolar bronchial artery supply might be the nutritive requirement of an increased amount of supportive tissue, not primarily diffusing in nature, in the region of the alveolus.
If this be true, the possibility exists that an occlusive lesion of the bronchial arteries might cause widespread degeneration of supportive tissue similar to that seen in generalized emphysema.
One would not expect such an event to occur in animals possessing lungs of types 1, or 2.
The presence of normally occurring bronchial artery-pulmonary artery anastomoses was first noted in 1721 by Ruysch, and thereafter by many others.
Nakamura ('58), Verloop ('48), Marchand, Gilroy and Watson ('50), Von Hayek ('53), and Tobin ('52) have all claimed their normal but relatively nonfunctional existence in the human being.
Miller ('50) is the principal antagonist of this viewpoint.
Berry, Brailsford and Daly in 1931 and Nakamura in 1958 reaffirmed this.
Our own studies in which bronchial artery-pulmonary artery anastomoses were demonstrated, were accomplished by injecting the bronchial artery first with no pressure on the pulmonary artery or vein, and then by injecting the pulmonary artery and vein afterwards.
It is distinctly possible, therefore, that simultaneous pressures in all three vessels would have rendered the shunts inoperable and hence, uninjectable.
This viewpoint is further supported by Verloop's ('48) demonstration of thickened bronchial artery and arteriolar muscular coats which are capable of acting as valves.
In other words, the anastomoses between the bronchial artery and pulmonary artery should be considered as functional or demand shunts.
In addition, little work has been done on a comparative basis in regard to the normal existence of bronchial artery-pulmonary artery anastomoses.
Verloop ('48;
'49) found these shunts in the human being but was unable to find them in rats.
Ellis, Grindlay and Edwards ('52) also were unable to find them in rats.
Nakamura ('58) was unable to demonstrate their existence, either by anatomic or physiologic methods, in dogs.
The possibility that the absence or presence of these shunts is species-dependent is therefore inferred.
Certainly, the mere fact of failing to demonstrate them in one or another species does not conclusively deny their existence in that species.
It is, however, highly suggestive and agrees well with our own findings in which we also failed to demonstrate normally occurring bronchial artery-pulmonary artery shunts in certain species, especially the dog.
In conclusion, these findings suggest the need for a comparative physiology, pathology, and histology of mammalian lungs.
In addition, a detailed interspecies survey of the incidence of generalized pulmonary emphysema in mammals would be interesting and pertinent.
Also, for the present, great caution should be exercised in the choice of an experimental animal for pulmonary studies if they are to be applied to man.
This is especially so if the dog, cat or monkey are to be used, in view of their marked anatomical differences from man.
Finally, it is suggested that in many respects the horse lung may be anatomically more comparable to that of the human than any other presently known species.
Summary
The main subgross anatomical features of the lungs of various mammals are presented.
A tabulation of these features permits the lungs to be grouped into three distinctive subgross types.
Type 1, is represented by the cow, sheep, and pig;
type 2, by the dog, cat, and monkey;
type 3, by the horse.
Lobularity is extremely well developed in type 1;
absent in type 2;
imperfectly developed in type 3.
The pleura and interlobular septa are thick in types 1 and 3.
The pleura is extremely thin in type 2 and septa are absent.
Arterial supply to the pleura in types 1 and 3 is provided by the bronchial artery, and in type 2, by the pulmonary artery.
In types 1, 2 and 3 the bronchial artery terminates in a capillary bed shared in common with the pulmonary artery at the level of the distal bronchiole.
In type 3 the bronchial artery also provides blood directly to the alveolar capillary bed.
True terminal bronchioles comprise the most frequent form taken by the distal airways in types 1 and 3, although small numbers of poorly developed respiratory bronchioles are present.
Well developed respiratory bronchioles, on the other hand, appear to be the only form taken by the distal airways in type 2.
In type 1 the pulmonary vein closely follows the course of the bronchus and the pulmonary artery from the periphery to the hilum.
This may be due to the heavy interlobular connective tissue barriers present.
In type 3, this general relationship is maintained peripherally but not centrally where the pulmonary vein follows a more independent path to the hilum as is the case throughout the lung in type 2.
Some of the features of the top portions of Figure 1 and Figure 2 were mentioned in discussing Table 1.
First, the Onset Profile spreads across approximately 12 years for boys and 10 years for girls.
In contrast, 20 of the 21 lines in the Completion Profile (excluding center 5 for boys and 4 for girls) are bunched and extend over a much shorter period, approximately 30 months for boys and 40 months for girls.
The Maturity Chart for each sex demonstrates clearly that Onset is a phenomenon of infancy and early childhood whereas Completion is a phenomenon of the later portion of adolescence.
Second, for both sexes, the 21 transverse lines in the Onset Profile vary more in individual spread than those in the Completion Profile.
Although the standard deviation values on which spread of the lines is based are relatively larger for those centers which begin to ossify early (Table 1), there are considerable differences in this value between centers having the closely timed Onsets.
Third, the process of calcification is seen to begin later and to continue much longer for these boys than for the girls, a fact which confirms data for other groups of children.
The Onset Profile and Completion Profile are constructed to serve as norms for children.
It is convenient to classify a child's onset ages and completion ages as advanced, moderate (modal), or delayed according to whether the child's age equivalent dots appeared to the left of, upon, or to the right of the appropriate short transverse line.
When a dot appears close to the end of the transverse line, the moderate rating may be further classified according to the position of the dot with respect to the vertical marking denoting the mean age.
Such classifications may be called somewhat advanced or somewhat delayed, as the case may be, reserving moderate for dots upon or close to the mean.
In the lower portion of each Chart, the Skeletal Age (Hand) of boy 34 and girl 2 may be similarly classified.
There the middle one of the three curves denotes mean Skeletal Age for the Maturity Series boys and girls.
The upper curve denotes the mean plus one standard deviation, and the lower curve represents the mean minus one standard deviation.
Thus, a child's Skeletal Age dots may be classified as advanced when they appear above the middle curve, moderate when they appear immediately above or below the middle curve, and delayed when they appear below the lower curve.
To summarize the purpose of the Skeletal Maturity Chart: each contains two kinds of skeletal maturity norms which show two quite different methods of depicting developmental level of growth centers.
First, the upper portion requires series of films for every child, consisting of those from Hand, Elbow, Shoulder, Knee, and Foot.
The lower portion necessitates only films of Hand.
Second, the upper portion permits comparison of maturity levels of an equal number of growth centers from the long, short, and round bones of the five regions.
The lower portion permits comparison of maturity levels of short and round bones predominantly, since only two long bones are included in Hand and Wrist as a region.
Third, the upper portion deals with only two indicators of developmental level, Onset and Completion.
The lower portion utilizes the full complement of intermediate maturity indicators of each Hand center as well as their Onset and Completion.
Fourth, the two indicators are for the most part widely separated chronologically, with the extensive age gap occurring during childhood for all but one growth center.
The lower portion provides a rating at any stage between infancy and adulthood.
Onsets, Completions, and Skeletal Ages (Hand) of boy 34 and girl 2 may be directly compared and classified, using only those Skeletal Ages which appear immediately below the Onset Profile and the Completion Profile.
It may be assumed that differences in ratings due to selection of growth centers from specific regions of the body will be small, according to existing tables of onset age and completion age for centers throughout the body.
Accordingly, maturity level ratings by means of the upper portion and lower portion of the Chart, respectively, should be somewhat similar since Skeletal Age assessments are dependent upon Onsets during infancy and upon Completions during adolescence.
It is clear that there are some differences in the ratings, but there is substantial agreement.
Since a Skeletal Age rating can be made at any age during growth, from Elbow, Shoulder, Knee, or Foot as well as Hand, it seems to be the method of choice when one wishes to study most aspects of skeletal developmental progress during childhood.
As stated earlier in the paper, Onsets and Completions--particularly the former--provide a different tool or indicator of expectancy in osseous development, each within a limited age period.
Such an indicator, or indicators, are needed as means of recognizing specific periods of delay in skeletal developmental progress.
It was stated earlier that one purpose of this study was to extend the analysis of variability of Onset and Completion in each of the 21 growth centers somewhat beyond that provided by the data in Tables 1 and 2.
As one approach to doing this, Figures 3 and 4 have be constructed from the mean ages and the individual onset and completion ages for boy 34 and girl 2.
The differences between onset age and completion age with respect to the corresponding mean age have been brought into juxtaposition by means of a series of arrows.
The data for boy 34 appear in Figure 3, and for girl 2 in Figure 4.
The numbering system used in Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 1 and 2 was continued for the 21 growth centers.
The dot on one end of each arrow indicates extent of difference in months between the child's onset age and the corresponding mean age for the growth center.
The tip of the arrow represents extent of difference between the child's completion age and the corresponding mean age for the growth center.
Thus, the alignment of the dots and tips, respectively, indicate individual variability of the 21 growth centers of each child with respect to the mean values for these boys and girls.
The direction in which the arrow points shows how the maturity level of the growth center was changed at Completion from the level at Onset.
When the dot and tip coincide, the classification used in this paper is Same schedule.
The difference between the sequence of Onset of ossification for the sexes governs the numbering sequence in Figures 3 and 4.
This difference is readily clarified by referring to Table 1.
For example, arrow 17 in Figure 3 portrays the proximal radial epiphysis for boy 34, whereas the same epiphysis for girl 2 is portrayed by arrow 18 in Figure 4.
For the boy, this epiphysis was markedly delayed at Onset but near the mean at Completion.
Thus, the Span of its ossification was shortened and the center's ability to catch up in ossification is demonstrated.
In contrast, for the girl the epiphysis was slightly advanced at Onset and delayed at Completion.
Obviously, the slowing for her may have occurred at any point between Onset and Completion.
The Skeletal Age curve in the lower portion of Figure 2 shows that slowing may have occurred for her during the prepubescent period.
Length of the shaft of these arrows may be evaluated according to the standard deviation values for each center in Table 1.
Figures 5 and 6 are examples of our method of analyzing the results for each growth center.
Forty other figures similar to 5 and 6 and the original data used in the construction of all figures and tables in this monograph have been included in the Appendix.
The principles used in making each arrow for Figures 3 and 4 were applied to the construction of Figures 5 and 6 as well as all figures in the Appendix.
Its Completion thus becomes one of the convenient maturity indicators to include in studies of growth, dietary patterns, and health during adolescence.
The following summary, based on Figures 5 and 6, is an example of one way of interpreting the 42 figures constructed from onset ages and completion ages of individual children with respect to the appropriate mean age for each growth center.
At the top of Figure 5, for example, the Onset range and Completion range lines for the chosen growth center have been drawn for girls according to their mean and standard deviation values in Table 1.
The 34 arrows, denoting onset age plus completion age deviations, have been arrayed in an Onset sequence which begins with girl 18 who had the earliest Onset of the 34 girls.
The growth center depicted here, in the distal phalanx of the second finger, is listed as the fifth of those in the seven short bones.
The mean onset age was 25.3 months (Table 1), and the average Span of the osseous stage was 133 months.
The correlation (Table 2) between onset age and completion age was -.50, and that between onset age and Span was -.10.
Accordingly, girls 31, 29, 33, 21, 26, 13, 3, 4, 14, 32, 24, 25, 34, 23, 6, 15, 22, and 16 may be said to have the same schedule at Onset and Completion.
It seems clear, from the counter-balanced shape of the series of arrows in Figure 5 that there was about an equal number of early and late Onsets and Completions for the 34 girls.
Accordingly, if epiphyseal-diaphyseal fusion occurs in this phalanx near menarche, early and late menarches might have been forecast rather precisely at the time of Onset of ossification for the 18 girls with same schedule.
As an example of the interpretation of an arrow in the figure which exceeds four months in shaft length in conjunction with its position in the figure: girl 2 had a delayed Onset and further delayed Completion.
It is of interest that her menarche was somewhat later than the average for the girls in this group.
A similar analysis of Figure 6 for the 34 boys would necessitate quite a different conclusion about the predictive value of onset age in forecasting their attainment of the pubescent stage.
Boys 32, 23, 31, 17, 30, 19, and 24 had same schedule at Onset and Completion;
thus early forecasting of the pubescent stage would appear possible for only seven boys.
Boy 34, like girl 2, did not have same schedule;
his arrow crosses the line denoting the mean.
The dot on his arrow indicates early Onset and the tip indicates relatively later Completion.
After the 42 figures had been drawn like Figures 5 and 6, classifications of the onset ages and completion ages were summarized from them.
Interestingly enough, the effect of the digitalis glycosides is inhibited by a high concentration of potassium in the incubation medium and is enhanced by the absence of potassium (Wolff, 1960).
Organification of iodine
The precise mechanism for organification of iodine in the thyroid is not as yet completely understood.
However, the formation of organically bound iodine, mainly mono-iodotyrosine, can be accomplished in cell-free systems.
In the absence of additions to the homogenate, the product formed is an iodinated particulate protein (Fawcett and Kirkwood, 1953;
Taurog, Potter and Chaikoff, 1955;
Taurog, Potter, Tong, and Chaikoff, 1956;
Serif and Kirkwood, 1958;
De Groot and Carvalho, 1960).
This iodoprotein does not appear to be the same as what is normally present in the thyroid, and there is no evidence so far that thyroglobulin can be iodinated in vitro by cell-free systems.
In addition, the iodoamino acid formed in largest quantity in the intact thyroid is di-iodotyrosine.
If tyrosine and a system generating hydrogen peroxide are added to a cell-free homogenate of the thyroid, large quantities of free mono-iodotyrosine can be formed (Alexander, 1959).
It is not clear whether this system bears any resemblance to the in vivo iodinating mechanism, and a system generating peroxide has not been identified in thyroid tissue.
On chemical grounds it seems most likely that iodide is first converted to Af and then to Af as the active iodinating species.
In the thyroid gland it appears that proteins (chiefly thyroglobulin) are iodinated and that free tyrosine and thyronine are not iodinated.
Iodination of tyrosine, however, is not enough for the synthesis of hormone.
The mono- and di-iodotyrosine must be coupled to form tri-iodothyronine and thyroxine.
The mechanism of this coupling has been studied in some detail with non-enzymatic systems in vitro and can be simulated by certain di-iodotyrosine analogues (Pitt-Rivers and James, 1958).
There is so far no evidence to indicate conclusively that this coupling is under enzymatic control.
The chemical nature of the iodocompounds is discussed below (pp. 76 et seq.).
Thyroglobulin synthesis
Little is known of the synthetic mechanisms for formation of thyroglobulin.
Its synthesis has not been demonstrated in cell-free systems, nor has its synthesis by systems with intact thyroid cells in vitro been unequivocally proven.
Similar findings have been noted in a patient with congenital absence of the organification enzymes, whose thyroid tissue could only concentrate iodide.
In addition, depending on availability of dietary iodine, thyroglobulin may contain varying quantities of iodine.
Secretion
Since the circulating thyroid hormones are the amino acids thyroxine and tri-iodothyronine (cf. Section C), it is clear that some mechanism must exist in the thyroid gland for their release from proteins before secretion.
The presence of several proteases and peptidases has been demonstrated in the thyroid.
One of the proteases has pH optimum of about 3.7 and another of about 5.7 (McQuillan, Stanley and Trikojus, 1954;
Alpers, Robbins and Rall, 1955).
The finding that the concentration of one of these proteases is increased in thyroid glands from TSH-treated animals suggests that this protease may be active in vivo.
There is no conclusive evidence yet that either of the proteases has been prepared in highly purified form nor is their specificity known.
A study of their activity on thyroglobulin has shown that thyroxine is not preferentially released and that the degradation proceeds stepwise with the formation of macromolecular intermediates (Alpers, Petermann and Rall, 1956).
Besides proteolytic enzymes the thyroid possesses de-iodinating enzymes.
A microsomal de-iodinase with a pH optimum of around 8, and requiring reduced triphosphopyridine nucleotide for activity, has been identified in the thyroid (Stanbury, 1957).
This de-iodinating enzyme is effective against mono- and di-iodotyrosine, but does not de-iodinate thyroxine or tri-iodothyronine.
It is assumed that the iodine released from the iodotyrosines remains in the iodide pool of the thyroid, where it is oxidised and re-incorporated into thyroglobulin.
The thyroxine and tri-iodothyronine released by proteolysis and so escaping de-iodination presumably diffuse into the blood stream.
It has been shown that thyroglobulin binds thyroxine, but the binding does not appear to be particularly strong.
It has been suggested that the plasma thyroxine-binding proteins, which have an extremely high affinity for thyroxine, compete with thyroglobulin for thyroxine (Ingbar and Freinkel, 1957).
Antithyroid drugs
Antithyroid drugs are of two general types.
One type has a small univalent anion of the thiocyanate-perchlorate-fluoro type.
This ion inhibits thyroid hormone synthesis by interfering with iodide concentration in the thyroid.
It does not appear to affect the iodinating mechanism as such.
The other group of antithyroid agents or drugs is typified by thiouracil.
These drugs have no effect on the iodide concentrating mechanism, but they inhibit organification.
The mechanism of action of these drugs has not been completely worked out, but certain of them appear to act by reducing the oxidised form of iodine before it can iodinate thyroglobulin (Astwood, 1954).
On the other hand, there are a few antithyroid drugs of this same general type, such as resorcinol, possessing no reducing activity and possibly acting through formation of a complex with molecular iodine.
Any of the antithyroid drugs, of either type, if given in large enough doses for a long period of time will cause goitre, owing to inhibition of thyroid hormone synthesis, with production of hypothyroidism.
The anterior lobe of the pituitary then responds by an increased output of TSH, causing the thyroid to enlarge.
The effect of drugs that act on the iodide-concentrating mechanism can be counteracted by addition of relatively large amounts of iodine to the diet.
The antithyroid drugs of the thiouracil type, however, are not antagonised by such means.
Besides those of the thiouracil and resorcinol types, certain antithyroid drugs have been found in naturally occurring foods.
The most conclusively identified is L-5-vinyl-2-thio-oxazolidone, which was isolated from rutabaga (Greer, 1950).
It is presumed to occur in other members of the Brassica family.
There is some evidence that naturally occurring goitrogens may play a role in the development of goitre, particularly in Tasmania and Australia (Clements and Wishart, 1956).
There it seems that the goitrogen ingested by dairy animals is itself inactive but is converted in the animal to an active goitrogen, which is then secreted in the milk.
Dietary influences
Besides the presence of goitrogens in the diet, the level of iodine itself in the diet plays a major role in governing the activity of the thyroid gland.
In the experimental animal and in man gross deficiency in dietary iodine causes thyroid hyperplasia, hypertrophy and increased thyroid activity (Money, Rall and Rawson, 1952;
Stanbury, Brownell, Riggs, Perinetti, Itoiz, and Del Castillo, 1954).
In man the normal level of iodine in the diet and the level necessary to prevent development of goitre is about 100 **ymg per day.
With lower levels, thyroid hypertrophy and increased thyroid blood-flow enable the thyroid to accumulate a larger proportion of the daily intake of iodine.
Further, the gland is able to re-use a larger fraction of the thyroid hormone de-iodinated peripherally.
In the presence of a low iodine intake, thyroglobulin labelled in vivo with Af is found to contain more mono-iodotyrosine than normal, the amounts of di-iodotyrosine and iodothyronines being correspondingly reduced.
This appears to result from both a reduced amount of the iodine substrate and a more rapid secretion of newly iodinated thyroglobulin.
If the deficiency persists long enough, it is reasonable to suppose that the Af label will reflect the Af distribution in the thyroglobulin.
Similar results might be expected from the influence of drugs or pathological conditions that limit iodide trapping, or organification, or accelerate thyroglobulin proteolysis.
The thyroid-stimulating hormone
The name thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) has been given to a substance found in the anterior pituitary gland of all species of animal so tested for its presence.
The hormone has also been called thyrotrophin or thyrotrophic hormone.
Here we shall restrict discussion to those methods that appear sufficiently sensitive and precise for determining the concentration of TSH in blood.
Brown (1959) has reviewed generally the various methods of assaying TSH, and the reader is referred to her paper for further information on the subject.
Chemical constitution and physical properties of pituitary tsh
As long ago as 1851 it was pointed out by Niepce (1851) that there is a connection between the pituitary and the thyroid.
This connection was clarified by Smith and Smith (1922), who showed that saline extracts of fresh bovine pituitary glands could re-activate the atrophied thyroids of hypophysectomised tadpoles.
The first attempts to isolate TSH came a decade later, when Janssen and Loeser (1931) used trichloroacetic acid to separate the soluble TSH from insoluble impurities.
After their work other investigators applied salt-fractionation techniques to the problem, as well as fractionation with organic solvents, such as acetone.
Albert (1949) has concluded that the most active preparations of TSH made during this period, from 1931 to 1945, were probably about 100 to 300 times as potent as the starting material.
Much of this work has been reviewed by White (1944) and by Albert (1949).
Developments up to about 1957 have been discussed by Sonenberg (1958).
In the last few years, the application of chromatographic and other modern techniques to the problem of isolating TSH has led to further purification (Bates and Condliffe, 1960;
Pierce, Carsten and Wynston, 1960).
The most active preparations obtained by these two groups of investigators appear to be similar in potency, composition and physical properties.
Two problems present themselves in considering any hormone in blood.
First, is the circulating form of the hormone the same as that found in the gland where it is synthesised and stored?
Second, what is its concentration in normal circumstances and in what circumstances will this concentration depart from the normal level and in which direction?
It is therefore necessary to consider the properties of pituitary TSH if the fragmentary chemical information about blood TSH is to be discussed rationally.
The importance of knowing in what chemical forms the hormone may exist is accentuated by the recent observation that there exists an abnormally long-acting TSH in blood drawn from many thyrotoxic patients (Adams, 1958).
In evaluating data on the concentration of TSH in blood, one must examine critically the bio-assay methods used to obtain them.
The introduction of the United States Pharmacopoeia reference standard in 1952 and the redefinition and equating of the USP and international units of thyroid-stimulating activity have made it possible to compare results published by different investigators since that time.
We should like to re-emphasise the importance of stating results solely in terms of international units of TSH activity and of avoiding the re-introduction of biological units.
For the most part, this discussion will be confined to results obtained since the introduction of the reference standard.
Standard preparations and units of thyroid-stimulating activity
The international unit (u.), adopted to make possible the comparison of results from different laboratories (Mussett and Perry, 1955), has been defined as the amount of activity present in 13.5 mg of the International Standard Preparation.
The international unit is equipotent with the USP unit adopted in 1952, which was defined as the amount of activity present in 20 mg of the USP reference substance.
Introduction
Muscle weakness is now recognized as an uncommon though serious complication of steroid therapy, with most of the synthetic adrenal corticosteroids in clinical use.
Although biopsies have shown structural changes in some of the reported cases of steroid-induced weakness, this case provides the only example known to us in which necropsy afforded the opportunity for extensive study of multiple muscle groups.
The case described in this paper is that of an older man who developed disabling muscular weakness while receiving a variety of steroids for a refractory anemia.
Report of case
This patient was a 65-year-old white male accountant who entered the New York Hospital for his fourth and terminal admission on June 26, 1959, because of disabling weakness and general debility.
In 1953 the patient developed an unexplained anemia for which 15 blood transfusions were given over a period of 4 years.
Splenomegaly was first noted in 1956, and a sternal marrow biopsy at that time showed scattered foci of fibrosis suggestive of myelofibrosis.
No additional transfusions were necessary after the institution of prednisone in July, 1957, in an initial dose of 40 mg. daily with gradual tapering to 10 mg. daily.
This medication was continued until February, 1958.
In February, 1958, the patient suffered a myocardial infarction complicated by pulmonary edema.
Additional findings at this time included cardiomegaly, peripheral arteriosclerosis obliterans, and cholelithiasis.
The hemoglobin was 11.6 gm..
Therapy included digitalization and anticoagulation.
Later, chlorothiazide and salt restriction became necessary to control the edema of chronic congestive failure.
Because of increasing anemia, triamcinolone, 8 mg. daily, was started on Feb. 23, 1958, and was continued until July, 1958.
In September, 1958, the patient developed generalized weakness and fatigue which was concurrent with exacerbation of his anemia;
the hemoglobin was 10.6 gm..
In an attempt to reverse the downhill trend by stimulating the bone marrow and controlling any hemolytic component, triamcinolone, 16 mg. daily, was begun on Sept. 26, 1958, and continued until Feb. 18, 1959.
At first the patient felt stronger, and the hemoglobin rose to 13.8 gm., but on Oct. 20, 1958, he complained of caving in in his knees.
By Nov. 8, 1958, weakness, specifically involving the pelvic and thigh musculature, was pronounced, and a common complaint was difficulty in stepping up on to curbs.
Prednisone, 30 mg. daily, was substituted for triamcinolone from Nov. 22 until Dec. 1, 1958, without any improvement in the weakness.
Serum potassium at this time was 3.8 mEq. per liter, and the hemoglobin was 13.9 gm. By Dec. 1, 1958, the weakness in the pelvic and quadriceps muscle groups was appreciably worse, and it became difficult for the patient to rise unaided from a sitting or reclining position.
Triamcinolone, 16 mg. daily, was resumed and maintained until Feb. 18, 1959.
Chlorothiazide was omitted for a 2-week period, but there was no change in the muscle weakness.
At this time a detailed neuromuscular examination revealed diffuse muscle atrophy that was moderate in the hands and feet, but marked in the shoulders, hips, and pelvic girdle, with hypoactive deep-tendon reflexes.
No fasciculations or sensory defects were found.
Electromyography revealed no evidence of lower motor neuron disease.
Thyroid function tests yielded normal results.
The protein-bound iodine was 6.6 mg., and the radioactive iodine uptake over the thyroid gland was 46% in 24 hours, with a conversion ratio of 12%.
A Schilling test demonstrated normal absorption of vitamin Af.
In February, 1959, during the second admission to The New York Hospital, a biopsy specimen of the left gastrocnemius showed striking increase in the sarcolemmal sheath nuclei and shrunken muscle fibers in several sections.
Serial serum potassium levels remained normal;
the serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase was 10 units per ml. per min..
The clinical impression at this time was either muscular dystrophy or polymyositis.
On Feb. 12, 1959, purified corticotropin (ACTH Gel), 20 units daily intramuscularly, was started but had to be discontinued 3 weeks later because of excessive fluid retention.
From March 3 to May 1, 1949, the patient was maintained on dexamethasone, 3 to 6 mg. daily.
In May 1959, prednisone, 30 mg. daily, replaced the dexamethasone.
Muscle weakness did not improve, and the patient needed first a cane, then crutches.
In spite of normal thyroid function tests, a trial of propylthiouracil, 400 mg. daily for one week, was given but served only to intensify muscle weakness.
Repeated attempts to withdraw steroids entirely were unsuccessful because increased muscle weakness resulted, as well as fever, malaise, anorexia, anxiety, and an exacerbation of the anemia.
These reactions were interpreted as being manifestations of hypoadrenocorticism.
Severe back pain in June, 1959, prompted a third hospital admission.
Extensive osteoporosis with partial collapse of D8 was found.
A high-protein diet, calcium lactate supplements, and norethandrolone failed to change the skeletal complaint or the severe muscle weakness.
The terminal hospital admission on June 27, 1959, was necessitated by continued weakness and debility complicated by urinary retention and painful thrombosed hemorrhoids.
X-ray films of the vertebral column showed progression of the demineralization.
On July 4, 1959, the patient developed marked abdominal pain and distension, went into shock, and died.
Findings at necropsy
The body was that of a well-developed, somewhat debilitated white man weighing 108 lb..
There were bilateral pterygia and arcus senilis, and the mouth was edentulous.
The heart weighed 510 gm., and at the outflow tracts the left and right ventricles measured 19 and 3 mm., respectively.
The coronary arteries were sclerotic and diffusely narrowed throughout their courses, and the right coronary artery was virtually occluded by a yellow atheromatous plaque 1.5 cm. distal to its origin.
The myocardium of the posterior base of the left ventricle was replaced by gray scar tissue over a 7.5 cm. area.
The valves were normal except for thin yellow plaques on the inferior surface of the mitral leaflets.
Microscopically, sections from the posterior base of the left ventricle of the heart showed several large areas of replacement of muscle by fibrous tissue.
In addition, other sections contained focal areas of recent myocardial necrosis that were infiltrated with neutrophils.
Many of the myocardial fibers were hypertrophied and had large, irregular, basophilic nuclei.
The intima of the larger coronary arteries was thickened by fibrous tissue containing fusiform clefts and mononuclear cells.
The intimal surface of the aorta was covered with confluent, yellow-brown, hard, friable plaques along its entire course, and there was a marked narrowing of the orifices of the large major visceral arteries.
In particular, the orifices of the right renal and celiac arteries were virtually occluded, and both calcified common iliac arteries were completely occluded.
The lungs weighed together 950 gm..
On the surfaces of both lungs there were emphysematous blebs measuring up to 3 cm. in diameter.
The parenchyma was slightly hyperemic in the apex of the left lung, and there were several firm, gray, fibrocalcific nodules measuring as large as 3 mm..
Microscopically, there was emphysema, fibrosis, and vascular congestion.
Macrophages laden with brown pigment were seen in some of the alveoli, and the intima of some of the small arteries was thickened by fibrous tissue.
The firm red spleen weighed 410 gm., and its surface was mottled by discrete, small patches of white material.
The endothelial cells lining the sinusoids were prominent, and many contained large quantities of hemosiderin.
Some of the sinusoids contained large numbers of nucleated red cells, and cells of the granulocytic series were found in small numbers.
There were slight fibrosis and marked arteriolosclerosis.
The liver weighed 2,090 gm., was brown in color, and the cut surface was mottled by irregular pale areas.
Microscopically, there was hyperemia of the central veins, and there was some atrophy of adjacent parenchyma.
Some liver cord cells contained vacuolated cytoplasm, while others had small amounts of brown hemosiderin pigment.
The gallbladder contained about 40 cc. of green-brown bile and 3 smooth, dark-green calculi measuring up to 1 cm. in diameter.
The mucosa of the stomach was atrophic and irregularly blackened over a 14 cm. area.
The small and large intestines were filled with gas, and the jejunum was dilated to about 2 times its normal circumference.
The small intestine and colon contained approximately 300 cc. of foul-smelling, sanguineous material, and the mucosa throughout was hyperemic and mottled green-brown.
A careful search failed to show occlusion of any of the mesenteric vessels.
Microscopically, the mucosa of the stomach showed extensive cytolysis and contained large numbers of Gram-negative bacterial rods.
The submucosa was focally infiltrated with neutrophils.
The mucosa of the jejunum and ileum showed similar changes, and in some areas the submucosa was edematous and contained considerable numbers of neutrophils.
Some of the small vessels were filled with fibrin thrombi, and there was extensive interstitial hemorrhage.
A section of the colon revealed intense hyperemia and extensive focal ulcerations of the mucosa, associated with much fibrin and many neutrophils.
Cultures taken from the jejunum yielded Monilia albicans, Pseudomonas pyocanea, Aerobacter aerogenes, and Streptococcus anhemolyticus.
The kidneys were pale and weighed right, 110 gm., and left, 230 gm..
The surfaces were coarsely and finely granular and punctuated by clear, fluid-filled cysts measuring up to 3 cm. in diameter.
On the surface of the right kidney there were also 2 yellow, firm, friable raised areas measuring up to 2 cm. in diameter.
Microscopically, both kidneys showed many small cortical scars in which there was glomerular and interstitial fibrosis, tubular atrophy, and an infiltration of lymphocytes and plasma cells.
Occasional tubules contained hyaline casts admixed with neutrophils.
Throughout, there were marked arteriolosclerosis and hyalinization of afferent glomerular arterioles.
These changes were more marked in the atrophic right kidney than in the left.
In addition, there were 2 small papillary adenomas in the right kidney.
The bone of the vertebral bodies, ribs, and sternum was soft and was easily compressed.
The marrow of the vertebral bodies was pale and showed areas of fatty replacement.
Microscopically, there were many areas of hypercellularity alternating with areas of hypocellularity.
The cells of the erythroid, myeloid, and megakaryocytic series were normal except for their numbers.
There was no evidence of fibrosis.
The muscles of the extremities, chest wall, neck, and abdominal wall were soft, pale, and atrophic.
Microscopic studies of the gastrocnemius, pectoralis major, transversus abdominis, biceps brachii, and diaphragm showed atrophy as well as varying degrees of injury ranging from swelling and vacuolization to focal necrosis of the muscle fibers.
These changes were most marked in the gastrocnemius and biceps and less evident in the pectoralis, diaphragm, and transversus.
In the gastrocnemius and biceps there were many swollen and homogeneous necrotic fibers such as that shown in Figure 2.
Such swollen fibers were deeply eosinophilic, contained a few pyknotic nuclei, and showed loss of cross-striations, obliteration of myofibrils, and prominent vacuolization.
The necrosis often involved only a portion of the length of a given fiber, and usually the immediately adjacent fibers were normal.
As shown in Figure 3, the protoplasm of other fibers was pale, granular, or flocculated and invaded by phagocytes.
Inflammatory cells were strikingly absent.
In association with these changes in the fibers, there were striking alterations in the muscle nuclei.
These were increased both in number and in size, contained prominent nucleoli, and were distributed throughout the fiber (Figs. 2 - 5).
In contrast to the nuclear changes described above, another change in muscle nuclei was seen, usually occurring in fibers that were somewhat smaller than normal but that showed distinct cross-striations and myofibrillae.
The nuclei of these fibers, as is shown in Figures 3 and 4, showed remarkable proliferation and were closely approximated, forming a chainlike structure at either the center or the periphery of the fiber.
Individual nuclei were usually oval to round, though occasionally elongated, and frequently small and somewhat pyknotic.
At times, clumps of 10 to 15 closely-packed nuclei were also observed.
Occasionally there were small basophilic fibers that were devoid of myofibrillae and contained many vesicular nuclei with prominent nucleoli (Fig. 5).
These were thought to represent regenerating fibers.
Trichrome stains failed to show fibrosis in the involved muscles.
In all of the sections examined, the arterioles and small arteries were essentially normal.
Purification of the conjugates
(2) The conjugates as well as the intermediate sera were absorbed for 30 minutes with 20 - 50 mg of proteins extracted from healthy sweet clover stems.
The proteins were extracted with 3 volumes of Af in Af to give a nearly neutral extract and precipitated by 80% saturation with Af.
The precipitate was washed twice with an 80% saturated solution of Af, dissolved in a small quantity of 0.1 M neutral phosphate buffer, dialyzed against cold distilled water till free from ammonium ions, and lyophilized using liquid nitrogen.
(3) In other experiments the indirect conjugate was treated with 3 volumes of ethyl acetate as recommended by Dineen and Ade (1957).
(4) The conjugates were passed through a diethylaminoethyl (DEAE) cellulose column equilibrated with neutral phosphate buffer (PBS) containing Af potassium phosphate and Af.
Preparation of frozen sections
The technique of cutting sections was essentially the same as that described by Coons et al (1951).
Root and stem tumors from sweet clover plants infected with WTV were quick-frozen in liquid nitrogen, embedded in ice, and cut at 3 - 6 **ym in a cryostat maintained at -16-degrees to -20-degrees.
The sections were mounted on cold slides smeared with Haupts' adhesive (Johansen, 1940) in earlier experiments, and in later experiments with a different mixture of the same components reported by Schramm and Rottger (1959).
The latter adhesive was found to be much more satisfactory.
The sections were then thawed by placing a finger under the slide and dried under a fan for 30 minutes;
until used they were stored for as long as 2 weeks.
Staining technique
indirect method.
The sections were fixed in acetone for 15 minutes and dried at 37-degrees for 30 minutes.
Some of them were then covered with a drop of Af in a moist chamber at 24-degrees for 30 - 40 minutes.
As controls other sections were similarly covered with Aj.
Sections were then washed with PBS for 15 - 30 minutes.
After blotting out most of the saline around the sections, a drop of Af was layered over each of the sections, allowed to react for 30 minutes, and then washed with PBS for 15 - 30 minutes.
After blotting out most of the liquid around the sections, the latter were mounted in buffered glycerine (7 parts glycerine to 3 parts of PBS).
Direct method.
After drying the sections under the fan, fixing in acetone, and drying at 37-degrees as in the indirect method, the sections were treated with conjugated Af or Af (undiluted unless mentioned otherwise) for 5 - 30 minutes.
As controls, other sections were similarly treated with Af or conjugated antiserum to the New York strain of potato yellow-dwarf virus (Wolcyrz and Black, 1956).
The sections were then washed with PBS for 15 - 30 minutes and mounted in buffered glycerine.
Fluorescence microscopy
Stained or unstained sections were examined under dark field illumination in a Zeiss fluorescence microscope equipped with a mercury vapor lamp (Osram HBO 200).
The light beam from the lamp was filtered through a half-standard thickness Corning 1840 filter.
In the eyepiece a Wratten 2 B filter was used to filter off residual ultra-violet light.
A red filter, Zeiss barrier filter with the code (Schott) designation BG 23, was also used in the ocular lens assembly as it improved the contrast between specific and nonspecific fluorescence.
Results
specificity of staining
indirect method.
In the first few experiments Af was passed through Dowex-2-chloride twice and absorbed twice with 50 - 100 mg sweet clover tissue powder.
The intermediate sera were also similarly absorbed with tissue powder.
Sections of sweet clover stem and root tumors were treated with 1: 10 solution of Af for 30 minutes, washed in buffered saline for 15 minutes, stained with Af for 30 minutes, and washed for 15 minutes in Aj.
Such sections showed bright yellow-green specific fluorescence in the cells of the pseudophloem tissue (Lee and Black, 1955).
This specific fluorescence was readily distinguished from the light green nonspecific fluorescence in consecutive sections stained with 1: 10 dilution of NS and Af or with Af alone.
Unstained sections mounted in buffered glycerine or sections treated only with NS or Af did not show such green fluorescence.
Sections of crown gall tissue similarly stained with either Af and Af or NS and Af also showed only the light green nonspecific fluorescence.
However, the nonspecific staining by the Af in tumor sections was considered bright enough to be confused with the staining of small amounts of WTV antigen.
Two absorptions of Af with ethyl acetate or two absorptions of Af (which had been passed through Dowex-2-chloride), NS and Af with crown gall tissue powder, or mouse liver powder did not further improve the specificity of staining.
Treatment of all the sera with sweet clover proteins greatly reduced nonspecific fluorescence, especially when the treated conjugate was diluted to 1: 2 with 0.85% saline.
Rinsing the sections with PBS before layering the intermediate sera did not improve the staining reaction.
In addition to other treatments, treating the sections with normal sheep serum for half an hour before layering Af did not reduce nonspecific staining.
The only treatment by which nonspecific staining could be satisfactorily removed was by passing the conjugate through a DEAE-cellulose column.
When 1 ml of conjugate was passed through a column (Af), the first and second milliliter fractions collected were the most specific and gave no nonspecific staining in some experiments, and very little in others.
In the latter cases an additional treatment of the DEAE-cellulose-treated Af with 50 mg of sweet clover stem tissue powder further improved the specificity.
After these treatments the conjugate did not stain healthy or crown gall sweet clover tissues or stained them a very faint green which was easily distinguishable from the bright yellow-green specific staining.
With this purified conjugate the best staining procedure consisted of treating the sections with 1: 10 dilution of Af for 30 minutes, washing with PBS for 15 minutes, staining with Af for 30 minutes, and washing with PBS for 15 minutes.
The specificity of staining in WTV tumors with Af and Af but not with NS and Af or with antiserum to potato yellow-dwarf virus and Af, and the absence of such staining in crown gall tumor tissue from sweet-clover, indicate that an antigen of WTV was being stained.
Direct method.
Af was first conjugated with 50 mg of FITC per gram of globulin.
This conjugate was passed twice through Dowex-2-chloride and treated with various tissue powders in the same manner as described for the indirect method.
In all cases a disturbing amount of nonspecific staining was still present although it was still distinguishable from specific fluorescence.
In later experiments, Af and Af were prepared by conjugating 8 mg of FITC per gram of globulin.
These conjugates Af had much less nonspecific staining than the previous conjugate (with 50 mg FITC per gram of globulin) while the specific staining was similar in both cases.
Nonspecific staining could be satisfactorily eliminated by passing these conjugates through a DEAE-cellulose column as described for Af.
The best staining procedure with this purified Af consisted of staining with the conjugate for 30 minutes and washing in PBS for 15 minutes.
The specificity of staining with Af was established as follows: Af specifically stained tumor sections but not sections of healthy sweet clover stems or of crown gall tumor tissue from sweet clover.
Sections of tumors incited by WTV were not similarly stained with conjugated normal serum or conjugated antiserum to potato yellow-dwarf virus.
After passing Af through DEAE-cellulose, the titer of antibodies to WTV in the specific fraction was 1: 4 of the titer before such passage (precipitin ring tests by R. F. Whitcomb);
but mere dilution of the conjugate to 1: 4 did not satisfactorily remove nonspecific staining.
This indicates that increase in specificity of Af after passing it through DEAE-cellulose was not merely due to dilution.
This was chiefly because of the bluish white autofluorescence from the cells.
The autofluorescence from the walls of the xylem cells was particularly brilliant.
Distribution of virus antigen
Results of specific staining by the direct and the indirect methods were similar and showed the localization of WTV antigen in certain tissues of tumors.
The virus antigen was concentrated in the pseudophloem tissue.
Frequently a few isolated thick-walled cells or, rarely, groups of such cells in the xylem region, were also specifically stained, but there was no such staining in epidermis, cortex, most xylem cells, ray cells, or pith.
Within the pseudophloem cells the distribution of WTV antigen was irregular in the cytoplasm.
No antigen was detectable in certain dark spherical areas in most cells.
These areas are thought to represent the nuclei.
In some tumor sections small spherical bodies, possibly inclusion bodies (Littau and Black, 1952) stained more intensely than the rest of cytoplasm and probably contained more antigen.
In all cases studied tissues of the stem on which the tumor had developed did not contain detectable amounts of WTV antigen.
Discussion
In both the direct and indirect methods of staining, the conjugates had nonspecifically staining fractions.
In the indirect method, this was evident from the fact that tumor sections were stained light green even when stained with NS and Af or with Af only.
In the direct method, Af, not further treated, stained certain tissues of healthy sweet clover stems nonspecifically and WTV tumor sections were similarly stained by comparable Af.
After Af and Af were passed through Dowex-2-chloride twice and treated twice with healthy sweet clover tissue powder, nonspecific staining was greatly reduced but a disturbing amount of such staining was still present.
Such treatments of the conjugates have usually been successful in eliminating nonspecific staining in several other systems (Coons, 1958).
Schramm and Rottger (1959) did not report any such nonspecific staining of plant tissues with fluorescein isocyanate-labeled antiserum to tobacco mosaic virus.
The reason for the failure of these treatments to eliminate nonspecific staining in the conjugates in our system is not known.
The specific staining by both direct and indirect methods showed that WTV antigen was concentrated in the pseudophloem tissue and in a few thick-walled cells in the xylem region, but was not detectable in any other tissues of the root and stem tumors.
A study of the distribution of WTV antigen within the pseudophloem cells indicates that it is irregularly distributed in the cytoplasm.
Wound-tumor virus is a leafhopper transmitted virus not easily transmissible by mechanical inoculation (Black, 1944;
Brakke et al, 1954).
The concentration and apparent localization of the WTV antigen in pseudophloem tissue of the tumor may indicate that the virus preferentially multiplies in the phloem and may need to be directly placed in this tissue in order to infect plants.
Since emotional reactions in the higher vertebrates depend on individual experience and are aroused in man, in addition, by complex symbols, one would expect that the hypothalamus could be excited from the cortex.
In experiments with topical application of strychnine on the cerebral cortex, the transmission of impulses from the cortex to the hypothalamus was demonstrated.
Moreover, the responsiveness of the hypothalamus to nociceptive stimulation is greatly increased under these conditions.
Even more complex and obviously cortically induced forms of emotional arousal could be elicited in monkey A on seeing monkey B (but not a rabbit) in emotional stress.
A previously extinguished conditioned reaction was restored in monkey A and was associated with typical signs of emotional excitement including sympathetic discharges.
It seems to follow that by and large an antagonism exists between the paleo- and the neocortex as far as emotional reactivity is concerned, and that the balance between the two systems determines the emotional responsiveness of the organism.
In addition, the neocortical-hypothalamic relations play a great role in primates, as Mirsky's interesting experiment on the communication of affect demonstrates.
But even in relatively primitive laboratory animals such as the rat, sex activity closely identified with the hypothalamus and the visceral brain is enhanced by the neocortex.
MacLean stressed correctly the importance of the visceral brain for preservation of the individual and the species, as evidenced by the influence of the limbic brain (including the hypothalamus) on emotions related to fight and flight and also on sexual functions.
It should be added that in man neocortical-hypothalamic interrelations probably play a role in the fusion of emotional processes with those underlying perception, memory, imagination, and creativity.
Previous experiences are obviously of great importance for the qualitative and quantitative emotional response.
The visceral brain as well as the neocortex is known to contribute to memory, but this topic is beyond the scope of this paper.
13.
Hypothalamic balance and its significance
After this brief discussion of neo-, paleocortical, and cortico-hypothalamic relations, let us return once more to the problem of hypothalamic balance and its physiological and pathological significance.
Facilitatory processes take place between neocortex and hypothalamus via ascending and descending pathways.
Thus cortico-fugal discharges induced by topical application of strychnine to a minute area in the neocortex summate with spikes present in the hypothalamus and cause increased convulsive discharges.
On the other hand, the temporary reduction in hypothalamic excitability through the injection of a barbiturate into the posterior hypothalamus causes a lessening in frequency and amplitude of cortical strychnine spikes until the hypothalamic excitability is restored.
Apparently, a positive feedback exists between the posterior hypothalamus and the cerebral cortex.
Consequently, if for any reason the hypothalamic excitability falls below the physiological level, the lessened hypothalamic-cortical discharges lead to a diminished state of activity in the cortex with consequent reduction in the cortico-fugal discharges.
Obviously, a vicious cycle develops.
This tendency can be broken either by restoring hypothalamic excitability directly or via cortico-hypothalamic pathways.
It is believed that drug therapy and electroshock involve the former and psychotherapy the latter mechanism.
Before we comment further on these pathological conditions, we should remember that changes in the state of the hypothalamus within physiological limits distinguish sleep from wakefulness.
Thus, a low intensity of hypothalamic-cortical discharges prevails in sleep and a high one during wakefulness, resulting in synchronous EEG potentials in the former and asynchrony in the latter condition.
With the dominance of the sympathetic division of the hypothalamus, the opposite changes occur.
Similar effects can be induced reflexly via the baroreceptor reflexes in man and animals.
Of particular importance is the study of the actions of drugs in this respect.
Although no drugs act exclusively on the hypothalamus or a part of it, there is sufficient specificity to distinguish drugs which shift the hypothalamic balance to the sympathetic side from those which produce a parasympathetic dominance.
The former comprise analeptic and psychoactive drugs, the latter the tranquilizers.
Specific differences exist in the action of different drugs belonging to the same group as, for instance, between reserpine and chlorpromazine.
The emotional states produced by drugs influence the cortical potentials in a characteristic manner;
synchrony prevails in the EEG of the experimental animal after administration of tranquilizers, but asynchrony after application of analeptic and psychoactive drugs.
The shock therapies act likewise on the hypothalamic balance.
Physiological experiments and clinical observations have shown that these procedures influence the hypothalamically controlled hypophyseal secretions and increase sympathetic discharges.
They shift the hypothalamic balance to the sympathetic side.
This explains the beneficial effect of electroshock therapy in certain depressions and a shift in the reaction from hypo- to normal reactivity of the sympathetic system as shown by the Mecholyl test.
Nevertheless, the theory that the determining influence of the hypothalamic balance has a profound influence on the clinical behavior of neuropsychiatric patients has not yet been tested on an adequate number of patients.
It was assumed that the shift in autonomic hypothalamic balance occurring spontaneously in neuropsychiatric patients from the application of certain therapeutic procedures follows the pattern known from the sleep-wakefulness cycle.
A change in the balance to the parasympathetic side leads in the normal individual to sleep or, in special circumstances, to cardiovascular collapse or nausea and vomiting.
In both conditions the emotional and perceptual sensitivity is diminished, but no depression occurs such as is seen clinically or may be produced in normal persons by drugs.
The fundamental differences between physiological and pathological states of parasympathetic (and also of sympathetic) dominance remain to be elucidated.
Perhaps a clue to these and related problems lies in the fact that changes in the intensity of hypothalamic discharges which are associated with changes in its balance lead also to qualitative alterations in reactivity.
Furthermore, conditioned reactions are fundamentally altered when the hypothalamic sympathetic reactivity is augmented beyond a critical level, and several types of behavioral changes probably related to the degree of central autonomic tuning are observed.
If, for instance, such a change is produced by one or a few insulin comas or electroshocks, previously inhibited conditioned reactions reappear.
However, if these procedures are applied more often, conditioned emotional responses are temporarily abolished.
In other studies, loss of differentiation in previously established conditioned reflexes resulted from repeated convulsive (metrazol) treatments, suggesting a fundamental disturbance in the balance between excitatory and inhibitory cerebral processes.
It has further been shown that: (1) an experimental neurosis in its initial stages is associated with a reversible shift in the central autonomic balance;
(2) drugs altering the hypothalamic balance alter conditioned reactions;
(3) in a state of depression, the positive conditioned stimulus may fail to elicit a conditioned reaction but cause an increased synchrony instead of the excitatory desynchronizing (alerting) effect on the Aj.
14.
On the physiological basis of some form of psychotherapy
The foregoing remarks imply that the hypothalamic balance plays a crucial role at the crossroads between physiological and pathological forms of emotion.
If this is the case, one would expect that not only the various procedures just mentioned which alter the hypothalamic balance would influence emotional state and behavior but that emotion itself would act likewise.
We pointed out that emotional excitement may lead to psychosomatic disorders and neurotic symptoms, particularly in certain types of personality, but it is also known that the reliving of a strong emotion (abreaction) may cure a battle neurosis.
This phenomenon raises the question whether the guidance of the emotions for therapeutic ends may not have an even wider application in the area of the neuroses.
Being a strictly physiological procedure, one may expect from such a study additional information on the nature of the emotional process itself.
Wolpe's experiments and therapeutic work lie in this area.
He showed convincingly that anxiety is a learned (conditioned) reaction and is the basis of experimental and clinical neuroses and assumed, therefore, that the neuronal changes which underlie the neuroses are functional and reversible.
An important observation of Pavlov served as a guide post to achieve such a reversibility by physiological means.
In a conditioning experiment, he demonstrated the antagonism between feeding and pain.
A mild electrical shock served as a conditioned stimulus and was followed by feeding.
The pain became thus the symbol for food and elicited salivary secretion (conditioned reflex).
Even when the intensity of the shocks was increased gradually, it failed to evoke any signs of pain.
Since strong nociceptive stimuli produce an experimental neurosis during which the animals fail to eat in the experimental situation, Wolpe thought that he could utilize the feeding-pain antagonism to inhibit the neurotic symptoms through feeding.
Appropriate experiments showed that this is, indeed, possible.
He then applied this principle of reciprocal inhibition to human neuroses.
He took advantage of the antagonism between aggressive assertiveness and anxiety and found a relatively rapid disappearance of anxiety when the former attitude was established.
For the interpretation of these significant investigations, it should be remembered that reciprocal relations exist in the hypothalamus with respect to autonomic and somatic functions which are closely associated with the emotions.
The feeding-pain antagonism seems to be based on this reciprocal relation between the tropho- and ergotropic systems.
Furthermore, a functional antagonism exists between an aggressive attitude and a state of anxiety.
Although in both emotions sympathetic symptoms are present, different autonomic-somatic patterns underlie aggression and anxiety, respectively, as indicated by the rate of the excretion of the catecholamines, the state of the muscle tone, and the Mecholyl test.
The psychological incompatibility of these emotional states seems to be reflected in, or based on, this marked difference.
15.
Concluding remarks
We stressed the reciprocal relation of these systems with respect to the autonomic-somatic downward discharge as well as regarding the hypothalamic-cortical discharge.
6.4.
The primary decomposition theorem
We are trying to study a linear operator T on the finite-dimensional space V, by decomposing T into a direct sum of operators which are in some sense elementary.
We can do this through the characteristic values and vectors of T in certain special cases, i.e., when the minimal polynomial for T factors over the scalar field F into a product of distinct monic polynomials of degree 1.
What can we do with the general T?
If we try to study T using characteristic values, we are confronted with two problems.
First, T may not have a single characteristic value;
this is really a deficiency in the scalar field, namely, that it is not algebraically closed.
Second, even if the characteristic polynomial factors completely over F into a product of polynomials of degree 1, there may not be enough characteristic vectors for T to span the space V.
This is clearly a deficiency in T.
The second situation is illustrated by the operator T on Af (F any field) represented in the standard basis by Af.
The characteristic polynomial for A is Af and this is plainly also the minimal polynomial for A (or for T).
Thus T is not diagonalizable.
One sees that this happens because the null space of Af has dimension 1 only.
On the other hand, the null space of Af and the null space of Af together span V, the former being the subspace spanned by Af and the latter the subspace spanned by Af and Af.
This will be more or less our general method for the second problem.
If (remember this is an assumption) the minimal polynomial for T decomposes Af where Af are distinct elements of F, then we shall show that the space V is the direct sum of the null spaces of Af.
The diagonalizable operator is the special case of this in which Af for each i.
The theorem which we prove is more general than what we have described, since it works with the primary decomposition of the minimal polynomial, whether or not the primes which enter are all of first degree.
The reader will find it helpful to think of the special case when the primes are of degree 1, and even more particularly, to think of the proof of Theorem 10, a special case of this theorem.
Theorem 12.
(primary decomposition theorem).
Let T be a linear operator on the finite-dimensional vector space V over the field F.
Let p be the minimal polynomial for T, Af, where the Af, are distinct irreducible monic polynomials over F and the Af are positive integers.
Let Af be the null space of Af.
Then (A) Af;
(B) each Af is invariant under T;
(C) if Af is the operator induced on Af by T, then the minimal polynomial for Af is Af.
Proof.
The idea of the proof is this.
If the direct-sum decomposition (A) is valid, how can we get hold of the projections Af associated with the decomposition?
The projection Af will be the identity on Af and zero on the other Af.
We shall find a polynomial Af such that Af is the identity on Af and is zero on the other Af, and so that Af, etc..
For each i, let Af.
Since Af are distinct prime polynomials, the polynomials Af are relatively prime (Theorem 8, Chapter 4).
Thus there are polynomials Af such that Af.
Note also that if Af, then Af is divisible by the polynomial p, because Af contains each Af as a factor.
We shall show that the polynomials Af behave in the manner described in the first paragraph of the proof.
Let Af.
Since Af and P divides Af for Af, we have Af.
Thus the Af are projections which correspond to some direct-sum decomposition of the space V.
We wish to show that the range of Af is exactly the subspace Af.
It is clear that each vector in the range of Af is in Af for if **ya is in the range of Af, then Af and so Af because Af is divisible by the minimal polynomial P.
Conversely, suppose that **ya is in the null space of Af.
If Af, then Af is divisible by Af and so Af, i.e., Af.
But then it is immediate that Af, i.e., that **ya is in the range of Af.
This completes the proof of statement (A).
It is certainly clear that the subspaces Af are invariant under T.
If Af is the operator induced on Af by T, then evidently Af, because by definition Af is 0 on the subspace Af.
This shows that the minimal polynomial for Af divides Af.
Conversely, let G be any polynomial such that Af.
Then Af.
Thus Af is divisible by the minimal polynomial P of T, i.e., Af divides Af.
It is easily seen that Af divides G.
Hence the minimal polynomial for Af is Af.
Corollary.
If Af are the projections associated with the primary decomposition of T, then each Af is a polynomial in T, and accordingly if a linear operator U commutes with T then U commutes with each of the Af, i.e., each subspace Af is invariant under U.
In the notation of the proof of Theorem 12, let us take a look at the special case in which the minimal polynomial for T is a product of first-degree polynomials, i.e., the case in which each Af is of the form Af.
Now the range of Af is the null space Af of Af.
Let us put Af.
By Theorem 10, D is a diagonalizable operator which we shall call the diagonalizable part of T.
Let us look at the operator Af.
Now Af Af so Af.
The reader should be familiar enough with projections by now so that he sees that Af and in general that Af.
When Af for each i, we shall have Af, because the operator Af will then be 0 on the range of Af.
Definition.
Let N be a linear operator on the vector space V.
We say that N is nilpotent if there is some positive integer R such that Af.
Theorem 13.
Let T be a linear operator on the finite-dimensional vector space V over the field F.
Suppose that the minimal polynomial for T decomposes over F into a product of linear polynomials.
Then there is a diagonalizable operator D on V and a nilpotent operator N in V such that (A) Af, (b) Af.
The diagonalizable operator D and the nilpotent operator N are uniquely determined by (A) and (B) and each of them is a polynomial in T.
Proof.
We have just observed that we can write Af where D is diagonalizable and N is nilpotent, and where D and N not only commute but are polynomials in T.
Now suppose that we also have Af where D' is diagonalizable, N' is nilpotent, and Af.
We shall prove that Af.
Since D' and N' commute with one another and Af, we see that D' and N' commute with T.
Thus D' and N' commute with any polynomial in T;
hence they commute with D and with N.
Now we have Af or Af and all four of these operators commute with one another.
Since D and D' are both diagonalizable and they commute, they are simultaneously diagonalizable, and Af is diagonalizable.
Since N and N' are both nilpotent and they commute, the operator Af is nilpotent;
for, using the fact that N and N' commute Af and so when R is sufficiently large every term in this expression for Af will be 0.
(Actually, a nilpotent operator on an n-dimensional space must have its T power 0;
if we take Af above, that will be large enough.
It then follows that Af is large enough, but this is not obvious from the above expression.
) Now Af is a diagonalizable operator which is also nilpotent.
Such an operator is obviously the zero operator;
for since it is nilpotent, the minimal polynomial for this operator is of the form Af for some Af;
but then since the operator is diagonalizable, the minimal polynomial cannot have a repeated root;
hence Af and the minimal polynomial is simply x, which says the operator is 0.
Thus we see that Af and Af.
Corollary.
Let V be a finite-dimensional vector space over an algebraically closed field F, e.g., the field of complex numbers.
Then every linear operator T in V can be written as the sum of a diagonalizable operator D and a nilpotent operator N which commute.
These operators D and N are unique and each is a polynomial in T.
From these results, one sees that the study of linear operators on vector spaces over an algebraically closed field is essentially reduced to the study of nilpotent operators.
For vector spaces over non-algebraically closed fields, we still need to find some substitute for characteristic values and vectors.
It is a very interesting fact that these two problems can be handled simultaneously and this is what we shall do in the next chapter.
In concluding this section, we should like to give an example which illustrates some of the ideas of the primary decomposition theorem.
We have chosen to give it at the end of the section since it deals with differential equations and thus is not purely linear algebra.
Example 11.
In the primary decomposition theorem, it is not necessary that the vector space V be finite dimensional, nor is it necessary for parts (A) and (B) that P be the minimal polynomial for T.
If T is a linear operator on an arbitrary vector space and if there is a monic polynomial P such that Af, then parts (A) and (B) of Theorem 12 are valid for T with the proof which we gave.
Let N be a positive integer and let V be the space of all N times continuously differentiable functions F on the real line which satisfy the differential equation Af where Af are some fixed constants.
If Af denotes the space of N times continuously differentiable functions, then the space V of solutions of this differential equation is a subspace of Af.
If D denotes the differentiation operator and P is the polynomial Af then V is the null space of the operator p (,), because Af simply says Af.
Let us now regard D as a linear operator on the subspace V.
Then Af.
If we are discussing differentiable complex-valued functions, then Af and V are complex vector spaces, and Af may be any complex numbers.
We now write Af where Af are distinct complex numbers.
If Af is the null space of Af, then Theorem 12 says that Af.
In other words, if F satisfies the differential equation Af, then F is uniquely expressible in the form Af where Af satisfies the differential equation Af.
Thus, the study of the solutions to the equation Af is reduced to the study of the space of solutions of a differential equation of the form Af.
This reduction has been accomplished by the general methods of linear algebra, i.e., by the primary decomposition theorem.
To describe the space of solutions to Af, one must know something about differential equations;
that is, one must know something about D other than the fact that it is a linear operator.
However, one does not need to know very much.
It is very easy to establish by induction on R that if F is in Af then Af;
that is, Af, etc..
Thus Af if and only if Af.
A function G such that Af, i.e., Af, must be a polynomial function of degree Af or less: Af.
Thus F satisfies Af if and only if F has the form Af.
Accordingly, the'functions'Af span the space of solutions of Af.
Since Af are linearly independent functions and the exponential function has no zeros, these R functions Af, form a basis for the space of solutions.
7-1.
Examples of binomial experiments
Some experiments are composed of repetitions of independent trials, each with two possible outcomes.
The binomial probability distribution may describe the variation that occurs from one set of trials of such a binomial experiment to another.
We devote a chapter to the binomial distribution not only because it is a mathematical model for an enormous variety of real life phenomena, but also because it has important properties that recur in many other probability models.
We begin with a few examples of binomial experiments.
Marksmanship example.
A trained marksman shooting five rounds at a target, all under practically the same conditions, may hit the bull's-eye from 0 to 5 times.
In repeated sets of five shots his numbers of bull's-eyes vary.
What can we say of the probabilities of the different possible numbers of bull's-eyes?
Inheritance in mice.
In litters of eight mice from similar parents, the number of mice with straight instead of wavy hair is an integer from 0 to 8.
What probabilities should be attached to these possible outcomes?
Aces (ones) with three dice.
When three dice are tossed repeatedly, what is the probability that the number of aces is 0 (or 1, or 2, or 3)?
General binomial problem.
More generally, suppose that an experiment consists of a number of independent trials, that each trial results in either a success or a non-success (failure), and that the probability of success remains constant from trial to trial.
In the examples above, the occurrence of a bull's-eye, a straight-haired mouse, or an ace could be called a success.
In general, any outcome we choose may be labeled success.
The major question in this chapter is: What is the probability of exactly X successes in N trials?
In Chapters 3 and 4 we answered questions like those in the examples, usually by counting points in a sample space.
Fortunately, a general formula of wide applicability solves all problems of this kind.
Before deriving this formula, we explain what we mean by problems of this kind.
Experiments are often composed of several identical trials, and sometimes experiments themselves are repeated.
In the marksmanship example, a trial consists of one round shot at a target with outcome either one bull's-eye (success) or none (failure).
Further, an experiment might consist of five rounds, and several sets of five rounds might be regarded as a super-experiment composed of several repetitions of the five-round experiment.
If three dice are tossed, a trial is one toss of one die and the experiment is composed of three trials.
Or, what amounts to the same thing, if one die is tossed three times, each toss is a trial, and the three tosses form the experiment.
Mathematically, we shall not distinguish the experiment of three dice tossed once from that of one die tossed three times.
These examples are illustrative of the use of the words trial and experiment as they are used in this chapter, but they are quite flexible words and it is well not to restrict them too narrowly.
Example 1.
Student football managers.
Ten students act as managers for a high-school football team, and of these managers a proportion P are licensed drivers.
Each Friday one manager is chosen by lot to stay late and load the equipment on a truck.
On three Fridays the coach has needed a driver.
Considering only these Fridays, what is the probability that the coach had drivers all 3 times?
Exactly 2 times?
1 time?
0 times?
Discussion.
Note that there are 3 trials of interest.
Each trial consists of choosing a student manager at random.
The 2 possible outcomes on each trial are driver or nondriver.
Since the choice is by lot each week, the outcomes of different trials are independent.
The managers stay the same, so that Af is the same for all weeks.
We now generalize these ideas for general binomial experiments.
Below we use our earlier examples to describe and illustrate these four properties.
We also give, for each property, an example where the property is absent.
The language and notation introduced are standard throughout the chapter.
There must be a fixed number n of repeated trials.
For the marksman, we study sets of five shots (Af);
for the mice, we restrict attention to litters of eight (Af);
and for the aces, we toss three dice (Af).
Experiment without a fixed number of trials.
Toss a die until an ace appears.
Here the number of trials is a random variable, not a fixed number.
Binomial trials.
Each of the N trials is either a success or a failure.
Success and failure are just convenient labels for the two categories of outcomes when we talk about binomial trials in general.
These words are more expressive than labels like A and not-A.
It is natural from the marksman's viewpoint to call a bull's-eye a success, but in the mice example it is arbitrary which category corresponds to straight hair in a mouse.
The word binomial means of two names or of two terms, and both usages apply in our work: the first to the names of the two outcomes of a binomial trial, and the second to the terms P and Af that represent the probabilities of success and failure.
Sometimes when there are many outcomes for a single trial, we group these outcomes into two classes, as in the example of the die, where we have arbitrarily constructed the classes ace and not-ace.
Experiment without the two-class property.
We classify mice as straight-haired or wavy-haired, but a hairless mouse appears.
We can escape from such a difficulty by ruling out the animal as not constituting a trial, but such a solution is not always satisfactory.
All trials have identical probabilities of success.
Each die has probability Af of producing an ace;
the marksman has some probability p, perhaps 0.1, of making a bull's-eye.
Note that we need not know the value of p, for the experiment to be binomial.
Experiment where p is not constant.
During a round of target practice the sun comes from behind a cloud and dazzles the marksman, lowering his chance of a bull's-eye.
The trials are independent.
Strictly speaking, this means that the probability for each possible outcome of the experiment can be computed by multiplying together the probabilities of the possible outcomes of the single binomial trials.
Thus in the three-dice example Af, Af, and the independence assumption imply that the probability that the three dice fall ace, not-ace, ace in that order is Af.
Experimentally, we expect independence when the trials have nothing to do with one another.
Examples where independence fails.
A family of five plans to go together either to the beach or to the mountains, and a coin is tossed to decide.
We want to know the number of people going to the mountains.
When this experiment is viewed as composed of five binomial trials, one for each member of the family, the outcomes of the trials are obviously not independent.
Indeed, the experiment is better viewed as consisting of one binomial trial for the entire family.
The following is a less extreme example of dependence.
Consider couples visiting an art museum.
Each person votes for one of a pair of pictures to receive a popular prize.
Voting for one picture may be called success, for the other failure.
An experiment consists of the voting of one couple, or two trials.
Table 7-1 illustrates the point.
The table shows that 0.6 of the boys and 0.6 of the girls vote for picture A.
Therefore, under independent voting, Af or 0.36 of the couples would cast two votes for picture A, and Af or 0.16 would cast two votes for picture B.
Thus in independent voting, Af or 0.52 of the couples would agree.
But Table 7-1 shows that Af or 0.70 agree, too many for independent voting.
Each performance of an n-trial binomial experiment results in some whole number from 0 through N as the value of the random variable X, where Af.
We want to study the probability function of this random variable.
For example, we are interested in the number of bull's-eyes, not which shots were bull's-eyes.
A binomial experiment can produce random variables other than the number of successes.
For example, the marksman gets 5 shots, but we take his score to be the number of shots before his first bull's-eye, that is, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 (or 5, if he gets no bull's-eye).
Thus we do not score the number of bull's-eyes, and the random variable is not the number of successes.
The constancy of P and the independence are the conditions most likely to give trouble in practice.
Obviously, very slight changes in P do not change the probabilities much, and a slight lack of independence may not make an appreciable difference.
(For instance, see Example 2 of Section 5-5, on red cards in hands of 5.
) On the other hand, even when the binomial model does not describe well the physical phenomenon being studied, the binomial model may still be used as a baseline for comparative purposes;
that is, we may discuss the phenomenon in terms of its departures from the binomial model.
To summarize:
A binomial experiment consists of Af independent binomial trials, all with the same probability Af of yielding a success.
The outcome of the experiment is X successes.
The random variable X takes the values Af with probabilities Af or, more briefly Af.
We shall find a formula for the probability of exactly X successes for given values of P and N.
When each number of successes X is paired with its probability of occurrence Af, the set of pairs Af, is a probability function called a binomial distribution.
The choice of P and N determines the binomial distribution uniquely, and different choices always produce different distributions (except when Af;
then the number of successes is always 0).
The set of all binomial distributions is called the family of binomial distributions, but in general discussions this expression is often shortened to the binomial distribution, or even the binomial when the context is clear.
Binomial distributions were treated by James Bernoulli about 1700, and for this reason binomial trials are sometimes called Bernoulli trials.
Random variables.
Each binomial trial of a binomial experiment produces either 0 or 1 success.
Therefore each binomial trial can be thought of as producing a value of a random variable associated with that trial and taking the values 0 and 1, with probabilities Q and P respectively.
The several trials of a binomial experiment produce a new random variable X, the total number of successes, which is just the sum of the random variables associated with the single trials.
Example 2.
The marksman gets two bull's-eyes, one on his third shot and one on his fifth.
The numbers of successes on the five individual shots are, then, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1.
The number of successes on each shot is a value of a random variable that has values 0 or 1, and there are 5 such random variables here.
Their sum is X, the total number of successes, which in this experiment has the value Af.
Consider a simple, closed, plane curve C which is a real-analytic image of the unit circle, and which is given by Af.
These are real analytic periodic functions with period T.
In the following paper it is shown that in a certain definite sense, exactly an odd number of squares can be inscribed in every such curve which does not contain an infinite number of inscribed squares.
This theorem is similar to the theorem of Kakutani that there exists a circumscribing cube around any closed, bounded convex set in Af.
The latter theorem has been generalized by Yamabe and Yujobo, and Cairns to show that in Af there are families of such cubes.
Here, for the case of squares inscribed in plane curves, we remove the restriction to convexity and give certain other results.
A square inscribed in a curve C means a square with its four corner points on the curve, though it may not lie entirely in the interior of C.
Indeed, the spiral Af, with the two endpoints connected by a straight line possesses only one inscribed square.
The square has one corner point on the straight line segment, and does not lie entirely in the interior.
On C, from the point P at Af to the point Q at Af, we construct the chord, and upon the chord as a side erect a square in such a way that as S approaches zero the square is inside C.
As S increases we consider the two free corner points of the square, Af and Af, adjacent to P and Q respectively.
As S approaches T the square will be outside C and therefore both Af and Af must cross C an odd number of times as S varies from zero to T.
The points may also touch C without crossing.
Suppose Af crosses C when Af.
We now have certain squares with three corners on C.
For any such square the middle corner of these will be called the vertex of the square and the corner not on the curve will be called the diagonal point of the square.
Each point on C, as a vertex, may possess a finite number of corresponding diagonal points by the above construction.
To each paired vertex and diagonal point there corresponds a unique forward corner point, i.e., the corner on C reached first by proceeding along C from the vertex in the direction of increasing T.
If the vertex is at Af, and if the interior of C is on the left as one moves in the direction of increasing t, then every such corner can be found from the curve obtained by rotating C clockwise through 90-degrees about the vertex.
The set of intersections of Af, the rotated curve, with the original curve C consists of just the set of forward corner points on C corresponding to the vertex at Af, plus the vertex itself.
We note that two such curves C and Af, cannot coincide at more than a finite number of points;
otherwise, being analytic, they would coincide at all points, which is impossible since they do not coincide near Af.
With each vertex we associate certain numerical values, namely the set of positive differences in the parameter T between the vertex and its corresponding forward corner points.
For the vertex at Af, these values will be denoted by Af.
The function f{t} defined in this way is multi-valued.
We consider now the graph of the function f{t} on Af.
We will refer to the plane of C and Af as the C-plane and to the plane of the graph as the Aj.
The graph, as a set, may have a finite number of components.
We will denote the values of f{t} on different components by Af.
Each point with abscissa T on the graph represents an intersection between C and Af.
There are two types of such intersections, depending essentially on whether the curves cross at the point of intersection.
An ordinary point will be any point of intersection A such that in every neighborhood of A in the C-plane, Af meets both the interior and the exterior of C.
Any other point of intersection between C and Af will be called a tangent point.
This terminology will also be applied to the corresponding points in the Aj.
We can now prove several lemmas.
Lemma 1.
In some neighborhood in the f-plane of any ordinary point of the graph, the function f is a single-valued, continuous function.
Proof.
We first show that the function is single-valued in some neighborhood.
With the vertex at Af in the C-plane we assume that Af is the parametric location on C of an ordinary intersection Q between C and Af.
In the f-plane the coordinates of the corresponding point are Af.
We know that in the C-plane both C and Af are analytic.
In the C-plane we construct a set of rectangular Cartesian coordinates u, V with the origin at Q and such that both C and Af have finite slope at Q.
Near Q, both curves can be represented by analytic functions of U.
In a neighborhood of Q the difference between these functions is also a single-valued, analytic function of U.
Furthermore, one can find a neighborhood of Q in which the difference function is monotone, for since it is analytic it can have only a finite number of extrema in any interval.
Now, to find Af, one needs the intersection of C and Af near Q.
But Af is just the curve Af translated without rotation through a small arc, for Af is always obtained by rotating C through exactly 90-degrees.
The arc is itself a segment of an analytic curve.
Thus if E is sufficiently small, there can be only one intersection of C and Af near Q, for if there were more than one intersection for every E then the difference between C and Af near Q would not be a monotone function.
Therefore, Af is single-valued near Q.
It is also seen that Af, since the change from Af to Af is accomplished by a continuous translation.
Thus Af is also continuous at Af, and in a neighborhood of Af which does not contain a tangent point.
We turn now to the set of tangent points on the graph.
This set must consist of isolated points and closed intervals.
This prevents the occurrence of an infinite sequence of isolated tangent points.
Lemma 2.
In some neighborhood of an isolated tangent point in the f-plane, say Af, the function Af is either double-valued or has no values defined, except at the tangent point itself, where it is single-valued.
Proof.
A tangent point Q in the C-plane occurs when C and Af are tangent to one another.
A continuous change in T through an amount E results in a translation along an analytic arc of the curve Af.
There are three possibilities: (A) Af remains tangent to C as it is translated;
(B) Af moves away from C and does not intersect it at all for Af;
(C) Af cuts across C and there are two ordinary intersections for every T in Af.
The first possibility results in a closed interval of tangent points in the f-plane, the end points of which fall into category (B) or (C).
In the second category the function Af has no values defined in a neighborhood Af.
In the third category the function is double-valued in this interval.
The same remarks apply to an interval on the other side of Af.
Again, the analyticity of the two curves guarantees that such intervals exist.
In the neighborhood of an end point of an interval of tangent points in the f-plane the function is two-valued or no-valued on one side, and is a single-valued function consisting entirely of tangent points on the other side.
With the above results we can make the following remarks about the graph of F.
First, for any value of T for which all values of f{t} are ordinary points the number of values of f{t} must be odd.
For it is clear that the total number of ordinary intersections of C and Af must be even (otherwise, starting in the interior of C, Af could not finally return to the interior), and the center of rotation at T is the argument of the function, not a value.
Therefore, for any value of T the number of values of f{t} is equal to the (finite) number of tangent points corresponding to the argument T plus an odd number.
Definition.
The number of ordinary values of the function f{t} at T will be called its multiplicity at T.
Lemma 3.
The graph of f has at least one component whose support is the entire interval Aj.
Proof
We suppose not.
Then every component of the graph of F must be defined over a bounded sub-interval.
Suppose Af is defined in the sub-interval Af.
Now Af and Af must both be tangent points on the T component in the f-plane;
otherwise by Lemma 1 the component would extend beyond these points.
Further, we see by Lemma 2 that the multiplicity of F can only change at a tangent point, and at such a point can only change by an even integer.
Thus the multiplicity of Af for a given T must be an even number.
This is true of all components which have such a bounded support.
But this is a contradiction, for we know that the multiplicity of f{t} is odd for every T.
We have shown that the graph of F contains at least one component whose inverse is the entire interval {0,T}, and whose multiplicity is odd.
There must be an odd number of such components, which will be called complete components.
The remaining (incomplete) components all have an even number of ordinary points at any argument, and are defined only on a proper sub-interval of Aj.
We must now show that on some component of the graph there exist two points for which the corresponding diagonal points in the C-plane are on opposite sides of C.
We again consider a fixed point P at Af and a variable point Q at Af on C.
We erect a square with PQ as a side and with free corners Af and Af adjacent to P and Q respectively.
As S varies from zero to T, the values of S for which Af and Af cross C will be denoted by Af and Af respectively.
We have Af, plus tangent points.
These s-values are just the ordinary values of Af.
Lemma 4.
The values Af are the ordinary values at Af of a multi-valued function g{t} which has components corresponding to those of f{t}.
Proof.
We first define a function b{t} as follows: given the set of squares such that each has three corners on C and vertex at t, b{t} is the corresponding set of positive parametric differences between T and the backward corner points.
The functions F and B have exactly the same multiplicity at every argument T.
Now with P fixed at Af, Af-values occur when the corner Af crosses C, and are among the values of S such that Af.
The roots of this equation are just the ordinates of the intersections of the graph of B with a straight line of unit slope through Af in the b-plane (the plane of the graph of b).
We define these values as Af, and define g{t} in the same way for each T.
Thus we obtain g{t} by introducing an oblique g{t}-axis in the Aj.
Introduction.
In 1 we investigate a new series of line involutions in a projective space of three dimensions over the field of complex numbers.
These are defined by a simple involutorial transformation of the points in which a general line meets a nonsingular quadric surface bearing a curve of symbol Af.
Then in 2 we show that any line involution with the properties that (A) It has no complex of invariant lines, and (B) Its singular lines form a complex consisting exclusively of the lines which meet a twisted curve, is necessarily of the type discussed in 1.
No generalization of these results to spaces of more than three dimensions has so far been found possible.
Let Q be a nonsingular quadric surface bearing reguli Af and Af, and let **zg be a Af curve of order K on Q.
A general line L meets Q in two points, Af and Af, through each of which passes a unique generator of the regulus, Af, whose lines are simple secants of Aj.
On these generators let Af and Af be, respectively, the harmonic conjugates of Af and Af with respect to the two points in which the corresponding generator meets Aj.
The line Af is the image of L.
Clearly, the transformation is involutorial.
We observe first that no line, l, can meet its image except at one of its intersections with Q.
For if it did, the plane of L and l' would contain two generators of Af, which is impossible.
Moreover, from the definitive transformation of intercepts on the generators of Af, it is clear that the only points of Q at which a line can meet its image are the points of Aj.
Hence the totality of singular lines is the T order complex of lines which meet Aj.
The invariant lines are the lines of the congruence of secants of **zg, since each of these meets Q in two points which are invariant.
The order of this congruence is Af, since Af secants of a curve of symbol (B) on a quadric surface pass through an arbitrary point.
The class of the congruence is Af, since an arbitrary plane meets **zg in K points.
Since the complex of singular lines is of order K and since there is no complex of invariant lines, it follows from the formula Af that the order of the involution is Af.
There are various sets of exceptional lines, or lines whose images are not unique.
The most obvious of these is the quadratic complex of tangents to Q, each line of which is transformed into the entire pencil of lines tangent to Q at the image of the point of tangency of the given line.
Thus pencils of tangents to Q are transformed into pencils of tangents.
It is interesting that a 1: 1 correspondence can be established between the lines of two such pencils, so that in a sense a unique image can actually be assigned to each tangent.
For the lines of any plane, **yp, meeting Q in a conic C, are transformed into the congruence of secants of the curve C' into which C is transformed in the point involution on Q.
In particular, tangents to C are transformed into tangents to C'.
Moreover, if Af and Af are two planes intersecting in a line l, tangent to Q at a point P, the two free intersections of the image curves Af and Af must coincide at P', the image of P, and at this point Af and Af must have a common tangent l'.
Hence, thought of as a line in a particular plane **yp, any tangent to Q has a unique image and moreover this image is the same for all planes through L.
Each generator, **yl, of Af is also exceptional, for each is transformed into the entire congruence of secants of the curve into which that generator is transformed by the point involution on Q.
This curve is of symbol Af since it meets **yl, and hence every line of Af in the Af invariant points on **yl and since it obviously meets every line of Af in a single point.
The congruence of its secants is therefore of order Af and class Af.
A final class of exceptional lines is identifiable from the following considerations: Since no two generators of Af can intersect, it follows that their image curves can have no free intersections.
In other words, these curves have only fixed intersections common to them all.
Now the only way in which all curves of the image family of Af can pass through a fixed point is to have a generator of Af which is not a secant but a tangent of **zg, for then any point on such a generator will be transformed into the point of tangency.
Since two curves of symbol Af on Q intersect in Af points, it follows that there are Af lines of Af which are tangent to Aj.
A line through two of these points, Af and Af, will be transformed into the entire bilinear congruence having the tangents to **zg at Af and Af as directrices.
A conic, C, being a (1, 1) curve on Q, meets the image of any line of Af, which we have already found to be a Af curve on Q, in Af points.
Hence its image, C', meets any line of Af in Af points.
Moreover, C' obviously meets any line Af in a single point.
Hence C' is a Af curve on Q.
Therefore, the congruence of its secants, that is the image of a general plane field of lines, is of order Af and class Af.
Finally, the image of a general bundle of lines is a congruence whose order is the order of the congruence of invariant lines, namely Af and whose class is the order of the image congruence of a general plane field of lines, namely Af.
The preceding observations make it clear that there exist line involutions of all orders greater than 1 with no complex of invariant lines and with a complex of singular lines consisting exclusively of the lines which meet a twisted curve Aj.
We now shall show that any involution with these characteristics is necessarily of the type we have just described.
To do this we must first show that every line which meets **zg in a point P meets its image at P.
To see this, consider a general pencil of lines containing a general secant of Aj.
By (1), the image of this pencil is a ruled surface of order Af which is met by the plane of the pencil in a curve, C, of order Af.
On C there is a Af correspondence in which the Af points cut from C by a general line, l, of the pencil correspond to the point of intersection of the image of L and the plane of the pencil.
Since C is rational, this correspondence has K coincidences, each of which implies a line of the pencil which meets its image.
However, since the pencil contains a secant of **zg it actually contains only Af singular lines.
To avoid this contradiction it is necessary that C be composite, with the secant of **zg and a curve of order Af as components.
Thus it follows that the secants of **zg are all invariant.
But if this is the case, then an arbitrary pencil of lines having a point, P, of **zg as vertex is transformed into a ruled surface of order Af having Af generators concurrent at P.
Since a ruled surface of order N with N concurrent generators is necessarily a cone, it follows finally that every line through a point, P, of **zg meets its image at P, as asserted.
Now consider the transformation of the lines of a bundle with vertex, P, on **zg which is effected by the involution as a whole.
From the preceding remarks, it is clear that such a bundle is transformed into itself in an involutorial fashion.
Moreover, in this involution there is a cone of invariant lines of order Af, namely the cone of secants of **zg which pass through P.
Hence it follows that the involution within the bundle must be a perspective De Jonquieres involution of order Af and the invariant locus must have a multiple line of multiplicity either Af or Af.
The first possibility requires that there be a line through P which meets **zg in Af points;
the second requires that there be a line through P which meets **zg in Af points.
In each case, lines of the bundles are transformed by involutions within the pencils they determine with the multiple secant.
In the first case the fixed elements within each pencil are the multiple secant and the line joining the vertex, P, to the intersection of **zg and the plane of the pencil which does not lie on the multiple secant.
In the second, the fixed elements are the lines which join the vertex, P, to the two intersections of **zg and the plane of the pencil which do not lie on the multiple secant.
The multiple secants, of course, are exceptional and in each case are transformed into cones of order Af.
Observations similar to these can be made at each point of Aj.
Hence **zg must have either a regulus of Af-fold secants or a regulus of Af-fold secants.
Moreover, if Af, no two of the multiple secants can intersect.
For if such were the case, either the plane of the two lines would meet **zg in more than K points or, alternatively, the order of the image regulus of the pencil determined by the two lines would be too high.
But if no two lines of the regulus of multiple secants of **zg can intersect, then the regulus must be quadratic, or in other words, **zg must be either a Af or a Af curve on a nonsingular quadric surface.
We now observe that the case in which **zg is a Af curve on a quadric is impossible if the complex of singular lines consists exclusively of the lines which meet Aj.
However, if there is no additional complex of singular lines, the order of the image regulus of a pencil is precisely Af.
This contradicts the preceding observations, and so, under the assumption of this paper, we must reject the possibility that **zg is a Af curve on a quadric surface.
Continuing with the case in which **zg is a Af curve on a quadric Q, we first observe that the second regulus of Q consists precisely of the lines which join the two free intersections of **zg and the planes through any one of the multiple secants.
For each of these lines meets Q in three points, namely two points on **zg and one point on one of the multiple secants.
Now consider an arbitrary line, l, meeting Q in two points, Af and Af.
These societies can expect to face difficult times.
As the historic processes of modernization gradually gain momentum, their cohesion will be threatened by divisive forces, the gaps between rulers and subjects, town and country, will widen;
new aspirants for power will emerge whose ambitions far exceed their competence;
old rulers may lose their nerve and their sense of direction.
National leaders will have to display the highest skills of statesmanship to guide their people through times of uncertainty and confusion which destroy men's sense of identity.
Feelings of a community of interest will have to be recreated--in some of the new nations, indeed, they must be built for the first time--on a new basis which looks toward the future and does not rely only on shared memories of the past.
Nevertheless, with foresight and careful planning, some of the more disruptive and dangerous consequences of social change which have troubled other countries passing through this stage can be escaped.
The United States can help by communicating a genuine concern with the problems these countries face and a readiness to provide technical and other appropriate forms of assistance where possible.
Our central goal should be to provide the greatest positive incentive for these societies to tackle boldly the tasks which they face.
At the same time, we should recognize that the obstacles to change and the lack of cohesion and stability which characterize these countries may make them particularly prone to diversions and external adventures of all sorts.
It may seem to some of them that success can be purchased much less dearly by fishing in the murky waters of international politics than by facing up to the intractable tasks at home.
We should do what we can to discourage this conclusion, both by offering assistance for their domestic needs and by reacting firmly to irresponsible actions on the world scene.
As a nation, we feel an obligation to assist other countries in their development;
but this obligation pertains only to countries which are honestly seeking to become responsible members of a stable and forward-moving world community.
Transitional societies
The men in power are committed in principle to modernization, but economic and social changes are proceeding only erratically.
Isolated enterprises have been launched, but they are not yet related to each other in a meaningful pattern.
The society is likely to be characterized by having a fairly modernized urban sector and a relatively untouched rural sector, with very poor communications between the two.
Progress is impeded by psychological inhibitions to effective action among those in power and by a failure on their part to understand how local resources, human and material, can be mobilized to achieve the national goals of modernization already symbolically accepted.
Most countries in this second category share the difficulty of having many of the structures of a modern political and social system without the modern standards of performance required to make them effective.
In these rapidly changing societies there is also too little appreciation of the need for effort to achieve goals.
The colonial period has generally left people believing that government can, if it wishes, provide all manner of services for them--and that with independence free men do not have to work to realize the benefits of modern life.
For example, in accordance with the fashion of the times, most transitional societies have announced economic development plans of varying numbers of years;
such is the mystique of planning that people expect that fulfillment of the plan will follow automatically upon its announcement.
The civil services in such societies are generally inadequate to deal competently with the problems facing them;
and their members often equate a government career with security and status rather than with sacrifice, self-discipline, and competence.
American policy should press constantly the view that until these governments demand efficiency and effectiveness of their bureaucracies there is not the slightest hope that they will either modernize of democratize their societies.
We should spread the view that planning and national development are serious matters which call for effort as well as enthusiasm.
Above all, we should seek to encourage the leaders of these societies to accept the unpleasant fact that they are responsible for their fates.
Only within the framework of a mature relationship characterized by honest appraisals of performance can we provide telling assistance.
With respect to those countries whose leaders prefer to live with their illusions, we can afford to wait, for in time their comparative lack of progress will become clear for all to see.
Our technical assistance to these countries should place special emphasis on inducing the central governments to assume the role of advisor and guide which at an earlier stage foreign experts assumed in dealing with the central governments.
We should encourage the governments to develop their own technical assistance to communities, state and provincial governments, rural communities, and other smaller groups, making certain that no important segment of the economy is neglected.
Efforts such as the Community Development Program in the Philippines have demonstrated that transitional societies can work toward balanced national development.
To achieve this goal of balanced development, communications between the central government and the local communities must be such that the needs and aspirations of the people themselves are effectively taken into account.
If modernization programs are imposed from above, without the understanding and cooperation of the people, they will encounter grave difficulties.
Land reform is likely to be a pressing issue in many of these countries.
It should be American policy not only to encourage effective land reform programs but also to underline the relation of such reforms to the economic growth and modernization of the society.
As an isolated policy, land reform is likely to be politically disruptive;
as part of a larger development effort, however, it may gain wide acceptance.
It should also be recognized that the problem of rural tenancy cannot be solved by administrative decrees alone.
Land reform programs need to be supplemented with programs for promoting rural credits and technical assistance in agriculture.
Lastly, governmental and private planners will at this stage begin to see large capital requirements looming ahead.
By holding out prospects for external capital assistance, the United States can provide strong incentives to prepare for the concerted economic drive necessary to achieve self-sustaining growth.
Actively modernizing societies
At a third stage in the modernization process are such countries as India, Brazil, the Philippines, and Taiwan, which are ready and committed to move into the stage of self-sustaining growth.
They must continue to satisfy basic capital needs;
and there persists the dual problem of maintaining operational unity around a national program of modernization while simultaneously decentralizing participation in the program to wider and wider groups.
But these countries have made big strides toward developing the necessary human and social overhead capital;
they have established reasonably stable and effective governmental institutions at national and local levels;
and they have begun to develop a capacity to deal realistically and simultaneously with all the major sectors of their economies.
On the economic front, the first priority of these countries is to mobilize a vastly increased volume of resources.
Several related tasks must be carried out if self-sustaining growth is to be achieved.
These countries must formulate a comprehensive, long-term program covering the objectives of both the private and the public sectors of the economy.
They must in their planning be able to count on at least tentative commitments of foreign capital assistance over periods of several years.
Capital imports drawn from a number of sources must be employed and combined skillfully enough to permit domestic investment programming to go forward.
Capital flows must be coordinated with national needs and planning.
Finally, a balance must be effected among project finance, utilization of agricultural surpluses, and general balance of payments support.
There remain many political and administrative problems to be solved.
For one thing, although considerable numbers of men have been trained, bureaucracies are still deficient in many respects;
even the famed Indian Civil Service is not fully adequate to the tremendous range of tasks it has undertaken.
Technical assistance in training middle- and upper-level management personnel is still needed in many cases.
There are also more basic problems.
This is the stage at which democratic developments must take place if the society is to become an open community of creative people.
Nevertheless, impulses still exist among the ruling elite to rationalize and thus to perpetuate the need for centralized and authoritarian practices.
Another great danger is that the emerging middle class will feel itself increasingly alienated from the political leaders who still justify their dominance by reference to the struggle for independence or the early phase of nationalism.
Particularly when based upon a single dominant party, governments may respond to such a situation by claiming a monopoly of understanding about the national interest.
Convinced of the wisdom of their own actions, and reassured by the promises of their economic development programs, governments may fail to push outward to win more and more people to the national effort, becoming instead more rigid and inflexible in their policies.
American policy toward such societies should stress our sympathy for the emerging social and professional classes.
It should attempt to communicate both an appreciation of professional standards and an understanding of the tremendous powers and potentialities of genuinely open and pluralistic societies.
We have every obligation to take seriously their claims to being democratic and free countries;
we also have, in consequence, the duty to appraise realistically and honestly their performance and to communicate our judgments to their leaders in frank but friendly ways.
The time factor
We have emphasized that the modernizing process in each society will take a considerable period of time.
With the exception of treaty-making, foreign relations were historically concerned for the most part with conditions of short or at least measurable duration.
Foreign policy now takes on a different perspective and must become skilled not merely at response but also at projection.
American and free-world policies can marginally affect the pace of transition;
but basically that pace depends on changes in the supply of resources and in the human attitudes, political institutions, and social structure which each society must generate.
It follows that any effective policy toward the underdeveloped countries must have a realistically long working horizon.
It must be marked by a patience and persistence which have not always been its trademark.
This condition affects not only the conception but also the legislative and financial support of foreign policy, especially in the context of economic aid.
2::
Some of the major functions of religion
The place of religion in the simple, preliterate societies is quite definite;
as a complex it fits into the whole social organization and functions dominantly in every part of it.
In societies like ours, however, its place is less clear and more complex.
With the diversity of religious viewpoints, there are differences of opinion as to the essential features of religion;
and there are different opinions as to the essential functions of religion.
Nevertheless, for most of the population of heterogeneous advanced societies, though less for the less religious portion, religion does perform certain modal individual and social functions.
Although the inner functions of religion are not of direct significance in social organization, they have important indirect consequences.
If the inner functions of religion are performed, the individual is a composed, ordered, motivated, and emotionally secure associate;
he is not greatly frustrated, and he is not anomic;
he is better fitted to perform his social life among his fellows.
There are several closely related inner functions.
In the last analysis, religion is the means of inducing, formulating, expressing, enhancing, implementing, and perpetuating man's deepest experience--the religious.
Man is first religious;
the instrumentalities follow.
Religion seeks to satisfy human needs of great pertinence.
The significant things in it, at the higher religious levels, are the inner emotional, mental, and spiritual occurrences that fill the pressing human needs of self-preservation, self-pacification, and self-completion.
The chief experience is the sensing of communion, and in the higher religions, of a harmonious relationship with the supernatural power.
Related to this is the fact that most of the higher religions define for the individual his place in the universe and give him a feeling that he is relatively secure in an ordered, dependable universe.
Man has the experience of being helpfully allied with what he cannot fully understand;
he is a coordinate part of all of the mysterious energy and being and movement.
The universe is a safe and permanent home.
A number of religions also satisfy for many the need of being linked with the ultimate and eternal.
Death is not permanent defeat and disappearance;
man has a second chance.
He is not lost in the abyss of endless time;
he has endless being.
Religion at its best also offers the experience of spiritual fulfillment by inviting man into the highest realm of the spirit.
Religion can summate, epitomize, relate, and conserve all the highest ideals and values--ethical, aesthetic, and religious--of man formed in his culture.
There is also the possibility, among higher religions, of experiencing consistent meaning in life and enjoying guidance and expansiveness.
The kind of religious experience that most moderns seek not only provides, clarifies, and relates human yearnings, values, ideals, and purposes;
it also provides facilities and incitements for the development of personality, sociality, and creativeness.
Under the religious impulse, whether theistic or humanistic, men have joy in living;
life leads somewhere.
Religion at its best is out in front, ever beckoning and leading on, and, as Lippman put it, mobilizing all man's scattered energies in one triumphant sense of his own infinite importance.
At the same time that religion binds the individual helpfully to the supernatural and gives him cosmic peace and a sense of supreme fulfillment, it also has great therapeutic value for him.
It gives him aid, comfort, even solace, in meeting mundane life situations where his own unassisted practical knowledge and skill are felt by him to be inadequate.
He is confronted with the recurrent crises, such as great natural catastrophes and the great transitions of life--marriage, incurable disease, widowhood, old age, the certainty of death.
He has to cope with frustration and other emotional disturbance and anomie.
Religion usually also includes a principle of compensation, mainly in a promised perfect future state.
The belief in immortality, where held, functions as a redress for the ills and disappointments of the here and now.
The tensions accompanying a repressive consciousness of wrongdoing or sinning or some tormenting secret are relieved for the less self-contained or self-sufficient by confession, repentance, and penance.
In providing for these inner individual functions, religion undertakes in behalf of individual peace of mind and well-being services for which there is no other institution.
In addition to the functions of religion within man, there have always been the outer social functions for the community and society.
The two have never been separable.
Religion is vitally necessary in both societal maintenance and regulation.
The value-system of a community or society is always correlated with, and to a degree dependent upon, a more or less shared system of religious beliefs and convictions.
The religion supports, re-enforces, reaffirms, and maintains the fundamental values.
Even in the United States, with its freedom of religious belief and worship and its vast denominational differentiation, there is a general consensus regarding the basic Christian values.
This is demonstrated especially when there is awareness of radically different value orientation elsewhere;
for example Americans rally to Christian values vis-a-vis those of atheistic communism.
In America also all of our major religious bodies officially sanction a universalistic ethic which is reflective of our common religion.
Even the non-church members--the freewheelers, marginal religionists and so on--have the values of Christian civilization internalized in them.
Furthermore, religion tends to integrate the whole range of values from the highest or ultimate values of God to the intermediary and subordinate values;
for example, those regarding material objects and pragmatic ends.
Finally, it gives sanctity, more than human legitimacy, and even, through super-empirical reference, transcendent and supernatural importance to some values;
for example, marriage as a sacrament, much law-breaking as sinful, occasionally the state as a divine instrument.
It places certain values at least beyond questioning and tampering.
Closely related to this function is the fact that the religious system provides a body of ultimate ends for the society, which are compatible with the supreme eternal ends.
This something leads to a conception of an over-all Social Plan with a meaning interpretable in terms of ultimate ends;
for example, a plan that fulfills the will of God, which advances the Kingdom of God, which involves social life as part of the Grand Design.
This explains some group ends and provides a justification of their primacy.
It gives social guidance and direction and makes for programs of social action.
Finally, it gives meaning to much social endeavor, and logic, consistency, and meaning to life.
In general, there is no society so secularized as to be completely without religiously inspired transcendental ends.
Religion integrates and unifies.
Some of the oldest, most persistent, and most cohesive forms of social groupings have grown out of religion.
These groups have varied widely from mere families, primitive, totemic groups, and small modern cults and sects, to the memberships of great denominations, and great, widely dispersed world religions.
Religion fosters group life in various ways.
The common ultimate values, ends and goals fostered by religion are a most important factor.
Without a system of values there can be no society.
Where such a value system prevails, it always unifies all who possess it;
it enables members of the society to operate as a system.
The beliefs of a religion also reflecting the values are expressed in creeds, dogmas, and doctrines, and form what Durkheim calls a credo.
As he points out, a religious group cannot exist without a collective credo, and the more extensive the credo, the more unified and strong is the group.
The credo unifies and socializes men by attaching them completely to an identical body of doctrine;
the more extensive and firm the body of doctrine, the firmer the group.
The religious symbolism, and especially the closely related rites and worship forms, constitute a powerful bond for the members of the particular faith.
The religion, in fact, is an expression of the unity of the group, small or large.
The common codes, for religious action as such and in their ethical aspects for everyday moral behavior, bind the devotees together.
These are ways of jointly participating in significantly symbolized, standardized, and ordered religiously sanctified behavior.
The codes are mechanism for training in, and directing and enforcing, uniform social interaction, and for continually and publicly reasserting the solidarity of the group.
Durkheim noted long ago that religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things unites into one single moral community all those who adhere to them.
His view is that every religion pertains to a community, and, conversely, every community is in one aspect a religious unit.
This is brought out in the common religious ethos that prevails even in the denominationally diverse audiences at many secular semi-public and public occasions in the United States;
and it is evidenced in the prayers offered, in the frequent religious allusions, and in the confirmation of points on religious grounds.
The unifying effect of religion is also brought out in the fact that historically peoples have clung together as more or less cohesive cultural units, with religion as the dominant bond, even though spatially dispersed and not politically organized.
The Jews for 2500 years have been a prime example, though the adherents of any world or interpeople religion are cases in point.
It might be pointed out that the integrating function of religion, for good or ill, has often supported or been identified with other groupings--political, nationality, language, class, racial, sociability, even economic.
Religion usually exercises a stabilizing-conserving function.
As such it acts as an anchor for the people.
There is a marked tendency for religions, once firmly established, to resist change, not only in their own doctrines and policies and practices, but also in secular affairs having religious relevance.
It has thus been a significant factor in the conservation of social values, though also in some measure, an obstacle to the creation or diffusion of new ones.
It tends to support the longstanding precious sentiments, the traditional ways of thinking, and the customary ways of living.
As Yinger has pointed out, the reliance on symbols, on tradition, on sacred writings, on the cultivation of emotional feelings of identity and harmony with sacred values, turns one to the past far more than to the future.
Historically, religion has also functioned as a tremendous engine of vindication, enforcement, sanction, and perpetuation of various other institutions.
At the same time that religion exercises a conserving influence, it also energizes and motivates both individuals and groups.
Much of the important individual and social action has been owing to religious incentives.
The great ultimate ends of religion have served as magnificent beacon lights that lured people toward them with an almost irresistible force, mobilizing energies and inducing sacrifices;
for example, the Crusades, mission efforts, just wars.
Much effort has been expended in the sincere effort to apply the teaching and admonitions of religion.
The insuperable reward systems that most religions embody have great motivating effects.
Religion provides the most attractive rewards, either in this world or the next, for those who not merely abide by its norms, but who engage in good works.
Religion usually acts as a powerful aid in social control, enforcing what men should or should not do.
Among primitive peoples the sanctions and dictates of religion were more binding than any of the other controls exercised by the group;
and in modern societies such influence is still great.
Religion has its own supernatural prescriptions that are at the same time codes of behavior for the here and now.
Overwhelmed with the care of five young children and concerned about persistent economic difficulties due to her husband's marginal income, her defense of denial was excessively strong.
Thus the lack of effective recognition of the responsibilities involved in caring for two babies showed signs of becoming a disabling problem.
The result, dramatically visible in a matter of days in the family's disrupted daily functioning, was a phobic-like fear that some terrible harm would befall the second twin, whose birth had not been anticipated.
Soon Mrs. B.'s fears threatened to burst into a full-blown panic concerning the welfare of the entire family.
Inability to care for the other children, difficulty in feeding the babies, who seemed colicky, bone-weary fatigue, repeated crying episodes, and short tempers reflected the family's helplessness in coping with the stressful situation.
Clearly, this was a family in crisis.
Mrs. B. compared her feelings of weakness to her feelings of weakness and helplessness at the time of her mother's death when she was eight, as well as her subsequent anger at her father for remarrying.
Her previous traumatic experiences flashed through her mind as if they had happened yesterday.
On the anniversary of her father's death she poured out with agonized tears her feelings of guilt about not having attended his funeral.
In the family's own words (during the third of twelve visits), they had reached the crisis peak--either the situation will give or we will break!
Direct confrontation and acceptance of Mrs. B.'s anger against the second baby soon dissipated her fears of annihilation.
Abreaction of her anxiety and guilt concerning the death of her parents, when linked up with her current feelings of anger and her fears of loss, abandonment, and annihilation, produced further relief of tension.
In a joint interview Mr. and Mrs. B. were helped to understand the meaning of a younger son's wandering away from home in terms of his feelings of displacement in reaction to the arrival of the twins.
The father, accurately perceiving the child's needs, not only respected them as worthy of his attention, but immediately satisfied them by taking him on his lap along with the twins, saying, I have a big lap;
there is room for you, too, Johnnie.
Follow-up visits of the nurse and social worker indicated continued success in the care of the new babies as well as a marked improvement in the family's day-to-day mental health and social functioning.
As seen in the B. family, there must be an attempt to help the client develop conscious awareness of the problem, especially in the absence of a formal request for assistance.
The lack of awareness usually springs from deep but disguised anxiety, often assuming the superficial guise of not knowing or not caring.
The unhealthy use of denial in the initial reaction to a stress must be handled through the medium of a positive controlled transference.
In general, the approach is more active than passive, more out-reaching than reflective.
While some regression is inevitable, it is discouraged rather than encouraged so that the transference does not follow the stages of planned regression associated with certain casework adaptations of the psychoanalytic model for insight therapy.
To establish an emotionally meaningful relationship the worker must demonstrate actual or potential helpfulness immediately, preferably within the first interview, by meeting the client's specific needs.
These needs usually concern the reduction of guilt and some relief of tension.
The initial interview must be therapeutic rather than purely exploratory in an information-seeking sense.
In this relationship-building stage the worker must communicate confidence in the client's ability to deal with the problem.
In so doing he implicitly offers the positive contagion of hope as a kind of maturational dynamic to counteract feelings of helplessness and hopelessness generally associated with the first stages of stress impact.
Thus, the client receives enough ego support to engage in constructive efforts on his own behalf.
Here there is a specific preventive component which applies in a more generalized sense to any casework situation.
We are preventing or averting pathogenic phenomena such as undue regression, unhealthy suppression and repression, excessive use of denial, and crippling guilt turned against the self.
In steering the family toward ego-adaptive and away from maladaptive responses, the worker uses time-honored focused casework techniques of specific emotional support, clarification, and anticipatory guidance.
Though there is obviously nothing new about these techniques, they do challenge the worker's skill to articulate them precisely on the spot and on the basis of quick and accurate diagnostic assessments.
In addition, in many cases, a variety of concrete social resources--homemaker, day care, medical and financial aid--must be reasonably available for the reality support needed to bolster the family in its individual and collective coping and integrative efforts.
At certain critical stages, and only for sound diagnostic reasons, it may be important to accompany family members in their use of these resources if their problem-solving behavior is to be constructive rather than defeating.
Finally, whatever the techniques used, a twin goal is common to all preventive casework service: to cushion or reduce the force of the stress impact while at the same time to encourage and support family members to mobilize and use their ego capacities.
Having outlined an approach to the theory and practice of preventive casework, we now address ourselves to our final question: What place should brief, crisis-oriented preventive casework occupy in our total spectrum of services?
We should first recognize our tendency to develop a hierarchy of values, locating brief treatment at the bottom and long-term intensive service at the top, instead of seeing the services as part of a continuum, each important in its own right.
This problem is perhaps as old as social casework itself.
Almost three decades ago Bertha Reynolds undertook a study of short-contact interviewing because of her conviction that short-term casework had an important but neglected place in our network of social services.
Her conclusion has been borne out in the experience of many practitioners: short-contact interviewing is neither a truncated nor a telescoped experience but is of the same essential quality as the so-called intensive case work.
Thus, casework involving a limited number of interviews is still to be regarded in terms of the quality of service rendered rather than of the quantity of time expended.
That we are experiencing an upsurge of interest in the many formulations and preventive adaptations of brief treatment in social casework is evident from even a small sampling of current literature.
Especially noteworthy is Levinger's finding that the length of treatment per se is not a reliable indicator of successful outcome.
According to a number of studies, the important predictors are the nature and management of the client's anxiety as well as the accessibility of the helping person.
These reports refer to a level of secondary prevention in a child guidance clinic approached by the customary route of voluntary referral by the family or by other professional people.
While there are many different possibilities for the timing of casework intervention, the experiments recently reported from a variety of traditional settings all point up the importance of an immediate response to the client's initial need for help.
In some programs, treatment is concentrated over a short period of time, while in others, after the initial contact is established, flexible spacing of interviews has been experimentally used with apparent success.
Willingness to take the risk of early and direct interpretation (with the proviso that if the interpretation is too threatening, the worker can withdraw) is another prominent feature in these efforts.
My aim in mentioning this factor obviously is not to give license to wild therapy but rather to encourage us to use the time-honored clinical casework skills we already possess, and to use them with greater confidence, precision, and professional pride.
Woodward, for example, has emphasized the need for a broad spectrum of services, including very brief services in connection with critical situations.
Ideally, brief treatment should be arrived at as a treatment of choice rather than as a treatment of chance.
Our literature is already replete with a fantastic number of suggestions for preventive agency programming ranging from the immediately practical to the globally utopian.
Probably, in the immediate future, we will have to settle for middle-range efforts that fall short of utopian models.
Increased experimentation with multipurpose agencies, especially those that combine afresh the traditional functions of family and child welfare services, holds rich promise for the future.
For example, child welfare experience abounds with cases in which the parental request for substitute care is precipitated by a crisis event which is meaningfully linked with a fundamental unresolved problem of family relationships.
Sentiment.
Tension management and communication of sentiment are the processes involved in the functioning of the element of sentiment or feeling.
One of the devices for tension management is preferential mating.
The preferential mating of this particular population has been analyzed in a separate study.
The relative geographical isolation of the Brandywine population makes for a limited choice in mating.
It would seem necessary that members of this population provide support for one another since it is not provided by the larger society.
The supportive relations can apparently be achieved in geographical and social isolation.
The newlyweds building homes on the same land with either set of parents, and the almost exclusive use of members of the population as sponsors for baptisms and weddings illustrate this supportive relationship.
As Loomis remarks, In the internal pattern the chief reason for interacting is to communicate liking, friendship, and love among those who stand in supporting relations to one another and corresponding negative sentiments to those who stand in antagonistic relations.
Achieving.
Maintenance of the status quo might seem to be the appropriate goal or objective of this population today.
Yet, the object of the element of achieving through the process of goal attaining for this population appears to have been changed by circumstances brought about by the war.
Prior to World War 2, there was a higher percentage of endogamous marriages than after World War 2.
Norms.
The norms, as elements, refer to all criteria for judging the character or conduct of both individual and group actions in any social system.
The process of evaluation assigns varying positive and negative priorities or values to elements.
The elements and processes become evident in a study of mate selection in this population.
From the evidence it may be conjectured that core - core marriages are the preferred unions for core males and females;
core - marginal marriages still belong in the category of permissive unions;
and core - Negro marriages are proscribed for core members.
Status-roles.
The element of status-roles and associated processes have not been sufficiently investigated for this population to permit any type of conjectures about them.
Power.
There is some indication from a limited number of interviews with members of the population that the element of power, primarily the voluntary influence of non-authoritative power, has been exerted on actors in the system, particularly in regard to mate selection.
This would seem to vary from family to family, depending somewhat on the core or marginal status of that family.
Again, size of the group may have some influence on the strength of group controls.
Ranking.
Interviews with members of the Brandywine population were attempted in order to discover the ranking of the various families in the population.
The large majority of the interviewees placed core families in the upper positions.
Loomis considers ranking a product of the evaluation process.
The standing or rank of an actor in a given social system is determined by the evaluation placed upon the actor and his acts in accordance with the norms and standards of the system.
Despite the increasing rate of exogamous marriages, the population has been able to sustain, at least to some degree, the consciousness of its intermediate status in society.
To some extent the system can be considered a Gemeinschaft in which social-role occupancies are determined by birth, by attributes such as sex or caste, which are biologically or socially immutable.
Sanctions.
The negative sanctions applied to core - Negro marriages for core members act as indicators of expected adherence to group norms.
However, because of Church laws, lately more stringently enforced, which forbid the marriage of cousins closely related consanguineously, a means of facilitating the goal of in-group relations may be that of recourse to illegitimate unions.
A cursory survey of available material indicates a high rate of illegitimate births occurring to parents who have a close consanguineous relationship.
Subsystems
The comprehensive or master processes activate all or some of the elements within the social system and subsystems.
Within the larger social system are the structural and functional subsystems.
The structural subsystem, consisting of relatively stable inter-relationships among its parts, includes: 1.
Subgroups of various types, interconnected by relational norms.
Roles of various types, within the larger system and within the subgroups 3.
Regulative norms governing subgroups and roles.
Cultural values.
In the study of marriage patterns for this group, consanguinity produces the structural system--a system of affinities--which, in turn, maintains the system of consanguinity.
Subgroups of various types have been found within this system.
Each family line can be considered a substructure.
There seems to be an implied cultural value attached to the fact of core status within the group.
Additionally, the proscription of core - Negro marriages for core families, discussed above, would seem to act as a regulative norm governing subgroups and roles.
The scope of this study does not provide for the study of roles of various types within the larger system or within the subgroups.
However, it cannot be presumed, informal though the structure of the population seems, that there are not well-defined roles within the system.
The present study relates to the theory of functional systems.
It is hypothesized that fertility is a function of the social system when the population as a whole is considered and a function of the subsystems when the two-fold division of core families and marginal families is considered.
The four functional problems of a social system are, to some extent, solved by the subsystems within this population.
By means of geographical isolation and high fertility rates, inbreeding can be fostered and the pattern of isolation from the greater society maintained.
In order to attain the goal of group solidarity and to relieve tension, the high fertility rate provides more group members for mate selection, and the clustering of members in groups fosters acceptance of group controls.
To maintain their intermediate position in the larger society, it is not only necessary that members of this population be visible, but that their numbers be great enough to be recognized as a separate, distinct grouping or system in society.
As mentioned above, where families are concentrated in larger numbers, group controls seem strongest and most effective.
Adaptation to the social and non-social environment through the economy has been met to a degree through a type of occupational segregation.
This provides the necessary contact with the larger society, while supporting a type of control over members in terms of social contacts.
Integration has to do with the inter-relation of parts.
The problem of solidarity and morale again involves the concept of values.
The values placed by the Brandywine population, upon maintaining a certain homogeneity, a certain separate racial identity, and therefore a certain separate social status, are important for the morale of the system.
Since morale is closely related to pattern maintenance and integration, the higher the morale and solidarity, the better the system can solve the problems of the system.
In this respect it would seem that the greater the social distance between the Brandywine population and the white and Negro populations within the same general locality, the greater the possibility for higher morale and solidarity within the Brandywine population.
It is conceived that one of the means to attain this social distance is that of physical and social isolation.
In turn, higher fertility rates for this population provide a means of increasing the numerical quantity of the population, allowing for the possibility of greater stability and unity.
The population can thereby replenish itself and actually grow larger.
Master processes
Of particular utility in the analysis of the development, persistence, and change of social systems has been the use of the master or comprehensive processes.
Loomis considers six such processes in his paradigm.
Communication
Boundary maintenance
Systemic linkage
Socialization
Social control
Institutionalization Though undoubtedly all six processes are operative within the whole social system and its subsystems, two processes that are of crucial importance to this study will be singled out for particular emphasis.
Communication.
In discussing the process of communication, Loomis defines it as the process by which information, decisions, and directives are transmitted among actors and the ways in which knowledge, opinions, and attitudes are formed, or modified by interaction.
Communication may be facilitated by means of the high visibility within the larger community.
Intense interaction is easier where segregated living and occupational segregation mark off a group from the rest of the community, as in the case of this population.
However, the factor of physical isolation is not a static situation.
Although the Brandywine population is still predominantly rural, there are indications of a consistent and a statistically significant trend away from the older and relatively isolated rural communities.
Urbanization appears to be an important factor in the disintegration of this group.
This conclusion is, however, an over-simplification.
A more realistic analysis must take into account the fact that Brandywine people in the urban-fringe area are, in general, less segregated locally than group members in rural areas.
In the urban area, in other words, they, unlike some urban ethnic groups, do not concentrate in ghetto colonies.
Group pressures toward conformity are slight or non-existent, and deviant behavior in mate selection incurs few if any social sanctions.
In such a setting social contacts and associations are likely to be heterogamous, resulting in a change of values and, almost necessarily, in mate selection behavior.
To the extent that urban life contributes to the breakdown of the group patterns of residential isolation, to that extent it contributes directly to increased exogamy.
Social control.
The process of social control is operative insofar as sanctions play a part in the individual's behavior, as well as the group's behavior.
By means of this social control, deviance is either eliminated or somehow made compatible with the function of the social group.
Examples from this population indicate that deviance seems to be sanctioned by ostracism from the group.
Socialization.
There is an oral tradition among the members of the population in regard to the origin and subsequent separate status of the group in the larger society.
Confused and divided though this tradition may be, it is an important part of the social and cultural heritage of the group, and acts as a means of socialization, particularly for members of the rural community.
The fact of Indian ancestry and free status during the days of slavery, are important distinctions made by members of the group.
Boundary maintenance.
Culturally induced social cohesion resulting from common norms and values internalized by members of the group is operative in the boundary maintenance of the group as well as in the process of socialization.
The process of boundary maintenance identifies and preserves the social system or subsystems, and the characteristic interaction is maintained.
As the threat of encroachment on the system increases, the probability of applied boundary maintenance mechanisms increases.
The fertility rate pattern would seem to be a function, though a latent one, of the process of maintaining the boundary.
Increased boundary maintenance may be achieved, for example, by assigning a higher primacy or evaluation to activities characteristic of the external pattern.
The external pattern or external system can be considered as group behavior that enables the group to survive in its environment.
Boundary maintenance for this group would seem to be primarily social, as is the preference for endogamy.
It is also expressed in the proscription against deviants in the matter of endogamy, particularly in rural areas.
By their pattern of endogamy and exogamy, the core families and the marginal families show distinct limits to the intergroup contact they maintain.
Systemic linkage.
A royal decree issued in 1910, two years after the Belgian government assumed authority for the administration of the Congo, prescribed the registration of all adult males by chiefdoms.
Further decrees along this line were issued in 1916 and 1919.
In 1922 a continuous registration of the whole indigenous population was instituted by ordinance of the Governor-General, and the periodic compilation of these records was ordered.
But specific procedures for carrying out this plan were left to the discretion of the provincial governors.
A unified set of regulations, applicable to all areas, was issued in 1929, and a complementary series of demographic inquiries in selected areas was instituted at the same time.
The whole system was again reviewed and reorganized in 1933.
General responsibility for its administration rested with a division of the colonial government concerned with labor supply and native affairs, Service des Affaires Indigenes et de la Main-d'Oeuvre (AIMO, Af Direction, Af Direction Generale, Gouvernement Generale).
Tribal authorities, the chiefs and their secretaries, were held responsible for maintaining the registers of indigenous persons within their territories, under the general supervision of district officials.
The district officials, along with their other duties, were obliged to organize special demographic inquiries in selected areas and to supervise the annual tabulations of demographic statistics.
The regulations require the inscription of each individual (male or female, adult or child) on a separate card (fiche).
The cards, filed by circonscription (sub-chiefdom, or village), are kept in the headquarters of each territoire (chiefdom).
Each card is expected to show certain information about the individual concerned, including his or her date of birth (or age at a specified time), spouses, and children.
Additional entries must be made from time to time.
Different cards are used for males and females, and a corner is clipped from the cards of adults, and of children when they reach puberty.
So a quick count could be made at any time, even by an illiterate clerk, of the number of registered persons in four age-and-sex classes.
Personal identification cards are issued to all adult males on which tax payments, inoculations, periods of employment, and changes of residence are recorded.
Similar identification cards were issued in 1959 to all adult females.
Each adult is held personally responsible for assuring his inscription and obtaining an identification card which must be shown on demand.
The registration card of a person leaving his home territory for a short period is put into a special file for absent persons.
The cards of permanent out-migrants are, in theory, sent to an office in the place of new residence.
Finally, the registration of births and deaths by nearest relatives was made compulsory in most regions.
Numbers of registered persons in four age-and-sex classes were counted each year.
In addition, demographic inquiries, supposedly involving field investigations, were conducted in selected minor divisions (circonscriptions) containing about 3 percent of the total population.
The areas to be examined in these inquiries were selected by local officials, supposedly as representative of a larger population.
Averages of the ratios obtained in a few selected areas were applied to the larger population.
The scheme, in theory, is an ingenious adaptation of European registration systems to the conditions of African life.
But it places a severe strain on the administrative resources (already burdened in other ways) of a widely dispersed, poor and largely illiterate population.
The sampling program was instituted before the principles of probability sampling were widely recognized in population studies.
The system was not well adapted to conditions of life in urban centers.
The distinction between domiciled (de jure) and present (de facto) population was not clearly defined.
So the results are subject to considerable confusion.
The system tended to break down during the war, but was reactivated;
it had reached the pre-war level of efficiency by 1951.
In spite of the defects in this system, the figures on total population during the late 1930's and again in the early 1950's seem to have represented actual conditions in most districts with approximate fidelity.
But the information on the dynamics of population was often quite misleading.
The same system, with minor modifications, was developed in Ruanda-Urundi under Belgian administration.
Here again it seems that useful approximations of the size and geographical distribution of the population were obtained in this way in the late pre-war and early post-war periods.
Before considering more recent activities, we should note another important aspect of demography in Belgian Africa.
A number of strong independent agencies, established in some cases with governmental or royal support, have conducted large medical, social, educational and research operations in particular parts of the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi.
The work of Fonds Reine Elisabeth pour l'Assistance Medicale aux Indigenes Du Congo Belge (FOREAMI) has special interest with respect to demography.
This agency accepted responsibility for medical services to a population ranging from 638,560 persons in 1941 to 840,503 in 1956 in the Kwango District and adjacent areas east of Leopoldville.
Each year from 1941 on, its medical staff had conducted intensive field investigations to determine changes in population structure and vital rates and, as its primary objective, the incidence of major diseases.
Its findings are reported each year in its Rapport Sur l'activite Pendant annee (Bruxelles).
Somewhat similar investigations have been made by medical officers in other areas.
Other independent, or partially independent agencies, have promoted investigations on topics directly or indirectly related to demography.
These studies vary widely in scope and precision.
L'Institut pour La Recherche Scientifique En Afrique Centrale (IRSAC) has sponsored well-designed field investigations and has cooperated closely with the government of Ruanda-Urundi in the development of its official statistics.
Some 30,000 completed schedules with 20 items (collected by sub-chiefs in 1,100 circumscriptions) have been tabulated.
The results are now being analyzed.
Statistics have been recognized as a matter of strategic importance in the Congo and in Ruanda-Urundi during the post-war years in connection with long-term economic and social programs.
The AIMO organizations of both countries, which maintain administrative services throughout the territories, retained immediate responsibility for the collection and publication of demographic information.
However, the statistical offices of both governments were assigned responsibility for the planning and analysis of these statistics.
A Bureau De La Demographie (A. Romaniuk, Director) was formed under AIMO in the Congo, to work in close rapport with the Section Statistique of the Secretariat General.
Eventually responsibility for demographic inquiries in the Congo was transferred to the demographic division of the Central Statistical Office.
The 1952 demographic inquiry in Ruanda-Urundi was directed by V. Neesen, a member of the IRSAC staff, though the inquiry was carried out under the auspices of AIMO, which has continuing responsibility for demographic statistics in this territory.
A member of the IRSAC staff (E. Van De Walle) was recently delegated to cooperate with AIMO in the development of demographic statistics in this territory.
The initiation of sampling censuses in Ruanda-Urundi (1952) and in the Congo (1955 - 57) were major advances.
We will deal first with the program in the Congo though this was put into operation later than the other.
The radical nature of the innovation in the Congo was not emphasized in the official announcements.
The term enquetes demographiques, previously used for the supplementary investigations carried out in connection with the administrative censuses, was used for the new investigations.
However, the differences in procedure are fundamental.
These are as follows: (1) field work procedures.
Field operations were transferred from administrative personnel primarily engaged in other tasks to specially trained teams of full-time African investigators (three teams, each working in two provinces).
These teams carried out the same operations successively in different areas.
(2) nature of the sample.
Sample areas in the new investigations were selected strictly by application of the principles of probability theory, so as to be representative of the total population of defined areas within calculable limits.
In short, scientific sampling was introduced in place of subjective sampling.
The populations of the various districts, or other major divisions, were stratified by type of community (rural, urban, mixed) and, where appropriate, by ethnic affiliation and by type of economy.
Sample units (villages in rural areas, houses in cities) were drawn systematically within these strata.
(3) size of the sample.
Different sampling ratios were applied under different conditions.
Higher proportions were sampled in urban and mixed communities than in rural areas.
About 11 percent of the total population was covered in the new investigation, as compared with about 3 percent in the previous inquiries.
(4) questions and definitions.
Uniform questions, definitions, and procedures were enforced throughout the whole country.
Data were obtained, separately, on three classes of persons: (A) residents, present;
(B) residents, absent;
and (C) visitors.
In the reports, summary results are given for both the de facto (A and C) and de jure (A and B) populations;
but the subsequent analysis of characteristics is reported only for the de jure population (or, in some districts, only the de facto population).
These changes represent, in effect, a shift from (1) an administrative compilation of data obtained through procedures designed primarily to serve political and economic objectives to (2) a systematic sampling census of the whole African population.
The population registration system still has important functions.
It supplies local data which are useful in administration and which can be used as a basis for intensive studies in particular situations.
It provides a frame for the sampling census.
It also provides a frame within which the registration of vital events is gradually gaining force (though one cannot expect to obtain reliable vital statistics in most parts of the Congo from this source in the near future).
It is still used in making current population estimates in post-census years, though the value of these estimates is open to question.
Finally, it may have certain very important, less obvious values.
The quality of the census data can, therefore, be greatly improved by the use of the registration records in conjunction with the field inquiries.
The first sampling census in the Congo extended over a three-year period, 1955 - 57;
the results were still being processed in 1959.
It is planned to double the number of teams and to make use of improved equipment in a second demographic inquiry in 1960, so that the inquiry can be carried through in one year and the results published more expeditiously.
It is proposed that in the future complete sampling censuses be carried out at five-year intervals.
Reports already issued on the sampling census, 1955 - 57, in various areas run as follows (using only the French and omitting corresponding Flemish titles).
This report contains preliminary notes and 35 tables.
Other reports in identical form, but with somewhat varying content, have been issued.
These area reports will be followed, according to present plans, by a summary report, which will include a detailed statement on methods.
With this evidence in mind, the writer began to plan how he might more effectively educate the married students in his functional classes.
Toward the end of the semester's work, he interviewed every married class member at great length.
He found, as he had suspected, a general consensus that perhaps over half of the present functionally designed course was not really functional for these students.
However, all admitted that the hindsight was not altogether lost.
In their own words, it had aided them to get a clearer picture of how they had gotten into their marriages, and perhaps they had obtained some insights on why certain troubles appeared from time to time.
In fact, they went so far as to caution the writer that if he attempted to design a section exclusively for married students there should be, at the beginning, some hindsight study;
but they all hastened to add that certainly less time was needed on it than presently spent.
All of them felt a compelling need for more coverage on areas that could be only lightly touched upon in a general survey functional course.
A few were doubtful about the merits of an exclusive section for married students.
As one of them expressed it, It has done me a world of good to listen to the naive questions and comments of these not-yet-married people.
I can now better see just what processes provoked certain actions from me in the past.
Had I been in an all-married section I would have missed this, and I believe that this single aspect has been of great personal value to me.
This comment and others similar to it, would seem to indicate a possible justification for continuing the status quo.
But the weight of feeling was heavily in the opposite direction.
Thus, the writer decided to hold one experimental section of the functional preparation for marriage course in the spring semester of 1960 exclusively for persons already married--that is, prerequisite: marriage.
This did not mean that married students could not enroll in other mixed sections, and some of them, largely because of scheduling difficulties, did.
But only those already married could enroll in this one section.
In addition, two other differences in the two types of sections must be noted.
(1) The regular sections do not allow freshmen;
this one did.
This action was rationalized on the basis of a small survey which indicated that a high percentage of married freshmen women on our campus never become sophomores.
Many of them appear to drop out, for one reason or another.
By permitting freshman students we might extend the opportunity for such a course to some individuals who otherwise might never get to take it.
This has subsequently been verified by the experience.
(2) Auditors were encouraged.
In the regular sections they have always been more or less discouraged.
The philosophy has been that if they could find the time to attend class why not encourage them to get the credit and perhaps provide an incentive to do the work more effectively.
Besides, auditors do not count on faculty load with the same weight as regularly enrolled students.
But in this one section we welcomed auditors.
Why?
For no particular reason, other than that the writer felt it might--just might--encourage both mates to be in attendance.
Many of the men on our campus have a pretty set curriculum, especially in the various engineering fields, with few electives till the senior year.
Incidentally, it needs to be noted that because auditors were permitted the section began increasing in numbers each week, until at last it swelled to such proportions that this free auditing policy had to be retracted.
After that, we began to get visitors to class.
This experimental class represented quite a variety of students.
It ranged from a freshman woman, just married, through the various academic growth stages, including one senior-graduate student, to a young faculty member recently married to a senior man who also attended.
It ranged from those with no children, through students in various stages of pregnancy, to one 44-year-old male with four children, three of whom were teenagers.
It ranged from two women members who had experienced premarital pregnancy to one couple twelve years married and seemingly unable to conceive.
One might digress at this point and speculate that if it is wise to create special sections for special status, then why not a special section for women pregnant before marriage, and one for 44-year-old men with teenage children, and so on.
Some of these speculations may have some merit, others are somewhat ambiguous.
But few who have experienced marriage can dispute the fact that the focus of interpersonal relationships is different in marriage than in a pre-marital situation.
The writer began this special class by explaining his background thinking for creating such a section in the first place.
He made it clear from the beginning that this was the students' opportunity, and that the future destiny of such groups depended on favorable results from this one.
He did build a framework of academic respectability, and one which did not encroach upon the sacred sovereignty of any other existing campus course.
This is to say that this was not a course in wise buying or money spending methods, nor a course in how to raise children.
We already have courses covering those problems, and so on.
But within that framework he allowed for as much flexibility as possible.
A steering committee of students was organized on the first day whose duty it was to be alert and constantly evaluate and re-evaluate the direction and pace the class was taking.
The writer, being cognizant through his interviews of the reactions of previous married students, did insist on there being included some hindsight material.
But the greater part of semester time was actually centered around the attitudes: So we are married--now how do we make the best of it?
Or How do we enrich our already fine marriage?
Films were used, as with all sections, but with one big difference.
Our campus, unfortunately, owns no films.
Since they are all either rented or borrowed, the requested dates for their use have to be far in advance.
The writer never knew from week to week just where the section might be.
For example, the steering committee might announce that the group felt a topic under study should not be dropped for an additional week as there was still too much of it untouched.
Since the writer had established this democratic procedure in the beginning he had to go along with their decision--after, of course, pointing out whether he thought their decision was a wise or an unwise one.
Thus the films seen as they came in (coordinated for the regular sections), were often out of context.
Nevertheless, the writer has never experienced such spontaneity of discussion after film showings.
Though it did not become known to the writer for some time, a nucleus group had sprung up within the class.
They began to meet in the evenings and carry forward various discussions they felt not fully enough covered in class.
From a few students this group gradually increased to include over three-fourths of those officially enrolled in the class, and many outsiders as well.
Also, although only a few of the students were intimately acquainted with each other in the beginning, most reported that when the semester ended their dearest and closest campus friendships were with members of that class.
In fact, they often revamped their social activities to include class members previously unknown.
Supplemental outside reading reports were handled just as in the other sections, the major difference being that there was a noticeably deeper level in the reported outside reading by the married group.
These students, although they might read various articles in popular magazines, more often chose to report on articles found in the journals.
In addition to the noticeable difference in outside articles, there was a considerable difference in the outside books they read.
In the main, this course took the following directional high roads.
(1) A great deal of time was spent on processes for solving marital differences.
This was not a search for a magic formula, but rather an examination of basic principles pertaining especially to all types of communication in marriage.
In short, it was centered around learning how to develop a more sensitive empathy.
Not until the group was satisfied in this area were they willing to venture further to (2), Specific adjustment areas, such as sex, in-laws, religion, finance, and so on.
From here they proceeded to (3) These same areas in relation to their own future family life stages, developing these to the extent of examining various crises which could be expected to confront them at some time or other.
As an example of this last facet, there were some lengthy discussions centered around bereavement.
Mainly these were concerned with the possibility of the death of one parent and the complication of living with the survivor afterward, but the possible death of one's own spouse was not overlooked.
Since the course, one member has lost her husband.
This was not a particularly shocking or unexpected thing--it was previously known to her that it might happen.
But just when was an unknown, and of course the longer it did not happen, the stronger her wish and belief that it might not.
Since her bereavement this individual has reported to the writer on numerous occasions about how helpful the class discussions were to her in this adjustment crisis.
Quite frequently class members brought questions from their mates at home.
These were often carefully written out with a great deal of thought behind them.
This added a personal zest to class discussions and participation.
Both sexes reported that the discussions on sex adjustment within marriage were extremely enlightening.
The writer sensed a much freer and more frank discussion, especially of this one area, than ever before.
He felt certain for the first time in his teaching experience that the men in the class understood that orgasm, as a criterion, is not nearly so essential for a satisfying female sexual experience as most males might think.
This was probably much more meaningful because all the women in the class emphasized it time and again.
On the other hand, the women class members appeared to reach a far greater understanding than have women members in other sections that it is more natural for males as a group to view sex as sex rather than always associating it with love as most women seem to do.
In the reproductive area it could be readily observed that all felt freer to discuss things than students had previously in mixed marital status sections.
Perhaps this was related to the fact that all were in on it to some extent.
Never in other sections has there been the opportunity for the genuine down-to-earth discussions about the feelings of both spouses during various stages of pregnancy.
There was a particularly marvelous opportunity for study in this area since almost every stage of pregnancy was represented, from a childless couple to and including every trimester.
In fact, we had one birth before the end of the course, and another student had to take the final examiantion a week early, just to be on the safe side.
There was also one spontaneous abortion during the semester.
Thus it is reasonable to believe that there is a significant difference between the two groups in their performance on this task after a brief structuring experience.
It was predicted that Kohnstamm-negative subjects would adhere to more liberal, concretistic reports of what the ambiguous figure looked like as reflecting their hesitancy about taking chances.
This was true mostly of those Kohnstamm-negative subjects who did not perceive the ambiguous figure as people in action.
Responses such as rope with a loop in it, and two pieces of rope, were quite characteristic.
Guilford-Martin personality inventories.
The three personality inventories (Guilford;
Guilford-Martin;
Guilford-Martin) were filled out by 12 of the Kohnstamm-positive subjects and 19 of the Kohnstamm-negative subjects.
These were the same subjects who were given the Rorschach test.
Some predictions had been made concerning factors R, N, I and Co on these inventories which appeared to be directly related to control and security aspects of personality functioning which were hypothesized as being of importance in differential Kohnstamm reactivity.
Only Co differentiated between the two groups at less than the 5% level (Af).
One prediction had been made about the difference in security or self-confidence between those subjects who shifted their Kohnstamm reactivity when informed and those who did not.
The nonreactors had been separated into two groups on this assumption with the presumably secure nonreactors and secure reactors being used as the groups for comparative personality studies.
It was predicted that those who shifted in their Kohnstamm reactivity would differ significantly from those who did not on the factor I which the investigators refer to as the Inferiority factor.
All of the subjects in the Kohnstamm-negative and Kohnstamm-positive groups (as defined for purposes of the personality studies) were compared with those subjects who shifted in Conditions 3, or 4.
A t test on these two groups, shifters vs. nonshifters, gave a t value of 2.405 which is significant on the two-tail test at the
level.
Discussion
individual differences
Individual differences in Kohnstamm reactivity to controlled Kohnstamm situations were found among the subjects used in the study.
Only 27% (11 subjects) gave a positive Kohnstamm reaction when completely naive concerning the phenomenon.
There were 49% (20 subjects) who did not give a positive reaction even after they were informed of the normalcy of such a reaction and had been given a demonstration.
There were 24% (10 subjects) who shifted from a negative to a positive reaction after they were reassured as to the normalcy of the Kohnstamm-positive reaction.
Among this latter group there were also differences in the amount and kind of information necessary before a shift in reaction occurred.
One subject changed when given only the information that some people have something happen to their arm when they relax.
Five subjects (12%) did not change until they had been told that some people have something happen to their arm, what that something was, and also were given a demonstration.
Four subjects (10%) did not change even then but needed the additional information that an arm-elevation under these circumstances was a perfectly normal reflex reaction which some people showed while others did not.
At no time was it implied by the experimenter that the subject's initial reaction was deviant.
The subjects were only given information about other possibilities of normal reaction.
Those who responded with an arm-elevation in the naive state did not change their reaction when told that there were some normal people who did not react in this fashion.
This information was accepted with the frequent interpretation that those persons who did not show arm-levitation must be preventing it.
These subjects implied that they too could prevent their arms from rising if they tried.
The positive Kohnstamm reactivity in Condition 1 ((the naive state) is not adequately explained by such a concept as suggestibility (if suggestibility is defined as the influence on behavior by verbal cues).
In no way, either verbally or behaviorally, did the experimenter indicate to the subjects any preferred mode of responding to the voluntary contraction.
Moreover, when the experimenter did inform those subjects that there were some normal people who did not have their arm rise once they relaxed, the Kohnstamm-positive subjects were uninfluenced in their subsequent reactions to the Kohnstamm situation.
They continued to give an arm-elevation.
A differential suggestibility would have to be invoked to explain the failure of this additional information to influence the Kohnstamm-positive reactors and yet attribute their naive Kohnstamm reactivity to suggestion.
A suggestion Hypothesis also seems inadequate as an explanation for those who shifted their reactions after they were informed of the possibilities of normal reactions different from those which they gave.
While they were told that there were some normal people who reacted differently than they had, they were also informed that there were other normals who reacted as they had.
There was no implication made that their initial reaction (absence of an arm-elevation) was less preferred than the presence of levitation.
A more tenable explanation for the change in reactions is that the added knowledge and increased familiarity with the total situation made it possible for these subjects to be less guarded and to relax, since any reaction seemed acceptable to the examiner as normal.
The naive state, Condition 1, could therefore be viewed as an inhibiting one for 24% of the subjects in this study.
They were not free to be themselves in this situation, an interpersonal one, where there was an observer of their reactions and they had no guide for acceptable behavior.
Instructions to relax, i.e., to be spontaneous, and react immediately to whatever impulse they might have, was not sufficiently reassuring until some idea of the possibilities of normal reactions had been given.
Alcohol ingestion succeeded in changing immobility to mobility quite strikingly in one pilot subject (the only one with whom this technique was tried).
This subject, who has been undergoing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for five years, did not give a positive Kohnstamm reaction under any of the four standardized conditions used in this experiment while sober.
After two drinks containing alcohol, her arm flew upward very freely.
There was evident delight on the part of the subject in response to her experience of the freedom of movement.
She described herself as having the same kind of irresponsible feeling as she had once experienced under hypnosis.
She ascribed her delight with both experiences to the effect they seemed to have of temporarily removing from her the controls which she felt so compulsively necessary to maintain even when it might seem appropriate to relax these controls.
Many subjects attributed differences in Kohnstamm reactivity to differences in degrees of subjective control--voluntary as the Kohnstamm-positive subjects perceived it and involuntary as the Kohnstamm-negative subjects perceived it.
These suggested interpretations were given by the subjects spontaneously when they were told that there were people who reacted differently than they had.
The Kohnstamm-positive subjects described the vivid experience of having their arms rise as one in which they exercised no control.
They explained its absence in others on the basis of an intervention of control factors.
They felt that they too could counteract the upward arm movement by a voluntary effort after they had once experienced the reaction.
Some of those who did not initially react with an arm-elevation also associated their behavior in the situation with control factors--an inability to relinquish control voluntarily.
One subject spontaneously asked (after her arm had finally risen), Do you suppose I was unconsciously keeping it down before?
Another said that her arm did not go up at first because I wouldn't let it;
I thought it wasn't supposed to.
This subject was one who gave an arm-elevation on the second trial in the naive state but not in the first.
She had felt that her arm wanted to go up in the first trial, but had consciously prevented it from so doing.
She explained nonreactivity of others by saying that they were not letting themselves relax.
When informed that there were some persons who did not have their arm go up, she commented, I don't see how they can prevent it.
In contrast to this voluntary-control explanation for nonreactivity given by the Kohnstamm-positive subjects, the Kohnstamm-negative subjects offered an involuntary-control hypothesis to explain nonreactivity.
They felt that they were relaxing as much as they could and that any control factors which might be present to prevent response must be on an unconscious level.
The above discussion does not mean to imply that control factors were completely in abeyance in the Kohnstamm-positive subjects;
but rather that they could be diminished sufficiently not to interfere with arm-levitation.
She then described her experience as one in which she first had difficulty accepting for herself a state of being in which she relinquished control.
However, she was able to relax and yield to the moment.
It is our hypothesis that Kohnstamm-positive subjects are less hesitant about relinquishing control than are Kohnstamm-negative subjects;
that they can give up their control and allow themselves to be reactors rather than actors.
It is our belief that this readiness to relinquish some control was evidenced by the Kohnstamm-positive subjects in some of the other experimental situations to be discussed below.
Thus, this readiness to relax controls, evidenced in the Kohnstamm situation, appears to be a more general personality factor.
Aniseikonic illusion
The Kohnstamm-positive subjects seemed to be freer to experience the unusual and seemingly impossible in the external world.
There was a significantly greater number in this group who reported a desk as being in a tilted position while a tennis ball resting on it remained stationary on the incline.
This occurred in spite of the rational awareness that the ball should be going downhill.
They knew that their perceptual experience differed from objective reality since they had seen the desk and ball prior to putting on the aniseikonic lenses.
Yet they were not so bound by past experience and constriction as to deny their immediate perceptions and to be dominated by their knowledge of what the experience should be.
They were able to experience at first, in terms of past conventionality.
When informed as to the various possibilities of normal reactions, they were then able to experience the uniqueness of the present.
It might be postulated that these subjects are unduly afraid of being wrong;
that they perceive new internal and environmental situations as threatening until they are tested and proved otherwise.
While the interpretations that have been given are inferences only, they gain support from such comments as the following, which was made by one of the Kohnstamm-negative subjects who did not, on the first trial, perceive the tilt illusion.
Control of socioeconomic status
It would have been desirable for the two communities to have differed only in respect to the variable being investigated: the degree of structure in teaching method.
The structured schools were in an industrial city, with three-family tenement houses typical of the residential areas, but with one rather sizable section of middle-class homes.
The unstructured schools were in a large suburban community, predominantly middle- to upper-middle class, but fringed by an industrial area.
In order to equate the samples on socioeconomic status, we chose schools in both cities on the basis of socioeconomic status of the neighborhoods.
School principals and guidance workers made ratings of the various neighborhoods and the research team made independent observations of houses and dwelling areas.
An objective scale was developed for rating school neighborhoods from these data.
Equal proportions of children in each city were drawn from upper-lower and lower-middle class neighborhoods.
Subjects
Individual differences in maturation and the development of readiness for learning to read indicate that not until the third grade have most children had ample opportunity to demonstrate their capacity for school achievement.
Therefore, third-grade children were chosen as subjects for this study.
For purposes of sample selection only (individual tests were given later) we obtained group test scores of reading achievement and intelligence from school records of the entire third-grade population in each school system.
The subjects for this study were randomly selected from stratified areas of the distribution, one-third as underachievers, one-third medium, and one-third over-achievers.
Children whose reading scores were at least one standard deviation below the regression line of each total third-grade school population were considered under-achievers for the purposes of sample selection.
Over-achievers were at least one standard deviation above the regression line in their school system.
The final sample was not significantly different from a normal distribution in regard to reading achievement or intelligence test scores.
Twenty-four classrooms in twelve unstructured schools furnished 156 cases, 87 boys and 69 girls.
Eight classrooms in three structured schools furnished 72 cases, 36 boys and 36 girls.
Administrative restrictions necessitated the smaller sample size in the structured schools.
It was assumed that the sampling procedure was purely random with respect to the personality variables under investigation.
Rating scale of compulsivity
An interview schedule of open-ended questions and a multiple-choice questionnaire were prepared, and one parent of each of the sample children was seen in the home.
The interviewers were instructed not to suggest answers and, as much as possible, to record the parents' actual words as they described the child's behavior in home situations.
The rating scale of compulsivity was constructed by first perusing the interview records, categorizing all evidence related to compulsivity, then arranging a distribution of such information apart from the case records.
Final ratings were made on the basis of a point system which was developed after studying the distributions of actual behaviors recorded and assigning weight values to each type of behavior that was deviant from the discovered norms.
Children scoring high in compulsivity were those who gave evidence of tension or emotionality in situations where there was lack of organization or conformity to standards and expectations, or who made exaggerated efforts to achieve these goals.
The low compulsive child was one who appeared relatively unconcerned about such matters.
For instance, the following statement was rated low in compulsivity, She's naturally quite neat about things, but it doesn't bother her at all if her room gets messy.
But she cleans it up very well when I remind her.
Measurement of anxiety
Castaneda, et al revised the Taylor Anxiety Scale for use with children.
The Taylor Scale was adapted from the Minnesota Multiphastic Personality Inventory, with item selection based upon clinical definitions of anxiety.
There is much research evidence to validate the use of the instrument in differentiating individuals who are likely to manifest anxiety in varying degrees.
Reliability and validation work with the Children's Anxiety Scale by Castaneda, et al demonstrated results closely similar to the findings with the adult scale.
Although the Taylor Scale was designed as a group testing device, in this study it was individually administered by psychologically trained workers who established rapport and assisted the children in reading the items.
Relationship of Anxiety to compulsivity
The question may be raised whether or not we are dealing with a common factor in anxiety and compulsivity.
The two ratings yield a correlation of, which is not significantly different from zero;
therefore, we have measured two different characteristics.
In theory, compulsive behavior is a way of diminishing anxiety, and one might expect a negative association except for the possibility that for many children the obsessive-compulsive defenses are not sufficient to quell the amount of anxiety they suffer.
The issue of interaction between anxiety and compulsivity will be taken up later.
Criterion measurement
In the primary grades, reading permeates almost every aspect of school progress, and the children's early experiences of success or failure in learning to read often set a pattern of total achievement that is relatively enduring throughout the following years.
In establishing criterion measurements, it was therefore thought best to broaden the scope beyond the reading act itself.
The predicted interaction effect should, if potent, extend its influence over all academic achievement.
The Stanford Achievement Test, Form J, was administered by classroom teachers, consisting of a battery of six sub-tests: Paragraph Meaning, Word Meaning, Spelling, Language, Arithmetic Computation, and Arithmetic Reasoning.
All of these sub-tests involve reading except Arithmetic Computation.
Scores are stated in grade-equivalents on a national norm.
The battery median grade-equivalent was used in data analysis in this study.
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale For Children was administered to each sample third-grade child by a clinical worker.
The relationship of intelligence test scores to school achievement is a well-established fact (in this case, Af);
therefore, in the investigation of the present hypothesis, it was necessary to control this factor.
The criterion score used in the statistical analysis is an index of over- or under-achievement.
It is the discrepancy between the actual attained achievement test score and the score that would be predicted by the I.Q..
For example, on the basis of the regression equation, a child with an I.Q. of 120 in this sample would be expected to earn an achievement test score of 4.8 (grade equivalent).
If a child with an I.Q. of 120 scored 5.5 in achievement, his discrepancy score would be, representing of one year of over-achievement.
A child with an I.Q. of 98 would be expected to earn an achievement test score of 3.5.
If such a child scored 3.0, his discrepancy score would be -.5, representing of one year of under-achievement.
In this manner, the factors measured by the intelligence test were controlled, allowing discovered differences in achievement to be interpreted as resulting from other variables.
Results
test of interaction of compulsivity and teaching methods
Tables 1 and 2 present the results of the statistical analysis of the data when compulsivity is used as the descriptive variable.
Figure 1 portrays the mean achievement scores of each sub-group graphically.
First of all, as we had surmised, the highly compulsive children in the structured setting score significantly better (Af) on achievement than do similar children in the unstructured schools.
It can be seen too that when we contrast levels of compulsivity within the structured schools, the high compulsive children do better (Af).
No significant difference was found in achievement between high and low compulsive children within the unstructured school.
The hypothesis of there being an interaction between compulsivity and teaching method was supported, in this case, at the level.
Indeed their achievement scores were somewhat better on an absolute basis although the difference was not significant.
It is interesting to note that medium compulsives in the unstructured schools made the lowest achievement scores (although not significantly lower).
Possibly their compulsivity was not strong enough to cause them to build their own structure.
Our conjecture is, then, that regardless of the manner in which school lessons are taught, the compulsive child accentuates those elements of each lesson that aid him in systematizing his work.
When helped by a high degree of structure in lesson presentation, then, and only then, does such a child attain unusual success.
Test of interaction of anxiety and teaching methods
The statistical analyses of achievement in relation to anxiety and teaching methods and the interactions of the two are presented in Tables 3 and 4.
Figure 2 is a graph of the mean achievement scores of each group.
As predicted, the highly anxious children in the unstructured schools score more poorly (Af) than those in the structured schools.
The interaction effect, which is significant at the level, can be seen best in the contrast of mean scores.
While high anxiety children achieve significantly less well (Af) in the unstructured school than do low anxiety children, they appear to do at least as well as the average in the structured classroom.
The most striking aspect of the interaction demonstrated is the marked decrement in performance suffered by the highly anxious children in unstructured schools.
According to the theory proposed, this is a consequence of the severe condition of perceived threat that persists unabated for the anxious child in an ambiguous sort of school environment.
The fact that such threat is potent in the beginning reading lessons is thought to be a vital factor in the continued pattern of failure or under-achievement these children exhibit.
The child with high anxiety may first direct his anxiety-released energy toward achievement, but because his distress severely reduces the abilities of discrimination and memorization of complex symbols, the child may fail in his initial attempts to master the problem.
Failure confirms the threat, and the intensity of anxiety is increased as the required learning becomes more difficult, so that by the time the child reaches the third grade the decrement in performance is pronounced.
The individual with high anxiety in the structured classroom may approach the learning task with the same increased energy and lowered powers of discrimination.
But the symbols he is asked to learn are simple.
As shown earlier, the highly anxious individual may be superior in his memorizing of simple elements.
Success reduces the prospect of threat and his powers of discrimination are improved.
By the time the child first attacks the actual problem of reading, he is completely familiar and at ease with all of the elements of words.
Apparently academic challenge in the structured setting creates an optimum of stress so that the child with high anxiety is able to achieve because he is aroused to an energetic state without becoming confused or panicked.
Sarason et al present evidence that the anxious child will suffer in the test-like situation, and that his performance will be impaired unless he receives supporting and accepting treatment from the teacher.
Although the present study was not a direct replication of their investigations, the results do not confirm their conclusion.
Observers, in the two school systems studied here, judged the teachers in the structured schools to be more impersonal and demanding, while the atmosphere in the unstructured schools was judged to be more supporting and accepting.
Yet the highly anxious child suffered a tremendous disadvantage only in the unstructured school, and performed as well or better than average in the structured setting.
Analysis
Analysis means the evaluation of subparts, the comparative ratings of parts, the comprehension of the meaning of isolated elements.
Analysis in roleplaying is usually done for the purpose of understanding strong and weak points of an individual or as a process to eliminate weak parts and strengthen good parts.
Impersonal purposes
Up to this point stress has been placed on roleplaying in terms of individuals.
Roleplaying can be done for quite a different purpose: to evaluate procedures, regardless of individuals.
For example: a sales presentation can be analyzed and evaluated through roleplaying.
Examples
Let us now put some flesh on the theoretical bones we have assembled by giving illustrations of roleplaying used for evaluation and analysis.
One should keep in mind that many of the exciting possiblities of roleplaying are largely unexplored and have not been used in industry to the extent that they have been in military and other areas.
Evaluation
The president of a small firm selling restaurant products, had considerable difficulty in finding suitable salesmen for his business.
Interviewing, checking references, training the salesmen, having them go with more experienced salesmen was expensive--and the rate of attrition due to resignations or unsatisfactory performance was too high.
It was his experience that only one good salesman was found out of every seven hired--and only one was hired out of every seven interviewed.
Roleplaying was offered as a solution--and the procedure worked as follows: all candidates were invited to a hotel conference room, where the president explained the difficulty he had, and how unnecessary it seemed to him to hire people who just did not work out.
In place of asking salesmen to fill questionnaires, checking their references, interviewing them, asking them to be tried out, he told them he would prefer to test them.
Each person was to enter the testing room, carrying a suitcase of samples.
Each salesman was to read a sheet containing a description of the product.
In the testing room he was to make, successively, three presentations to three different people.
In the testing room, three of the veteran salesmen served as antagonists.
One handled the salesman in a friendly manner, another in a rough manner, and the third in a hesitating manner.
Each was told to purchase material if he felt like it.
The antagonists came in, one at a time, and did not see or hear the other presentations.
After each presentation, the antagonist wrote his judgment of the salesmen;
and so did the observers consisting of the president, three of his salesmen and a psychologist.
Ten salesmen were tested in the morning and ten more in the afternoon.
This procedure was repeated one day a month for four months.
The batting average of one success out of seven increased to one out of three.
The president of the firm, calculating expenses alone, felt his costs had dropped one-half while success in selection had improved over one hundred per cent.
The reason for the value of this procedure was simply that the applicants were tested at work in different situations by the judgment of a number of experts who could see how the salesmen conducted themselves with different, but typical restaurant owners and managers.
They were, in a sense, tried out in realistic situations.
From the point of view of the applicants, less time was wasted in being evaluated--and they got a meal out of it as well as some insights into their performances.
Another use of roleplaying for evaluation illustrates how this procedure can be used in real life situations without special equipment or special assistants during the daily course of work.
The position of receptionist was opened in a large office and an announcement was made to the other girls already working that they could apply for this job which had higher prestige and slightly higher salary than typing and clerking positions.
All applicants were generally familiar with the work of the receptionist.
At the end of work one day, the personnel man took the applicants one at a time, asked them to sit behind the receptionist's desk and he then played the role of a number of people who might come to the receptionist with a number of queries and for a number of purposes.
Each girl was independently tested by the personnel man, and he served not only as the director, but as the antagonist and the observer.
She was hired and was found to be entirely satisfactory when she played the role eight hours a day.
Analysis
In considering roleplaying for analysis we enter a more complex area, since we are now no longer dealing with a simple over-all decision but rather with the examination and evaluation of many elements seen in dynamic functioning.
Some cases in evidence of the use of roleplaying for analysis may help explain the procedure.
An engineer had been made the works manager of a firm, supplanting a retired employee who had been considered outstandingly successful.
The engineer had more than seven years of experience in the firm, was well trained, was considered a hard worker, was respected by his fellow engineers for his technical competence and was regarded as a comer.
However, he turned out to be a complete failure in his new position.
He seemed to antagonize everyone.
Turnover rates of personnel went up, production dropped, and morale was visibly reduced.
Despite the fact that he was regarded as an outstanding engineer, he seemed to be a very poor administrator, although no one quite knew what was wrong with him.
At the insistence of his own supervisor--the president of the firm--he enrolled in a course designed to develop leaders.
He played a number of typical situations before observers, other supervisors who kept notes and then explained to him in detail what he did they thought was wrong.
Entirely concerned with efficiency, he was merciless in criticizing people who made mistakes, condemning them to too great an extent.
He did not really listen to others, had little interest in their ideas, and wanted to have his own way--which was the only right way.
The entire group of managers explained, in great detail, a number of human relations errors that he made.
One by one, these errors were discussed and one by one he rejected accepting them as errors.
He admitted his behavior, and defended it.
He refused to change his approach, and instead he attacked high and low--the officials for their not backing him, and subordinates for their laxness, stupidity, and stubbornness.
After the diagnosing, he left the course, convinced that it could do him no good.
We may say that his problem was diagnosed but that he refused treatment.
The engineer turned works manager had a particular view of life--and refused to change it.
We may say that his attitude was foolish, since he may have been a success had he learned some human relations skills;
or we may say that his attitude was commendable, showing his independence of mind, in his refusal to adjust to the opinions of others.
In any case, he refused to accept the implications of the analysis, that he needed to be made over.
Another case may be given in illustration of a successful use of analysis, and also of the employment of a procedure for intensive analysis.
In a course for supermarket operators, a district manager who had been recently appointed to his position after being outstandingly successful as a store manager, found that in supervising other managers he was having a difficult time.
On playing some typical situations before a jury of his peers he showed some characteristics rated as unsatisfactory.
He was told he displayed, for example, a sense of superiority--and he answered: Well, I am supposed to know all the answers, aren't I?
He was criticized for his curtness and abruptness--and he answered: I am not working to become popular.
On being criticized for his arbitrary behavior--he answered: I have to make decisions.
That's my job.
In short, as frequently happens in analyses, the individual feels threatened and defends himself.
However, in this case the district manager was led to see the errors of his ways.
The necessary step between diagnosis and training is acceptance of the validity of the criticisms.
How this was accomplished may be described, since this sometimes is a crucial problem.
The director helped tailor-make a check list of the district manager's errors by asking various observers to write out sentences commenting on the mistakes they felt he made.
These errors were then collected and written on a blackboard, condensing similar ideas.
Eighteen errors were located, and then the director asked each individual to vote whether or not they felt that this manager had made the particular errors.
They were asked to vote true if they thought they had seen him make the error, false if they thought he had not;
and cannot say if they were not certain.
The manager sat behind the group so he could see and count the hands that went up, and the director wrote the numbers on the blackboard.
No comments were made during the voting.
The results looked as follows: Af.
After every session, the check marks were totaled up and graphed, and in this way the supervisor's progress was charted.
Summary
In life we learn to play our roles and we freeze into patterns which become so habitual that we are not really aware of what we do.
We can see others more clearly than we can see ourselves, and others can see us better than we see ourselves.
To learn what we do is the first step for improvement.
To accept the validity of the judgments of others is the second step.
To want to change is the third step.
To practice new procedures under guided supervision and with constant feedback is the fourth step.
To use these new ways in daily life is the last step.
Roleplaying used for analysis follows these general steps leading to training.
When an evaluative situation is set up, and no concern is with the details that lead to an over-all estimate, we say that roleplaying is used for evaluation.
Observers can see a person engaged in spontaneous behavior, and watch him operating in a totalistic fashion.
This behavior is more veridical--or true--than other testing behavior for some types of evaluation, and so can give quick and accurate estimates of complex functioning.
While roleplaying for testing is not too well understood at the present time, it represents one of the major uses of this procedure.
Chapter 10, spontaneity training
the objective of this chapter is to clarify the distinctions between spontaneity theory and other training concepts.
In addition, the basic approach utilized in applying roleplaying will be reviewed.
The goal will be to provide the reader with an integrated rationale to aid him in applying roleplaying techniques in this unique training area.
The reasons for extracting this particular roleplaying application from the previous discussion of training are twofold.
Spontaneity training theory is unique and relatively new.
It is not easy for the therapist to discern when, in the patient's communicating, an introject has appeared and is holding sway.
One learns to become alert to changes in his vocal tone--to his voice's suddenly shifting to a quality not like his usual one, a quality which sounds somehow artificial or, in some instances, parrot-like.
The content of his words may lapse back into monotonous repetition, as if a phonograph needle were stuck in one groove;
only seldom is it so simple as to be a matter of his obviously parroting some timeworn axiom, common to our culture, which he has evidently heard, over and over, from a parent until he experiences it as part of him.
One hebephrenic woman often became submerged in what felt to me like a somehow phony experience of pseudo-emotion, during which, despite her wracking sobs and streaming cheeks, I felt only a cold annoyance with her.
At first I did not know what she meant;
I thought she must be seeing me as some one who had just come from seeing her grandmother, in their distant home-city.
Then I realized that she had been deliberately showing me, this time, what Granny was like;
and when I replied in this spirit, she corroborated my hunch.
At another phase in the therapy, when a pathogenic mother-introject began to emerge more and more upon the investigative scene, she muttered in a low but intense voice, to herself, I hate that woman inside me!
I could evoke no further elaboration from her about this;
but a few seconds later she was standing directly across the room from me, looking me in the eyes and saying in a scathingly condemnatory tone, Your father despises you!
Again, I at first misconstrued this disconcertingly intense communication, and I quickly cast through my mind to account for her being able to speak, with such utter conviction, of an opinion held by my father, now several years deceased.
Then I replied, coldly, If you despise me, why don't you say so, directly?
She looked confused at this, and I felt sure it had been a wrong response for me to make.
It then occurred to me to ask, Is that what that woman told you?
She clearly agreed that this had been the case.
I realized, now, that she had been showing me, in what impressed me as being a very accurate way, something her mother had once said to her;
it was as if she was showing me one of the reasons why she hated that woman inside her.
What had been an unmanageably powerful introject was now, despite its continuing charge of energy disconcerting to me, sufficiently within control of her ego that she could use it to show me what this introjected mother was like.
Earlier, this woman had been so filled with a chaotic variety of introjects that at times, when she was in her room alone, it would sound to a passerby as though there were several different persons in the room, as she would vocalize in various kinds of voice.
A somewhat less fragmented hebephrenic patient of mine, who used to often seclude herself in her room, often sounded through the closed door--as I would find on passing by, between our sessions--for all the world like two persons, a scolding mother and a defensive child.
I have found, time and again, that some bit of particularly annoying and intractable behavior on the part of a patient rests, in the final analysis, on this basis;
and only when I can acknowledge this, to myself, as being indeed an aspect of my personality, does it cease to be a prominently troublesome aspect of the patient's behavior.
Another patient, a paranoid woman, for many months infuriated not only me but the ward-personnel and her fellow patients by arrogantly behaving as though she owned the whole building, as though she were the only person in it whose needs were to be met.
Condensation.
Here a variety of meanings and emotions are concentrated, or reduced, in their communicative expression, to some comparatively simple-seeming verbal or nonverbal statement.
One finds, for example, that a terse and stereotyped verbal expression, seeming at first to be a mere hollow convention, reveals itself over the months of therapy as the vehicle for expressing the most varied and intense feelings, and the most unconventional of meanings.
One cannot assume, of course, that all these accumulated meanings were inherent in the stereotype at the beginning of the therapy, or at any one time later on when the stereotype was uttered;
But it is true that the therapist can sense, when he hears this stereotype, that there are at this moment many emotional determinants at work in it, a blurred babel of indistinct voices which have yet to become clearly delineated from one another.
Sometimes it is not a verbal stereotype--a How are you now?
Or an I want to go home, or whatever--but a nonverbal one which reveals itself, gradually, as the condensed expression of more than one latent meaning.
A hebephrenic man used to give a repetitious wave of his hand a number of times during his largely-silent hours with his therapist.
When the therapist came to feel on sufficiently sure ground with him to ask him, What is that, Bill--hello or farewell?
, the patient replied, Both, Dearie--two in one.
Of all the possible forms of nonverbal expression, that which seems best to give release, and communicational expression, to complex and undifferentiated feelings is laughter.
and which, more often than all these, conveys a welter of feelings which could in no way be conveyed by any number of words, words which are so unlike this welter in being formed and discrete from one another.
To a much less full extent, the hebephrenic person's belching or flatus has a comparable communicative function;
As I have been intimating, in the schizophrenic--and perhaps also in the dreams of the neurotic;
In my experience, a great many of the patient's more puzzling verbal communications are so for the reason that concrete meanings have not become differentiated from figurative meanings in his subjective experience.
Thus he may be referring to some concrete thing, or incident, in his immediate environment by some symbolic-sounding, hyperbolic reference to transcendental events on the global scene.
Of such hidden meanings the patient himself is, more often than not, entirely unaware.
His subjective experience may be a remarkably concretistic one.
One hebephrenic women confided to me, I live in a world of words, as if, to her, words were fully concrete objects;
Burnham, in his excellent article (1955) concerning schizophrenic communication, includes mention of similar clinical material.
A borderline schizophrenic young man told me that to him the various theoretical concepts about which he had been expounding, in a most articulate fashion, during session after session with me, were like great cubes of almost tangibly solid matter up in the air above him;
as he spoke I was reminded of the great bales of cargo which are swung, high in the air, from a docked steamship.
The many linguistic techniques for reducing the amount of dictionary information that have been proposed all organize the dictionary's contents around prefixes, stems, suffixes, etc..
A significant reduction in the voume of store information is thus realized, especially for a highly inflected language such as Russian.
For English the reduction in size is less striking.
The logical scheme used to accomplish the former influences the placement of information in the dictionary file.
Implementation of the latter requires storage of information needed only for synthesis.
We suggest the application of certain data-processing techniques as a solution to the problem.
But first, we must define two terms so that their meaning will be clearly understood: form--any unique sequence of alphabetic characters that can appear in a language preceded and followed by a space;
occurrence--an instance of a form in text.
We propose a method for selecting only dictionary information required by the text being translated and a means for passing the information directly to the occurrences in text.
We accomplish this by compiling a list of text forms as text is read by the computer.
A random-storage scheme, based on the spelling of forms, provides an economical way to compile this text-form list.
Dictionary forms found to match forms in the text list are marked.
A location in the computer store is also named for each marked form;
dictionary information about the form stored at this location can be retrieved directly by occurrences of the form in text.
The dictionary is a form dictionary, at least in the sense that complete forms are used as the basis for matching text occurrences with dictionary entries.
Also, the dictionary is divided into at least two parts: the list of dictionary forms and the file of information that pertains to these forms.
A more detailed description of dictionary operations--text lookup and dictionary modification--gives a clearer picture.
Text lookup, as we will describe it, consists of three steps.
The first is compiling a list of text forms, assigning an information cell to each, and replacing text occurrences with the information cell assigned to the form of each occurrence.
For this step the computer memory is separated into three regions: cells in the W-region are used for storage of the forms in the text-form list;
cells in the X-region and Y region are reserved as information cells for text forms.
When an occurrence Af is isolated during text reading, a random memory address Af, the address of a cell in the X-region, is computed from the form of Af.
Let Af denote the form of Af.
If cell Af has not previously been assigned as the information cell of a form in the text-form list, it is now assigned as the information cell of Af.
The form itself is stored in the next available cells of the W-region, beginning in cell Af.
The address Af and the number of cells required to store the form are written in Af;
the information cell Af is saved to represent the text occurrence.
Text reading continues with the next occurrence.
Let us assume that Af is identical to the form of an occurrence Af which preceded Af in the text.
When this situation exists, the address Af will equal Af which was produced from Af.
If Af was assigned as the information cell for Af, the routine can detect that Af is identical to Af by comparing Af with the form stored at location Af.
The address Af is stored in the cell Af.
When, as in this case, the two forms match, the address Af is saved to represent the occurrence Af.
Text reading continues with the next occurrence.
A third situation is possible.
The formula for computing random addresses from the form of each occurrence will not give a distinct address for each distinct form.
Thus, when more than one distinct form leads to a particular cell in the X-region, a chain of information cells must be created to accommodate the forms, one cell in the chain for each form.
If Af leads to an address Af that is equal to the address computed from Af, even though Af does not match Af, the chain of information cells is extended from Af by storing the address of the next available cell in the Y-region, Af, in Af.
The cell Af becomes the second information cell in the chain and is assigned as the information cell of Af.
A third cell can be added by storing the address of another Y-cell in Af;
similarly, as many cells are added as are required.
Each information cell in the chain contains the address of the Y-cell where the form to which it is assigned is stored.
Each cell except the last in the chain also contains the address of the Y-cell that is the next element of the chain;
the absence of such a link in the last cell indicates the end of the chain.
Hence, when the address Af is computed from Af, the cell Af and all Y-cells in its chain must be inspected to determine whether Af is already in the form list or whether it should be added to the form list and the chain.
When the information cell for Af has been determined, it is saved as a representation of Af.
Text reading continues with the next occurrence.
Text reading is terminated when a pre-determined number of forms have been stored in the text-form list.
This initiates the second step of glossary lookup--connecting the information cell of forms in the text-form list to dictionary forms.
Each form represented by the dictionary is looked up in the text-form list.
Each time a dictionary form matches a text form, the information cell of the matching text form is saved.
The number of dictionary forms skipped since the last one matched is also saved.
These two pieces of information for each dictionary form that is matched by a text form constitute the table of dictionary usage.
If each text form is marked when matched with a dictionary form, the text forms not contained in the dictionary can be identified when all dictionary forms have been read.
The appropriate action for handling these forms can be taken at that time.
Each dictionary form is looked up in the text-form list by the same method used to look up a new text occurrence in the form list during text reading.
A random address Af that lies within the X-region of memory mentioned earlier is computed from the i-th dictionary form.
If cell Af is an information cell, it and any information cells in the Y-region that have been linked to Af each contain an address in the W-region where a potentially matching form is stored.
The dictionary form is compared with each of these text forms.
When a match is found, an entry is made in the table of dictionary usage.
If cell Af is not an information cell we conclude that the i-th dictionary form is not in the text list.
These two steps essentially complete the lookup operation.
The list of text forms in the W-region of memory and the contents of the information cells in the X and Y-regions are no longer required.
Only the assignment of the information cells is important.
The first stage of translation after glossary lookup is structural analysis of the input text.
The grammatical description of each occurrence in the text must be retrieved from the dictionary to permit such an analysis.
A description of this process will serve to illustrate how any type of information can be retrieved from the dictionary and attached to each text occurrence.
The grammatical descriptions of all forms in the dictionary are recorded in a separate part of the dictionary file.
The order is identical to the ordering of the forms they describe.
When entries are being retrieved from this file, the table of dictionary usage indicates which entries to skip and which entries to store in the computer.
This selection-rejection process takes place as the file is read.
Each entry that is selected for storage is written into the next available cells of the Aj.
The address of the first cell and the number of cells used is written in the information cell for the form.
(The address of the information cell is also supplied by the table of dictionary usage.
) When the complete file has been read, the grammatical descriptions for all text forms found in the dictionary have been stored in the W-region;
the information cell assigned to each text form contains the address of the grammatical description of the form it represents.
Hence, the description of each text occurrence can be retrieved by reading the list of text-ordered information-cell addresses and outputting the description indicated by the information cell for each occurrence.
This leaves the ordering of entries variable.
(Here an entry is a form plus the information that pertains to it.
Two very useful ways for modifying a form-dictionary are the addition to the dictionary of complete paradigms rather than single forms and the application of a single change to more than one dictionary form.
The former is intended to decrease the amount of work necessary to extend dictionary coverage.
The latter is useful for modifying information about some or all forms of a word, hence reducing the work required to improve dictionary contents.
Applying the techniques developed at Harvard for generating a paradigm from a representative form and its classification, we can add all forms of a word to the dictionary at once.
An extension of the principle would permit entering a grammatical description of each form.
Equivalents could be assigned to the paradigm either at the time it is added to the dictionary or after the word has been studied in context.
Thus, one can think of a dictionary entry as a word rather than a form.
If all forms of a paradigm are grouped together within the dictionary, a considerable reduction in the amount of information required is possible.
For example, the inflected forms of a word can be represented, insofar as regular inflection allows, by a stem and a set of endings to be attached.
(Indeed, the set of endings can be replaced by the name of a set of endings.
) The full forms can be derived from such information just prior to the lookup of the form in the text-form list.
Similarly, if the equivalents for the forms of a word do not vary, the equivalents need be entered only once with an indication that they apply to each form.
The dictionary system is in no way dependent upon such summarization or designed around it.
When irregularity and variation prevent summarizing, information is written in complete detail.
Entries are summarized only when by doing so the amount of information retained in the dictionary is reduced and the time required for dictionary operations is decreased.
In sentences, patterns of stress are determined by complex combinations of influences that can only be suggested here.
The tendency is toward putting dominant stress at the end.
There is a parallel to this tendency in the assignment of time in long-known hymn tunes.
Thus the first lines of one of Charles Wesley's hymns are as follows.
A charge to keep I have, A God to glorify.
In the tune to which this hymn is most often sung, Boylston, the syllables have and fy, ending their lines, have twice the time any other syllables have.
But the parallel is significant.
When the answer to what's wrong now?
Is Bill's broken a chair, dominant stress will usually be on the complement a chair.
From the point of view of syntactic analysis the head word in the statement is the predicator has broken, and from the point of view of meaning it would seem that the trouble centers in the breaking;
but dominant stress will be assigned to broken only in rather exceptional versions of the sentence.
In I know one thing dominant stress will usually be on the complement one thing;
in one thing I know it will usually be on the predicator know.
In small-town people are very friendly dominant stress will generally be on the complement very friendly;
in the double sentence the smaller the town, the friendlier the people it will generally be on the subjects the town and the people.
In what's a linguist?
dominant stress will generally be on the subject a linguist;
in who's a linguist? it will generally be on the complement a linguist.
Dominant stress is on her luggage both in that's her luggage, where her luggage is the complement, and in there's her luggage, where it is the subject.
Adverbial second complements, however, are likely not to have dominant stress when they terminate sentences.
If the answer to what was that noise?
Is George put the cat out, dominant stress will ordinarily be on the first complement, the cat, not the second complement out.
Final adjuncts may or may not have dominant stress.
If the answer to what was that noise?
Is George reads the news emotionally, dominant stress may or may not be on the adjunct emotionally.
When prepositional complements are divided as in what are you looking for?
They are likely to lose dominant stress.
Context is of extreme importance.
What is new in the context is likely to be made more prominent than what is not.
The personal pronouns and substitute one are normally unstressed because they refer to what is prominent in the immediate context.
In I'll go with George dominant stress is probably on George;
but if George has just been mentioned prominently (and the trip to be made has been under discussion), what is said is probably I'll go with him, and dominant stress is probably on the preposition with.
When a gesture accompanies who's he?
the personal pronoun has dominant stress because he has not been mentioned previously.
If both George and a piece of information George does not have are prominent in the context, but the idea of telling George is new, then dominant stress will probably be on tell in why not tell George?
But when what is new in a particular context is also fairly obvious, there is normally only light stress or no stress at all.
Thus the unstressed it of it rarely snows here gets its significance from its use with snows: nothing can snow snow but it.
In there aren't many young people in the neighborhood the modifier young takes dominant stress away from its head people: the fact that the young creatures of interest are people seems rather obvious.
If women replaced people, it would normally have dominant stress.
In I have things to do the word things makes little real contribution to meaning and has weaker stress than do.
If work is substituted for things (with more exact contribution to meaning), it will have dominant stress.
In I know one thing dominant stress is likely to go to one rather than to semantically pale thing.
In I knew you when you were a child, and you were pretty then dominant stress on then implies that the young woman spoken to is still pretty.
Dominant stress on pretty would be almost insulting here.
In the written language then can be underlined or italicized to guide the reader here, but much of the time the written language simply depends on the reader's alertness, and a careless reader will have to back up and reread.
Often, dominant stress simply indicates a centering of attention or emotion.
Thus in it's incredible what that boy can eat dominant stress is likely to be on incredible, and eat will have strong stress also.
In she has it in for George dominant stress will ordinarily be on in, where the notion of stored-up antipathy seems to center.
In we're painting at our garage strong stress on at indicates that the job being done is not real painting but simply an effort at painting.
Where there is comparison or contrast, dominant stresses normally operate to center attention.
Thus in his friends are stranger than his sisters' strong stresses are normal for his and sisters', but in his friends are stranger than his sisters strong stresses are normal for friends and sisters.
In he's hurting himself more than he's hurting you both himself and you have stronger stress than they would ordinarily have if there were no contrast.
In is she Chinese or Japanese?
The desire to contrast the first parts of words which are alike in their last components produces an exceptional disregard of the normal patterns of stress of Chinese and Japanese.
Sometimes strong stress serves to focus an important secondary relationship.
In hunger stimulates man too the situation is very similar.
Strong stress on hunger treats hunger as an additional stimulus, strong stress on stimulates treats stimulation as an additional effect of hunger, strong stress on man treats man as an additional creature who responds to the stimulation of hunger.
Here again, in the written language it is possible to help the reader get his stresses right by using underlining or italics, but much of the time there is simply reliance on his understanding in the light of context.
When a word represents a larger construction of which it is the only expressed part, it normally has more stress than it would have in fully expressed construction.
Thus when yes, I have is the response to have you finished reading the paper?
The stress on have, which here represents have finished reading the paper, is quite strong.
In Mack's the leader at camp, but Jack is here the is of the second main declarative represents is the leader and therefore has stress.
Mack's the leader at camp, but Jack's here, with this is deprived of stress, makes here the complement in the clause.
In of all the suggestions that were made, his was the silliest the possessive his represents his suggestion and is stressed.
When go represents itself and a complement (being equivalent, say, to go to Martinique) in which boat did Jack go on?
It has strong stress;
when it represents only itself and on which is its complement (so that go on is semantically equivalent to board), on has stronger stress than go does.
Omission of a subordinator pronoun, however, does not result in an increase in stress on a prepositional adverb for which the subordinator pronoun would be object.
Thus to has light stress both in that was the conclusion that I came to and in that was the conclusion I came to.
But when to represents to consciousness in that was the moment that I came to, and similarly in that was the moment I came to, there is much stronger stress on to.
In I wanted to tell him, but I was afraid to the final to is lightly stressed because it represents to tell him.
In to tell him, of course, to is normally unstressed.
When I have instructions to leave is equivalent in meaning to I have instructions that I am to leave this place, dominant stress is ordinarily on leave.
When the same sequence is equivalent in meaning to I have instructions which I am to leave, dominant stress is ordinarily on instructions.
It is clear that patterns of stress sometimes show construction unambiguously in the spoken language where without the help of context it would be ambiguous in the written.
Other examples follow.
I'll come by Tuesday.
I can't be happy long without drinking water.
In the first of these sentences if by is the complement of come and Tuesday is an adjunct of time equivalent to on Tuesday, there will be strong stress on by in the spoken language;
but if a complement for come is implied and by Tuesday is a prepositional unit used as an adjunct, by will be unstressed or lightly stressed at most.
In the second sentence if drinking water is a gerundial clause and without drinking water is roughly equivalent in meaning to unless I drink water, there will be stronger stress on water than on drinking;
but if drinking is a gerundial noun modifying water and without drinking water is equivalent to without water for drinking, there will be stronger stress on drinking than on water.
But the use of stress in comparison and contrast, for example, can undermine distinctions such as these.
And patterns of stress are not always unambiguous by any means.
Syllabification.
-- Syllables are linguistic units centering in peaks which are usually vocalic but, as has been noted, are consonantal under certain circumstances, and which may or may not be combined with preceding and/or following consonants or combinations of consonants.
Syllables are genuine units, but division of words and sentences into them presents great difficulties.
Sometimes even the number of syllables is not clear.
Doubt on this point is strongest before /l/ and AAb/ or /r/.
From the point of view of word formation real might be expected to have two syllables.
Historically re is the formative that is employed also in republic, and al is the common suffix.
When ity is added, real clearly has two syllables.
But there is every reason to regard deal as a monosyllable, and because of the fact that /l/ commonly has the quality of AAb/ when it follows vowel sounds, deal seems to be a perfectly satisfactory rhyme with deal.
It is obvious enough that linguists in general have been less successful in coping with tone systems than with consonants or vowels.
No single explanation is adequate to account for this.
Improvement, however, is urgent, and at least three things will be needed.
The first is a wide-ranging sample of successful tonal analyses.
Even beginning students in linguistics are made familiar with an appreciable variety of consonant systems, both in their general outlines and in many specific details.
An advanced student has read a considerable number of descriptions of consonantal systems, including some of the more unusual types.
By contrast, even experienced linguists commonly know no more of the range of possibilities in tone systems than the over-simple distinction between register and contour languages.
This limited familiarity with the possible phenomena has severely hampered work with tone.
Tone analysis will continue to be difficult and unsatisfactory until a more representative selection of systems is familar to every practicing field linguist.
Papers like these four, if widely read, will contribute importantly to improvement of our analytic work.
The second need is better field techniques.
The result has been neglect, fumbling efforts, or superficial treatment.
As these maladies overlap, so must the cure.
Analyses such as these four will simultaneously combat the assumptions that tone is impossible and that it is simple.
They will give suggestions that can be worked up into field procedures.
Good field techniques will not only equip linguists for better work, but also help them overcome negative attitudes.
Actually, none of these papers says much directly about field techniques.
But it is worth pondering that very little has been published on any phase of field techniques in linguistics.
These things have been disseminated by other means, but always in the wake of extensive publication of analytic results.
The third need is for better theory.
We should expect that general phonologic theory should be as adequate for tone as for consonants and vowels, but it has not been.
This can only be for one of two reasons: either the two are quite different and will require totally different theory (and hence techniques), or our existing theories are insufficiently general.
If, as I suspect, the problem is largely of the second sort, then development of a theory better able to handle tone will result automatically in better theory for all phonologic subsystems.
One issue that must be faced is the relative difficulty of analysis of different phonologic subsystems.
Since tone systems typically comprise fewer units than either consonant or vowel systems, we might expect that they would be the easiest part of a phonologic analysis.
Actual practice does not often work out this way.
Tone systems are certainly more complex than the number of units would suggest, and often analytically more difficult than much larger consonantal systems.
Welmers has suggested one explanation.
Tone languages use for linguistic contrasts speech parameters which also function heavily in nonlinguistic use.
This may both divert the attention of the uninitiate and cause confusion for the more knowledgeable.
The problem is to disentangle the linguistic features of pitch from the co-occurring nonlinguistic features.
Of course, something of the same sort occurs with other sectors of the phonology: consonantal articulations have both a linguistic and an individual component.
But in general the individual variation is a small thing added onto basic linguistic features of greater magnitude.
With tone, individual differences may be greater than the linguistic contrasts which are superimposed on them.
Pitch differences from one speaker to another, or from one emotional state to another, may far exceed the small differences between tones.
However, any such suggestion accounts for only some of the difficulties in hearing tone, or in developing a realistic attitude about tone, but not for the analytic difficulties that occur even when tone is meticulously recorded.
A second explanation is suggested by the material described in Rowlands' paper.
Tone and intonation often become seriously intermeshed.
Neither can be adequately systematized until we are able to separate the two and assign the observed phenomena individually to one or the other.
Other pairs of phonologic subsystems also interact or overlap in this way;
for example, duration sometimes figures in both the vowel system and the intonation.
Some phonetic features, for example glottal catch or murmur, are sometimes to be assigned to segmental phonemics and sometimes to accentual systems.
But no other two phonologic systems are as difficult to disentangle as are tone and intonation in some languages.
This explanation of tone difficulties, however, does not apply in all languages.
In some (the Ewe type mentioned above) interaction of tone and intonation is restricted to the ends of intonation spans.
In many of the syllables, intonation can be safely ignored, and much of the tonal analysis can be done without any study of intonation.
Still, even in such languages tone analysis has not been as simple as one might expect.
A third explanation is suggested by Richardson's analysis of Sukuma tone.
There we see a basically simple phonemic system enmeshed in a very complex and puzzling morphophonemic system.
In the typical tone language, tonal morphophonemics is of the same order of complexity as consonantal morphophonemics.
The phonemic systems which must support these morphophonemic systems, however, are very different.
The inventory of tones is much smaller, and commonly the contrasts range along one single dimension, pitch level.
Consonantal systems are not merely larger, they are multidimensional.
Morphophonemic rules may be thought of as joining certain points in the system.
The possibilities in the consonantal system are very numerous, and only a small portion of them are actually used.
Phonemes connected by a morphophonemic rule commonly show a good bit of phonetic similarity, possible because of the several dimensions of contrast in the system.
Tonal morphophonemics, in a common case, can do nothing but either raise or lower the tone.
The possibilities are few, and the total number of rules may be considerably greater.
Often, therefore, there are a number of rules having the same effect, and commonly other sets of rules as well, having the opposite effect.
Tonal morphophonemics is much more confusing to the beginning analyst than consonantal morphophonemics, even when the total number of rules is no greater.
The difficulty of analysis of any subsystem in the phonology is an inverse function of the size--smaller systems are more troublesome--for any given degree of morphophonemic complexity.
This hypothesis will account for a large part of the difficulties of tonal analysis, as well as the fact that vowel systems are often more puzzling than consonantal systems.
The statement of the system is a different matter.
Smaller systems can of course be stated much more succinctly.
A phonemic system can be stated without reference to morphophonemics, but it cannot always be found without morphophonemics.
The design of orthographies has received much less attention from linguists than the problem deserves.
There has been a tendency on the part of many American linguists to assume that a phonemic transcription will automatically be the best possible orthography and that the only real problem will then be the social one of securing acceptance.
This seems naive.
Most others have been content to give only the most general attention to the broadest and most obvious features of the phonology when designing orthographies.
Apparently the feeling is that anything more would be involvement in technical abstrusenesses of possible pedantic interest but of no visible significance in practical affairs.
The result of this attitude has been the domination of many orthography conferences by such considerations as typographic'esthetics ', which usually turns out to be nothing more than certain prejudices carried over from European languages.
Many of the suggested systems seem to have only the most tenuous relationship to the language structures that they purport to represent.
Linguists have not always been more enlightened than practical people and sometimes have insisted on incredibly trivial points while neglecting things of much greater significance.
As a result, many people have been confirmed in their conviction that orthography design is not an activity to which experts can contribute anything but confusion.
A. E. Sharp, in Vowel-Length And Syllabicity In Kikuyu, examines one set of related orthographic questions and its phonologic background in detail.
His objective is merely to determine what distinctions of length and syllabicity it may be desirable to make explicit in a Kikuyu orthography (59).
To do so, he finds it necessary to examine the relevant parts of the phonology thoroughly and in detail.
In the process, he develops some very significant observations about problems of a sort that are often difficult.
A few of his examples are of very great interest, and the whole discussion of some importance for theory.
His orthographic recommendations are no simplistic acceptance of phonemics on the one hand or of superficiality on the other.
Rather he weighs each phonologic fact in the light of its orthographic usefulness.
He concludes that some changes can be made in the current orthography which will appreciably improve its usefulness, but hesitates to suggest precise graphic devices to effect these changes.
I hope his suggestions are given the consideration they deserve in Kikuyu circles.
This, however, will not exhaust their practical usefulness, as they rather clearly indicate what thorough phonologic investigation can contribute to orthography design.
We need many more studies of this sort if the design of written languages is to be put on a sound basis.
One other paper deals with a phonologic problem: Vowel Harmony In Igbo, by J. Carnochan.
This restates the already widely known facts in terms of prosodies.
As a restatement it makes only a small contribution to knowledge of Igbo.
But it would seem more intended as a tract advocating the prosodic theory than a paper directed to the specific problems of Igbo phonology.
The paper has a certain value as a comparatively easy introduction to this approach, particularly since it treats a fairly simple and straightforward phenomenon where it is possible to compare it with a more traditional (though not structural) statement.
It does show one feature of the system that has not been previously described.
But it does not, as it claims, demonstrate that this could not be treated by traditional methods.
It seems to me that it rather easily can.
Five of the papers deal with grammatical problems.
On the whole they maintain much the same high standard, but they are much more difficult to discuss in detail because of their wider variety of subject matter.
My comments must be briefer than the papers deserve.
W. H. Whiteley writes on The Verbal Radical In Iraqw.
This must be considered primarily an amendment and supplement to his early A Short Description Of Item-Categories In Iraqw.
It exhibits much the same descriptive technique and is open to much the same criticisms.
The treatment seems unnecessarily loose-jointed and complex, largely because the method is lax and the analysis seems never to be pushed to a satisfactory or even a consistent stopping-point.
There are more stems per item in Athabascan, which expresses the fact that the Athabascan languages have undergone somewhat more change in diverging from proto-Athabascan than the Yokuts languages from proto-Yokuts.
This may be because the Athabascan divergence began earlier;
or again because the Athabascan languages spread over a very much larger territory (including three wholly separated areas);
or both.
The differentiation, however, is not very much greater, as shown by the fact that Athabascan shows 3.46 stems per meaning slot as against 2.75 for Yokuts, with a slightly greater number of languages represented in our sample: 24 as against 21.
(On deduction of one-eighth from 3.46, the stem / item rate becomes 3.03 against 2.75 in equivalent number of languages.
) These general facts are mentioned to make clear that the total situation in the two families is similar enough to warrant comparison.
The greatest difference in the two sets of figures is due to differences in the two sets of lists used.
Swadesh in short was trying to develop a basic list that was universal;
I, one that was specifically adapted to the San Joaquin Valley.
The result is that I included 70 animal names, but Swadesh only 4;
and somewhat similarly for plants, 16 as against 4.
Swadesh, and therefore Hoijer, felt compelled to omit all terms denoting species or even genera (ox, vulture, salmon, yellow pine, manzanita);
their classes of animal and plant terms are restricted to generalizations or recurrent parts (fish, bird, tree, grass, horn, tail, bark, root).
The groups are therefore really non-comparable in content as well as in size.
Other classes are included only by myself (interrogatives, adverbs) or only by Swadesh and Hoijer (pronouns, demonstratives).
What we have left as reasonably comparable are four classes: (1) body parts and products, which with a proportionally nearly even representation (51 terms out of 253, 25 out of 100) come out with nearly even ratios;
2.6 and 2.7;
(2) Nature (29 terms against 17), ratios 3.3 versus 4.1;
(3) adjectives (16, 15 terms), ratios 3.9 versus 4.7;
(4) verbs (9, 22 terms), ratios 4.0 versus 3.4.
It will be seen that where the scope is similar, the Athabascan ratios come out somewhat higher (as indeed they ought to with a total ratio of 2.8 as against 3.5 or 4: 5) except for verbs, where alone the Athabascan ratio is lower.
This exception may be connected with Hoijer's use of a much higher percentage of verbs: 22% of his total list as against 3.5% in mine.
Or the exception may be due to a particular durability peculiar to the Athabascan verb.
More word class ratios determined in more languages will no doubt ultimately answer the question.
If word classes differ in their resistance or liability to stem replacement within meaning slot, it is conceivable that individual meanings also differ with fair consistence trans-lingually.
Hoijer's Athabascan and my Yokuts share 71 identical meanings (with allowance for several near-synonyms like stomach-belly, big-large, long-far, many-much, die-dead, say-speak).
For Yokuts, I tabulated these 71 items in five columns, according as they were expressed by 1, 2, 3, 4, and more than 4 stems.
The totals for these five categories are not too uneven, namely 20, 15, 11, 16, 9 respectively.
For Athabascan, with a greater range of stems, the first two of five corresponding columns were identical, 1 and 2 stems;
the three others had to be spread somewhat, and are headed respectively Af;
Af;
and Af stems.
When now we count the frequency of the 71 items in the two language families appearing in the same column or grade, or one column or grade apart, or two or three or four, we find these differences: Af
This distribution can be summarized by averaging the distance in grades apart: Af;
which, divided by Af gives a mean of 1.07 grades apart.
If the distribution of the 71 items were wholly concordant in the two families, the distance would of course be 0.
If it were wholly random and unrelated, it would be 2.0, assuming the five classes were equal in n, which approximately they are.
The actual mean of 1.07 being about halfway between 0 of complete correlation and 2.0 of no correlation, it is evident that there is a pretty fair degree of similarity in the behavior even of particular individual items of meaning as regards long-term stem displacement.
121 - 137).
Thomas' findings are, first, that the individual items vary greatly and unpredictably in their persistence;
but, second, that the semantic groups are surprisingly unvarying in their average persistence (as between M-K and I-E).
His first conclusion, on behavior of individual items, is negative, whereas mine (on Ath. and Yok.) was partially positive.
His second conclusion, on semantic word classes, agrees with mine.
This second conclusion, independently arrived at by independent study of material from two pairs of language families as different and remote from one another as these four are, cannot be ignored.
Thomas also presents a simple equation for deriving an index of persistence, which weights not only the number of stems (' roots ') per meaning, but their relative frequency.
Thus his persistence values for some stem frequencies per meaning are: stem identical in 8 languages, 100%;
stem frequencies 7 and 1, 86%;
stem frequencies 4 and 4, 64%;
stem frequencies 4, 3, and 1, 57%.
His formula will have to be weighed, may be altered or improved, and it should be tested on additional bodies of material.
But consideration of the frequency of stems per constant meaning seems to be established as having significance in comparative situations with diachronic and classificatory relevance;
and Gleason presumably is on the way with a further contribution in this area.
As to relative frequencies of competing roots (7 - 1 vs. 4 - 4, etc.), Thomas with his'weighting'seems to be the first to have considered the significance this might have.
The problem needs further exploration.
I was at least conscious of the distinction in my full Yokuts presentation that awaits publication, in which, in listing'Two-Stem Meanings ', I set off by asterisks those forms in which N of stem B was Af of stem A/3, the unasterisked ones standing for Af;
or under'Four Stems ', I set off by asterisks cases where the combined N of stems Af was Af.
These findings, and others which will in time be developed, will affect the method of glottochronological inquiry.
Had Hoijer substituted for his 15 adjectival slots 15 good animal and plant items, his rate of stem replacement would have been lower and the age of Athabascan language separation smaller.
And irrespective of the outcome in centuries elapsed since splitting, calculations obviously carry more concordant and comparable meaning if they deal with the most stable units than with variously unstable ones.
It is evident that Swadesh has not only had much experience with basic vocabulary in many languages but has acquired great tact and feeling for the expectable behavior of lexical items.
Why then this urge to include unstable items in his basic list?
It is the urge to obtain a list as free of geographical and cultural conditioning as possible.
And why that insistence?
It is the hope of attaining a list of items of universal occurrence.
But it is becoming increasingly evident that such a hope is a snare.
Not that such a list cannot be constructed;
but the nearer it comes to attaining universality, the less significant will it be linguistically.
Its terms will tend to be labile or vague, and they will fit actual languages more and more badly.
The practical operational problem of lexicostatistics is the establishment of a basic list of items of meaning against which the particular forms or terms of languages can be matched as the medium of comparison.
The most important quality of the meanings is that they should be as definable as possible.
In proportion as meanings are concrete, we can better rely on their being insulated and distinctive.
An elephant or a fox or a swan or a cocopalm or a banana possess in unusually high degree this quality of obvious, common-sense, indubitable identity, as do an eye or tooth or nail.
They isolate out easily, naturally, and unambiguously from the continuum of nature and existence;
and they should be given priority in the basic list as long as they continue to show these qualities.
With the universal list as his weapon, Swadesh has extended his march of conquest farther and farther into the past, eight, ten, twelve millennia back.
And he has proclaimed greater or less affiliation between all Western hemisphere languages.
Some of this may prove to be true, or even considerable of it, whether by genetic ramification or by diffusion and coalescence.
But the farther out he moves, the thinner will be his hold on conclusive evidence, and the larger the speculative component in his inferences.
He has traversed provinces and kingdoms, but he has not consolidated them behind him, nor does he control them.
He has announced results on Hokan, Penutian, Uto-Aztecan, and almost all other American families and phyla, and has diagrammed their degree of interrelation;
but he has not worked out by lexicostatistics one comprehensively complete classification of even a single family other than Salish.
That is his privilege.
The remote, cloudy, possible has values of its own--values of scope, stimulus, potential, and imagination.
But there is also a firm aspect to lexicostatistics: the aspect of learning the internal organization of obvious natural genetic groups of languages as well as their more remote and elusive external links;
of classification first, with elapsed age merely a by-product;
of acquiring evidential knowledge of what happened in Athabascan, in Yokuts, in Uto-Aztecan in the last few thousand years as well as forecasting what more anciently may have happened between them.
This involves step-by-step progress, and such will have to be the day-by-day work of lexicostatistics as a growing body of scientific inquiry.
If of the founders of glottochronology Swadesh has escaped our steady plodding, and Lees has repudiated his own share in the founding, that is no reason why we should swerve.
There is no apparent reason why we should feel bound by Swadesh's rules and procedure since his predilections and aims have grown so vast.
It seems time to consider a revision of operational procedures for lexicostatistic studies on a more humble, solid, and limited basis.
I would propose, first, an abandonment of attempts at a universal lexical list, as intrinsically unachievable, and operationally inadequate in proportion as it is achieved.
I would propose, next, as the prime requirement for constitution of new basic lists, items whose forms show as high an empirical retention rate as possible.
There would be no conceivable sense in going to the opposite extreme of selecting items whose forms are the most unstable.
An attempted middle course might lead to devices like a 5000-word alphabetized dictionary from which every fiftieth word was selected.
Doubtless it was inevitable that differences of opinion should arise about the methods for applying these policies.
Poland
frontiers.
When the Yalta Conference opened, the American policy of postponing all discussion of Russia's western boundaries until the peace conference had broken down.
The long delay in opening the Second Front was now working to Russia's advantage.
The West was now glad to propose the 1919 Curzon Line, which was substantially Russia's 1941 border, as the boundary between Russia and Poland.
When this proposal was made, Stalin spoke with stronger emotion than at any other time during the Conference.
He stood up to emphasize his strong feeling on the subject.
The bitter memory of Russia's exclusion from the Paris Peace Conference and of the West's effort to stamp out Bolshevism at its birth boiled up within him.
You would drive us into shame, he declared.
The White Russians and the Ukrainians would say that Stalin and Molotov were far less reliable defenders of Russia than Curzon and Clemenceau.
Yet after long and earnest discussion Stalin accepted the Curzon Line and even agreed voluntarily that there should be digressions from that line of five to eight kilometers in favor of Poland in some regions.
He did not mind the Line itself, which Churchill declared in the House of Commons, on February 27, 1945, he had always believed to be just and right, but he did not want it called by a hated name.
The West had long since forgotten the events of 1919, but it was not so easy for the Red leaders, who felt that they had suffered great injustice in that period.
In the Dunn-Atherton memorandum of February 4, 1942, the State Department had expected to be able to hold Russia in check by withholding agreement to her 1941 boundaries.
Now Stalin made it clear that he meant to move Poland's western borders deep into Germany, back to the western Neisse-Oder River lines, taking not only East Prussia and all of Silesia but Pomerania and the tip of Brandenburg, back to and including Stettin.
From six to nine million additional Germans would be evicted, though most would have fled, and Poland would receive far more from Germany than the poor territories, including the great Pripet Marshes, which she lost to Russia.
Stalin declared that he preferred to continue the war a little longer, although it costs us blood, in order to give Poland compensation in the West at the expense of the Germans.
By this time Churchill was not so cordial toward moving Poland westward as he had been at Teheran, where he and Eden had both heartily approved the idea.
After a prolonged study of the Oder line on a map, at Teheran, Churchill liked the picture.
He would tell the Poles, he said, that they had been given a fine place to live in, more than three hundred miles each way.
At Yalta he thought more about the six million Germans who would have to leave, trying to find work in Germany, and Roosevelt objected to the Western Neisse River being chosen in the south, instead of the Eastern Neisse, both of which flow into the Oder.
The issue was left in abeyance, presumably for the peace conference.
However, there was no real question of the justice of creating a strong Poland, both industrially and agriculturally, and one unplagued by large minorities of Germans or Russians.
The moving of millions of the German master-race, from the very heart of Junkerdom, to make room for the Polish Slavs whom they had enslaved and openly planned to exterminate was a drastic operation, but there was little doubt that it was historically justified.
Government.
Of more importance to the West than Poland's boundaries was the character of her government.
At Yalta the West still believed that Eastern Europe could be kept in its orbit, in spite of the onrushing Soviet armies.
Though little democracy had ever been practised in this region, and much of it was still ruled by feudalistic means, it was taken for granted that at least the forms of Western democracy would be established in this area and Western capitalism preserved within it.
Believing devoutly as they did in Anglo-Saxon institutions, it was important to both Roosevelt and Churchill that the Poles should have them.
The issue was acute because the exiled Polish Government in London, supported in the main by Britain, was still competing with the new Lublin Government formed behind the Red Army.
More time was spent in trying to marry these incompatibles than over any subject discussed at Yalta.
All democratic and anti-Nazi parties were to have the right to campaign.
Roosevelt acted as moderator of the long debate on this issue.
It was a matter of principle with Churchill, since Britain had declared war in behalf of Poland.
To Stalin it was a matter of life and death.
He made this completely clear.
Speaking with great earnestness, he said: For the Russian people, the question of Poland is not only a question of honor but also a question of security.
Throughout history, Poland has been the corridor through which the enemy has passed into Russia.
Twice in the last thirty years our enemies, the Germans, have passed through this corridor.
It is in Russia's interest that Poland should be strong and powerful, in a position to shut the door of this corridor by her own force.
It is necessary that Poland should be free, independent in power.
Therefore, it is not only a question of honor but of life and death for the Soviet state.
Byrnes says that invariably thereafter the Soviets used the same security argument to justify their course in Poland.
This reasoning was also as inevitable as anything could be.
Any free elections that were to be held in Poland would have to produce a government in which Moscow had complete confidence, and all pressure from the West for free voting by anti-Soviet elements in Poland would be met by restrictions on voting by these elements.
Liberated Europe
In even greater degree the same rule applied to the remainder of Eastern Europe, where the upper classes had generally collaborated with the Nazis, even to the extent of sending millions of their peasants into Russia as a part of Hitler's armies.
But at Yalta the conflicting expectations of East and West were merged into an agreement by the Big Three to assist all liberated countries in Europe to create democratic institutions of their own choice.
Other similar affirmations in the Declaration on Liberated Europe seemed to assure democratic institutions on the Western model.
Also war-time propaganda and cooperation had obscured the differences between Russian and Western ideas of democracy, and it seemed better to have them covered by verbal formulae than to imperil the military victories over Germany and Japan.
The application of these formulae could not please both sides, for they really attempted to marry the impossible to the inevitable.
While obliged to concede governments in East Europe allied with the Soviet Union instead of opposed to it, we thought we had preserved our social and economic system in East Europe.
This illusion was described in a far-sighted editorial in The New York Herald Tribune, on March 5, 1947, in connection with the submission of the satellite peace treaties to the Senate.
In doing so Marshall and Byrnes were asking for the ratification of a grim lesson in the facts of international life.
We had entertained exaggerated ideas about our victory automatically establishing our system throughout the world.
We were troubled about the fate of the Baltic States.
Yalta left us with comforting illusions of a Western capitalist-democratic political economy reigning supreme up to the Curzon line and the borders of Bessarabia (Italics added)
This is a penetrating description of our post-war illusion, which applied to other areas than East Europe.
The same editorial continued that We expected to democratize Japan and Korea and to see a new China pattern itself easily on our institutions.
We expected, in short, that most of the world would make itself over in our image and that it would be relatively simple, from such a position, to deal with the localized aberrations of the Soviet Union.
Yet actually the image corresponded in no way to the actualities of the post-war world.
Neither our military, our economic nor our ideological power reached far enough to determine the fate of East Europe.
Then the editorial added prophetically: how far they may reach in Asia is yet undetermined, but they fall far short of our dreams of the war conferences.
Here is the best short explanation of the origins of the Cold War that has been written.
Then China promptly went Communist, and Mr. Truman had to fight the interminable Korean war for the democratization of Korea before we learned how far our writ did reach in Asia.
Years of war, strain, and hatred;
of heavy arms expenditures and constant danger of another world war had to ensue before the United States could bring itself to accept the two chief results of World War 2,--Communist control of East Europe and China--a new balance of power.
While the Cold War raged it was easy to blame it all on Yalta.
Yet, in summarizing a series of careful essays on the Yalta Conference, Forrest Pogue could find no basis for Yalta becoming a symbol for betrayal and a shibboleth for the opponents of Roosevelt and international cooperation.
When the Yalta Papers were finally published with great fanfare they had revealed no betrayal by anyone.
An analysis of the election falls naturally in four parts.
First is the long and still somewhat obscure process of preparation, planning and discussion.
Preparation began slightly more than a year after independence with the first steps to organize rural communes.
All political interests supported electoral planning, although there are some signs that the inherent uncertainties of a popular judgment led to some procrastination.
The second major aspect of the election is the actual procedure of registration, nomination and voting.
Considerable technical skill was used and the administration of the elections was generally above reproach.
However, the regionally differentiated results, which appear below in tables, are interesting evidence of the problems of developing self-government under even the most favorable circumstances.
A third aspect, and probably the one open to most controversy, is the results of the election.
The electoral procedure prevented the ready identification of party affiliation, but all vitally interested parties, including the government itself, were busily engaged in determining the party identifications of all successful candidates the month following the elections.
The fourth and concluding point will be to estimate the long-run significance of the elections and how they figure in the current pattern of internal politics.
Elections have figured prominently in nearly every government program and official address since independence.
They were stressed in the speeches of Si Mubarak Bekkai when the first Council of Ministers was formed and again when the Istiqlal took a leading role in the second Council.
King Muhammad 5, was known to be most sympathetic to the formation of local self-government and made the first firm promise of elections on May Day, 1957.
There followed a long and sometimes bitter discussion of the feasibility of elections for the fall of 1957, in which it appears that the Minister of the Interior took the most pessimistic view and that the Istiqlal was something less than enthusiastic.
Since the complicated process of establishing new communes and reviewing the rudimentary plan left by the French did not even begin until the fall of 1957, this goal appears somewhat ambitious.
From the very beginning the electoral discussions raised fundamental issues in Moroccan politics, precisely the type of questions that were most difficult to resolve in the new government.
Until the Charter of Liberties was issued in the fall of 1958, there were no guarantees of the right to assemble or to organize for political purposes.
The Istiqlal was still firmly united in 1957, but the P.D.I. (Parti Democratique de l'Independance), the most important minor party at the time, objected to the Istiqlal's predominance in the civil service and influence in Radio Maroc.
There were rumors that the Ministry of the Interior favored an arbitrary, non-political process, which were indirectly affirmed when the King personally intervened in the planned meetings.
The Ifni crisis in the fall of 1957 postponed further consideration of elections, but French consultants were called in and notices of further investigation appeared from time to time.
In January, 1958, the Minister of the Interior announced that an election law was ready to be submitted to the King, the rumors of election dates appeared once again, first for spring of 1958 and later for the summer.
Although the government was probably prepared for elections by mid-1958, the first decision was no doubt made more difficult as party strife multiplied.
In late 1957 the M.P. (Mouvement Populaire) appeared and in the spring of 1958 the internal strains of the Istiqlal was revealed when the third Council of Government under Balafrej was formed without support from progressive elements in the party.
The parties were on the whole unprepared for elections, while the people were still experiencing post-independence let-down and suffering the after-effects of poor harvests in 1957.
Despite the internal and international crises that harassed Morocco the elections remained a central issue.
They figured prominently in the Balafrej government of May, 1958, which the King was reportedly determined to keep in office until elections could be held.
But the eagerly sought homogeneity of the Balafrej Council of Government was never achieved as the Istiqlal quarreled over foreign policy, labor politics and economic development.
By December, 1958, when'Abdallah Ibrahim became President of the Council, elections had even greater importance.
They were increasingly looked upon as a means of establishing the new rural communes as the focus of a new, constructive national effort.
To minimize the chances of repeating the Balafrej debacle the Ibrahim government was formed.
A titre personnel and a special office was created in the Ministry of the Interior to plan and to conduct the elections.
By this time there is little doubt but what election plans were complete.
There remained only the delicate task of maneuvering the laws through the labyrinth of Palace politics and making a small number of policy decisions.
From the rather tortuous history of electoral planning in Morocco an important point emerges concerning the first elections in a developing country and evaluating their results.
In the new country the electoral process is considered as a means of resolving fundamental, and sometimes bitter, differences among leaders and also as a source of policy guidance.
In the absence of a reservoir of political consensus each organized political group hopes that the elections will give them new prominence, but in a system where there is as yet no place for the less prominent.
Those in power tend to procrastinate and even to repudiate the electoral process.
The tendency to treat elections as an instrument of self-interest rather than an instrument of national interest had two important effects on electoral planning in Morocco.
At the central level the scrutin uninominal voting system was selected over some form of the scrutin de liste system, even though the latter had been recommended by Duverger and favored by all political parties.
The choice of the single member district was dictated to a certain extent by problems of communication and understanding in the more remote areas of the country, but it also served to minimize the national political value of the elections.
Although the elections were for local officials, it was not necessary to conduct the elections so as to prevent parties from publicly identifying their candidates.
With multiple member districts the still fragmentary local party organizations could have operated more effectively and parties might have been encouraged to state their positions more clearly.
Both parties and the Ministry of the Interior were busily at work after the elections trying to unearth the political affiliations of the successful candidates and, thereby, give the elections a confidential but known degree of national political significance.
Since a national interpretation cannot be avoided it is unfortunate that the elections were not held in a way to maximize party responsibility and the educational effect of mass political participation.
The general setting of the Moroccan election may also encourage the deterioration of local party organization.
The concentration of effective power in Rabat leads not only to party bickering, but to distraction from local activity that might have had many auxiliary benefits in addition to contributing to more meaningful elections.
Interesting evidence can be found in the results of the Chamber of Commerce elections, which took place three weeks before national elections.
The Istiqlal-sponsored U.M.C.I.A. (L'Union Marocaine Des Commercants, Industrialistes et Artisans) was opposed by candidates of the new U.N.F.P. (L'Union National Des Forces Populaires) in nearly all urban centers.
As the more conservative group with strong backing from wealthy businessmen, the U.M.C.I.A. was generally favored against the more progressive, labor-based U.N.F.P..
The newer party campaigned heavily, while the older, more confident party expected the Moroccan merchants and small businessmen to support them as they had done for many years.
The local Istiqlal and U.M.C.I.A. offices did not campaign and lost heavily.
The value of the elections was lost, both as an experiment in increased political participation and as a reliable indicator of commercial interest, as shown in Table 1.
The Chamber of Commerce elections were, of course, an important event in the preparation for rural commune elections.
The U.N.F.P. learned that its urban organization, which depends heavily on U.M.T. support, was most effective.
The Istiqlal found that the spontaneous solidarity of the independence struggle was not easily transposed to the more concrete, precise problems of internal politics.
The overall effect was probably to stimulate more party activity in the communal elections than might have otherwise taken place.
A second major point of this essay is to examine the formal arrangements for the elections.
Although a somewhat technical subject, it has important political implications as the above discussion of the voting system indicated.
Furthermore, the problems and solutions devised in the electoral experiences of the rapidly changing countries are often of comparative value and essential to evaluating election results.
The sine qua non of the elections was naturally an impartial and standardized procedure.
As the background discussion indicated there were frequently expressed doubts that a government dominated by either party could fairly administer elections.
The P.D.I. and later the Popular Movement protected the Istiqlal's privileged position until the fall of Balafrej, and then the Istiqlal used the same argument, which it had previously ignored, against the pro-U.N.F.P. tendencies of the Ibrahim government.
The bulk of the preparation had, of course, proceeded under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, whose officials are barred from party activity and probably generally disinterested in party politics.
Apart from some areas of recurring trouble, like Bani Mellal, where inexperienced officials had been appointed, there is little evidence that local officials intervened in the electoral process.
Centrally, however, the administrative problem was more complex and the sheer prestige of office was very likely an unfair advantage.
The King decided to remove Ibrahim a week before elections and to institute a non-party Council of Government under his personal direction.
Although the monarch had frequently asserted that the elections were to be without party significance, his action was an implicit admission that party identifications were a factor.
The new Council was itself inescapably of political meaning, which was most clearly revealed in the absence of any U.N.F.P. members and the presence of several Istiqlal leaders.
Since the details of the elections were settled the change of government had no direct effect on the technical aspects of the elections, and may have been more important as an indication of royal displeasure with the U.N.F.P.
Voting preparations began in the fall of 1959, although the actual demarcation and planning for the rural communes was completed in 1958.
There were three major administrative tasks: the fixing of electoral districts, the registration of voters and the registration of candidates.
Voter registration began in late November 1959 and continued until early January, 1960.
The government was most anxious that there be a respectable response.
Periodic bulletins of the accomplishment in each province made the registration process into a kind of competition among provincial officials.
A goal was fixed, as given in Table 2, and attention focused on its fulfillment.
The qualifications to vote were kept very simple.
Both men and women of twenty-one years of age could register and vote upon presenting proof of residence and identification.
There were liberal provisions for dispensation where documents or records were lacking.
The police were disqualified along with certain categories of naturalized citizens, criminals and those punished for Protectorate activities.
The registration figures given in Table 2 must be interpreted with caution since the estimate for eligible electors were made without the benefit of a reliable census.
Unemployed older workers who have no expectation of securing employment in the occupation in which they are skilled should be able to secure counseling and retraining in an occupation with a future.
Some vocational training schools provide such training, but the current need exceeds the facilities.
Current programs
Since 1917 some thirteen supplementary and related acts have extended this Federal program.
The George-Barden Act of 1946 raised the previous increases in annual authorizations to $29 million in addition to the $7 million under the Smith Act.
The Health Amendment Act of 1956 added $5 million for practical nurse training.
The latest major change in this program was introduced by the National Defense Education Act of 1958, Title 8, of which amended the George-Barden Act.
Annual authorizations of $15 million were added for area vocational education programs that meet national defense needs for highly skilled technicians.
The Federal program of vocational education merely provides financial aid to encourage the establishment of vocational education programs in public schools.
The initiative, administration and control remain primarily with the local school districts.
Even the states remain primarily in an assisting role, providing leadership and teacher training.
Federal assistance is limited to half of the total expenditure, and the state or local districts must pay at least half.
The state may decide to encourage local programs by paying half of the cost, or the state may require the local district to bear this half or some part of it.
Throughout the history of the program, state government expenditures in the aggregate have usually matched or exceeded the Federal expenditures, while local districts all together have spent more than either Federal or state governments.
Today, Federal funds account for only one-fifth of the nation's expenditures for vocational education.
The greatest impact of the matching-fund principle has been in initially encouraging the poorest states and school districts to spend enough to obtain their full allocation of outside funds.
National defense considerations have been the major reason behind most Federal training expenditures in recent decades.
During World War 2, about 7.5 million persons were enrolled in courses organized under two special programs administered by state and local school authorities: (1) Vocational Education for National Defense, and (2) War Production Training.
The total cost of the five-year program was $297 million.
For the Smith-Hughes, George-Barden, and National Defense Act of 1958, the cumulative total of Federal expenditures in 42 years was only about $740 million.
No comparable measures are available of enrollments and expenditures for private vocational education training.
There are a great number and variety of private commercial schools, trade schools and technical schools.
In addition, many large corporations operate their own formal training programs.
A recent study indicated that 85 per cent of the nation's largest corporations conducted educational programs involving some class meetings and examinations.
Most skilled industrial workers, nevertheless, still acquire their skills outside of formal training institutions.
The National Manpower Council of Columbia University has estimated that three out of five skilled workers and one out of five technicians have not been formally trained.
There is little doubt that the students benefit from vocational education.
Employers prefer to hire youth with such training rather than those without, and most graduates of vocational training go to work in jobs related to their training.
Vocational educators do not claim that school training alone makes skilled workers, but it provides the essential groundwork for developing skills.
In most states, trade and industrial training is provided in a minority of the high schools, usually located in the larger cities.
In Arkansas fewer than 6 per cent of the high schools offer trade and industrial courses.
In Illinois about 13 per cent of the schools have programs, and in Pennsylvania 11 per cent.
An important recent trend is the development of area vocational schools.
For a number of years Kentucky, Louisiana and several other states have been building state-sponsored vocational education schools that serve nearby school districts in several counties.
These schools are intended to provide the facilities and specialized curriculum that would not be possible for very small school districts.
Transportation may be provided from nearby school districts.
Courses are provided mainly for post high school day programs;
but sometimes arrangements also are made for high school students to attend, and evening extension courses also may be conducted.
The Title 8, program of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 was a great spur to this trend toward area schools.
By 1960 there were such schools in all but 4 states.
They were operating in 10 of the 17 major areas of chronic labor surplus and in 10 of the minor areas.
An extension of this program into the other distressed areas should be undertaken.
Relation to new industry
Some of this trend toward area vocational schools has been related to the problems of persistent labor surplus areas and their desire to attract new industry.
The major training need of a new industrial plant is a short period of pre-employment training for a large number of semi-skilled machine operators.
A few key skilled workers experienced in the company's type of work usually must be brought in with the plant manager, or hired away from a similar plant elsewhere.
A prospective industry also may be interested in the long-run advantages of training programs in the area to supply future skilled workers and provide supplementary extension courses for its employees.
The existence of a public school vocational training program in trade and industry provides a base from which such needs can be filled.
Additional courses can readily be added and special cooperative programs worked out with any new industry if the basic facilities, staff and program are in being.
Thus, besides the training provided to youth in school, the existence of the school program can have supplementary benefits to industry which make it an asset to industrial development efforts.
Few states make effective use of their existing vocational education programs or funds for the purpose of attracting new industry.
The opportunity exists for states to reserve some of their vocational education funds to apply on an ad hoc flexible basis to subsidize any local preemployment training programs that may be quickly set up in a community to aid a new industrial plant.
Local focus of programs
The major weakness of vocational training programs in labor surplus areas is their focus on serving solely local job demands.
This weakness is not unique to labor surplus areas, for it is inherent in the system of local school districts in this country.
Planning of vocational education programs and courses is oriented to local employer needs for trained workers.
All the manuals for setting up vocational courses stress the importance of first making a local survey of skill needs, of estimating the growth of local jobs, and of consulting with local employers on the types of courses and their content.
Furthermore, there is a cautious conservatism on the part of those making local skill surveys.
Local jobs can be seen and counted, while opportunities elsewhere are regarded as more hypothetical.
While the U. S. Department of Labor has a program of projecting industry and occupational employment trends and publishing current outlook statements, there is little tangible evidence that these projections have been used extensively in local curriculum planning.
The U. S. Office of Education continues to stress local surveys rather than national surveys.
This procedure is extremely shortsighted in chronic labor surplus areas with a long history of declining employment.
Elaborate studies have been made in labor surplus areas in order to identify sufficient numbers of local job vacancies and future replacement needs for certain skills to justify training programs for those skills.
No effort is made in the same studies to present information on regional or national demand trends in these skills or to consider whether regional or national demands for other skills might provide much better opportunities for the youth to be trained.
Moreover, the current information on what types of training are needed and possible is too limited and fragmentary.
There simply is not enough material available on the types of job skills that are in demand and the types of training programs that are required or most suitable.
Much of the available information comes not from the Federal government but from an exchange of experiences among states.
Proposals
State and local agencies in the vocational education field must be encouraged to adopt a wider outlook on future job opportunities.
There is a need for an expanded Federal effort to provide research and information to help guide state education departments and local school boards in existing programs.
A related question is whether unemployed workers can be motivated to take the training provided.
There is little evidence that existing public or private training programs have any great difficulty getting students to enroll in their programs, even though they must pay tuition, receive no subsistence payments, and are not guaranteed a job.
However, there always is some limit to the numbers who will spend the time and effort to acquire training.
Again, one major difficulty is the local focus.
A training program in a depressed area may have few enrollees unless there is some apparent prospect for better employment opportunities afterwards, and the prospect may be poor if the training is aimed solely at jobs in the local community.
If there is adequate information on job opportunities for skilled jobs elsewhere, many more workers can be expected to respond.
Another problem is who will pay for the training.
Local school districts are hard pressed financially and unenthusiastic about vocational training.
Programs usually are expanded only when outside funds are available or local business leaders demand it.
Even industrial development leaders find it hard to win local support for training unless a new industry is in sight and requests it.
State governments have been taking the lead in establishing area vocational schools, but their focus is still on area job opportunities.
Only the Federal government is likely to be able to take a long-run and nation-wide view and to pay for training to meet national skilled manpower needs.
If only state funds were used to pay for the vocational education, it could be argued that the state should not have to bear the cost of vocational training which would benefit employers in other states.
However, if Federal funds are used, it would be entirely appropriate to train workers for jobs which could be obtained elsewhere as well as for jobs in the area of chronic unemployment.
Such training would increase the tendency of workers to leave the area and find jobs in other localities.
A further possibility is suggested by the example of the G. I. bills and also by some recent trends in attitudes toward improving college education: that is to provide financial assistance to individuals for vocational training when local facilities are inadequate.
This probably would require some support for subsistence as well as for tuition, but the total would be no greater than for the proposals of unemployment compensation or a Youth Conservation Corps.
A maximum of $600 per year per student would enable many to take training away from home.
A program of financial assistance would permit placing emphasis on the national interest in training highly skilled labor.
Instead of being limited to the poor training facilities in remote areas, the student would be able to move to large institutions of concentrated specialized training.
Such specialized training institutions could be located near the most rapidly growing industries, where the equipment and job experience exist and where the future employment opportunities are located.
This would heighten possibilities for part-time cooperative, on-the-job and extension training.
Personal financial assistance would enable more emphasis to be placed on the interests of the individual.
His aptitudes and preferences could be given more weight in selecting the proper training.
But briefly, the topping configuration must be examined for its inferences.
Then the fact that the lower channel line was pierced had further forecasting significance.
And then the application of the count rules to the width (horizontally) of the configuration gives us an intial estimate of the probable depth of the decline.
The very idea of there being count rules implies that there is some sort of proportion to be expected between the amount of congestive activity and the extent of the breakaway (run up or run down) movement.
This expectation is what really sold point and figure.
But there is no positive and consistently demonstrable relationship in the strictest sense.
Experience will show that only the vaguest generalities apply, and in fine, these merely dwell upon a relationship between the durations and intensities of events.
After all, too much does not happen too suddenly, nor does very little take long.
The advantages and disadvantages of these two types of charting, bar charting and point and figure charting, remain the subject of fairly good-natured litigation among their respective professional advocates, with both methods enjoying in common, one irrevocable merit.
They are both trend-following methods.
Even if we strip their respective claims to the barest minimum, the odds still favor them both, for the trend in effect is always more likely to continue than to reverse.
Of course, many more things are charted besides prices.
The foregoing have been methods of charting prices, but now let us look at some of the other indices that are customarily charted, and which are looked to for their forecasting abilities.
The quest for methods
The search for forecasting formulae is ceaseless.
Correlations have been worked up between the loading of freight cars and the course of stock price.
The theory behind this is, of course, fundamentalist in character.
As the number of reported freight car loadings increased, this was taken to indicate increased industrial activity, and consequently increased stock earnings, implying fatter dividends, and implying therefore increased stock market prices.
We now know that things rarely ever work out in such cut-and-dried fashion, and that car loadings, while perhaps interesting enough, are nevertheless not the magic formula that will always turn before stock prices turn.
It recalls to mind the quest of olden times for the fountain of youth, a quest heavily invested in, during the days of wooden ships.
Just as heavily invested are the endeavors of multitudes of modern men who carry on the quest for the enchanting index.
The quest offers careers.
Much of this goes on in offices high up in Wall Street's lofty wind-swept towers.
They are concerned with all things traded in, securities, bonds, cocao, coffee, soybeans, cotton, tin, oats, etc..
And along Chicago's West Jackson Boulevard, La Salle Street, and around the Merchandise Mart Plaza there sit men who chart crop reports, who divide the number of reported lady-bugs by the number of reported green-bugs, and the number of hogs by the amount of corn.
They plot the open interest curves, rainfall curves, and they even divide Democratic congressmen by Republican congressmen.
All these things and countless more enter into their calculations, and yet, the enchanting index remains non-forthcoming.
Not, at any rate, in the fuller sense of the word.
The markets are far too subtle, and the last word in these endeavors will doubtless never be written, for the enchanting index is about as nebulous as the fountain of youth.
But whereas civilized men no longer pursue the fountain, they never abandoned their pursuit of the enchanting index.
We mentioned odd-lot indices a few paragraphs ago.
In the stock market, the normal trading package is a hundred shares, just as 5,000 bushels is the standard grain contract package.
A stock transaction for less than a hundred shares is executed via a special odd-lot broker on the floor of the exchange.
This results in a separate record being made, distinguishing these trades from the overall volume of trading.
According to the theory underlying odd-lot indices, the trader who trades odd lots is most likely a small trader, one who can't afford to trade round lots.
Or, to use the cynical phraseology of one odd-lot index enthusiast, they represent a sampling of the least sophisticated echelon of traders.
Falling most easily prey to an adverse market movement, for this rank of traders can least afford to lose, virtually anything the odd-lot traders do, marketwise, is taken to exemplify the wrong thing to do.
Figures reporting the volume of odd-lot purchases and odd-lot sales are released by the stock exchange and carried in the newspapers.
Odd-lot index observers then make graphs of the data according to their particular statistical recipe.
They might, for example, plot it exactly as is, or they might make ten day moving averages of it, or longer moving averages, or they might simply plot the ratio of odd-lot purchases to odd-lot sales.
The particular recipe is a matter of individual taste.
The data is now interpreted in conjunction with a price chart, usually of a popular stock average.
Towards the end of an intermediate or major rise, while the top is forming on the price chart, it is frequently observed that the odd-lot buying increases sharply.
This warns the chartist that the formation in progress is quite likely to be a top.
Thus, in the aggregate, the odd-lot trader is one who buys at the tops and sells at the bottoms, notwithstanding occasional individual exceptions.
While it had long been known in general, that the public is always wrong, the use of odd-lot indices now puts the adage on a statistical basis.
One might well wonder why the public is always wrong and the question raised is about as awkward as the one concerned with the chicken and the egg.
Which came first?
Is it really that the public buys at the tops, and not that the market tops out when the public buys?
And the converse at bottoms.
Does the public usually sell at bottoms, or does the market usually bottom out when the public sells?
We have been using the word public in quotation marks, that is, in its vernacular connotation with reference to the odd-lot index theory.
Obviously someone has to sell in order for someone to buy, and vice versa.
And while all concerned are members of the literal public, somewhat less than all concerned, although still a majority, form the quotation marked public.
And the public minus the public leaves the so-called sophisticated element--the element on the other end of the public's transactions.
This element is often called strong hands.
Strong hands differ from weak hands in that their operations are the primary movers.
They initiate campaigns, so to speak, even if this initiation is diffused among them, and their concerted action only psychologically organized.
Strong hands act;
weak hands react.
Strong hands move first;
weak hands ask, What is going on?
When strong hands buy, they are able to buy more, and they do it even in the face of bearish news reports.
They are able to sit more patiently with what they have bought.
Needless to say, strong hands are not eager to be joined by weak hands, for this increases the risk that they will have to absorb what these weak hands unload on the way up, at higher prices, during the run-up phase of the campaign.
Certain badly disillusioned market critics are often apt to feel that there is something somehow unfair, dirty, or even thoroughly criminal about this interplay of competitive forces.
But after all, can anyone imagine a market wherein the reverse of these things were true?
Try to imagine a market in which only a minority of traders would lose, and the majority would make consistent profits.
How much and how many profits could a majority take out of the losses of a few?
Moreover, the taunt concerning the sophisticated echelon and its alleged erudition is put to test during every campaign, and accrues only upon results;
not before.
It quite often happens that campaigns go askew, resulting in a most unflattering deterioration of strong hands into played-out hands, just as a member of a former campaign's public may emerge flatteringly right the next time.
Membership in the echelons fluctuates too.
The study of odd-lot indices is somehow akin to the spectacle of a man trying to outfox his own shadow, what with all observers trying to get on the side of the few at the same time.
The usefulness of this study and of configuration analysis as well, declines in direct proportion to the dissemination of its use.
It has to, by virtue of the very dictionary definition of the word few.
Diametric opposition must persist as to the future course of prices, if there is to persist a market at all.
And the few must win what the many lose, for the opposite arrangement would not support markets as we know them at all, and is, in fact, unimaginable.
There need be no squeamishness about admitting this.
Anyone still doubting that this is the only way markets can be is invited to try to imagine a market wherein the majority consistently wins what the minority loses.
Mr. John Magee, whose work has been discussed in this chapter, was quoted in a New Yorker Magazine profile as saying: Of course, you have to remember it's a good thing for us chartists that there aren't more of us.
If you got too many people investing by this method, their operations would begin to affect stock prices, and thus throw the charts off.
The method would become self-defeating.
Mr. Alexander H. Wheelan's Study Helps In Point And Figure Technique tells the readers: We assure you that the total number of people using this method of market analysis is a very small portion of the sum total of those operating in the securities and commodities markets.
Nevertheless, all theories and techniques lead but to one of two possible modes of expression, if they lead to a market committment at all.
In the final analysis, then, the user becomes either a bull or a bear in a given instance, notwithstanding any amount of forethought and calculation, however elaborate.
Thus while his theory or technique may not be oversubscribed, it is commonplace for bullish and bearish positions to become temporarily over-subscribed.
Though the methods of deciding may be profound and diverse, the possible conclusions remain but two.
Chapter 6, more methods
the hoaxes
In assessing the outlook for interest rates in 1961, the question, as always, is the prospect for general business activity.
By and large, what happens to business as a whole will govern the relationship between demand and supply conditions in the capital markets and will thus determine interest rates.
Moreover, the trend of general business activity in 1961 will exert a decisive influence on fiscal, monetary, and other Federal policies which affect interest rates.
Nineteen-sixty has been a baffling year for analysts of general business activity.
During much of the year the general level of business activity has moved along on a record-high plateau, but there have been persistent signs of slack in the economy.
The tendency for general business activity to soften somewhat is becoming more evident.
Although the pause in the advance of general business activity this year has thus far been quite modest, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the softening process will continue into the first quarter of 1961 and possibly somewhat longer.
It is difficult to see any powerful sources of strength on the horizon at this time which would give the economy a new upward thrust.
The rate of plant and equipment spending by business and industry now seems to be topping out and facing some decline.
In earlier business cycles, when this occurred the country usually experienced a sharp upturn in residential construction as mortgage financing became easier to obtain.
At this time, however, there are signs that increased availability of mortgage credit will not act with the usual speed to stimulate a sharp rise in residential construction.
These signs are the inventories of unsold houses in some areas of the country and the moderate rise in vacancy rates for apartments (7.6% in September).
On the other hand, in a more favorable vein, general business activity should receive some stimulus from rising Federal spending, and the reduction in business inventories has probably run a good part of its course.
The 2% increase in retail sales in October to a 4-month high is encouraging in this connection as well as the most recent consumer survey by the National Industrial Conference Board, which shows a decided pickup in consumer spending plans.
The pattern of general business activity which probably lies ahead of us is a further moderate softening through the spring of 1961 before a new rise in economic activity gets under way.
The recovery will probably be sparked by a rising rate of housing starts next spring in response to more readily available mortgage credit, as well as by an expansion of Government spending, well sustained consumer spending, and some rebuilding of business inventories.
Slight downward pressure
What does the general business outlook suggest about the trend of long-term rates in 1961?
If the trend of general business activity follows the pattern suggested here, we are likely to see additional steps by the Federal Reserve authorities to ease the availability of credit.
Certainly a further reduction in the discount rate would be a strong possibility, as well as an easier reserve position for the banking system.
Open market policy
One of the most intriguing questions is whether the recent departures of the Federal Reserve authorities from confining their open market operations to Treasury bills will spread into longer-term Government securities in the next few months.
To the extent that the new Administration has its wishes, the Federal Reserve would conduct its open market operations throughout the entire maturity range of Government securities and aggressively seek to force down long-term interest rates.
My guess would be that interest rates will decline moderately into the spring of 1961 and during the second half of the year will turn up gradually to recover the ground lost during the downturn.
It is pertinent to ask the question: Has the long upswing of interest rates during the past 15 years just about run its course, and are we now entering a period in which both capital market forces and Federal policies will produce a prolonged decline of interest rates?
My answer is in the negative because I believe that total capital demands during the Sixties will continue to press against available supplies, and interest rates will generally tend to be firm at high levels.
Five basic forces
This view is based upon several basic economic forces which I believe will be operating in the Sixties, as follows: (1)
Recent events in the General Assembly of the United Nations confirm that the cold war will remain with us, and probably intensify, for the foreseeable future.
This makes it certain that Federal expenditures for military preparedness and foreign economic aid are likely to rise further in the next several years.
We are just beginning the task of trying to win or maintain the friendship of the new African nations against the ruthless competition of the Communist bloc.
Our efforts to overcome the lead of the Russians in space are bound to mean accelerated Federal spending.
There are serious dangers involved in this trend toward rising Federal expenditures, of which I take a dim view, but it seems very likely to occur.
(2)
During the Sixties we have the prospect of a significant stepping up in the rate of household formations, which should contribute to a rising volume of consumer expenditures and home building.
According to the latest projections of the Bureau of the Census, the annual rate of household formations will increase for the next 20 years.
During the Seventies the projections show a more pronounced rise to an annual rate of 1,338,000 in the second half of that decade.
Accordingly, the expanding markets for consumer goods and housing occasioned by the higher rate of household formation should enhance the general economic prospects of the Sixties.
However, the impact of a rising rate of household formation this decade should not be exaggerated.
The average annual rate of 1,083,000 in the second half of the Sixties is still considerably below the annual rate of 1,525,000 in the three-year period from April 1947 to March 1950.
(3)
With the expansion of family formation in the Sixties, a continued substantial rise in expenditures by state and local government units seems to be indicated.
This is an area in which there is still a large backlog of demand.
State and local expenditures (in real terms) increased persistently from $26.5-billion in 1949 to $44.3-billion in 1959, and it would not be surprising if they showed a comparable increase in this decade, which would carry them to the neighborhood of $75-billion by 1970.
Here would be a powerful force for raising business activity.
(4)
It seems likely that with the three preceding forces at play, the rate of business and industrial plant and equipment expenditures should continue to move upward from the levels of the Fifties.
Spurred by keen competition in our industrial system, and still further increases in the funds devoted to industrial research, plant and equipment expenditures by business and industry should rise during the decade.
(5)
In a more pessimistic vein about the economic outlook, I suspect that the reservoir of demand for consumer goods and housing which was dammed-up during the Thirties and World War 2, is finally in the process of running dry.
There is some clear-cut evidence of this.
For example, the huge postwar demand on the part of veterans for housing under the VA home loan guaranty program seems to have largely exhausted itself.
In a way, we may be witnessing the same thing in the sales of automobiles today as the public no longer is willing to purchase any car coming on the market but is more insistent on compact cars free of the frills which were accepted in the Fifties.
The huge backlog of demand which was evident in the first decade and a half after the War was fed by liquid assets accumulated by the public during the War, and even more so by the easier and easier credit in the consumer loan and home loan fields.
The consuming public has used up a good part of these liquid assets, or they have been drained by the rising price level, and we have apparently gotten to the end of the line in making consumer or home mortgage terms easier.
This is not to say that the level of consumer expenditures will not continue to rise in the Sixties.
I am confident that it will, but consumer spending in the Sixties will not be fortified by the great backlog of wants and desires which characterized most of the Fifties.
Markets should become more competitive as consumers become more selective.
Sixties' capital requirements
Accordingly, during the Sixties our national economy is likely to grow at as fast a rate as in the Fifties and, in the process, to require enormous amounts of capital funds.
Wage-price policies of industry are the result of a complex of forces--no single explanation has been found which applies to all cases.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze one possible force which has not been treated in the literature, but which we believe makes a significant contribution to explaining the wage-price behavior of a few very important industries.
While there may be several such industries to which the model of this paper is applicable, the authors make particular claim of relevance to the explanation of the course of wages and prices in the steel industry of the United States since World War 2.
Indeed, the apparent stiffening of the industry's attitude in the recent steel strike has a direct explanation in terms of the model here presented.
The model of this paper considers an industry which is not characterized by vigorous price competition, but which is so basic that its wage-price policies are held in check by continuous critical public scrutiny.
Where the industry's product price has been kept below the profit-maximizing and entry-limiting prices due to fears of public reaction, the profit seeking producers have an interest in offering little real resistance to wage demands.
The contribution of this paper is a demonstration of this proposition, and an exploration of some of its implications.
In order to focus clearly upon the operation of this one force, which we may call the effect of public-limit pricing on key wage bargains, we deliberately simplify the model by abstracting from other forces, such as union power, which may be relevant in an actual situation.
For expository purposes, this is best treated as a model which spells out the conditions under which an important industry affected with the public interest would find it profitable to raise wages even in the absence of union pressures for higher wages.
Part 1, below describes this abstract model by spelling out its assumptions.
Part 2, discusses the operation of the model and derives some significant conclusions.
Part 3, discusses the empirical relevance and policy implications of the conclusions.
Part 4, is a brief summary.
The Mathematical Appendix presents the rigorous argument, but is best read after Part 1, in order that the assumptions underlying the equations may be explicit.
1, the assumptions of the model
The industry
The industry with which this model is concerned is a basic industry, producing a substantial share of gross national product.
Price competition is lacking.
For the purposes of setting the product price, the industry behaves as a single entity.
In wage negotiations, the industry bargains as a unit with a single union.
The demand for the industry's product
We are concerned with aggregate demand for the industry's product.
The manner in which this is shared among firms is taken as given.
In any given time period, the aggregate demand for the industry's product is determined by two things: the price charged by the industry, and the level of Aj.
For the purposes of this discussion, the problem of relative prices is encompassed in these two variables, since GNP includes other prices.
(We abstract here from technological progress and assume that prices of all other products change proportionately.
The form of the industry demand function is one which makes quantity demanded vary inversely with the product price, and vary directly with the level of Aj.
Industry product price policy
The industry of this model is so important that its wage and price policies are affected with a public interest.
Because of its importance, and because the lack of price competition is well recognized, the industry is under considerable public pressure not to raise its price any more than could be justified by cost increases.
For the industry of this model, the effect of such public pressures in the past has been to hold the price well below the short-run profit-maximizing price (given the wage rate and the level of GNP), and even below the entry-limited price (but not below average cost).
For such an industry, it is only safe to raise its price if such an increase is manifestly justified by rising costs (due to rising wages, etc.).
Thus, if public pressure sets the effective limit to the price that the industry may charge, this pressure is itself a function of the wage rate.
In this model, we abstract from all non-wage sources of cost changes, so that the public-limit price only rises as the wage rate rises.
In such circumstances, it may well be to the advantage of the industry to allow an increase in the basic wage rate.
Since marginal costs rise when the wage rate rises, the profit-maximizing price also rises when the public-limit price is elevated, and is likely to remain well above the latter.
The entry-limiting price will also be raised for potential domestic competition, but unless general inflation permits profit margins to increase proportionately throughout the economy, we might expect the public-limit price to approach the entry-limit price.
The foreign-entry-limit price would be approached more rapidly, since domestic wage-rates do not enter foreign costs directly.
Where this approach becomes critical, the industry can be expected to put much emphasis on this as evidence of its sincerity in resisting the wage pressures of a powerful union, requesting tariff relief after it has reluctantly acceded to the union pressure.
The extent to which the public-limit price is raised by a given increase in the basic wage rate is itself a function of three things: the passage of time, the level of GNP, and the size of the wage increase.
We are abstracting from the fact of strikes here, but it should be obvious that the extent to which the public-limit price is raised by a given increase in the basic wage rate is also a function of the show of resistance put up by the industry.
The industry may deliberately take a strike, not to put pressure on the union, but in order to educate the government and the customers of the industry.
As a strike continues, these parties increase their pressure on the industry to reach an agreement.
They become increasingly willing to accept the price increase that the industry claims the wage bargain would entail.
Public indignation and resistance to wage-price increases is obviously much less when the increases are on the order of 3% per annum than when the increases are on the order of 3% per month.
The simple passage of an additional eleven months' time makes the second 3% boost more acceptable.
Thus, the public-limit price is raised further by a given wage increase the longer it has been since the previous price increase.
Notice, however, that the passage of time does not permit the raising of prices per se, without an accompanying wage increase.
Similarly, higher levels of GNP do not, in themselves, provide grounds for raising prices, but they do relax some of the pressure on the industry so that it can raise prices higher for a given wage increase.
This is not extended to anticipated levels of GNP, however--only the current level of GNP affects the public pressure against wage-price increases.
Industry costs
The level of this average cost is determined by factor prices, technology, and so forth.
As we have noted, however, we are abstracting from changes in all determinants of this level except for changes in the wage rate.
The level of average cost (equal to marginal cost) is thus strictly a function of the wage rate.
Union policies and collective bargaining issues
The single union which faces the industry does not restrict its membership, and there is an adequate supply of labor available to the firms of the industry at the going wage rate.
The union does not regard unemployment of its own members as a matter of concern when setting its own wage policy--its concern with employment makes itself felt in pressure upon the government to maintain full employment.
The union vigorously demands wage increases from productivity increases, and wage increases to offset cost-of-living increases, but we abstract from these forces here.
For our present purposes we assume that the sole subject of bargaining is the basic wage rate (not including productivity improvement factors or cost-of-living adjustments), and it is this basic wage rate which determines the level of costs.
Productivity is something of an amorphous concept and the amount of productivity increase in a given time period is not even well known to the industry, much less to the union or to the public.
Disagreement on the amount of productivity increase exacerbates the problem of agreeing how an increase in profit margins related to a productivity increase should be shared.
The existence of conflict and of vigorous union demand for an increase in money wages does not contradict the assumption that the union is willing to settle for cost-of-living and productivity-share increases as distinct from a cost-raising increase in the basic wage rate.
We assume further that the union recognizes the possibility that price-level increases may offset wage-rate increases, and it does not entirely disregard the effect of price increases arising from its own wage increases upon the real wage rate.
For internal political reasons, the union asks for (and accepts) increases in the basic wage rate, and would vigorously oppose a reduction in this rate, but the adjustment of the basic wage rate upwards is essentially up to the discretion of the companies of the industry.
Changes in the basic wage rate are cost-raising, and they constitute an argument for raising prices.
However, it is not known to either the union or the public precisely how much of a cost increase is caused by a given change in the basic wage rate, although the companies are presumed to have reliable estimates of this magnitude.
Thus, for non-negative changes in the basic wage rate, the industry becomes the active wage-setter, since any increase in the basic wage rate can occur only by reason of industry acquiescence.
The presumption in the literature would appear to be that the basic wage rate would be unchanged in this case, on the grounds that it is clearly not in the interest of the industry to raise wages gratuitously.
From this presumption it is an easy step to the conclusion that any observed increases in the basic wage rate must be due to union behavior different and more aggressive than assumed in our model.
It is this conclusion that we challenge;
we do so by disproving the presumption on which it is based.
2, the operation of the model
It is convenient to assume that the union-industry contract is of one year's duration.
In the century from 1815 to 1914 the law of nations became international law.
Several factors contributed to this change.
The Congress of Vienna is a convenient starting point because it both epitomized and symbolized what was to follow.
Here in 1815 the great nations assembled to legislate not merely for Europe, but for the world.
Thus the Congress marks a formal recognition of the political system that was central to world politics for a century.
International law had to fit the conditions of Europe, and nothing that could not fit this system, or the interests of the great European nations collectively, could possibly emerge as law in any meaningful sense.
Essentially this imposed two conditions: First, international law had to recognize and be compatible with an international political system in which a number of states were competitive, suspicious, and opportunistic in their political alignments with one another;
second, it had to be compatible with the value system that they shared.
In both respects, international law was Europeanized.
It was not always easy to develop theory and doctrine which would square the two conditions.
But there was no pressing need to maintain these same standards with regard to most of the rest of the world.
Thus, theory and doctrine applicable among the great nations and the smaller European states did not really comfortably fit less developed and less powerful societies elsewhere.
A nation such as Switzerland could be neutralized by agreement and could be relied upon to protect its neutrality;
more doubtful, but possible, (with an assist from the North) was the neutralization of the Latin American countries;
out of the question was the neutralization of Asia and Africa.
This Europeanization of the law was made explicit by a number of 19th century scholars.
More emphasis was put upon the fact that international law was the law of civilized nations;
Kent and Story, the great early American scholars, repeatedly made use of this phrase, or of Christian nations, which is a substantial equivalent.
Wheaton stated that the public law was essentially limited to the civilized and Christian peoples of Europe or to those of European origin.
Of course it had always been of European origin in fact, but it had maintained a universal outlook under the natural law theory.
Now, with virtually every writer, not only was the European origin of public law acknowledged as a historical phenomenon, but the rules thus established by the advanced civilizations of Europe were to be imposed on others.
The European customs on which international law was based were to become, by force and fiat, the customs that others were to accept as law if they were to join this community as sovereign states.
Hall, for example, was quite explicit on this point when he said states outside European civilization must formally enter into the circle of law-governed countries.
They must do something with the acquiescence of the latter, or some of them, which amounts to an acceptance of the law in its entirety beyond all possibility of misconstruction.
During the nineteenth century these views were protested by virtually all the Latin American writers, though ineffectively, just as the new nations of Africa and Asia protest them, with more effect, today.
A number of other nineteenth-century developments contributed to the transmutation of the law of nations into international law;
that is, from aspects of a universal system of Justice into particular rules governing the relations of sovereign states.
The difference is important, for although the older law of nations did cover relationships among sovereigns, this was by no means its exclusive domain.
The law of nature governed sovereigns in their relationship to their own citizens, to foreigners, and to each other in a conceptually unified system.
The theory of international law, which in the nineteenth century became common to virtually all writers in Europe and America, broke this unity and this universality.
It lost sight of the individual almost entirely and confined itself to rules limiting the exercise of state power for reasons essentially unconnected with justice or morality save as these values might affect international relations.
No longer did the sovereign look to the law of nations to determine what he ought to do;
his search was merely for rules that might limit his freedom of action.
To appreciate this development, we must relate it to other aspects of nineteenth-century philosophy.
First, and most obvious, was the growing nationalism and the tendency to regard the state, and the individual's identification with the state, as transcending other ties of social solidarity.
National identification was not new, but it was accelerating in intensity and scope throughout Europe as new unifications occurred.
It reached its ultimate philosophical statement in notions of state will put forward by the Germans, especially by Hegel, although political philosophers will recognize its origins in the rejected doctrines of Hobbes.
National identification was reflected jurisprudentially in law theories which incorporated this Hegelian abstraction and saw law, domestic and international, simply as its formal reflection.
In the international community this reduced law to Jellinek's auto-limitation.
A state, the highest form of human organization in fact and theory, could be subjected to Law only by a manifestation of self-will, or consent.
According to the new theories, the nineteenth century corporate sovereign was sovereign in a quite new and different sense from his historical predecessors.
He no longer sought to find the law;
he made it;
he could be subjected to law only because he agreed to be.
There was no law, domestic or international, except that willed by, acknowledged by, or consented to by states.
Hidden behind Hegelian abstractions were more practical reasons for a changing jurisprudence.
Related to, but distinguishable from, nationalism was the growth of democracy in one form or another.
Increased participation in politics and the demands of various groups for status and recognition had dramatic effects upon law institutions.
Law became a conscious process, something more than simply doing justice and looking to local customs and a common morality for applicable norms.
Particularly was this true when the norms previously applied were no longer satisfactory to many, when customs were rapidly changing as the forces of the new productivity were harnessed.
The old way of doing things, which depended on a relatively stable community with stable ideas dealing with familiar situations, was no longer adequate to the task.
First was the period of codification of existing law: the Code Napoleon in France and the peculiar codification that, in fact, resulted from Austin's restatement and ordering of the Common Law in England.
Codification was followed in all countries by a growing amount of legislation, some changing and adjusting the older law, much dealing with entirely new situations.
The legislative mills have been grinding ever since, and when its cumbersome processes were no longer adequate to the task, a limited legislative authority was delegated in one form or another, to the executive.
Whereas the eighteenth century had been a time in which man sought justice, the nineteenth and twentieth have been centuries in which men are satisfied with law.
Indeed, with developed positivism, the separation of law from justice, or from morality generally, became quite specific.
In municipal systems we tend to view what is called positivism as fundamentally a movement to democratize policy by increasing the power of parliament--the elected representatives--at the expense of the more conservative judiciary.
It is true that, initially, the task was to remove restrictions that, it was thought, inhibited the free flow of money, goods, and labor;
but even laissez-faire was a conscious policy.
Law was seen as an emanation of the sovereign will.
However, the sovereign was not Hobbes' absolute monarch but rather the parliamentary sovereign of Austin.
It was, too, an optimistic philosophy, and, though it separated law from morality, it was by no means an immoral or amoral one.
Man, through democratic institutions of government and economic freedom, was master of his destiny.
The theory did not require, though it unfortunately might acquire, a Hegelian mystique.
It was merely a rationalization and ordering of new institutions of popular government.
It was not opposed to either justice or morality;
it merely wished to minimize subjective views of officials who wielded public authority.
Particularly was this true as laissez-faire capitalism became the dominant credo of Western society.
To free the factors of production was a major objective of the rising bourgeoisie, and this objective required that governmental authority--administrative officials and judges--be limited as precisely and explicitly as possible;
that old customs which inhibited trade be abrogated;
that business be free from governmental supervision and notions of morality which might clog the automatic adjustments of the free market;
that obligations of status that were inconsistent with the new politics and the new economics be done away with.
Contract--conceived as the free bargain of formal equals--replaced the implied obligations of a more static and status-conscious society.
Indeed, contract was the dominant legal theme of the century, the touchstone of the free society.
Government itself was based upon contract;
business organization--the corporation--was analyzed in contractual terms;
trade was based on freedom of contract, and money was lent and borrowed on contractual terms;
even marriage and the family was seen as a contractual arrangement.
It is not surprising that the international obligations of states were also viewed in terms of contract.
In fact, some--Anzilotti is the principle example--went so far as to say that all international law could be traced to the single legal norm, Pacta sunt Servanda.
The displacement (at least to a considerable extent) of the ethical jurisprudence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by positivism reshaped both international law theory and doctrine.
In the first place the new doctrine brought a formal separation of international from municipal law, rejecting the earlier view that both were parts of a universal legal system.
One result was to nationalize much that had been regarded as the law of nations.
Admiralty law, the law merchant, and the host of problems which arise in private litigation because of some contact with a foreign country were all severed from the older Law of Nations and made dependent on the several national laws.
Private international law (which Americans call the conflict of laws) was thus segregated from international law proper, or, as it is often called, public international law.
States were free to enact, within broad, though (perhaps) determinate limits, their own rules as to the application of foreign law by their courts, to vary the law merchant, and to enact legislation with regard to many claims arising on the high seas.
The change was not quite so dramatic as it sounds because in fact common norms continued to be invoked by municipal courts and were only gradually changed by legislation, and then largely in marginal situations.
Mr. Justice Black was one of the minority that rested on the Article 1, power.
In this view, supported by only three members of the Court, a power denied by the specific provisions of Article 3, was granted by the generality of Article 1.
If this seems arbitrary, its effect was to treat citizens of the District of Columbia equally with citizens of the states--at the expense of expanding a troublesome jurisdiction.
Federal question jurisdiction
For almost a hundred years we relied upon state courts (subject to review by the Supreme Court) for the protection of most rights arising under national law.
Then in 1875, apparently in response to the nationalizing influence of the Civil War, Congress first gave the lower federal courts general authority--concurrently with state tribunals--to decide cases involving federal-right questions.
One purpose of the change was to attain sympathetic enforcement of rights insured by the Civil War amendments against state interference.
Serious difficulty arose with the advent of Substantive Due Process.
An amendment, presumably designed to deal with the problems of newly freed slaves, became a laissez-faire limitation upon state economic policy.
A flood of federal lower court injunctions seriously impeded the processes of local government.
Congress reacted with a series of measures modifying in various ways what it had granted in 1875.
In 1910 it required the convening of a special three-judge court for the issuance of certain injunctions and allowed direct appeals to the Supreme Court.
Such legislation was clarified and extended from time to time thereafter.
In 1913 an abortive provision was made for the stay of federal injunction proceedings upon institution of state court test cases.
The essential ineffectiveness of these measures resulted in 1934 in substantial elimination of federal jurisdiction to enjoin state public utility rate orders.
Three years later similar restraints were imposed upon injunctions against collection of state taxes.
This saved for state adjudication, in the first instance, the two major areas where federal injunctions had been most obnoxious, but other areas remained vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, like Congress, showed misgivings concerning this aspect of government by injunction.
Drawing upon the traditional discretion of the chancellor, Mr. Justice Holmes introduced a series of self-imposed judicial restraints that culminated in Mr. Justice Frankfurter's famous doctrine of abstention.
Whereas the earlier cases turned rather narrowly upon the availability of adequate state remedies, the new emphasis is upon the nature of the state policy at issue.
The classic case is Railroad Commission v. Pullman.
The commission had issued an administrative order which was challenged as discriminatory against Negroes.
Its enforcement was enjoined by a federal trial court.
On review the Supreme Court, via Mr. Justice Frankfurter, found southern racial problems a sensitive area of social policy on which the federal courts ought not to enter unless no alternative to adjudication is open.
An alternative was found in the vagueness of state law as to whether the offending order had in fact been authorized.
Reluctant, as usual, to interpret state legislation--such interpretation can only be a forecast rather than a determination--Mr. Justice Frankfurter led a unanimous Court to vacate the injunction.
But it is crucial that here, unlike Burford, the trial court was ordered to retain the case until the state courts had had a reasonable opportunity to settle the state-law question.
The resources of equity are equal to an adjustment that will avoid the waste of a tentative decision as well as the friction of a premature constitutional adjudication.
Temporary abstention, i.e., postponement, is one thing;
refusal to adjudicate is another.
To the extent that the jurisdictional principle of 1875 stands unmodified by subsequent legislation, federal equitable relief against state action must be available--or so it seems to Mr. Justice Frankfurter.
In Alabama Public Service Commission v. Southern Ry. Co., the commission had refused to permit abandonment of certain uneconomic train facilities.
The railroad, claiming deprivation of property without due process of law, sought injunctive relief.
The Court held that federal jurisdiction should not be exercised lest the domestic policy of the state be obstructed;
this in the name of equitable discretion.
Justices Frankfurter and Jackson concurred in the Court's result, for they found no merit in the railroad's claim.
But they objected vigorously to the proposition that federal courts may refuse to exercise jurisdiction conferred in a valid act of Congress:
By one fell swoop the Court now finds that Congress indulged in needless legislation in the acts of 1910, 1913, 1925, 1934 and 1937.
By these measures, Congress, so the Court (in effect) now decides, gave not only needless but inadequate relief, since it now appears that the federal courts have inherent power to sterilize the Act of 1875 against all proceedings challenging local regulation.
A most revealing recent case is Textile Workers Union v. Lincoln Mills.
The Taft-Hartley Act gave the federal courts jurisdiction over suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce.
On its face this merely provides a federal forum;
it does not establish any law (rights) for the federal judges to enforce.
How can judges exercise jurisdiction to enforce national rights when Congress has created none?
The Court held that Congress had intended the federal judiciary to fashion an appropriate law of labor-management contracts.
In short, congressional power to grant federal-question authority to federal courts is now apparently so broad that Congress need not create, or specify, the right to be enforced.
The Lincoln Mills decision authorizes a whole new body of federal common law which, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter pointed out in dissent, leads to one of the following incongruities: ((1) conflict in federal and state court interpretations of collective bargaining agreements;
(2) displacement of state law by federal law in state courts in all actions regarding collective bargaining agreements;
or (3) exclusion of state court jurisdiction over these matters.
The Justice's elaborate examination of the legislative history of the provision in question suggests that Congress' purpose was merely to make unions suable.
With a few exceptions, the lawmakers seemed unaware of the technical problems of federal jurisdiction involved--to say nothing of the delegation of lawmaking power to judges.
To avoid these constitutional difficulties, Mr. Justice Frankfurter was prepared to read the Taft-Hartley provision as concerned with diversity, rather than federal question, jurisdiction.
This would satisfy what presumably was Congress' major purpose--the suability of unions.
It would also leave intact the states' traditional authority in the realm of contract law.
(As we have seen, the Erie and York decisions require federal courts in diversity cases to follow state decisional rules.
) Here again Mr. Justice Frankfurter could not lightly accept the principle of wholesale judicial legislation.
If Congress wants to displace the states from areas which they have customarily occupied, let it do so knowingly and explicitly.
And let it do its own lawmaking and not leave that to federal judges.
Does Lincoln Mills suggest that if Congress granted jurisdiction over interstate divorce cases, the federal courts would be authorized to fashion a national law for the dissolution of marriages?
There is a common problem behind most of these federal question and diversity cases.
Congress has not clearly defined the bounds between state and federal court competence.
It has the power to do so but for the most part has left the matter for solution by judges on a case-by-case basis.
Obviously, the goal here proposed is the guiding principle in Mr. Justice Frankfurter's opinions--to the extent that Congress leaves the problem to judicial discretion.
The same rule of specialization and division of labor guides him in the FELA certiorari cases, in the administrative law area, and indeed in the whole realm of judicial review.
Mr. Justice Black no doubt concurs in principle but is more apt to make exceptions to achieve a generous and just result.
He will not be fooled by technicalities.
Federal review of state decisions
With few exceptions, Congress has not given federal courts exclusive authority to enforce rights arising under federal law.
To put it differently, state and federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction with respect to most claims of federal right.
To insure uniformity in the meaning of national law, however, state interpretations are subject to Supreme Court review.
It may be noted, parenthetically, that to evade desegregation an ex-Justice and former southern governor has urged Congress to abolish this reviewing authority.
The result, of course, would be that federal law inevitably would mean different things in different states.
It would also probably mean different things within the same state--depending upon what court (state or federal) rendered decision.
We consider here only a few of many problems involved in this crucial federal-state relationship.
The first is that enforcement of national law in state litigation raises in reverse the old diversity puzzle of the relation of procedure to substance.
Subject to certain constitutional restraints in favor of fair trials, each level of government is free to devise its own judicial procedures.
Litigants who choose to assert federal claims in a state court go into that court subject to its rules of procedure.
A similar canon applies to those who press state claims in federal tribunals, e.g., in diversity cases.
In an FELA controversy the state court followed established state procedure by construing a vague complaint most strongly against the complainant.
In other words the burden of pleading clearly rested upon the pleader by state law.
The result was that the plaintiff's case was dismissed.
Mr. Justice Black led a reversing majority: Strict local rules of pleading cannot be used to impose unnecessary burdens upon rights of recovery authorized by federal law.
Here, as in the Byrd case, another element of state procedure was subsumed to federal judge-made law.
Justices Frankfurter and Jackson dissented: One State may cherish formalities more than another, one State may be more responsive than another to procedural reforms.
Federal law, though invoked in a State court, delimits the Federal claim--defines what gives a right to recovery and what goes to prove it.
Another problem in the area of federal-state relationships is this: what constitutes reversible error in a state decision?
Terminiello v. Chicago involved a conviction for disorderly conduct under a local ordinance.
The conduct in question was a speech.
The accused did not object to the trial court's charge to the jury that discourse may constitute a breach of the peace if it stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest.
For present purposes it may be assumed that this charge so narrowly limited speech as to violate the federal Constitution.
Though the accused raised many other objections, he did not object on this crucial point at any stage of the proceedings.
That is, he did not claim in any of the four courts through which his case progressed that the jury charge had denied him any federal right.
How else can one explain, for example, allowing the survival of the right to amortize bond discount and premium (section 381(c)(9)), but not the right to amortize bond issue expenses;
or allowing a deduction for payment of certain obligations of a transferor assumed in the reorganization (section 381(c)(16)), but not a deduction for theft losses sustained by a transferor prior to a reorganization but discovered after it;
or requiring a transferor to carry over its method of depreciation (section 381(c)(6)), but not allowing rapid amortization of emergency facilities transferred in a reorganization;
or allowing survival of a dividend carryover to a personal holding company (section 381(c)(14)), but not carryover of excess tax credits for foreign taxes?
These items, and most of the others listed above, seem quite comparable to items whose right of survival is provided for in section 381.
There does not seem to be any reasonable basis for distinction either in terms of the nature of the tax attribute or in terms of tax-avoidance possibilities.
With respect to items such as these the provisions of section 381(c), viewed in historical perspective, suggest a rule requiring survival, whether the items are beneficial or detrimental to the surviving corporation.
To this extent some stretching of the literal meaning of the Committee Report seems justified, since the literal meaning conflicts with the clear implication, if not the language, of the statute.
It is not contended that section 381 should prescribe the survival of all of the transferor's tax attributes.
Such an interpretation could not be justified by a construction of the statute alone;
it would certainly violate the intention of Congress as expressed in the Committee Report;
and in at least one instance, involving refund claims, it might be contrary to another provision of the United States Code.
Refund claims
Section 203 of the United States Code voids an assignment of a claim against the Government unless made after it has been allowed, the amount due has been ascertained, and a warrant for its payment has been issued.
If it were not for judicial development of certain exceptions, this section would prohibit a suit for refund by an acquiring corporation for taxes paid by a transferor corporation, even though the reorganization meets the requirements of section 381(a).
A clearly recognized exception is a statutory merger or consolidation.
The leading case, Seaboard Air Line Railway v. United States, held that the transferee could sue for a refund of taxes paid by the transferor, and it has been consistently followed.
The Court said the purpose of the section was principally to spare the Government the embarrassment and trouble of dealing with several parties, one of them a stranger to the claim, and to prevent traffic in claims, particularly tenuous claims, against the Government.
Neither reason, said the Court, applied to the case at hand;
furthermore, Congress could not be presumed to have intended to obstruct mergers approved by the states.
Other exceptions are assignments for the benefit of creditors, corporate dissolutions, transfers by descent, or transfers by subrogation.
Exceptions are often classified as transfers by operation of law.
A tax-free reorganization not complying with the merger or consolidation statutes of the states involved is difficult to fit into an operation of law mold.
A recent case in point is Mitchell Canneries v. United States, in which a claim against the Government was transferred first from a corporation to a partnership, whose partners were former stockholders, and then to another corporation formed by the partners.
In an earlier case, Kingan & Co. v. United States, an American corporation was formed for the purpose of acquiring the stock of a British corporation in exchange for its own stock and then liquidating the British corporation.
The anti-assignment statute was held not to prevent the American corporation from suing for a refund of taxes paid by the British corporation.
The transaction presumably would have qualified under section 368(a)(1) as a contractual reorganization, followed by a section 332 liquidation, but not under section 368(a)(1) as a statutory merger of consolidation.
The Court, nevertheless, relied on the Seaboard case and also mentioned that the shareholders of the two corporations were the same.
In substance, said the Court, there was no transfer of equitable title.
The Treasury arrives at substantially the same conclusion, but skirts the problem of section 203 of the United States Code.
Proper evidence of the liquidation and succession must also be filed.
If the succession is a matter of public record, certificates of the Secretaries of State or other public officials having custody of the documents will suffice;
if the succession is not of record, all documents relating to such succession, properly certified, are required.
The former proof seems applicable to a statutory merger or consolidation, the latter to a contractual acquisition.
The Ruling would not, however, apply to an acquisition of assets for cash.
A recent Ruling, although rather confusing, cites and follows Rev. Rul. 54-17.
The Ruling suggests also that it applies to either a statutory or contractual reorganization.
Hence, a successor corporation in a C reorganization appears entitled to sue for a refund of taxes paid by the merged corporation despite section 203.
In a B reorganization, followed by a section 332 liquidation, those cases which hold that section 203 is inapplicable to transfers in liquidation appear to permit the successor corporation to sue for refund of taxes paid by the transferor.
In fact, a cash purchase of a corporation's stock followed by liquidation might also be an effective way to transfer a claim for refund if the Kimbell-Diamond doctrine is not applied to eliminate the intermediate step.
These results appear sound.
The cases have allowed transfer of claims if beneficial ownership is not changed.
The first reason would never apply to a reorganization transfer which meets the conditions of section 381(a), which is the only type presently under discussion.
In virtually every case the transferor corporation is liquidated, and its former stockholders either own outright, or have a continuing stock interest in, the assets which gave rise to the tax.
In these circumstances the possibility of multiple or conflicting claims is exceedingly remote.
Furthermore, in a C reorganization the continuing interest of stockholders of the corporation which paid the tax must be greater than is necessary in a statutory merger, to which the statute is clearly inapplicable.
Nor is it at all likely that a desperate claim against the Government will be assigned on a contingent-fee basis in the guise of a tax-free reorganization.
If the transferor has substantial assets other than the claim, it seems reasonable to assume no corporation would be willing to acquire all of its properties in the dim hope of collecting a claim for refund of taxes.
If such an unlikely transaction were to take place, it would more logically be accomplished by a stock purchase, followed by the prosecution of the claim by the wholly-owned subsidiary, followed by liquidation.
In the rare case where a corporation's only substantial asset, or its most important one, is a claim for refund, perhaps its transfer should not be permitted, whether the reorganization takes the form of a statutory merger or of the acquisition of assets for stock.
It appears, then, that although the matter is not dealt with in section 381(c), a successor corporation in a reorganization of a type specified in section 381(a) is entitled to sue for refund of taxes paid by a transferor corporation.
Section 203 of the United States Code has been interpreted as not applying to claims against the Government transferred in tax-free reorganizations.
The successor corporations have been held entitled to sue on such claims.
Other tax attributes of the transferor
There are certain tax attributes of a corporation whose nature and effect might depend on the facts of the particular reorganization involved.
For example, property used in the trade or business of a transferor corporation, as defined in section 1231, presumably would not retain its special status following a non-taxable reorganization if it is not so used in the business of the acquiring corporation.
Similar considerations presumably made it difficult to prescribe a general rule where the acquired and acquiring corporations have different methods of accounting (section 381(c)(4)) or depreciation (section 381(c)(6)).
Other sections of the 1954 Internal Revenue Code provide for survival of certain of a transferor's tax attributes following a tax-free reorganization.
Section 362 requires carryover of the transferor corporation's basis for property transferred, and section 1223 provides for tacking on the transferor's holding period for such property to that of the transferee.
Section 169 permits a person acquiring grain-storage facilities to elect to continue amortization over a 60-month period.
However, a similar privilege was not specifically provided in section 168 for a person acquiring emergency facilities.
Attributes similar to a loss carryover.
There may be certain items which are quite similar to a net operating loss carryover or operating deficit and whose right to survive a reorganization should perhaps be subject to the conditions applicable to those items.
For example, suppose another excess profits tax similar to prior laws is enacted, providing for carryover of excess profits credits.
This carryover right has a number of things in common with a net operating loss carryover.
It is an averaging device intended to ease the tax burden of fluctuating income;
it is a tax benefit which might be of substantial value to a corporation which expects to have a high excess profits tax.
Since this type of item was not in the statute when section 381 was enacted in 1954, one cannot say with certainty what effect the enactment of that section should have.
With respect to this type of item, one might properly apply the language of the Committee Report, quoted above, which cautions against using section 381 as a basis for treating other tax attributes not mentioned therein.
Actually, there do not presently appear to be items in the statute comparable to a net operating loss carryover.
Probably the primary reason for special treatment of a net operating loss carryover is the unique opportunity it presents for tax avoidance.
Reasons for selecting mail questionnaire method
There were two methods that could have been used for conducting the study within the resources available: (1) interviews in depth with a few selected companies, and (2) the more limited interrogation of a large number of companies by means of a mail questionnaire.
It was also hoped that responses to a mail questionnaire would suggest fruitful inquiries that might be made in subsequent studies of a more detailed nature.
It is recognized that a mail questionnaire has inherent limitations.
There is the danger that the questions will mean different things to different respondents.
Simple yes or no answers do not reveal the different shades of opinion that the various respondents may have.
A respondent may want to make alternative answers because he does not know the precise circumstances assumed in the question.
There is also the problem of the respondent's frame of reference.
Is the respondent making a recommendation for his own benefit, for the benefit of his industry, for the benefit of a specific government department or service, for the benefit of the defense program, for the benefit of small business, or for the benefit of the taxpayers?
There is also the question of whether the respondent based his answers on factual information and carefully considered judgment, or whether his answers were casual guesses.
Finally, there is the question of how strongly an expressed opinion is held--whether it is a firm opinion or one that the respondent favors only slightly over the alternatives.
The research team was very mindful of these dangers and limitations of a mail questionnaire.
Under the circumstances, however, the team considered it would provide the most useful information at this point.
In the preparation of the questionnaire the problems noted above were carefully considered, and the structure and phraseology used were designed to minimize the effects of these limitations.
Design of the questionnaire
The questionnaire was designed to elicit three types of information: (1) the facts regarding certain characteristics of the respondents, including their experience with, and interest in, securing defense business;
(2) the actual selling and buying practices of the respondents;
and (3) the attitudes and opinions of the respondents concerning bidding procedures and the methods of awarding defense contracts.
It was hoped that the facts concerning the characteristics and practices of the respondents would offer clues to the reasons why they took the positions and made the recommendations which they did.
The major sections of the questionnaire (see Appendix B) are devoted to the following: 1.
Information for classifying respondents (Part A of the questionnaire) 2.
Characteristics of defense sales activities (Part B of the questionnaire) 3.
Respondents' practices in participating in advertised bidding for defense business (Part C of the questionnaire) 4.
Respondents' practices in participating in negotiated bidding for defense purposes (Part D of the questionnaire) 5.
Respondents' opinions regarding advertised bidding (Part E of the questionnaire) 6.
Respondents' opinions regarding negotiated bidding (Part F of the questionnaire) 7.
Respondents' preferences regarding the methods of awarding defense contracts (Part G of the questionnaire)
The questionnaire provided a place for the name of the respondent but stated that identification of the respondent was optional.
The questionnaire also stated that, in any event, all replies would be treated confidentially.
It is interesting to note that 75 per cent of those who returned the questionnaire identified themselves.
Preparation and pretest of the questionnaire
The research team prepared and then revised the questionnaire over a period of six months.
In June, 1960, an early draft of the questionnaire, along with a cover letter, was mailed to fourteen companies in the state of Washington.
This test resulted in further revisions of the questionnaire.
The research team was concerned that responses from firms in the state of Washington might not be typical of those throughout the country, or that the results might be different when no phone or personal follow-up was made.
Accordingly, another test of the questionaire was made.
The revised draft was mailed in July, 1960, to 100 firms throughout the United States.
The method of compiling the AIA and TR lists will be described later.
Ten days after the questionnaires were mailed, follow-up airmail postcards were sent urging those companies which had not yet returned their questionnaires to do so at once.
Twenty-eight returns in all were received.
The responses were carefully checked for obvious errors in the answers or for questions that were apparently not understood by the respondent.
The cover letter, questionnaire, and follow-up postcard were then revised into final form (see Appendixes A, B, and C).
Compilation of mailing lists
The objective of the study was to determine the opinions and practices of small firms selling to defense programs.
The firms to receive the questionnaires were selected with this objective in mind.
Three lists of companies were made and used in the study.
The first was a list of fourteen manufacturing companies located in the state of Washington which were personally known to the research team to be active in defense work.
The primary consideration in the compilation of this list was convenience in discussing the questionnaire with company officers.
The second list was derived from a group of approximately 8,000 names supplied to the research team by the Aerospace Industries Association.
These names were secured from member companies by the Association from the forty-four sources listed in Appendix Aj.
Each source selected from its approved bidders list about 200 firms which it believed to be small businesses that participated in the production of weapons and weapon support systems.
Where possible, the name of an executive was supplied along with the company name and address.
The forty-four lists supplied by the AIA member companies were merged and duplicate names were eliminated.
There was further elimination of all companies that were not accompanied by the name of a responsible company executive.
The remaining names were then checked against the Thomas Register list (see below) and duplicate names were removed from the AIA lists.
By these steps the final AIA list was reduced from 8,000 to 3,500.
The third list was selected by the research team on a random basis from the Thomas Register.
It was compiled as a control sample to determine if the opinions and practices of companies on the lists submitted by the members of the Aerospace Industries Association were materially different from those of other small firms selling to defense programs.
Such a difference might have resulted from: 1.
The fact that the Aerospace Industries Association members whose lists were used did not comprise all firms engaged in defense programs.
The fact that companies on the AIA lists were already participating in the defense program because of the manner of their selection.
Accordingly, as in-group, they might have different opinions and practices than an out-group composed of those companies not so participating but interested in defense business.
The fact that AIA lists might not have been selected on a random basis.
The control sample was selected by taking the bottom name of each of the two columns of names on each page of the alphabetical listing of manufacturers in the Thomas Register.
If the bottom name in each column did not have a responsible executive identified, the next name above which identified such a responsible executive was substituted.
Fifteen hundred names were selected in this fashion.
Mailing the questionnaire
Each questionnaire was mailed with a cover letter addressed personally to the president or other executive of each firm.
The questionnaires were mailed in Seattle, Washington, and sent by regular mail to addresses in the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.
Airmail was used for the addresses outside the Pacific Northwest.
Each letter contained a postage-prepaid return envelope by regular mail for addresses in the Pacific Northwest, and by airmail for those outside the Pacific Northwest.
Approximately ten days after the questionnaire was mailed, a follow-up airmail postcard was sent to each of the original names.
The first test mailing (to 14 companies) was made in June, 1960.
The second test mailing (to 100 companies) was made in July, 1960.
The final mailing of the questionnaire was made late in August, 1960, to 4,900 firms consisting of 3,450 from the AIA list and 1,450 from the TR list.
Returns received
Over 1,000 returns were received within two weeks after the final mailing was made.
They continued to arrive until the end of December, 1960, by which time a total of 1,343 returns were received representing 26.8 per cent of the 5,014 questionnaires sent out.
Fifty-seven returns could not be used because they were incomplete or received too late to be processed.
The remaining 1,286 returns that were processed came from the categories in Table 2.
Processing the returns
Each questionnaire was audited for obvious mistakes and for comments, and was identified by a serial number, by the source list from which the company name was selected, and by the geographical location of the company as determined by the postmark on the return envelope.
All responses, except comments, were numerically coded to permit use of data-processing equipment.
The codes were key-punched into IBM punch cards and verified.
Each return required three cards and involved key punching 228 digital columns.
In order to be able to properly relate the data for a single company each of the three cards comprising the set for each firm was identified with the appropriate serial number of the respondent.
The cards were then processed using standard IBM punch card equipment, including an IBM 650 computer.
The first step in processing was to analyze the returns from Questions 1, 2, and 3 to determine whether the respondents were large businesses or small businesses, in accordance with the definitions contained in ASPR Section 1-701.
(see Chapter 2.
) The results are shown in Table 3.
The returns from companies classified as large businesses were set aside and not used because they were not relevant to a study of the opinions and practices of small firms.
The second step in processing was to compare the responses from companies on the AIA list with those from companies on the TR list in order to determine whether it would be appropriate to merge the responses for the purposes of the study.
The methods and results of this comparative analysis are described in Appendix Aj.
It was concluded that it would be appropriate to process the two groups of responses as a single sample of all small businesses engaged in, or wishing to sell to, defense programs.
In the first place, the two groups of firms, when combined, had characteristics and practices that were more representative of companies that were the subject of this study than did the firms from the AIA list alone.
The vast Central Valley of California is one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world.
During the summer of 1960, it became the setting for a bitter and basic labor-management struggle.
The contestants in this economic struggle are the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) of the AFL-CIO and the agricultural employers of the State.
By virtue of the legal responsibilities of the Department of Employment in the farm placement program, we necessarily found ourselves in the middle between these two forces.
It is not a pleasant or easy position, but one we have endeavored to maintain.
We have sought to be strictly neutral as between the parties, but at the same time we have been required frequently to rule on specific issues or situations as they arose.
Inevitably, one side was pleased and the other displeased, regardless of how we ruled.
Often the displeased parties interpreted our decision as implying favoritism toward the other.
We have consoled ourselves with the thought that this is a normal human reaction and is one of the consequences of any decision in an adversary proceeding.
It is disconcerting, nevertheless, to read in a labor weekly, Perluss knuckles down to growers, and then to be confronted with a growers' publication which states, Perluss recognizes obviously phony and trumped-up strikes as bona fide.
For a number of years, there have been sporadic attempts in California to organize farm workers.
These attempts met with little sucess for a variety of reasons.
They were inadequately financed, without experienced leadership, and lacked the general support of organized labor as a whole.
This past year the pattern has been different: The organizing program had the full support of the AFL-CIO, which supplied staff and money to the AWOC, as well as moral support.
Leadership was experienced and skillful, and financial resources were significant.
Regardless of where personal sympathies may lie as between the parties, failure to recognize these changed conditions would be to ignore the facts of life.
As a result of these changed conditions, the impact of the organizational effort on agricultural labor-management relations has been much greater than in the past.
The AWOC has been able to employ the traditional weapons of labor--the strike and the picket line--with considerable success, particularly in the area of wages.
By the very nature of the situation, it is the union which has been able to select the time and place to bring pressure upon management.
To date, at least, the strategy of the AWOC has been selective;
that is to say, to concentrate on a particular crop or activity in a particular area at a strategic time, rather than any broadside engagement with management throughout an area or the State.
Primarily, we became involved in these disputes because of our referral obligations under our farm placement program.
But the current issues arose out of the Wagner-Peyser Act concerning referrals to an establishment where a labor dispute exists, and out of Public Law 78 and the Migrant Labor Agreement if Mexican nationals were employed at the ranch.
Most of us remember and think of the Wagner-Peyser Act in its historical sense, as a major milestone in the development of public placement services.
Infrequently do we think of it as a living, continuing, operating control over the system.
However, when labor disputes arise, its provisions come clearly into play.
California has accepted the provisions of that Act (as have all other States) by enacting into our Code (Section 2051) a provision that
The State of California accepts the provisions of the Wagner-Peyser Act, and will observe and comply with the requirements of that act.
With respect to labor disputes, the Wagner-Peyser Act states only,
In carrying out the provisions of this Act, the Secretary is authorized and directed to provide for the giving of notice of strikes or lock-outs to applicants before they are referred to employment.
Other provisions of the Act empower the Secretary to adopt regulations necessary to carry out its provisions, and he has done so.
The pertinent regulation for our purposes is Section 602.2 (,), as follows:
Referrals in labor dispute situations.
With respect to positions not covered by subparagraph (1) or (2) of this paragraph, any individual may be referred to a place of employment in which a labor dispute exists, provided he is given written notice of such dispute prior to or at the time of his referral.
In analyzing this regulation, let us take the last sentence first.
It permits referrals under certain circumstances even when there is a labor dispute, provided the individual is given written notice of such a dispute.
Assume, for example, a situation where a farm has a packing shed and fields.
The packing shed workers go on strike.
There is no dispute involving fieldwork.
We concluded that we may refer workers to the fieldwork (but not the packing shed work) provided we give them written notice of the packing shed dispute.
So far, no troublesome cases have arisen under this provision.
It is the first part of the Regulation that is currently at issue.
Note that it prohibits referrals under either condition (1) or condition (2).
Employer representatives have contended that the Secretary has gone beyond his authority by such a prohibition, on the grounds that the Wagner-Peyser Act requires only written notice to the prospective worker that a dispute exists.
Into court
The matter got into the courts this way: One of the early strikes called by the AWOC was at the DiGiorgio pear orchards in Yuba County.
We found that a labor dispute existed, and that the workers had left their jobs, which were then vacant because of the dispute.
Accordingly, under clause (1) of the Secretary's Regulation, we suspended referrals to the employer.
(Incidentally, no Mexican nationals were involved.
) The employer, seeking to continue his harvest, challenged our right to cease referrals to him, and sought relief in the Superior Court of Yuba County.
The court issued a temporary restraining order, directing us to resume referrals.
We, of course, obeyed the court order.
However, the Federal Court held that since the State had accepted the provisions of the Wagner-Peyser Act into its own Code, and presumably therefore also the regulations, it was now a State matter.
It accordingly refused to assume jurisdiction, whereupon the California Superior Court made the restraining order permanent.
Under that order, we have continued referring workers to the ranch.
A similar case arose at the Bowers ranch in Butte County, and the Superior Court of that county issued similar restraining orders.
The growers have strenuously argued that I should have accepted the Superior Court decisions as conclusive and issued statewide instructions to our staff to ignore this provision in the Secretary's Regulation.
I cannot accept that view, either as a lawyer or as an administrator.
Legal considerations
First, let us examine briefly some of the legal considerations involved.
It is an accepted juridical principle in California that a Superior Court decision does not constitute a binding legal precedent.
It is conclusive, unless appealed, only upon the particular parties to the particular action which was heard.
It is not binding upon another Superior Court, which could rule to the contrary.
Only when a decision is rendered by the District Court of Appeal (or, of course, the Supreme Court) is a binding precedent established.
In that event, we can correctly say that we have received an authoritative interpretation of the matter, and one which we can follow statewide with confidence that the policy will not be overthrown in other Superior Courts.
But over and beyond the compelling need for a binding precedent decision, I am convinced that the decisions of the Superior Courts which in effect nullify the Secretary's Regulation are not a correct interpretation of the Secretary's power under the Federal law.
I believe I am in good company in this view.
The Attorney General of California concurs in this interpretation and has filed an appeal from these decisions to the District Court of Appeal.
The Attorney General of the United States, in considering the power of the Secretary to issue similar regulations under the Wagner-Peyser Act relating to the interstate recruitment of farm workers, has rendered an opinion sustaining his authority.
Next, let us consider briefly the program and administrative implications of a failure on our part to pursue our appeals.
There is far too much at stake for all of the parties concerned to leave the matter hanging in midair.
The ramifications of the issue are enormous.
A decision to refer workers to jobs vacant because of a strike would have to be applied equally to nonagricultural situations, and might in effect place the public employment services in the position of acting as strikebreakers.
The public interest is so dominant in such an issue that I cannot be so presumptuous as to attempt to settle it by an administrative order based upon conclusions reached in a summary action in one or two Superior Courts in the State.
It is an issue which may well reach the Supreme Court of the United States before judicial finality is achieved.
As an administrator, I cannot place the Employment Service in California in jeopardy of being out of compliance with the Federal laws by my failure to pursue the avenues of appeal open to me.
The impact of noncompliance under the Wagner-Peyser Act is clear: the withdrawal of some $11 million a year of administrative funds which finance our employment service program or, as a corollary, the taking over by the Federal Government of its operation.
Thus far, the cases which have come before the courts have involved only the issue of referral where the job is vacant due to a strike--condition (1) in the Regulation of the Secretary.
None has yet arisen under condition (2), relating to referral to jobs the filling of which is an issue in a labor dispute.
Here the problem is essentially one of defining the word filling.
Should it be defined in a narrow sense to include only such elements as job specifications, union membership, union jurisdiction, and the like?
Or should it have a broader connotation of including wage demands and other factors not necessarily associated with the mechanics of filling the job.
Because of the uncertainty of this definition, I solicited the interpretation of the Secretary of Labor.
He has advised me that the narrower interpretation is the proper one;
that is, that if wages, for example, is the only issue in a labor dispute, and no workers have left their jobs because of the dispute, we may continue to make referrals.
Martin and Stendler present evidence that infants and young children can and do solve many problems at a relatively simple perceptual level simply by combining objects and counting them.
After they have developed concepts, they are free from the necessity of manipulating objects;
they do symbolically what they once had to do concretely.
The ability to think seems to increase consistently with age.
One experiment showed the greatest one-year difference occurring between the eleventh and twelfth years.
10.
Many studies indicate that elementary-school children's interests cover the whole field of science;
that their questions indicate a genuine interest in social processes and events;
and that as they mature their interests and capabilities change and broaden.
Emotional characteristics
How a child feels about himself, about other people, and about the tasks confronting him in school may have as much influence on his success in school as his physical and intellectual characteristics.
A considerable amount of evidence exists to show that an unhappy and insecure child is not likely to do well in school subjects.
Emotional maturity is the result of many factors, the principal ones being the experiences of the first few years of the child's life.
However, the teacher who understands the influence of emotions on behavior may be highly influential in helping pupils gain confidence, security, and satisfaction.
Concerning this responsibility of the teacher, suggestions for helping children gain better control of the emotions are presented in Chapter 11.
The following generalizations about the emotional characteristics of elementary-school children may be helpful.
Typically, the young child's emotional reactions last for a relatively short time, as contrasted to those of an adult.
As the child grows older, his emotional reactions lead to moods, or emotional states drawn out over a period of time and expressed slowly, rather than in short, abrupt outbursts.
Studies of the growth and decline of children's fears indicate that fears due to strange objects, noises, falling, and unexpected movement decline during the preschool years, but that fears of the dark, of being alone, and of imaginary creatures or robbers increase.
Ridiculing a child for being afraid or forcing him to meet the feared situation alone are poor ways of dealing with the problem;
more effective solutions include explanations, the example of another child, or conditioning by associating the feared object, place, or person with something pleasant.
Children need help in learning to control their emotions.
The young child learns from parents and teachers that temper tantrums, screaming, kicking, and hitting will not get him what he wants;
the older child learns that intense emotional outbursts will not win approval by his peers, and, therefore, makes a real effort to control his emotions.
Children differ widely in their emotional responses.
Among infants the patterns of emotional responses are similar;
as the influence of learning and environment are felt, emotional behavior becomes individualized.
Social characteristics
Although no national norms exist for the social development of children, the teacher can find a great deal of information concerning types of social behavior normally displayed by children at various age levels.
The following summary will give the student some idea about the social characteristics of elementary-school children;
During early childhood, children are more interested in the approval of their parents and teachers than they are in the approval of other children;
after they have been in school a few years, their interest in playmates of their own age increases, and their interest in adults decreases;
the child who had once considered it a treat to accompany his parents on picnics and family gatherings now considers it a bore.
In late childhood the influence of the group on the social behavior of the child continues to increase;
the group sets the styles in clothing, the kind of play engaged in, and the ideals of right and wrong behavior.
In early childhood the choice of a companion is likely to be for another child of his own age or a year or two older, who can do the things he likes to do;
such factors as sex, intelligence, and status in the group do not influence his choice much at this time.
In later childhood, an interest in team games replaces individual play;
loyalty to the group, a feeling of superiority over those who are not members, and unwillingness to play with members of the opposite sex become dominant traits.
During early childhood boys tease and bully, on the average, more than girls;
those who feel inferior or insecure engage in these activities more than do well-adjusted children.
During late childhood boys like to tease, jostle, and talk smart to girls;
girls, who are more mature than boys, frown upon the youthful antics of boys of their own age.
By the time pupils reach the sixth grade, their ethical and moral standards are fairly well developed;
they exhibit a keen interest in social, political, and economic problems, but they frequently have vague and incorrect notions about the terms they use rather glibly in their routine school work.
Between the ages of two and four years, negativism or resistance to adult authority is noticeable;
after the fourth year it begins to decline.
However, as we have seen, in later childhood the child begins to substitute the standards of the peer group for those of parents and teachers.
The elementary-school child grows gradually in his ability to work in groups.
The child in the primary grades can play harmoniously with one companion, but his desire to be first in everything gets him into trouble when the group gets larger;
he wants to be with people, but he hasn't yet learned to cooperate.
In the middle grades, however, he begins to participate more effectively in group activities such as selecting a leader, helping to make plans and carry on group activities, and setting up rules governing the enterprise.
Why the teacher should study the individual pupil
Much progress has been made in the last two decades in developing techniques for understanding children, yet in almost any classroom today can be found children whose needs are not being met by the school program.
Some are failing to achieve as much as their ability would permit;
others never seem able to enter fully into the life of the classroom.
These children have been described as those who were trying to say something to adults who did not understand.
Many school systems now employ school psychologists and child guidance specialists.
It is the classroom teacher, however, who has daily contacts with pupils, and who is in a unique position to put sound psychological principles into practice.
Indeed, a study of the individual child is an integral part of the work of the elementary-school teacher, rather than merely an additional chore.
Teachers and administrators in many elementary schools have assumed that dividing the pupils in any grade into groups on the basis of test scores solves the problem of meeting the needs of individuals.
What they should recognize is that children who have been placed in one of these groups on a narrow academic basis still differ widely in attributes that influence success, and that they still must be treated as individuals.
Although the teacher must be concerned with maintaining standards, he must also be concerned about understanding differences in ability, background, and experience.
Factors that inhibit learning and lead to maladjustment
Studies conducted in various sections of the United States indicate that many children in elementary schools are maladjusted emotionally, and that many of them are failing to make satisfactory progress in school subjects.
One study, which involved 1,524 pupils in grades one to six, found that 12 percent of the pupils were seriously maladjusted and that 23 percent were reading a year below capacity.
It is apparent, therefore, that the teacher needs to know what factors have a vital bearing on the learning and adjustment of children.
When a child fails to meet the standards of the school in his rate of learning, insecurity, unhappiness, and other forms of maladjustment frequently follow.
These maladjustments in turn inhibit learning, and a vicious cycle is completed.
It is easy for the teacher to rationalize that the child who is not achieving in accordance with his known ability is just plain lazy, or that the child who lacks interest in school, who dislikes the teacher, or who is overaggressive is a hopeless delinquent.
The causes of retardation and maladjustment may be found in physical factors, such as defective speech or hearing, impaired vision, faulty motor coordination, a frail constitution, chronic disease, malnutrition, and glandular malfunctioning.
They may be caused by poor health habits, such as faulty eating and sleeping habits.
They may be related to mental immaturity or lack of aptitude for certain types of school work.
The curriculum may be too difficult for some and too easy for others.
Teaching methods, learning materials, and promotion policies may inhibit learning and lead to maladjustments for some children.
Unwholesome family relations, broken homes, and undesirable community influences may also be contributing factors.
This is only a minimum list of the factors that inhibit learning and contribute to maladjustment among children.
Moreover, these conditions do not influence all children in the same manner.
A vision handicap that may produce nervous tension and reading disability for one child may spur another child on to even greater achievement in reading.
An impoverished home that may discourage one child may constitute the motivation causing another to work harder for successful achievement in school.
At any rate, the teacher who recognizes common causes of retardation and maladjustment can frequently do a great deal to eliminate the causes of pupil discouragement, failure, and maladjustment.
Sources of information about children
Successful teaching involves getting enough information about each pupil to understand why he behaves as he does in certain situations and how his achievement in school is being influenced by various factors in his environment.
The classroom teacher cannot be expected to be as proficient in the use of the techniques of child study as the clinical psychologist;
he cannot be expected to administer all the tests and gather all the information needed about each child in his classroom.
He can be expected, however, to examine and interpret the information already available;
to refine and extend his own techniques for studying individual children;
and to utilize opportunities, arising in connection with regular classroom activities, for gaining a better understanding of his pupils.
This section deals with some of the sources of information that can be tapped by the classroom teacher;
Chapter 15 provides more detailed information about specific techniques used in evaluating pupil progress.
Cumulative records
Most school systems today maintain a system of cumulative records of pupils.
These records, when systematically maintained, provide much information about the children, which the teacher can use in guidance, instruction, grouping, and reporting to parents.
Each teacher has in his classroom a metal file, equipped with a lock, which is used to store cumulative record folders.
During summer vacation periods these records are stored in the office of the principal.
Only the teacher and other professional personnel are permitted to see or use these records.
Each new teacher to whom the pupil goes is expected to study the information in the cumulative record and to bring it up to date.
Some school systems provide written instructions to principals and teachers designating when certain information is to be recorded on cumulative record forms and explaining how the information is to be summarized and used.
The Summary Report On Desegregation Progress In Education In The Middle-South Region, 1959 - 1960 clearly shows two pieces of information.
The Summary Report, which was prepared for this Conference, indicates, first, that actual or pending school desegregation is increasing;
second, that both actual and pending desegregation is, with few exceptions, the product or result of court order.
The Report together with other information suggests that desegregation in the schools is slow.
The Middle-South Region, as defined by the National Association of Intergroup Relations Officials (NAIRO), consists of the states of Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, West Virginia, Delaware, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The states and the Nation's Capital all have some desegregation, in fact some dating back to 1954;
but the region also embraces some of the staunchest opposition.
Desegregation has been opposed by massive resistance, interposition, pupil assignment (with no assignments of Negro children), and hate bombings.
Desegregation and court order
Now let's look at the evidence that shows the increase in desegregation and such increase as a result of court order.
First Kentucky.
Elementary school desegregation came to Owen and Union Counties, which already had high school desegregation.
The action was a result of a court order, the citation for which (and for other court action mentioned in this paper) is taken from the Summary Report for this Conference.
In Maryland the Harford County Board of Education had prepared a desegregation plan which the Court approved but which a plaintiff had challenged;
thus, county school board and Federal court joined hands here to promote school desegregation.
Additional school desegregation in Tennessee resulted from a court order opening a school serving children of military personnel.
Similarly, further desegregation may come from suits pending in three Tennessee cities, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Memphis.
In West Virginia the number of white and Negro children attending the same school has increased almost twofold.
There are no court decisions here.
As in Maryland, a District court has approved an official plan of school desegregation in Delaware.
As a result of the State Board of Education plan, Negro children entered heretofore white elementary schools in five districts.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing an appeal from the plan.
In Virginia court orders led to desegregation in Charlottesville and Floyd Counties.
Desegregation in Pulaski County is pending because of court order, although date of admission is not yet determined.
Negro parents have filed application for admission of additional children to schools in Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, and Warren Counties.
Desegregation can also result from additional suits brought by Negro plaintiffs against school boards in Newport News, Fairfax County, Arlington County, and Norfolk.
As a school district, the District of Columbia has had desegregated schools since 1954, shortly after the Supreme Court decision.
This recapitulation makes it clear that school desegregation continues, including the Old Dominion State, in spite of its stern resistance.
The record is clear that increase in school desegregation last year came largely as a result of a court order;
that on the immediate horizon, if further large-scale (relatively speaking) desegregation comes, it will result from court orders on suits filed in several Middle-South states.
Knowledge that thousands of school districts are involved and observation that school desegregation has occurred in only a handful in 1959-1960 leads to a conclusion that desegregation-from-court-order is slow.
Before turning to my views as to the problems and issues before us at this Regional Conference, I wish to note a small item in the Summary Report as it refers to the District of Columbia.
That reference in the Report is continuation of the trend toward an all-Negro school system, a remark apparently occasioned by the increase of Negro school population from 74.1 per cent to 76.7 per cent.
I see no real prospects for an all-Negro school population.
West of Rock Creek Park is still monolithically white and is in fact increasingly white as a result of Georgetown's conversion-by-renovation housing program.
Nearby Foggy Bottom is ousting Negroes.
The large acreage in the Southwest Redevelopment area beckons white people--what with high-priced town houses and elevator apartments.
The Capitol Hill rehabilitation, like Foggy Bottom, replaces Negroes with whites (but also replaces some whites with other whites).
In fact, short of fleeing to Warrenton, Virginia, or Rockville, Maryland, white people may have to live with Negroes.
All of this must be taken into account before the image of an all-Negro D.C. public school system is conjured up.
Problems to solve
From the Summary Report before us at this Conference, a number of problems are apparent.
They vex us and perplex us but generally do not divide us like the issues which follow the problems.
First, how can we step up the desegregation movement?
It is slow.
I believe we all want more schools where white and Negro together can and do attend.
I believe we all want no child denied admission to a school on account of his color.
In general, members of NAIRO would certainly want a child admitted to a school nearest his residence or within his residence zone.
How to achieve this objective is a problem, but we are not divided on what we want.
Second, as we increase the number of desegregated school districts and schools themselves, how can we achieve this action through school board action?
It may be county school board or state school board action, as well as that of municipal school boards.
Correlatively, can we reduce the role of the district courts, so that the action is that of the people of the community or other school district and not that of the law court?
This is a problem, and I believe there is little difference of opinion that wherever possible a local school board should devise and effect a plan of desegregation.
Third, how can we insure a systematic and continuing group relations education in the schools?
Not simply a brief program when the schools are actually desegregated but a continuing program that also promotes integration, that encourages the children and teachers not to look at each other as white or Negro, but as human beings.
Again the problem is how to get it done and in what form to offer the group relations education;
not whether it should be done.
Fourth, in the segregated school system, during the period before desegregation, how can we assure equal opportunity?
In fact, in the desegregated school system which may have a good many schools with all-Negro population, how can we assure equal opportunity?
This is a problem, but we are not divided over its importance or by its existence.
Fifth, in the segregated school system or in the all-Negro or all-white schools, how can we encourage better group relations or an improved attitude toward people who do not belong to the group?
Can we help children adjust to images of other children when the latter are not actually present.
Now, the issues
If we have five problems whose solution we seek in relatively united fashion, then there are twice as many issues which, I judge, sharply divide us, intergroup relations practitioners and lay people.
Issue no. 1.
Pupil assignment.
Since on the one hand school desegregation has come in Virginia hand-in-glove with pupil assignment, shall we support the plan?
On the basis of pupil assignment criteria, Judge Albert Bryan has assigned Negro children to formerly white schools in Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.
Shall we support pupil assignment?
On the other hand, looking at the larger picture, is it true that pupil assignment has effectively cut off, blocked, or reduced school desegregation to a trickle?
Shall we therefore oppose the plan?
This question is an issue because it likely divides us into two camps--those for or against pupil assignment.
Issue no. 2.
Teacher assignment in order to desegregate.
In large cities like Baltimore, Louisville, and Washington, D.C., should school desegregation be extended to all-Negro and all-white schools by assigning white and Negro teachers, respectively?
On the one hand do we argue the Supreme Court decision required only that a child not be denied admission to a school on account of his race?
We can argue that where residence makes pupil desegregation impossible teacher assignment can create a partially desegregated situation.
Issue no. 3.
The plaintiff in school desegregation cases.
The earlier part of my statement deals with the court orders that resulted in desegregation.
In each instance the plaintiff was a private citizen.
In thousands of school districts, indeed, in the entire State of Mississippi, no plaintiff has come forth.
And I have established that the action of municipal, county, or state school boards or boards of education is small, infinitesimally small in comparison with the number of districts.
Is the requirement that the plaintiff be a person actually denied admission to a school a sound requirement?
Should Congress authorize the Attorney General to file suit to accomplish admission of a child to a school to which he is denied entrance?
Even though in civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960 the provision for the Attorney General to act was eliminated, should we nevertheless support such a clause?
This is an issue, for it divides people rather sharply.
Issue no. 4.
Withholding of funds to schools that deny children on account of race.
This is the Powell Amendment, which in 1957 divided even a liberal group like the American Veterans Committee (AVC).
Should we support a clause in Federal school construction or school assistance legislation that would deny Federal funds to a school district that denies admission to a child on account of his race?
This is softer than earlier Powell amendments which would have denied funds to all segregated school districts.
There is nonetheless considerable argument against the clause, softened though it be, on the grounds that Federal aid is so necessary to the public schools.
The Federal funds limitation enlists the support of many, the opposition of quite a few.
Issue no. 5.
Required public education.
Should a political subdivision, state or county or municipality, be required to furnish public education?
For the school year, 1959-1960, the Prince Edward County (Virginia) Board of Supervisors voted not to provide funds for public education, and the school board therefore could provide no public education--for white or Negro children.
Is public education in this American democracy of such importance that no child should be denied public education?
Or is this subject a matter of self-determination, a matter of states rights or county rights?
If people don't want to provide public education, should they be forced to do so?
Even if we marshal substantial agreement behind mandatory public education, we likely cannot expect that all the states will enact the legislation.
Should the requirement, which must therefore be Federal in nature, be legislated by the United States Congress?
Or must it become law by amendment of the United States Constitution?
We actually have two issues in this question--goal and method.
Issue no. 6.
Federal responsibility for education of the citizens.
If the above issue is settled by requiring public education for all citizens, Issue No. 6 may be moot.
If, on the other hand, it is not settled, or while it is being debated and resolved, does the Federal government have a responsibility in situations like that in Prince Edward County?
Nearly half the children still receive no education.
Must or should the Federal government help?
Should the government directly provide education for the children who want public education?
The next question is whether board members favor their own social classes in their roles as educational policy-makers.
On the whole, it appears that they do not favor their own social classes in an explicit way.
Seldom is there an issue in which class lines can be clearly drawn.
A hypothetical issue of this sort might deal with the establishment of a free public junior college in a community where there already was a good private college which served the middle-class youth adequately but was too expensive for working-class youth.
In situations of this sort the board generally favors the expansion of free education.
There have been very few cases of explicit conflict of interest between the middle class and any other class in the field of educational policy.
If there were more such cases, it would be easier to answer the question whether the policy-makers favor their own social classes.
There is currently a major controversy of public education in which group interests and values are heavily engaged.
This is the issue of segregated schools in the South.
In this case it is primarily a matter of conflict of racial groups rather than social-class groups.
Thus, the white middle and lower classes are arrayed against the Negro middle and lower classes.
This conflict may be resolved in a way which will suit white middle-class people better than it suits white lower-class people.
If this happens, there may be some class conflict in the South, with school boards and school teachers taking the middle-class position.
The educational profession
The members of the educational profession have a major voice in the determination of educational policy, their position being strongest in the universities.
They are mostly upper-middle- and lower-middle-class people, with a few in the upper class.
Do they make class-biased decisions?
In a society dominated by middle-class values and working in an institution which transmits and strengthens these social values, it is clear that the educational profession must work for the values which are characteristic of the society.
There is no problem here.
The problem arises, if it does arise, when the educator has to make a choice or a decision within the area of his professional competence, but which bears some relation to the social structure.
For instance, in giving school grades or in making recommendations for the award of a college scholarship, does he consciously or unconsciously favor students of one or another social class?
Again, in deciding on the content and method of his teaching, does he favor a curriculum which will make his students stronger competitors in the race for higher economic status, or does he favor a curriculum which strengthens students in other ways?
The answers to questions such as these certainly depend to some extent upon the educator's own social-class position and also upon his social history, as well as upon his personality and what he conceives his mission to be as an educator.
In a set of case studies of teachers with various social-class backgrounds, Wattenberg illustrates a variety of approaches to students and to teaching which depend upon the teacher's personality as well as on his social-class background.
One social-class factor which plays a large part in educational policy today is the fact that a great many school and college teachers are upward mobile from urban lower-class and lower-middle-class families.
Their own experience in the social system influences their work and attitudes as teachers.
Teachers who have been upward mobile probably see education as most valuable for their students if it serves students as it has served them;
that is, they are likely to favor a kind of education that has vocational-advancement value.
There is no doubt that higher education since World War 2, has moved away from pure liberal education toward greater emphasis on technology and specialization.
There are several causes for this, one being rapid economic development with increasing numbers of of middle-class positions requiring engineering or scientific training.
But another cause may lie in the experience of so many new postwar faculty members with their own use of education as a means of social advancement.
Compared with the college and university faculty members of the period from 1900 to 1930, the new postwar faculty members consist of more children of immigrants and more children of urban working-class fathers.
Their experience is quite in contrast with that of children of upper- and upper-middle-class native-born parents, who are more likely to regard education as good for its own sake and to discount the vocational emphases in the curriculum.
The public interest groups
Educational policies are formed by several groups who are officially or unofficially appointed to act in the public interest.
Legislators are one such group, and state legislators have major responsibility for educational legislation.
They generally vote so as to serve their own constituency, and if the constituency should be solidly middle class or solidly lower class, they might be expected to vote and work for middle- or for lower-class interests in education.
However, there are relatively few such political constituencies, and, as has been pointed out, there is seldom a clear-cut distinction between the educational interests of one social class and those of another.
Another public interest group is the commission of laymen or educators which is appointed to study an educational problem and to make recommendations.
Generally these commissions work earnestly to represent the interest of the entire society, as they conceive it.
Nevertheless, their conclusions and recommendations cannot please everybody, and they often represent a particular economic or political point of view.
For instance, there have been two Presidential Commissions on higher education since World War 2.
President Truman's Commission on Higher Education tended to take a liberal, expansionist position, while President Eisenhower's Committee on Education Beyond the High School was slightly more conservative.
Both Commissions consisted of upper-middle- and upper-class people, who attempted to act in the public interest.
An example of a more definite class bias is noted in proceedings of the Commission on the Financing of Higher Education sponsored by the Association of American Universities and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
This Commission recommended against the use of federal government funds for the assistance of private universities and against a broad program of government-supported scholarships.
This might be said to be an upper- or an upper-middle-class bias, but the Commission published as one of its staff studies a book by Byron S. Hollingshead entitled Who Should Go To College?
Which recommended a federal government scholarship program.
Furthermore, the Commission set up the Council for Financial Aid to Education as a means of encouraging private business to increase its support of private higher education.
Thus, the Commission acted with a sense of social responsibility within the area of its own convictions about the problem of government support to private education.
Then there are the trustees and officers of the great educational foundations, who inevitably exert an influence on educational decisions by their support or refusal to support various educational programs, experiments, and demonstrations.
These people are practically always upper- or upper-middle-class persons, who attempt to act in what they regard as the interest of the entire society.
Finally there are the parent organizations and the laymen's organizations such as the National Association of Parents and Teachers, and the Citizens Committee on Public Schools.
These have an upper-middle-class leadership and a middle-class membership, with rare exceptions, where working-class parents are active in local P.-T.A. matters.
Like the other policy-making groups, these are middle class in their educational attitudes, and they attempt to act in the general public interest, as they see it.
In general, it appears that educational decisions and educational policies are made by people who intend to act in the interests of the society as a whole.
They are predominantly middle- and upper-class people, and undoubtedly share the values and attitudes of those classes.
They may be unaware of the existence of lower-class values and consequently fail to take them into account.
But there is very little frank and conscious espousal of the interests of any one social class by the people who have the power to make decisions in education.
They think of themselves as trustees for the entire society and try to serve the entire society.
Attempts to influence social structure through education
Educational policy in the United States has as an explicit goal the maximization of economic and cultural opportunity.
In so far as this goal is achieved, the society becomes more fluid, artificial barriers to social mobility are reduced, and people at the lower end of the social hierarchy share more fully in the material and cultural goods of society.
On the other hand, there is a counterbalancing purpose in education which is to pass on the advantages of the parents to their children.
This leads to efforts at exclusiveness through private schools and to the maintenance of social stratification in the schools.
Both of these purposes exist side by side without much overt conflict under present conditions.
Maximizing economic and cultural opportunity
The broad expansion of free education results both in raising the average economic and cultural level of the society and in promoting fluidity within the social structure.
Fifty years ago the general raising of the school-leaving age to sixteen was an example of this movement.
During the past decade the program has been carried on through expansion of free higher education in state universities, state colleges, and community colleges.
The reaffirmation of American faith in the comprehensive high school, as expressed in the Conant study, is another indication of the liveliness of the ideal of maximizing opportunity through the equalizing of educational opportunity.
The recent federal government's student-loan program is another step in the direction of making higher education more available to lower-status youth.
Meanwhile, the private colleges have increased their tuition rates so much that they have raised an economic barrier which dwarfs their scholarship funds.
The gains in educational opportunity during the past decade have taken place largely in the publicly supported institutions.
Unfortunately, however, and for reasons to be discussed in the following chapter, no rate relationships can be made completely nondiscriminatory as long as all or some of the rates must be set above marginal costs in order to yield adequate revenues.
And this fact may explain some of the disagreements among the experts as to the more rational formulas for the apportionment of total costs among different units of service.
Here, the choice is that between the horns of a dilemma.
Two major types of fully distributed cost analysis
The double-step type
Despite an ambiguity due to its failure clearly to define relative costs, the above exposition of fully distributed costing goes about as far as one can go toward expressing the basic philosophy of the practice.
For more explicit expositions, one must distinguish different types of analyses.
The first, or double-step, type might also be called the railroad type because of its application to railroads (and other transportation agencies) by the Cost Section of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The Cost Section distinguishes between (directly) variable costs and constant costs in a manner noted in the preceding chapter.
The variable costs alone are assigned to the different units of freight traffic as representing long-run out-of-pocket costs--a term with a meaning here not distinctly different from that of the economist's long-run marginal costs.
There remains a residue of total costs, or total revenue requirements which, since it is found to behave as if it were constant over substantial variations in traffic density, is strictly unallocable on a cost-finding basis.
In recent years, this burden (which includes allowances for revenue deficiencies in the passenger business and in less-than-carload freight traffic!
) has amounted to about one third of those total revenue requirements which the carload freight business is supposed to be called upon to meet.
Since this book is concerned only incidentally with railroad rates, it will not attempt to analyze the methods by which the staff of the Interstate Commerce Commission has estimated out-of-pocket costs and apportioned residue costs.
Suffice it to say that the usefulness of the latter apportionment is questionable.
and a mere cost apportionment which somehow spreads among the classes and units of service even those costs that are strictly unallocable from the standpoint of specific cost determination.
The single-step type
We turn now to a type of fully distributed cost analysis which, unlike the railroad type, draws no distinction between cost allocation and cost apportionment: the single-step type.
It might be called the public utility type because of the considerable use to which it has been put in gas and electric utility rate cases.
Here no attempt is made, first to determine out-of-pocket or marginal costs and then to superimpose on these costs reasonably distributed residues of total costs.
Instead, all of the total costs are treated as variable costs, although these costs are divided into costs that are deemed to be functions of different variables.
As already noted in an earlier paragraph, the more familiar cost analyses of utility enterprises or utility systems divide the total costs among a number of major classes of service, such as residential, commercial, industrial power, street lighting, etc..
This grand division permits many costs to be assigned in their entirety to some one class, such as street lighting, or at least to be excluded completely from some important class or classes.
High-tension industrial power service, for example, would not be charged with any share of the maintenance costs or capital costs of the low-tension distribution lines.
But the major portions of the total costs of a utility business are common or joint to all, or nearly all, classes of customers;
and these costs must somehow be apportioned among the various classes and then must somehow be reapportioned among the units of service in order to report unit costs that can serve as tentative measures of reasonable rates.
The general basis on which these common costs are assigned to differently measured units of service will be illustrated by the following highly simplified problem of an electric-utility cost analysis.
But before turning to this example, we must distinguish two subtypes of analysis, both of which belong to the single-step type rather than to the double-step type.
Here, an apportionment, say, of $5,000,000 of the total costs to residential service as a class would include an allowance of perhaps 6 per cent as the cost of whatever capital is deemed to have been devoted to the service of the residential consumers.
But in the second subtype, which I take to be the one more frequently applied, only the operating expenses and not the cost of capital or fair return are apportioned directly among the various classes of service.
To be sure, the capital investments in (or, alternatively, the estimated fair values of) the plant and equipment are apportioned among the different classes, as are also the gross revenues received from the sales of the different services.
But any resulting excess of revenues received from a given class of service over the operating costs imputed to this class is reported as a return realized on the capital investment attributed to the same service.
Other services will show different rates of return, some probably much lower and some higher.
Needless to say, any such inference would be quite unwarranted.
For the reason just suggested, I shall assume the use of the first subtype of fully distributed cost apportionment in the following simplified example.
That is to say, an allowance for cost of capital will be assumed to be included directly in the cost apportionment.
Three-part analysis of the costs of an electric utility business
In order to simplify the exposition of a typical fully apportioned cost analysis, let us assume the application of the analysis to an electric utility company supplying a single city with power generated by its own steam-generation plant.
Let us also assume the existence of only one class or type of service, all of which is supplied at the same voltage, phase, etc. to residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
This latter assumption will permit us to center attention on the most controversial aspect of modern public utility cost analysis--the distinction among costs that are functions of outputs of the same service measured along different dimensions.
Since the company under review is supplying what we are here regarding as only one kind of service, we might suppose that the problem of total cost apportionment would be very simple;
indeed, that it would be limited to a finding of the total annual operating and capital costs of the business, followed by a calculation of this total in terms of annual cost per kilowatt-hour of consumption.
In fact, however, the problem is not so simple.
For a statement of costs per kilowatt-hour would ignore the fact that many of these costs are not a function of kilowatt-hour output (or consumption) of energy.
A recognition of multiple cost functions is therefore required.
The simplest division, and the one most frequently used (with subdivisions) in gas and electric rate cases, is a threefold division of the total operating and capital costs into customer costs, energy or volumetric costs, and demand or capacity costs.
If this threefold division of costs were to have its counterpart in the actual rates of charge for service, as it actually does have in some rates, there would result a three-part rate for any one class of service.
For example, the monthly bill of a residential consumer might be the sum of a $1 customer charge, a $5 charge for 250 kilowatt-hours of energy at
per kilowatt-hour, and a $2 charge for a maximum demand of 2 kilowatts during the month at the rate of $1 per kilowatt--a total bill of $8 for that month.
But our present interest lies in the measurement of costs of service, and only indirectly in rates that may or may not be designed to cover these costs.
Let us therefore consider each of the three types of cost in turn, recognizing that this simplified classification is used only for illustrative purposes;
costs actually vary in much more complex ways.
The customer costs
These are those operating and capital costs found to vary with number of customers regardless, or almost regardless, of power consumption.
Included as a minimum are the costs of metering and billing along with whatever other expenses the company must incur in taking on another consumer.
These minimum costs may come to $1 per month, more or less, for residential and small commercial customers, although they are substantially higher for large industrial users, who require more costly connections and metering devices.
The preconditions of sociology have remained largely unexamined by the sociologist.
Like primitive numbers in mathematics, the entire axiological framework is taken to rest upon its operational worth.
But what is the operational worth of a sociology which mimetically reproduces the idea of physical models?
Is it not the task of philosophy to see what intelligible meaning can be assigned to the most sacred canons in social science?
It has become painfully clear that the very attempt to make the language of social research free of values by erecting mathematical and physical models, is itself a conditioned response to a world which pays a premium price for technological manipulation.
(cf. Rapoport, 1959::
Ch. 11.
) Here I think the role of the philosopher becomes apparent.
The simple pragmatic success of the sociology of small groups needs to be questioned.
For if the small group notion involves the implicit claim that the phenomena of sociological investigations are of atomic or subatomic proportions, the philosopher needs to know the extent to which such entities are valid.
The mere exploration of the unconscious ground of present-day sociology offers a rich vein of philosophical and logical investigation.
(cf. Brodbeck, 1959::
Ch. 12.
A parallel function for philosophy is the study of the relation between perceptions experientially received and conceptions logically formed.
Philosophy can supply adequate criteria of meaning in the selection of socially viable categories.
This involves a sifting of the empirical and rational elements entering into each social science statement.
Merton's functional sociology may have great practical use in the study of different cultures, yet it is perfectly clear, as Nagel (1957::
247 - 83) and Hempel (1959::
271 - 307) indicate, that the concept of function in sociology has been built up from physiological and biological models, in which the notions of teleology, i.e., metaphysical purpose, are central.
(cf. Chapter 9.
) Functionalism as a sociological credo is, therefore, not a direct consequence of observations, but rather an indirect consequence of philosophical inference and judgment.
The purpose of this sort of philosophical study of sociology is not to tyrannize but to clarify the principles of social science.
It is absurd to speak of philosophy as a superior enterprise to sociology, since the former is a logical, rational discipline, where sociology is essentially descriptive and empirical.
Such a position entails the negation of philosophy in its Platonic form as something soaring above and embracing the empirical and mathematical sciences.
But contrary to Whitehead, philosophy is not a synonym for Plato.
The uses of philosophy as a logical clearing house are manifest to any approach that does not descend to pure sensationalism.
However, when philosophy attempts to stand above the sciences, to dictate the conditions of empirical research, it becomes formal metaphysics;
shaping the contours of life to fit the needs of legends.
The notion of philosophy as Queen Bee may fit well with authoritarian modes of political ideology, but it has been noted that the price of such an imperial notion of philosophy is the frustration and flagellation of the social sciences.
(cf. Wetter, 1952::
Pt. 2, Ch. 5;
Horowitz 1957b.
Metaphysics is no longer a direct grappling with nature as it was in antiquity.
It has surrendered any claims of description in favor of psychological accounts of nothingness, as in Heidegger's system (1929).
Science is mocked for wishing to know nothing of Nothing, in a last ditch effort to save the gods at the expense of men.
It is not positivism which has isolated metaphysics from reality by distinguishing between description and prescription.
It is simply revealing the state to which metaphysical thinking has fallen during this century.
Consider the traditional four fields of philosophy: logic, ethics, epistemology and esthetics.
It is a commonplace that to the degree these special preserves of past philosophic hunting grounds establish an empirical content and suitable methodological criteria, they move away from philosophy as such.
What is left to traditional systems of philosophy is, in effect, only the history of these fields prior to their becoming rigorous enough to abide by the canons of scientific method.
In this situation, philosophy has survived by separating itself from metaphysics, by showing the ultimate questions to be the meaningless questions.
The relinquishing by philosophy of pretentious claims to empirical priority gives it an ability to treat problems of meaning and truth which in the past it was unable to examine because of its missionary attitude to knowledge of more humble sorts.
In the new situation, philosophy is able to provide the social sciences with the same guidance that mathematics offers the physical sciences, a reservoir of logical relations that can be used in framing hypotheses having explanatory and predictive value.
Beyond this, philosophy may urge the social sciences forward by asking the type of question that falls outside the present scope of social inquiry, but within its potential domain of relevance.
In this connection, it might be noted that the theory of games was a mathematical discovery long before its uses in political science were exploited.
Likewise, Kant formulated the nebular hypothesis, according to which the solar system was evolved from a rotating mass of incandescent gas, nearly a half century before its scientific value was made plain by Laplace in his Systeme Du Monde.
This does not mean that philosophy resolves the problems it generates, any more so than Riemann's geometry settled the physical status of the space-time continuum.
But the forceful presentation of new issues for the sciences to work on is itself a monumental task.
To those raised on Marcel's Homo Viator and Heidegger's das Nichtige, this may seem a modest role for philosophy.
However, modesty and triviality are different qualities.
Philosophy conceived of as servant to the sciences might appear as less dramatic than philosophy which jeers as the sciences evolve.
The ceaseless effort to understand and measure the distance mankind has traversed since its primitive anthropological status offers a more durable sort of drama.
By clarifying fundamental premises in the social sciences, and defining the logical problems emergent at the borderlands of each new scientific discipline, philosophy can offer the sort of distinction that can accelerate growth in human understanding.
Philosophy can prevent the working scientist from becoming slothful and self-content by noting the assumptions and level at which a hypothesis or theory is framed.
The dissection of scientific theory, the examination of a theory from the vantage-points of language, epistemology, and ethics, is itself a distinct contribution to knowledge, no less so because of its removal from empirical research.
The realm of science, whatever the degree of precision in formulations, covers the range of prediction and explanation.
(cf. Hempel and Oppenheim, 1948::
135 - 75.
) Whatever philosophy is conceived to be, its rationalist, logistic attitude to evidence should make it clear that it is something other than science.
For some forms of philosophy, this very division between the empirical and the rational becomes a sign of the metaphysical superiority of the latter.
Bergson and Leroy announce that the secret is the center of a philosophy and thereafter a hundred followers declare secrecy a higher verity.
This is simply a confession of intellectual sterility spruced up to look virtuous.
For as Merleau-Ponty indicated (1953), it is not the secret which is important, but the removal of secrecy.
In this, philosophy and science share a common goal.
The hypostatization of the secret nonetheless guarantees that the division of analytical and synthetic philosophies shall not be overcome by even the most persuasive argument;
for this division is but an abstract representation of the social struggle between mysticism and science.
The mystification of metaphysical systems does not imply the demise of philosophy, only the close of a philosophic age which demanded metaphysics to be rational and logical.
(cf. McGlynn: 1958.
) Scientific systems, and this includes even the relation of mechanist to relativist physics, are built upon, refined and corrected.
Philosophic systems, by the very nature of their completeness, are overthrown by rival systems.
In addition to the incompleteness of science and the completeness of metaphysics, they differ in that science is essentially descriptive, while philosophy in its inherited forms, tends to be goal-oriented, teleological and prescriptive.
When dealing with the actual relation of philosophy to the sociology of knowledge, or better the role of philosophy in assisting research on the social sources of ideas, one has to become necessarily selective.
Certain features we have touched upon: philosophy as a logical, deductive system from which a social science methodology can be built up;
philosophic analysis of the assumptions and presumptions of the social sciences;
and philosophy as a guide to possible integration of supposedly disparate sociological investigations.
The objection will be raised that the most important role of philosophy in relation to social science has been omitted, namely the status of ultimate value questions and norms operative in the social sciences.
Specifically, it will be asked whether the real questions people ask are not the ultimate questions that social science finds itself impotent in the face of.
What then is the status of such questions as: is society the ground of human existence or a means to an individual goal?
Do societies develop according to cosmic patterns or are they subject only to the free choice of individuals?
Does society really exist as an entity over and above the agglomeration of men?
I think it must be said that, contrary to metaphysical insistence, these are questions so framed as to defy either empirical exploration or rational solutions.
As Simmel (1908) and Dilthey (1922) indicated, questions of whether the value of life is individual or social are not questions, but assertions of faith made to appear as legitimate questions.
Such pseudo-questions assume that answers of concrete significance can be supplied to statements involving undefined universals.
Social theory has no more right to expect results from meaningless questions, than physics has the right to expect a theological solution to the wave-particle controversy.
It is not that such questions are not asked.
It is rather that introducing them into social analysis reflects not so much a search for truth as for certainty.
An operational approach to sociology can never expect abstract certainty, since it is certainty which every new discovery in science either replaces or reshapes.
To raise the added objection that men require certainty on psychological grounds, answers to ultimate questions having an irrational rather than scientific basis, is in a real sense to undermine the objection itself.
For what concerns all scientific disciplines is precisely that which can be captured for the rational, i.e., for the scientific determination of what in past ages was considered ultimate and irrational.
A philosophy which attempts to supply ultimate answers in an ultimate way reveals its acquiescence in the shortcomings of men, an impatience with partial, tentative solutions.
Men have always lived in a tentative world, and in suspension of ultimate judgments where and when necessary.
Uncertainty overcoming itself is the precondition of the quest for new and more precise information about the world.
Without such uncertainty we are left with a set of dogmas and myths.
The functional interplay of philosophy and science should, as a minimum, guarantee a meaningful option to myth-making.
A degree of indefiniteness is a salutary condition for the growth of science.
But neither was the statement empirical, for goodness was not a quality like red or squeaky that could be seen or heard.
What were they to do, then, with these awkward judgments of value?
To find a place for them in their theory of knowledge would require them to revise the theory radically, and yet that theory was what they regarded as their most important discovery.
It appeared that the theory could be saved in one way only.
If it could be shown that judgments of good and bad were not judgments at all, that they asserted nothing true or false, but merely expressed emotions like Hurrah or Fiddlesticks, then these wayward judgments would cease from troubling and weary heads could be at rest.
This is the course the positivists took.
They explained value judgments by explaining them away.
Now I do not think their view will do.
But before discussing it, I should like to record one vote of thanks to them for the clarity with which they have stated their case.
It has been said of John Stuart Mill that he wrote so clearly that he could be found out.
This theory has been put so clearly and precisely that it deserves criticism of the same kind, and this I will do my best to supply.
The theory claims to show by analysis that when we say, That is good, we do not mean to assert a character of the subject of which we are thinking.
I shall argue that we do mean to do just that.
Let us work through an example, and the simpler and commoner the better.
There is perhaps no value statement on which people would more universally agree than the statement that intense pain is bad.
Let us take a set of circumstances in which I happen to be interested on the legislative side and in which I think every one of us might naturally make such a statement.
We come upon a rabbit that has been caught in one of the brutal traps in common use.
There are signs that it has struggled for days to escape and that in a frenzy of hunger, pain, and fear, it has all but eaten off its own leg.
The attempt failed: the animal is now dead.
As we think of the long and excruciating pain it must have suffered, we are very likely to say: It was a bad thing that the little animal should suffer so.
The positivist tells us that when we say this we are only expressing our present emotion.
I hold, on the contrary, that we mean to assert something of the pain itself, namely, that it was bad--bad when and as it occurred.
Consider what follows from the positivist view.
On that view, nothing good or bad happened in the case until I came on the scene and made my remark.
For what I express in my remark is something going on in me at the time, and that of course did not exist until I did come on the scene.
The pain of the rabbit was not itself bad;
nothing evil was happening when that pain was being endured;
badness, in the only sense in which it is involved at all, waited for its appearance till I came and looked and felt.
Now that this is at odds with our meaning may be shown as follows.
Let us put to ourselves the hypothesis that we had not come on the scene and that the rabbit never was discovered.
Are we prepared to say that in that case nothing bad occurred in the sense in which we said it did?
Clearly not.
If so, then it is clear that in saying the suffering was bad we are not expressing our feelings only.
We are saying that the pain was bad when and as it occurred and before anyone took an attitude toward it.
The first argument is thus an ideal experiment in which we use the method of difference.
It removes our present expression and shows that the badness we meant would not be affected by this, whereas on positivist grounds it should be.
The second argument applies the method in the reverse way.
It ideally removes the past event, and shows that this would render false what we mean to say, whereas on positivist grounds it should not.
Let us suppose that the animal did not in fact fall into the trap and did not suffer at all, but that we mistakenly believe it did, and say as before that its suffering was an evil thing.
On the positivist theory, everything I sought to express by calling it evil in the first case is still present in the second.
In the only sense in which badness is involved at all, whatever was bad in the first case is still present in its entirety, since all that is expressed in either case is a state of feeling, and that feeling is still there.
And our question is, is such an implication consistent with what we meant?
Clearly it is not.
The suggestion that in saying something evil had occurred we were after all making no mistake, because we had never meant anyhow to say anything about the past suffering, seems to me merely frivolous.
If we did not mean to say this, why should we be so relieved on finding that the suffering had not occurred?
On the theory before us, such relief would be groundless, for in that suffering itself there was nothing bad at all, and hence in its nonoccurrence there would be nothing to be relieved about.
The positivist theory would here distort our meaning beyond recognition.
So far as I can see, there is only one way out for the positivist.
He holds that goodness and badness lie in feelings of approval or disapproval.
And there is a way in which he might hold that badness did in this case precede our own feeling of disapproval without belonging to the pain itself.
The pain in itself was neutral;
but unfortunately the rabbit, on no grounds at all, took up toward this neutral object an attitude of disapproval and that made it for the first time, and in the only intelligible sense, bad.
This way of escape is theoretically possible, but since it has grave difficulties of its own and has not, so far as I know, been urged by positivists, it is perhaps best not to spend time over it.
I come now to a third argument, which again is very simple.
When we come upon the rabbit and make our remark about its suffering being a bad thing, we presumably make it with some feeling;
the positivists are plainly right in saying that such remarks do usually express feeling.
But suppose that a week later we revert to the incident in thought and make our statement again.
And suppose that the circumstances have now so changed that the feeling with which we made the remark in the first place has faded.
The pathetic evidence is no longer before us;
and we are now so fatigued in body and mind that feeling is, as we say, quite dead.
In these circumstances, since what was expressed by the remark when first made is, on the theory before us, simply absent, the remark now expresses nothing.
It is as empty as the word Hurrah would be when there was no enthusiasm behind it.
And this seems to me untrue.
When we repeat the remark that such suffering was a bad thing, the feeling with which we made it last week may be at or near the vanishing point, but if we were asked whether we meant to say what we did before, we should certainly answer Yes.
We should say that we made our point with feeling the first time and little or no feeling the second time, but that it was the same point we were making.
And if we can see that what we meant to say remains the same, while the feeling varies from intensity to near zero, it is not the feeling that we primarily meant to express.
I come now to a fourth consideration.
We all believe that toward acts or effects of a certain kind one attitude is fitting and another not;
but on the theory before us such a belief would not make sense.
Broad and Ross have lately contended that this fitness is one of the main facts of ethics, and I suspect they are right.
But that is not exactly my point.
My point is this: whether there is such fitness or not, we all assume that there is, and if we do, we express in moral judgments more than the subjectivists say we do.
Let me illustrate.
In his novel The House Of The Dead, Dostoevsky tells of his experiences in a Siberian prison camp.
Whatever the unhappy inmates of such camps are like today, Dostoevsky's companions were about as grim a lot as can be imagined.
I have heard stories, he writes, of the most terrible, the most unnatural actions, of the most monstrous murders, told with the most spontaneous, childishly merry laughter.
Most of us would say that in this delight at the killing of others or the causing of suffering there is something very unfitting.
If we were asked why we thought so, we should say that these things involve great evil and are wrong, and that to take delight in what is evil or wrong is plainly unfitting.
Now on the subjectivist view, this answer is ruled out.
For before someone takes up an attitude toward death, suffering, or their infliction, they have no moral quality at all.
There is therefore nothing about them to which an attitude of approval or condemnation could be fitting.
They are in themselves neutral, and, so far as they get a moral quality, they get it only through being invested with it by the attitude of the onlooker.
But if that is true, why is any attitude more fitting than any other?
Would applause, for example, be fitting if, apart from the applause, there were nothing good to applaud?
Would condemnation be fitting if, independently of the condemnation, there were nothing bad to condemn?
In such a case, any attitude would be as fitting or unfitting as any other, which means that the notion of fitness has lost all point.
Indeed, we are forced to go much farther.
If goodness and badness lie in attitudes only and hence are brought into being by them, those men who greeted death and misery with childishly merry laughter are taking the only sensible line.
If there is nothing evil in these things, if they get their moral complexion only from our feeling about them, why shouldn't they be greeted with a cheer?
To greet them with repulsion would turn what before was neutral into something bad;
it would needlessly bring badness into the world;
and even on subjectivist assumptions that does not seem very bright.
On the other hand, to greet them with delight would convert what before was neutral into something good;
it would bring goodness into the world.
The injured German veteran was a former miner, twenty-four years old, who had been wounded by shrapnel in the back of the head.
This resulted in damage to the occipital lobe and very probably to the left side of the cerebellum also.
In any event, the extraordinary result of this injury was that he became psychically blind, while at the same time, apparently, the sense of touch remained essentially intact.
Psychical blindness is a condition in which there is a total absence of visual memory-images, a condition in which, for example, one is unable to remember something just seen or to conjure up a memory-picture of the visible appearance of a well-known friend in his absence.
The necessary inference, as the authors themselves interpret it, would seem to be this: ((1) Spatial qualities are not among those grasped by the sense of touch, as such.
We do not arrive at spatial images by means of the sense of touch by itself.
(2) Spatiality becomes part of the tactual sensation only by way of visual representations;
that is, there is, in the true sense, only a visual space.
The underlying assumption, of course, is that only sight and touch enable us, in any precise and fully dependable way, to locate objects in space beyond us, the other senses being decidedly inferior, if not totally inadequate, in this regard.
This is an assumption with which few would be disposed to quarrel.
The force of the authors' analysis (if indeed it has any force) can be felt by the reader, I believe, only after three questions have been successfully answered.
(1) What allows us to think that the patient had no third-dimensional representations when his eyes were closed?
(2) What evidence is there that he was psychically blind?
(3) How can we be sure that his sense of touch was not profoundly disturbed by his head injury?
We shall consider these in the inverse order of their presentation.
The answer the authors give to it, therefore, is of supreme importance.
The authors insist, however, that these abnormalities in the sense of touch were due absolutely to no organic disorders in that sense faculty but rather to the injuries which the patient had sustained to the sense of sight.
First of all, what is their evidence that the tactual apparatus was fundamentally undamaged?
(1) When an object was placed in the patient's hand, he had no difficulty determining whether it was warm or cold, sharp or blunt, rough or smooth, flexible, soft, or hard;
and he could tell, simply by the feel of it, whether it was made of wood, iron, cloth, rubber, and so on.
And he could recognize, by touch alone, articles which he had handled immediately before, even though they were altogether unfamiliar to him and could not be identified by him;
that is, he was unaware what kind of objects they were or what their use was.
(2) The patient attained an astonishing efficiency in a new trade.
And so the authors conclude: The conduct of the patient in his every-day life and in his work, even more than the foregoing facts (mentioned above under 1), leave positively no room for doubt that the sense of touch, in the ordinary sense of the word, was unaffected;
or, to put the same thing in physiological terms, that the performance-capacity of the tactual apparatus, from the periphery up to the tactual centers in the brain,--that is, from one end to the other--was unimpaired.
If the argument is accepted as essentially sound up to this point, it remains for us to consider whether the patient's difficulties in orienting himself spatially and in locating objects in space with the sense of touch can be explained by his defective visual condition.
But before we can do this, we must first find answers to our original questions 1 and 2;
then we shall perhaps be in a position to provide something like a complete answer to the question at hand.
In what ways, then, did the patient's psychical blindness manifest itself?
He could not see objects as unified, self-contained, and organized figures, as a person does with normal vision.
The meaning of this, as we shall see, is that he had no fund of visual memory-images of objects as objects;
and, therefore, he could not recognize even long-familiar things upon seeing them again.
According to his own testimony, he never actually saw things as shaped but only as generally amorphous blots of color of a more or less indefinite size;
at their edges they slipped pretty much out of focus altogether.
But by the tracing procedure, he could, in a strange obviously kinesthetic manner, find the unseen form;
could piece, as it were, the jumbled mass together into an organized whole and then recognize it as a man or a triangle or whatever it turned out to be.
If, however, the figure to be discerned were complicated, composed of several interlocking subfigures, and so on, even the tracing process failed him, and he could not focus even relatively simple shapes among its parts.
The patient himself denied that he had any visual imagery at all;
and there was ample evidence of the following sort to corroborate him.
After a conversation with another man, he was able to recount practically everything that had been said but could not describe at all what the other man looked like.
Nor could he call up memory-pictures of close friends or relatives.
In short, both his own declarations and his figural blindness, when he looked at objects, seem to present undeniable evidence that he had simply no visual memory at all.
He was oblivious of the form of the object actually being viewed, precisely because he could not assign it to a visual shape, already learned and held in visual memory, as persons of normal vision do.
He could not recognize it;
he was absolutely unfamiliar with it because he had no visual memory at all.
Therefore, his only recourse was to learn the shape all over again for each new visual experience of the same individual object or type of object;
and this he could do only by going over its mass with the tracing procedure.
Then he might finally recognize it, apparently by combining the visual blot, actually being seen, with tactual feelings in the head or body accompanying the tracing movements.
This would mean, it can readily be seen, that, again, for each new visual experience, the tracing motions would have to be repeated because of the absence of visual imagery.
Men, trees, automobiles, houses, and so on--objects continually confronted in everyday life--had each its characteristic blot-appearance and became easily recognizable, at the very beginning of tracing, by an inference as to what each was.
Dice, for example, he inferred from black dots on a white surface.
He evidently could not actually see the corners of these objects, but their size and the dots gave them away.
And the authors give numerous instances of calculated guessing on the patient's part to show how large a role it played in his process of readapting himself and how proficient he became at it.
Often he seems even to have been able to guess correctly, without the tracing motions, solely on the basis of qualitative differences among the blot-like things which appeared in his visual experience.
Perhaps the very important question--What is, then, exactly the role of kinesthetic sensations in the patient's ability to recognize forms and shapes by means of the tracing movements when he is actually looking at things?
-- has now been raised in the reader's mind and in the following form.
How, then, do the kinesthetic sensations function in all this?
The authors set about answering this fundamental question through a detailed investigation of the patient's ability, tactually, (1) to perceive figure and (2) to locate objects in space, with his eyes closed (or turned away from the object concerned).
Quite naturally, they make the investigation, first, by prohibiting the patient from making any movements at all and then, later, by repeating it and allowing the patient to move in any way he wanted to.
When the patient was not allowed to move his body in any way at all, the following striking results occurred.
Whenever artists, indeed, turned to actual representations or molded three-dimensional figures, which were rare down to 800 B.C., they tended to reflect reality (see Plate 6a, 9b);
a schematic, abstract treatment of men and animals, by intent, rose only in the late eighth century.
To speak of this underlying view of the world is to embark upon matters of subjective judgment.
At the least, however, one may conclude that Geometric potters sensed a logical order;
their principles of composition stand very close to those which appear in the Homeric epics and the hexameter line.
Their world, again, was a still simple, traditional age which was only slowly beginning to appreciate the complexity of life.
And perhaps an observer of the vases will not go too far in deducing that the outlook of their makers and users was basically stable and secure.
The storms of the past had died away, and the great upheaval which was to mark the following century had not yet begun to disturb men's minds.
Throughout the work of the later ninth century a calm, severe serenity displays itself.
In the vases this spirit may perhaps at times bore or repel one in its internal self-satisfaction, but the best of the Geometric pins have rightly been considered among the most beautiful ever made in the Greek world.
The ninth century was in its artistic work the spiritually freest and most self-sufficient between past and future, and the loving skill spent by its artists upon their products is a testimonial to their sense that what they were doing was important and was appreciated.
The Aegean in 800 B.C.
Geometric pottery has not yet received the thorough, detailed study which it deserves, partly because the task is a mammoth one and partly because some of its local manifestations, as at Argos, are only now coming to light.
From even a cursory inspection of its many aspects, however, the historian can deduce several fundamental conclusions about the progress of the Aegean world down to 800 B.C.
The general intellectual outlook which had appeared in the eleventh century was now consolidated to a significant degree.
Much which was in embryo in 1000 had become reasonably well developed by 800.
In this process the Minoan-Mycenaean inheritance had been transmuted or finally rejected;
the Aegean world which had existed before 1000 differed from that which rises more clearly in our vision after 800.
Those modern scholars who urge that we must keep in mind the fundamental continuity of Aegean development from earliest times--granted occasional irruptions of peoples and ideas from outside--are correct;
but all too many observers have been misled by this fact into minimizing the degree of change which took place in the early first millennium.
The focus of novelty in this world now lay in the south-eastern districts of the Greek mainland, and by 800 virtually the entire Aegean, always excepting its northern shores, had accepted the Geometric style of pottery.
While Protogeometric vases usually turn up, especially outside Greece proper, together with as many or more examples of local stamp, these non-Greek patterns had mostly vanished by the later ninth century.
In their place came local variations within the common style--tentative, as it were, in Protogeometric products but truly distinct and sharply defined as the Geometric spirit developed.
Attica, though important, was not the only teacher of this age.
One can take a vase of about 800 B.C. and, without any knowledge of its place of origin, venture to assign it to a specific area;
imitation and borrowing of motifs now become ascertainable.
The potters of the Aegean islands thus stood apart from those of the mainland, and in Greece itself Argive, Corinthian, Attic, Boeotian, and other Geometric sequences have each their own hallmarks.
These local variations were to become ever sharper in the next century and a half.
The same conclusions can be drawn from the other physical evidence of the Dark ages, from linguistic distribution, and from the survivals of early social, political, and religious patterns into later ages.
By 800 B.C. the Aegean was an area of common tongue and of common culture.
On these pillars rested that solid basis for life and thought which was soon to be manifested in the remarkably unlimited ken of the Iliad.
Everywhere within the common pattern, however, one finds local diversity;
Greek history and culture were enduringly fertilized, and plagued, by the interplay of these conjoined yet opposed factors.
Further we cannot go, for the Dark ages deserve their name.
Many aspects of civilization were not yet sufficiently crystallized to find expression, nor could the simple economic and social foundations of this world support a lofty structure.
The epic poems, the consolidation of the Greek pantheon, the rise of firm political units, the self-awareness which could permit painted and sculptured representations of men--all these had to await the progress of following decades.
What we have seen in this chapter, we have seen only dimly, and yet the results, however general, are worth the search.
These are the centuries in which the inhabitants of the Aegean world settled firmly into their minds and into their institutions the foundations of the Hellenic outlook, independent of outside forces.
To interpret, indeed, the era from 1000 to 800 as a period mainly of consolidation may be a necessary but unfortunate defect born of our lack of detailed information;
if we could see more deeply, we probably would find many side issues and wrong turnings which came to an end within the period.
The historian can only point out those lines which were major enough to find reflection in our limited evidence, and must hope that future excavations will enrich our understanding.
Throughout the Dark ages, it is clear, the Greek world had been developing slowly but consistently.
The pace could now be accelerated, for the inhabitants of the Aegean stood on firm ground.
Chapter 5 the early eighth century
the landscape of Greek history broadens widely, and rather abruptly, in the eighth century B.C., the age of Homer's rosy-fingered Dawn.
The first slanting rays of the new day cannot yet dispel all the dark shadows which lie across the Aegean world;
but our evidence grows considerably in variety and shows more unmistakably some of the lines of change.
For this period, as for earlier centuries, pottery remains the most secure source;
the ceramic material of the age is more abundant, more diversified, and more indicative of the hopes and fears of its makers, who begin to show scenes of human life and death.
Figurines and simple chapels presage the emergence of sculpture and architecture in Greece;
objects in gold, ivory, and bronze grow more numerous.
Since writing was practiced in the Aegean before the end of the century, we may hope that the details of tradition will now be occasionally useful.
Though it is not easy to apply the evidence of the Iliad to any specific era, this marvelous product of the epic tradition had certainly taken definitive shape by 750.
The Dipylon Geometric pottery of Athens and the Iliad are amazing manifestations of the inherent potentialities of Greek civilization;
but both were among the last products of a phase which was ending.
Greek civilization was swirling toward its great revolution, in which the developed qualities of the Hellenic outlook were suddenly to break forth.
The revolution was well under way before 700 B.C., and premonitory signs go back virtually across the century.
The era, however, is Janus-faced.
While many tokens point forward, the main achievements stand as a culmination of the simple patterns of the Dark ages.
The dominant pottery of the century was Geometric;
political organization revolved about the basileis;
trade was just beginning to expand;
the gods who protected the Greek countryside were only now putting on their sharply anthropomorphic dress.
The modern student, who knows what was to come next, is likely to place first the factors of change which are visible in the eighth century.
Not all men of the period would have accepted this emphasis.
Many potters clung to the past the more determinedly as they were confronted with radically new ideas;
the poet of the Iliad deliberately archaized.
Although it is not possible to sunder old and new in this era, I shall consider in the present chapter primarily the first decades of the eighth century and shall interpret them as an apogee of the first stage of Greek civilization.
On this principle of division I must postpone the evolution of sculpture, architecture, society, and politics;
for the developments in these areas make sense only if they are connected to the age of revolution itself.
The growing contacts between Aegean and Orient are also a phase which should be linked primarily to the remarkable broadening of Hellenic culture after 750.
We shall not be able entirely to pass over these connections to the East as we consider Ripe Geometric pottery, the epic and the myth, and the religious evolution of early Greece;
the important point, however, is that these magnificent achievements, unlike those of later decades, were only incidentally influenced by Oriental models.
The antecedents of Dipylon vases and of the Iliad lie in the Aegean past.
Dipylon pottery
the pottery of the first half of the eighth century is commonly called Ripe Geometric.
The severe yet harmonious vases of the previous fifty years, the Strong Geometric style of the late ninth century, display as firm a mastery of the principles underlying Geometric pottery;
but artists now were ready to refine and elaborate their inheritance.
The vases which resulted had different shapes, far more complex decoration, and a larger sense of style.
Beyond the aesthetic and technical aspects of this expansion we must consider the change in pottery style on broader lines.
In earlier centuries men had had enough to do in rebuilding a fundamental sense of order after chaos.
They had had to work on very simple foundations and had not dared to give rein to impulses.
The potters, in particular, had virtually eschewed freehand drawing, elaborate motifs, and the curving lines of nature, while yet expressing a belief that there was order in the universe.
In their vases were embodied the basic aesthetic and logical characteristics of Greek civilization, at first hesitantly in Protogeometric work, and then more confidently in the initial stages of the Geometric style.
By 800 social and cultural security had been achieved, at least on a simple plane;
it was time to take bigger steps, to venture on experiments.
Ripe Geometric potters continued to employ the old syntax of ornaments and shapes and made use of the well-defined though limited range of motifs which they had inherited.
In these respects the vases of the early eighth century represent a culmination of earlier lines of progress.
To the ancestral lore, however, new materials were added.
Painters left less and less of a vase in a plain dark color;
instead they divided the surface into many bands or covered it by all-over patterns into which freehand drawing began to creep.
The rows of animals and birds, in particular, suggest awareness of Oriental animal friezes, transmitted perhaps via Syrian silver bowls and textiles, but the specific forms of these rows on local vases and metal products are nonetheless Greek.
Though the spread of this type of decoration in the Aegean has not yet been precisely determined, it seems to appear first in the Cyclades, which were among the leading exporters of pottery throughout the century.
As the material at the command of the potters grew and the volume of their production increased, the local variations within a common style became more evident.
Plate 12 illustrates four examples, which are Ripe or Late Geometric work of common spirit but of different schools.
Cook had discovered a beef in his possession a few days earlier and, when he could not show the hide, arrested him.
Thinking the evidence insufficient to get a conviction, he later released him.
Even while suffering the trip to his home, Cook swore to Moore and Lane that he would kill the Indian.
Three weeks later, following his recovery, armed with a writ issued by the Catskill justice on affidavits prepared by the district attorney, Cook and Russell rode to arrest Martinez.
Arriving at daybreak, they found Julio in his corral and demanded that he surrender.
Instead, he whirled and ran to his house for a gun, forcing them to kill him, Cook reported.
Both Cook's and Russell's lives were threatened by the Mexicans following the killing, but the company officers felt that in the end, it would serve to quiet them despite their immediate emotion.
General manager Pels even suggested that it might be wise to keep the Mexicans in suspense rather than accept their offers to sell out and move away, and try to have a few punished.
On February 17, Russell and Cook were sent to the Pena Flor community on the Vermejo to see about renting out ranches the company had purchased.
While talking with Julian M. Beall, Francisco Archuleta and Juan Marcus appeared, both heavily armed, and after watching the house for a while, rode away.
It was nearly sundown before they finished the business with Beall and began riding down the stream.
They had traveled only a short distance when they spotted five Mexicans riding along a horse-trail across the stream just ahead of them.
Suspecting an ambush, the two deputies decided to ride up a side canyon taking a short cut into Catskill.
After spending two nights (Wednesday and Thursday) in Catskill, the deputies again headed for the Vermejo to finish their business.
They stayed with a rancher Friday night and by eleven o'clock Saturday morning passed the old Garnett Lee ranch.
Half a mile below at the mouth of Salyer's Canyon was an old ranch that the company had purchased from A. J. Armstrong, occupied by a Mexican, his wife, and an old trapper.
There were three houses in Salyer's Canyon just at the foot of a low bluff, the road winding along the top, entering above, and then passing down in front of the houses, thence to the Vermejo.
To the west of this road was another low bluff, forty or fifty feet high, covered with scrub oak and other brush.
As they were riding along this winding road on the bench of land between the two bluffs, a volley of rifle fire suddenly crashed around the two officers.
Not a bullet touched Cook who was nearer the ambush, but one hit Russell in the leg and another broke his arm, passing on through his body.
With the first reports, Russell's horse wheeled to the right and ran towards the buildings while Cook, followed by a hail of bullets, raced towards the arroyo of Salyer's Canyon immediately in front of him, just reaching it as his horse fell.
Grabbing his Winchester from its sheath, Cook prepared to fight from behind the arroyo bank.
Bullets were so thick, throwing sand in his face, that he found it difficult to return the fire.
Noticing Russell's horse in front of the long log building, he assumed his friend had slipped inside and would be able to put up a good fight, so he began working his way down the ditch to join him.
At a very shallow place, two Mexicans rushed into the open for a shot.
Dropping to one knee, Cook felled one, and the other struggled off with his comrade, sending no further fire in his direction.
Just before leaving the arroyo where he was partially concealed, he did hear shots down at the house.
Russell had reached the house as Cook surmised, dismounted, but just as the old trapper opened the door to receive him, he fell into the trapper's arms--dead.
A bullet fired by one of the Mexicans hiding in a little chicken house had passed through his head, tearing a hole two-inches square on the outgoing side.
Finding him dead, Cook caught Russell's horse and rode to the cattle foreman's house to report the incident and request bloodhounds to trail the assassins.
Before daylight Sunday morning, a posse of twenty-three men under the leadership of Deputy Sheriff Frank MacPherson of Catskill followed the trail to the house of Francisco Chaves, where 100 to 150 Mexicans had gathered.
MacPherson boldly approached the fortified adobe house and demanded entrance.
The men inside informed him that they had some wounded men among them but he would not be allowed to see them even though he offered medical aid.
The officer demanded the names of the injured men;
the Mexicans not only refused to give them, but told the possemen if they wanted a fight they could have it.
Since the strength of the Mexicans had been underrated, too small a posse had been collected, and since the deputy had not been provided with search warrants, MacPherson and his men decided it was much wiser to withdraw.
The posse's retreat encouraged the Mexicans to be overbearing and impudent.
During the following week, six tons of hay belonging to one rancher were burned;
some buildings, farm tools, two horses, plows, and hay owned by Bonito Lavato, a friendly interpreter for the company, and Pedro Chavez' hay were stolen or destroyed;
and a store was broken into and robbed.
District Attorney M. W. Mills warned that he would vigorously prosecute persons caught committing these crimes or carrying arms--he just didn't catch anyone.
Increasing threats on his life finally convinced Cook that he should leave New Mexico.
His friends advised that it would be only a question of time until either the Mexicans killed him by ambuscade or he would be compelled to kill them in self-defense, perpetuating the troubles.
By early summer, he wrote from Laramie that he was suffering from the wound inflicted in the ambush and was in a bad way financially, so Pels sent him a draft for $100, warning that it was still not wise for him to return.
Pels also sent a check for $100 to Russell's widow and had a white marble monument erected on his grave.
Cattle stealing and killing, again serious during the spring of 1891, placed the land grant company officers in a perplexing position.
They were reluctant to appoint sheriffs to protect the property, thus running the risk of creating disturbances such as that on the Vermejo, and yet the cowboys protested that they got no salary for arresting cattle thieves and running the risk of being shot.
And the law virtually ignored the situation.
The judge became ill just as the Colfax District Court convened, no substitute was brought in, no criminal cases heard, only 5 out of 122 cases docketed were tried, and court adjourned sine die after sitting a few days instead of the usual three weeks.
Pels complained: Litigants and witnesses were put to the expense and inconvenience of going long distances to transact business;
public money spent;
justice delayed;
nothing accomplished, and the whole distribution of justice in this county seems to be an absolute farce.
Word reached the company that the man behind these depredations was Manuel Gonzales, a man with many followers, including a number who were kept in line through fear of him.
Although wanted by the sheriff for killing an old man named Asher Jones, the warrant for his arrest had never been served.
On May 19, a deputy sheriff's posse of eight men left Maxwell City and rode thirty-five miles up the Vermejo where they were joined by Juan Jose Martinez.
By 3:00 A.M. they reached his house and found it vacant.
When they were refused entrance to his brother's house nearby, they smashed down the door, broke the window, and threw lighted clothes wet with kerosene into the room.
Still there was no Gonzales and the family would say nothing.
About 300 yards up the creek was a cluster of Mexican houses containing six rooms in the form of a square.
While prowling around these buildings, two of the posse recognized the voice of Gonzales speaking to the people inside.
He was promised that no harm would befall him if he would come out, but he cursed and replied that he would shoot any man coming near the door.
The posse then asked that he send out the women and children as the building would be fired or torn down over his head if necessary to take him dead or alive.
Again he refused.
In deadly earnest, the besiegers methodically stripped away portions of the roof and tossed lighted rags inside, only to have most stamped out by the women as soon as they hit the floor.
When it became obvious that he could stay inside no longer, taking a thousand to one chance Gonzales rushed outside, square against the muzzle of a Winchester.
Shot near the heart, he turned to one side and plunged for a door to another room several feet away, three bullets following him.
As he pushed open the door he fell on his face, one of his comrades pulling him inside.
Not realizing the seriousness of the wound, the besiegers warned that if he did not surrender the house would be burned down around him.
Receiving no answer, they set the fire.
When the house was about half consumed, his comrade ran to the door and threw up his hands, declaring repeatedly that he did not know the whereabouts of Manuel.
Finding it true that he was not inside, the deputies returned to the first house and tore holes through the side and the roof until they could see a body on the bed covered by a blanket.
Several slugs fired into the bed jerked aside the blanket to reveal an apparently lifeless hand.
Shot six or eight times the body was draped with Russell's pistol, belt, and cartridges.
There was no extra horse so it was left to his comrades who, though numbering in the fifties, had stood around on the hillside nearby without firing a shot during the entire attack.
Early the next morning, a Mexican telephoned Pels that Celso Chavez, one of the posse members, was surrounded by ten Mexicans at his father's home on the upper Vermejo.
The sheriff and District Attorney Mills hastily swore out a number of warrants against men who had been riding about armed, according to signed statements by Chavez and Dr. I. P. George, and ordered Deputy Barney Clark of Raton to rescue the posseman.
Traveling all night, Clark and twelve men arrived at about seven o'clock May 22.
Occasionally they heard gun-shot signals and a number of horsemen were sighted on the hills, disappearing at the posse's approach.
A Mexican justice of the peace had issue a writ against Chavez for taking part in the murder of Manuel Gonzales so he and his father were anxious to be taken out of danger.
The men helped them gather their belongings and escorted them to Raton along with three other families desiring to leave.
The ten or more dangerous parties singled out for prosecution were still at large, and Pels realized that if these men entrenched themselves in their adobe houses, defending themselves through loopholes, it would be most difficult to capture them.
Thus he wired J. P. Lower and Sons of Denver: Have you any percussion hand grenades for throwing in a house or across a well loaded with balls or shrapnel shot?
If not, how long to order and what is the price?
He wisely decided that it would be foolish to create a disturbance during the coming roundup, particularly since the Mexicans were on their guard.
His problem then became one of restraining the American fighters who wanted to clean out the Vermejo by force immediately.
The plant was located west of the Battenkill and south of the location of the former electric light plant.
The Manchester Depot Sewer Company issued 214 shares of stock at $10 each for construction of a sewer in that locality, and assessments were made for its maintenance.
It has given considerable trouble at times and empties right into the Battenkill.
Fire District No. 1 discussed its possible purchase in 1945, but considered it an unwise investment.
The sewer on Bonnet Street was constructed when there were only a few houses on the street.
As new homes were built they were connected so that all residences south of School Street are served by it.
B. J. Connell is the present treasurer and manager.
The 1946 town meeting voted to have the Selectmen appoint a committee to investigate and report on the feasibility of some system of sewage disposal and a disposal plant to serve Manchester Center, Depot, and Way's Lane.
The committee submitted a report signed by Louis Martin and Leon Wiley with a map published in the 1946 town report.
The layout of the sewer lines was designed by Henry W. Taylor, who was the engineer for the Manchester Village disposal plant.
No figures were submitted with the report and no action was taken on it by the town.
The 1958 town meeting directed town authorities to seek federal and state funds with which to conduct a preliminary survey of a proposed sewage plant with its attendant facilities.
The final step was a vote for a $230,000 bond issue for the construction of a sewage system by the 1959 town meeting, later confirmed by a two-thirds vote at a special town meeting June 21, 1960.
There the matter stands with the prospect that soon Manchester may be removed from the roster of towns contributing raw sewage to its main streams.
Telephone and telegraph
Manchester's unusual interest in telegraphy has often been attributed to the fact that the Rev. J. D. Wickham, headmaster of Burr and Burton Seminary, was a personal friend and correspondent of the inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse.
At any rate, Manchester did not lag far behind the first commercial system which was set up in 1844 between Baltimore and Washington.
In 1846 Matthew B. Goodwin, jeweler and watchmaker, became the town's first telegrapher in a dwelling he built for himself and his business two doors north of the Equinox House or one door north of the Bank, Manchester, Vermont.
Goodwin was telegrapher for the American Telegraph Company and the Troy and Canada Junction Telegraph Company.
Shares of capital stock at $15 each in the latter company were payable at the Bank of Manchester or at various other Vermont banks.
A message of less than fifteen words to Bennington cost twenty-five cents.
By 1871 L. C. Orvis, manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company, expressed willingness to send emergency telegrams on Sundays from his Village drugstore.
Orvis even needed to hire an assistant, Clark J. Wait.
The Manchester Journal commented editorially on the surprising amount of local telegraphic business.
In the fall of 1878, the Popular Telegraph Line was established between Manchester and Factory Point by the owners, Paul W. Orvis, Henry Gray, J. N. Hard, and Clark J. Wait.
The line soon lived up to its name, as local messages of moderate length could be sent for a dime and the company was quickly able to declare very liberal dividends on its capital stock.
In 1879 the same Clark Wait, with H. H. Holley of South Dorset, formed the American Telegraph Line, extending from Manchester Depot via Factory Point and South Dorset to Dorset.
Besides being most convenient, the line soon proved a good investment for the owners.
Telegraphers at the Depot at this time were Aaron C. Burr and Mark Manley of Burr and Manley, dealers in lumber and dry goods.
Early equipment was very flimsy;
the smallest gusts of wind toppled poles, making communications impossible.
But companies continued to spring up.
By 1883 the Battenkill Telegraph Company was in existence and Alvin Pettibone was its president.
Operating in 1887 was the Valley Telegraph Line, officers of which were E. C. Orvis, president;
H. K. Fowler, vice-president and secretary;
J. N. Hard, treasurer;
F. H. Walker, superintendent;
H. S. Walker, assistant superintendent.
Two companies now had headquarters with Clark J. Wait, who by then had his own drugstore at Factory Point--the Northern Union Telegraph Company and the Western Union.
Operators were Arthur Koop and Norman Taylor.
Still existing on a Northern Union telegraph form is a typical peremptory message from Peru grocer J. J. Hapgood to Burton and Graves' store in Manchester--Get and send by stage four pounds best Porterhouse or serloin stake, for Mrs. Hapgood send six sweet oranges.
From 1896 until 1910 John H. Whipple was manager of Western Union at the Center in the drugstore he purchased from Clark Wait.
The Village office of Western Union with George Towsley as manager and telegrapher continued in Hard's drugstore until 1905.
During the summers, Towsley often needed the assistance of a company operator.
These were the years when people flocked to Manchester not only to play golf, which had come into vogue, but also to witness the Ekwanok Country Club tournaments.
New Yorkers were kept informed of scores by reporters who telegraphed fifteen to twenty thousand words daily to the metropolitan newspapers.
This boosted local telegraph business and Manchester basked in all the free advertising.
In 1914 when the town was chosen for the U. S. Amateur Golf tournament, a representative hurried here from the Boston manager's office.
In his wake came the District Traffic Supervisor and the cream of the telegraphic profession, ten of Boston's best, chosen for their long experience and thorough knowledge of golf.
During that tournament alone, some 250,000 words winged their way out of Manchester.
The old Morse system was replaced locally by the Simplex modern automatic method in 1929, when Ellamae Heckman (Wilcox) was manager of the Western Union office.
During summers, business was so brisk that Mrs. Wilcox had two assistants and a messenger.
She was succeeded by Clarence Goyette.
Since that time the telegraph office has shifted in location from the railroad station at the Depot and shops at the Center back to the town clerk's office and drugstore at the Village.
After being located for some years in the Village at the Equinox Pharmacy under the supervision of Mrs. Harry Mercier, it is presently located in the Hill and Dale Shop, Manchester Center.
The first known telephone line in Manchester was established in July 1883 between Burr and Manley's store at Manchester Depot and the Kent and Root Marble Company in South Dorset.
This was extended the following year to include the railroad station agent's office and Thayer's Hotel at Factory Point.
In November 1887 a line connecting several dwelling houses in Dorset was extended to Manchester Depot.
Telephone wires from Louis Dufresne's house in East Manchester to the Dufresne lumber job near Bourn Pond were up about 1895.
Eber L. Taylor of Manchester Depot recorded the setting of phone poles in East Dorset and Barnumville in his diary for 1906.
These must have been for local calls strictly, as in May 1900 the only long distance telephone in town was transferred from C. B. Carleton's to Young's shoe store.
A small single switchboard was installed in the Village over Woodcock's hardware store (later E. H. Hemenway's).
George Woodcock was manager and troubleshooter;
Elizabeth Way was the first operator;
and a night operator was also employed.
Anyone fortunate enough to have one of those early phones advertised the fact along with the telephone number in the Manchester Journal.
In 1918 the New England Telephone Company began erecting a building to house its operations on the corner of U. S. Rte. 7 and what is now Memorial Avenue at Manchester Center.
More aerial and underground equipment was installed as well as office improvements to take care of the expanding business.
In 1931 Mrs. F. H. Briggs, agent and chief operator, who was to retire in 1946 with thirty years' service, led agency offices in sales for the year with $2,490.
William Hitchcock, who retired in 1938, was a veteran of thirty-four years' local service.
Another veteran telephone operator was Edith Fleming Blackmer, who had been in the office forty years at the time of her death in 1960.
In 1932 Dorset received its own exchange, which made business easier for the Manchester office, but it was not until February 1953 that area service was extended to include Manchester and Dorset.
This eliminated toll calls between the two towns.
Within a month, calls were up seventy per cent.
Electric power
electricity plays such an important part in community life today that it is difficult to envision a time when current was not available for daily use.
Yet one has to go back only some sixty years.
The first mention of an electric plant in Manchester seems to be one installed in Reuben Colvin's and Houghton's gristmill on the West Branch in Factory Point.
No records are available as to the date or extent of installation, but it may have been in 1896.
On June 14, 1900 the Manchester Journal reported that an electrical engineer was installing an electric light plant for Edward S. Isham at Ormsby Hill.
This was working by the end of August and giving satisfactory service.
In November 1900 surveying was done under John Marsden on the east mountains to ascertain if it would be possible to get sufficient water and fall to operate an electric power plant.
Nothing came of it, perhaps due to lack of opportunity for water storage.
The next step was construction by the Manchester Light and Power Company of a plant on the west bank of the Battenkill south of Union Street bridge.
This was nearly completed May 23, 1901 with a promise of lights by June 10, but the first light did not go on until September 28.
It was at the end of the sidewalk in front of the Dellwood Cemetery cottage.
The first directors of the Manchester Light and Power Company were John Marsden, M. L. Manley, William F. Orvis, George Smith, and John Blackmer.
The officers were John Marsden, president;
John C. Blackmer, vice-president;
George Smith, treasurer;
and William F. Orvis, secretary.
Marsden was manager of the company for ten years and manager of its successor company, the Colonial Light and Power Company, for one year.
At about the time the Marsden enterprise was getting under way, the Vail Light and Lumber Company started construction of a chair stock factory on the site of the present Bennington Co-operative Creamery, intending to use its surplus power for generating electricity.
Manchester then had two competing power companies until 1904, when the Manchester Light and Power Company purchased the transmission system of the Vail Company.
This was fortunate, as the Vail plant burned in 1905.
The Colonial Light and Power Company was succeeded by the Vermont Hydro-Electric Corporation, which in turn was absorbed by the Central Vermont Public Service Corporation.
The latter now furnishes the area with electricity distributed from a modern sub-station at Manchester Depot which was put into operation February 19, 1930 and was improved in January 1942 by the installation of larger transformers.
For a time following the abandonment of the local plant, electric current for Manchester was brought in from the south with an emergency tie-in with the Vermont Marble Company system to the north.
Some who have written on Utopia have treated it as a learned diversion of a learned world, a phantasy with which More amused himself, a holiday work, a spontaneous overflow of intellectual high spirits, a revel of debate, paradox, comedy and invention.
With respect to this view, two points are worth making.
First, it appears to be based on the fact that on its title page Utopia is described as festivus, gay.
It overlooks the other fact that it is described as Nec minus salutaris quam festivus, no less salutary than gay.
It also overlooks the fact that in a rational lexicon, and quite clearly in More's lexicon, the opposite of serious is not gay but frivolous, and the opposite of gay is not serious but solemn.
More believed that a man could be both serious and gay.
But to return to the main line of our inquiry, it is doubtful that Utopia is still widely read because More was medieval or even because he was a martyr--indeed, it is likely that these days many who read Utopia with interest do not even know that its author was a martyr.
Utopia is still widely read because in a sense More stood on the margin of modernity.
And if he did stand on the margins of modernity, it was not in dying a martyr for such unity as Papal supremacy might be able to force on Western Christendom.
Similar literary exercises were the common doings of a Christian humanist of the first two decades of the sixteenth century.
More stands on the margins of modernity for one reason alone--because he wrote Utopia.
And the evidence that he does, indeed, stand there derives quite simply from the vigorous interest with which rather casual readers have responded to that book for the past century or so.
Only one other contemporary of More's evokes so immediate and direct a response, and only one other contemporary work--Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince.
Can we discover what it is in Utopia that has evoked this response?
Remember that in seeking the modern in Utopia we do not deny the existence of the medieval and the Renaissance there;
we do not even need to commit ourselves to assessing on the same inconceivable scale the relative importance of the medieval, the Renaissance, and the modern.
The medieval was the most important to Chambers because he sought to place Thomas More, the author of Utopia, in some intelligible relation with St. Thomas More, the martyr.
To others whose concern it is to penetrate the significance of Christian Humanism, the Renaissance elements are of primary concern.
But here we have a distinctly modern preoccupation;
we want to know why that book has kept on selling the way it has;
we want to know what is perennially new about Utopia.
What is new about it?
To that question the answer is simple;
it can be made in two words, Utopian communism.
But it is an answer which opens the door wide to an onrush of objections and denials.
Surely there is nothing new about communism.
We find it in Plato's Republic, and in Utopia More acknowledges his debt to that book.
We find it in that common way of life pleasing to Christ and still in use among the truest societies of Christians, that is, the better monasteries which made it easier to convert the Utopians to Christianity.
We find it in the later Stoic conception of man's natural condition which included the community of all possessions.
This conception was taken up by the early Church Fathers and by canon lawyers and theologians in the Middle Ages;
and More was far too well read not to have come across it in one or several of the forms thus given it.
But although the idea of communism is very old even in More's day and did not spring full-clad from his imagination in 1515, it is not communism as such that we are concerned with.
We are concerned not with the genus communism nor with other species of the genus: Platonic, Stoic, early Christian, monastic, canonist or theological communism;
we are concerned with Utopian communism--that is, simply communism as it appears in the imaginary commonwealth of Utopia, as More conceived it.
Perhaps one way to sharpen our sense of the modernity of Utopian communism is to contrast it with the principal earlier types of communistic theory.
We will achieve a more vivid sense of what it is by realizing what it is not.
In Plato's Republic communism is--to speak anachronistically--a communism of Janissaries.
Its function is to separate from the base ruled mass, among whom private ownership prevails, the governing warrior elite.
and it is to this problem that the Republic ultimately returns.
In More's Utopia communism is not a means of separating out a warrior elite from the lumpish mass.
Utopian communism applies to all Utopians.
And in the economy of the book it is not peripheral but central.
The concern of Utopia is with the optimo reipublicae statu, the best ordering of a civil society;
and it is again and again made clear that Utopian communism provides the institutional array indispensible to that best ordering.
The apostolic community was literally an elite: chosen by Christ himself.
And the monastic communities were supposed to be made up of volunteers selected only after a novitiate which would test their religious aptitude for monastic rigors, their spiritual athleticism.
Finally, the conception of the natural community of all possessions which originated with the Stoics was firmly fixed in a tradition by More's time, although it was not accepted by all the theologian-philosophers of the Middle Ages.
In that tradition communism lay a safe distance back in the age of innocence before the Fall of Man.
It did not serve to contrast the existing order of society with a possible alternative order, because the age of innocence was not a possible alternative once man had sinned.
The actual function of patristic communism was adequately set forth by St. Gregory almost a millenium before More wrote Utopia.
The soil is common to all men.
When we give the necessities of life to the poor, we restore to them what is already theirs.
We should think of it more as an act of justice than compassion.
Because community not severalty of property is the law of nature no man can assert an absolutely unalterable right to what is his.
Indeed, of all that is his every man is by nature and reason and therefore by conscience obligated to regard himself as a custodian.
He is a trustee for the common good, however feeble the safeguards which the positive or municipal law of property provides against his misuse of that share of the common fund, wisely or unwisely, entrusted to his keeping.
In contrast to this Stoic-patristic view, Utopia implies that the nature of man is such that to rely on individual conscience to supply the deficiencies of municipal law is to embark on the bottomless sea of human sinfulness in a sieve.
The Utopians brace conscience with legal sanctions.
In a properly ordered society the massive force of public law performs the function which in natural law theory ineptly is left altogether to a small voice so often still.
In all the respects just indicated Utopian communism differs from previous conceptions in which community of possessions and living plays a role.
Neither from one of these conceptions nor from a combination of them can it be deduced.
We do not deny originality to the Agamemnon because Aeschylus found the tales of the house of Atreus among the folk lore of the Greeks.
In a like sense whatever bits or shreds of previous conceptions one may find in it, Utopian communism remains, as an integral whole, original--a new thing.
It is not merely a new thing;
it is one of the very few new things in Utopia;
most of the rest is medieval or humanist or part of an old tradition of social criticism.
But to say that at a moment in history something is new is not necessarily to say that it is modern;
and for this statement the best evidence comes within the five years following the publication of Utopia, when Martin Luther elaborates a new perception of the nature of the Divine's encounter with man.
New, indeed, is Luther's perception, but not modern, as anyone knows who has ever tried to make intelligible to modern students what Luther was getting at.
Although Utopian communism is both new in 1516 and also modern, it is not modern communism or even modern socialism, as they exist or have ever existed in theory or in practice.
Consider the features of Utopian communism: generous public provision for the infirm;
democratic and secret elections of all officers including priests, meals taken publicly in common refectories;
a common habit or uniform prescribed for all citizens;
even houses changed once a decade;
six hours of manual labor a day for all but a handful of magistrates and scholars, and careful measures to prevent anyone from shirking;
no private property, no money;
no sort of pricing at all for any goods or services, and therefore no market in the economic sense of the term.
Whatever the merits of its intent, Utopian communism is far too naive, far too crude, to suit any modern socialist or communist.
It is not the details of Utopian communism that make Utopia modern, it is the spirit, the attitude of mind that informs those details.
What that spirit and attitude were we can best understand if we see more precisely how it contrasts with the communist tradition with the longest continuous history, the one which reached Christianity by the way of Stoicism through the Church Fathers of Late Antiquity.
During the Dorr trial the Democratic press condemned the proceedings and heralded Dorr as a martyr to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
The two major newspapers in Providence continued, throughout the crisis, to accuse each other of misrepresenting the facts and attempting to falsify history.
While the Daily Post continued to accuse Republicans and the Daily Journal continued to accuse Democrats, the Woonsocket Patriot complained that the Virginia authorities showed indecent and cowardly haste to condemn Brown and his men.
Editor Foss stated, Of their guilt there can be no doubt but they are entitled to sufficient time to prepare for trial, and a fair trial.
The Providence Daily Post thought that there were probably good reasons for the haste in which the trial was being conducted and that the only thing gained by a delay would be calmer feelings.
The Providence Daily Journal stated that although the guilt of Brown was evident, the South must guarantee him a fair trial to preserve domestic peace.
On October 31, 1859, John Brown was found guilty of treason against the state of Virginia, inciting slave rebellion, and murder.
For these crimes he was sentenced to be hanged in public on Friday, December 2, 1859.
Upon receiving the news, Northern writers, editors, and clergymen heaped accusations of murder on the Southern states, particularly Virginia.
Although Rhode Islanders were preparing for the state elections, they watched John Brown's trial with extreme interest.
On Wednesday morning, November 2, 1859, the Providence Daily Journal stated that although Brown justly deserved the extreme penalty, no man, however criminal, ought to suffer the penalty without a fair trial.
The editor's main criticism of the trial was the haste with which it was conducted.
The readers of the Providence Daily Post, however, learned that it was generally conceded that Old Brown had a fair trial.
Concerning the sentence the editor asked, What else can Virginia do than to hang the men who have defied her laws, organized treason, and butchered her citizens.
In the eastern section of the state the newspapers' reaction to Brown's trial and sentence were basically identical.
The editor of the Newport Advertiser could discover no evidence of extenuating circumstances in the Brown trial which would warrant making an exception to the infliction of capital punishment.
In direct contrast to the other Rhode Island editors, Samuel S. Foss of the Woonsocket Patriot outwardly condemned the trial as being completely unfair.
Concerning the sentence, Foss wrote, If it be possible that mercy shall override vengeance and that John Brown's sentence shall be commuted to imprisonment, it would be well--well for the country and for Virginia.
Despite the excitement being caused by the trial and sentence of John Brown, Rhode Islanders turned their attention to the state elections.
The state had elected Republican candidates in the past two years.
There was no doubt as to the control the Republican party exercised throughout the state.
If it failed on occasion to elect its candidates for general state offices by majorities, the failure was due to a lingering remnant of the Know-Nothing party, which called itself the American Republican party.
The American Republicans and the Republicans both nominated Lieutenant-Governor Turner for governor.
Elisha R. Potter was the Democratic candidate.
The results of the election of 1859 found Republican candidates not only winning the offices of governor and lieutenant-governor but also obtaining the two Congressional offices from the eastern and western sections of the state.
During the month of November hardly a day passed when there was not some mention of John Brown in the Rhode Island newspapers.
On November 7, 1859, the Providence Daily Journal reprinted a letter sent to John Brown from E. B., a Quaker lady in Newport.
In reference to Brown's raid she wrote, though we are non-resistants and religiously believe it better to reform by moral and not by carnal weapons, we know thee was anemated by the most generous and philanthropic motives.
E. B. compared John Brown to Moses in that they were both acting to deliver millions from oppression.
In contrast to E. B., most Rhode Islanders hardly thought of John Brown as being another Moses.
Most attempts to develop any sympathy for Brown and his actions found an unresponsive audience in Rhode Island.
On Wednesday evening, November 23, 1859, in Warren, Rev. Mark Trafton of New Bedford, gave a Mission of Sympathy lecture in which he favorably viewed the Harper's Ferry insurrection.
The Warren Telegraph stated that many of Rev. Trafton's remarks were inappropriate and savored strongly of radicalism and fanaticism.
In its account of the Trafton lecture, the Providence Daily Post said that the remarks of Rev. Trafton made the people indignant.
No sympathy or admiration for Brown could be found in the Providence Daily Post, for the editor claimed that there were a score of men in the state prison who were a thousand times more deserving of sympathy.
The Providence Daily Journal, however, stated that Brown's courage, bravery, and heroism in a good cause would make a man a martyr;
it gives something of dignity even to a bad one.
The Woonsocket Patriot admitted that John Brown might deserve punishment or imprisonment but he should no more be hung than Henry A. Wise or James Buchanan.
The Newport Mercury exhibited more concern over the possibility of the abolitionists making a martyr of Brown than it did over the development of sympathy for him.
In her letter to John Brown, E. B., the Quakeress from Newport, had suggested that the American people owed more honor to John Brown for seeking to free the slaves than they did to George Washington.
During the latter days of November to the day of Brown's execution, it seems that most Rhode Islanders did not concur in E. B.'s suggestion.
On November 22, 1859, the Providence Daily Journal stated that although Brown's pluck and honest fanaticism must be admired, any honor paid to Brown would only induce other fanatics to imitate his actions.
A week later the Daily Journal had discovered the initial plans of some Providence citizens to hold a meeting honoring John Brown on the day of his execution.
The editor of the Daily Journal warned, that if such a demonstration be made, it will not find support or countenance from any of the men whose names are recognized as having a right to speak for Providence.
The Providence Daily Post's editor wrote that he could not believe that a meeting honoring Brown was to be held in Providence.
He further called upon the people of Providence to rebuke the meeting and avoid disgrace.
On December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged at Charles Town, Virginia.
Extraordinary precautions were taken so that no stranger be allowed in the city and no citizen within the enclosure surrounding the scaffold.
In many Northern towns and cities meetings were held and church bells were tolled.
Such was not the case in Rhode Island.
The only public demonstration in honor of John Brown was held at Pratt's Hall in Providence, on the day of his execution.
Seated on the platform were Amos C. Barstow, ex-mayor of Providence and a wealthy Republican stove manufacturer;
Thomas Davis, an uncompromising Garrisonian;
the Reverend Augustus Woodbury, a Unitarian minister;
the Reverend George T. Day, a Free-Will Baptist;
Daniel W. Vaughan, and William H. H. Clements.
The latter two were appointed secretaries.
The first speaker was Amos C. Barstow who had been unanimously chosen president of the meeting.
He spoke of his desire to promote the abolition of slavery by peaceable means and he compared John Brown of Harper's Ferry to the John Brown of Rhode Island's colonial period.
Barstow concluded that as Rhode Island's John Brown became a canonized hero, if not a saint, so would it be with John Brown of Harper's Ferry.
The next speaker was George T. Day.
Although admitting Brown's guilt on legal grounds, Day said that, Brown is no common criminal;
his deed was not below, but above the law.
Following Day was Woodbury who spoke of his disapproval of Brown's attempt at servile insurrection, his admiration of Brown's character, and his opposition to slavery.
Woodbury's remarks were applauded by a portion of the audience several times and once there was hissing.
The fourth and last speaker was Thomas Davis.
By this time large numbers of the audience had left the hall.
Davis commenced his remarks by an allusion to the general feeling of opposition which the meeting had encountered from many of the citizens and all the newspapers of the city.
He said that the propriety or impropriety of such a gathering was a question that was to be settled by every man in accordance with the convictions of private judgments.
In the remainder of his speech Davis spoke of his admiration for Brown and warned those who took part in the meeting that they are liable to the charge that they are supporting traitors and upholding men whom the laws have condemned.
He recalled that in Rhode Island a party opposed to the state's condemnation of a man (Thomas W. Dorr) proclaimed the state's action as a violation of the law of the land and the principles of human liberty.
At the close of Davis' speech the following preamble and resolutions were read by the president, and on the question of their adoption passed unanimously:
Whereas, John Brown has cheerfully risked his life in endeavoring to deliver those who are denied all rights and is this day doomed to suffer death for his efforts in behalf of those who have no helper: Therefore,
Resolved that the anti-slavery sentiment is becoming ripe for resolute action.
Resolved, that we find in this fearful tragedy at Harper's Ferry a reason for more earnest effort to remove the evil of slavery from the whole land as speedily as possible.
On the morning following the Pratt Hall meeting the editor of the Providence Daily Journal wrote that although the meeting was milder and less extreme than those held in other areas for similar purposes, it could have been avoided completely.
Rather than being deceived, the eye is puzzled;
instead of seeing objects in space, it sees nothing more than--a picture.
Through 1911 and 1912, as the Cubist facet-plane's tendency to adhere to the literal surface became harder and harder to deny, the task of keeping the surface at arm's length fell all the more to eye-undeceiving contrivances.
To reinforce, and sometimes to replace, the simulated typography, Braque and Picasso began to mix sand and other foreign substances with their paint;
the granular texture thus created likewise called attention to the reality of the surface and was effective over much larger areas.
In certain other pictures, however, Braque began to paint areas in exact simulation of wood graining or marbleizing.
that is, by being placed in such relation to the forms depicted within the illusion that these forms left no room for the typography except near the surface.
The accumulation of such devices, however, soon had the effect of telescoping, even while separating, surface and depth.
The process of flattening seemed inexorable, and it became necessary to emphasize the surface still further in order to prevent it from fusing with the illusion.
It was for this reason, and no other that I can see, that in September 1912, Braque took the radical and revolutionary step of pasting actual pieces of imitation-woodgrain wallpaper to a drawing on paper, instead of trying to simulate its texture in paint.
Picasso says that he himself had already made his first collage toward the end of 1911, when he glued a piece of imitation-caning oilcloth to a painting on canvas.
It is true that his first collage looks more Analytical than Braque's, which would confirm the date he assigns it.
But it is also true that Braque was the consistent pioneer in the use of simulated textures as well as of typography;
and moreover, he had already begun to broaden and simplify the facet-planes of Analytical Cubism as far back as the end of 1910.
When we examine what each master says was his first collage we see that much the same thing happens in each.
(It makes no real difference that Braque's collage is on paper and eked out in charcoal, while Picasso's is on canvas and eked out in oil.
) By its greater corporeal presence and its greater extraneousness, the affixed paper or cloth serves for a seeming moment to push everything else into a more vivid idea of depth than the simulated printing or simulated textures had ever done.
But here again, the surface-declaring device both overshoots and falls short of its aim.
For the illusion of depth created by the contrast between the affixed material and everything else gives way immediately to an illusion of forms in bas-relief, which gives way in turn, and with equal immediacy, to an illusion that seems to contain both--or neither.
Because of the size of the areas it covers, the pasted paper establishes undepicted flatness bodily, as more than an indication or sign.
Literal flatness now tends to assert itself as the main event of the picture, and the device boomerangs: the illusion of depth is rendered even more precarious than before.
Instead of isolating the literal flatness by specifying and circumscribing it, the pasted paper or cloth releases and spreads it, and the artist seems to have nothing left but this undepicted flatness with which to finish as well as start his picture.
The actual surface becomes both ground and background, and it turns out--suddenly and paradoxically--that the only place left for a three-dimensional illusion is in front of, upon, the surface.
And the surface is driven back, in its very surfaceness, only by this contrast.
In the upper center of Braque's first collage, Fruit Dish (in Douglas Cooper's collection), a bunch of grapes is rendered with such conventionally vivid sculptural effect as to lift it practically off the picture plane.
The trompe-l'oeil illusion here is no longer enclosed between parallel flatnesses, but seems to thrust through the surface of the drawing paper and establish depth on top of it.
Yet the violent immediacy of the wallpaper strips pasted to the paper, and the only lesser immediacy of block capitals that simulate window lettering, manage somehow to push the grape cluster back into place on the picture plane so that it does not jump.
At the same time, the wallpaper strips themselves seem to be pushed into depth by the lines and patches of shading charcoaled upon them, and by their placing in relation to the block capitals;
and these capitals seem in turn to be pushed back by their placing, and by contrast with the corporeality of the woodgraining.
Thus every part and plane of the picture keeps changing place in relative depth with every other part and plane;
and it is as if the only stable relation left among the different parts of the picture is the ambivalent and ambiguous one that each has with the surface.
And the same thing, more or less, can be said of the contents of Picasso's first collage.
In later collages of both masters, a variety of extraneous materials are used, sometimes in the same work, and almost always in conjunction with every other eye-deceiving and eye-undeceiving device they can think of.
The area adjacent to one edge of a piece of affixed material--or simply of a painted-in form--will be shaded to pry that edge away from the surface, while something will be drawn, painted or even pasted over another part of the same shape to drive it back into depth.
Planes defined as parallel to the surface also cut through it into real space, and a depth is suggested optically which is greater than that established pictorially.
All this expands the oscillation between surface and depth so as to encompass fictive space in front of the surface as well as behind it.
Flatness may now monopolize everything, but it is a flatness become so ambiguous and expanded as to turn into illusion itself--at least an optical if not, properly speaking, a pictorial illusion.
Depicted, Cubist flatness is now almost completely assimilated to the literal, undepicted kind, but at the same time it reacts upon and largely transforms the undepicted kind--and it does so, moreover, without depriving the latter of its literalness;
rather, it underpins and reinforces that literalness, re-creates it.
Out of this re-created literalness, the Cubist subject reemerged.
For it had turned out, by a further paradox of Cubism, that the means to an illusion of depth and plasticity had now become widely divergent from the means of representation or imaging.
In the Analytical phase of their Cubism, Braque and Picasso had not only had to minimize three-dimensionality simply in order to preserve it;
In order to be saved, plasticity had had to be isolated;
and as the aspect of the subject was transposed into those clusters of more or less interchangeable and contour-obliterating facet-planes by which plasticity was isolated under the Cubist method, the subject itself became largely unrecognizable.
Cubism, in its 1911-1912 phase (which the French, with justice, call hermetic) was on the verge of abstract art.
It was then that Picasso and Braque were confronted with a unique dilemma: they had to choose between illusion and representation.
If they opted for illusion, it could only be illusion per se--an illusion of depth, and of relief, so general and abstracted as to exclude the representation of individual objects.
It was the collage that made the terms of this dilemma clear: the representational could be restored and preserved only on the flat and literal surface now that illusion and representation had become, for the first time, mutually exclusive alternatives.
In the end, Picasso and Braque plumped for the representational, and it would seem they did so deliberately.
(This provides whatever real justification there is for the talk about reality.
) But the inner, formal logic of Cubism, as it worked itself out through the collage, had just as much to do with shaping their decision.
Left in their previous atom-like smallness, they would have cut away too abruptly into depth;
and the broad, opaque shapes of pasted paper would have been isolated in such a way as to make them jump out of plane.
Large planes juxtaposed with other large planes tend to assert themselves as independent shapes, and to the extent that they are flat, they also assert themselves as silhouettes;
and independent silhouettes are apt to coincide with the recognizable contours of the subject from which a picture starts (if it does start from a subject).
Analytical Cubism came to an end in the collage, but not conclusively;
nor did Synthetic Cubism fully begin there.
Synthetic Cubism began with Picasso alone, late in 1913 or early in 1914;
this was the point at which he finally took the lead in Cubist innovation away from Braque, never again to relinquish it.
But even before that, Picasso had glimpsed and entered, for a moment, a certain revolutionary path in which no one had preceded him.
It was as though, in that instant, he had felt the flatness of collage as too constricting and had suddenly tried to escape all the way back--or forward--to literal three-dimensionality.
This he did by using utterly literal means to carry the forward push of the collage (and of Cubism in general) literally into the literal space in front of the picture plane.
Some time in 1912, Picasso cut out and folded a piece of paper in the shape of a guitar;
to this he glued and fitted other pieces of paper and four taut strings, thus creating a sequence of flat surfaces in real and sculptural space to which there clung only the vestige of a picture plane.
The affixed elements of collage were extruded, as it were, and cut off from the literal pictorial surface to form a bas-relief.
Los Angeles in 1957 finally bowed to the skyscraper.
) And without high density in the core, rapid-transit systems cannot be maintained economically, let alone built from scratch at today's prices.
However, the building of freeways and garages cannot continue forever.
The new interchange among the four Los Angeles freeways, including the grade-constructed accesses, occupies by itself no less than eighty acres of downtown land, one-eighth of a square mile, an area about the size of Rockefeller Center in New York.
It is hard to believe that this mass of intertwined concrete constitutes what the law calls the highest and best use of centrally located urban land.
As it affects the city's fiscal situation, such an interchange is ruinous;
it removes forever from the tax rolls property which should be taxed to pay for the city services.
Subways improved land values without taking away land;
freeways boost valuation less (because the garages they require are not prime buildings by a long shot), and reduce the acreage that can be taxed.
Downtown Los Angeles is already two-thirds freeway, interchange, street, parking lot and garage--one of those preposterous if statistics has already come to pass.
The freeway with narrowly spaced interchanges concentrates and mitigates the access problem, but it also acts inevitably as an artificial, isolating boundary.
City planners do not always use this boundary as effectively as they might.
Less ambitious freeway plans may be more successful--especially when the roadways and interchanges are raised, allowing for cross access at many points and providing parking areas below the ramp.
Meanwhile, the automobile and its friend the truck have cost the central city some of its industrial dominance.
In ever greater numbers, factories are locating in the suburbs or in industrial parks removed from the city's political jurisdiction.
The appeal of the suburb is particularly strong for heavy industry, which must move bulky objects along a lengthy assembly line and wants enough land area to do the entire job on one floor.
To light industry, the economies of being on one floor are much slighter, but efficiency engineers usually believe in them, and manufacturers looking for ways to cut costs cannot be prevented from turning to efficiency engineers.
This movement of industry away from the central cities is not so catastrophically new as some prophets seem to believe.
It is merely the latest example of the leapfrog growth which formed the pattern of virtually all American cities.
The leapfrog was a phenomenon of the railroad and the steam turbine, and the time when the belts of residence surrounding the old factory area were not yet blighted.
The truck and the car gave the manufacturer a new degree of freedom in selecting his plant site.
Until internal combustion became cheap, he had to be near a railroad siding and a trolley line or an existing large community of lower-class homes.
The railroad siding is still important--it is usually, though not always, true that long-haul shipment by rail is cheaper than trucking.
But anybody who promises a substantial volume of business can get a railroad to run a short spur to his plant these days, and many businesses can live without the railroad.
And there are now many millions of workers for whom the factory with the big parking lot, which can be reached by driving across or against the usual pattern of rush hour traffic and grille-route bus lines, is actually more convenient than the walk-to factory.
They are all suburban plants, relying on the roads to keep them supplied with workers.
And wherever the new thruways go up their banks are lined by neat glass and metal and colored brick light industry.
The drive along Massachusetts' Route 128, the by-pass which makes an arc about twenty miles from downtown Boston, may be a vision of the future.
The future could be worse.
The plants along Route 128 are mostly well designed and nicely set against the New England rocks and trees.
They can even be rather grand, like Edward Land's monument to the astonishing success of Polaroid.
But they deny the values of the city--the crowded, competitive, tolerant city, the melting pot which gave off so many of the most admirable American qualities.
They are segregated businesses, combining again on one site the factory and the office, drawing their work force from segregated communities.
It is interesting to note how many of the plants on Massachusetts' Route 128 draw most of their income either from the government in non-competitive cost-plus arrangements, or from the exploitation of patents which grant at least a partial monopoly.
While the factories were always the center of the labor market, they were often on the city's periphery.
In spreading the factories even farther, the automobile may not have changed to any great extent the growth pattern of the cities.
Even the loss of hotel business to the outskirt's motel has been relatively painless;
the hotel-motel demarcation is becoming harder to find every year.
What hurts most is the damage the automobile has done to central-city retailing, especially in those cities where public transit is feeble.
Some retailing, of course, always spreads with the population--grocery stores, drugstores, local haberdasheries and dress shops, candy stores and the like.
But whenever a major purchase was contemplated forty years ago--a new bedroom set or a winter coat, an Easter bonnet, a bicycle for Junior--the family set off for the downtown department store, where the selection would be greatest.
Department stores congregated in the one hundred per cent location, where all the transit lines converged.
These stores are still there, but the volume of the downtown store has been on a relative decline, while in many cities the suburban branch sells more and more dry goods.
If the retailer and hotelman's downtown unit sales have been decreasing, however, his dollar volume continues to rise, and it is dollars which you put in the bank.
In most discussions of this phenomenon, the figures are substantially inflated.
No suburban shopping-center branch--not even Hudson's vast Northland outside Detroit--does anything like the unit volume of business or carries anything like the variety of merchandise to be found in the home store.
Telephone orders distort the picture: the suburbanite naturally calls a local rather than a central-city number if both are listed in an advertisement, especially if the local call eliminates city sales tax.
The suburban branch is thereby credited with a sale which would have been made even if its glass doors had never opened.
Accounting procedures which continue to charge a disproportionate overhead and warehouse expense to the main store make the branches seem more profitable than they are.
In many cases that statement--We break even on our downtown operation and make money on our branches--would be turned around if the cost analysis were recalculated on terms less prejudicial to the old store.
Fear of the competition--always a great motivating force in the American economy--makes retailers who do not have suburban operations exaggerate both the volume and the profitability of their rival's shiny new branches.
The fact seems to be that very many large branch stores are uneconomical, that the choice of location in the suburbs is as important as it was downtown, and that even highly suburbanized cities will support only so many big branches.
Moreover, the cost of operations is always high in any new store, as the conservative bankers who act as controllers for retail giants are beginning to discover.
When all has been said, however, the big branch store remains a major break with history in the development of American retailing.
Just as the suburban factory may be more convenient than the downtown plant to the worker with a car, the trip to the shopping center may seem far easier than to the downtown department store, though both are the same distance from home.
Indeed, there are some cities where the suburban shopping pulls customers who are geographically much nearer to downtown.
Raymond Vernon reports that residents of East St. Louis have been driving across the Mississippi, through the heart of downtown St. Louis and out to the western suburbs for major shopping, simply because parking is easier at the big branches than it is in the heart of town.
To the extent that the problem is merely parking, an aggressive downtown management, like that of Lazarus Brothers in Columbus, Ohio, can fight back successfully by building a garage on the lot next door.
If the distant patron of the suburban branch has been frightened away from downtown by traffic problems, however, the city store can only pressure the politicians to do something about the highways or await the completion of the federal highway program.
And if the affection for the suburban branch reflects a desire to shop with nice people, rather than with the indiscriminate urban mass which supports the downtown department store, the central location may be in serious trouble.
Today, according to land economist Homer Hoyt, shopping centers and their associated parking lots cover some 46,000 acres of land, which is almost exactly the total land area in all the nation's Central Business Districts put together.
The downtown store continues to offer the great inducement of variety, both within its gates and across the street, where other department stores are immediately convenient for the shopper who wants to see what is available before making up her mind.
If anything may be predicted in the quicksilver world of retailing, it seems likely that the suburban branch will come to dominate children's clothing (taking the kid downtown is too much of a production), household gadgetry and the discount business in big-ticket items.
Department stores were built on dry goods, especially ladies' fashions, and in this area, in the long run, the suburban branches will be hard put to compete against downtown.
If this analysis is correct, the suburban branches will turn out to be what management's cost accountants refuse to acknowledge, marginal operations rather than major factors.
Historically in America the appeal of cities has been their color and life, the variety of experience they offered.
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm?
Was a question that had to be asked long before they saw Paree.
Though Americans usually lived in groups segregated by national origin or religious belief, they liked to work and shop in the noise and vitality of downtown.
Only a radical change in the nature of the population in the central city would be likely to destroy this preference--and we must now turn our attention to the question of whether such a change, gloomily foreseen by so many urban diagnosticians, is actually upon us.
Suburbs and Negroes
In their book, American Skyline, Christopher Tunnard and Henry Hope Reed argue that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was what made the modern suburb a possibility--a fine ironical argument, when you consider how suburbanites tend to vote.
The first superhighways--New York's Henry Hudson and Chicago's Lake Shore, San Francisco's Bay Bridge and its approaches, a good slice of the Pennsylvania Turnpike--were built as part of the federal works program which was going to cure the depression.
At the same time, Roosevelt's Federal Housing Administration, coupled with Henry Morgenthau's cheap-money policy, permitted ordinary lower-middle-class families to build their own homes.
Bankers who had been reluctant to lend without better security than the house itself got that security from the U. S. government;
householders who had been unable to pick up the burden of short-term high-interest mortgages found they could borrow for twenty-five years at 4 per cent, under government aegis.
Before losing itself in the sands of the 19th Century, the grand stream of Italian Renaissance architectural decoration made a last appearance in the Brumidi frescos of the Capitol Rotunda in Washington.
The artistic generation after Brumidi was trained in the Paris of that time to a more meticulous standard of execution, and tended to overlook greatness of conception where faults and weakness were easy to find.
But it is a great conception.
The open ceiling, with allegorical and classical figures thrown in masses against the sky: the closed frieze, formally divided into historical scenes and tightly tied to the stone walls, belong in their large ordering to the line of Correggio and his Baroque followers.
The descent may be remote, but this is surely the only full-scale example of that vigorous inheritance in the United States.
Constantino Brumidi designed the decorative scheme as a whole, in collaboration with the architect Charles U. Walter, at the time when plans were being made to replace the wooden dome of Bullfinch with the present much larger iron structure.
After many years and many interruptions he was able to finish the canopy fresco, and slightly less than half the frieze, beginning with the Liberty group opposite the East door, and ending with William Penn, all but one leg, when a tragic accident ended his career.
He left at his death sketches, drawn to scale, for the rest of the circle.
These were carried out not too faithfully by Filippo Costaggini, who began by supplying the missing member to the founder of Pennsylvania and noting in pencil, in Italian, that he began at this point.
When Costaggini had used up all the sketches thirty-six feet of empty frieze were left over.
A blank undecorated void, plastered in roughcast, disfigured the wall of the Rotunda until 1951.
Later the cleaning and restoration were ordered, first of the older part of the frieze, finally of the canopy.
What follows is therefore a description of three separate undertakings, the new frescoing of the gap, and the successive essays in conservation, with some discussion of problems that arose in connection with each.
For the use of students and future restorers, a full, day-by-day record was kept of all three undertakings, complete technical reports on what we found and what we did.
These may be consulted in the office of the Architect of the Capitol, or the Library of Congress.
The first preliminary was inspecting the unfinished length of frieze, a jumble of roughcast and finish coats, all in bad condition.
It was decided to strip the whole area down to the bricks, and to replace the rough coats up to one inch thickness to agree with the older artists' preparation, with a mortar, one part slaked lime, three parts sand, to be put on in two layers.
Cartoons were drawn full size, after sketches had been made to satisfy all the authorities.
There was some difficulty here.
One had to manage the given subjects, three diverse recent events, so as to make them part of a classical frieze,--that is, a pattern of large figures filling the space, with not much else, against a blank background.
Moreover, all three representations must be squeezed comfortably into little more than the length Brumidi allowed for each one of his.
When it was all arranged to fit, and not to interrupt the lengthwise flow of movement in the frieze, the cartoons were tried in place.
The scaffolding, a confusion of heavy beams hanging from the gallery above, was strong and safe, but obscured visibility.
Nothing could be seen from the floor, but by moving around the gallery one could get glimpses;
and we were able to decide on some amplification of scale.
To be sure of matching color as well as form, pieces of cartoon were traced on the roughcast, and large samples painted in fresco, then left two months to dry out to their final key.
Later it was gratifying to note that they had set so solidly as to be hard to remove when the time came.
The scaffold was the length of the space to be painted.
What bits of Brumidi and Costaggini could be reached at either end seemed in good order, though the roughish sandy surface was thick with dust.
Washed, they came out surprisingly clear and bright.
It could be seen that both artists used a very thick final coat of plaster, one half inch, and that both followed the traditional Italian fresco technique as described by Cennino Cennini in the 14th Century, and current in Italy to this day.
That is, they used opaque color throughout, getting solid highlights with active lime white.
Painting a secco is much in evidence.
A brown hatching reinforces and broadens shadows, and much of the background is solidly covered with a dark coat.
This brown is sometimes so rich in medium as to appear to be oil paint.
In our own practice, to have the last intonaco plaster coat thick enough to match, and at the same time to avoid fine cracks in drying, we found that it had to be put on in two layers, letting the first set awhile before applying the second.
The mortar was three parts sand to two of lime.
Some of the lime that is always on hand in the Capitol basement for plaster repairs was slaked several months for us;
but to make it stiffer, of a really putty-like consistency to avoid cracking, we added a little hydrated lime--hard on the hands, but we could see no other disadvantage.
I am told that a mortar longer slaked might have remained longer in condition for painting.
As it was, it took the pigment well for six hours, enough for our purpose, and held it firmly in setting.
It was obvious that to match Brumidi, white must be mixed with all but the darkest tones.
Lime white, hard and brilliant, has a tendency to jump away from the other colors in drying, and also by its capacity to set, to preclude the use of ready-made gradations, so useful in decorative work.
In older Italian practice, lime, dried and reground bianco sangiovanni, entered into such prepared shades.
For convenience we chose a stronger pigment, unknown to the early Italians or to Brumidi, titanium oxide, reserving the active lime white for highest lights, put on at the end of the day's stint.
Other pigments were mostly raw umber, some burnt umber, and a little yellow ochre.
This last was probably not in Brumidi's palette, but was needed to take the chill, bluish look off the new work next to the old, where softening effects of time were seen, even after thorough cleaning.
The use of secco we tried to restrict to covering joints.
Experience showed, however, that it is very difficult to paint a dark umber background in fresco that will not dry out spotty and uneven.
Later Brumidi and Costaggini will be seen coping with this same problem.
We were forced, as they were, to work a good deal of tempera into background and dark areas.
We made it by Doerner's recipe, five parts thoroughly washed cheese curd to one of lime putty;
ground together they made a strong adhesive, which became waterproof in drying.
Figure 1 was taken in 1953.
The new part is finished.
On the right is the Brumidi Liberty group, as it looked after cleaning operations, which had not yet come around to the other end;
where, of Costaggini, only some foliage has been washed, at the point where his work stopped.
One is led to speculate as to why the empty space was there, left for our century to finish.
Costaggini said it was Brumidi's fault in not providing enough material to fill the circle.
Brumidi's son later maintained that Costaggini had compressed and mutilated his father's designs, ambitiously coveting a bit he could claim for his very own.
This question might be settled by comparing the measurement of the actual circumference with the dimensions noted, presumably in Brumidi's hand, above the various sections of his long preparatory drawing, which has been kept.
Whosever fault, it is evident that Brumidi intended to fill out the whole frieze with his histories and come full circle with the scene of the discovery of California gold.
In painting a fresco, the handling of wet mortar compels one always to move from top to bottom and from left to right, not to spoil yesterday's work with today's plastering.
At the very first, then, Brumidi was required, by the classically pyramidal shape of his central group, to fill in the triangular space above the seated girl on Liberty's right, before starting on the allegorical figures themselves.
Here he put a small man, whose missing hands might have left his function doubtful, until comparison with the first sketches showed that when the artist came back to the beginning, this was to be the closing figure of the party of forty-niners, and was to hold a basket.
One sees Costaggini's rendering of the same figure more than thirty feet away.
The startlingly bright effect of the first washings led the Committee to order the rest of the Brumidi-Costaggini cycle cleaned and restored to go with them.
The fixed wooden scaffold was removed, and, so as to reach all the frieze, one of pipe, on wheels, built up from the floor.
Every few days, in the early morning, as the work progressed, twenty men would appear to push it ahead and to shift the plank foundation that distributed its weight widely on the Rotunda pavement, supported as it is by ancient brick vaulting.
On this giddy and oscillating platform over fifty feet from the floor, after a first dusting, we began to wash.
A most useful tool for wetting the surface without running down was made from a greenhouse mist spray nozzle welded to a hose connection, to be used at low water pressure.
A valve in the handle let us cut the pressure still lower.
One man sprayed, with a sponge in hand to check excess wetting.
A second assistant mopped with two sponges.
In parts a repeated sponging was needed, but everywhere we found that water alone was enough to restore the original brightness.
No soap or other cleaning agent was used that might bring in unwanted chemical reactions.
The painting a fresco stood up superbly;
a little of the secco came off.
Necessary retouching was put on at once.
Altogether we found the craftsmanship first rate, especially Brumidi's.
We were greatly helped by there being no traces of former restoring.
Apparently not more than dusting had ever been done, and not much of that.
The plaster was sound, the intonaco firmly attached all over, and the pigment solidly incorporated with it in all but a few unimportant places.
The greatest source of trouble was rain which had repeatedly flowed from openings above, soaking the surface and leaving streaks of dissolved lime, very conspicuous even after cleaning, particularly in the Landing of Columbus, Oglethorpe and the Indians, and Yorktown.
Here the Architect, referring to the use of the Capitol as a public building, not a museum, requested some repainting to maintain decorative effect, rather than leaving blank, unsightly patches.
These frescos have had no care for eighty years.
With naked gas jets below and leaky windows above, enough to ruin wall paintings in any medium, they have survived, in a building long unheated in winter, hot and damp under the iron dome in summer.
Those whom I wish to address with this letter are for the most part unknown to me.
It may well be that, when Rudy Pozzatti and I visited your country last spring, you were living and working close to the places we saw and the streets we walked.
As American artists, it was natural that we would want to meet as many Soviet artists as possible.
This letter might not have been necessary had our efforts to meet and talk with you been more successful.
Even though we did not see many of your faces, it appears now quite evident that a considerable number of your profession heard, from those whom we had the fortune to encounter, that we had been in your midst.
I am very pleased that quite a number of you found ways to communicate to me your desire to hear of our reactions and experiences in the U.S.S.R..
I can well understand your curiosity.
We, ourselves, are always eager to know how others feel about us and the way in which we live.
It is my hope that this written message and report will reach you through the good offices of the Union of Soviet Artists.
There should be no reason to misinterpret or ignore the intent of this letter.
Pozzatti and I endeavored earnestly to record our impressions without the prejudice that the anxiety of our time so easily provokes.
The time-span of little more than a month cannot entitle me to pose as an expert on anything I saw.
Too much damage is done by experts who have spent even less time, if any at all, in the U.S.S.R..
Nevertheless I consider it reasonable, because of my commitment as an artist, to assume that the rights and responsibilities of creative individuals are related to humanity as a whole rather than to specific geo-political interests.
If this attitude is seriously questioned in the Soviet Union, it does not necessarily follow that the majority of the society in which I live is too aware of the necessity for clarity on this ethical as well as aesthetic point of view.
It is a matter of some disappointment to me that still many of my own countrymen are too shortsighted to ascribe any symbolic significance to the plight of a minority, such as artists, in any social order.
I encountered many questions and great interest upon my return from the Soviet Union about my reactions to that experience.
That which I found most profound and most disturbing appeared to evoke a curiously muted reaction.
Almost as if I were talking about something quite unreal.
Apparently this is not the time and the climate in which people will listen objectively, or at least dispassionately, to individual impressions of a subject which preoccupies a good deal of their waking moments.
Personal predispositions tend to blunt the ear and, in turn, the voice as well.
I cannot be content with the anecdotal small talk of a somewhat unusual travelogue.
I am equally impatient with the shrug of the shoulder, shake of the head of those who no longer care because they have known it for so long;
the aggressive disbelief of those who are romantically lost in a semantic jungle of the word Revolution;
the belligerent denunciations by the sick fanatics of ignorance who try to build a papier-mache wall of pseudo-patriotism on our physical horizons.
Difficult as it may have been at times, Pozzatti and I saw enough, talked to enough artists, historians and others to realize that the issue is quite clear.
Artists and poets are the raw nerve-ends of humanity;
they are small in number and their contribution is not immediately decisive in everyday life.
By themselves they may not be able to save the life on this planet, but without them there would be very little left worth saving.
It cannot be said that our very first day in the Soviet Union turned out to be an ordinary one.
We stood under a gigantic tree in the rolling country just outside of Moscow looking at silent flowers on the grave of a Russian poet and writer who cherished the love for his country to the point of foregoing the highest international honor.
The grave, about half-way between his home and the blue turrets of a small church, rose above the forms and spaces of gently undisciplined pastures of green, the sounds of birds, the silence of other graves and the casual paths through small forests.
Just yesterday we had met and talked with a living writer, a contemporary of the dead poet, who is known for his ability of manipulating his ideas and his craft more advantageously.
But today we were aware of only two men.
One had taken a flight into uncharted space, in the service of science, to return as a living hero.
The other had assumed the right to explore the equally uncharted space of the human spirit.
The flowers on his grave attested to the fact that he as well was somebody's hero.
These two recollections form the frame around a series of experiences and sights which, to me at least, symbolize the extremes in the aesthetic as well as ethical conflict between materialism and humanism.
A struggle that is being waged all over the world in the half-light of disinterest.
The prevalent opinion which we encountered in a variety of expressions in your country denied not only the existence of this conflict but it was elaborated even further with an incredible semantic dexterity.
The socialist environment, it was stated, had cross-fertilized these two extreme seeds and was about to produce a new plant and fruit.
When I speculated on one such occasion that the new growth, like other mutations, might be unable to propagate, I was immediately accused of preaching racial prejudice.
I could not bring myself to answer that some of my best friends are non-propagating mules.
This kind of reasoning and logic takes a little time to get used to.
After a while we were perhaps less surprised, but still puzzled, when a friendly discussion would suddenly jump the track into the most irrelevant and illogical comparisons.
A chance remark about Lenin's sealed train brought the rejoinder that this was a myth akin to George Washington's cherry tree.
Theories of the behavior pattern of population masses were compared to scientific discoveries concerning the motion-pattern of gaseous masses.
No wonder that Pozzatti and I had at times difficulty in remembering the real purpose of our presence, namely, Cultural Exchange.
Typical of such an experience was the occasion of a somewhat formal official welcome in the offices of the Union of Soviet Artists.
We had looked forward to what we hoped to be our first informal meeting with a number of Moscow's artists.
Instead, we became involved in a series of friendly, but overly formal, welcoming addresses to which we had no choice but to reply in kind.
The terms of friendship, understanding, cooperation, etc., tend to become somewhat shopworn because of constant and indiscriminate use.
I can only hope that the continuing exchange of groups and individuals between our countries will not wear out all language pertinent to the occasion.
The presiding female functionary, of massive proportions and forbidding appearance, initially did not contribute to the expressions of friendship and welcome by a number of dignified gentlemen representing the arts.
It was only after we had responded, with what I fear were similar cliches, that she went into action by questioning our desire for friendship and understanding with a challenge about aggressive and warlike actions by the U.S. Government in Cuba and Laos.
She retreated by leaving the room when we suggested that our meeting might well terminate right then and there.
This gave her an opportunity to ring down the curtain with the petulant admonition that we should not presume to lecture her on Abstraction.
She did not go so far as to say, as was done on other occasions, that Abstraction as well as Impressionism were a Russian invention that had been discarded as unwanted by the people of the U.S.S.R.
Pozzatti and I could not know then that we would experience this sort of treatment more often in Moscow than elsewhere.
We were to discover, in fact, that quite a number of people share with us the impression that, in contrast to other Soviet regions, Moscow's atmosphere is depressingly subdued and official.
To have one's intentions deliberately or unintentionally misunderstood is always a waste of time.
Until our Moscow experience, I had not considered it necessary to prepare any argument formally or informally.
Artists simply do not talk to each other in that fashion;
and, furthermore, I could not presume the implication that I spoke for American artists as a group.
To save time, some clarification seemed necessary.
The following is a statement read to a large and friendly group of your fellow artists in Leningrad:
We have come to your land with the express intention of understanding and respecting your ideas and your ways.
Our presence here should also be considered further, sincere evidence of the attempts by our people and their chosen government to seek any and all possible ways to effect closer, peaceful ties among all people.
We are quite convinced that one of the main hopes for the future depends upon the informal contacts and exchanges of ideas between individuals.
In spite of the relatively short period of time that we have experienced among you, we have already seen many indications of your character and spirit.
We are acutely aware that yours is a society which, in spite of several wars and many privations, has developed itself into one of the foremost nations of the world.
Your past history is resplendent with the fruits of the intellect.
Your present history is equally admirable for its industrial and scientific achievements.
We have come to you to experience something of your way of life while also attempting to acquaint you with that of ours.
While we, as American artists, believe deeply in the universal character of all intellectual activity, we would be less than honest with you, or ourselves, if we failed to state a specific attitude toward our own society as well as the international community as a whole.
In stating this position, we should like to make it clear to you that we cannot expect artists and intellectuals in other lands to share our opinion in every respect.
As a matter of fact, we prize the diversity among our own people so much that we will not presume to speak for all other American artists.
Like yourselves, we have pride and love for our country.
To many of us, this is a land to which we or our parents fled from totalitarian terror in order to live in dignified freedom.
As artists we feel the same obligation, as do other individuals, in considering ourselves responsible citizens of a great nation.
The Sane Society is an ambitious work.
Its scope is as broad as the question: What does it mean to live in modern society?
A work so broad, even when it is directed by a leading idea and informed by a moral vision, must necessarily fail.
Even a hasty reader will easily find in it numerous blind spots, errors of fact and argument, important exclusions, areas of ignorance and prejudice, undue emphases on trivia, examples of broad positions supported by flimsy evidence, and the like.
Such books are easy prey for critics.
Nor need the critic be captious.
A careful and orderly man, who values precision and a kind of tough intellectual responsibility, might easily be put off by such a book.
It is a simple matter, for one so disposed, to take a work like The Sane Society and shred it into odds and ends.
That could be easily done, but there is little reason in it.
It would come down to saying that Fromm paints with a broad brush, and that, after all, is not a conclusion one must work toward but an impression he has from the outset.
I mention these features of the book because they are inherent in the book's character and therefore must be mentioned.
It would be superfluous to build a critique around them.
There are more substantial criticisms to be made of Fromm's account of capitalist civilization.
It is worthwhile to recall that Fromm's treatment has both descriptive and normative aspects.
Since I have already discussed his moral position, that discussion is incorporated by reference into the following pages, which will focus on the empirical and analytic side of Fromm's treatment.
I shall first indicate a couple of weaknesses in Fromm's analysis, then argue that, granted these weaknesses, he still has much left that is valuable, and, finally, raise the general question of a philosophical versus a sociological approach to the question of alienation.
Almost no empirical work has been done on the problem of alienation.
Despite its rather long intellectual history, alienation is still a promising hypothesis and not a verified theory.
The idea has received much attention in philosophy, in literature, and in a few works of general social criticism, such as The Sane Society.
What is missing is work that would answer, presumably by the use of survey methods and Guttman-type attitude scales, such questions as these: What are the components of the feeling-state described as alienation?
How widespread is alienation?
What is its incidence among the various classes and subgroups of the population?
Taking alienation as a dependent variable, with what socio-structural factors is it most highly associated?
Considered as an independent variable, how does it affect behavior in various sectors of life?
I am not suggesting that Fromm ought to do this kind of work.
Nor do I think that alienation is nothing more than a projection of the malaise of the intellectual.
I am saying only that until a fuller and different kind of evidence comes in, any discussion of alienation must be understood to have certain important limitations.
Until such evidence appears, we must make do with the evidence we have.
Here, perhaps, Fromm is vulnerable, for he does not always use the best and most recent evidence available, and he sometimes selects and interprets the evidence in rather special ways.
Three examples follow.
For all these points he relies exclusively on Berle and Means's study of 1932, The Modern Corporation And Private Property.
Fromm seems unaware of these developments.
Another example is his very infrequent use of the large amount of data from surveys designed to discover what and how people actually do feel and think on a broad range of topics: he cites such survey-type findings just three times.
Moreover, the conclusions he draws from the findings are not always the only ones possible.
For example, he cites the following data from two studies on job satisfaction: in the first study, 85 per cent of professionals and executives, 64 per cent of white collar people, and 41 per cent of factory workers expressed satisfaction with their jobs;
in the second study, the percentages were 86 for professionals, 74 for managerial persons, 42 for commercial employees, 56 for skilled workers, and 48 for semi-skilled workers.
He concludes that these data show a remarkably high percentage of consciously dissatisfied and unhappy persons among factory and clerical workers.
Starting from other value premises than Fromm's, some analysts might conclude that the percentages really tell us very little at all, while others might even conclude that the figures are remarkably low.
Eric Hoffer, for example, once said that America was a paradise--the only one in the history of the world--for workingmen and small children.
What matters is that while Fromm's reading of the data is not the only one possible, it is precisely the one we would expect from a writer who earnestly believes that every man can and ought to be happy and satisfied.
Fromm says these data show that job dissatisfaction and resentment are widespread.
That is one way to read the findings, but again there are other ways.
One might use such findings to indicate the strength of informal primary associations in the factory, an interpretation which would run counter to Fromm's theory of alienation.
Or, he might remind Fromm that the 41 per cent figure is really astonishingly low: after all, the medieval guild system was dedicated to the proposition that 100 per cent of the workers ought to turn out only the average amount;
and today's trade unions announce pretty much the same view.
In view of these shortcomings in both the amount and the interpretation of survey-type findings on public opinion, and considering the criticisms which can be brought against Fromm's philosophical anthropology, such a passage as the following cannot be taken seriously.
Are people happy, are they as satisfied, unconsciously, as they believe themselves to be?
Considering the nature of man, and the conditions for happiness, this can hardly be so.
The ambiguities suggested above stem from a more basic difficulty in Fromm's style of thought.
He seems to use the term alienation in two different ways.
Sometimes he uses it as a subjective, descriptive term, and sometimes as an objective, diagnostic one.
That is, sometimes it is used to describe felt human misery, and other times it is postulated to explain unfelt anxiety and discontent.
The failure to keep these two usages distinct presents hazards to the reader.
It also permits Fromm to do some dubious things with empirical findings.
When alienation is used as an objective and diagnostic category, for example, it becomes clear that Fromm would have to say that awareness of alienation goes far toward conquering it.
(He, in effect, does say this in his discussion of the pseudo-happiness of the automaton conformist.
The point is that in a system such as Fromm's which recognizes unconscious motivations, and which rests on certain ethical absolutes, empirical data can be used to support whatever proposition the writer is urging at the moment.
Thus, in the example cited above Fromm rests his whole case on the premise that the workers are being deprived unconsciously, unknowingly, of fulfillment, and then supports this with survey data reporting conscious, experienced frustrations.
He has his cake and eats it too: if the workers say they are dissatisfied, this shows conscious alienation;
if they say they are satisfied, this shows unconscious alienation.
This sort of manipulation is especially troublesome in Fromm's work because, although his system is derived largely from certain philosophic convictions, he asserts that it is based on empirical findings drawn both from social science and from his own consulting room.
While the empirical psychoanalytic label which Fromm claims sheds no light on the validity of his underlying philosophy, it does increase the marketability of his product.
The final example of the failure to use available evidence, though evidence of a different kind from that which has so far been considered, comes from Fromm's treatment of some other writers who have dealt with the same themes.
He finds it equally remarkable that their critical diagnosis and prognosis should have so much in common among themselves and with the critics of the twentieth century.
There is nothing remarkable about this at all.
It is largely a matter of finding passages that suit one's purposes.
There is a difference between evidence and illustration, and Fromm's citation of the other diagnosticians fits the latter category.
Glance at the list: Burckhardt, Tolstoy, Proudhon, Thoreau, London, Marx, Tawney, Mayo, Durkheim, Tannenbaum, Mumford, A. R. Heron, Huxley, Schweitzer, and Einstein.
This is a delightfully motley collection.
One can make them say the same thing only by not listening to them very carefully and hearing only what one wants to hear.
The method of selection Fromm uses achieves exactly that.
Furthermore, the list is interesting for its omissions.
It omits, for example, practically the whole line of great nineteenth century English social critics, nearly all the great writers whose basic position is religious, and all those who are with more or less accuracy called Existentialists.
Of course, the list also excludes all writers who are fairly optimistic about the modern situation;
these, almost by definition, are spokesmen for an alienated ideology.
It is not hard to find that concurrence of opinion which Fromm finds so remarkable when you ignore all who hold a different opinion.
Turning from these problems of the use of evidence, one meets another type of difficulty in Fromm's analysis, which is his loose and ambiguous use of certain important terms.
One such instance has already been presented: his use of alienation.
The only other one I shall mention here is his use of the term capitalism.
For Fromm, capitalism is the enemy, the root of all evil.
It is of course useful to have a sovereign cause on one's social criticism, for it makes diagnosis and prescription much easier than they might otherwise be.
If one characteristic distinguishes Boris Godunov, it is the consistency with which every person on the stage--including the chorus--comes alive in the music.
Much of this lifelike quality results from Mussorgsky's care in basing his vocal line on natural speech inflections.
In this he followed a path that led back to the very source of opera;
such composers as Monteverdi, Lully and Purcell, with the same goal in mind, had developed styles of recitative sensitively attuned to their own languages.
Through long experimentation in his songs, Mussorgsky developed a Russian recitative as different from others as the language itself.
Giving most of his musical continuity to the orchestra, he lets the speech fall into place as if by coincidence, but controlling the pace and emphasis of the words.
The moments of sung melody, in the usual sense, come most often when the character is actually supposed to be singing, as in folk songs and liturgical chants.
Otherwise Mussorgsky reserves his vocal melodies for prolonged expressions of emotion--Boris' first monologue, for example.
Even then, the flexibility of the phrasing suggests that the word comes first in importance.
Aside from Boris himself, one need but examine the secondary roles to place Mussorgsky among the masters of musical portraiture.
Even those who appear in only one or two scenes are full personalities, defined with economical precision.
Consider the four monks who figure prominently in the action: Pimen, Varlaam, Missail and the Jesuit Rangoni.
Under no circumstances could we mistake one for the other;
each musical setting has an individual touch.
Pimen is an old man, weak in body--his voice rarely rises to a full forte--but firm and clear of mind.
His calmness offers contrast to Grigori's youthful excitement.
A quiet but sturdy theme, somewhat folklike in character, appears whenever the old monk speaks of the history he is recording or of his own past life:
This theme comes to represent the outer world, the realm of battles and banquets--seen from a distance, quite distinct from the quieter spiritual life in the monastery.
It changes and develops according to the text;
it introduces Pimen when he comes before Boris in the last act.
Once he has been identified, however, a new melody is used to accompany his narrative, a bleak motif with barren octaves creating a rather ancient effect:
An imaginative storyteller, Pimen takes on the character he describes, as if he were experiencing the old shepherd's blindness and miraculous cure.
Here the composer uses a favorite device of his, the intensification of the mood through key relationships.
The original D minor seems to symbolize blindness, inescapable in spite of all attempts to move away from it.
As the child addresses the shepherd in a dream, light--in the form of the major mode--begins to appear, and at the moment of the miracle we hear a clear and shining D major.
Varlaam and Missail always appear together and often sing together, in a straightforward, rhythmically vigorous idiom that distinguishes them from the more subtle and well-educated Pimen.
Their begging song might easily be a folk melody:
The same could be said for the song to which they make their entrance in the final scene.
Apparently their origin is humble, their approach to life direct and unsophisticated.
Whatever learning they may have had in their order doesn't disturb them now.
Missail is the straight man, not very talkative, mild-mannered when he does speak.
Varlaam is loud, rowdy, uninhibited in his pleasures and impatient with anyone who is not the same.
A rough ostinato figure, heard first in the introduction to the inn scene, characterizes him amusingly and reappears whenever he comes into the action:
The Song Of Kazan, in which this figure becomes a wild-sounding accompaniment, fills in the picture of undisciplined high spirits.
The phrasing is irregular, and the abrupt key changes have a primitive forcefulness.
(We can imagine how they startled audiences of the 1870's.
Varlaam's music begins to ramble as he feels the effects of the wine, but he pulls himself together when the need arises.
Both monks respond to the guard's challenge with a few phrases of their begging song;
a clever naturalistic touch is Varlaam's labored reading of the warrant.
As the knack gradually comes back to him, his rhythm becomes steadier, with the rigid monotony of an unskilled reader.
For the only time in the opera, words are not set according to their natural inflection;
to do so would have spoiled the dramatic point of the scene.
Musically and dramatically, Rangoni is as far removed from the conventional monk as Varlaam.
His music shows a sensuality coupled with an eerie quality that suggest somehow a blood-kinship with Dappertutto in Offenbach's Hoffman.
His speech shows none of the native accent of the Russian characters;
in spite of the Italian name, he sounds French.
His personality appears more striking by contrast with Marina, who is--perhaps purposely--rather superficially characterized.
Rangoni's first entrance is a musical shock, a sudden open fifth in a key totally unrelated to what has preceded it.
The effect is as if he had materialized out of nowhere.
He speaks quietly, concealing his authority beneath a smooth humility, just as the shifting harmonies that accompany him all but hide the firm pedal point beneath them.
He addresses Marina with great deference, calling her Princess at first;
it is only after he has involved her emotions in his scheme that he uses her given name, placing himself by implication in the position of a solicitous father.
Curiously, this scene is a close parallel to one that Verdi was writing at the same time, the scene between Amonasro and Aida.
Rangoni and Amonasro have the same purpose--forcing the girl to charm the man she loves into serving her country's cause--and their tactics are much the same.
Rangoni begins by describing the sad state of the Church;
this brings a reaction of distress from Marina.
The music becomes ethereal as he calls up a vision of her own sainthood: it is she, he tells her, who can bring the truth to Russia and convert the heretics.
As if in a trance, she repeats his words--then realizes, with a shock, her own audacity.
This is no assignment for a frivolous girl, she assures him.
Now Rangoni comes to the point, and we hear, for the first time, a long, downward chromatic scale that will become the characteristic motif of his sinister power.
It is a phrase as arresting as a magician's gesture, with a piquant turn of harmony giving an effect of strangeness.
Another theme, sinuously chromatic, appears as he directs her to gain power over Grigori by any means, even at the cost of her honor.
Coming from a priest, the music sounds as odd as the advice:
Marina rebels at this suggestion.
Her pride is as much at stake as her virtue;
she is the unattainable beauty, the princess who turns away suitors by the dozen.
Indignantly she denounces Rangoni for his evil thoughts and orders him to leave her.
At once the Jesuit pulls out all the stops.
To music of a menacing darkness, he describes the powers of Satan gaining control of the girl, poisoning her soul with pride and destroying her beauty.
The combined threat of hell-fire and ugliness is too much for her, and she falls terrified at his feet.
With another sudden change of mood, he is again calm and protective, exhorting her to trust and obey him as God's spokesman--and the chromatic scale descends in ominous contradiction.
Whatever the source of Rangoni's power, Marina is his captive now;
we are reminded of this at the end of the next scene, when his theme cuts through the warmth of the love duet, again throwing a chill over the atmosphere.
The most unusual feature of Boris, however, is the use of the greatest character of all, the chorus.
This is the real protagonist of the drama;
the conflict is not Boris versus Grigori or Shuiski or even the ghost of the murdered child, but Boris versus the Russian people.
Mussorgsky makes this quite clear by the extent to which choral scenes propel the action.
Boris' first entrance seems almost a footnote to the splendor of the Coronation Scene, with its dazzling confusion of tonalities.
We have a brief glimpse of the Tsar's public personality, the official Boris, but our real focus is on the excitement of the crowd--a significant contrast with its halfhearted acclamation in the opening scene, its bitter resentment and fury in the final act.
One reason for the unique vitality of the chorus is its great variety in expression.
It rarely speaks as a unit.
Even in its most conventional appearance, the guests' song of praise to Marina, there are a few female dissenters criticizing the princess for her coldness.
In many passages--for example, the council of boyars--each section of the chorus becomes a character group with a particular opinion.
Hot arguments arise between tenors and basses, who will sing in harmony only when they agree on an idea.
The opening scene shows this method at its most individual.
Mussorgsky paints a telling picture of the common people, those who must suffer the effects of their rulers' struggle for power without understanding the causes.
They are held in control by force, but barely.
They will kneel and plead for Boris' leadership in a strangely intense song, its phrases irregularly broken as if gasping for breath, but when the police with their cudgels move away, they mock and grumble and fight among themselves.
There is a quick change from the plaintive song to a conversational tone.
Hey, Mityukh, asks one group, what are we shouting about?
And Mityukh, apparently the intellectual leader of the crowd, replies that he has no notion.
The jokes and arguments grow louder until the police return;
then the people strike up their song with even more fervor than before, ending it with a wail of despair.
Mussorgsky frequently uses liturgical music with considerable dramatic force.
In Pimen's cell the soft prayers of the monks, heard from offstage, not only help to set the scene but emphasize the contrast between young Grigori's thoughts and his situation.
This is especially striking between Pimen's quiet exit and Grigori's vehement outburst against Boris.
Again, as Boris feels himself nearing death, a procession files into the hall singing a hymn, its modal harmonies adding a churchly touch to the grim atmosphere: The words are hardly calculated to put the Tsar's mind at ease.
They echo the words with which he has described his own vision of the dying child who trembles and begs for mercy--and there is no mercy.
The living as well as the dead now accuse him;
this final reminder of his guilt is the fatal one.
One of the outstanding assets of the present production is the restoration of the St. Basil's scene, usually omitted from performances and rarely included in a published score.
Though brief, it has a sharp dramatic edge and great poignancy.
In addition, it is an important link in the plot, giving us a revealing glimpse of the people's attitude toward Boris and the false Dimitri.
The mayhem in the forest of Kromy is a natural sequel.
The St. Basil's scene opens with little groups of beggars milling around the square, the ever present police keeping them under scrutiny.
In the orchestra we hear first a hushed, hesitant pizzicato figure, then the insistent police motif as it appeared in the opening scene.
The service is over, and a number of people come from the church with their spokesman Mityukh in the lead.
They bring the news that the Pretender has been excommunicated;
this is met with scorn by the hearers, who claim that Mityukh is lying or drunk.
(Mussorgsky cleverly contrasts the two groups by their orchestral accompaniment, solemn chords or mocking staccatos.
) There is still more news, Mityukh announces: they have prayed for the soul of the Tsarevich.
So far these remarks, like most criticisms of Hardy, have tacitly assumed that his poetry is all of a piece, one solid mass of verse expressing a sensibility at a single stage of development.
For critics, Hardy has had no poetic periods--one does not speak of early Hardy or late Hardy, or of the London or Max Gate period, but simply of Hardy, as of a poetic monolith.
This seems odd when one recalls that he wrote poetry longer than any other major English poet: Domicilium is dated between 1857 and 1860;
Seeing The Moon Rise is dated August, 1927.
One might expect that in a poetic career of seventy-odd years, some changes in style and method would have occurred, some development taken place.
This is not, however, the case, and development is a term which we can apply to Hardy only in a very limited sense.
In a time when poetic style, and poetic belief as well, seem in a state of continual flux, Hardy stands out as a poet of almost perverse consistency.
Though he struggled with philosophy all his life, he never got much beyond the pessimism of his twenties;
the sober opinion of his letter to Noyes, written when Hardy was eighty years old, is essentially that of his first philosophical notebook entry, made when he was twenty-five: The world does not despise us: it only neglects us (Early Life, p. 63).
And though in his later years he revised his poems many times, the revisions did not alter the essential nature of the style which he had established before he was thirty;
so that, while it usually is easy to recognize a poem by Hardy, it is difficult to date one.
There is only one sense in which it is valid to talk about Hardy's development: he did develop toward a more consistent and more effective control of that tone which we recognize as uniquely his.
There is only one Hardy style, but in the earlier poems that style is only intermittently evident, and when it is not, the style is the style of another poet, or of the fashion of the time.
In the later poems, however, the personal tone predominates.
The bad early poems are bad Shakespeare or bad Swinburne;
the bad late poems are bad Hardy.
There are two ways of getting at a poet's development: through his dated poems, and through the revisions which he made in later editions of his work.
About a quarter of Hardy's poems carry an appended date line, usually the year of completion, but sometimes inclusive years (1908 - 1910) or two separate dates when Hardy worked on the poem (1905 and 1926) or an approximate date (During the War).
These dates are virtually the only clues we have to the chronology of the poems, since the separate volumes are neither chronological within themselves nor in relation to each other.
With the exception of Satires Of Circumstance, each volume contains dated poems ranging over several decades (Winter Words spans sixty-one years);
the internal organization rarely has any chronological order, except in obvious groups like the Poems of Pilgrimage, the Poems of 1912 - 13, and the war poems.
From the dated poems we can venture certain conclusions about Hardy's career in poetry, always remembering that conclusions based on a fraction of the whole must remain tentative.
The dated poems suggest that while Hardy's concern with poetry may have been constant, his production was not.
He had two productive periods, one in the late 1860's, the other in the decade from 1910 to 1920 (half of the dated poems are from the latter period, and these alone total about one-tenth of all Hardy's poems).
There was one sterile period: only one poem is dated between 1872 and 1882 and, except for the poems written on the trip to Italy in 1887, very few from 1882 to 1890.
The dated poems also give us an idea of the degree to which Hardy drew upon past productions for his various volumes, and therefore probably are an indication of the amount of poetry he was writing at the time.
Poems Of The Past And The Present and Time's Laughing Stocks, both published while Hardy was at work on The Dynasts, draw heavily on poems written before 1900.
Satires Of Circumstance and Moments Of Vision, coming during his most productive decade, are relatively self-contained;
the former contains no poem dated before 1909 - 10--that is, no poem from a period covered by a previous volume--and the latter has only a few such.
The last three volumes are again more dependent on the past, as Hardy's creative powers declined in his old age.
These observations about Hardy's productivity tally with the details of his life as we know them.
The first productive period came when he was considering poetry as a vocation, before he had decided to write fiction for a living (in his note for Who's Who he wrote that he wrote verses 1865 - 1868;
gave up verse for prose, 1868 - 70;
but resumed it later).
During the poetically sterile years he was writing novels at the rate of almost one a year and was, in addition, burdened with bad health (he spent six months in bed in 1881, too ill to do more than work slowly and painfully at A Laodicean).
Two entries in The Early Life support the assumption that during this period Hardy had virtually suspended the writing of poetry.
Mrs. Hardy records that at the end of November (1881) he makes a note of an intention to resume poetry as soon as possible (Early Life, p. 188);
and on Christmas Day, 1890, Hardy wrote: While thinking of resuming'the viewless Wings Of Poesy before dawn this morning, new horizons seemed to open, and worrying pettinesses to disappear (Early Life, p. 302).
There are more poems dated in the 1890's than in the '80's--Hardy had apparently resumed the viewless wings as he decreased the volume of his fiction--but none in 1891, the year of Tess, and only one in 1895, the year of Jude.
After 1895 the number increases, and in the next thirty years there is only one year for which there is no dated poem--1903, when Hardy was at work on The Dynasts.
The second productive period, the decade from 1910 to 1920, can be related to three events: the completion of The Dynasts in 1909, which left Hardy free of pressure for the first time in forty years;
the death of Emma Hardy in 1912, which had a profound emotional effect on Hardy for which he found release in poetry;
and the First World War.
It may seem strange that a poet should come to full fruition in his seventies, but we have it on Hardy's own authority that he was a child till he was sixteen, a youth till he was five-and-twenty, and a young man till he was nearly fifty (Early Life, p. 42).
We may carry this sequence one step further and say that at seventy he was a poet at the height of his powers, wanting only the impetus of two tragedies, one personal, the other national, to loose those powers in poetry.
Hardy's two productive decades were separated by forty years, yet between them he developed only in that he became more steadily himself--it was a narrowing, not an expanding process.
Like a wise gardener, Hardy pruned away the Shakespearian sonnets and songs, and the elements of meter and poetic diction to which his personal style was not suited, and let the main stock of his talent flourish.
The range of the later poetry is considerably narrower, but the number of successful poems is far greater.
We can see the general characteristics of the earlier decade if we look at two poems of very different qualities: Revulsion (1866) and Neutral Tones (1867).
There is not much to be said for Revulsion.
Like about half of the 1860 - 70 poems, it is a sonnet on a conventional theme--the unhappiness of love.
Almost anyone could have written it;
it is competent in the sense that it makes a coherent statement without violating the rules of the sonnet form, but it is entirely undistinguished and entirely unlike Hardy.
The language is the conventional language of the form;
there is no phrase or image that sounds like Hardy or that is striking enough to give individuality to the poem.
It is smoother than Hardy usually is, but with the smoothness of anonymity.
It is obviously a young man's poem, written out of books and not out of experience;
it asserts emotion without evoking it--that is to say, it is sentimental.
There are many such competently anonymous performances among the earlier poems.
The poem does not distort the syntax of ordinary speech nor draw on exotic sources of diction, yet it is obviously not ordinary speech--only Hardy would say a grin of bitterness swept thereby;
like an ominous bird a-wing, or wrings with wrong, or would describe a winter sun as God-curst.
Neutral Tones is an excellent example of Hardy's mature style, drawn from his earliest productive period;
I cite it as evidence that he did not develop through new styles as he grew older (as Yeats did), but that he simply learned to use better what he already had.
In the poem we recognize and acknowledge one man's sense of the world;
if it is somber, it is also precise, and the precision lends authority to the vision.
In Revulsion, on the other hand, the pessimism is a case not proven;
the poem offers nothing to persuade us of the speaker's right to speak as he does.
In the 1860 - 70 decade there are many poems like Revulsion, but there is only one Neutral Tones.
Hardy was not Hardy very often.
The Poems of 1912 - 13 offer a good example of Hardy's style as it was manifested in the later productive decade.
These are the poems Hardy wrote after the death of his first wife;
they compose a painful elegy to what might have been, to a marriage that began with a promise of happiness, and ended in long years of suffering and hatred.
Hardy obviously felt that these poems were peculiarly personal and private;
he sometimes called them an expiation, and he would not allow them to be published in periodicals.
They are the only poems that he rearranged as a group between their first appearance (in Satires Of Circumstance) and the publication of the Collected Poems.
The elegiac tone is Hardy's natural tone of voice, and it is not surprising that the 1912 - 13 poems are consistently and unmistakably his.
The view is always toward the past;
but the mood is not quite nostalgic--Hardy would not allow sentiment to soften his sense of the irredeemable pastness of the past, and the eternal deadness of the dead.
The poems are, the epigraph tells us, the traces of an ancient flame;
the fire of love is dead, and Hardy stands, as the speaker does in the last poem of the sequence, over the burnt circle of charred sticks, and thinks of past happiness and present grief, honest and uncomforted.
Critically invisible, modern revolt, like X-rays and radioactivity, is perceived only by its effects at more materialistic social levels, where it is called delinquency.
Disaffiliation, by the way, is the term used by the critic and poet, Lawrence Lipton, who has written several articles on this subject, the first of which, in The Nation, quoted as Epigraph: We disaffiliate.
''--John L. Lewis.
Like the pillars of Hercules, like two ruined Titans guarding the entrance to one of Dante's circles, stand two great dead juvenile delinquents--the heroes of the post-war generation: the great saxophonist, Charlie Parker, and Dylan Thomas.
If the word deliberate means anything, both of them certainly deliberately destroyed themselves.
Both of them were overcome by the horror of the world in which they found themselves, because at last they could no longer overcome that world with the weapon of a purely lyrical art.
Both of them were my friends.
Living in San Francisco I saw them seldom enough to see them with a perspective which was not distorted by exasperation or fatigue.
So as the years passed, I saw them each time in the light of an accelerated personal conflagration.
The last time I saw Bird, at Jimbo's Bob City, he was so gone--so blind to the world--that he literally sat down on me before he realized I was there.
What happened, man?
I said, referring to the pretentious Jazz Concert.
Evil, man, evil, he said, and that's all he said for the rest of the night.
About dawn he got up to blow.
The rowdy crowd chilled into stillness and the fluent melody spiraled through it.
The last time I saw Dylan, his self-destruction had not just passed the limits of rationality.
It had assumed the terrifying inertia of inanimate matter.
Being with him was like being swept away by a torrent of falling stones.
Now Dylan Thomas and Charlie Parker have a great deal more in common than the same disastrous end.
As artists, they were very similar.
They were both very fluent.
But this fluent, enchanting utterance had, compared with important artists of the past, relatively little content.
Neither of them got very far beyond a sort of entranced rapture at his own creativity.
The principal theme of Thomas's poetry was the ambivalence of birth and death--the pain of blood-stained creation.
Music, of course, is not so explicit an art, but anybody who knew Charlie Parker knows that he felt much the same way about his own gift.
Both of them did communicate one central theme: Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense--the creative act.
This, of course, is the theme of much art--perhaps most poetry.
It is the theme of Horace, who certainly otherwise bears little resemblance to Parker or Thomas.
The difference is that Horace accepted his theme with a kind of silken assurance.
To Dylan and Bird it was an agony and terror.
I do not believe that this is due to anything especially frightful about their relationship to their own creativity.
I believe rather that it is due to the catastrophic world in which that creativity seemed to be the sole value.
Horace's column of imperishable verse shines quietly enough in the lucid air of Augustan Rome.
Art may have been for him the most enduring, orderly, and noble activity of man.
But the other activities of his life partook of these values.
They did not actively negate them.
Dylan Thomas's verse had to find endurance in a world of burning cities and burning Jews.
He was able to find meaning in his art as long as it was the answer to air raids and gas ovens.
As the world began to take on the guise of an immense air raid or gas oven, I believe his art became meaningless to him.
I think all this could apply to Parker just as well, although, because of the nature of music, it is not demonstrable--at least not conclusively.
Thomas and Parker have more in common than theme, attitude, life pattern.
In the practice of their art, there is an obvious technical resemblance.
Contrary to popular belief, they were not great technical innovators.
Their effects are only superficially startling.
Thomas is a regression from the technical originality and ingenuity of writers like Pierre Reverdy or Apollinaire.
Similarly, the innovations of bop, and of Parker particularly, have been vastly overrated by people unfamiliar with music, especially by that ignoramus, the intellectual jitterbug, the jazz aficionado.
The tonal novelties consist in the introduction of a few chords used in classical music for centuries.
And there is less rhythmic difference between progressive jazz, no matter how progressive, and Dixieland, than there is between two movements of many conventional symphonies.
What Parker and his contemporaries--Gillespie, Davis, Monk, Roach (Tristano is an anomaly), etc.--did was to absorb the musical ornamentation of the older jazz into the basic structure, of which it then became an integral part, and with which it then developed.
This is true of the melodic line which could be put together from selected passages of almost anybody--Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges.
It is true of the rhythmic pattern in which the beat shifts continuously, or at least is continuously sprung, so that it becomes ambiguous enough to allow the pattern to be dominated by the long pulsations of the phrase or strophe.
This is exactly what happened in the transition from baroque to rococo music.
It is the difference between Bach and Mozart.
It is not a farfetched analogy to say that this is what Thomas did to poetry.
The special syntactical effects of a Rimbaud or an Edith Sitwell--actually ornaments--become the main concern.
The metaphysical conceits, which fascinate the Reactionary Generation still dominant in backwater American colleges, were embroideries.
Thomas's ellipses and ambiguities are ends in themselves.
The immediate theme, if it exists, is incidental, and his main theme--the terror of birth--is simply reiterated.
This is one difference between Bird and Dylan which should be pointed out.
Again, contrary to popular belief, there is nothing crazy or frantic about Parker either musically or emotionally.
His sinuous melody is a sort of naive transcendence of all experience.
Emotionally it does not resemble Berlioz or Wagner;
it resembles Mozart.
This is true also of a painter like Jackson Pollock.
He may have been eccentric in his behavior, but his paintings are as impassive as Persian tiles.
Partly this difference is due to the nature of verbal communication.
The insistent talk-aboutiveness of the general environment obtrudes into even the most idyllic poetry.
It is much more a personal difference.
Thomas certainly wanted to tell people about the ruin and disorder of the world.
Parker and Pollock wanted to substitute a work of art for the world.
Technique pure and simple, rendition, is not of major importance, but it is interesting that Parker, following Lester Young, was one of the leaders of the so-called saxophone revolution.
In modern jazz, the saxophone is treated as a woodwind and played with conventional embouchure.
Metrically, Thomas's verse was extremely conventional, as was, incidentally, the verse of that other tragic enrage, Hart Crane.
I want to make clear what I consider the one technical development in the first wave of significant post-war arts.
Ornament is confabulation in the interstices of structure.
A poem by Dylan Thomas, a saxophone solo by Charles Parker, a painting by Jackson Pollock--these are pure confabulations as ends in themselves.
Confabulation has come to determine structure.
Uninhibited lyricism should be distinguished from its exact opposite--the sterile, extraneous invention of the corn-belt metaphysicals, or present blight of poetic professors.
In fact, his only disciple--the only person to imitate his style--was W. S. Graham, who seems to have imitated him without much understanding, and who has since moved on to other methods.
Thomas's principal influence lay in the communication of an attitude--that of the now extinct British romantic school of the New Apocalypse--Henry Treece, J. F. Hendry, and others--all of whom were quite conventional poets.
Parker certainly had much more of an influence.
At one time it was the ambition of every saxophone player in every high school band in America to blow like Bird.
Even before his death this influence had begun to ebb.
In fact, the whole generation of the founding fathers of bop--Gillespie, Monk, Davis, Blakey, and the rest--are just now at a considerable discount.
The main line of development today goes back to Lester Young and by-passes them.
The point is that many of the most impressive developments in the arts nowadays are aberrant, idiosyncratic.
There is no longer any sense of continuing development of the sort that can be traced from Baudelaire to Eluard, or for that matter, from Hawthorne through Henry James to Gertrude Stein.
The cubist generation before World War 1, and, on a lower level, the surrealists of the period between the wars, both assumed an accepted universe of discourse, in which, to quote Andre Breton, it was possible to make definite advances, exactly as in the sciences.
I doubt if anyone holds such ideas today.
Continuity exits, but like the neo-swing music developed from Lester Young, it is a continuity sustained by popular demand.
In the plastic arts, a very similar situation exists.
Surrealists like Hans Arp and Max Ernst might talk of creation by hazard--of composing pictures by walking on them with painted soles, or by tossing bits of paper up in the air.
But it is obvious that they were self-deluded.
Nothing looks anything like an Ernst or an Arp but another Ernst or Arp.
Nothing looks less like their work than the happenings of random occasion.
Many of the post-World War 2, abstract expressionists, apostles of the discipline of spontaneity and hazard, look alike, and do look like accidents.
The aesthetic appeal of pure paint laid on at random may exist, but it is a very impoverished appeal.
Once again what has happened is an all-consuming confabulation of the incidentals, the accidents of painting.
the splashes of light and black which fake drapery in the fashionable imitators of Hals and Sargent.
Often work of this sort is presented as calligraphy--the pure utterance of the brush stroke seeking only absolute painteresque values.
You have only to compare such painting with the work of, say, Sesshu, to realize that someone is using words and brushes carelessly.
At its best the abstract expressionists achieve a simple rococo decorative surface.
Its poverty shows up immediately when compared with Tiepolo, where the rococo rises to painting of extraordinary profundity and power.
A Tiepolo painting, however confabulated, is a universe of tensions in vast depths.
A Pollock is an object of art--bijouterie--disguised only by its great size.
In fact, once the size is big enough to cover a whole wall, it turns into nothing more than extremely expensive wallpaper.
Now there is nothing wrong with complicated wallpaper.
There is just more to Tiepolo.
The great Ashikaga brush painters painted wallpapers, too--at least portable ones, screens.
A process of elimination which leaves the artist with nothing but the play of his materials themselves cannot sustain interest in either artist or public for very long.
So, in the last couple of years, abstract expressionism has tended toward romantic suggestion--indications of landscape or living figures.
Anglo-Saxon and Greek epic each provide on two occasions a seemingly authentic account of the narration of verse in the heroic age.
Hrothgar's court bard sings of the encounters at Finnsburg (lines 1068 - 1159), and improvises the tale of Beowulf's exploits in a complimentary comparison of the Geatish visitor with Sigemund (lines 871 - 892);
Alcinous' court bard sings of the discovered adultery of Ares and Aphrodite (Odyssey 8 266-366), and takes up a tale of Odysseus while the Ithacan wanderer listens on (Odyssey 8 499-520).
Nothing in all this is autobiographical: unlike the poets of Deor and Widsith, the poet of Beowulf is not concerned with his own identity;
the poet of The Odyssey, reputed blind, reveals himself not at all in singing of the blind minstrel Demodocus.
Since none of these glimpses of poetizing without writing is intended to incorporate a signature into the epic matter, there is prima-facie evidence that Beowulf and the Homeric poems each derive from an oral tradition.
That such a tradition lies behind The Iliad and The Odyssey, at least, is hard to deny.
Milman Parry rigorously defended the observation that the extant Homeric poems are largely formulaic, and was led to postulate that they could be shown entirely formulaic if the complete corpus of Greek epic survived;
he further reasoned that frequent formulas in epic verse indicate oral composition, and assumed the slightly less likely corollary that oral epic is inclined towards the use of formulas.
Proceeding from Parry's conclusions and adopting one of his schemata, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., argues that Beowulf likewise was created from a legacy of oral formulas inherited and extended by bards of successive generations, and the thesis is striking and compelling.
Yet a fresh inspection will indicate one crucial amendment: Beowulf and the Homeric poems are not at all formulaic to the same extent.
The bondage endurable by an oral poet is to be estimated only by a very skilful oral poet, but it appears safe to assume that no sustained narrative in rhyme could be composed without extreme difficulty, even in a language of many terminal inflections.
Assonance seems nearly as severe a curb, although in a celebrated passage William of Malmesbury declares that A Song Of Roland was intoned before the battle commenced at Hastings.
The Anglo-Saxon alliterative line and the Homeric hexameter probably imposed less of a restraint;
the verse of Beowulf or of The Iliad and The Odyssey was not easy to create but was not impossible for poets who had developed their talents perforce in earning a livelihood.
Yet certain aids were valuable and quite credibly necessary for reciting long stretches of verse without a pause.
The poet in a written tradition who generally never blots a line may once in a while pause and polish without incurring blame.
But the oral poet cannot pause;
he must improvise continuously with no apparent effort.
Even though the bondage of his verse is not so great as the writing poet can manage, it is still great enough for him often to be seriously impeded unless he has aids to facilitate rapid composition.
The Germanic poet had such aids in the kennings, which provided for the difficulties of alliteration;
the Homeric poet had epithets, which provided for recurring needs in the hexameter.
Either poet could quickly and easily select words or phrases to supply his immediate requirements as he chanted out his lines, because the kennings and the epithets made possible the construction of systems of numerous synonyms for the chief common and proper nouns.
Other synonyms could of course serve the same function, and for the sake of ease I shall speak of kennings and epithets in the widest and loosest possible sense, and name, for example, Gar-Dene a kenning for the Danes.
Limited to a few thousand lines of heroic verse in Anglo-Saxon as in the other Germanic dialects, we cannot say how frequently the kennings in Beowulf recurred in contemporary epic on the same soil.
But we can say that since a writing poet, with leisure before him, would seem unlikely to invent a technique based upon frequent and substantial circumlocution, the kennings like the epithets must reasonably be ascribed to an oral tradition.
One of the greatest Homerists of our time, Frederick M. Combellack, argues that when it is assumed The Iliad and The Odyssey are oral poems, the postulated single redactor called Homer cannot be either credited with or denied originality in choice of phrasing.
Any example of grand or exquisite diction may have been created by the poet who compiled numerous lays into the two works we possess or may be due to one of his completely unknown fellow-craftsmen.
The quest of the historical Homer is likely never to have further success;
no individual word in The Iliad or The Odyssey can be credited to any one man;
no strikingly effective element of speech in the extant poems can with assurance be said not to have been a commonplace in the vaster epic corpus that may have existed at the beginning of the first millennium before Christ.
This observation is of interest not only to students of Homeric poetry but to students of Anglo-Saxon poetry as well.
To the extent that a tale is twice told, its final author must be suspect, although plagiarism in an oral tradition is less a misdemeanor than the standard modus dicendi.
Combellack argues further, and here he makes his main point, that once The Iliad and The Odyssey are thought formulaic poems composed for an audience accustomed to formulaic poetry, Homeric critics are deprived of an entire domain they previously found arable.
With a few important and a few more unimportant exceptions, no expression can be deemed le mot juste for its context, because each was very probably the only expression that long-established practice and ease of rapid recitation would allow.
Words or phrases that connoisseurs have admired as handsome or ironic or humorous must therefore lose merit and become regarded as mere inevitable time-servers, sometimes accurate and sometimes not.
This observation too may have reference to Anglo-Saxon poetry.
To the extent that a language is formulaic, its individual components must be regarded as no more distinguished than other cliches.
W. F. Bryan suggests that certain kennings in Beowulf were selected sometimes for appropriateness and sometimes for ironic inappropriateness, but such a view would appear untenable unless it is denied that the language of Beowulf is formulaic.
If the master of scops who was most responsible for the poem ever used kennings that were traditional, he was at least partly deprived of free will and not inclined towards shrewd and sophisticated misuse of speech elements.
Once many significant phrases are found in theory or in recurrent practice to provide for prosodic necessity, they are not to be defended for their semantic properties in isolated contexts.
It is false to be certain of having discovered in the language of Beowulf such effects as intentional irony.
Yet, if the argument is turned awry, there may be found a great deal in Bryan's view, after all.
A formulaic element need not be held meaningless merely because it was selected with little conscious reflection.
Time-servers, though the periphrastic expressions are, they may nevertheless be handsome or ironic or humorous.
A long evolution in an oral tradition caused the poetic language of the heroic age to be based upon formulas that show the important qualities of things, and these formulas are therefore potentially rather than always actually accurate.
Nouns and adjectives in a written tradition are chosen for the nonce;
in an oral tradition they may be chosen for the entire epic corpus, and tend towards idealization rather than distinctive delineation.
Reliance is therefore not to be placed upon the archaeological particulars in an oral poem;
no-one today would hope to discover the unmistakable ruins of Heorot or the palace of Priam.
A ship at dry-dock could be called a foamy-necked floater in Anglo-Saxon or a swift ship in Greek.
Even when defenseless of weapons the Danes would be Gar-Dene (as their king is Hrothgar) and Priam would be EUMMELIHS.
Achilles, like Siegfried in The Nibelungenlied, is potentially the swiftest of men and may accordingly be called swift-footed even when he stands idle.
In Coriolanus the agnomen of Marcius is used deliberately and pointedly, but the Homeric epithets and the Anglo-Saxon kennings are used casually and recall to the hearer a familiar story or situation or a useful or pleasant quality of the referent.
The epic language was not entirely the servant of the poet;
it was partly his master.
The poet's intentions are difficult to discern and, except to biographers, unimportant;
the language, however, is a proper object of scrutiny, and the effects of the language are palpable even if sometimes inevitable.
Beowulf and the Homeric poems appear oral compositions.
Yet they are written;
at some stage in their evolution they were transcribed.
This explanation is attractive, but is vitiated at least in part by the observation that Cynewulf, though he used kennings in the traditional manner, was a literate man who four times inscribed his name by runes into his works.
If Cynewulf was literate, the Beowulf poet may have been also, and so may the final redactor of The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Other theories of origin are compatible with the formulaic theory: Beowulf may contain a design for terror, and The Iliad may have a vast hysteron-proteron pattern answering to a ceramic pattern produced during the Geometric Period in pottery.
The account of the growth and final transcription of these epics rests partly, however, upon the degree to which they were formulaic.
Carl Eduard Schmidt counted 1804 different lines repeated exactly in the two Homeric poems, and by increasing this figure so as to include lines repeated with very slight modifications he counted 2118 different lines used a total of 5612 times.
Thus one line in five from The Iliad and The Odyssey is to be found somewhere else in the two poems.
The ratio is thoroughly remarkable, because the lines are so long--half again as long as those of Beowulf.
Anglo-Saxon poetry appears to have no comparable amount of repetition;
there is no reason to think that the scop used and re-used whole lines and even lengthy passages after the manner of his Homeric colleague.
In determining the extent to which any poem is formulaic it is idle, however, to inspect nothing besides lines repeated in their entirety, for a stock of line-fragments would be sufficient to permit the poet to extemporize with deftness if they provided for prosodic needs.
The closest scrutiny is owed to the Anglo-Saxon kennings and the Homeric epithets;
if any words or phrases are formulaic, they will be.
The Iliad has two words for the shield, ASPIS and SAKOS.
Recent criticism of Great Expectations has tended to emphasize its symbolic and mythic content, to show, as M. D. Zabel has said of Dickens generally, that much of the novel's impact resides in its allegoric insight and moral metaphor.
J. H. Miller's excellent chapter on Great Expectations has lately illustrated how fruitfully that novel can be read from such a perspective.
In his analysis, however, he touches upon but fails to explore an idea, generally neglected in discussions of the book, which I believe is central to its art--the importance of human hands as a recurring feature of the narrative.
This essay seeks to make that exploration.
Dickens was not for nothing the most theatrical of the great Victorian writers.
He knew instinctively that next to voice and face an actor's hands are his most useful possession--that in fiction as in the theatre, gesture is an indispensable shorthand for individualizing character and dramatizing action and response.
It is hardly accidental, therefore, that many of his most vivid figures do suggestive or eccentric things with their hands.
In Great Expectations the hands become almost an obsession.
Mr. Jaggers habitually bites his forefinger, a gesture which conveys both contempt and the inscrutable abstractedness that half fascinates, half terrifies all who have dealings with him.
Miss Havisham's withered hands, heavy as if her unhappiness were somehow concentrated in them, move in restless self-pity between her broken heart and her walking stick.
Pumblechook's signature is the perpetually extended glad hand.
Wemmick reveals his self-satisfaction by regularly rubbing his hands together.
We have only to think of Lady Macbeth or the policeman-murderer in Thomas Burke's famous story, The Hands Of Mr. Ottermole, to realize that hands often call up ideas of crime and punishment.
So it is with Great Expectations, whether the hands be Orlick's as he strikes down Mrs. Gargery or Pip's as he steals a pie from her pantry.
Such associations suit well with the gothic or mystery-story aspects of Dickens' novel, but, on a deeper plane, they relate to the themes of sin, guilt, and pursuit that have recently been analyzed by other critics.
Magwitch terrifies Pip into stealing a pork pie for him by creating the image in the boy's imagination of a bogy man who may softly creep his way to him and tear him open, imbruing his hands in him.
As Pip agonizes over the theft that his own hands have committed, his guilty conscience projects itself upon the wooden finger of a local signpost, transforming it into a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.
Held upside down in the graveyard, Pip clings in terror with both hands to his convict;
later he flees in panic from the family table just as his theft is about to be discovered and is blocked at the front door by a soldier who accusingly holds out a pair of handcuffs which he has brought to Gargery's forge for mending.
Through such details Dickens indicates at the outset that guilt is a part of the ironic bond between Pip and Magwitch which is so unpredictably to alter both their lives.
Since they commonly translate thoughts and feelings into deeds, hands naturally represent action, and since nearly half the characters in Great Expectations are of the underworld or closely allied to it, the linking of hands with crime or violence is not to be wondered at.
Dickens, for excellent psychological reasons, never fully reveals Magwitch's felonious past, but Pip, at the convict's climactic reappearance in London, shrinks from clasping a hand which he fears might be stained with blood.
Orlick slouches about the forge like Cain with his hands in his pockets, and when he shouts abuse at Mrs. Joe for objecting to his holiday, she claps her hands in a tantrum, beats them upon her bosom and upon her knees, and clenches them in her husband's hair.
This last rampage is only the prelude to the vicious blow upon her head, dealt by some unknown hand whose identity is later revealed not verbally but through a manual action--the tracing of Orlick's hammer upon a slate.
Pip himself is to feel the terror of Orlick's murderous hand in his secret rendezvous at the sluicehouse on the marshes.
Dickens lays great emphasis on the hands in this scene.
Orlick might almost be Magwitch's bogy man come alive, a figure of nemesis from Pip's phantasy of guilt.
The scarred, disfigured wrists of Mr. Jaggers' housekeeper are the tell-tale marks of her sinister past, for her master, coolly exhibiting them to his dinner guests, makes a point of the force of grip there is in these hands.
Magwitch's hand here ironically becomes the agent of justice.
But only in one of its aspects is Great Expectations a tale of violence, revenge, and retribution.
Since a gentleman must, if possible, avoid sullying them by work, his hands, as importantly as his accent, become the index of social status.
Almost the first step in the corruption of Pip's values is the unworthy shame he feels when Estella cruelly remarks the coarseness of his hands: They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages.
When the snobbery that alienates Pip from Joe finally gives way before the deeper and stronger force of love, the reunion is marked by an embarrassed handshake at which Pip exclaims: No, don't wipe it off--for God's sake, give me your blackened hand!
Pip's abject leave-taking of Miss Havisham, during which he kneels to kiss her hand, signalizes his homage to a supposed patroness who seems to be opening up for him a new world of glamour;
when, on the journey to London that immediately follows, he pauses nostalgically to lay his hand upon the finger-post at the end of the village, the wooden pointer symbolically designates a spiritual frontier between innocence and the corruption of worldly vanity.
In both cases the finger-post represents Pip's heightened awareness of contrary magnetisms.
A variety of hand movements helps dramatize the moral climate of the fallen world Pip encounters beyond the forge.
Pumblechook's hands throughout the novel serve to travesty greed and hypocritical self-aggrandizement.
We first see him shaking Mrs. Joe's hand on discovering the sizable amount of the premium paid to her husband for Pip's indenture as an apprentice and later pumping Pip's hands for the hundredth time at least (May I--may I--''?
) in effusive congratulation to Pip on his expectations.
Pip first learns the stupendous power of money from the sycophantic tailor, Mr. Trabb, whose brutality to his boy helper exactly matches the financial resource of each new customer, and whose fawning hands touch the outside of each elbow and rub Pip out of the shop.
The respectability which money confers implies a different etiquette, and, upon taking up the life of a London gentleman, Pip must learn from Herbert Pocket that the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under.
The declarative operation EQU is used to equate symbolic names to item numbers (see page 85).
Continuation cards
Certain Autocoder statements make provision for more parameters than may be contained in the operand (columns 21 - 75) of a single line on the Autocoder coding sheet.
When this is the case, the appropriate section of this manual will indicate that Continuation Cards may be used.
Thus, when specifically permitted, the operand of a given line on the Autocoder coding sheet may be continued in the operand of from one to four additional lines which immediately follow.
The label and operation columns must be blank and the continuation of the operand must begin in column 21;
i.e., it must be left-justified in the operand column of the coding sheet.
The operand need not extend across the entire operand column of either the header card or continuation cards but may end with the comma following any parameter.
Remarks may appear to the right of the last parameter on each card provided they are separated from the operand by at least two blank spaces.
Illustrations of the use of continuation cards are included throughout the examples illustrating the various statements.
If a continuation card follows a statement that does not permit continuation cards, the compiler will generate a NOP and issue an error message.
Additional restrictions regarding the use of continuation cards with macro-instructions appear on page 106.
Reservation of index words and electronic switches
The assignment of actual addresses to symbolic index word and electronic switch names occurs in Phase 3, of the Autocoder processor.
The initial availability of index words and electronic switches is determined by a table which is included in the Compiler Systems Tape.
This table originally indicates that index words 1 through 96 and electronic switches 1 through 30 are available for assignment to symbolic references;
index words 97 through 99 are not available.
The initial setting of this table may be altered, however, as described in the 7070/7074 Data Processing System Bulletin IBM 7070/7074 Compiler System: Operating Procedure, form Aj.
During the first pass of Phase 3, references to the actual addresses of index words and electronic switches are collected and the availability table is updated.
At the end of this pass, the table indicates which index words and electronic switches are not available for assignment to symbolic references.
Both index words and electronic switches may have been made unavailable before the start of assignment in one of the following ways.
The initial setting of the availability table indicated that the index word or electronic switch was not available for assignment.
The one- or two-digit number of the index word or electronic switch was used in the operand of a symbolic machine instruction to specify indexing or as a parameter which is always an index word or electronic switch, e.g., 3.
The one- or two-digit number of the index word or electronic switch was used in the operand of an EQU statement, e.g.,
When the index words or electronic switches are reserved because of actual usage in the statements described above, the position or order of the statements within the program is not important;
any such reference will make the index word or electronic switch unavailable at the end of this pass.
During the assignment pass of Phase 3, index words and electronic switches are reserved as they are encountered during assignment.
Index words and electronic switches may be reserved in the following ways.
The first two methods apply to both index words and electronic switches;
the third applies only to index words.
During the assignment pass, each instruction is examined for reference to the symbolic name of an index word or electronic switch.
When such a reference is found, an actual address is assigned and the availability table is changed so that the assigned index word or switch is no longer available for later assignment.
If the one- or two-digit address of an index word or electronic switch is used or is included in the operand of an XRESERVE or SRESERVE statement (see page 99), the corresponding index word or electronic switch is reserved.
If a statement has been assigned an address in the index word area
by means of an actual label or
by means of an origin statement which refers to an actual address, the corresponding index word will be reserved.
These entries should normally appear at the beginning of the program or immediately following each LITORIGIN statement.
Otherwise, symbolic names may have previously been assigned to these same index words.
(This method does not apply to electronic switches.
The preceding methods allow efficient use of index words and electronic switches during a sectionalized or multi-phase program, particularly when used in conjunction with the LITORIGIN statement.
Extreme caution should be used, however, to avoid the conflicting usage of an index word or electronic switch which may result from the assignment of more than one name or function to the same address.
It will not, however, be used for symbolic assignment until all other index words or electronic switches have been assigned for the first time.
The resultant conflicting usage of index words or electronic switches may be avoided by reducing the number of symbolic names used, e.g., through the proper use of the EQU, XRELEASE, or SRELEASE statements.
As noted in Appendix C, index words 97 through 99 are never available for assignment to symbolic names by the compiler;
also, index words 93 through 96 may have been made unavailable for assignment.
Declarative statements
Autocoder declarative statements provide the processor with the necessary information to complete the imperative operations properly.
Declarative statements are never executed in the object program and should be separated from the program instruction area, placed preferably at its beginning or end.
Otherwise, special care must be taken to branch around them so that the program will not attempt to execute something in a data area as an instruction.
If the compiler does encounter such statements, a warning message will be issued.
DA, DC, DTF, and DLINE require more than one entry.
The DA statement is used to name and define the positions and length of fields within an area.
The DC statement is used to name and enter constants into the object program.
Since the 7070 and 7074 make use of record definition words (RDWS) to read, write, move, and otherwise examine blocks of storage, the DA and DC statements provide the option of generating RDWS automatically.
When so instructed, Autocoder will generate one or more RDWS and assign them successive locations immediately preceding the area with which they are to be associated.
An RDW will be of the form Af, where xxxx is the starting location of the area and yyyy is its ending location.
These addresses are calculated automatically by the processor.
In some cases, it may be more advantageous to assign locations to RDWS associated with DA and DC areas in some other part of storage, i.e., not immediately preceding the DA or DC areas.
The DRDW statement may be used for this purpose.
The DRDW statement may also be used to generate an RDW defining any area specified by the programmer.
As many as ten digital switches may be named and provided by the DSW statement for consideration by the SETSW and logic macro-instructions.
Each switch occupies one digit position in a word, can be set on or off, and is considered as logically equivalent to an electronic switch.
It cannot, however, be referred to by electronic switch commands, e.g., ESN, BSN, etc..
An individual switch or the entire set of switches in a word may be tested or altered as desired.
Through use of the DLINE statement, a means is provided for specifying both the editing of fields to be inserted in a print line area and the layout of the area itself.
The area may include constant information supplied by the programmer.
The area may also be provided with additional data during the running of the object program by means of EDMOV or move macro-instructions.
The declarative statement EQU permits the programmer to equate symbolic names to actual index words, electronic switches, arm and file numbers, tape channel and unit numbers, alteration switches, etc., and to equate a symbol to another symbol or to an actual address.
The DIOCS, DTF, and DUF statements are used when required by the Input/Output Control System.
DIOCS is used to select the major methods of processing to be used, and to name the index words used by Aj.
Each tape file must be described by Tape File Specifications, produced by Aj.
In addition to information related to the file and its records, the File Specifications contain subroutine locations and the location of tape label information.
A DUF entry must be supplied for every unit record file describing the type of file and the unit record equipment to be used.
The DUF also supplies the locations of subroutines written by the user that are unique to the file.
A full description of the DIOCS, DTF, and DUF statements is contained in the 7070 Data Processing System Bulletin IBM 7070 Input/Output Control System, form Aj.
Brief descriptions of these three declarative statements and detailed descriptions of the formats and functions of each of the other 7070/7074 Autocoder declarative statements follow below.
diocs--define input/output control system
When the Input/Output Control System is to be used in a program, a DIOCS statement must be used to select the major methods of processing to be used.
This statement also allows the naming of the index words used by Aj.
Source program format
The basic format of the DIOCS statement is as follows: anylabel is any symbolic label;
it may be omitted.
The entry DIOCS must be written exactly as shown.
The first item in the operand, IOCSIXF, is used to specify the first IOCS index word for programs using tape files.
This item may be a symbolic name or an actual one-digit or two-digit index word address in the range 3 - 94.
If the first item in the operand is omitted, the symbolic name IOCSIXF will be assigned.
When an actual index word or a symbolic address is specified, Autocoder will equate the name IOCSIXF to it.
The second item in the operand, IOCSIXG, is used to specify the second IOCS index word for programs using tape files.
This item may be a symbolic name or an actual one-digit or two-digit index word address in the range 3 - 94.
If the second item in the operand is omitted, the symbolic name IOCSIXG will be assigned.
When an actual index word or a symbolic address is specified, Autocoder will equate IOCSIXG to it.
In the Midwest, oxidation ponds are used extensively for the treatment of domestic sewage from suburban areas.
The high cost of land and a few operational problems resulting from excessive loadings have created the need for a wastewater treatment system with the operational characteristics of the oxidation pond but with the ability to treat more organic matter per unit volume.
Research at Fayette, Missouri on oxidation ponds has shown that the BOD in the treated effluent varied from 30 to 53 mg/l with loadings from 8 to 120 lb.
Since experience indicates that effluents from oxidation ponds do not create major problems at these BOD concentrations, the goal for the effluent quality of the accelerated treatment system was the same as from conventional oxidation ponds.
Recent studies by Weston and Stack had indicated that a turbine aerator could be added to an oxidation pond to increase the rate of oxygen transfer.
Their study showed that it was possible to transfer 3 to 4 lb of oxygen / hr. / hp.
O'Connor and Eckenfelder discussed the use of aerated lagoons for treating organic wastes.
They indicated that a 4-day retention, aerated lagoon would give 60 to 76 per cent BOD reduction.
Later, Eckenfelder increased the efficiency of treatment to between 75 and 85 per cent in the summer months.
It appeared from the limited information available that the aerated lagoon might offer a satisfactory means of increasing the capacity of existing oxidation ponds as well as providing the same degree of treatment in a smaller volume.
Red Bridge Subdivision
With the development of the Red Bridge Subdivision south of Kansas City, Missouri, the developer was faced with the problem of providing adequate sewage disposal.
The sewage system from Kansas City was not expected to serve the Red Bridge area for several years.
This necessitated the construction of temporary sewage treatment facilities with an expected life from 5 to 15 Aj.
For the initial development an oxidation pond was constructed as shown in Figure 1.
The oxidation pond has a surface area of 4.77 acres and a depth of 4 Aj.
The pond is currently serving 1,230 persons or 260 persons per acre.
In the summer of 1960 the oxidation pond became completely septic and emitted obnoxious odors.
It was possible to maintain aerobic conditions in the pond by regular additions of sodium nitrate until the temperature decreased and the algae population changed from blue-green to green algae.
The anaerobic conditions in the existing oxidation pond necessitated examination of other methods for supplying additional oxygen than by sodium nitrate.
At the same time further expansion in the Red Bridge Subdivision required the construction of additional sewage treatment facilities.
The large land areas required for oxidation ponds made this type of treatment financially unattractive to the developer.
It was proposed that aerated lagoons be used to eliminate the problem at the existing oxidation ponds and to provide the necessary treatment for the additional development.
Pilot lagoon
The lack of adequate data on the aerated lagoon system prompted the developer to construct an aerated lagoon pilot plant to determine its feasibility for treating domestic sewage.
The pilot plant was a circular lagoon 81 ft in diam at the surface and 65 ft in diam at the bottom, 4 ft below the surface, with a volume of 121,000 Aj.
The side slopes were coated with fiberglas matting coated with asphalt to prevent erosion.
The pilot lagoon was located as shown in Figure 1 to serve the area just south of the existing housing area.
The major contributor was a shopping center with houses being added to the system as the subdivision developed.
The pilot lagoon was designed to handle the wastes from 314 persons with a 4-day aeration period.
Initially, the wastewater would be entirely from the shopping center with the domestic sewage from the houses increasing over an 18-month period.
This operation would permit evaluation of the pilot plant, with a slowly increasing load, over a reasonable period of time.
The pilot plant was equipped with a 3-hp. turbine aerator (Figure 2).
The aerator had a variable-speed drive to permit operation through a range of speeds.
The sewage flow into the treatment plant was metered and continuously recorded on 24-hr. charts.
The raw sewage was introduced directly under the turbine aerator to insure maximum mixing of the raw sewage with the aeration tank contents.
The effluent was collected through two pipes and discharged to the Blue River through a surface drainage ditch.
Analyses
Composite samples were collected at weekly intervals.
The long retention period and the complete mixing concept prevented rapid changes in either the mixed liquor or in the effluent.
Weekly samples would make any changes more readily discernible than daily samples.
The composite samples were normally collected over a 6-hr. period, but an occasional 24-hr. composite was made.
Examination of the operations of the shopping center permitted correlation of the 6-hr. composite samples with 24-hr. operations.
The data indicated that the organic load during the 6-hr. composites was essentially 50 per cent of the 24-hr. organic load.
Grab samples were collected from the existing oxidation pond to determine its operating conditions.
Efforts were made to take the grab samples at random periods so that the mass of data could be treated as a 6-hr. composite sample.
A single 24-hr. composite sample indicated that the sewage flow pattern and characteristics were typical.
Pilot plant operations
The BOD of the influent to the pilot plant varied between 110 and 710 mg/l with an average of 350 Aj.
This was equivalent to 240 mg/lBOD on a 24-hr. basis.
The BOD of the raw sewage was typical of domestic sewage from a subdivision.
The BOD in the effluent averaged 58 mg/l, a 76-per-cent reduction over the 24-hr. period.
Examination of the data in Table 1, shows that a few samples contributed to raising the effluent Aj.
The periods of high effluent BOD occurred during cold periods when operational problems with the aerator resulted.
Ice caused the aerator to overload, straining the drive belts.
The slippage of the drive belts caused the aerator to slow down and reduce oxygen transfer as well as the mixing of the raw sewage.
The organic loading on the unit averaged 32 lb of BOD/day or about 2 lb BOD/day/1,000 cu ft aeration capacity.
Needless to say, the organic load was very low on a volumetric basis, but was 270 lb BOD/day/acre on a surface loading basis.
It seems that the aerated lagoon was a very heavily loaded oxidation pond or a lightly loaded activated sludge system.
The flow rate remained relatively constant during the winter months as shown in Table 1.
With the spring rains the flow rose rapidly due to infiltration in open sewers.
As construction progresses, the volume of storm drainage will be sharply reduced.
The retention period in the aerated lagoon ranged from 9.8 to 2.6 days, averaging 6.4 days.
The large amount of vegetable grindings from the grocery store in the shopping center created a suspended solids problem.
The vegetables were not readily metabolized by the bacteria in the aeration unit and tended to float on the surface.
A skimming device at the effluent weir prevented loss of most of these light solids.
The average volatile suspended solids in the effluent was 75 mg/l while MLSS averaged 170 mg/l volatile suspended solids.
The average sludge age based on displacement of solids was calculated to be 14.5 days.
The oxygen uptake rate in the mixed liquor averaged 0.8 mg/l/hr during the first four months of this study.
Variations in aerator speeds during the latter two months of this study caused increased mixing and increased oxygen demand.
The increase in oxygen uptake rates from 1.2 to 2.6 mg/l/hr which followed an increase in rotor speed was believed to be related to resuspension of solids which had settled at the lower rotor speeds.
It appeared that most of the mixed liquor suspended solids were active microbial solids with the heavier, less active solids settling out.
The suspended solids discharged in the effluent were found to be the major source of the Aj.
Removal of the suspended solids by a membrane filter yielded an average effluent containing only 20 mg/l Aj.
The BOD in the drainage ditch receiving the pilot plant effluent averaged 12 Aj.
This low BOD was due to removal of the excess suspended solids by sedimentation since the only dilution was surface runoff which was very low during this study.
Microscopic examination
Routine microscopic examinations were made of the mixed liquor as indicated by McKinney and Gram for the various types of protozoa.
It was found that the aerated lagoon was an activated sludge system rather than an oxidation pond.
At no time were algae found in the mixed liquor.
The bacteria formed typical activated sludge floc.
The floc particles were all small as the heavier floc settled out.
Initially, the flagellated protozoa predominated, but they soon gave way to the free swimming ciliated protozoa.
As the temperature decreased, the number of free swimming ciliated protozoa decreased.
Very little protozoa activity existed below 40-degrees-F.
When the temperature reached 32-degrees-F all protozoan activity ceased;
but as the temperature rose, the numbers of protozoa increased rapidly.
Only once were stalked ciliates found in the mixed liquor.
The predomination of free swimming ciliated protozoa is indicative of a high bacterial population.
Oxygen transfer
One of the important aspects of this study was to determine the oxygen transfer relationships of the mechanical aerator.
Routine determinations were made for dissolved oxygen in the mixed liquor and for oxygen uptake rates.
The data given in Table 2, show the routine operation of the aerator.
The dissolved oxygen in the aeration unit was consistently high until January 29, 1961.
An extended cold spell caused ice to build up on the aerator which was mounted on a floating platform and caused the entire platform to sink lower in the water.
The added resistance to the rotor damaged the drive belts and reduced the oxygen transfer capacity.
It was approximately one month before the belt problem was noticed and corrected, but at no time was there a deficiency of dissolved oxygen.
A series of eight special tests were conducted at different rotor speeds to determine the oxygen transfer rate.
Five of the tests were conducted with a polyethylene cover to simulate an ice cover.
The rate of oxygen transfer at 1.0-mg. / l. dissolved oxygen concentration and 10-degrees-C for various rotor speeds is given in Table 3.
The maximum rate of oxygen transfer at 1.0 mg/l dissolved oxygen was calculated as 220 lb/day at a maximum rate of 9.3 Aj.
The actual power requirements indicated 2 lb. oxygen transfer / hr. / hp..
The polyethylene cover reduced the oxygen transfer rate by 10 per cent, indicating that the maximum oxygen transfer is at the rotor rather than through the surface.
Oxidation pond
During this study septic conditions developed in the oxidation pond in the spring when the ice melted.
Shortly after this study ended septic conditions resulted which required the addition of sodium nitrate.
The location of the oxidation pond in a high-value residential area makes odor nuisances a sensitive problem for the developer.
The organic concentration in the influent raw sewage ranged from 160 to 270 mg/l of BOD with an average of 230 Aj.
The BOD data are given in Table 4.
A single 24-hr. composite sample had a BOD of 260 mg/l, indicating a typical domestic sewage.
The daily sewage volume to the oxidation pond averaged 147,000 gpd, giving a retention period of 42 days.
The organic loading on the pond was slightly under 60 lb. BOD / day / acre.
The effluent BOD averaged 34 mg/l, a little lower than that of the study at Fayette indicated for a loading of 60 lb. Aj.
The BOD of the effluent ranged from a minimum of 13 to a maximum of 47 mg. / l..
Microscopic examination of the effluent showed that minimum BOD occurred when the algae began to decrease with cold weather.
When the algae began to build up again, the effluent BOD rose.
During the two weeks when the algae disappeared from the effluent BOD's in the effluent were 18 and 16 Aj.
Thus, the three main categories of antisubmarine warfare operations are defense of shipping, defense of naval forces, and area defense.
The last category overlaps the others in amphibious operations and near terminals and bases.
To effect these operations, five elements exist (1) surface, (2) air, (3) mines, (4) submarine, and (5) fixed installations.
Surface forces have been used to provide defense zones around naval and merchant ship formations, air to furnish area surveillance, and mines for protection of limited areas.
Submarines and shore installations are new elements.
The submarine now has a definite place in submarine defense particularly in denying enemy access to ocean areas.
Fixed installations offer possibilities for area detection.
Mine warfare is being reoriented against submarine targets.
A sixth element, not always considered, is intelligence.
It includes operational intelligence of the enemy and knowledge of the environment.
Operational intelligence presumably will be available from our national intelligence agencies;
intelligence on the environment will come from the recently augmented program in oceanography.
The major postwar development is the certainty that these elements should not be considered singly but in combination and as being mutually supporting.
Necessity for an over-all concept
Thinking on submarine defense has not always been clear-cut.
Proponents of single elements tend to ensure predominance of that element without determining if it is justified, and the element with the most enthusiastic and vociferous proponents has assumed the greatest importance.
Consequently, air, surface, and submarine elements overshadow the mine, fixed installations, and intelligence.
These have sought more and more of what they have.
Each seems to strive for elimination of the necessity for the others.
This, despite postwar experience demonstrating that all elements are necessarily mutually supporting.
Thus, the most productive areas are not necessarily the most stressed.
This is stated to emphasize the necessity for an over-all concept of submarine defense, one which would provide positions of relative importance to ASW elements based on projected potentialities.
Then the enthusiasm and energy of all elements can be channeled to produce cumulative progress toward a common objective.
An over-all concept would have other advantages.
It would allow presentation to the public of a unified approach.
Now the problem is presented piecemeal and sometimes contradictorily.
While one element is announcing progress, another is delineating its problems.
The result can only be confusion in the public mind.
A unified concept can serve as a guide to budgeting and, if public support is gained, will command Congressional support.
Industry's main criticism of the Navy's antisubmarine effort is that it cannot determine where any one company or industry can apply its skills and know-how.
Lacking guidance, industry picks its own areas.
The result, coupled with the salesmanship for which American industry is famous, is considerable expenditure of funds and efforts in marginal areas.
An over-all concept will guide industry where available talents and facilities will yield greatest dividends.
Therefore, a broad concept of over-all submarine defense is needed for co-ordination of the Navy's efforts, for a logical presentation to the public, for industry's guidance, and as a basis for a program to the Congress.
Principles involved in an over-all concept
That which follows will be a discussion of principles and possible content for an over-all concept of antisubmarine warfare.
Russia possesses the preponderance of submarines in the world, divided between her various fleets.
Some are also in Albania and others are on loan to Egypt.
Other countries which may willingly or unwillingly become Communist can furnish bases.
Communist target areas can be assumed, but there is no certainty that such assumptions coincide with Soviet intentions.
Attack can come from almost any direction against many locations.
Logically, then, the first principle of the plan must be that it is not rigidly oriented toward any geographical area.
It is often stated that the submarine can be destroyed while building, at bases, in transit, and on station.
Destruction of the enemy's building and base complex, however, requires attacks on enemy territory, which is possible only in event of all-out hostilities.
In transit or on station, it may not be possible to attack the submarines until commission of an overt act.
The Communists are adept at utilizing hostilities short of general war and will do so whenever it is to their advantage.
Therefore the second principle of the plan must be that, while providing for all-out hostilities, its effectiveness is not dependent on general war.
Antisubmarine warfare does not involve clashes between large opposing forces, with the decision a result of a single battle.
It is a war of attrition, of single actions, of an exchange of losses.
This exchange must result in our ending up with some effective units.
Initially, having fewer units of some elements--especially submarines--than the opponent, our capabilities need to be sufficiently greater than theirs, so that the exchange will be in our favor.
Therefore, the third principle of the plan must be that it does not depend for effectiveness on engagement by the same types, unless at an assured favorable exchange rate.
The submarine has increased its effectiveness by several orders of magnitude since World War 2.
Its speed has increased, it operates at increasingly greater depths, its submerged endurance is becoming unlimited, and it will become even more silent.
The next developments will probably be in weaponry.
The missile can gradually be expected to replace the torpedo.
As detection ranges increase, weapons will be developed to attack other submarines and surface craft at these ranges.
Therefore, the fourth principle of the plan must be that it provide for continuously increasing capabilities in the opponent.
No element can accomplish the total objective of submarine defense.
Some elements support the others, but all have limitations.
Some limitations of one element can be compensated for by a capability of another.
Elements used in combination will increase the over-all capability more than the sum of the capabilities of the individual elements.
Therefore, the plan's fifth principle must be that it capitalize on the capabilities of all elements in combination.
Conceivably the submarine defense problem can be solved by sufficient forces.
Numbers would be astronomical and current fiscal policies make this an impractical solution.
Shipbuilding, aircraft procurement, and weapon programs indicate that there will not be enough of anything.
Therefore, any measures taken in peacetime which will decrease force requirements in war will contribute greatly to success when hostilities occur.
Therefore, the sixth principle of the plan must be that it concentrate on current measures which will reduce future force requirements.
The world is constantly changing;
what was new yesterday is obsolescent today.
The seventh principle of the plan is self-evident;
it must be flexible enough to allow for technological breakthroughs, scientific progress, and changes in world conditions.
Supporting elements in asw operations
To this point the need for an over-all plan for submarine defense has been demonstrated, the mission has been stated, broad principles delineating its content laid down, and the supporting elements listed.
Before considering these elements in more detail, an additional requirement should be stated.
Large area coverage will accomplish all other tasks.
Therefore, because reduction in tasks results in reduction of forces required, the plan should provide for expanding area coverage.
But it must be remembered that the plan should not be oriented geographically.
Consequently, the system giving area coverage (if such coverage is less than world wide) must be flexible and hence at least partially mobile.
Since effective area coverage appears fairly remote, the requirement can be borne in mind while considering the elements: air, surface, sub-surface, fixed installations, mines, and intelligence.
These are arranged approximately in the order of the vociferousness of their proponents but will be discussed in the reverse order in the hope that the true order of importance will result.
Intelligence, as used herein, will include information on possible opponents and on the environment which can affect operations.
These can be referred to as operational intelligence and environmental intelligence.
In submarine defense these must have maximum stress.
Good operational intelligence can ensure sound planning, greatly reduce force requirements, and increase tactical effectiveness.
Environmental intelligence is just as important.
The ocean presently co-operates with the target.
Full knowledge of the science of oceanography can bring the environment to our side, resulting in an increase in effectiveness of equipment and tactics, a decrease in enemy capabilities, and the development of methods of capitalizing on the environment.
Therefore, improved intelligence will result in reduced force requirements and, as it supports all other elements, rates a top priority.
Gathering intelligence is important, but of equal importance is its translation into usable form.
A program is needed to translate the results of oceanographic research into tactical and operating instructions.
Approaching this problem on a statistical basis is invalid, because the opponent has the same sources available and will be encountered not under average conditions, but under the conditions most advantageous to him.
Therefore, the on-the-scene commander must have detailed operating instructions based on measurement of conditions, in the area, at the time of encounter.
All capabilities must be used to maximum advantage then.
Temperature, wind, oxygen content, depth, bottom character, and animal life are the chief environmental variables.
There may be others.
Variations in sound velocity should be measured rather than temperature, because more of the variables would be encompassed.
These variations must eventually be measured horizontally as well as vertically.
Progress in predicting water conditions is encouraging, but little guidance is available to the man at sea on the use of such information.
A concurrent effort is needed to make oceanographic data useful on the spot.
Mine warfare has in the past been directed against surface targets.
By its nature it has always been of great psychological advantage and small efforts have required considerably greater counter-efforts.
Mines are being increasingly oriented against submarine targets.
They are still considered to be for use in restricted waters, however, and targets must come within a few yards of them.
Mines need to be recognized as a major element in anti-submarine warfare employment, extended to deep water, and have their effective area per unit increased.
Mines can be used to deny access to great areas;
they are difficult to counter, cost little to maintain until required, and can be put into place quickly.
A most attractive feature is that detection and attack are combined in a single package.
Effective employment will reduce force requirements.
For example, effective mine barriers from Florida to Cuba and across the Yucatan Channel from Cuba to Mexico would remove all requirements for harbor defense, inshore patrol, convoy escort, shipping control, and mine defense for the entire Gulf of Mexico.
More extended systems, covering all passage into the Caribbean, would free the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico from the previously listed requirements.
Systems covering the Gulf of St. Lawrence and possibly the entire coasts of the United States are not impossible.
Such mine defense systems could permit concentration of mobile forces in the open oceans with consequent increase in the probability of success.
The advantages inherent in mine warfare justify as great an importance for this element as is accorded any of the other elements.
Fixed installations are increasingly advocated as the problem of area defense emerges.
The proponents are scientific and technical men who exercise considerable influence on their military counterparts.
Systems which detect submarines over wide areas are attractive, although they can be only burglar alarms.
Mobile forces are required to localize and attack detected targets, since the systems are not capable of pinpointing a target.
Such systems are expensive and are oriented geographically.
In an over-all ASW concept, dependence on and effort expended for such systems should be limited to those with proven capabilities.
No general installation should be made until a model installation has been proved and its maximum capability determined.
In addition, proposals for fixed installations should be carefully weighed against a counterpart mobile system.
Fixed installations will always lack the flexibility that should be inherent in naval systems.
The submarine has become increasingly attractive as an antisubmarine weapon system.
It operates in its target's environment, and any advantage gained therefrom by the target is shared by the attacker.
But the submarine is a weapon of ambush and therefore always in danger of being ambushed.
Two metabolites (1, and 2)) of p-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) which act as cofactors for the hydroxylation of aniline by acid-fast bacteria are biosynthesized from Aj.
The 7 carbons of PABA are incorporated directly into metabolite 2 ((as shown with both ring-labeled and carboxy-labeled Af).
Thirty-five of the 36 carbon atoms arise from Aj.
All 28 carbons of metabolite 1 ((a product of mild acid hydrolysis of 2) arise from Aj.
Metabolite 1, isolated from the medium, however, showed a lower specific activity, which indicates endogenous synthesis of this metabolite.
Vigorous acid hydrolysis of metabolite 1, destroyed the biological activity of the compound and liberated two aryl amines.
Fragment A has been obtained in crystalline form as a dioxalate salt and free base.
Preliminary evidence tentatively indicates that the molecule (metabolite 1)) is cleaved at a secondary amide bond.
(N. H. Sloane;
chemical studies are being pursued with the cooperation of K.G. Untch.
) studies on esterases
-- Research on esterases in mammalian sera was continued.
One of the most interesting findings was the extreme sensitivity of plasma arylesterases to rare earth ions.
The inhibition of the enzyme by very low concentrations of lanthanum ion is probably the strongest known biological effect of rare earth salts.
Various metal ions have been found to protect plasma arylesterase against inactivation by urea and guanidine.
The effects can be related to the structure of this enzyme.
The non-identity of serum and red blood cell arylesterase was also established.
Furthermore, the hydrolysis of paraoxon was studied in mammalian sera, and it was found that it is hydrolyzed by albumin (or a factor attached to it) in addition to arylesterase.
Selective inhibitors can distinguish the two activities.
Investigations on the acceleration of human plasma cholinesterase were carried further.
(E. G. Erdos, L. E. Boggs, C. D. Mackey) biophysical studies on modified fibrous proteins
-- Electron-microscopical and physical-chemical methods were used to demonstrate the renaturation of heat-denatured collagen and ribonucleic acid.
(R. V. Rice)
A method was devised for extracting and purifying soluble earthworm collagen (EWC).
It was observed that EWC macromolecules are the same diameter (15 a.) but much longer (up to several microns) than vertebrate tropocollagen.
This unusual collagen also was shown to undergo a reversible thermal phase transformation.
(R. V. Rice, M. D. Maser) studies on peptides and peptidases
-- This investigation involved several aspects.
Substance Z, an active urinary peptide, was purified by extraction in organic solvents and repeated column chromatography;
high-voltage electrophoresis and paper chromatography were used in preliminary structural studies;
pharmacological effects in vitro on isolated surviving organs and in vivo on blood pressure were assayed;
special equipment required for registering respiration and for recording the contraction of smooth muscles under various conditions was developed by the Instruments Section (Victor Jackman, W. C. Barnes, J. F. Reiss);
and enzymes which terminate the action of peptides such as bradykinin and perhaps Substance Z were studied.
Experiments are in progress to develop ultraviolet spectrophotometric techniques for assaying these enzymes and for studying their sensitivity to metal ions.
(E. G. Erdos, C. D. Mackey, A. G. Renfrew, W. B. Severs, E. M. Sloane) seed proteins
-- In a physiochemical study of seed proteins, the globulins of the Brazil nut have been investigated.
In addition to the known principal globulin, excelsin, three other ultracentrifugally distinct components have been observed.
A water-soluble protein of quite low molecular weight (ca. 10,000) has also been found in this system and partly characterized.
(E. F. Casassa, H. J. Notarius)
continuum mechanics and viscoelasticity
theory of non-newtonian fluids
By strengthening the differentiability assumption, it has been possible to derive second and higher order theories of viscoelasticity.
In the second-order theory, one of the normal stress differences can be calculated from the first-order stress relaxation function.
(B. D. Coleman with Walter Noll, Department of Mathematics, Carnegie Institute of Technology) viscoelastic measurements
-- An extensive series of measurements was made on a high-density polyethylene in a torsion pendulum instrument using forced sinusoidal oscillation, free vibration, and creep measurements over the temperature range of Af to 80-degrees-C.
As many as seven decades of the time scale were thus covered isothermally.
The simple time-temperature equivalence valid for many amorphous systems did not hold here.
It was possible, however, to decompose the compliance into a sum of a frequency-independent component and two viscoelastic mechanisms, each compatible with the Boltzmann superposition principle and with a consistent set of time-temperature equivalence factors.
(Hershel Markovitz, D.J. Plazek, Haruo Nakayasu)
geochemistry
trace elements in tektites, meteorites, and related materials
-- The results of microanalysis of tektites (natural glasses of unknown origin) for gallium and germanium have shown that these glasses are probably produced from terrestrial (or less likely from lunar) matter by impact of a celestial body.
The gallium / germanium ratio is higher than that for ordinary igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary matter as a result of selective volatilization of the components of the tektite.
Gallium oxide is less volatile than silica (the main constituent of tektites) and germanium oxide is more volatile.
Australites (tektites from Australia) give the appearance of a second melting.
In conformity with this conclusion a higher trace gallium content was found in the portion (flange) that has undergone a second melting.
The silicate fractions of stony meteorites show gallium / germanium ratios similar to those of tektites because they too have undergone melting at some point in their histories.
Libyan Desert silica-glass, another natural glass, is composed of nearly pure silica and has the same trace germanium content as sands in the area.
The gallium content, however, has been enhanced five-fold.
This glass is probably formed from Libyan Desert sands by comet or stony-meteorite impact.
Nickel-iron meteorites with sufficient kinetic energy to produce large terrestrial explosion craters may nevertheless melt only small quantities of material.
Most of the impact energy is spent in crushing and fragmentation.
When rapid quenching follows melting, impact glasses may result.
These always contain metallic inclusions.
Impact glasses not containing elemental nickel-iron may have been produced by stony meteorites or comets.
No meteorites have ever been recovered from paleoexplosion craters, and recent craters containing impact glass have all been produced by metallic meteorites with the exception of Aouelloul crater, Adrar, Western Sahara Desert.
This crater contains impact glass with no metallic inclusions and no meteoritic material has been recovered.
(A. J. Cohen, John Anania)
inorganic chemistry
Preparation of a coordination compound is often accomplished by the simple method of reacting a metal salt with a ligand in a suitable solvent such as an alcohol.
By applying this general principle, a great number of complex compounds of osmium, ruthenium, iridium, and rhenium, with triphenylphosphine, triphenylarsine, and triphenylstibine have been obtained in this laboratory during the past few years.
Recent work with radiocarbon and deuterated alcohols as solvents, however, has given evidence that metal-hydrido and carbonyl complexes may be readily formed by reaction with alcohol in some of these systems.
Some of the previously reported compounds have thus been reformulated and a series of new hydrido and carbonyl compounds discovered, the more representative examples being Af, Af, Af, Af and Af (Af).
The coordination complexes formed by transition metals with primary and secondary phosphines and arsines are being investigated (R. G. Hayter).
Particular interest is directed towards the condensation of these ligands with metal halides to form substituted phosphide or arside complexes.
During the past year, these ligands have yielded some unusual five-coordinate complexes of nickel (2) and some interesting binuclear phosphorus-bridged complexes of palladium (2) (see figure), as well as new compounds of the well-known type Af.
The structures, properties, and reactions of these compounds are being studied.
(J. A. Laswick, N. L. Heatwole)
structure and properties of macromolecules
elasticity of macromolecular networks
-- The theory of elasticity of Gaussian networks has been developed on a more general basis and the equations of state relating variables of pressure, volume, temperature, stress and strain have been precisely formulated.
Simple elongation has been treated in detail.
The various stress-temperature coefficients for constancy of volume and strain, constancy of pressure and strain, and constancy of pressure and length have been interrelated.
The dilation accompanying elongation and the simultaneously developed anisotropy of compressibility have been related to the elongation.
In continuation of these theoretical studies, a more precise elucidation of the effects of imperfections in network structure is sought.
(P. J. Flory, C. A. J. Hoeve) chain conformations of polymeric chains
-- Recent theoretical work to calculate the dimensions of polymeric chains by Volkenstein and Lifson has been extended to include more general types of chains.
The mean-square end-to-end distance of the polyisobutylene chain has been calculated in reasonable agreement with values deduced from viscosity data.
These studies are being extended to different polymers to increase our knowledge about the hindrances to rotation around chain bonds.
(C. A. J. Hoeve, A. A. Blumberg) crystallization in polymers and copolymers
-- The crystallization of copolymers comprising Af units interspersed with a minor percentage of Af is limited by the inability of the crystal lattice characteristic of the former to accommodate the bulky side group of the latter.
Only uninterrupted sequences of the former are eligible for formation of crystallites.
Limitations on the lengths of these sequences diminish the stability of the comparatively short crystallites which can be formed, and this is reflected in a broadening of the melting range.
(Robert Chiang, J. B. Jackson, P. J. Flory) Carefully executed melting studies on this system (M. J. Richardson) permit quantitative estimation of the instability engendered by reduced crystallite length.
The complex morphology of polycrystalline homopolymers is necessarily dependent on the same factor.
Hence, the present studies offer a possible basis for interpretations in the latter field.
Contraction of muscle
Experiments carried out over long periods of time in order to allow establishment of a steady state have shown that the onset of contraction and its completion are confined to an interval of several degrees Centigrade and to a concentration range of only several per cent.
The contraction therefore partakes of the character of a phase transition.
While ATP appears to be necessary for the occurrence of contraction, its presence and enzymatic hydrolysis of it by the muscle protein myosin are not the only criteria for contraction.
(C. A. J. Hoeve, P. J. Flory) anionic Polymerization
-- One of the principal aims of anionic polymerization techniques is the synthesis of polymers of extremely narrow molecular weight distribution.
A simple process for the preparation of nearly monodisperse polystyrene of predictable molecular weight has been developed.
The preparation of such products is not new, but the systems heretofore employed in polymerizations have commanded considerable experimental skill and starting materials of a high purity.
Upon completion of the purging step, additional initiator appropriate for the molecular weight of the sample desired is added, and the system is then warmed to the polymerization temperature, at which the reaction is allowed to go to completion.
The predictability of the molecular weights was found to be within 10% for the polymers prepared, with Af ratios less than 1.1.
Contrary to observations with ethers, no apparent change of the reactivity of the chain ends takes place over considerable periods of time in benzene as solvent.
Organization:
In this publication measurements of interfacial angles of crystals are used to classify and identify chemical substances.
T. V. Barker, who developed the classification-angle system, was about to begin the systematic compilation of the index when he died in 1931.
The compilation work was undertaken by a number of interested crystallographers in the Department of Mineralogy of the University Museum at Oxford.
Since 1948 the working headquarters has been the Department of Geology and Mineralogy.
Numerous cooperating individuals in Great Britain, Holland, the United States, and Belgium have contributed editorially or by making calculations.
Great interest and practical help have been given by the Barker Index Committee.
Financial and material help have come from academic, governmental, and industrial organizations in England and Holland.
Editors for Volumes 1, and 2, were M. W. Porter and the late R. C. Spiller, both of Oxford University.
A third volume remains to be published.
Substances:
Volume 1, deals with 2991 compounds belonging to the tetragonal, hexagonal and trigonal, and orthorhombic systems;
and Volume 2, with about 3500 monoclinic substances.
Volume 3, in preparation, will treat the anorthic compounds described in Groth's Chemische Krystallographie.
Properties:
The Barker system is based on the use of the smallest number of interfacial angles necessary for indexing purposes.
Other morphological, physical, and optical property values are also given.
Sources of data:
The index is essentially a new treatment of previously compiled morphological data.
Most of the data used are from Groth's Chemische Krystallographie.
Criticality:
Every calculation has been made independently by two workers and checked by one of the editors.
Use of nomenclature, symbols, units, physical constants:
Accepted crystallographic symbolism has been used;
other symbols related to the index necessarily have been introduced.
Currency:
This publication covers the old literature (Groth);
there is no mechanism for keeping the volumes up to date.
Format:
The publication form is that of clothbound books.
The data are presented in lists and tables.
Part 1 in both volumes is labeled Introduction And Tables.
The tables include those for the classification angles, refractive indices, and melting points of the various types of crystals.
Part 2 of Volume 1, and Parts 2 and 3 of Volume 2, contain the crystal descriptions.
These are grouped into sections according to the crystal system, and within each section compounds are arranged in the same order as in Groth's Chemische Krystallographie.
An alphabetical list of chemical and mineralogical names with reference numbers enables one to find a particular crystal description.
References to the data sources are given in the crystal descriptions.
Publication and distribution:
The Barker index is published for the Barker Index Committee by W. Heffer & Sons, Ltd., 4 Petty Cury, Cambridge, England.
Volume 1, containing Parts 1 and 2 was published in 1951;
Volume 2, in three parts, in 1956.
The two volumes are available from the publisher for $16.80 and $28.00, respectively.
2-2.
Crystal data
organization:
The present edition of crystal data was written by J.D.H. Donnay, the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. (Part 2)) and Werner Nowacki, University of Berne, Switzerland (Part 1)) with the collaboration of Gabrielle Donnay, U. S. Geological Survey, Washington, D. C..
Many collaborators in the United States and Switzerland helped in collecting and assembling data, in making calculations, and in editing.
Support came from academic and industrial groups in these two countries.
The Geological Society of America gave a grant-in-aid to complete the work and bore the expenses of publication.
Preparation of a second edition is in progress under the sponsorship of the Crystal Data Committee of the American Crystallographic Association.
Coeditors are J.D.H. Donnay, G. E. Cox of Leeds University, and Olga Kennard of the National Council for Medical Research, London.
Financial grants have been received from the National Science Foundation and the (British) Institute of Physics for the compilation work and the publication costs.
The continuity of the project is suggested by plans for an eventual third edition.
Substances:
Elements, alloys, inorganic and organic compounds.
(Metal data will not be included in the second edition, since these have been collected independently by W. B. Pearson, National Research Council, Ottawa, and published as A handbook of lattice spacings and structures of metals and alloys by Pergamon Press.
) properties:
Crystallographic data resulting mainly from X-ray and electron diffraction measurements are presented.
Cell dimensions, number of formula units per cell, space group, and specific gravity are given for all substances.
For some substances, auxiliary properties such as the melting point are given.
Sources of data:
Part 1, of the present edition covers the literature to mid-1948;
Part 2, up to the end of 1951.
Much of the material comes directly from secondary sources such as Strukturbericht.
Criticality:
The vast number of compounds to be covered, the limited resources to do the job, and the immediate need for this type of compilation precluded a thorough evaluation of all available data in the present edition.
Future editions may be more critical.
Use of nomenclature, symbols, units, physical constants:
Since Parts 1, and 2, were prepared independently, the abbreviation schemes and the chemical symbols used differ in the two parts.
The second edition should have greater uniformity.
Currency:
A second edition is in preparation, and there are long range plans for a third.
Format:
Data in the present edition are presented in tables and lists.
Part 1, deals with the classification of crystalline substances by space groups and is not a numerical data compilation.
The compounds are divided according to composition into seven categories.
Part 2, contains determinative tables for the identification of crystalline substances.
These are arranged according to crystal system.
There are formula and name indexes covering both parts.
References for Part 1, are given at the end and for Part 2, in the tables.
Publication and distribution:
The present edition of crystal data (Af), published in 1954 as Memoir 60 of the Geological Society of America, is now out of print.
The manuscript of the second edition will probably be ready by the end of 1960.
2-3.
Crystal Structures
organization:
The author of Crystal Structures is Ralph W.G. Wyckoff, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.
The first section of this publication appeared in 1948 and the last supplement in 1960.
Though now complete, the publication is included in this directory because of its importance and because of the long-term nature of its preparation.
Substances:
Elements, inorganic and organic compounds (no alloys).
Properties:
The data presented are derived almost entirely from X-ray diffraction measurements and include atomic coordinates, cell dimensions, and atomic and ionic radii.
Sources of data:
Published literature.
Criticality:
The aim was to state the results of all available determinations of atomic positions in crystals.
Presumably the tabulated data are best available values.
The critical comments in the textual sections of this publication are invaluable.
Use of nomenclature, symbols, units, physical constants:
The terminology used conforms to that of Internationale Tabellen Zur Bestimmung Von Kristallstrukturen.
Currency:
During the years of publication, supplement and replacement sheets were issued periodically.
Coverage of the literature extends through 1954 and includes some 1955 references.
It is to be hoped that some way will be found to keep this important work current.
Format:
The publication form is that of loose-leaf sheets (Af) contained in binders.
The book is divided into chapters and in each chapter the material is grouped into Text, Tables, Illustrations, and Bibliography.
Each group is paginated separately;
numbers sometimes followed by letters are used so that insertions can be made.
Inorganic structures are found in Chapters 2 - 12, organic structures in Chapters 13 - 15.
Within each chapter an effort has been made to group together those crystals with similar structures.
There are three indexes, i.e., an inorganic formula index, a mineralogical name index, and a name index to organic compounds.
Publication and distribution:
Publisher of Crystal Structures is Interscience Publishers, 250 Fifth Avenue, New York 1, N. Y..
The work consists of four sections and 5 supplements.
Price of the complete work including all necessary binders is $148.50.
2-4.
Dana's System Of Mineralogy
organization:
Six editions of James Dwight Dana's System appeared between 1837 and 1892.
In 1915 Edward S. Dana, editor of the sixth edition, asked W. E. Ford of Yale University to prepare a seventh edition of his father's work.
A number of people became involved in the preparation but work was slow until 1937.
In that year a grant was obtained from the Penrose Fund of the Geological Society of America to finance additional full-time workers.
Money was also advanced by the publishers, John Wiley & Sons, Inc..
Volume 1, was completed in 1941 and published in 1944.
The editors of this volume and Volume 2, were the late Charles Palache, Clifford Frondel, and the late Harry Berman, all of Harvard University.
Work on Volume 2, was begun in 1941, interrupted by the war in 1942, and resumed in 1945.
The volume was completed in 1950 and published in 1951.
A supplementary grant from the Geological Society of America helped finance its publication.
Besides the editors there were many contributors in the United States and Great Britain to Volumes 1, and 2.
W. E. Ford, for example, continued to supply data on the occurrence of minerals until his death in 1939.
Volume 3, is nearing completion and there are plans to revise Volume 1.
The project is currently supported by Harvard University.
Substances:
minerals.
Properties:
Crystallographic, physical, optical, and chemical properties.
The crystallographic data given include interaxial angles and unit cell dimensions;
the physical property values include hardness, melting point, and specific gravity.
Sources of data:
Almost entirely original articles in journals;
abstracts and other compilations on rare occasions when original papers are not available.
Criticality:
All information is carefully appraised and uncertain facts are designated by ('?'.
) An authentic diffraction pattern is always obtained and optical properties are frequently checked.
Use of nomenclature, symbols, units, physical constants:
Recommendations of international authorities, such as the International Union of Crystallography, are followed.
There is a complete synonymy at the beginning of each species description.
Currency:
Currency in the usual sense cannot be maintained in an undertaking of this sort.
Format:
The data are presented in text and tables in bound volumes.
Volume 1, of the seventh edition contains an introduction and data for eight classes of minerals;
Volume 2, contains data for forty-two classes.
References are given at the end of each mineral description and a general index is given at the end of each volume.
There will be a comprehensive index in Volume 3, covering all three volumes.
Publication and distribution:
Volume 1 ((Af) of the seventh edition of Dana's System Of Mineralogy was published in 1944 and Volume 2 ((Af) in 1951 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, N. Y..
(The association of Wiley & Sons with the Dana Mineralogies dates back to 1844 when they published the second edition of the system.
) The two volumes are available from the publisher for $14.00 and $16.00, respectively.
2-5.
The Groth Institute
organization:
The Groth Institute, which was established in 1958, is a group activity affiliated with the Physics Department of The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa..
Ray Pepinsky is the Director.
The Institute derives its name from Paul Von Groth's Chemische Krystallographie, a five-volume work which appeared between 1906 and 1919.
The resident staff is large and consists of professional assistants, graduate students, abstractors, librarian, technical editor, machine operators, secretarial help, and others.
There are also corresponding members and outside advisory groups.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has provided financial assistance in the early stages of the Institute's program.
Substances:
All crystalline substances and other solid-state materials.
Properties:
The aim is to collect a very broad range of physical, chemical, morphological, and structural data for crystals on an encyclopedic scale and to seek all possible useful and revealing correlations of properties with internal structure.
Sources of data:
The first stage of operation has centered on the literature imaging of critical or summarizing tabulations such as the Barker Index.
Coverage of primary literature will follow.
Unpublished data will be available to the Groth institute from cooperating groups and individuals.
Criticality:
Critical evaluation of all data compiled is not a primary aim of this project.
However, the proposed correlation of the many interrelated properties of crystals will reveal discrepancies in the recorded data and suggest areas for reinvestigation.
In addition, the availability of computers will permit recalculation and refinement of much structural information.
Use of nomenclature, symbols, units, physical constants:
For punched-card or tape storage of information all literature values must be conformed to a common language.
In this way a degree of unification of nomenclature, symbols, and units will be realized.
In earlier years, the preservation of food was essentially related to survival.
In the more sophisticated atmosphere of today's developed nations, food-preservation techniques have sought also to bring variety, peak freshness, and optimum taste and flavor in foods at reasonable cost to the consumer.
An early hope that irradiation might be the ultimate answer to practically all food preservation problems was soon dispelled.
Factors responsible for the spoilage of foods
The chief factors responsible for the spoilage of fresh foodstuffs are (1) microorganisms such as bacteria, molds, and yeasts, (2) enzymes, (3) insects, (4) sprouting, and (5) chemical reactions.
Microorganisms are often responsible for the rapid spoilage of foods.
Of special concern is the growth of bacteria such as Clostridium botulinum which generate poisonous products.
Enzymatic action in stored food produces changes which can adversely affect the appearance of food or its palatability.
Spoilage by chemical action results from the reaction of one group of components in the food with others or with its environment, as in corrosion of the walls of metal containers or the reaction of fats with oxygen in the air to produce rancidity.
Sprouting is a naturally occurring phenomenon in stored potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, and similar root vegetables.
Insect infestation is a problem of importance chiefly in stored grain.
The presence of parasitic organisms such as Trichinella spiralis in pork introduces another factor which must be dealt with in food processing.
To permit the storage of food for long periods of time, a method of preservation must accomplish the destruction of microorganisms and inhibition of enzymatic action.
The term sterilization applies to methods involving essentially complete destruction of all microorganisms.
Food treated in this manner and protected from recontamination by aseptic methods of packaging and containment presumably could be stored for long periods without refrigeration.
The process of pasteurization involves milder and less prolonged heat treatment which accomplishes the destruction of most, but not all, of the microorganisms.
Less severe thermal treatment as by blanching or scalding serves to inactivate enzymes.
General effects of ionizing radiation
Ionizing radiation can cause the destruction of microorganisms and insects involved in food spoilage or, at lower doses, can inhibit their action.
It furnishes a means of destroying insects in stored grain products as well as certain parasitic organisms present in meats.
Deactivation of enzymes is also possible, although some types require extremely heavy doses of 10 Mrad or more.
Because of undesirable flavors, odors, colors, and generally low palatability associated with radiation treatment of this magnitude, the inactivation of enzymes is best accomplished prior to irradiation by the conventional heat-processing methods of blanching.
Radiation does not retard the chemical spoilage of food.
It will, however, inhibit the sprouting of potatoes and other root vegetables.
The radiation doses required for the preservation of foods are in the following ranges: 1.
For radiosterilization, to destroy all organisms for long-term preservation--about 4.5 Mrad for nonacid foods of low salt content.
For radiopasteurization, to partially destroy microorganisms;
results vary with types of food, storage conditions, and objectives of treatment--commonly of the order of 0.2 Mrads but up to about 0.8 Aj.
For destruction of insects--about 25,000 Aj.
For inhibiting the sprouting of root vegetables--4,000 to 10,000 Aj.
Preserving foods with ionizing radiation leads to some undesirable side effects, particularly at the higher radiation dosages.
In this respect, the general palatability and individual acceptance of most radiosterilized foods has, to date, been found to be low in comparison with fresh and commercially processed foods.
A number of foods are quite acceptable as regards taste and palatability, however, at dosages substantially less than sterilization levels.
Moreover, the nutritive value of irradiated foods apparently undergoes little, if any, change, although some of the fat-soluble vitamins are affected by sterilization doses.
Radiation sources
For irradiation of food, the results obtained depend upon the dose rather than the specific type of radiation, and X-ray, gamma, and high-energy electron radiation are suitable.
Aside from availability and economic considerations, each has certain practical advantages;
for example, gamma rays give deeper penetration but cannot be focused or collimated, whereas unidirectional electron beams may be split and directed to both the top and bottom of the food package to be irradiated.
Selection of a source for commercial irradiation would involve consideration of numerous factors including required dose rate, load factor, throughput, convenience, safety, and most important, costs.
Of the potentially useful sources of ionizing radiations, gamma sources, cobalt-60, cesium-137, fission products, or a reactor irradiation loop system using a material such as an indium salt have received most attention for food-preservation systems.
Of the various particle accelerators, the Van De Graff machines, resonant transformers, and linear accelerators are the principal ones available for commercial use.
Costs of the effective energy produced by these sources is a major obstacle in the development of food-preservation processes.
Estimated production costs of radiation energy from machine and nuclide sources range from $1 to $10 per Aj.
Conventional energy for processing foods is available in the range of at most a few cents per kwhr for electric power and the equivalent of a few mills per kwhr for process steam.
Radiation, therefore, is at an initial cost disadvantage even though only 1 to 10 per cent as much radiation energy as heat energy is required for radiopasteurization or radiosterilization.
What are the possibilities of lowered radiation production costs for the future?
It has been estimated that for applications on a megawatt scale costs might reach values in the neighborhood of 10 cents per kwhr for large-scale accelerators or for gamma radiation generated in a reactor core.
No comparable reductions in the cost of nuclide radiation are foreseen.
Such projections, however, appear highly speculative and the capacities involved are far beyond those foreseen for food-preservation facilities.
Present status of irradiation preservation of foods
The objective of complete sterilization of foods is to produce a wholesome and palatable product capable of being stored without refrigeration for extended periods of time.
Chief interest in radiosterilization resides in the military services.
For them, providing appetizing food under battle or emergency conditions is a paramount consideration.
They require completely sterile foods capable of being stored without refrigeration, preferably items already cooked and ready to eat.
High nutritional value, variety, palatability, and appetizing appearance are important for reasons of morale.
Foods for rear stations, which require cooking, but no refrigeration, are also of interest.
Of primary interest are meats.
Radiopasteurization, which produces fewer adverse sensory changes in food products, has potential usefulness in prolonging the keeping qualities of fresh and refrigerated food items.
Thus, food so processed might reach more remote markets and permit the consumer to enjoy more produce at peak freshness and palatability.
Commercial interest is chiefly in this type of treatment, as is military interest under peacetime conditions.
The present status of food preservation by ionizing radiation is discussed by food classes in the following paragraphs.
Meats
The radiation processing of meat has received extensive investigation.
To date, the one meat showing favorable results at sterilization doses is pork.
Of particular interest to the military services is the demonstration that roast pork, after radiosterilization, is superior in palatability to available canned pork products.
Tests with beef have been largely unsuccessful because of the development of off-flavors.
A prime objective of the Army Quartermaster Corps program is to find the reasons for beef's low palatability and means of overcoming it, since it is a major and desirable dietary item.
Partly because low-level heat treatment is needed to inactivate enzymes before radiosterilization, treated fresh meats have the appearance of boiled or canned meat.
Off-flavor is a less severe problem with the radiopasteurization of meats, but problems of commercial acceptability remain.
Moderate radiation doses of from 100,000 to 200,000 rads can extend the shelf life (at 35 F) of fresh beef from 5 days to 5 or 6 weeks.
However, the problem of consumer acceptability remains.
The preradiation blanching process discolors the treated beef and liquid accumulates in prepackaged cuts.
Cooked beef irradiated in the absence of oxygen assumes an unnatural pink color.
When lamb and mutton are irradiated at substerilization doses, the meat becomes dehydrated, the fat becomes chalky, and, again, unnatural changes in color occur.
Ground meats such as fresh pork sausage and hamburger have a relatively short shelf life under refrigeration, and radiopasteurization might be thought to offer distinctly improved keeping qualities.
However, a major problem here is one of scale of processing;
ground meats are usually prepared from scrap meats at the local level, whereas irradiation at economic volumes of production would require central processing and distribution facilities.
The problems of color change by blanching and liquid accumulation within the package are the same as for solid cuts.
Specialty cooked items containing meat portions, as in frozen dinners might offer a potential use for radiopasteurization.
The principal potential advantage would be that the finished product could be transported and stored at lower cost under refrigeration instead of being frozen.
A refrigerated item could also be heated and served in less time than is required for frozen foods of the same type.
Competitive processes for preserving meats are by canning and freezing.
Costs of canning meat are in the range of 0.8 to 5 cents per pound;
costs of freezing are in the area of 2 to 3.5 cents per pound.
The table on page 10 shows costs of canning and freezing meat, and estimated costs for irradiation under certain assumed conditions.
Under the conditions of comparison, it will be noted that: (1)
Radiosterilization (at 3 Mrad) is more expensive than canning, particularly for the cesium-137 source.
(2)
Radiopasteurization by either the electron accelerator or cesium-137 source is in the range of freezing costs.
(3)
Irradiation using the nuclide source is more expensive than use of an electron accelerator.
Poultry
Results of irradiation tests with poultry have been quite successful.
At sterilizing doses, good palatability results, with a minimum of changes in appearance, taste, and odor.
Radiopasteurization has also been successful, and the shelf life of chicken can be extended to a month or more under refrigerated storage as compared with about 10 days for the untreated product.
Acceptable taste and odor are retained by the irradiated and refrigerated chicken.
Seafood
Fresh seafood products are extremely perishable.
Although refrigeration has served to extend the storage life of these products, substantially increased consumption might be possible if areas remote from the seacoast could be served adequately.
Furthermore, it has made an exact assessment of the removal mechanisms possible.
The instrument is shown in Fig. 1 and consists essentially of a hard, sharp, tungsten carbide knife which is pushed along the substrate to remove the coating.
The force required to accomplish removal is plotted, by means of an electronic recorder, against distance of removal.
Since the removal force is a function of coating thickness, a differential transformer pickup has been incorporated into the instrument to accurately measure film thickness.
This, too, is recorded against distance by a repeat run over the same track previously cut.
A number of adjustment features are included in the Hesiometer to facilitate measurement and permit ready removal of coatings deposited on such substrates as iron and other metals, glass, wood, and plastic surfaces.
The measurement of topcoats on primers can also readily be carried out.
Hesiometer results have been found to compare excellently with manual knife scratching tests.
The instrumental method, however, is about 100 times more sensitive and yields numerical results which can be accurately repeated at will over a period of time.
If a wedge-shaped coating of increasing thickness is removed from a substrate by an instrument like the Hesiometer with a knife of constant rake angle, a number of removal mechanisms are often observed which depend upon the thickness of the coating.
At low thicknesses a cutting (or shearing) phenomenon is often encountered.
As the coating becomes thicker, the cutting may abruptly change to a cracking type of failure.
If the coating becomes still thicker, a peeling type failure finally can occur.
The typical appearance of these various mechanisms is illustrated in Figs. 2, 3, and 4, which are single frame enlargements of high speed movies taken during the course of the knife removal process.
It can be seen from Fig. 2 that the cutting removal of a coating from its substrate involves pure cohesive failure of the coating.
The molecular forces holding the coating to the substrate are obviously greater than the cohesive strength of the coating and failure occurs by shear along a plane starting at the tip of the knife and extending to the coating surface.
The pictures of Figs. 3 and 4 show the cracking and peeling types of removal where the coating is detached by failure in a region at, or close to, the interface between coating and substrate.
If the force required to remove the coatings is plotted against film thickness, a graph as illustrated schematically in Fig. 5 may characteristically result.
Here, H is the coatings removal force measured parallel to the surface of the substrate and T is the film thickness.
It can be seen that the force is characteristic of the removal process and changes abruptly from cutting to cracking to peeling removal.
Also, it can be readily seen that the cutting and peeling types of failure show a steady state response, while the cracking mechanism is of a dynamic nature.
It should be recalled that these three mechanisms can occur on the same coating deposited upon the same substrate merely as a function of changes in coatings thickness.
Presumably the interfacial bond strength and gross cohesive properties are identical in each case.
What then, are the factors that contribute to these phenomena?
Why should the practical adhesion of a coating as assessed by a knife method change, initially increasing rather rapidly and then decreasing stepwise to very low values as the knife is forced through a coating of increasing thickness?
Cutting mechanism of cohesive failure
The cutting (or shearing) removal process has been previously described.
It was found that the coating is separated from its substrate entirely by cohesive failure.
The details of the removal process are shown schematically in Fig. 6.
The various forces result from the reaction of the removed paint chip against the face of the knife and along the shear plane, which makes an angle **yf with the substrate.
The action and reaction forces are R and Af, respectively, and are equal and opposite in direction.
All the other force vectors are derived from these.
Af is the force required to cut a coating of thickness T from the substrate.
Af is the shear force along the shear plane;
Af and Af are the thrust forces acting against coating and knife, respectively;
Af is the normal compressive force acting on the shear plane;
Af is the friction force between chip and knife surfaces, and P is the normal force acting on the face of the knife.
**yc is the rake angle of the knife;
**yf is the angle the shear plane makes with the substrate;
**yt is the friction angle;
and **yb is the angle the resultants make with the plane of the substrate.
An analysis of the vector relationships shows that the rake angle **yc and the friction angle **yt determine the vector direction Af of the force resultants R and Af.
Consequently, both the rake angle of the knife as well as the friction occurring between the back of the removed coating and the front of the knife will determine in large part the detailed mechanism of the cutting removal process.
It is difficult to measure the direction and magnitude of R directly.
In actual practice, the values most readily amenable to measurement are the cutting force Af and the shear angle Aj.
These two values and the rake angle **yc are sufficient to determine the other parameters of these relationships.
**yc is defined by the geometry of the knife;
**yf can readily be determined by measuring the thickness of the coating before and after cutting from the substrate;
Af is instrumentally determined.
From Fig. 6 the relationship between these parameters can readily be derived and the cutting force is Af where **yl is the shear strength of the coating and is a parameter of the coatings material, W is the width of the removed coating and T is its thickness.
If the cutting force, Af, is plotted against film thickness, a straight line should result passing through the origin and having slope Af.
However, in the actual assessment of the cutting force by instrumental methods for any thickness of coating a number of spurious effects occur which must be taken into account and which make the measured value larger than the true cutting force indicated by eqn. (1).
Blunt knife
One of these is the fact that the knife employed, no matter how well sharpened, will have a slightly rounded cutting edge.
This signifies that **yc, the rake angle, is no longer a constant to zero film thickness.
The curvature of this bluntness is, in the case of the Carboloy knife employed in the Hesiometer, determined by the grain sizes of the polished grit and the tungsten carbide crystals cemented together in the knife body and is in the order of 0.1 to 0.2 mil..
The force vector concept of Fig. 6 can readily be applied to this condition also.
Because the rake angle Af at the tip of the knife is very much smaller (or even negative) when compared to the value of **yc for the major portion of the knife, a very rapid increase in cutting force with thickness will result.
It can be seen that Af is a constant, and is determined for the most part by the geometry of the knife.
The blunter the knife, the higher is the value of Af.
The importance of a hard, abrasion-resistant knife material like the Carboloy employed in the Hesiometer immediately becomes apparent.
Softer knives would blunt very rapidly, making the value of Af inexact.
In extreme cases of very soft knives this value may even change during the course of a measurement.
Knife friction
A second factor which enters into the practical measurement of the instrumentally determined cutting force is the frictional resistance caused by the bottom of the knife against the substrate.
This is not a constant value like Af, but varies with the thickness of the coating and the direction and magnitude of the resultants R and Af of Fig. 6.
Under equilibrium conditions of cutting the chip exerts a thrust Af against the knife which tends to push it into the substrate or lift it away from the substrate depending on the vector direction of Af.
The resultant friction force, Af is thus directly proportional to Af and consequently also to film thickness.
The value of Af can readily be assessed by determining the frictional force exerted on the knife while running over the previously stripped coating track under various external loadings.
A straight line relationship is usually observed in a plot of Af against load L, having slope k, and Af.
Since the load L, under actual cutting conditions is caused by Af, it can be seen that Af
The first two forces are directly interrelated and depend upon film thickness, whereas Af is independent of these two and is a constant for a given knife/coating combination.
These theoretical relationships are more clearly illustrated in Fig. 7 and their sum can be seen to correlate in form with practical measurements made with the Hesiometer as illustrated in the first portion of Fig. 5 for the cutting mechanism.
Chipping mechanism of cohesive failure
Although a large number of coatings systems, particularly at low thicknesses fail cohesively by the cutting mechanism, frequently a second type of cohesive failure may also take place.
This is a chipping, dynamic type failure encountered with very brittle coatings resins or very highly pigmented films.
This is shown in the photomicrograph of Fig. 8.
The basic difference between the continuous cutting mechanism and that of the chipping mechanism is that instead of shear occurring in the coating ahead of the knife continuously without fracture, rupture intermittently occurs along the shear plane.
The detailed mechanisms of this type of failure have been studied extensively by Merchant for metal cutting, and the principles found can be directly applied to coatings.
By studying high speed movies made of this type of failure, the sequence of relationships as schematically illustrated in Fig. 9 could be observed.
In the first picture (9a) the knife is just beginning to advance into the inclined surface which was left from the previous chip formation.
In the next, the shear plane angle is high, and extends to the inclined work surface.
With increasing advance of the knife into the coating the shear plane extends to the coatings surface and the shear angle rapidly decreases.
Eventually, rupture occurs along the shear plane (9e), and the cycle repeats itself.
Consequently, if the shear angle **yf is replaced by the rupture angle Af, the relationships as described in eqns. (1), (2), (4), and (6) will directly apply.
The cracking mechanism
Under equilibrium cutting conditions, the chip exerts a force Af against the coating and an equal opposite force Af against the knife in the plane of the substrate as shown in Fig. 6.
If the rake angle **yc of the knife is high enough and the friction angle **yt between the front of the knife and the back of the chip is low enough to give a positive value for Af, the resultant vector R will lie above the plane of the substrate.
Within only a few years, foamed plastics materials have managed to grow into an integral, and important, phase of the plastics industry--and the end is still not yet in sight.
Urethane foam, as only one example, was only introduced commercially in this country in 1955.
Yet last year's volume probably topped 100 million lb. and expectations are for a market of 275 million lb. by 1964.
Many of the other foamed plastics, particularly the styrenes, show similar growth potential.
And there are even newer foamed plastics that are yet to be evaluated.
As this issue goes to press, for example, one manufacturer has announced an epoxy foam with outstanding buoyancy and impact strength;
another reports that a cellular polypropylene, primarily for use in wire coating applications, is being investigated.
On the following pages, each of the major commercial foamed plastics is described in detail, as to properties, applications, and methods of processing.
It might be well to point out, however, some of the newer developments that have taken place within the past few months which might have a bearing on the future of the various foamed plastics involved.
In urethane foams, for example, there has been a definite trend toward the polyether-type materials (which are now available in two-component rigid foam systems) and the emphasis is definitely on one-shot molding.
Most manufacturers also seem to be concentrating on formulating fire-resistant or self-extinguishing grades of urethane foam that are aimed specifically at the burgeoning building markets.
Urethane foam as an insulator is also coming in for a good deal of attention.
In one outstanding example, Whirlpool Corp. found that by switching to urethane foam insulation, they could increase the storage capacity of gas refrigerators to make them competitive with electric models.
Much interest has also been expressed in new techniques for processing the urethane foams, including spraying, frothing, and molding (see article, p. 391 for details).
And in meeting the demands for urethane foam as a garment interlining, new adhesives and new methods of laminating foam to a substrate have been developed.
New techniques for automatic molding of expandable styrene beads have helped boost that particular material into a number of new consumer applications, including picnic chests, beverage coolers, flower pots, and flotation-type swimming toys.
Two other end-use areas which contributed to expandable styrene's growth during the year were packaging (molded inserts replacing complicated cardboard units) and foamed-core building panels.
Extruded expandable styrene film or sheet--claimed to be competitive price-wise with paper--also showed much potential, particularly for packaging.
Sandwich panels for building utility shelters that consist of kraft paper skins and rigid styrene foam cores also aroused interest in the construction field.
In vinyl foam, the big news was the development of techniques for coating fabrics with the material (for details, see P. 395).
Better hand, a more luxurious feel, and better insulating properties were claimed to be the result.
Several companies also saw possibilities in using the technique for extruding or molding vinyl products with a slight cellular core that would reduce costs yet would not affect physical properties of the end product to any great extent.
Readers interested in additional information on foams are referred to the Foamed Plastics Chart appearing in the Technical Data section and to the list of references which appears below.
Urethane foams
Since the mid 1950s, when urethane foam first made its appearance in the American market, growth has been little short of fantastic.
Present estimates are that production topped the 100-million-lb. mark in 1960 (85 to 90 million lb. for flexible, 10 or 11 million lb. for rigid);
by 1965, production may range from 200 to 350 million lb. for flexible and from 115 to 150 million lb. for rigid.
The markets that have started to open up for the foam in the past year or so seem to justify the expectations.
Furniture upholstery, as just one example, can easily take millions of pounds;
foamed refrigerator insulation is under intensive evaluation by every major manufacturer;
and use of the foam for garment interlining is only now getting off the ground, with volume potential in the offing.
Basic chemistry
Urethane foams are, basically, reaction products of hydroxyl-rich materials and polyisocyanates (usually tolylene diisocyanate).
Blowing can be either one of two types--carbon dioxide gas generated by the reaction of water on the polyisocyanate or mechanical blowing through the use of a low-boiling liquid such as a fluorinated hydrocarbon.
The most important factor in determining what properties the end-product will have is quite naturally the type of hydroxyl-rich compound that is used in its production.
Originally, the main types used were various compositions of polyesters.
These are still in wide use today, particularly in semi-rigid formulations, for such applications as cores for sandwich-type structural panels, foamed-in-place insulation, automotive safety padding, arm rests, etc..
More recently, polyethers--again in varied compositions, molecular weights, and branching--have come into use at first for the flexible foams, just lately for the rigids.
The polyether glycols are claimed to give flexible urethanes a spring-back action which is much desired in cushioning.
Although the first polyether foams on the market had to be produced by the two-step prepolymer method, today, thanks to new catalysts, they can be produced by a one-shot technique.
It is possible that the polyether foams may soon be molded on a production basis in low-cost molds with more intricate contours and with superior properties to latex foam.
The polyester urethane foam is generally produced with adipic acid polyesters;
the polyether group generally consists of foams produced with polypropylene glycol or polypropylene glycol modified with a triol.
One shot vs. prepolymer
In the prepolymer system, the isocyanate and resin are mixed anhydrously and no foaming occurs.
The foaming can be accomplished at some future time at a different location by the addition of the correct proportion of catalyst in solution.
In one-shot, the isocyanate, polyester or polyether resin, catalyst, and other additives are mixed directly and a foam is produced immediately.
Properties
Most commercial uses of urethane foams require densities between 2 and 30 lb. / cu. ft. for rigid foams, between 1 and 3 lb. / cu. ft. for flexible foams.
This latter figure compares with latex foam rubber at an average of 5.5 lb. / cu. ft. in commercial grades.
Compression strength:
Graph in Fig. 1, p. 392, indicates how the ratio of compressive strength to density varies as the latter is increased or decreased.
The single curve line represents a specific formulation in a test example.
By varying the formula, this curve may be moved forward or backward along the coordinates to produce any desired compression strength / density ratio.
Thermal conductivity and temperature resistance:
In flexible urethane foams, we are referring to the range between the highest and lowest temperatures under which the materials' primary performance remains functionally useful.
In temperature resistance, this quality is usually related to specific properties, e.g., flexural, tensile strengths, etc..
Thermal conductivity is directly traceable to the material's porous, air-cell construction which effectively traps air or a gas in the maze of minute bubbles which form its composition.
These air or gas bubbles make highly functional thermal barriers.
Table 1, p. 394, shows a comparison of K factor ratings of a number of commercial insulating materials in common use, including two different types of rigid urethane foam.
Flexural strength:
This term refers to the ability of a material to resist bending stress and is determined by measuring the load required to cause failure by bending.
The higher-density urethane semi-rigid foams usually have stronger flex fatigue resistance, i.e., the 12 lb. / cu. ft. foam has 8 times the flexural strength of the 3 lb. / cu. ft. density.
Note that flexural strength is not always improved by simply increasing the density, nor is the change always proportional from one formulation to another.
Where flexural strength is an important factor, be sure that your urethane foam processor is aware of it.
Tensile strength:
This property refers to the greatest longitudinal stress or tension a material can endure without tearing apart.
(like compression strength of urethane foams, it has a direct relationship to formulation.
) Exceptional tensile strength is another of urethane foam's strong features.
Figure 2, above, shows the aging properties of urethane foams as determined by the percent of change in tensile strength during exposure to ultra-violet light.
Processing urethanes
There are many ways of producing a foamed urethane product.
The foam can be made into slab stock and cut to shape, it can be molded, it can be poured-in-place, it can be applied by spray guns, etc..
Slab stock is still one of the most important forms of urethane end-product in use today.
Basically, the foam machines that produce such stock consist of two or more pumping units, a variable mixer, a nozzle carriage assembly, and, in many cases, a conveyor belt to transport and contain the liquid during the reaction process and until it solidifies into foam.
The ingredients are fed from tanks through a hose and into the mixer at a predetermined rate.
The mixing head moves back and forth slowly across the width of the receptacle.
It only takes a few minutes for the foaming action to be completed and after a short cure, the material can be cut into lengths as desired.
Much has been done in the way of ingenious slitters to fabricate the slab stock into finished products.
Profile cutting machines are available which can split foam to any desired thickness and produce sine, triangle, trapezoid, and other profiles in variable heights, dimensions, etc..
The convoluted sheets can be combined to attain certain cushioning effects mechanically rather than chemically.
Also available is a slitter which peels the inside of a folded block of foam and can be used to slit continuous sheets up to 300 yd. in length, down to 1/16 in. thick.
Molding
Although slab stock appeared first, it soon became apparent that for the production of cushions with irregular shapes, crowned contours, or rounded edges, the cutting of slab stock is a wasteful and uneconomical process.
Only by resorting to molding techniques can the cushion manufacturer hope to compete satisfactorily in the established cushion market.
The closed molding of flexible urethane foams has been a problem ever since the introduction of the material (molding in open molds was more feasible).
Satisfactory methods for polyester foams and even prepolymer polyether foams were never fully achieved.
Closed molding generally resulted in parts weighing more (because of higher density) than parts fabricated from free-blown foams.
This counteracted the gain from having no scrap loss.
In addition, there were difficulties with the flow and spreading of the foam mixture over the mold surface, trouble with lack of gel strength in the rising foam, and problems of splits.
The introduction of one-shot polyether foam systems, aided by the development of new catalysts, helped to alleviate some of the problems of closed molding.
While there are still many bugs to be ironed out, the technique is fast developing.
Other techniques
Simple systems are available that make it possible for urethane foam components to be poured, pumped, etc., into a void where they foam up to fill the void.
In a typical application--the making of rigid urethane foam sandwich panels--an amount of foam mixture calculated to expand 10 to 20% more than the volume of the panel is poured into the panel void and the top of the panel is locked in place by a jig.
Temperature of the wash and rinse waters is maintained at 85 - 90-degrees-F (29 - 32-degrees-C).
The top rolls are loaded with 40 lbs..
Sixty lbs. loading is possible but 40 lbs. is adequate.
The suds box drain is arranged at the start to deliver into the raised main drain pipe (thus returning suds to soap box) and the machine is started.
The 160-ml. bath containing the calculated amount of detergent is applied slowly and directly to the running specimen.
Washing is continued for 30 minutes or for a period of time sufficient to allow 100 nips or passes through the squeeze rolls.
At the conclusion of the washing, 8 liters of water at 90-degrees-F (32*0C.) are automatically metered from the rinse reservoir to the washing tubs, 4 liters to each tub.
This operation requires from 10 to 12 minutes.
During the rinsing operation the volume in the tubs gradually increases until overflow from the main drain begins.
At this point the drains are readjusted so that the suds box drain will discharge directly into the waste line and the main tub drain is set at the 2-1/2 mark on the drain gauge.
When all of the rinse water has passed from the reservoir to the tubs the main drains are lowered to permit complete draining of the tubs.
The run is complete when all the water has drained off into the waste line.
This method of rinsing appears to produce maximum cleansing with minimum soil redeposition.
Suggested evaluation and classification
Evaluation may be made on either a soil-removal or a grease-removal basis as desired.
A reflectance-measuring instrument may be desirable to measure cleaning, whereas Soxhlet extraction is necessary to measure grease removal.
Purpose and scope
This test method is intended for determining the dimensional changes of woven or knitted fabrics, made of fibers other than wool, to be expected when the cloth is subjected to laundering procedures commonly used in the commercial laundry and the home.
Four washing test procedures are established, varying in severity from very severe to very mild, and are intended to cover the range of practical washing from commercial procedure to hand washing.
Five drying test procedures are established to cover the range of drying techniques used in the home and commercial laundry.
Three methods for determining the dimensional restorability characteristics are established for those textiles which require restoration by ironing or wearing after laundering.
These tests are not accelerated and must be repeated to evaluate dimensional changes after repeated launderings.
Table 1, summarizes all of the various washing, drying, and restoration procedures available.
The person using these tests must determine which combination of procedures is practical for any specific item in order to evaluate the dimensional changes of textile fabrics or garments after laundering procedures commonly used in the home or commercial laundry.
It is possible to identify the test procedure completely with a code consisting of a Roman Numeral, a letter, and an Arabic number.
Principle
A specimen or garment is washed in a cylindrical reversing wash wheel, dried and subjected to restorative forces where necessary.
Temperature and time of agitation in the wash wheel are varied to obtain different degrees of severity.
Drying procedures and application of restorative force procedures are varied to conform with end-use handling during home or commercial laundering.
Distances marked on the specimen in warp and filling directions (or wales and courses for knitted fabrics) are measured before and after laundering.
Apparatus and materials
wash wheel--cylindrical wash wheel of the reversing type.
The wheel (cage) is 20 to 24 inches inside diameter and 20 to 24 inches inside length.
There are three fins each approximately three inches wide extending the full length of the inside of the wheel.
One fin is located every 120-degrees around the inside diameter of the wheel.
The wash wheel rotates at a speed of 30 revolutions per minute, making five to ten revolutions before reversing.
The water inlets are large enough to permit filling the wheel to an eight-inch level in less than two minutes, and the outlet is large enough to permit discharge of this same amount of water in less than two minutes.
The machine is equipped with a pipe for injecting live steam that is capable of raising the temperature of water at an eight-inch level from 110-degrees to 140-degrees-F (38*0 to 60*0C.) in less than two minutes.
The machine shall contain an opening for the insertion of a thermometer or other equivalent equipment for determining the temperature of the water during the washing and rinsing procedures.
It is equipped with an outside water gauge that will indicate the level of the water in the wheel.
A domestic automatic washer that will give equivalent results may be used.
The wash wheel is the equipment preferred for the test.
Pressing equipment--flat-bed press measuring 24 inches by 50 inches or larger.
Any flat-bed press capable of pressing a specimen 22 inches square may be used as an alternative.
The flat-bed press is maintained at a temperature not less than 275-degrees-F (135*0C.).
Dryer--dryer of the rotary tumble type, having a cylindrical basket approximately 30 inches in diameter and 24 inches in length and rotating at approximately 35 r.p.m..
The dryer is provided with a means of maintaining a drying temperature of 120-degrees - 160-degrees-F (49*0 - 71*&0C.), measured in the exhaust vent as close as possible to the drying chamber.
Screen drying racks--16-mesh screening (Saran or Velon).
Drying room--facilities for drip- or line-drying.
Extractor--centrifugal extractor of the laundry-type with a perforated basket, approximately 11 inches deep by 17 inches in diameter, with an operating speed of approximately 1,500 r.p.m..
Pen and ink, indelible--or other suitable marking device.
measuring scale --
Soap, neutral chip--fed. Spec. 566 or Aj.
Softener--e.g. sodium metaphosphate or sodium hexametaphosphate (if needed in hard water areas).
Detergent, synthetic--alkylarysulfonate type.
Flatiron, electric--approximately 3 lb.
tension presser--consisting of a padded ironing board from which extend clamping members on all four sides.
Two of the clamps are fixed to the edges of the board whereas two clamps travel on guide rails opposite the fixed clamps.
The movable clamps travel on carriages which ride the rails and are drawn by dead-weight loading.
Sets of weights are provided so that the load can be selected in the range of 1/2 to 4 pounds.
A perforated aluminum plate, used to provide the drying surface, is heated by means of a flatiron.
A special template is furnished with the apparatus to enable marking a specimen for a central measuring area and the fabric extensions to the clamps (see Fig. 2).
Knit shrinkage gauge--consisting of a set of 20 mounting pins set in guides in radial slots (Fig. 1).
Each pin is individually sprung to a tensioning member which is driven outwardly in the slot.
The springs have an extension of 1 inch at Af tension.
The tensioning members have a common drive so that the application of restorative force takes place simultaneously in all directions in the plane of the test specimen.
The minimum diameter of the pin frame in the collapsed state is 11 inches and the maximum diameter in the freely extended state (unloaded) is 14 inches.
The surface of the apparatus in contact with the test specimen is uncluttered and polished so as to be as friction-free as possible.
Test specimens
The preparation of test specimens will vary depending upon the type of dimensional restorability procedure (if any) to be used.
Three specimens for each sample to be tested are required in order to arrive at a satisfactory average of performance.
This is especially true for knitted fabrics.
Specimens are allowed to reach moisture equilibrium with a standard atmosphere of Af and Af and then laid out without tension on a flat, polished surface, care being taken that the fabric is free from wrinkles or creases.
Fabrics that are badly distorted in their unlaundered state due to faulty finishing may give deceptive dimensional change results when laundered by any procedure.
This also holds true if restorative forces are applied.
Therefore, it is recommended that in such cases the sample be replaced, or if used, the results of dimensional change or dimensional restorability tests be considered as indicative only.
Generally, it is necessary to mark distances on a specimen (or garment) in both lengthwise and widthwise directions and to measure before and after laundering.
The distances may be marked with indelible ink and a fine-point pen, by sewing fine threads into the fabric, or by a specially designed stamping machine.
The marked distances are parallel to the respective yarns.
Usually, the greater the original distances marked, the greater will be the accuracy of the test.
Distances of less than 10 inches are not recommended.
Woven fabrics to be dried by procedure b (flat-bed pressed) or restored by procedure 3 (hand ironing):
The specimen of fabric is a rectangle at least 22 by 22 inches, except for cloth narrower than 22 inches, in which case the specimen is the entire width of the fabric.
Three distances, each at least 18 inches, are measured and marked off parallel to each of the warp and filling directions.
The distances are at least two inches from any edge of the specimen.
Woven or warp knitted fabrics to be subjected to restorative procedure 1 (tension presser).
Each specimen is at least 25 inches by 25 inches.
Mark the specimen at the outer edges of the template with pen and indelible ink;
also place three dots on the specimen at each side of the 10 inch square, one dot at midpoint, and one at approximately 1/2 inch from each corner.
Measure and record.
Circular knitted fabrics to be subjected to restorative procedure 2, (knit shrinkage gauge).
Each specimen is approximately 16 inches square.
The markings consist of a centrally located 10 inch diameter measuring circle and a 14 inch diameter circle of 20 dots equidistantly spaced (See Figure 1).
Garments.
Critical measurements in length and width directions should be taken before and after washing, drying, and restorative procedures.
Procedure
washing --
The washing procedures are summarized in Table 2.
Place the specimen in the wash wheel with sufficient other similar fabric to make a dry load of Af pounds.
Start the wash wheel and note the time.
Immediately add water at 100 - 105-degrees-F (38 - 43*0C.) to the wheel to a level of Af inches;
this level will be increased by condensed steam.
When this water level has been reached, inject steam into the wheel until the temperature reaches that shown in Column B of Table 2.
Add sufficient soap (and softener if required to counteract hard water) to furnish a good running suds, or if desired use a synthetic detergent.
Test 1,
-- Stop the wash wheel at the end of the time shown in Column A of Table 2, and drain.
Refill the machine to a level of Af inches with water at 100 - 109-degrees-F ((38 - 43*0 C.) and start the machine.
Inject steam, if necessary, to reach the temperature shown in Column D of Table 2.
Again stop the machine at the end of the time shown in Column C of Table 2.
This procedure is repeated for the second rinse, using the temperatures and time shown in Columns F and E of Table 2.
Tests 2, 3,, and 4.
-- Run the machine continuously until completion of the test.
Drain off the soap solution of the suds cycle at such a time that the wheel has become substantially empty of soap and water at the end of the time shown in Column A of Table 2, measured from the time the wash wheel was started.
Refill the machine to a level of Af inches with water at 100 - 109-degrees-F (38 - 43*0C.).
When this water level has been reached, inject steam until the temperature is that shown in Column Aj.
Drain off the water at such a time that the wheel has become substantially empty of water at the end of the sum of the times shown in Columns A and C, measured from the time the wash wheel was started.
Immediately refill to a level of Af inches with water at 100 - 109-degrees-F (38 - 43*0C).
When this water level has been reached inject steam until the temperature is that shown in Column Aj.
Drain off the water at such a time that the wheel has become substantially empty of water at the end of the sum of the times shown in Columns A, C, and E, measured from the time the wash wheel was started.
High-gain, photoelectronic image intensification is applied under conditions of low incident light levels whenever the integration time required by a sensor or recording instrument exceeds the limits of practicability.
Examples of such situations are (aerial) night reconnaissance, the recording of radioactive tracers in live body tissues, special radiography in medical or industrial applications, track recording of high energy particles, etc..
High-gain photoelectronic image intensification may be achieved by several methods;
some of these are listed below: (A)
Cascading single stages by coupling lens systems, (B)
Channel-type, secondary emission image intensifier, (C)
Image intensifier based upon the multipactor principle, (D)
Transmission secondary electron multiplication image intensifiers (TSEM tubes), (E)
Cascading of single stages, enclosed in one common envelope.
Cascading single stages by coupling lens systems is rather inefficient as the lens systems limit the obtainable gain quite severely.
Channel-type image intensifiers are capable of achieving high-gain values;
they suffer, however, from an inherently low resolution.
Image intensifiers based upon the multipactor principle appear to hold promise as far as obtainable resolution is concerned.
However, the unavoidable low-duty cycle restricts the effective gain.
TSEM tubes have been constructed showing high gain and resolution.
However, electrostatic focus, important for many applications, has not been realized for these devices.
Resolution limitations with electrostatic focus might be anticipated due to chromatic aberrations.
Furthermore, the thin film dynodes appear to have a natural diameter limitation wherever a mesh support cannot be tolerated.
Cascaded single stages enclosed by a common envelope have been constructed with high gain and high resolution.
These tubes may differ both in the choice of the electron optical system and in the design of the coupling members.
The electron optical system may be either a magnetic or electrostatic one.
The magnification may be smaller, equal, or larger than unity.
As it will be discussed later, peripheral defocusing can be improved on by utilizing curved fiber couplers.
It should be noted, however, that the paraxial resolution is quite similar for both electron optical systems.
It is felt that fiber-coupled double- (and multi-) stage image intensifiers will gain considerable importance in the future.
Therefore, we shall consider in this paper the theoretical gain and resolution capabilities of such tubes.
The luminous efficiency and resolution of single stages, fiber couplers, and finally of the composite tube will be computed.
It will be shown theoretically that the high image intensification obtainable with such a tube and contact photography permits the utilization of extremely low incident light levels.
The effect of device and quantum noise, associated with such low input levels, will be described.
After these theoretical considerations, constructional details of a fiber-coupled, double-stage X-ray image intensifier will be discussed.
Measured performance characteristics for this experimental tube will be listed.
The conclusion shall be reached that fiber-coupled, double-stage tubes represent a sensible and practical approach to high-gain image intensification.
Basic design of a fiber-coupled, double-stage image intensifier
The tube design which forms the basis of the theoretical discussion shall be described now.
The electron optical system (see fig. 14-1) is based in principle on the focusing action of concentric spherical cathode and anode surfaces.
The inner (anode) sphere is pierced, elongated into a cup, and terminated by the phosphor screen.
The photoelectrons emitted from a circular segment of the cathode sphere are focused by the positive lens action of the two concentric spheres, pass through the (negative) lens formed by the anode aperture, and impinge upon the cathodoluminescent viewing screen.
The cylindrical focusing electrode permits adjustment of the positive lens part by varying the focusing potential.
The anode potential codetermines the gain, G, and magnification, M, of the stage.
Both the photocathode and the image plane of such an electrode configuration are curved concave as seen from the anode aperture.
The field-flattening property of the biconcave fiber coupler can be utilized to alleviate the peripheral resolution losses resulting with a flat phosphor-screen or coupling member.
For the same reason, the output fiber plate is planoconcave, its exposed flat side permitting contact photography if a permanent record is desired.
As it will be shown later, the field-flattening properties of the interstage and output fiber coupler comprise indeed the main advantage of such a design.
The second photocathode and both phosphor surfaces are deposited on the fiber plate substrates.
The photocathode sensitivities S, phosphor efficiencies P, and anode potentials V of the individual stages shall be distinguished by means of subscripts 1, and 2, in the text, where required.
Both stages are assumed to have unity magnification.
Theoretical discussion of flux gain
flux gain of a single stage
The luminous gain of a single stage with Af (flux gain) is, to a first approximation, given by the product of the photocathode sensitivity S (amp / lumen), the anode potential V (volts), and the phosphor conversion efficiency P (lumen/watt).
In general, P is a function of V and the current density, but it shall here be assumed as a constant.
The luminous efficiency Af of a photocathode depends on the maximum radiant sensitivity Af and on the spectral distribution of the incident light Af by the relation: Af where Af is normalized radiant photocathode sensitivity.
Af is standard visibility function.
The luminous flux gain of a single stage is given by: Af.
If the input light distribution falls beyond the visible range, Af as expected, since Af.
Such cases are not considered here.
Efficiency of fiber couplers
The efficiency of fiber optics plates depends on four factors: (A)
numerical aperture (N.A.);
(B)
end (Fresnel reflection) losses (R);
(C)
internal losses (I.L.);
(D)
packing efficiency (F.R.).
The numerical aperture of the fibers is given by: Af where Af.
The angle Af is measured in the medium of index Af.
Settled phosphors, as generally used in image intensifiers, have low optical contact with the substrate surface, hence Af shall be assumed.
The numerical aperture should be in general close to unity.
This condition can be satisfied, e.g., with Af and Af or equivalent glass combinations.
A sufficiently good approximation for determining the end reflection losses R can be obtained from the angle independent Fresnel formula: Af.
For phosphor to fiber and fiber to air surfaces, and assuming Af, we obtain Af percent.
This value may be reduced to 4.6 percent by means of a (very thin) glass layer of index 1.5.
Hence, the Af factor for the output fiber coupler is Af.
As the index of refraction of photosensitive surfaces of the SbCs-type lies around 2, the Fresnel losses at the fiber-photocathode interface are about 0.5 percent and the Af factor for the interstage coupler is 0.95.
It might be anticipated that multiple coatings will reduce end reflection losses even further.
The internal losses are due to absorption and the small but finite losses suffered in the numerous internal reflections due to deviations from the prescribed, cylindrical fiber cross-section and minute imperfections of the core-jacket interface.
These losses depend on fiber diameter and length, absorption coefficient, the mean value of the loss per internal reflection and last, but not least, on the angular distribution of the incident light.
Explicit expressions (integral averages) are given in the literature.
Lacking reliable data for some of the variables, we are relying on experimental data of about 20 percent internal losses for 1/4-inch long, small (5 - 10 M) diameter fibers.
This relatively high value is probably due to the small fiber diameters increasing the number of internal reflections.
Since we are considering here relatively small diameter (1 - 1.5 inches) fiber plates, their average thickness can be kept below 1/4 inch and their internal losses may be assumed as 15 percent (per plate).
The packing efficiency, F.R., of fiber plates did not receive much attention in the literature, probably as it is high for the larger fibers generally used, until rather recently.
For circular fibers in a closely packed hexagonal array, the packing efficiency is given by: Af where Af, and 0.906 is the ratio of the area of a circle to that of the circumscribed hexagon.
For the small diameter fibers now technically feasible and required for about 100 Af resolution, Af.
The cladding thickness is about 0.5 M, hence, Af and Af.
Thus, the efficiency **yt couplers is given by--Af or approximately 50 percent each.
It must be remembered that the fiber plates replace a glass window and a (mica) membrane, in addition to an optical output lens system.
The efficiency Af of an Af lens at the magnification Af is: Af.
Neglecting absorption, the end losses of the coupling membrane and the output window Af would be 6 percent and 8 percent.
Thus, the combined efficiency of the elements replaced by the two fiber plates (with a combined efficiency of 0.25) is 0.043 or about six times less than that of the two fiber plates.
Gain of fiber coupled image intensifiers
Including the brightness gain Af due to the Af area demagnification, the overall gain of a fiber coupled double stage image intensifier is: Af.
It is obvious that the careful choice of photocathode which maximizes Af for a given input E (in the case of the second stage, for the first phosphor screen emission) is very important.
The same consideration should govern the choice of the second-stage phosphor screen for matching with the spectral sensitivity of the ultimate sensor (e.g., photographic emulsion).
We have evaluated the matching integrals for two types of photocathodes (S-11 and S-20) and three types of light input.
The input light distributions considered are P-11 and P-20 phosphor emission and the so-called night light (N.L.) as given by H.W. Babcock and J. J. Johnson.
The integrals (in units) are listed in table 14-1, below.
Theoretical discussion of paraxial device resolution
resolution limitations in a single stage
The resolution limitations for a single stage are given by the inherent resolution of the electron optical system as well as the resolution capabilities of the cathodoluminescent viewing screen.
The resolution capabilities of an electrostatic system depend on both the choice of magnification and chromatic aberrations.
It has been stated previously that a minifying electrostatic system yields a lower resolution than a magnifying system or a system with unity magnification.
Furthermore, the chromatic aberrations depend on the chosen high voltage.
In general, a high anode voltage reduces chromatic aberrations and thus increases the obtainable resolution.
The luminous gain of the discussed tube was calculated from Eq. (6) for the 16 possible combinations of S-11 and S-20 photocathodes and P-11 and P-20 phosphor screens, for night light and P-20 light input.
(The P-20 input is of interest because it corresponds roughly to the light emission of conventional X-ray fluorescent screens).
The following efficiencies obtained from JEDEC and RCA specifications were used: Af
The following table (14-2) lists the (luminous) gain values computed according to Eq. (6) with Af.
The possibility of a space charge blowup of the screen crossover of the elementary electron bundles has been pointed out.
It is obvious that such an influence can only be expected in the final stage of an image intensifier at rather high output levels.
Space charge influences will also decrease at increased voltages.
Electrostatic systems of the pseudo-symmetric type have been tested for resolution capabilities by applying electronography.
A resolution of 70 - 80 line-pairs per millimeter appears to be feasible.
Thus, in general, elementary light optical effects, light scatter, and electron scatter determine the obtainable resolution limit.
It should be noted that photoluminescence, due to Bremsstrahlung generated within the viewing screen by electron impact, appears to be important only if anode voltages in excess of 30 KV are utilized.
It has been stated that settled cathodoluminescent phosphor screens may have a limiting resolution of 60 Af at high voltage values of approximately 20 Aj.
For the further discussion, we shall thus assume an electron optical resolution of 80 Af and phosphor screen resolution of 60 Af.
The set of all decisions is called the operating policy or, more simply, the policy.
An optimal policy is one which in some sense gets the best out of the process as a whole by maximizing the value of the product.
There are thus three components to an optimal design problem: (1)
The specification of the state of the process stream;
(2)
The specification of the operating variables and the transformation they effect;
(3)
The specification of the objective function of which the optimization is desired.
For a chemical process the first of these might involve the concentrations of the different chemical species, and the temperature or pressure of the stream.
For the second we might have to choose the volume of reactor or amount of cooling to be supplied;
the way in which the transformation of state depends on the operating variables for the main types of reactors is discussed in the next chapter.
The objective function is some measure of the increase in value of the stream by processing;
it is the subject of Chapter 4.
The essential characteristic of an optimal policy when the state of the stream is transformed in a sequence of stages with no feedback was first isolated by Bellman.
Moreover, by systematically varying the operating conditions in the first stage and always using the optimal Af-stage policy for the remaining stages, we shall eventually find the optimal policy for all R stages.
Proceeding in this way, from one to two and from two to three stages, we may gradually build up the policy for any number.
At each step of the calculation the operating variables of only one stage need be varied.
To see how important this economy is, let us suppose that there are M operating variables at each stage and that the state is specified by N variables;
then the search for the maximum at any one stage will require a number of operations of order Af (where a is some number not unreasonably large).
To proceed from one stage to the next a sufficient number of feed states must be investigated to allow for interpolation;
this number will be of the order of Af.
If, however, we are seeking the optimal R-stage policy for a given feed state, only one search for a maximum is required at the final step.
Thus a number of operations of the order of Af are required.
If all the operating variables were varied simultaneously, Af operations would be required to do the same job, and as R increases this increases very much more rapidly than the number of operations required by the dynamic program.
But even more important than this is the fact that the direct search by simultaneously varying all operating conditions has produced only one optimal policy, namely, that for the given feed state and R stages.
In contrast, the dynamic program produces this policy and a whole family of policies for any smaller number of stages.
If the problem is enlarged to require a complete coverage of feed states, Af operations are needed by the dynamic program and Af by the direct search.
But Af is vastly larger than R.
No optimism is more baseless than that which believes that the high speed of modern digital computers allows for use of the crudest of methods in searching out a result.
Suppose that Af, and that the average operation requires only Af sec..
Then the dynamic program would require about a minute whereas the direct search would take more than three millennia!
The principle of optimality thus brings a vital organization into the search for the optimal policy of a multistage decision process.
Bellman (1957) has annunciated in the following terms:
An optimal policy has the property that whatever the initial state and initial decision are, the remaining decisions must constitute an optimal policy with respect to the state resulting from the first decision.
This is the principle which we will invoke in every case to set up a functional equation.
It appears in a form that is admirably suited to the powers of the digital computer.
At the same time, every device that can be employed to reduce the number of variables is of the greatest value, and it is one of the attractive features of dynamic programming that room is left for ingenuity in using the special features of the problem to this end.
2.2 the discrete deterministic process
Consider the process illustrated in Fig. 2.1, consisting of R distinct stages.
These will be numbered in the direction opposite to the flow of the process stream, so that stage R is the T stage from the end.
Let the state of the stream leaving stage R be denoted by a vector Af and the operating variables of stage R by Af.
Thus Af denotes the state of the feed to the R-stage process, and Af the state of the product from the last stage.
Each stage transforms the state Af of its feed to the state Af in a way that depends on the operating variables Af.
We write this Af.
This transformation is uniquely determined by Af and we therefore speak of the process as deterministic.
In practical situations there will be restrictions on the admissible operating conditions, and we regard the vectors as belonging to a fixed and bounded set S.
The set of vectors Af constitutes the operating policy or, more briefly, the policy, and a policy is admissible if all the Af belong to S.
When the policy has been chosen, the state of the product can be obtained from the state of the feed by repeated application of the transformation (1);
thus Af.
The objective function, which is to be maximized, is some function, usually piecewise continuous, of the product state.
Let this be denoted by Af.
An optimal policy is an admissible policy Af which maximizes the objective function P.
The policy may not be unique but the maximum value of P certainly is, and once the policy is specified this maximum can be calculated by (2) and (3) as a function of the feed state Af.
Let Af where the maximization is over all admissible policies Af.
When it is necessary to be specific we say that the optimal policy is an optimal R-stage policy with respect to the feed state Af.
For any choice of admissible policy Af in the first stage, the state of the stream leaving this stage is given by Af.
This is the feed state of the subsequent Af stages which, according to the principle of optimality, must use an optimal Af-stage policy with respect to this state.
This will result in a value Af of the objective function, and when Af is chosen correctly this will give Af, the maximum of the objective function.
Thus Af where the maximization is over all admissible policies Af, and Af is related to Af by (5).
The sequence of equations (6) can be solved for Af when Af is known, and clearly Af, the maximization being over all admissible Af.
The set of equations (5), (6), and the starting equation (7) is of a recursive type well suited to programming on the digital computer.
In finding the optimal R-stage policy from that of Af stages, only the function Af is needed.
When Af has been found it may be transferred into the storage location of Af and the whole calculation repeated.
We also see how the results may be presented, although if n, the number of state variables, is large any tabulation will become cumbersome.
A table or set of tables may be set out as in Table 2.1.
To extract the optimal R-stage policy with respect to the feed state Af, we enter section R of this table at the state Af and find immediately from the last column the maximum value of the objective function.
In the third column is given the optimal policy for stage R, and in the fourth, the resulting state of the stream when this policy is used.
Since by the principle of optimality the remaining stages use an optimal Af-stage policy with respect to Af, we may enter section Af of the table at this state Af and read off the optimal policy for stage Af and the resulting state Af.
Proceeding in this way up the table we extract the complete optimal policy and, if it is desired, we can check on Af by evaluating Af at the last stage.
It may be that the objective function depends not only on Af but also on Af, as when the cost of the operating policy is considered.
A moment's reflection shows that the above algorithm and presentation work equally well in this case.
A form of objective function that we shall often have occasion to consider is Af.
Here P represents the value of the stream in state P and Q the cost of operating the stage with conditions Q.
Hence P is the increase in value of the stream minus the cost of operation, that is, the net profit.
If Af denotes the net profit from stage R and Af, then the principle of optimality gives Af.
This sequence of equations may be started with the remark that with no process Af there is no profit, i.e., Af.
2.3 the discrete stochastic process
The process in which the outcome of any one stage is known only statistically is also of interest, although for chemical reactor design it is not as important as the deterministic process.
In this case the stage R operating with conditions Af transforms the state of the stream from Af to Af, but only the probability distribution of Af is known.
This is specified by a distribution function Af such that the probability that Af lies in some region D of the stage space is Af.
We cannot now speak of maximizing the value of the objective function, since this function is now known only in a probabilistic sense.
We can, however, maximize its expected value.
For a single stage we may define Af where the maximization is by choice of Af.
We thus have an optimal policy which maximizes the expected value of the objective function for a given Af.
If we consider a process in which the outcome of one stage is known before passage to the next, then the principle of optimality shows that the policy in subsequent stages should be optimal with respect to the outcome of the first.
Then Af, the maximization being over all admissible Af and the integration over the whole of stage space.
The type of presentation of results used in the deterministic process may be used here, except that now the fourth column is redundant.
The third column gives the optimal policy, but we must wait to see the outcome of stage R and enter the preceding section of the table at this state.
The discussion of the optimal policy when the outcome of one stage is not known before passing to the next is a very much more difficult matter.
2.4 the continuous deterministic process
In many cases it is not possible to divide the process into a finite number of discrete stages, since the state of the stream is transformed in a continuous manner through the process.
We replace r, the number of the stage from the end of the process, by t, a continuous variable which measures the distance of the point considered from the end of the process.
The word distance is used here in a rather general sense;
it may in fact be the time that will elapse before the end of the process.
If T is the total length of the process, its feed state may be denoted by a vector p(T) and the product state by p(Q).
P denotes the state at any point T and Q the vector of operating variables there.
A gyro-stabilized platform system, using restrained gyros, is well suited for automatic leveling because of the characteristics of the gyro-platform-servo combination.
The restrained gyro-stabilized platform with reasonable response characteristics operates with an approximate equation of motion, neglecting transient effects, as follows: Af where U is a torque applied about the output axis of the controlling gyro.
The platform angle **yf is the angle about which the gyro is controlling.
This is normally termed the gyro input axis, 90-degrees away from the gyro output or **yj axis.
The gyro angular momentum is defined by H.
Thus if the gyro and platform-controller combination maintains the platform with zero angular deviation about the **yf axis, the system can be rotated with an angular velocity Af if a torque is supplied to the gyro output axis Aj.
It is assumed that the gyros are designed with electrical torquers so that a torque can be applied about their output axes.
In the system shown in Fig. 7-1, the accelerometer output is amplified and the resulting voltage is applied to the gyro output-axis torquer.
This torque causes the entire system to rotate about the **yf axis, since the response to Af.
If the polarities are correct, the platform rotates in such a direction as to reduce the accelerometer output to zero.
As the accelerometer output is decreasing, the torque applied to the gyro output axis decreases and, therefore, the rate decreases.
Finally, when the accelerometer output is zero, the entire system remains stationary, and the platform is, by definition, leveled.
A mathematical block diagram for the leveling system is shown in Fig. 7-2.
The platform is initially off level by the angle Aj.
The angle generated by the platform servo **yf multiplied by G is the effective acceleration acting on the accelerometer.
Af is the scale factor of the accelerometer (Af).
The voltage Af is amplified by Af and applied to the gyro torquer with scale factor Af.
Finally, the gyro-stabilized platform characteristic is represented by Af.
The system as indicated in Fig. 7-2 is fundamental and simple because the transient effects of both the platform servo and the accelerometer have been neglected.
With these factors included, an upper limit is placed on the allowable loop gain by stability considerations.
In this type of system, a high loop gain is desirable because it provides a fast response time.
When the frequency response characteristics of practical components are considered, their effect on stability does not present the most serious limit on the system loop gain.
The time required for the system to reach a level position is approximately inversely proportional to the servo loop gain.
In addition, the cutoff frequency for input accelerations is approximately proportional to the servo loop gain;
i.e., high loop gain causes the system to respond to horizontal components of accelerations.
This problem usually determines the lower limit of loop gain rather than response time.
It must be noticed in Fig. 7-1 that the accelerometer responds to any input acceleration.
The equation relating input acceleration to output platform angle is Af.
In practice, the preflight leveling process takes place with the system mounted in the airframe.
When the system is arranged for automatic leveling, the platform angles respond to any horizontal components of acceleration acting on the accelerometers.
There are many such components of acceleration present due to the effect of wind gusts, engine noise, turbulence around the vehicle, etc..
One of the greatest problems associated with automatic leveling is establishing a true level in the presence of high-level acceleration noise.
One solution to the problem is to operate with a low loop gain and to include low-pass filters.
This technique causes the system to respond only to low frequency acceleration components such as the platform tilt.
Since a lower loop gain and low-pass filtering increases the response time, a practical compromise must be reached.
One of the most desirable solutions is achieved by the use of a non-linear amplifier for Af.
The amplifier is designed so that its gain is large for accelerometer signals above a certain threshold level.
Below this level, the amplifier gain Af is proportional and is of small value, in order to provide adequate noise filtering.
The effect is that the platform returns from an off-level position at a rapid rate until it is nearly level, at which point the platform is controlled by a proportional servo with low enough frequency response so that the noise has little effect on the leveling process.
When the system is on automatic leveling, the gyro drift is canceled by the output of the leveling system (amplifier Af).
The platform actually tilts off level so that the accelerometer output, when amplified by Af, will supply the correct current to the gyro torquer to cancel the gyro drift.
The amount of platform dip required depends upon the scale factors of the system.
7-3.
Practical leveling considerations.
The automatic leveling system described in this section is readily adaptable to a gyro-stabilized platform consisting of three integrating gyros.
The system requires some switching of flight equipment circuits.
However, the leveling operation can be maintained and controlled remotely with no mechanical or optical contact with the platform.
This leveling system will hold the platform on-level, automatically, as long as the system is actuated.
A useful by-product of this system is that the information necessary to set the gyro drift biases is available from the currents necessary to hold the system in level.
The leveling process can be accomplished manually, and the results are as satisfactory as those obtained with automatic equipment.
The process consists in turning the platform manually until the outputs of both accelerometers are zero.
The turning is accomplished by applying voltage to the gyro torquers described above.
In brief, the human replaces amplifier Af in Figs. 7-1 and 7-2.
Manual leveling requires an appropriate display of the accelerometer outputs.
If high accuracy is required in preflight leveling, it is usually necessary to integrate or doubly integrate the accelerometer outputs (this also minimizes the noise problem).
With integration, the effect of a small acceleration (or small platform tilt angle) can be seen after a time.
However, skill is required on the part of an operator to level a platform to any degree of accuracy.
Also, it requires more time as compared to the automatic approach.
Manual leveling is inconvenient if the platform must be maintained accurately level for any prolonged period of time.
The operator must continually supply the correct amount of turning current to the gyro torquers so that the effect of gyro drift is canceled.
This process is especially difficult since gyro drifting is typically random.
7-4.
Platform heading.
Platform heading consists of orienting the sensitive axis of the accelerometers parallel to the desired coordinate system of the navigator.
In simpler terms, it amounts to pointing the platform in the proper direction.
For purely inertial navigators, two techniques are available to accomplish the platform heading: Use of external or surveying equipment to establish proper heading;
Use of the characteristics of the platform components for an indication of true heading.
The choice of the heading technique is dependent upon the accuracy requirements, field conditions, and the time available to accomplish the heading.
7-5.
External determination of heading--surveying technique.
With the gyro-stabilized platform leveled, it can be headed in the proper direction by using surveying techniques.
The platform accelerometers must be slightly modified for this procedure.
Before the accelerometers are mounted on the platform, the direction of their sensitive axis must be accurately determined.
A mirror is mounted on each accelerometer so that the plane of the mirror is perpendicular to the sensitive axis of the unit.
Transit.
A precision transit is set up so that it is aligned with respect to true north.
This can be done to a high degree of accuracy by existing surveying techniques.
With the transit set up, a mirror on one of the accelerometers is sighted and the platform is turned until it is aligned.
The sighting procedure includes the use of a fixture for the transit to project a beam of light, which is darkened by crossed hairs, on the accelerometer mirror.
When the platform is aligned, the reflected image of the crossed hairs can be seen exactly superimposed upon the original crossed hairs.
The images can easily be aligned with a high degree of accuracy.
The platform is turned as required by supplying currents to the appropriate gyro torquers.
Although this technique is simple and satisfactory, one practical difficulty does exist: the direction of true north must be known for each launch point.
However, this difficulty is not too serious if it is realized that a surveying team can establish a true north base line with a few days' work.
In many installations, the inertial platform is raised off the ground a considerable height when it is mounted in the vehicle before flight.
With this situation, it is difficult to sight in on the platform with surveying equipment.
If the platform is not too high off the ground, a transit can be mounted on a stand to raise it up to the platform.
Obviously, the heading accuracy is lessened by such techniques since errors are introduced because of motion of the stand.
Autocollimator.
The transit can be replaced by an autocollimator.
This instrument provides an electrical signal proportional to the angular deviations of the platform and can be used to automatically hold the platform on true heading.
The electrical signal from the autocollimator is amplified and supplied to the Z-gyro torquer.
If the polarity is correct, the platform will turn until the heading error angle is zero.
Information is also available from this autocollimator system to set the drift bias for the Z-axis gyro.
If the Z gyro is drifting, a current generated by the autocollimator is delivered to the gyro torquer to cancel the drift.
If the drift error is systematic, it can be canceled with a bias circuit which can be arranged and adjusted to supply the required compensating current.
Electrical pickoffs.
It is possible to locate an angular electrical pickoff, which will indicate the angular deviation between the true heading direction and the platform.
Essentially, the stator or reference portion of the pickoff is established with respect to the true heading direction, and the platform is turned either manually or automatically until the angular electrical pickoff signal is reduced to zero.
7-6.
Gyrocompass heading.
Gyrocompass alignment is an automatic heading system which depends upon the characteristic of one gyro to establish true heading.
The accelerometers are mounted rigidly on the platform.
Thus, if one accelerometer is properly aligned, the other is also.
The input axis of the appropriate gyros are parallel to the sensitive direction of the accelerometers.
Figure 7-3 shows a platform system with the gyro vectors arranged as described above.
The platform is leveled and properly headed, so that the X-gyro input axis is parallel to the east-west direction and the Y-gyro input axis is parallel to the north-south direction.
The input axis of the X gyro, when pointing in the east-west direction, is always perpendicular to the spin axis of earth.
If the platform is not properly headed, the X-gyro input axis will see a component of the earth's rotation.
The sensing of this rotation by the X gyro can be utilized to direct the platform into proper heading.
In Fig. 7-4, the input axis of the three-axis platform is shown at some point on the earth.
The point is at a latitude **yl, and the platform is at an error in heading east.
The earth is spinning at an angular velocity **zq equal to one revolution per 24 hr..
When the platform is level, **ye is a rotation about the Z axis of the platform Af.
Since the earth is rotating and the unleveled gyro-stabilized platform is fixed with respect to a reference in space, an observer on the earth will see the platform rotating (with respect to the earth).
Thirty-three
Scotty did not go back to school.
His teacher and his school principal were conferred with and everyone agreed that, if he kept up with a certain amount of work at home, there was little danger of his losing a term.
Scotty accepted the decision with indifference and did not enter the arguments.
He was discharged from the hospital after a two-day checkup and he and his parents had what Mr. McKinley described as a celebration lunch at the cafeteria on the campus.
Rachel wore a smart hat and, because she had been warned recently about smoking, puffed at her cigarettes through a long ivory holder stained with lipstick.
Scotty's father sat sprawled in his chair, angular, alert as a cricket, looking about at the huge stainless-steel appointments of the room with an expression of proprietorship.
Teachers--men who wore brown suits and had gray hair and pleasant smiles--came to their table to talk shop and to be introduced to Scotty and Rachel.
Rachel was polite, Scotty indifferent.
They ate the cafeteria food with its orange sauces and Scotty gazed without interest at his food, the teachers, the heroic baronial windows, and the bright ranks of college banners.
His father tried to make the food a topic.
The blueberry pie is good, Scotty.
I recommend it.
He looked at his son, his face worried.
Scotty murmured, No, thanks, so softly his father had to bend his gaunt height across the table and turn a round brown ear to him.
Scotty regarded the ear and the grizzled hair around it with a moment of interest.
He said more loudly, I'm full, old Pop.
He had eaten almost nothing on the crested, three-sectioned plate and had drunk about half the milk in its paper container.
He's all right, Craig, Rachel said.
I can fix him something later in the afternoon when we get home.
Since his seizure, Scotty had had little appetite;
yet his changed appearance, surprisingly, was one of plumpness.
His face was fuller;
his lips and the usually sharp lines of his jaw had become swollen-looking.
He breathed now with his mouth open, showing a whitely curving section of lower teeth;
he kept his eyes, with their puffed blurred lids, always lowered, though not, apparently, focusing.
Even his neck seemed thicker and, therefore, shorter.
His hands, which had been as quick as a pair of fluttering birds, were now neither active nor really relaxed.
They lay on his lap, palms up, stiffly motionless, the tapered fingers a little thick at the joints.
Altogether he had, since the seizure, the appearance of a boy who overindulged in food and took no exercise.
He looked lazy, spoiled, a little querulous.
Rachel had little to say.
She greeted her husband's colleagues with smiling politeness, offering nothing.
Mr. McKinley, for all his sprawling and his easy familiarity, was completely alert to his son, eyes always on the still face, jumping to anticipate Scotty's desires.
It was a strained, silent lunch.
Rachel said, I'd better get him to bed.
The doctors had suggested Scotty remain most of every afternoon in bed until he was stronger.
Since Mr. McKinley had to give a lecture, Rachel and Scotty drove home alone in the Plymouth.
They did not speak much.
Scotty gazed out at ugly gray slums and said softly, Look at those stupid kids.
It was a Negro section of peeling row houses, store-front churches and ragged children.
Rachel had to bend toward Scotty and ask him to repeat.
He said, Nothing.
And then: There are lots of kids around here.
Scotty looked at the children, his mouth slightly opened, his eyes dull.
He felt tired and full and calm.
Thirty-four
the days seemed short, perhaps because his routine was, each day, almost the same.
He rose late and went down in his bathrobe and slippers to have breakfast either alone or with Rachel.
Virginia treated him with attention and tried to tempt his appetite with special food: biscuits, cookies, candies--the result of devoted hours in the tiled kitchen.
She would hover over him and, looking like her brother, anxiously watch the progress of Scotty's fork or spoon.
You don't eat enough, honey.
Try to get that down.
Rachel, observing, would say, He has to rediscover his own capacity.
It'll take time.
Virginia and Rachel talked to each other quietly now, as allies who are political rather than natural might in a war atmosphere.
Both watched Scotty constantly, Rachel without seeming to, Virginia openly, her eyes filled with concern.
Scotty was neutral.
He did not resent their supervision or Virginia's sometimes tiring sympathy.
He ate what he felt like, slept as much or as little as he pleased, and moved about the draughty rooms of the house, when he was not in bed, with slow, dubious steps, like an elderly tourist in a cathedral.
His energy was gone.
He was able, now, to sit for hours in a chair in the living room and stare out at the bleak yard without moving.
His hands lay loosely, yet stiffly--they were like wax hands: almost lifelike, not quite--folded in his lap;
his mouth hung slightly open.
When he was asked a question or addressed in such a way that some response was inescapable, he would answer;
if, as often happened, he had to repeat because he had spoken too softly, he would repeat his words in the same way, without emphasis or impatience, only a little louder.
He had not mentioned Kate.
He had not even thought about her much except once or twice at night in bed when his slowly ranging thoughts would abruptly, almost accidentally, encounter her.
At these times he felt a kind of pain in his upper chest, but it was an objective pain, in no way different from others in intensity and not different in kind;
it was like the bandaged wound on the back of his head which occasionally throbbed;
it was merely another part of his weakness.
He was calm, drugged, and lazy.
He did not care.
Rachel mentioned Kate.
She said, I notice the girl from across the street hasn't bothered to phone or visit.
Scotty said, That's all right.
Kate's all right.
He thought about it briefly, then deliberately turned the talk to something else.
Once, sitting at the front window in his parents' room, he saw Kate come out of her house.
She was with Elizabeth.
They were far off and looked tiny.
The heavy branches in his front yard would hide and then reveal them.
They turned at the bottom of Kate's steps and moved off in the direction of the park.
He thought he saw--it awakened and, for a moment, interested him--that Elizabeth held a leash in her hand and that a round fuzzy puppy was on the end of the leash.
Then they disappeared and Scotty got up and went into his own room and got into bed.
By the time he was under the covers he had forgotten about seeing Kate.
The doctor, since Scotty was no longer allowed to make his regular trips into town to see him, came often and informally to the house.
He would sit, slim-waisted and spare, on the edge of Scotty's bed, his legs crossed so elaborately that the crossed foot could tap the floor.
Scotty did not mind the doctor's unsmiling teasing as he used to.
Husky young man, he said with mock distaste.
I imagine you're always battling in school.
I don't go to school any more.
Pardon?
The doctor had to bend close to hear;
his delicate hand, as veined as a moth's wing, rested absently on Scotty's chest.
Scotty said the same words more loudly.
Oh.
Well, we're taking a little vacation, that's all.
He turned unsmilingly to Rachel.
I think by the end of next week he could get out in the air a little.
He could now but the weakness is very definite;
it would exhaust him further and unnecessarily.
He'll be stronger soon.
His stethoscope was on the table by Scotty's bed and he picked it up and wagged it at Scotty.
He said fussily, Just keep the cap on those strong emotions.
The stethoscope glinted silver in the darkening room.
I'll drop by again in a few days.
Rachel stayed on after the doctor had gone.
She smoothed the covers on Scotty's bed and picked things up from the floor.
She did not touch him.
Scotty watched with disinterest.
He did not speak.
He had no desire to.
She said, Do you think you'll miss school?
He had noticed how formal and irritably exact Rachel had grown.
He did not care.
He felt her irritability did not concern him, yet he knew he would not care even if it did.
He shook his head.
We've had any number of calls about you.
You could win a popularity contest at that school without any trouble.
Miss Estherson called twice.
She wants to pay you a visit.
She says the children miss you.
Apparently you were the light of their lives.
Scotty shrugged slightly.
Rachel came close to the bed, bent as if she would kiss him, then moved away.
She was frowning.
That doctor annoys me.
She seemed to speak to herself.
Do you suppose his self-consciousness is characteristic of the new Negro professionals or merely of doctors in general?
She turned to him again.
Well, Mrs. Charles--Sally--has phoned too.
She was very worried.
Rachel's tone was dry.
She didn't really say--She glanced away at the floor, then swooped gracefully and picked up one of Scotty's slippers.
I mean, do you feel like seeing Kate?
Scotty said, I don't know.
It was true.
He did not.
There was the slight pain, but it was no different from the throbbing in his head.
Well, there's time, in any case.
We'll wait till you're stronger and then talk about it.
She put the slipper neatly by its mate at the foot of the bed.
Scotty said, Okay.
This time Rachel kissed him lightly on the forehead.
Scotty was pleased.
His father was a constant visitor.
Scotty would hear the front door in the evening and then his father's deep slow voice;
it floated up the stairs.
How's Scotty?
And Rachel's or Virginia's reply: better.
He's getting plenty of rest.
Is his appetite improved?
Or: Does he get exercise?
The exchange was almost invariable, and Scotty, in his bed, could hear every word of it.
He never smiled.
It required an energy he no longer possessed to be satirical about his father.
His father would come upstairs and stand self-consciously at the foot of the bed and look at his son.
After a pause, during which he studied Scotty's face as if Scotty were not there and could not study him too, Mr. McKinley would ask the same questions he had asked downstairs.
Scotty would reply softly and his father, apologetically, would ask him to repeat.
I'm eating more, he would say.
Or: I walk around the house a lot.
Perhaps you should get out a little.
I'm not supposed to yet.
He was not irritated.
He did not mind the useless, kindly questions.
He looked at the lined face with vague interest;
he felt he was noting it, as if it were something he might think about when he grew stronger.
Mr. McKinley examined everything with critical care, seeking something material to blame for his son's illness.
Have you got enough blankets?
And another time, without accusation: You never wore that scarf I bought you.
Where their sharp edges seemed restless as sea waves thrusting themselves upward in angry motion, Papa-san sat glacier-like, his smooth solidity, his very immobility defying all the turmoil about him.
Our objective, the colonel had said that day of the briefing, is Papa-san.
There the objective sat, brooding over all.
Gouge, burn, blast, insult it as they would, could anyone really take Papa-san?
Between the ponderous hulk and himself, in the valley over which Papa-san reigned, men had hidden high explosives, booby traps, and mines.
The raped valley was a pregnant womb awaiting abortion.
On the forward slope in front of his own post stretched two rows of barbed wire.
At the slope's base coils of concertina stretched out of eye range like a wild tangle of children's hoops, stopped simultaneously, weirdly poised as if awaiting the magic of the child's touch to start them all rolling again.
Closer still, regular barricades of barbed wire hung on timber supports.
Was it all vain labor?
Who would clean up the mess when the war was over?
Smiling at his quixotic thoughts, Warren turned back from the opening and lit a cigarette before sitting down.
Tonight a group of men, tomorrow night he himself, would go out there somewhere and wait.
If he were to go with White, he would be out there two days, not just listening in the dark at some point between here and Papa-san, but moving ever deeper into enemy land--behind Papa-san--itself.
Was this what he had expected?
He hadn't realized that there would be so much time to think, so many lulls.
Somehow he had forgotten what he must have been told, that combat was an intermittent activity.
Now he knew that the moment illuminated by the vision on the train would have to be approached.
It could take place tomorrow night, or it might occur months from now.
There was just too much time.
Time to become afraid.
White's suggestion flattered, but he did not like the identity.
He did not spill over with hatred for the enemy.
He hadn't even seen him yet
Pressing his cigarette out in the earth, Warren walked to the slit and scanned the jagged hills.
He saw no life, but still stood there for a time peering at the unlovely hills, his gaze continually returning to Papa-san.
He had come here in order to test himself.
While most of his beliefs were still unsettled, he knew that he did not believe in killing.
Yet, he was here.
He had come because he could not live out his life feeling that he had been a coward.
There were ten men on the patrol which Sergeant Prevot led out that next night.
The beaming ROK was carrying a thirty-caliber machine gun;
another man lugged the tripod and a box of ammunition.
Warren and White each carried, in addition to their own weapons and ammo, a box of ammo for the ROK's machine gun.
Others carried extra clips for the Browning Automatic Rifle, which was in the hands of a little Mexican named Martinez.
Prevot had briefed the two new men that afternoon.
We just sit quiet and wait, Prevot had said.
Be sure the man nearest you is awake.
If Joe doesn't show up, we'll all be back here at 0600 hours.
Otherwise, we hold a reception.
Then we pull out under our mortar and artillery cover, but nobody pulls out until I say so.
Remember what I said about going out to get anybody left behind?
That still holds.
We bring back all dead and wounded.
At 2130 hours they had passed through the barbed wire at the point of departure.
Then began the journey through their own mine fields.
Mines.
Ours were kinder than theirs, some said.
They set bouncing betties to jump and explode at testicle level while we more mercifully had them go off at the head.
Mines.
Big ones and little.
The crude wooden boxes of the enemy, our nicely turned gray metal disks.
But theirs defied the detectors.
Mines.
A foot misplaced, a leg missing.
Mines.
All sizes: big ones, some wired to set off a whole field, little ones, hand grenade size.
Booby traps to fill the head with chunks of metal.
Warren tried to shake off the jumble of his fears by looking at the sky.
It was dark.
Prevot had said that the searchlights would be bounced off the clouds at 2230 hours, which gives us time to get settled in position.
Because they were new men and to be sure that they didn't get lost, Prevot had placed Warren and White in the center of the patrol as it filed out.
His eyes now fixed on White's solid figure, Warren could hear behind him the tread of another.
He could also hear the stream which he had seen from his position.
They were going to follow it for part of their journey.
It's safe, Prevot had said, and it provides cover for our noise.
Soon they were picking their way along the edge of the stream which glowed in the night.
On their right rose the embankment covered with brush and trees.
If a branch extended out too far, each man held it back for the next, and if they met a low overhang, each warned the other.
Thus, stealthily they advanced upstream;
then they turned to the right, climbed the embankment, and walked into the valley again.
There was no cover here, only grass sighing against pant-legs.
And with each sigh, like a whip in the hand of an expert, the grass stripped something from Warren.
The gentle whir of each footstep left him more naked than before, until he felt his unprotected flesh tremble, chilled by each new sound.
The shapes of the men ahead of him lacked solidity, as if the whip had stripped them of their very flesh.
The dark forms moved like mourners on some nocturnal pilgrimage, their dirge unsung for want of vocal chords.
The warped, broken trees in the valley assumed wraith-like shapes.
Clumps of brush that they passed were so many enchained demons straining in anger to tear and gnaw on his bones.
Looming over all, Papa-san leered down at him, threatening a hundred hidden malevolencies.
Off in the distance a searchlight flashed on, its beam slashing the sky.
The sharp ray was absorbed by a cloud, then reflected to the earth in a softer, diffused radiance.
Somewhere over there another patrol had need of light.
Warren thought of all the men out that night who, like himself, had left their protective ridge and--fear working at their guts--picked their way into the area beyond.
White's arm went up and Warren raised his own.
The patrol was stopping.
Prevot came up.
Take that spot over there, he whispered, pointing to a small clump of blackness.
Give me your machine gun ammo.
Warren handed him the metal box and Prevot quietly disappeared down the line.
Lying in the grass behind the brush clump, Warren looked about.
The others likewise had hidden themselves in the grass and the brush.
Over his shoulder he could see Prevot with the machine gun crew.
Even at this short distance they were only vague shapes, setting up the machine gun on a small knoll so that it could fire above the heads of the rest of the patrol.
Warren eased his rifle's safety off and gently, slowly sneaked another clip of ammunition from one of the cloth bandoleers that marked the upper part of his body with an Aj.
This he placed within quick reach.
The walk and his fears had served to overheat him and his sweaty armpits cooled at the touch of the night air.
Although the armored vest fitted the upper part of his body snugly, he felt no security.
Figures seemed to crouch in the surrounding dark;
in the distance he saw a band of men who seemed to advance and retreat even as he watched.
Certain this menace was only imaginary, he yet stared in fascinated horror, his hand sticky against the stock of his weapon.
He was aware of insistent inner beatings, as if prisoners within sought release from his rigid body.
Above, the glowing ivory baton of their searchlight pointed at the clouds, diluting the valley's dark to a pallid light.
Then the figures which held his attention became a group of shattered trees, standing like the grotesques of a medieval damnation scene.
Even so, he could not ease the tension of his body;
the rough surface of the earth itself seemed to resist every attempt on his part to relax.
Sensing the unseen presence of the other men in the patrol, he felt mutely united to these nine near-strangers sharing this pinpoint of being with him.
He sensed something precious in the perilous moment, something akin to the knowledge gained on his bicycle trip through the French countryside, a knowledge imprisoned in speechlessness.
-- In France he had puzzled the meaning of the great stone monuments men had thrown up to the sky, and always as he wandered, he felt a stranger to their exultation.
They were poems in a strange language, of which he could barely touch a meaning--enough to make his being ache with the desire for the fullness he sensed there.
Brittany, that stone-gray mystery through which he traveled for thirty days, sleeping in the barns of farmers or alongside roads, had worked some subtle change in him, he knew, and it was in Brittany that he had met Pierre.
Pierre had no hands;
they had been severed at the wrists.
With leather cups fitted in his handlebars, he steered his bicycle.
He and Warren had traveled together for four days.
They visited the shipyards at Brest and Pierre had to sign the register, vouching for the integrity of the visiting foreigner.
He took the pen in his stumps and began to write.
Wait!
Wait!
Cried the guard who ran from the hut to shout to other men standing about outside.
They crowded the small room and peered over one another's shoulders to watch the handless man write his name in the book.
C'est formidable, they exclaimed.
Mais, oui.
C'est merveilleux.
And then the questions came, eager, interested questions, and many compliments on his having overcome his infirmity.
Doesn't it ever bother you, Warren had asked, to have people always asking you about your hands?
Oh, the French are a very curious people, Pierre had laughed.
They are also honest seekers after truth.
Now the English are painfully silent about my missing hands.
They refuse to mention or to notice that they are not there.
The Americans, like yourself, take the fact for granted, try to be helpful, but don't ask questions.
I'm used to all three, but I think the French have the healthiest attitude.
That was the day that Pierre had told Warren about the Abbey of Solesmes.
You are looking tired and there you can rest.
It will be good for you.
I think, too, he said, his dark eyes mischievous, that you will find there some clue to the secret of the cathedrals about which you have spoken.
Within two weeks Warren was ringing the bell at the abbey gate.
The monk who opened the door immediately calmed his worries about his reception: I speak English, the old man said, but I do not hear it very well.
He smiled and stuck a large finger with white hairs sprouting on it into his ear as though that might help.
Smiling at Warren's protestations, the old monk took his grip from him and led him down a corridor to a small parlor.
Will you please wait in here.
Mickie sat over his second whisky-on-the-rocks in a little bar next to the funeral parlor on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Al's Little Cafe was small, dark, narrow, and filled with the mingled scent of beer, tobacco smoke, and Italian cooking.
Hanging over the bar was an oil painting of a nude Al had accepted from a student at the Corcoran Gallery who needed to eat and drink and was broke.
The nude was small and black-haired and elfin, and was called Eloise.
This was one place where Moonan could go for a drink in a back booth without anyone noticing him, or at least coming up and hanging around and wanting to know all the low-down.
The other patrons were taxi drivers and art students and small shopkeepers.
The reporters had not yet discovered that this was his hideaway.
His friend Jane was with him.
She was wise enough to realize a man could be good company even if he did weigh too much and didn't own the mint.
She was the widow of a writer who had died in an airplane crash, and Mickie had found her a job as head of the historical section of the Treasury.
This meant sorting out press clippings and the like.
Jane sat receptive and interested.
Mickie had a pleasant glow as he said, You see, both of them, I mean the President and Jeff Lawrence, are romantics.
A romantic is one who thinks the world is divinely inspired and all he has to do is find the right key, and then divine justice and altruism will appear.
It's like focusing a camera;
the distant ship isn't there until you get the focus.
You know what I'm talking about.
I'm sure all girls feel this way about men until they live with them.
But when it comes to war, the Colonel knows what it is and Jeff doesn't.
Mr. Christiansen knows that a soldier will get the Distinguished Service Medal for conduct that would land him in prison for life or the electric chair as a civilian.
He had a mean, unbroken sheer bastard in his outfit, and someone invented the name Trig for him.
That's to say, he was trigger happy.
He'd shoot at anything if it was the rear end of a horse or his own sentry.
He was a wiry, inscrutable, silent country boy from the red clay of rural Alabama, and he spoke with the broad drawl that others normally make fun of.
But not in front of Trig.
I heard of some that tried it back in the States, and he'd knock them clear across the room.
There'd been a pretty bad incident back at the Marine base.
A New York kid, a refugee from one of the Harlem gangs, made fun of Trig's accent, and drew a knife.
Before the fight was over, the Harlem boy had a concussion and Trig was cut up badly.
They caught Trig stealing liquor from the officers' mess, and he got a couple of girls in trouble.
The fear of punishment just didn't bother him.
It wasn't there.
It was left out of him at birth.
This is why he made such a magnificent soldier.
He wasn't troubled with the ordinary, rank-and-file fear that overcomes and paralyzes and sends individual soldiers and whole companies under fire running in panic.
It just didn't occur to Trig that anything serious would happen to him.
Do you get the picture of the kind of fellow he was?
Jane nodded with a pleasant smile.
All right.
There was a sniper's nest in a mountain cave, and it was picking off our men with devilish accuracy.
The Colonel ordered that it be wiped out, and I suggested,'You ask for volunteers, and promise each man on the patrol a quart of whisky, ten dollars and a week-end pass to Davao.
Trig was one of the five volunteers.
The patrol snaked around in back of the cave, approached it from above and dropped in suddenly with wild howls.
You could hear them from our outpost.
There was a lot of shooting.
We knew the enemy was subdued, because a flare was fired as the signal.
So we hurried over.
Two of our men were killed, a third was wounded.
Trig and a very black colored boy from Detroit had killed or put out of action ten guerrillas by grenades and hand-to-hand fighting.
When we got there, Trig and the Negro were quarreling over possession of a gold crucifix around the neck of a wounded Filipino.
The colored boy had it, and Trig lunged at him with a knife and said,'Give that to me, you black bastard.
We don't 'low nigras to walk on the same sidewalk with white men where I come from.
The Negro got a bad slice on his chest from the knife wound.
What did the Colonel do about the men?
Jane asked in her placid, interested way.
Mickie laughed.
He recommended both of them for the DSM and the Detroit fellow for the Purple Heart, too, for a combat-inflicted wound.
So you see Mr. Christiansen knows what it's all about.
But not Jeff Lawrence.
When he was in the war, he was in Law or Supplies or something like that, and an old buddy of his told me he would come down on Sundays to the Pentagon and read the citations for medals--just like the one we sent in for Trig--and go away with a real glow.
These were heroes nine feet tall to him.
Jefferson Lawrence was alone at the small, perfectly appointed table by the window looking out over the river.
He had dinner and sat there over his coffee watching the winding pattern of traffic as it crossed the bridge and spread out like a serpent with two heads.
Beside him was Mrs. Dalloway.
He thought how this dainty, fragile older woman threading her way through the streets of Westminster on a day in June, enjoying the flowers in the shops, the greetings from old friends, but never really drawing a deep, passionate breath, was so like himself.
He, and Mrs. Dalloway, too, had never permitted themselves the luxury of joys that dug into the bone marrow of the spirit.
He had not because he was both poor and ambitious.
Poverty imposes a kind of chastity on the ambitious.
They cannot stop to grasp and embrace and sit in the back seat of cars along a dark country lane.
No, they must look the other way and climb one more painful step up the ladder.
He made the decision with his eyes open, or so he thought.
At any cost, he must leave the dreary Pennsylvania mining town where his father was a pharmacist.
And so he had, so he had.
At State College, he had no time to walk among the violets on the water's edge.
From his room he could look out in springtime and see the couples hand in hand walking slowly, deliciously, across the campus, and he could smell the sweet vernal winds.
He was not stone.
He was not unmoved.
He had to teach himself patiently that these traps were not for him.
He must mentally pull the blinds and close the window, so that all that existed was in the books before him.
At law school, the same.
More of this stamping down of human emotion as a young lawyer in New York.
By the time he was prosperous enough--his goals were high--he was bald and afraid of women.
The only one who would have him was his cripple, the strange unhappy woman who became his wife.
Perhaps it was right;
perhaps it was just.
He had dared to defy nature, to turn his back to the Lorelei, and he was punished.
Like Mrs. Dalloway, with her regrets about Peter Walsh, he had his moments of melancholy over a youth too well spent.
If he had had a son, he would tell him, Gather ye rosebuds while ye may This same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying.
But then his son could afford it.
Lawrence was waiting for Bill Boxell.
The Vice President had called and asked if he could see the Secretary at his home.
He said the matter was urgent.
The Secretary was uneasy about the visit.
He did not like Boxell.
He suspected something underhanded and furtive about him.
Lawrence could not put his finger on it precisely, and this worried him.
When you disliked or distrusted a man, you should have a reason.
Human nature was not a piece of meat you could tell was bad by its smell.
Lawrence stared a minute at the lighted ribbon of traffic, hoping that a clue to his dislike of the Vice President would appear.
It did not.
Therefore, he decided he was unfair to the young man and should make an effort to understand and sympathize with his point of view.
A half hour later the Vice President arrived.
He looked very carefully at every piece of furnishing, as though hoping to store this information carefully in his mind.
He observed the Florentine vase in the hall, the Renoir painting in the library, as well as the long shelves of well-bound volumes;
the pattern of the Oriental rug, the delicate cut-glass chandelier.
He said to the Secretary, I understand you came from a little Pennsylvania town near Wilkes-Barre.
How did you find out about this?
He waved his arm around at the furnishings.
It was not a discourteous question, Lawrence decided.
This young man had so little time to learn he had to be curious;
he had to find out.
The Secretary did not tell him at what cost, at what loneliness, he learned these things.
He merely said, Any good decorator these days can make you a tasteful home.
The Vice President said, If you hear of any names that would fix me cheap in return for advertising they decorated the Vice President's home, let me know.
I can do business with that kind.
Again, Lawrence thought a little sadly, these were the fees of poverty and ambition.
Boxell did not have the chance to grow up graciously.
He had to acquire everything he was going to get in four years.
They had brandy in the library.
Boxell looked at Lawrence with a searching glance, the kind that a prosecuting attorney would give a man on trial.
What are your weaknesses?
Where will you break?
How best to destroy your peace?
The Vice President said with a slight bluster, There isn't anyone who loves the President more than I do.
Old Chris is my ideal.
At the same time, you have to face facts and realize that a man who's been in the Marine Corps all his life doesn't understand much about politics.
What does a monk know about sex?
Lawrence listened with the practiced, deceptive calm of the lawyer, but his face was in the shadow.
So, we have to protect the old man for his own good.
You see what I mean.
Congress is full of politicians, and if you want to get along with them, you have to be politic.
This is why I say we just can't go ahead and disarm the Germans and pull down our own defenses.
Let me tell you what happened to me today.
A fellow came up to me, a Senator, I don't have to tell you his name, and he told me,'I love the President like a brother, but God damn it, he's crucifying me.
I've got a quarter of a million Germans in my state, and those krautheads tune in on Father Werther every night, and if he tells them to go out and piss in the public square, that's what they do.
He's telling them now to write letters to their Congressmen opposing the disarmament of Germany.
And another one comes to me and he says,'Look here, there's a mill in my state employs five thousand people making uniforms for the Navy.
The Bishop looked at him coldly and said, Take it or leave it!
Literally, there was nothing else to do.
He was caught in a machine.
But Sojourner was not easily excited or upset and said quite calmly: Let's go and see what it's like.
Annisberg was about seventy-five miles west of Birmingham, near the Georgia border and on the Tallahoosa River, a small and dirty stream.
The city was a center of manufacture, especially in textiles, and also because of the beauty of some of its surroundings, a residence for many owners of the great industries in north Alabama.
Wilson came by train from Birmingham and looked the city over;
the rather pleasant white city was on the hill where the chief stores were.
Beyond were industries and factories.
Then they went down to Black Bottom.
In the midst of this crowded region was the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church.
It was an old and dirty wooden structure, sadly in need of repair.
But it was a landmark.
It had been there 50 years or more and everybody in town, black and white, knew of it.
It had just suffered a calamity, the final crisis in a long series of calamities.
For the old preacher who had been there twenty-five years was dead, and the city mourned him.
He was a loud-voiced man, once vigorous but for many years now declining in strength and ability.
He was stern and overbearing with his flock, but obsequious and conciliatory with the whites, especially the rich who partly supported the church.
The Deacon Board, headed by a black man named Carlson, had practically taken over as the pastor grew old, and had its way with the support of the Amen corner.
The characteristic thing about this church was its Amen corner and the weekly religious orgy.
A knot of old worshippers, chiefly women, listened weekly to a sermon.
It began invariably in low tones, almost conversational, and then gradually worked up to high, shrill appeals to God and man.
And then the Amen corner took hold, re-enacting a form of group participation in worship that stemmed from years before the Greek chorus, spreading down through the African forest, overseas to the West Indies, and then here in Alabama.
With shout and slow dance, with tears and song, with scream and contortion, the corner group was beset by hysteria and shivering, wailing, shouting, possession of something that seemed like an alien and outside force.
It spread to most of the audience and was often viewed by visiting whites who snickered behind handkerchief and afterward discussed Negro religion.
It sometimes ended in death-like trances with many lying exhausted and panting on chair and floor.
To most of those who composed the Amen corner it was a magnificent and beautiful experience, something for which they lived from week to week.
It was often re-enacted in less wild form at the Wednesday night prayer meeting.
Wilson, on his first Sunday, witnessed this with something like disgust.
He had preached a short sermon, trying to talk man-to-man to the audience, to tell them who he was, what he had done in Macon and Birmingham, and what he proposed to do here.
He sympathized with them on the loss of their old pastor.
But then, at mention of that name, the Amen corner broke loose.
He had no chance to say another word.
At the very end, when the audience was silent and breathless, a collection was taken and then slowly everyone filed out.
The audience did not think much of the new pastor, and what the new pastor thought of the audience he did not dare at the time to say.
During the next weeks he looked over the situation.
First of all there was the parsonage, an utterly impossible place for civilized people to live in, originally poorly conceived, apparently not repaired for years, with no plumbing or sewage, with rat-holes and rot.
It was arranged that he would board in the home of one of the old members of the church, a woman named Catt who, as Wilson afterward found, was briefly referred to as The Cat because of her sharp tongue and fierce initiative.
Ann Catt was a lonely, devoted soul, never married, conducting a spotless home and devoted to her church, but a perpetual dissenter and born critic.
She soared over the new pastor like an avenging angel lest he stray from the path and not know all the truth and gossip of which she was chief repository.
Then Wilson looked over the church and studied its condition.
The salary of the pastor had for years been $500 annually and even this was in arrears.
Wilson made up his mind that he must receive at least $2,500, but when he mentioned this to the Deacons they said nothing.
The church itself must be repaired.
It was dirty and neglected.
It really ought to be rebuilt, and he determined to go up and talk to the city banks about this.
Meanwhile, the city itself should be talked to.
The streets in the colored section were dirty.
There was typhoid and malaria.
The children had nowhere to go and no place to play, not even sidewalks.
The school was small, dark and ill-equipped.
The teacher was a pliant fool.
There were two liquor saloons not very far from the church, one white, that is conducted for white people with a side entrance for Negroes;
the other exclusively Negro.
Undoubtedly, there was a good deal of gambling in both.
On the other side of the church was a quiet, well-kept house with shutters and recently painted.
Wilson inquired about it.
It was called Kent House.
The deacon of the church, Carlson, was its janitor.
One of the leading members of the Amen corner was cook;
there were two or three colored maids employed there.
Wilson was told that it was a sort of hotel for white people, which seemed to him rather queer.
Why should a white hotel be set down in the center of Black Bottom?
But nevertheless it looked respectable.
He was glad to have it there.
The rest of Black Bottom was a rabbit warren of homes in every condition of neglect, disrepair and careful upkeep.
Dives, carefully repaired huts, and nicely painted and ornamented cottages were jumbled together cheek by jowl with little distinction.
The best could not escape from the worst and the worst nestled cosily beside the better.
The yards, front and back, were narrow;
some were trash dumps, some had flower gardens.
Behind were privies, for there was no sewage system.
After looking about a bit, Wilson discovered beyond Black Bottom, across the river and far removed from the white city, a considerable tract of land, and it occurred to him that the church and the better Negro homes might gradually be moved to this plot.
He talked about it to the Presiding Elder.
The Presiding Elder looked him over rather carefully.
He was not sure what kind of a man he had in hand.
But there was one thing that he had to stress, and that was that the contribution to the general church expenses, the dollar money, had been seriously falling behind in this church, and that must be looked after immediately.
In fact, he intimated clearly that that was the reason that Wilson had been sent here--to make a larger contribution of dollar money.
Wilson stressed the fact that clear as this was, they must have a better church, a more business-like conduct of the church organization, and an effort to get this religious center out of its rut of wild worship into a modern church organization.
He emphasized to the Presiding Elder the plan of giving up the old church and moving across the river.
The Presiding Elder was sure that that would be impossible.
But he told Wilson to go ahead and try.
And Wilson tried.
It did seem impossible.
When it was proposed to rebuild the church, Wilson found that the terms for a new mortgage were very high.
He was sure that he could do better if he went to Atlanta to get the deal financed.
But when this proposal was made to his Deacon Board, he met unanimous opposition.
The church certainly would not be removed.
The very proposition was sacrilege.
It had been here fifty years.
It was going to stay forever.
It was hardly possible to get any argument on the subject.
As for rebuilding, well, that might be looked into, but there was no hurry, no hurry at all.
Wilson again went downtown to a different banker, an intelligent young white man who seemed rather sympathetic, but he shook his head.
Reverend, he said, I think you don't quite understand the situation here.
Don't you see the amount of money that has been invested by whites around that church?
Tenements, stores, saloons, some gambling, I hope not too much.
The colored people are getting employment at Kent House and other places, and they are near their places of employment.
When a city has arranged things like this you cannot easily change them.
Now, if I were you I would just plan to repair the old church so it would last for five or ten years.
By that time, perhaps something better can be done.
Then Wilson asked, What about this Kent House which you mention?
I don't understand why a white hotel should be down here.
The young banker looked at him with a certain surprise, and then he said flatly: I'm afraid I can't tell you anything in particular about Kent House.
You'll have to find out about it on your own.
Hope to see you again.
And he dismissed the colored pastor.
It was next day that Sojourner came and sat beside him and took his hand.
She said, My dear, do you know what Kent House is?
No, said Wilson, I don't.
I was just asking about it.
What is it?
It's a house of prostitution for white men with white girls as inmates.
They hire a good deal of local labor, including two members of our Trustee Board.
They buy some supplies from our colored grocers and they are patronized by some of the best white gentlemen in town.
Wilson stared at her.
My dear, you must be mistaken.
Talk to Mrs. Catt, she said.
And after Wilson had talked to Mrs. Catt and to others, he was absolutely amazed.
This, of course, was the sort of thing that used to take place in Southern cities--putting white houses of prostitution with colored girls in colored neighborhoods and carrying them on openly.
But it had largely disappeared on account of protest by the whites and through growing resentment on the part of the Negroes as they became more educated and got better wages.
But this situation of Kent House was more subtle.
The wages involved were larger and more regular.
The inmates were white and from out of town, avoiding local friction.
The backing from the white town was greater and there was little publicity.
Good wages, patronage and subscription of various kinds stopped open protest from Negroes.
And yet Wilson knew that this place must go or he must go.
And for him to leave this job now without accomplishing anything would mean practically the end of his career in the Methodist church, if not in all churches.
Payne dismounted in Madison Place and handed the reins to Herold.
There was a fog, which increased the darkness of the night.
Two gas lamps were no more than a misleading glow.
He might have been anywhere or nowhere.
The pretence was that he was delivering a prescription from Dr. Verdi.
Secretary of State Seward was a sick man.
The idea had come from Herold, who had once been a chemist's clerk.
The sick were always receiving medicines.
No one would question such an errand.
The bottle was filled up with flour.
Before Payne loomed the Old Clubhouse, Seward's home, where Key had once been killed.
Now it would have another death.
From the outside it was an ordinary enough house of the gentry.
He clomped heavily up the stoop and rang the bell.
Like the bell at Mass, the doorbell was pitched too high.
It was still Good Friday, after all.
Payne did not notice him.
He was thinking chiefly of Cap.
If their schedules were to synchronize, there was no point in wasting time.
He pushed his way inside.
For a moment the hall confused him.
This was the largest house he had ever been in, almost the largest building, except for a hotel.
He had no idea where Seward's room would be.
In the half darkness the banisters gleamed, and the hall seemed enormous.
Above him somewhere were the bedrooms.
Seward would be up there.
He explained his errand, but without bothering much to make it plausible, for he felt something well up in him which was the reason why he had fled the army.
He did not really want to kill, but as in the sexual act, there was a moment when the impulse took over and could not be downed, even while you watched yourself giving way to it.
He was no longer worried.
Everything would be all right.
He knew that in this mood he could not be stopped.
Still, the sensation always surprised him.
It was a thrill he felt no part in.
He could only watch with a sort of gentle dismay while his body did these quick, appalling, and efficient things.
He brushed by the idiotic boy and lumbered heavily up the stairs.
They were carpeted, but made for pumps and congress gaiters, not the great clodhoppers he wore.
The sound of his footsteps was like a muffled drum.
At the top of the stairs he ran into somebody standing there angrily in a dressing gown.
He stopped and whispered his errand.
Young Frederick Seward held out his hand.
Panting a little, Payne shook his head.
Dr. Verdi had told him to deliver his package in person.
Frederick Seward said his father was sleeping, and then went through a pantomime at his father's door, to prove the statement.
Very well, Payne said.
I will go.
He smiled, but now that he knew where the elder Seward was, he did not intend to go.
He pulled out his pistol and fired it.
It made no sound.
It had misfired.
Reversing it, he smashed the butt down on Frederick Seward's head, over and over again.
It was the first blow that was always difficult.
After that, violence was exultantly easy.
He got caught up into it and became a different person.
Only afterwards did an act like that become meaningless, so that he would puzzle over it for days, whereas at the time it had seemed quite real.
It was not murder at all.
Payne was more methodical than that.
He was merely clearing a way to what he had to do.
He ran for the sick room, found his pistol was broken, and threw it away.
A knife would do.
From childhood he had known all about knives.
Someone blocked the door from inside.
He smashed it in and tumbled into darkness.
He saw only dimly moving figures, but when he slashed them they yelled and fled.
He went for the bed, jumped on it, and struck where he could, repeatedly.
It was like finally getting into one's own nightmares to punish one's dreams.
Two men pulled him off.
Nobody said anything.
Payne hacked at their arms.
There was a lady there, in a nightdress.
He would not have wanted to hurt a lady.
Another man approached, this one fully dressed.
When the knife went into his chest, he went down at once.
I'm mad, shouted Payne, as he ran out into the hall.
I'm mad, and only wished he had been.
That would have made things so much easier.
But he was not mad.
He was only dreaming.
He clattered down the stairs and out of the door.
One always wakes up, even from one's own dreams.
The clammy air revived him.
Herold, he saw, had fled.
Well, one did not expect much of people like Herold.
He unhitched his horse, walked it away, mounted, and spurred it on.
He rode on and on.
He had no idea where he was.
After some time he came to an open field.
An open field was better than a building, that was for sure, so he dismounted, turned off the horse, and plunged through the grass.
He felt curiously sleepy, the world seemed far away;
he knew he should get to Cap, but he didn't know how.
He was sure, for he had done as he was told, hadn't he?
Cap would find him and take care of him.
So choosing a good tree, he clambered up into it, found a comfortable notch, and curled up in it to sleep, like the tousled bear he was, with his hands across his chest, as though surfeited with honey.
Violence always made him tired, but he was not frightened.
In Boston, Edwin Booth was winding up a performance of A New Way To Pay Old Debts.
It was a part so familiar to him that he did not bother to think about it any more.
Acting soothed him.
On a stage he always knew what to do, and tonight, to judge by the applause, he must be doing it better than usual.
As Sir Giles Overreach (how often had he had to play that part, who did not believe a word of it), he raised his arm and declaimed: Where is my honour now?
That was one of the high spots of the play.
The audience, as usual, loved it.
He was delighted to see them so happy.
If he had any worries, it was only the small ones, about Mother in New York, and his daughter Edwina and what she might be doing at this hour, with her Aunt Asia, in Philadelphia.
Everyone is ambivalent about his profession, if he has practised it long enough, but there were still moments when he loved the stage and all those unseen people out there, who might cheer you or boo you, but that was largely, though not entirely, up to you.
They made the world seem friendly somehow, though he knew it was not.
Wilkes was quite right about one thing.
Laura Keene had been in the green room.
The commotion had brought her into the wings.
Since she could not act, one part suited her as well as any other, and so she was the first person to offer Mr. Lincoln a glass of water, holding it up to the box, high above her head, to Miss Harris, who had asked for it.
She had been one of the first to collect her wits.
It was not so much that the shot had stunned the audience, as that they had been stunned already.
Most of them had seen Our American Cousin before, and unless Miss Keene was on stage, there was not much to it.
The theatre was hot and they were drugged with boredom.
The stage had been empty, except for Harry Hawk, doing his star monologue.
The audience was fond of Harry Hawk, he was a dear, in or out of character, but he was not particularly funny.
At the end of the monologue the audience would applaud.
Meanwhile it looked at the scenery.
Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing old mantrap!
Said Trenchard, otherwise Hawk.
There was always a pause here, before the next line.
That was when the gun went off.
Yet even that explosion did not mean much.
Guns were going off all over Washington City these days, because of the celebrations, and the theatre was not soundproof.
Then the audience saw a small, dim figure appear at the edge of the Presidential box.
Sic semper tyrannis, it said mildly.
Booth had delivered his line.
Behind him billowed a small pungent cloud of smoke.
They strained forward.
They had not heard what had been said.
They had been sitting too long to be able to stand up easily.
The figure leapt from the box, almost lost its balance, the flag draped there tore in the air, the figure landed on its left leg, fell on its hands, and pressed itself up.
Harry Hawk still had his arm raised towards the wings.
His speech faltered.
He did not lower his arm.
The figure was so theatrically dressed, that it was as though a character from some other play had blundered into this one.
The play for Saturday night was to be a benefit performance of The Octoroon.
This figure looked like the slave dealer from that.
But it also looked like a toad, hopping away from the light.
There was something maimed and crazy about its motion that disturbed them.
Then it disappeared into the wings.
Harry Hawk had not shifted position, but he at last lowered his arm.
Mrs. Lincoln screamed.
There was no mistaking that scream.
It was what anyone who had ever seen her had always expected her to do.
Yet this scream had a different note in it.
That absence of an urgent self-indulgence dashed them awake like a pail of water.
Clara Harris, one of the guests in the box, stood up and demanded water.
Her action was involuntary.
When something unexpected happened, one always asked for water if one were a woman, brandy if one were a man.
Mrs. Lincoln screamed again.
In the Presidential box someone leaned over the balustrade and yelled: He has shot the President!
That got everybody up.
On the stage, Harry Hawk began to weep.
Laura Keene brushed by him with the glass of water.
The crowd began to move.
In Washington City everyone lived in a bubble of plots, and one death might attract another.
It was not exactly panic they gave way to, but they could not just sit there.
The beehive voices, for no one could bear silence, drowned out the sound of Mrs. Lincoln's weeping.
At the rear of the auditorium, upstairs, some men tried to push open the door to the box corridor.
It would not give.
A Dr. Charles Taft clambered up on the stage and got the actors to hoist him up to the box.
In the audience a man named Ferguson lost his head and tried to rescue a little girl from the mob, on the same principle which had led Miss Harris to demand water.
Someone opened the corridor door from the inside, and called for a doctor.
Somehow Dr. Charles Leale was forced through the mob and squeezed out into the dingy corridor.
He went straight to the Presidential box.
As usual, Mrs. Lincoln had lost her head, but nobody blamed her for doing so now.
There was a little blood on the hem of her dress, for the assassin had slashed Miss Harris's companion, Major Rathbone, with a knife.
Rathbone said he was bleeding to death.
By the look of him he wasn't that far gone.
With a sneer, the man spread his legs and, a third time, confronted them.
Once more, Katie reared, and whinnied in fear.
For a moment, boy and mount hung in midair.
Stevie twisted and, frantically, commanded the mare to leap straight ahead.
But the stranger was nimbler still.
With a bold arm, he dared once more to obstruct them.
Katie reared a third time, then, trembling, descended.
The stranger leered.
Seizing the bridle, he tugged with all his might and forced Katie to her knees.
It was absurd.
Stevie could feel himself toppling.
He saw the ground coming up--and the stranger's head.
With incredible ferocity, he brought his fists together and struck.
The blow encountered silky hair and hard bone.
The man uttered a weird cry, spun about, and collapsed in the sand.
Katie scrambled to her feet, Stevie agilely retaining his seat.
Again Katie reared, and now, wickedly, he compelled her to bring her hooves down again and again upon the sprawled figure of the stranger.
He could feel his own feet, iron-shod, striking repeatedly until the body was limp.
He gloated, and his lips slavered.
He heard himself chortling.
They rode around and around to trample the figure into the sand.
Only the top of the head, with a spot bare and white as a clamshell, remained visible.
Stevie was shouting triumphantly.
A train hooted.
Instantly, he chilled.
They were pursuing him.
He was frightened;
his fists clutched so tightly that his knuckles hurt.
Then Katie stumbled, and again he was falling, falling!
Stevie!
Stevie!
His mother was nudging him, but he was still falling.
His head hung over the boards of Katie's stall;
before it was sprawled the mangled corpse of the bearded stranger.
Stevie, wake up now!
We're nearly there.
He had been dreaming.
He was safe in his Mama's arms.
The train had slowed.
Houses winked as the cars rolled beside a little depot.
Po' Chavis!
The trainman called.
He came by and repeated, Po' Chavis!
Chapter 6
Bong!
Bong!
Startled him awake.
The room vibrated as if a giant hand had rocked it.
Bong!
A dull boom and a throbbing echo.
The walls bulged, the floor trembled, the windowpanes rattled.
He stared at the far morning, expecting a pendulum to swing across the horizon.
Bong!
He raced to the window and yanked at the sash.
Bong!
The wood was old, the paint alligatored.
Bong!
A fresh breeze saluted him.
Six o'clock!
He put his head out.
There was the slate roof of the church;
ivy climbed the red brick walls like a green-scaled monster.
The clock which had struck presented an innocent face.
In the kitchen Mama was wiping the cupboards.
There's a tower and a steeple on the church a million feet high.
And the loudest clock in the whole world!
I know, Stephen, she smiled.
They say that our steeple is one hundred and sixty-two feet high.
The clock you heard strike--it's really the town clock--was installed last April by Mrs. Shorter, on her birthday.
He dressed, and sped outdoors.
He crossed Broome Street to Orange Square.
The steeple leaned backward, while the church advanced like a headless creature in a long, shapeless coat.
The spire seemed to hold up the sky.
Port Jervis, basking in the foothills, was the city of God.
The Dutch Reformed Church, with two steeples and its own school was on Main Street;
the Episcopal Church was one block down Sussex Street;
the Catholic Saint Mary's Church, with an even taller steeple and a cross on top, stood on Ball Street.
The Catholics had the largest cemetery, near the Neversink River where Main Street ran south;
Stevie whistled when he passed these alien grounds.
God was everywhere, in the belfry, in the steeple, in the clouds, in the trees, and in the mountains hulking on the horizon.
Somewhere, beyond, where shadows lurked, must be the yawning pit of which Papa preached and the dreadful Lake of Fire.
So, walking in awe, he became familiar with God, who resided chiefly in Drew Centennial Church with its high steeple and clock.
There was no church like Drew Church, no preacher like Papa, who was intimate with Him, and could consign sinners to hellfire.
To know God he must follow in Papa's footsteps.
He was fortunate, and proud.
The veterans, idling on their benches in the Square, beneath the soldiers' monument, got to their feet when Papa approached: Morning, Reverend!
His being and His will--Stevie could not divide God from his Papa--illumined every parish face, turned the choir into a band of angels, and the pulpit into the tollgate to Heaven.
We have nine hundred and eleven members in our charge, Mama announced, and three hundred and eighty Sunday-school scholars.
When Papa went out to do God's work, Stevie often accompanied him in the buggy, which was drawn by Violet, the new black mare.
Although they journeyed westerly as far as Germantown, beyond the Erie roundhouse and the machine shop, and along the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and northward to Brooklyn, below Point Peter, he could see the church spire wherever he looked back.
Sometimes they went south and rolled past the tollhouse--Afternoon, Reverend!
-- and crossed the suspension bridge to Matamoras;
that was Pennsylvania.
In the Delaware River, three long islands were overgrown with greening trees and underbrush.
South of Laurel Grove Cemetery, and below the junction of the Neversink and the Delaware, was the Tri-State Rock, from which Stevie could spy New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as New York, simply by spinning around on his heel.
On these excursions, Papa instructed him on man's chief end, which was his duty to God and his own salvation.
However, a boy's lively eyes might rove.
Where Cuddleback Brook purled into the Neversink was a magnificent swimming hole.
Papa pointed a scornful finger at the splashing youth: Idle recreation!
Stevie saw no idols;
it troubled him that he couldn't always see what Papa saw.
He was torn between the excitement in the sun-inflamed waters and a little engine chugging northward on the Monticello Branch.
Where you been today?
Ludie inquired every evening, pretending that he did not care.
He'll make a preacher out of you!
No, he won't!
Stevie flared.
Not me!
Somebody's got to be a preacher in the family.
He made a will and last testament before we left Paterson.
I heard them!
Uncle and Aunt Howe were the witnesses.
Will he die?
Everybody does.
Ludie could be hateful.
To speak of Papa dying was a sin.
It could never happen as long as God was alert and the Drew steeple stood guard with its peaked lance.
Stevie was constantly slipping into the church.
He pulled with all his strength at the heavy, brass-bound door, and shuffled along the wainscoted wall.
The cold, mysterious presence of God was all around him.
At the end of a shaft of light, the pews appeared to be broad stairs in a long dungeon.
Far away, standing before a curtained window in the study room, was his father, hands tucked under his coattails, and staring into the dark church.
The figure was wreathed in an extraordinary luminescence.
The boy shuddered at the deathly pale countenance with its wrinkles and gray hair.
Would Papa really die?
The mouth was thin-lipped and wide, the long cleft in the upper lip like a slide.
When Papa's slender fingers removed the spectacles, there were red indentations on the bridge of the strong nose.
It's time you began to think on God, Stephen.
Perhaps one day He will choose you as He chose me, long ago.
Therefore, give Him your affection and store up His love for you.
Open your heart to Him and pray, Stephen, pray!
For His mercy and His guidance to spare you from evil and eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire.
Stevie had heard these words many times, yet on each occasion they caused him to tremble.
For he feared the Lake of Fire.
He strove to think of God and His eternal wrath;
he must pray to be spared.
Papa was disappointed that none of the brothers had heard the Call.
Not George, Townley, or Ted, certainly not Ludie.
Burt was at Hackettstown and Will at Albany Law School, where they surely could not hear it.
Someday God would choose him.
He would hear the Call and would run to tell Papa.
The stern face would relax, the black-clad arms would embrace him, My son!
Yet how might he know the Call when it came?
Probably, as in Scriptures, a still, small voice would whisper.
It would summon him once;
if he missed it, never again.
What if it came when he was playing, or was asleep and dreaming?
He must not fail to hear it.
He was Papa's chosen;
therefore, nothing but good could happen to him, even in God's wrathful storms.
When the skies grew dark and thunder rolled across the valley, he was unafraid.
Aggie might fly into a closet, shut the door and bury her head in the clothes;
he dared to wait for the lightning.
Lightning could strike you blind if you were a sinner!
But he was good.
He clenched his fists and faced the terror.
Thunder crashed;
barrels tumbled down the mountainsides, and bounced and bounced till their own fury split them open.
Lightning might strike the steeples of the other churches;
not of Drew Church.
A flash illumined the trees as a crooked bolt twigged in several directions.
Violet whinnied from the stable.
He ran out into the downpour, sped across the yard and into the buggy room.
Don't be afraid, Violet!
He shouted, and was aghast at the echoes.
Don't you be afraid!
He would save her.
If there was a fire or a flood he would save Mama first and Violet next.
Drenched and shaking, he stood near the sweet-smelling stall and dared to pat her muzzle.
Don't you be afraid, Violet!
After the storm, the sky cleared blue and cool, and fragrant air swept the hills.
When the sun came out, Stevie strode proudly into Orange Square, smiling like a landlord on industrious tenants.
The fountain had brimmed over, the cannon were wet, the soldiers' monument glistened.
Even before the benches had dried, the Civil War veterans were straggling back to their places.
The great spire shone as if the lightning had polished it.
He jumped.
The pointed shadow had nearly touched him.
He trailed Ludie to the baseball game in the lot on Kingston Street near the Dutch Reformed.
Go on home!
Ludie screeched at him.
Someone'll tell Papa!
No one told on Ludie, not even when he slipped live grasshoppers into the mite-box.
Ludie did as he pleased.
Ludie took his slingshot and climbed to the rooftop to shoot at crows.
Ludie chewed roofer's tar.
Ludie had a cigar box full of marbles and shooters, and a Roman candle from last Fourth of July.
Ludie hopped rides on freight cars, and was chased by Mr. Yankton, the railroad guard.
He came home overheated, ran straight to the ice-chest, and gulped shivery cold water.
Stevie envied him.
That Ludie!
He, too, cocked his cap at a jaunty angle, jingled marbles in his pocket, and swaggered down Main Street.
On the Christophers' lawn, little girls in white pinafores were playing grownups at a tea party.
A Newfoundland sat solemnly beside a doghouse half his size.
Stevie yearned for a dog.
He wondered whether God had a dog in the sky.
He meandered down Pike Street, past the First National Bank with its green window shades.
He crossed the tracks to Delaware House, where ladies in gay dresses and men in straw boaters and waxed mustaches crowded the verandah.
A tall lady, with a ruffled collar very low on her bosom, turned insolent green eyes upon him.
She was taller than Aggie.
She was so beautiful with her rosy mouth and haughty air that she had to be wicked.
Fiddles screeched;
a piano tinkled.
P. J.--as Ludie called the town--was crowded with summer people who came to the mountains to escape the heat in the big cities.
They stayed at hotels and boardinghouses, or at private homes.
Rich people went to Delaware House, Opera House, American House or Fowler House.
If the crummy bastard could write!
That's how it should be.
Krist, I wish they could write!
He thought of her, the first one.
He had caught her coming out of the shack.
She was a juicy one.
Oh how they bounced!
Fresh, warm, sweet and juicy, sweet lovin sixteen, she was.
The snow came a little faster now, he noted.
He chuckled, the memory vivid.
Jee-sus, We Fixed him!
Yooee, we fixed him!
The snow again.
If only the fucken weather wasn't so lousy!
What I have to put up with!
Only one worth a shit, and that's Brandon.
He ain't so bad.
His thoughts turned to other things.
The big shock everybody had when they found ol Slater and those others done for.
Kaboom for.
He had been pretty scared himself, wondering what the hell was coming off.
But he soon saw which way the ball was bouncing.
Soon came back to his senses.
I soon came back to my senses, he said, aloud, to the young blizzard, proudly, drawing himself up, as if making a report to some important superior.
I was the first to get my squad on the ball, and anybody thinkin it was easy is pretty damn dumb.
Look at thum.
That goddamn redheader was the worst.
He kept sayin, not me, not me, I don't wanta wind up like em.
But I told him, goddammit.
I told him, he said aloud They'll get the guys that done it.
That'll put the place back to normal.
Normal, by God.
Maybe it's a good thing it happened.
Maybe they'll stop it now, once for all.
Clean the place up.
They're doin it now.
I hear the whole bunch is croakin out in the snow.
They'll get the guys that done it.
There was something troubling him though: as yet they hadn't Five days.
Keerist.
Prickly twinges of annoyance ran through him.
His eyes blinked hard, snapping on and squashing some bad things that were trying to push their way into him.
A tune began to whirl inside his head.
One of his favorites: Guitar Boogie.
It always came on, faithfully, just like a radio or juke box, whenever he started to worry too much about something, when the bad things tried to push their way into him.
The music drove them off, or away, and he was free to walk on air in a very few moments, humming and jiving within, beating the rhythm within.
He glowed with anticipation about what would happen to the culprits when they caught them.
He had never heard the word reactionary before his life as a POW began.
It was a word he was proud of, a word that meant much to him, and he used it with great pleasure, almost as if it were an exclusive possession, and more: he sensed himself to be very highly educated, four cuts above any of the folks back home.
Four cuts at least, he chuckled to himself, and I owe it all to them.
The word also made him feel hate, sincere hate, for those so labeled.
He used it very effectively when he wanted to get his squad on the ball.
It came up again and again in the discussion sessions.
Lousy Reactionary bastards been tryin to fuck up the Program for months.
Months.
Hired, hard lackeys of the Warmongering capitalists.
Not captured, sent here.
To fuck up the program.
You guys remember that.
Remember that He heard himself haranguing them.
He saw himself before them delivering the speech.
He laughed, suddenly, feeling a surge of power telling him of his hold over them, seeing himself before them, receiving utmost respect and attention.
One day, Ching had told him (smiling, patting him on the back) as they walked to the weekly conference of squad leaders, Keep it up, your squad is good, one of the best, keep it up, keep up the good work.
He would!
That was really something, coming from Ching.
Really something, he said, aloud.
Dirty Reactionary bastards comin down here in the night and bumpin off ol Slater and those other poor bastards.
They'll get them by God and let them bring them down here to me, just let them, God, I'll slice their balls right off.
His arm moved swiftly, violently, once, twice.
He felt intense satisfaction.
He was tingling within.
Before him, mutilated, bleeding to death, they lay.
It was as if it had been done.
Bastards, he said aloud, spitting on them.
He halted, and looked around.
Rivers of cold sweat were suddenly unleashed within him.
The thought came back, the one nagging at him these past four days.
He tried to stifle it.
But the words were forming.
He knew he couldn't.
He braced himself.
Somebody'll hafta start thinkin.
He fought it, seeking to kill the last few words, but on they came out.
He was trembling, a strange feeling upon him, fully expecting some catastrophe to strike him dead on the spot.
But it didn't.
And he took heart;
the final word came forth.
Now he heard it, fully;
bout takin his place He listened, waited, nothing happened.
He felt good.
His old self.
The music arrived, taking him its rhythm.
Stroked him, snaked all through him, the lyrics lifted him, took him from one magic isle to another, stopping briefly at each Brandon.
He is good.
Damn good.
Johnson.
Jesus, the guy says he is trying.
But he isn't with it, not at all with it.
When I talked to Ching about it, he said, Everyone can learn, if he is not a Reactionary or lazy.
No one is stupid.
That's what he said.
He oughta know.
It is plain as hell Johnson is no reactionary.
So you're not tryin, Johnson, you bastard you.
He looked over at him, lying there, asleep, and he felt a wave of revulsion.
How he loathed him.
Sleepy-eyed, soft-spoken Johnson, Biggest thorn in my side of the whole fucken squad.
He was the guy what always goofed at Question Time.
Why couldn't they have dumped him off on someone else?
Why me?
Why didn't the damn Reactionaries bump him off?
Why Slater?
Like a particle drawn to a magnet he returned to that which was pressing so hard in his mind.
The music surged up, but it failed to check it.
Who is the man to take His place?
The guy with most on the Ball.
Most on the ball.
Handle men.
Thoroughly Wised up.
Knows the score With a supreme effort, he broke it off.
He turned to the window again.
A gnawing and gnashing within him.
The snow was tumbling down furiously now.
Huge glob-flakes hitting the ground, piling higher and higher.
He stared at it, amazed, alarmed.
The whole fucken sky's cavin in!
Keeeerist!
Lookit it!
Cover the whole building, bury us all, by nightfall.
Jesus!
Somebody, got to be somebody If I don't put my two cents in soon, somebody else will I know they're waitin only for one thing: for the bastards what done it to be nailed.
Maybe they already got them.
He was again tingling with pleasure, seeing himself clearly in Slater's shoes.
Top dog, sleeping and eating right there with the Staff.
Ching, Tien, all of them.
Top dog.
Poor ol Slater.
Jesus, imagine, the crummy bastards, they'll get em, they'll get what's comin to em.
He whirled about suddenly.
It was nothing, though his heart was thumping wildly.
Somebody was up.
That was all.
Boy, you're stirrin early, a sleepy voice said.
Yehhh, said Coughlin, testily, eyeing him up and down.
Lookit that come down, willya, said the man, scratching himself, yawning.
Yehhh, said Coughlin, practically spitting on him.
The man moved away.
That's the way.
They'll toe the line.
Goddamn it.
Keep the chatter to a minimum, short answers, one word, if possible.
Less bull the more you can do with em.
That's Brown's trouble.
All he does is to bullshit with his squad, and they are the stupidest bastards around.
Just about to get their asses kicked into hut Seven.
Plenty of room there now.
All those dumb 8-Balls croaked.
You can do anything with these dumb fucks if you know how.
Anything.
They'd cut their mothers' belly open.
Give um the works.
See, he's already snapping it up, the dumb jerk.
Coughlin grinned, feeling supremely on top of things.
He watched the snow once again.
It infuriated him.
It made no sense to him.
He whirled around, suddenly hot all over, finding the man who had been standing before him a few moments back, nailing him to the spot on which he now stood, open-mouthed.
You, Listen!
-- name William Foster's Four Internal Contradictions in Capitalism.
Quick--Quick--now!
The man shrank before the hot fury, searching frantically for the answer.
Finnegan woke up.
There was a hell of a noise this time of morning.
He stared out the window.
For Christ's sake!
The whole fucken sky's caved in!
He looked for the source of the noise that had awakened him.
It was that prick Coughlin.
What the hell was he up to now?
Why didn't he drop dead?
How did they miss him when they got Slater?
How?
Then he was asking himself the usual early morning questions: What the Hell am I doin here?
Is this a nut-house?
Am I nuts?
Is this for real?
Am I dreamin?
From somewhere in the hut came Coughlin's voice.
How long did you study?
How long, buddy?
For Christ's sake!
A voice pleaded.
Don't Christsake me, buddy!
Just answer.
C'mon--'mon!
I'm no hero.
Did I start the damn war?
Automatically, Finnegan started going over today's lesson.
Capitalism rots from the core.
Did I start the damn war?
Who did?
That's a good one.
I thought I knew.
Why don't Uncle Sam mind his own fucken business?
I'll bet both together did.
I bet.
So fuck them both.
Goddamn.
Goddammit.
Just let me go home to Jersey, back to the shore, oh, Jesus, the shore.
The waves breakin in on you and your girl at night there on the warm beach in the moonlight.
If I hafta do this to stay alive by God I'll do it.
I hated the goddamn army from the first day I got in anyhow.
All pricks like Coughlin run it anyway, one way or another.
Fuck them.
He rolled over and tried to shut out the noise, now much louder.
He snuggled into the blanket.
Brandon dreamed.
He was sitting on top of a log which was spinning round and around in the water.
A river, wide as the Missouri, where it ran by his place.
The log was spinning.
But he was not.
So what?
Why should I be spinning just because the goddamn log is spinning?
(he asked this out loud, but no one heard it over the other noise in the hut).
Over on the bank, the west bank, a man stood, calling to him.
He couldn't make out what he was saying.
No doubt it had to do with the log.
Why should he be concerned?
Rousseau is so persuasive that Voltaire is almost convinced that he should burn his books, too.
But while the two men are riding into the country, where they are going to dinner, they are attacked in the dark of the forest by a band of thieves, who strip them of everything, including most of their clothes.
You must be a very learned man, says Voltaire to one of the bandits.
A learned man?
The bandit laughs in his face.
But Voltaire perseveres.
He goes to the chief himself.
At what university did you study?
He asks.
He refuses to believe that the bandit chief never attended a higher institution.
To have become so corrupt, he says, surely you must have studied many arts and sciences.
The chief, annoyed by these questions, knocks Voltaire down and shouts at him that he not only never went to any school, but never even learned how to read.
When finally the two bedraggled men reach their friend's home, Voltaire's fears are once again aroused.
For it is such a distinguished place, with such fine works of art and such a big library, that there can be little doubt but that the owner has become depraved by all this culture.
To Voltaire's surprise, however, their host gives them fresh clothes to put on, opens his purse to lend them money and sits them down before a good dinner.
Immediately after dinner, however, Rousseau asks for still another favor.
Could he have pen and paper, please?
He is in a hurry to write another essay against culture.
How cruel!
But at the same time how understandable.
How could the rich, for whom life was made so simple, ever understand the subterfuges, the lies, the frauds, the errors, sins and even crimes to which the poor were driven in their efforts to overcome the great advantages the rich had in the race of life?
How, for example, could a Voltaire understand the strange predicament in which a Rousseau would find himself when, soon after the furor of his first Discourse, he acquired still another title to fame?
This time as a musician.
As a composer.
Ever since he had first begun to study music and to teach it, Rousseau had dreamed of piercing through to fame as the result of a successful opera.
But his facility in this genre was not great.
And his efforts to get a performance for his Gallant Muses invariably failed.
And for good reasons.
His operatic music had little merit.
But then one day, while on a week's visit to the country home of a retired Swiss jeweler, Rousseau amused the company with a few little melodies he had written, to which he attached no great importance.
He was really amazed to discover the other guests so excited about these delicate little songs.
Put a few such songs together, they urged him.
String them onto some sort of little plot, and you'll have a delightful operetta.
He didn't believe them.
Nonsense, he said.
This is the sort of stuff I write and then throw away!
Heaven forbid!
Cried the ladies, enchanted by his music.
You must make an opera out of this material.
And they wouldn't leave off arguing and pleading until he had promised.
Oh, the irony and the bitterness of it!
That after all his years of effort to become a composer, he should now, now when he was still stoutly replying to the critics of his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, be so close to a success in music and have to reject it.
Or at least appear to reject it!
But what else could he do?
You couldn't on the one hand decry the arts and at the same time practice them, could you?
Well, yes, perhaps in literature, since you could argue that you couldn't keep silent about your feelings against literature and so were involved in spite of yourself.
But now music too?
No.
That would be too much!
And the fault, of course, was Rameau's.
The fault was Rameau's and that of the whole culture of this Parisian age.
For it was Rameau's type of music that he had been trying to write, and that he couldn't write.
These little songs, however, were sweet nothings from the heart, tender memories of his childhood, little melodies that anyone could hum and that would make one want to weep.
But no.
He couldn't appear as a composer now.
That glory, craved for so long, was now forbidden to him.
Still, just for the ladies, and just for this once, for this one weekend in the country, he would make a little piece out of his melodies.
The ladies were delighted and Jean Jacques was applauded.
And everyone went to work to learn the parts which he wrote.
But then, after the little operetta had been given its feeble amateur rendering, everyone insisted that it was too good to be lost forever, and that the Royal Academy of Music must now have the manuscript in order to give it the really first-rate performance it merited.
Rousseau was aware that he must seem like a hypocrite, standing there and arguing that he could not possibly permit a public performance.
The ladies especially couldn't understand what troubled him.
A contradiction?
Bah, what was a contradiction in one's life?
Every woman has had the experience of saying no when she meant yes, and saying yes when she meant no.
Rousseau had to admit that though he couldn't agree to a public performance, he would indeed, just for his own private satisfaction, dearly love to know how his work would sound when done by professional musicians and by trained voices.
I'd simply like to know if it is as good as you kind people seem to think, he said.
Duclos, the historian, pointed out to Jean Jacques that this was impossible.
The musicians of the Royal Opera would not rehearse a work merely to see how it would sound.
Merely to satisfy the author's curiosity.
Rousseau agreed.
But he recalled that Rameau had once had a private performance of his opera Armide, behind closed doors, just for himself alone.
Duclos understood what was bothering Rousseau: that the writer of the Prosopopoeia of Fabricius should now become known as the writer of an amusing little operetta.
That would certainly be paradoxical.
But Duclos thought he saw a way out.
Let me do the submitting to the Royal Academy, he suggested.
Your name will never appear.
No one will even suspect that it is your work.
To that Rousseau could agree.
But now what crazy twists and turns of his emotions!
And how anxious this lover of obscurity was for applause!
And thus torn between his desire to be known as the composer of a successful opera and the necessity of remaining true to his proclaimed desire for anonymity, Rousseau suffered through several painful weeks.
Imagine the honor of it!
What was your answer?
Jean Jacques asked, striving to appear unimpressed.
I refused, Duclos said.
What else could I do?
Monsieur De Cury was incensed, of course.
But I said I would first have to get the author's permission.
And I was certain he would refuse.
How infuriating all this was!
Why had not this success come to him before he had plunged into his Discourse, and before he had committed himself to a life of austerity and denial?
Now, when everything was opening up to him--even the court of Louis 15!
-- he had to play a role of self-effacement.
Back and forth Duclos had to go, between M. De Cury and Jean Jacques and between the Duke D'Aumont and Jean Jacques again, as his little operetta, The Village Soothsayer, though still unperformed, took on ever more importance.
And of course the news of who the composer was did finally begin to get around among his closest friends.
But they, naturally, kept his secret well, and the public at large knew only of a great excitement in musical and court circles.
How titillating it was to go among people who did not know him as the composer, but who talked in the most glowing terms of the promise of the piece after having heard the first rehearsals.
The furor was such that people who could not possibly have squirmed their way into the rehearsals were pretending that they were intimate with the whole affair and that it would be sensational.
He felt himself now, as he himself says in his Confessions, at a crucial point of his life.
And that was why, on the day of the performance, when a carriage from the royal stables called to take him to the palace, he did not bother to shave.
On the contrary, he was pleased that his face showed a neglect of several days.
Seeing him in that condition, and about to enter the hall where the King, the Queen, the whole royal family and all the members of the highest aristocracy would be present, Grimm and the Abbe Raynal and others tried to stop him.
You can't go in that way!
They cried.
Why not?
Jean Jacques asked.
Who is going to stop me?
You haven't dressed for the occasion!
They pointed out to him.
I'm dressed as I always am, Rousseau said.
Neither better nor worse.
At home, yes, they argued.
But here you are in the palace.
There's the King.
And Madame De Pompadour.
If they are here, then surely I have the right to be here, Rousseau said.
And even more right.
Since I am the composer!
But in such a slovenly condition.
What is slovenly about me?
Rousseau asked.
Is it because of my slovenliness that hair grows on my face?
Surely it would grow there whether I washed myself or not.
A hundred years ago I would have worn a beard with pride.
And those without beards would have stood out as not dressed for the occasion.
Now times have changed, and I must pretend that hair doesn't grow on my face.
That's the fashion.
And fashion is the real king here.
Not Louis 15, since even he obeys.
Now, if you don't mind, I should like to hear my own piece performed.
But of course behind his boldness he didn't feel bold at all.
He trembled lest his piece should fail.
And this in addition to his usual fear of being among people of high society, his fear of making some inane or inappropriate remark.
And even deeper than that: his fear lest in this closed hall he should suddenly itch to relieve himself.
Could he walk out in the midst of his piece?
Here, before the court?
Before the King?
It was the first time any of us had laughed since the morning began.
The rider from Concord was as good as his word.
He came spurring and whooping down the road, his horse kicking up clouds of dust, shouting:
They're a-coming!
By God, they're a-coming, they are!
We heard him before he ever showed, and we heard him yelling after he was out of sight.
Solomon Chandler hadn't misjudged the strength of his lungs, not at all.
I think you could have heard him a mile away, and he was bursting at every seam with importance.
I have observed that being up on a horse changes the whole character of a man, and when a very small man is up on a saddle, he'd like as not prefer to eat his meals there.
That's understandable, and I appreciate the sentiment.
As for this rider, I never saw him before or afterwards and never saw him dismounted, so whether he stood tall or short in his shoes, I can't say;
but I do know that he gave the day tone and distinction.
The last thing in the world that resembled a war was our line of farmers and storekeepers and mechanics perched on top of a stone wall, and this dashing rider made us feel a good deal sharper and more alert to the situation.
We came down off the wall as if he had toppled all of us, and we crouched behind it.
I have heard people talk with contempt about the British regulars, but that only proves that a lot of people talk about things of which they are deplorably ignorant.
Whatever we felt about the redcoats, we respected them in terms of their trade, which was killing;
and I know that I, myself, was nauseated with apprehension and fear and that my hands were soaking wet where they held my gun.
I wanted to wipe my flint, but I didn't dare to, the state my hands were in, just as I didn't dare to do anything about the priming.
The gun would fire or not, just as chance willed.
I put a lot more trust in my two legs than in the gun, because the most important thing I had learned about war was that you could run away and survive to talk about it.
The gunfire, which was so near that it seemed just a piece up the road now, stopped for long enough to count to twenty;
and in that brief interval, a redcoat officer came tearing down the road, whipping his horse fit to kill.
I don't know whether he was after our rider, who had gone by a minute before, or whether he was simply scouting conditions;
but when he passed us by, a musket roared, and he reared his horse, swung it around, and began to whip it back in the direction from which he had come.
He was a fine and showy rider, but his skill was wasted on us.
From above me and somewhere behind me, a rifle cracked.
The redcoat officer collapsed like a punctured bolster, and the horse reared and threw him from the saddle, except that one booted foot caught in the stirrup.
Half crazed by the weight dragging, the dust, and the heat, the horse leaped our wall, dashing out the rider's brains against it, and leaving him lying there among us--while the horse crashed away through the brush.
It was my initiation to war and the insane symphony war plays;
for what had happened on the common was only terror and flight;
but this grinning, broken head, not ten feet away from me, was the sharp definition of what my reality had become.
And now the redcoats were coming, and the gunfire was a part of the dust cloud on the road to the west of us.
I must state that the faster things happened, the slower they happened;
the passage and rhythm of time changed, and when I remember back to what happened then, each event is a separate and frozen incident.
In my recollection, there was a long interval between the death of the officer and the appearance of the first of the retreating redcoats, and in that interval the dust cloud over the road seems to hover indefinitely.
Yet it could not have been more than a matter of seconds, and then the front of the British army came into view.
It was only hours since I had last seen them, but they had changed and I had changed.
In the very front rank, two men were wounded and staggered along, trailing blood behind them.
No drummers here, no pipers, and the red coats were covered with a fine film of dust.
They marched with bayonets fixed, and as fixed on their faces was anger, fear, and torment.
Rank after rank of them came down the road, and the faces were all the same, and they walked in a sea of dust.
Committeemen, hold your fire!
Hold your fire!
A voice called, and what made it even more terrible and unreal was that the redcoat ranks never paused for an instant, only some of them glancing toward the stone wall, from behind which the voice came.
The front of their column had already passed us, when another officer came riding down the side of the road, not five paces from where we were.
My Cousin Simmons carried a musket, but he had loaded it with bird shot, and as the officer came opposite him, he rose up behind the wall and fired.
One moment there was a man in the saddle;
the next a headless horror on a horse that bolted through the redcoat ranks, and during the next second or two, we all of us fired into the suddenly disorganized column of soldiers.
One moment, the road was filled with disciplined troops, marching four by four with a purpose as implacable as death;
the next, a cloud of gun smoke covered a screaming fury of sound, out of which the redcoat soldiers emerged with their bayonets and their cursing fury.
In the course of this, they had fired on us;
but I have no memory of that.
I had squeezed the trigger of my own gun, and to my amazement, it had fired and kicked back into my shoulder with the force of an angry mule;
and then I was adding my own voice to the crescendo of sound, hurling more vile language than I ever thought I knew, sobbing and shouting, and aware that if I had passed water before, it was not enough, for my pants were soaking wet.
I would have stood there and died there if left to myself, but Cousin Simmons grabbed my arm in his viselike grip and fairly plucked me out of there;
and then I came to some sanity and plunged away with such extraordinary speed that I outdistanced Cousin Simmons by far.
Everyone else was running.
Later we realized that the redcoats had stopped their charge at the wall.
Their only hope of survival was to hold to the road and keep marching.
We tumbled to a stop in Deacon Gordon's cow hole, a low-lying bit of pasture with a muddy pool of water in its middle.
Isaac Pitt, one of the men from Lincoln, had taken a musket ball in his belly;
and though he had found the strength to run with us, now he collapsed and lay on the ground, dying, the Reverend holding his head and wiping his hot brow.
It may appear that we were cruel and callous, but no one had time to spend sympathizing with poor Isaac--except the Reverend.
I know that I myself felt that it was a mortal shame for a man to be torn open by a British musket ball, as Isaac had been, yet I also felt relieved and lucky that it had been him and not myself.
I was drunk with excitement and the smell of gunpowder that came floating down from the road, and the fact that I was not afraid now, but only waiting to know what to do next.
Meanwhile, I reloaded my gun, as the other men were doing.
We were less than a quarter of a mile from the road, and we could trace its shape from the ribbon of powder smoke and dust that hung over it.
Wherever you looked, you saw Committeemen running across the meadows, some away from the road, some toward it, some parallel to it;
and about a mile to the west a cluster of at least fifty Militia were making their way in our direction.
Cousin Joshua and some others felt that we should march toward Lexington and take up new positions ahead of the slow-moving British column, but another group maintained that we should stick to this spot and this section of road.
I didn't offer any advice, but I certainly did not want to go back to where the officer lay with his brains dashed out.
Someone said that while we were standing here and arguing about it, the British would be gone;
but Cousin Simmons said he had watched them marching west early in the morning, and moving at a much brisker pace it had still taken half an hour for their column to pass, what with the narrowness of the road and their baggage and ammunition carts.
While this was being discussed, we saw the militia to the west of us fanning out and breaking into little clusters of two and three men as they approached the road.
It was the opinion of some of us that these must be part of the Committeemen who had been in the Battle of the North Bridge, which entitled them to a sort of veteran status, and we felt that if they employed this tactic, it was likely enough the best one.
Mattathias Dover said:
It makes sense.
If we cluster together, the redcoats can make an advantage out of it, but there's not a blessed thing they can do with two or three of us except chase us, and we can outrun them.
That settled it, and we broke into parties of two and three.
Cousin Joshua Dover decided to remain with the Reverend and poor Isaac Pitt until life passed away--and he was hurt so badly he did not seem for long in this world.
I went off with Cousin Simmons, who maintained that if he didn't see to me, he didn't know who would.
Good heavens, Adam, he said, I thought one thing you'd have no trouble learning is when to get out of a place.
I learned that now, I said.
We ran east for about half a mile before we turned back to the road, panting from the effort and soaked with sweat.
There was a clump of trees that appeared to provide cover right up to the road, and the shouting and gunfire never slackened.
Under the trees, there was a dead redcoat, a young boy with a pasty white skin and a face full of pimples, who had taken a rifle ball directly between the eyes.
Three men were around him.
They had stripped him of his musket and equipment, and now they were pulling his boots and jacket off.
Cousin Simmons grabbed one of them by the shoulder and flung him away.
God's name, what are you to rob the dead with the fight going on!
Cousin Simmons roared.
They tried to outface him, but Joseph Simmons was as wide as two average men, and it would have taken braver men than these were to outface him.
That summer the gambling houses were closed, despite the threats of Pierre Ameaux, a gaming-card manufacturer.
Dancing was no longer permitted in the streets.
The Bordel and other places of prostitution were emptied.
The slit breeches had to go.
Drunkenness was no longer tolerated.
In defiance, a chinless reprobate, Jake Camaret, marched down the aisle in St. Peter's one Sunday morning, followed by one of the women from the Bordel, whose dress and walk plainly showed the lack of any shame.
Plunking themselves down on the front bench, they turned to smirk at those around them.
John's first impulse was to denounce their blasphemy.
But the thought occurred that God would want this opportunity used to tell them about Him.
Calmly he opened the Bible and read of the woman at the well.
He finished the worship service as if there had been no brazen attempt to dishonor God and man.
The next morning, as the clock struck nine, he appeared at the Council meeting in the Town Hall and insisted that the couple would have to be punished if the Church was to be respected.
I have told you before, and I tell you again, Monsieur Favre said rudely.
Stick to the preaching of the Gospel!
John stiffened in anger.
That is the answer the ungodly will always make when the Church points its fingers at their sins.
I say to you that the Church will ever decry evil!
John's reply was like a declaration of war.
Monsieur Favre sat down in his high-backed stall, lips compressed, eyes glinting.
Ablard Corne, a short man with a rotunda of stomach, rose.
Every eye was on him as he began to speak.
What Master Calvin says is true.
How can we have a good city unless we respect morality?
Abel Poupin, a tall man with sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes, got to his feet.
We all know that Jake Camaret and the woman are brazenly living together.
It would be well to show the populace how we deal with adulterers.
Philibert Berthelier, the son of the famous patriot, disagreed.
Do not listen to that Frenchman.
He is throttling the liberty my father gave his life to win!
John was quietly insistent.
There can be no compromise when souls are in jeopardy.
A week later the sentence of the Council was carried out: Jake Camaret and the woman were marched naked through the streets past a mocking populace.
Before them stalked the beadle, proclaiming as he went, Thus the Council deals with those who break its laws--adulterers, thieves, murderers, and lewd persons.
Let evildoers contemplate their ways, and let every man beware!
John's thoughts raced painfully into the past as he read the letter he had just received from his sister Mary.
Charles had died two weeks before, in early November, without being reconciled to the Church.
The canons, in a body, had tried to force him on his deathbed to let them give him the last rites of the Church, but he had died still proclaiming salvation by faith.
Burial had taken place at night in the ground at the public crossroads under the gibbet, so that his enemies could not find his body and have it dug up and burned.
The Abbot of St. Eloi, Claude De Mommor, had been a good friend, but not even he thought Charles deserved burial in hallowed ground.
John closed his eyes and saw once again the little niche in his mother's bedroom, where she had knelt to tell the good Virgin of her needs.
The blue-draped Virgin was still there, but no one knelt before her now.
Not even Varnessa;
she, too, prayed only to God.
For an instant John longed for the sound of the bells of Noyon-la-Sainte, the touch of his mother's hand, the lilt of Charles's voice in the square raftered rooms, his father's bass tones rumbling to the canons, and the sight of the beloved bishop.
But he had to follow the light.
Unless God expected a man to believe the Holy Scriptures, why had He given them to him?
The white-clad trees stood like specters in the February night.
Snow buried the streets and covered the slanting rooftops, as John trudged toward St. Peter's.
A carriage crunched by, its dim lights filtering through the gloom.
The sharp wind slapped at him and his feet felt like ice as the snow penetrated the holes of his shoes, his only ones, now patched with folded parchment.
The city had recently given him a small salary, but it was not enough to supply even necessities.
As he neared the square, a round figure muffled in a long, black cape whisked by.
John recognized Ablard Corne and called out a greeting.
How grateful he was to such men!
There were several on the Council who tried to live like Christians.
Despite their efforts, the problems seemed to grow graver all the time.
Quickening his steps, John entered the vast church and climbed the tower steps to the bells.
Underneath the big one, in the silent moonlight, lay a dead pigeon, and on the smaller bell, the Clemence, two gray and white birds slept huddled together in the cold winter air.
John leaned upon the stone balustrade.
He brushed back his black hair, shoving it under his pastor's cap to keep it from blowing in his eyes.
Below the moon-splashed world rolled away to insurmountable white peaks;
above him the deep blue sky glittered with stars.
He stood very still, his arms at his sides, staring up at the heavens, then down at the blinking lights below.
How long, my Lord?
How long?
I have never asked for an easy task, but I am weary of the strife.
Sleep was difficult these days.
Indigestion plagued him.
Severe headaches were frequent.
Loneliness tore through him like a physical pain whenever he thought of Peter Robert, Nerien, Nicholas Cop, Martin Bucer, and even the compromising Louis Du Tillet.
An occasional traveler from Italy brought news of Peter Robert, who was now distributing his Bible among the Waldensian peasants.
Letters came regularly from Nerien, Nicholas, and Martin.
He had Anthony and William to confide in and consult.
But William continued to find a bitter joy in smashing images and tearing down symbols sacred to the Old Church.
John found it difficult, but he held him in check.
And Anthony was busy most of the time courting this girl and that.
His easy good looks made him a favorite with the ladies.
Geneva, instead of becoming the City of God, as John had dreamed, had in the two years since he had been there, continued to be a godless place where all manner of vice flourished.
Refugees poured in, signing the Confession and rules in order to remain, and then disregarding them.
Dice rolled, prostitutes plied their trade, thieves stole, murderers stabbed, and the ungodly blasphemed.
Catholics who were truly Christians longed for the simple penance of days gone by.
Libertines recalled the heroism of the past and demanded: Are we going to allow the Protestant Pope, Master Calvin, to curtail our liberty?
Why, oh why, doesn't he stick to preaching the Gospel, instead of meddling in civic affairs, politics, economics, and social issues that are no concern of the Church?
And John's reply was always the same: Anything that affects souls is the concern of the Church!
We will have righteousness!
Tears burned behind his eyes as he prayed and meditated tonight.
Unless the confusion cleared, he would not be coming here much longer.
Monsieur Favre's threat would become a reality, for he continued to proclaim loudly that the city must rid itself of that Frenchman.
The slow tapping of a cane on the stone steps coming up to the tower interrupted his reverie.
Faint at first, the tapping grew until it sounded loud against the wind.
Eli Corault!
John thought.
What is he doing here at this hour?
He started down the steps to meet the near-blind preacher, who had been one of the early Gospelers in Paris.
John?
Is that you?
I came to warn you of a plot!
John stood above him, his face ashen.
What now?
Slowly, like a man grown old, he took Eli's hand and led him below to the tower study, guiding him to a chair beside the little hearth where a fire still burned.
Plot?
John asked tiredly.
Monsieur Favre just paid me a visit.
I went to your rooms, and Anthony told me you were here.
Two Anabaptists, Caroli and Benoit, are to challenge you and William to a debate before the Council.
It is to be a trap.
You know the law: if you lose the debate after accepting a challenge, you will be banished!
What will be the subject?
You are to be accused of Arianism to confuse the religious who remain loyal.
Anger and fear fused in John.
Ever since the fourth century a controversy had raged over the person of Christ.
Those who refused to believe that He was the eternal Son of God were termed Arianists.
Peter Caroli had come to Geneva, saying that he had been a bishop of the Church of Rome and had been persecuted in Paris for his Reformed faith.
He asked to be appointed a preacher.
But Michael Sept had unmasked him, revealing he had never been a bishop, but was an Anabaptist, afraid to state his faith, because he knew John Calvin had written a book against their belief that the soul slept after death.
So John had refused to agree to his appointment as a preacher, and now Caroli sought revenge.
John sighed.
If William agrees, we should insist on a public debate, he said at length.
There is more to the conspiracy.
Bern demands that the Lord's Supper be administered here as it used to be, with unleavened bread.
Furthermore, Bern decrees that we must do as we are ordered by the Council, preach only the word of God and stop meddling in politics!
It was always the spirit with Christ;
matters such as leavened or unleavened bread are inconsequential.
Geneva must remain a sovereign state.
We will not yield to the demands of Bern!
The firelight played over Eli's flowing white locks and rugged features.
Monsieur Favre indicated that if I would co-operate, after you and William are banished, following the debate, I will be given a place of influence.
What was your reply to that?
That I would rather be banished with two such Christians than be made the Chief Syndic!
The following morning, as John entered the Place Molard on his way to visit a sick refugee, he had a premonition of danger.
Then suddenly a group of men and dogs circled him.
He wanted to run, but he knew that if he did, he would be lost.
He stood very still, his heart thumping wildly.
On the outskirts of the rabble the Camaret brothers and Gaspard Favre shook their fists.
Are you going to comply with the demands of Bern?
The chinless Jake called.
Arianist!
A rowdy with a big blob of a nose roared.
Heretic!
John lifted his hand for silence.
Know this: the ministers will not yield to the demands of Bern.
His voice shook a little.
Somebody heaved a stone.
For an instant John was stunned.
When he felt the side of his head, his fingers came away covered with blood.
Before he could duck, another stone struck him.
And another.
Let him be now!
Pierre Ameaux, the gaming-card manufacturer said, his little pig eyes glaring.
We have taught him a lesson.
The crowd moved back and John started dizzily down the hill.
Fists pummeled him as he staggered forward.
Then he slipped and went down on his hands and knees in the melting snow.
At once a bevy of dogs was snapping and snarling around him.
One, more horrible than the rest, lunged, growling deep in his throat, his hair bristling.
With great difficulty John clambered to his feet and started to run, sweat pouring down his face.
Standing in the shelter of the tent--a rejected hospital tent on which the rain now dripped, no longer drumming--Adam watched his own hands touch the objects on the improvised counter of boards laid across two beer barrels.
There was, of course, no real need to rearrange everything.
A quarter inch this way or that for the hardbake, or the toffee, or the barley sugar, or the sardines, or the bitters, or the condensed milk, or the stationery, or the needles--what could it mean?
Adam watched his own hands make the caressing, anxious movement that, when rain falls and nobody comes, and ruin draws close like a cat rubbing against the ankles, has been the ritual of stall vendors, forever.
He recognized the gesture.
He knew its meaning.
He had seen a dry, old, yellowing hand reach out, with that painful solicitude, to touch, to rearrange, to shift aimlessly, some object worth a pfennig.
Back in Bavaria he had seen that gesture, and at that sight his heart had always died within him.
On such occasions he had not had the courage to look at the face above the hand, whatever face it might be.
Now the face was his own.
He wondered what expression, as he made that gesture, was on his face.
He wondered if it wore the old anxiety, or the old, taut stoicism.
But there was no need, he remembered, for his hand to reach out, for his face to show concern or stoicism.
It was nothing to him if rain fell and nobody came.
Then why was he assuming the role--the gesture and the suffering?
What was he expiating?
Or was he now taking the role--the gesture and the suffering--because it was the only way to affirm his history and identity in the torpid, befogged loneliness of this land.
This was Virginia.
He looked out of the tent at the company street.
The rain dripped on the freezing loblolly of the street.
The chimney of the hut across from him was surmounted by a beef barrel with ends knocked out.
In this heavy air, however, that device did not seem to help.
The smoke from that chimney rose as sluggishly as smoke from any other, and hung as sadly in the drizzle, creeping back down along the sopping canvas of the roof.
Over the door was a board with large, inept lettering: home sweet home.
This was the hut of Simms Purdew, the hero.
The men were huddled in those lairs.
Adam knew the names of some.
He knew the faces of all, hairy or shaven, old or young, fat or thin, suffering or hardened, sad or gay, good or bad.
When they stood about his tent, chaffing each other, exchanging their obscenities, cursing command or weather, he had studied their faces.
He had had the need to understand what life lurked behind the mask of flesh, behind the oath, the banter, the sadness.
He was seeing, somehow, the face of a young boy, the boy Simms Purdew must once have been, a boy with sorrel hair, and blue eyes dancing with gaiety, and the boy mouth grinning trustfully among the freckles.
In that moment of vision Adam heard the voice within himself saying: I must not hate him, I must not hate him or I shall die.
His heart suddenly opened to joy.
He thought that if once, only once, he could talk with Simms Purdew, something about his own life, and all life, would be clear and simple.
If Simms Purdew would turn to him and say: Adam, you know when I was a boy, it was a funny thing happened.
Lemme tell you now --
If only Simms Purdew could do that, whatever the thing he remembered and told.
It would be a sign for the untellable, and he, Adam, would understand.
Now, Adam, in the gray light of afternoon, stared across at the hut opposite his tent, and thought of Simms Purdew lying in there in the gloom, snoring on his bunk, with the fumes of whisky choking the air.
He saw the sign above the door of the hut: home sweet home.
He saw the figure of a man in a poncho coming up the company street, with an armful of wood.
It was Pullen James, the campmate of Simms Purdew.
He carried the wood, carried the water, did the cooking, cleaning and mending, and occasionally got a kick in the butt for his pains.
Adam watched the moisture flow from the poncho.
It gave the rubberized fabric a dull gleam, like metal.
Pullen James humbly lowered his head, pushed aside the hardtack-box door of the hut, and was gone from sight.
Adam stared at the door and remembered that Simms Purdew had been awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry at Antietam.
The street was again empty.
The drizzle was slacking off now, but the light was grayer.
With enormous interest, Adam watched his hands as they touched and shifted the objects on the board directly before him.
Into the emptiness of the street, and his spirit, moved a form.
The form was swathed in an army blanket, much patched, fastened at the neck with a cord.
From under the shapeless huddle of blanket the feet moved in the mud.
The feet wore army shoes, in obvious disrepair.
The head was wrapped in a turban and on top of the turban rode a great hamper across which a piece of poncho had been flung.
The gray face stared straight ahead in the drizzle.
Moisture ran down the cheeks, gathered at the tip of the nose, and at the chin.
The figure was close enough now for him to see the nose twitching to dislodge the drop clinging there.
The figure stopped and one hand was perilously freed from the hamper to scratch the nose.
Then the figure moved on.
This was one of the Irish women who had built their own huts down near the river.
They did washing.
Adam recognized this one.
He recognized her because she was the one who, in a winter twilight, on the edge of camp, had once stopped him and reached down her hand to touch his fly.
Slice o' mutton, bhoy?
She had queried in her soft guttural.
Slice o' mutton?
Her name was Mollie.
They called her Mollie the Mutton, and laughed.
Looking down the street after her, Adam saw that she had again stopped and again removed one hand from the basket.
He could not make out, but he knew that again she was scratching her nose.
Mollie the Mutton was scratching her nose.
The words ran crazily in his head: Mollie the Mutton is scratching her nose in the rain.
Then the words fell into a pattern: Mollie the Mutton is scratching her nose, Scratching her nose in the rain.
Mollie the Mutton is scratching her nose in the rain.
The pattern would not stop.
It came again and again.
He felt trapped in that pattern, in the repetition.
Suddenly he thought he might weep.
What's the matter with me?
He demanded out loud.
He looked wildly around, at the now empty street, at the mud, at the rain.
Oh, what's the matter with me?
He demanded.
When he had stored his stock in the great oak chest, locked the two big hasps and secured the additional chain, tied the fly of the tent, and picked up the cash box, he moved up the darkening street.
He would consign the cash box into the hands of Jed Hawksworth, then stand by while his employer checked the contents and the list of items sold.
Then he --
Then what?
He did not know.
His mind closed on that prospect, as though fog had descended to blot out a valley.
Far off, in the dusk, he heard voices singing, muffled but strong.
In one of the huts a group of men were huddled together, singing.
He stopped.
He strained to hear.
He heard the words: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee!
Let the water and the blood From Thy riven side flow!
He thought: I am a Jew from Bavaria.
He was standing there, he thought, in Virginia, in the thickening dusk, in a costly greatcoat that had belonged to another Jew.
That other Jew, a young man too, had left that greatcoat behind, in a rich house, and marched away.
He had crossed the river which now, beyond the woods yonder, was sliding darkly under the mist.
He had plunged into the dark woods beyond.
He had died there.
What had that man, that other young Jew, felt as he stood in the twilight and heard other men, far away, singing together?
Adam thought of the hutments, regiment after regiment, row after row, the thousands of huts, stretching away into the night.
He thought of the men, the nameless thousands, huddling in them.
He thought of Simms Purdew snoring on his bunk while Pullen James crouched by the hearth, skirmishing an undershirt for lice, and a wet log sizzled.
He thought of Simms Purdew, who once had risen at the edge of a cornfield, a maniacal scream on his lips, and swung a clubbed musket like a flail to beat down the swirl of Rebel bayonets about him.
He thought of Simms Purdew rising up, fearless in glory.
He felt the sweetness of pity flood through him, veining his very flesh.
Those men, lying in the huts, they did not know.
They did not know who they were or know their own worth.
In the pity for them his loneliness was gone.
Then he thought of Aaron Blaustein standing in his rich house saying: God is tired of taking the blame.
He is going to let History take the blame for a while.
He thought of the old man laughing under the glitter of the great chandelier.
He thought: Only in my heart can I make the world hang together.
Adam rose from the crouch necessary to enter the hut.
He saw Mose squatting by the hearth, breaking up hardtack into a pan.
A pot was boiling on the coals.
Gonna give Ole Buckra all his money?
Mose asked softly.
Adam nodded.
Yeah, Mose murmured, yeah.
And look what he done give us.
Adam looked at the pot.
What is it?
He asked.
Chicken, Mose said, and theatrically licked his lips.
Gre't big fat chicken, yeah.
He licked his lips again.
Then: yeah.
A chicken with six tits and a tail lak a corkscrew.
And it squealed for slop.
Mose giggled.
Fooled you, huh?
It is the same ole same, tell me its name.
It is sowbelly with tits on.
It is salt po'k.
It is salt po'k and skippers.
That po'k, it was so full of skippers it would jump and run and not come when you say, hoo-pig.
Had to put my foot on it to hole it down while I cut it up fer the lob-scuse.
He dumped the pan of crumbled hardtack into the boiling pot of lobscouse.
Good ole lob-scuse, he mumbled, and stirred the pot.
He stopped stirring and looked over his shoulder.
Know what Ole Buckra et tonight?
He demanded.
Know what I had to fix fer Ole Him?
Adam shook his head.
Chicken, Mose said.
She was a child too much a part of her environment, too eager to grow and learn and experience.
Once, they were at Easthampton for the summer (again, Fritzie said, a good place, even though they were being robbed).
One soft evening--that marvelous sea-blessed time when the sun's departing warmth lingers and a smell of spume and wrack haunts everything--Amy had picked herself off the floor and begun to walk.
Fritzie was on the couch reading;
Laura was sitting in an easy chair about eight feet away.
The infant, in white terry-cloth bathrobe, her face intense and purposeful, had essayed a few wobbly steps toward her father.
Y'all wanna walk--walk, he said.
Then, gently, he shoved her behind toward Laura.
Amy walked--making it halfway across the cottage floor.
She lost not a second, picking herself up and continuing her pilgrimage to Laura.
Then Laura took her gently and shoved her off again, toward Fritzie: Amy did not laugh--this was work, concentration, achievement.
In a few minutes she was making the ten-foot hike unaided;
soon she was parading around the house, flaunting her new skill.
Some liar's logic, a wisp of optimism as fragile as the scent of tropical blossoms that came through the window (a euphoria perhaps engendered by the pill Fritzie had given her), consoled her for a moment.
Amy had to be safe, had to come back to them--if only to reap that share of life's experiences that were her due, if only to give her parents another chance to do better by her.
Through the swathings of terror, she jabbed deceit's sharp point--Amy would be reborn, a new child, with new parents, living under new circumstances.
The comfort was short-lived, yet she found herself returning to the assurance whenever her imagination forced images on her too awful to contemplate without the prop of illusion.
Gazing at her husband's drugged body, his chest rising and falling in mindless rhythms, she saw the grandeur of his fictional world, that lush garden from which he plucked flowers and herbs.
She envied him.
She admired him.
In the darkness, she saw him stirring.
He seemed to be muttering, his voice surprisingly clear.
Y'all should have let me take that money out, Andrus said.
'nother minute I'd have been fine.
H'all should have let me do it.
Laura touched his hand.
Yes, I know, Fritzie.
I should have.
Tuesday
The heat intensified on Tuesday.
Southern California gasped and blinked under an autumn hot spell, drier, more enervating, more laden with man's contrived impurities than the worst days of the summer past.
It could continue this way, hitting 106 and more in the Valley, Joe McFeeley knew, into October.
He and Irvin Moll were sipping coffee at the breakfast bar.
Both had been up since 7:00--Irv on the early-morning watch, McFeeley unable to sleep during his four-hour relief.
The night before, they had telephoned the Andrus maid, Selena Masters, and she had arrived early, bursting her vigorous presence into the silent house with an assurance that amused McFeeley and confounded Moll.
The latter, thanking her for the coffee, had winked and muttered, Sure 'nuff, honey.
Selena was the wrong woman for these crudities.
With a hard eye, she informed Moll: Don't sure 'nuff me, officer.
I'm honey only to my husband, understand?
Sergeant Moll understood.
The maid was very black and very energetic, trim in a yellow pique uniform.
Her speech was barren of southernisms;
she was one of Eliot Sparling's neutralized minorities, adopting the rolling R's and constricted vowels of Los Angeles.
Not seeing her dark intelligent face, one would have gauged the voice as that of a Westwood Village matron, ten years out of Iowa.
After she had served the detectives coffee and toast (they politely declined eggs, uncomfortable about their tenancy), she settled down with a morning newspaper and began reading the stock market quotations.
While she was thus engaged, McFeeley questioned her about her whereabouts the previous day, any recollections she had of people hanging around, of overcurious delivery boys or repairmen, of strange cars cruising the neighborhood.
She answered him precisely, missing not a beat in her scrutiny of the financial reports.
Selena Masters, Joe realized, was her own woman.
She was the only kind of Negro Laura Andrus would want around: independent, unservile, probably charging double what ordinary maids did for housework--and doubly efficient.
When the parents emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, the maid greeted them quietly.
I'm awful sorry about what's happened, Selena said.
Maybe today'll be a good-news day.
She charged off to the bedrooms.
Moll took his coffee into the nursery.
During the night, a phone company technician had deadened the bells and installed red blinkers on the phones.
Someone would have to remain in the office continually.
McFeeley greeted the parents, then studied his notebook.
He wanted to take the mother to headquarters at once and start her on the mug file.
Sleep well?
He asked.
Andrus did not answer him.
His face was bloated with drugging, redder than normal.
The woman had the glassy look of an invalid, as if she had not slept at all.
Oh--we managed, she said.
I'm a little groggy.
Did anything happen during the night?
Few crank calls, McFeeley said.
A couple of tips we're running down--nothing promising.
We can expect more of the same.
Too bad your number is in the directory.
Didn't occur to me my child would be kidnaped when I had it listed, Andrus muttered.
He settled on the sofa with his coffee, warming his hands on the cup, although the room was heavy with heat.
The three had little to say to each other.
The previous night's horror--the absolute failure, overcast with the intrusions of the press, had left them all with a wan sense of uselessness, of play-acting.
Sipping their coffee, discussing the weather, the day's shopping, Fritzie's commitments at the network (all of which he would cancel), they avoided the radio, the morning TV news show, even the front page of the Santa Luisa Register, resting on the kitchen bar.
Kidnaper spurns ransom;
Amy still missing.
Once, Andrus walked by it, hastily scanned the bold black headline and the five-column lead of the article (by Duane Bosch, staff correspondent--age not given), and muttered: We a buncha national celebrities.
McFeeley told the parents he would escort them to police headquarters in a half hour.
Before that, he wanted to talk to the neighbors.
He did not want to bring the Andruses to the station house too early--Rheinholdt had summoned a press conference, and he didn't want them subjected to the reporters again.
He could think of nothing else to tell them: no assurances, no hopeful hints at great discoveries that day.
When the detective left, Andrus phoned his secretary to cancel his work and to advise the network to get a substitute director for his current project.
Mrs. Andrus was talking to the maid, arranging for her to come in every day, instead of the four days she now worked.
Outside, only a handful of reporters remained.
The bulk of the press corps was covering Rheinholdt's conference.
In contrast to the caravan of the previous night, there were only four cars parked across the street.
Two men he did not recognize were sipping coffee and munching sweet rolls.
He did not see Sparling, or DeGroot, or Ringel, or any of the feverish crew that had so harassed him twelve hours ago.
However, the litter remained, augmented by several dozen lunchroom suppers.
The street cleaner had not yet been around.
One of the reporters called to him: Anything new, Lieutenant?
And he ignored him, skirting the parked cars and walking up the path to the Skopas house.
When McFeeley was halfway to the door, the proprietor emerged--a mountainous, dark man, his head thick with resiny black hair, his eyes like two of the black olives he imported in boatloads.
McFeeley identified himself.
The master of the house, his nourished face unrevealing, consented to postpone his departure a few minutes to talk to the detective.
Inside, as soon as Mr. Skopas had disclosed--in a hoarse whisper--the detective's errand, his family gathered in a huddle, forming a mass of dark flesh on and around a brocaded sofa which stood at one side of a baroque fireplace.
Flanked by marble urns and alabaster lamps, they seemed to be posing for a tribal portrait.
It was amazing how they had herded together for protection: an enormous matriarch in a quilted silk wrapper, rising from the breakfast table;
a gross boy in his teens, shuffling in from the kitchen with a sandwich in his hands;
a girl in her twenties, fat and sullen, descending the marble staircase;
then all four gathering on the sofa to face the inquisitor.
They answered him in monosyllables, nods, occasionally muttering in Greek to one another, awaiting the word from Papa, who restlessly cracked his knuckles, anxious to stuff himself into his white Cadillac and burst off to the freeway.
No, they hadn't seen anyone around;
no, they didn't know the Andrus family;
yes, they had read about the case;
yes, they had let some reporters use their phone, but they would no longer.
They offered no opinions, volunteered nothing, betrayed no emotions.
Studying them, McFeeley could not help make comparison with the Andrus couple.
The Skopas people seemed to him of that breed of human beings whose insularity frees them from tragedy.
He imagined they were the kind whose tax returns were never examined (if they were, they were never penalized), whose children had no unhappy romances, whose names never knew scandal.
The equation was simple: wealth brought them happiness, and their united front to the world was their warning that they meant to keep everything they had, let no one in on the secrets.
By comparison, Fritzie and Laura Andrus were quivering fledglings.
They possessed no outer fortifications, no hard shells of confidence;
they had enough difficulty getting from day to day, let alone having an awful crime thrust upon them.
Skopas expressed no curiosity over the case, offered no expression of sympathy, made no move to escort McFeely to the door.
All four remained impacted on the sofa until he had left.
He had spoken to Mrs..
Emerson the previous day.
There remained a family named Kahler, owners of a two-story Tudor-style house on the south side of the Andrus home.
Their names had not come up in any discussions with Laura, and he had no idea what they would be like.
McFeeley noted the immaculate lawn and gardens: each blade of grass cropped, bright and firm;
each shrub glazed with good health.
The door was answered by a slender man in his sixties--straight-backed, somewhat clerical in manner, wearing rimless glasses.
When Joe identified himself, he nodded, unsmiling, and ushered him into a sedate living room.
Mrs. Kahler joined them.
She had a dried-out quality--a gray, lean woman, not unattractive.
Both were dressed rather formally.
The man wore a vest and a tie, the woman had on a dark green dress and three strands of pearls.
Funny thing, Mr. Kahler said, when they were seated, when I heard you ringing, I figured it was that guy down the block, Hausman.
McFeeley looked puzzled.
Kahler continued: I fixed his dog the other day and I guess he's sore, so I expected him to come barging in.
Mr. Kahler went on to explain how Hausman's fox terrier had been making in his flower beds.
The dog refused to be scared off, so Kahler had purchased some small firecrackers.
He would lay in wait in the garage, and when the terrier came scratching around, he'd let fly with a cherry bomb.
Scared the hell out of him, Kahler grinned.
I hit him in the ass once.
Both grinned at the detective.
Finally, all I needed was to throw a little piece of red wood that looked like a firecracker and that dumb dog would run ki-yi-ing for his life.
In the dim underwater light they dressed and straightened up the room, and then they went across the hall to the kitchen.
She was intimidated by the stove.
He found the pilot light and turned on one of the burners for her.
The gas flamed up two inches high.
They found the teakettle.
And put water on to boil and then searched through the icebox.
Several sections of a loaf of dark bread;
butter;
jam;
a tiny cake of ice.
In their search for what turned out to be the right breakfast china but the wrong table silver, they opened every cupboard door in the kitchen and pantry.
While she was settling the teacart, he went back across the hall to their bedroom, opened one of the suitcases, and took out powdered coffee and sugar.
She appeared with the teacart and he opened the windows.
Do you want to call Eugene?
He didn't, but it was not really a question, and so he left the room, walked down the hall to the front of the apartment, hesitated, and then knocked lightly on the closed door of the study.
A sleepy voice answered.
Le petit dejeuner, Harold said, in an accent that did credit to Miss Sloan, his high-school French teacher.
At the same time, his voice betrayed uncertainty about their being here, and conveyed an appeal to whatever is reasonable, peace-loving, and dependable in everybody.
Since ordinary breakfast-table conversation was impossible, it was at least something that they were able to offer Eugene the sugar bowl with their sugar in it, and the plate of bread and butter, and that Eugene could return the pitcher of hot milk to them handle first.
Eugene put a spoonful of powdered coffee into his cup and then filled it with hot water.
Stirring, he said: I am sorry that my work prevents me from doing anything with you today.
They assured him that they did not expect or need to be entertained.
Harold put a teaspoonful of powdered coffee in his cup and filled it with hot water, and then, stirring, he sat back in his chair.
The chair creaked.
Every time he moved or said something, the chair creaked again.
Eugene was not entirely silent, or openly rude--unless asking Harold to move to another chair and placing himself in the fauteuil that creaked so alarmingly was an act of rudeness.
It went right on creaking under his own considerable weight, and all it needed, Harold thought, was for somebody to fling himself back in a fit of laughter and that would be the end of it.
Through the open window they heard sounds below in the street: cartwheels, a tired horse's plodding step, voices.
Harold indicated the photograph on the wall and asked what church the stone sculpture was in.
Eugene told him and he promptly forgot.
They passed the marmalade, the bread, the black-market butter, back and forth.
Nothing was said about hotels or train journeys.
Eugene offered Harold his car, to use at any time he cared to, and when this offer was not accepted, the armchair creaked.
They all three had another cup of coffee.
Eugene was in his pajamas and dressing gown, and on his large feet he wore yellow Turkish slippers that turned up at the toes.
Excuse me, he said in Berlitz English, and got up and left them, to bathe and dress.
The first shrill ring of the telephone brought Harold out into the hall.
He realized that he had no idea where the telephone was.
At that moment the bathroom door flew open and Eugene came out, with his face lathered for shaving, and strode down the hall, tying the sash of his dressing gown as he went.
The telephone was in the study but the ringing came from the hall.
Between the telephone and the wall plug there was sixty feet of cord, and when the conversation came to an end, Eugene carried the instrument with him the whole length of the apartment, to his bathroom, where it rang three more times while he was shaving and in the tub.
Before he left the apartment he knocked on their door and asked if there was anything he could do for them.
Harold shook his head.
Sabine called a few minutes ago, Eugene said.
She wants you and Barbara to have dinner with her tomorrow night.
He handed Harold a key to the front door, and cautioned him against leaving it unlocked while they were out of the apartment.
When enough time had elapsed so that there was little likelihood of his returning for something he had forgotten, Harold went out into the hall and stood looking into one room after another.
In the room next to theirs was a huge cradle, of mahogany, ornately carved and decorated with gold leaf.
It was the most important-looking cradle he had ever seen.
Then came their bathroom, and then a bedroom that, judging by the photographs on the walls, must belong to Mme Cestre.
A young woman who looked like Alix, with her two children.
Alix and Eugene on their wedding day.
Matching photographs in oval frames of Mme Bonenfant and an elderly man who must be Alix's grandfather.
Mme Vienot, considerably younger and very different.
The schoolboy.
And a gray-haired man whose glance--direct, lifelike, and mildly accusing--was contradicted by the gilt and black frame.
It was the kind of frame that is only put around the photograph of a dead person.
Professor Cestre, could it be?
With the metal shutters closed, the dining room was so dark that it seemed still night in there.
One of the drawing-room shutters was partly open and he made out the shapes of chairs and sofas, which seemed to be upholstered in brown or russet velvet.
The curtains were of the same material, and there were some big oil paintings--portraits in the style of Lancret and Boucher.
Though, taken individually, the big rooms were, or seemed to be, square, the apartment as a whole formed a triangle.
The apex, the study where Eugene slept, was light and bright and airy and cheerful.
The window looked out on the Place Redoute--it was the only window of the apartment that did.
Looking around slowly, he saw a marble fireplace, a desk, a low bookcase of mahogany with criss-crossed brass wire instead of glass panes in the doors.
The daybed Eugene had slept in, made up now with its dark-brown velours cover and pillows.
The portable record player with a pile of classical records beside it.
Beethoven's Fifth was the one on top.
Da-da-da-dum Music could not be Eugene's passion.
Besides, the records were dusty.
He tried the doors of the bookcase.
Locked.
The titles he could read easily through the criss-crossed wires: works on theology, astral physics, history, biology, political science.
No poetry.
No novels.
He moved over to the desk and stood looking at the papers on it but not touching anything.
The clock on the mantel piece was scandalized and ticked so loudly that he glanced at it over his shoulder and then quickly left the room.
The concierge called out to them as they were passing through the foyer.
Her quarters were on the right as you walked into the building, and her small front room was clogged with heavy furniture--a big, round, oak dining table and chairs, a buffet, with a row of unclaimed letters inserted between the mirror and its frame.
The suitcases had come while they were out, and had been put in their room, the concierge said.
He waited until they were inside the elevator and then said: Now what do we do?
Call the Vouillemont, I guess.
I guess.
Rather than sit around waiting for the suitcases to be delivered, they had gone sight-seeing.
They went to the Flea Market, expecting to find the treasures of Europe, and found instead a duplication of that long double row of booths in Tours.
Cheap clothing and junk of every sort, as far as the eye could see.
They looked, even so.
Looked at everything.
Barbara bought some cotton aprons, and Harold bought shoestrings.
They had lunch at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the intersection of two broad, busy, unpicturesque streets, and coming home they got lost in the Metro;
it took them over an hour to get back to the station where they should have changed, in order to take the line that went to the Place Redoute.
It was the end of the afternoon when he took the huge key out of his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
When he opened the door, there stood Eugene, on his way out of the apartment.
He was wearing sneakers and shorts and an open-collared shirt, and in his hand he carried a little black bag.
He did not explain where he was going, and they did not ask.
Instead, they went on down the hall to their room.
Do you think he could be having an affair?
Barbara asked, as they heard the front door close.
Oh no, Harold said, shocked.
Well, this is France, after all.
I know, but there must be some other explanation.
He's probably spending the evening with friends.
And for that he needs a little bag?
They went shopping in the neighborhood, and bought two loaves of bread with the ration coupons they had been given in Blois, and some cheese, and a dozen eggs, and a bag of oranges from a peddler in the Place Redoute--the first oranges they had seen since they landed.
They had Vermouth, sitting in front of a cafe.
When they got home Harold was grateful for the stillness in the apartment, and thought how, under different circumstances, they might have stayed on here, in these old-fashioned, high-ceilinged rooms that reminded him of the Irelands' apartment in the East Eighties.
They could have been perfectly happy here for ten whole days.
He went down the hall to Eugene's bathroom, to turn on the hot-water heater, and on the side of the tub he saw a pair of blue wool swimming trunks.
He felt them.
They were damp.
He reached out and felt the bath towel hanging on the towel rack over the tub.
Damp also.
He looked around the room and then called out: Come here, quick?
What is it?
Barbara asked, standing in the doorway.
I've solved the mystery of the little bag.
There it is and there is what was in it.
But where do people go swimming in Paris?
That boat in the river, maybe.
What boat?
There's a big boat anchored near the Place De La Concorde, with a swimming pool in it--didn't you notice it?
But if he has time to go swimming, he had time to be with us.
She looked at him in surprise.
I know, he said, reading her mind.
I don't know what I'm going to do with you.
It's because we are in France, he said, and know so few people.
So something like this matters more than it would at home.
Also, he was so nice when he was nice.
All because I didn't feel like dancing.
I don't think it was that, really.
Then what was it?
I don't know.
I wish I did.
The tweed coat, maybe.
The thing about Eugene is that he's very proud.
And the thing about hurt feelings, the wet bathing suit pointed out, is that the person who has them is not quite the innocent party he believes himself to be.
For instance--what about all those people Harold Rhodes went toward unhesitatingly, as if this were the one moment they would ever have together, their one chance of knowing each other?
Fortunately, the embarrassing questions raised by objects do not need to be answered, or we would all have to go sleep in the open fields.
And in any case, answers may clarify but they do not change anything.
He brought with him a mixture of myrrh and aloes, of about a hundred pounds' weight.
They took Jesus's body, then, and wrapped it in winding-clothes with the spices;
that is how the Jews prepare a body for burial.
Listed as present at the Descent were Mary, Mary's sister, Mary Magdalene, John, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus.
Search as he might, he could find no place where the Bible spoke of a moment when Mary could have been alone with Jesus.
Mostly the scene was crowded with mourners, such as the dramatic Dell'Arca Lamentation in Bologna, where the grief-stricken spectators had usurped Mary's last poignant moment.
In his concept there could be no one else present.
His first desire was to create a mother and son alone in the universe.
When might Mary have had that moment to hold her child on her lap?
Perhaps after the soldiers had laid him on the ground, while Joseph of Arimathea was at Pontius Pilate's asking for Christ's body, Nicodemus was gathering his mixture of myrrh and aloes, and the others had gone home to mourn.
Those who saw his finished Pieta would take the place of the biblical witnesses.
They would feel what Mary was undergoing.
There would be no halos, no angels.
These would be two human beings, whom God had chosen.
He felt close to Mary, having spent so long concentrating on the beginning of her journey.
Now she was intensely alive, anguished;
her son was dead.
Even though he would later be resurrected, he was at this moment dead indeed, the expression on his face reflecting what he had gone through on the cross.
In his sculpture therefore it would not be possible for him to project anything of what Jesus felt for his mother;
only what Mary felt for her son.
Jesus' inert body would be passive, his eyes closed.
Mary would have to carry the human communication.
This seemed right to him.
It was a relief to shift in his mind to technical problems.
Since his Christ was to be life size, how was Mary to hold him on her lap without the relationship seeming ungainly?
His Mary would be slender of limb and delicate of proportion, yet she must hold this full-grown man as securely and convincingly as she would a child.
There was only one way to accomplish this: by design, by drawing diagrams and sketches in which he probed the remotest corner of his mind for creative ideas to carry his concept.
He started by making free sketches to loosen up his thinking so that images would appear on paper.
Visually, these approximated what he was feeling within himself.
At the same time he started walking the streets, peering at the people passing or shopping at the stalls, storing up fresh impressions of what they looked like, how they moved.
In particular he sought the gentle, sweet-faced nuns, with head coverings and veils coming to the middle of their foreheads, remembering their expressions until he reached home and set them down on paper.
Discovering that draperies could be designed to serve structural purposes, he began a study of the anatomy of folds.
No fold could be accidental, each turn of the drapery had to serve organically, to cover the Madonna's slender legs and feet so that they would give substantive support to Christ's body, to intensify her inner turmoil.
When the cloth dried and stiffened, he saw what adjustments had to be made.
So that's sculpture, commented Argiento wryly, when he had sluiced down the floor for a week, making mud pies.
Michelangelo grinned.
See, Argiento, if you control the way these folds are bunched, like this, or made to flow, you can enrich the body attitudes.
They can have as much tactile appeal as flesh and bone.
He went into the Jewish quarter, wanting to draw Hebraic faces so that he could reach a visual understanding of how Christ might have looked.
The Jewish section was in Trastevere, near the Tiber at the church of San Francesco a Ripa.
The colony had been small until the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 drove many Jews into Rome.
Here, for the most part, they were well treated, as a reminder of the Old Testament heritage of Christianity;
many of their gifted members were prominent in the Vatican as physicians, musicians, bankers.
The men did not object to his sketching them while they went about their work, but no one could be persuaded to come to his studio to pose.
He was told to ask for Rabbi Melzi at the synagogue on Saturday afternoon.
Michelangelo found the rabbi in the room of study, a gentle old man with a white beard and luminous grey eyes, robed in black gabardine with a skullcap on his head.
He was reading from the Talmud with a group of men from his congregation.
When Michelangelo explained why he had come, Rabbi Melzi replied gravely:
The Bible forbids us to bow down to or to make graven images.
That is why our creative people give their time to literature, not to painting or sculpture.
But, Rabbi Melzi, you don't object to others creating works of art?
Not at all.
Each religion has its own tenets.
I am carving a Pieta from white Carrara marble.
I wish to make Jesus an authentic Jew.
I cannot accomplish this if you will not help me.
The rabbi said thoughtfully, I would not want my people to get in trouble with the Church.
I am working for the Cardinal of San Dionigi.
I'm sure he would approve.
What kind of models would you prefer?
Workmen.
In their mid-thirties.
Not bulky laborers, but sinewy men.
With intelligence.
And sensitivity.
Rabbi Melzi smiled at him with infinitely old but merry eyes.
Leave me your address.
I will send you the best the quarter has to offer.
Michelangelo hurried to Sangallo's solitary bachelor room with his sketches, asked the architect to design a stand which would simulate the seated Madonna.
Sangallo studied the drawings and improvised a trestle couch.
Michelangelo bought some scrap lumber.
Together he and Argiento built the stand, covering it with blankets.
His first model arrived at dusk.
He hesitated for a moment when Michelangelo asked him to disrobe, so Michelangelo gave him a piece of toweling to wrap around his loins, led him to the kitchen to take off his clothes.
He then draped him over the rough stand, explained that he was supposed to be recently dead, and was being held on his mother's lap.
The model quite plainly thought Michelangelo crazy;
only the instructions from his rabbi kept him from bolting.
But at the end of the sitting, when Michelangelo showed him the quick, free drawings, with the mother roughed in, holding her son, the model grasped what Michelangelo was after, and promised to speak to his friends.
He worked for two hours a day with each model sent by the rabbi.
Mary presented quite a different problem.
Though this sculpture must take place thirty-three years after her moment of decision, he could not conceive of her as a woman in her mid-fifties, old, wrinkled, broken in body and face by labor or worry.
His image of the Virgin had always been that of a young woman, even as had his memory of his mother.
Jacopo Galli introduced him into several Roman homes.
Here he sketched, sitting in their flowing gowns of linen and silk, young girls not yet twenty, some about to be married, some married a year or two.
Since the Santo Spirito hospital had taken only men, he had had no experience in the study of female anatomy;
but he had sketched the women of Tuscany in their fields and homes.
He was able to discern the body lines of the Roman women under their robes.
He spent concentrated weeks putting his two figures together: a Mary who would be young and sensitive, yet strong enough to hold her son on her lap;
and a Jesus who, though lean, was strong even in death a look he remembered well from his experience in the dead room of Santo Spirito.
He drew toward the composite design from his meticulously accurate memory, without need to consult his sketches.
Soon he was ready to go into a three-dimensional figure in clay.
Here he would have free expression because the material could be moved to distort forms.
When he wanted to emphasize, or get greater intensity, he added or subtracted clay.
Next he turned to wax because there was a similarity of wax to marble in tactile quality and translucence.
He respected each of these approach techniques, and kept them in character: his quill drawings had a scratchiness, suggesting skin texture;
the clay he used plastically to suggest soft moving flesh, as in an abdomen, in a reclining torso;
the wax he smoothed over to give the body surface an elastic pull.
Yet he never allowed these models to become fixed in his mind;
they remained rough starting points.
When carving he was charged with spontaneous energy;
too careful or detailed studies in clay and wax would have glued him down to a mere enlarging of his model.
The true surge had to be inside the marble itself.
Drawing and models were his thinking.
Carving was action.
10.
The arrangement with Argiento was working well, except that sometimes Michelangelo could not figure who was master and who apprentice.
Argiento had been trained so rigorously by the Jesuits that Michelangelo was unable to change his habits: up before dawn to scrub the floors, whether they were dirty or not;
water boiling on the fire for washing laundry every day, the pots scoured with river sand after each meal.
Argiento, this is senseless, he complained, not liking to work on the wet floors, particularly in cold weather.
You're too clean.
Scrub the studio once a week.
That's enough.
No, said Argiento stolidly.
Every day.
Before dawn.
I was taught.
And God help anyone who tries to unteach you!
Grumbled Michelangelo;
yet he knew that he had nothing to grumble about, for Argiento made few demands on him.
The boy was becoming acquainted with the contadini families that brought produce into Rome.
On Sundays he would walk miles into the campagna to visit with them, and in particular to see their horses.
The one thing he missed from his farm in the Po Valley was the animals;
frequently he would take his leave of Michelangelo by announcing:
Today I go see the horses.
It took a piece of bad luck to show Michelangelo that the boy was devoted to him.
He was crouched over his anvil in the courtyard getting his chisels into trim, when a splinter of steel flew into his eye and imbedded itself in his pupil.
He stumbled into the house, eyes burning like fire.
Argiento made him lie down on the bed, brought a pan of hot water, dipped some clean white linen cloth and applied it to extract the splinter.
Though the pain was considerable Michelangelo was not too concerned.
He assumed he could blink the splinter out.
But it would not come.
Argiento never left his side, keeping the water boiled, applying hot compresses throughout the night.
By the second day Michelangelo began to worry;
and by the second night he was in a state of panic: he could see nothing out of the afflicted eye.
At dawn Argiento went to Jacopo Galli.
Galli arrived with his family surgeon, Maestro Lippi.
The surgeon carried a cage of live pigeons.
He told Argiento to take a bird out of the cage, cut a large vein under its wing, let the blood gush into Michelangelo's injured eye.
The surgeon came back at dusk, cut the vein of a second pigeon, again washed out the eye.
Beth was very still and her breath came in small jerking gasps.
The thin legs twitched convulsively once, then Kate felt the little body stiffening in her arms and heard one strangled sound.
The scant flesh grew cool beneath her frantic hands.
The child was gone.
When Juanita awoke, Kate was still rocking the dead child, still crooning in disbelief, No, no, oh, no!
They put Kate to bed and wired Jonathan and sent for the young Presbyterian minister.
He sat beside Kate's bed with the others throughout the morning, talking, talking of God's will, while Kate lay staring angrily at him.
When he told her God had called the child to Him, she rejected his words rebelliously.
Few of the neighbors came, but Mrs. Tussle came, called by tragedy.
It always comes in threes, she sighed heavily.
Trouble never comes but in threes.
They held the funeral the next morning from the crossroads church and buried the little box in the quiet family plot.
Kate moved through all the preparations and services in a state of bewilderment.
She would not accept the death of such a little child.
God called her to Him, the minister had said.
God would not do that, Kate thought stubbornly.
Jonathan's letter came, as she knew it would, and he had accepted their child's death as another judgment from God against both Kate and himself.
In blind panic of grief she accepted Jonathan's dictum, and believed in her desperation that she had been cursed by God.
She held Jonathan's letter, his words burning like a brand, and knew suddenly that the bonds between them were severed.
She had nothing left but her duty to his land and his son.
Joel came and sat mutely with her, sharing her pain and anguish, averting his eyes from the ice packs on her bosom.
Juanita and Mrs. Tussle kept Kate in bed a week until her milk dried.
When she returned to life in the big house she felt shriveled of all emotion save dedication to duty.
She disciplined herself daily to do what must be done.
She had even steeled herself to keep Juanita upstairs in the nurse's room off the empty nursery, although the girl tried to insist on moving back to the quarters to spare Kate remembrance of the baby's death.
Juanita drooped about the place, wearing a haunted, brooding look, which Kate attributed to the baby's death, until the day a letter came for her addressed to Miss Juanita Fitzroy, bearing a Grafton postmark.
Seeing the slanting hand, Kate knew uneasily that it was from the Yankee colonel.
The Federal forces had taken Parkersburg and Grafton from the Rebels and were moving to take all the mountains.
Kate tried to contain her curiosity and foreboding at what the letter portended, at what involvement existed for Juanita.
Uncle Randolph and Joel had replanted the bottom lands with difficulty, for more of the slaves, including Annie, had sneaked off when the soldiers broke camp.
Joel worked like a field hand in the afternoons after school.
He had been at lessons in the schoolhouse since they returned from Harpers Ferry.
Kate felt she had deserted the boy in her own loss.
She loved him and missed his company.
Uncle Randolph had been riding out every evening on some secret business of his own.
What it was Kate could not fathom.
He claimed to be visiting the waterfront saloon at the crossroads to play cards and drink with his cronies, but Kate had not smelled brandy on him since Mrs. Lattimer's funeral.
Joel knew what he was about, however.
You're gonna get caught, she heard Joel say to Uncle Randolph by the pump one morning.
Not this old fox, chuckled Uncle Randolph.
Everybody knows I'm just a harmless, deaf old man who takes to drink.
I aim to keep a little whisky still back in the ridge for my pleasure.
Whiskey still, my foot, said Joel.
You're back there riding with the guerrillas, the Moccasin Rangers.
Hush, said Uncle Randolph, smiling, or I'll give you another black eye.
He patted the eye Joel had had blackened in a fight over being Rebel at the crossroads some days back.
Kate had no idea what they were talking of, although she had seen the blue lights and strange fires burning and winking on the ridges at night, had heard horsemen on the River Road and hill trails through the nights till dawn.
Stranger, Uncle Randolph began riding home nights with a jug strapped to his saddle, drunkenly singing Old Dan Tucker at the top of his voice.
Hearing his voice ring raucously up from the road, Kate would await him anxiously and watch perplexed as he walked into the house, cold sober.
What he was about became clear to her with the circulation of another broadside proclamation by General McClellan, threatening reprisals against Rebel guerrillas.
She was taken up in worry for the reckless old man.
Kate drew more and more on her affection for Joel through the hot days of summer work.
She had taken him out of the schoolhouse and closed the school for the summer, after she saw Miss Snow crack Joel across the face with a ruler for letting a snake loose in the schoolroom.
Kate had walked past the school on her morning chores and had seen the whole incident, had seen Joel's burning humiliation before Miss Snow's cold, bespectacled wrath.
He had the hardest pains of growing before him now, as he approached twelve.
These would be his hardest years, she knew, and he missed his father desperately.
She tried to find some way to draw him out, to help him.
Whenever she found time, she went blackberry picking with him, and they would come home together, mouths purple, arms and faces scratched, tired enough to forget grief for another day.
He tended the new colts Beau had sired.
He helped Kate and Juanita enlarge the flower garden in the side yard, where they sometimes sat in the still evenings watching the last fat bees working against the summer's purple dusk.
No one went much to the crossroads now except Uncle Randolph.
They stayed in their own world on the bluff, waiting for letters and the peddler, bringing the news.
Jonathan wrote grimly of the destruction of Harpers Ferry before they abandoned it;
of their first engagement at Falling Waters after Old Jack's First Brigade had destroyed all the rolling stock of the B & O Railroad.
The men were restive, he wrote, ready to take the battle to the enemy as Jackson wished.
The peddler came bawling his wares and told them of the convention in Wheeling, Which had formed a new state government by declaring the government at Richmond in the east illegal because they were traitors.
Dangling his gaudy trinkets before them, he told of the Rebel losses in the mountains, at Cheat and Rich mountains both, and the Federal march on Beverly.
Cleaned all them Rebs out'n the hills, they did!
They won't never git over inter loyal western Virginia, them traitors!
The Federals is making everybody take the oath of loyalty around these parts too, he crowed.
After he had gone, Kate asked Uncle Randolph proudly, Would you take their oath?
And the old man had given a sly and wicked laugh and said, Hell, yes!
I think I've taken it about fifty times already!
Winking at Joel's look of shock.
Her mother wrote Kate of her grief at the death of Kate's baby and at Jonathan's decision to go with the South And, dear Kate, she wrote, poor Dr. Breckenridge's son Robert is now organizing a militia company to go South, to his good father's sorrow.
Maj. Anderson of Fort Sumter is home and recruiting volunteers for the U.S. Army.
In spite of the fact that the state legislature voted us neutral, John Hunt Morgan is openly flying the Confederate flag over his woolen factory!
Rumor of a big battle spread like a grassfire up the valley.
Accounts were garbled at the telegraph office when they sent old George down to Parkersburg for the news.
All dey know down dere is it were at Manassas Junction and it were a big fight, the old man told them.
In the next few days they had cause to rejoice.
It had been a big battle, and the Confederate forces had won.
Jonathan and Ben were not on the lists of the dead or on that of the missing.
Kate and Mrs. Tussle waited for letters anxiously.
Joel went to the crest of a hill behind the house and lit an enormous victory bonfire to celebrate.
When Kate hurried in alarm to tell him to put it out, she saw other dots of flames among the western Virginia hills from the few scattered fires of the faithful.
They all prayed now that the North would realize that peace must come, for Virginia had defended her land victoriously.
The week after Manassas the sound of horses in the yard brought Kate up in shock from an afternoon's rest when she saw the Federal soldiers from her upstairs window.
They had already lost most of their corn, she thought.
Were they to be insulted again because of the South's great victory?
She remembered McClellan's last proclamation as she hurried fearfully down the stairs.
At the landing she saw Juanita, her face flushed pink with excitement, run down the hall from the kitchen to the front door.
Juanita stopped just inside the open door, her hand to her mouth.
As Kate came swiftly down the stairs to the hall she saw Colonel Marsh framed in the doorway, his face set in the same vulnerable look Juanita wore.
Kate greeted him gravely, uneasy with misgivings at his visit.
What brings you here again, Colonel Marsh?
She asked, taking him and Juanita into the parlor where the shutters were closed against the afternoon sun.
I stopped to say goodbye, Mrs. Lattimer, and to tell you how sorry I was to hear about your baby.
I wish our doctor could have saved her.
It was a terrible loss to me, said Kate quietly, feeling the pain twist again at the mention, knowing now that Juanita must have written to him at Grafton.
Where will you go now that you're leaving Parkersburg?
She asked him, seeing Juanita's eyes grow bleak.
As you know, General McClellan has been occupying Beverly.
He has notified me that he has orders to go to Washington to take over the Army of the Potomac.
I am to go to Washington to serve with him.
When are you to leave?
Kate asked, watching them both now anxiously.
Their eyes betrayed too much of their emotions, she thought sadly.
Tomorrow.
Would you permit Juanita to walk about the grounds with me for a short spell, Mrs. Lattimer?
Stay here in the parlor where it's cool, she said, trying to be calm.
It would be better for Joel and Uncle Randolph and Mrs. Tussle not to see them.
Kate went back and reminded the kitchen women of the supper preparations.
Then she took iced lemonade to Marsh's young aide where he sat in the cool of the big trees around the flower garden.
When Marsh called to his aide and the pair rode off down the River Road where the gentians burned blue, Juanita was shaken and trying not to cry.
She sought Kate out upstairs, her lips trembling.
He wants me to go with him tomorrow, she told Kate.
What do you want to do?
Kate asked, uneasy at the gravity of the girl's dilemma.
I could go with him.
He knows me as your niece, which, of course, I am.
But I am a slave!
You own me.
It's your decision, said Juanita, holding her face very still, trying to contain the bitterness of her voice as she enunciated her words too distinctly.
No, the decision is yours.
I have held your papers of manumission since I married Mr. Lattimer.
The red glow from the cove had died out of the sky.
The two in the bed knew each other as old people know the partners with whom they have shared the same bed for many years, and they needed to say no more.
The things left unsaid they both felt deeply, and with a sigh they fell back on the well-stuffed pillows.
Anita put out the remaining candles with a long snuffer, and in the smell of scented candlewick, the comforting awareness of each other's bodies, the retained pattern of dancers and guests remembered, their minds grew numb and then empty of images.
They slept--Mynheer with a marvelously high-pitched snoring, the damn seahorse ivory teeth watching him from a bedside table.
In the ballroom below, the dark had given way to moonlight coming in through the bank of French windows.
It was a delayed moon, but now the sky had cleared of scudding black and the stars sugared the silver-gray sky.
Martha Schuyler, old, slow, careful of foot, came down the great staircase, dressed in her best lace-drawn black silk, her jeweled shoe buckles held forward.
Well, I'm here at last, she said, addressing the old portraits on the walls.
I don't hear the music.
I am getting deaf, I must admit it.
She came to the ballroom and stood on the two carpeted steps that led down to it.
Where is everyone?
I say, where is everyone?
Peter, you lummox, you've forgot to order the musicians.
She stood there, a large old woman, smiling at the things she would say to him in the morning, this big foolish baby of a son.
There were times now, like this, when she lost control of the time count and moved freely back and forth into three generations.
Was it a birthday ball?
When Peter had reached his majority at eighteen?
Or was it her own first ball as mistress of this big house, a Van Rensselaer bride from way upstate near Albany, from Rensselaerwyck.
And this handsome booby, staring and sweating, was he her bridegroom?
Martha picked up the hem of her gown and with eyes closed she slowly began to dance a stately minuet around the ballroom.
David Cortlandt was tired beyond almost the limits of his flesh.
He had ridden hard from Boston, and he was not used to horseback.
Now, driving the horse and sulky borrowed from Mynheer Schuyler, he felt as if every bone was topped by burning oil and that every muscle was ready to dissolve into jelly and leave his big body helpless and unable to move.
The road leading south along the river was shaded with old trees, and in the moonlight the silvery landscape was like a setting for trolls and wood gods rather than the Hudson River Valley of his boyhood memories.
He slapped the reins on the back of the powerful gray horse and held on as the sulky's wheels hit a pothole and came out with a jolt and went on.
He would cross to Manhattan, to Harlem Heights, before morning.
There a certain farmhouse was a station for the Sons of Liberty.
He would send on by trusted messenger the dispatches with their electrifying news.
And he would sleep, sleep, and never think of roads and horses' sore haunches, of colonial wars.
Strange how everything here fitted back into his life, even if he had been away so long.
Mynheer, Sir Francis, the valley society, the very smell of the river on his right purling along to the bay past fish weirs and rocks, and ahead the sleepy ribbon of moon-drenched road.
A mist was walking on the water, white as cotton, but with a blending and merging grace.
Ahead there was a stirring of sudden movement at a crossroads.
David reached for the pair of pistols in the saddlebags at his feet.
He pulled out one of them and cocked it.
A strange wood creature came floating up from a patch of berry bushes.
It was a grotesque hen, five or six feet tall.
It had the features of a man bewhiskered by clumps of loose feathers.
It ran, this apocalyptic beast, on two thin legs, and its wings--were they feathered arms?
-- flapped as it ran.
Its groin was bloody.
Black strips of skin hung from it.
The horse shied at the dreadful thing and flared its nostrils.
David took a firm hand with it.
The creature in feathers looked around and David saw the mad eyes, glazed with an insane fear.
The ungainly bird thing ran away, and to David its croaking sounded like the crowing of a tormented rooster.
Then it was gone.
He drove on, wary and shaken.
The Sons were out tonight.
Chapter 10
New York lay bleaching in the summer sun, and the morning fish hawk, flying in the heated air, saw below him the long triangular wedge of Manhattan Island.
It was thickly settled by fifteen thousand citizens and laid out into pig-infested streets, mostly around the Battery, going bravely north to Wall Street, but giving up and becoming fields and farms in the region of Harlem Heights.
From there it looked across at Westchester County and the Hudson River where the manor houses, estates, and big farms of the original (non-Indian) landowners began.
On the east side of the island of Manhattan the indifferent hawk knew the East River that connected New York Bay with Long Island Sound.
On the western tip of Long Island protruded Brooklyn Heights.
It commanded a view over Manhattan and the harbor.
A fringe of housing and gardens bearded the top of the heights, and behind it were sandy roads leading past farms and hayfields.
Husbandry was bounded by snake-rail fences, and there were grazing cattle.
On the shores north and south, the fishers and mooncursers--smugglers--lived along the churning Great South Bay and the narrow barrier of sand, Fire Island.
The morning hawk, hungry for any eatable, killable, digestible item, kept his eyes on the ring of anchored ships that lay off the shores in the bay, sheltered by the Jersey inlets.
They often threw tidbits overboard.
The larger ships were near Paulus Hook, already being called, by a few, Jersey City.
These were the ships of His Majesty's Navy, herding the hulks of the East Indies merchants and the yachts and ketches of the loyalists.
The news of battle on Breed's Hill had already seeped through, and New York itself was now left in the hands of the local Provincial Congress.
The fish hawk, his wings not moving, circled and glided lower.
The gilt sterns of the men-of-war becoming clearer to him, the sides of the wooden sea walls alternately painted yellow and black, the bronze cannon at the ports.
The captain's gig of H.M.S. Mercury was being rowed to H.M.S. Neptune.
On shore the freed slaves to despotism--the town dwellers--watched the ships and waited.
The chevaux de frise, those sharp stakes and barriers around the fort at the Battery, pointed to a conflict between the town and sea power rolling in glassy swells as the tide came in.
Across the bay the Palisades were heavy in green timber;
their rock paths led down to the Hudson.
Below in the open bay facing Manhattan was Staten Island, gritty with clam shells and mud flats behind which nested farms, cattle barns, and berry thickets.
Today, tomorrow, six months, even perhaps a year
The fish hawk flew on and was lost from sight.
The British ships rolled at anchor, sent out picket boats and waited for orders from London.
Waited for more ships, more lobster-backed infantry, and asked what was to be done with a war of rebellion?
David Cortlandt, having slept away a day and a night, came awake in a plank farmhouse on the Harlem River near Spuyten Duyvil.
He looked out through windowpanes turned a faint violet by sun and weather, looked out at King's Bridge toward Westchester.
The road seemed animated with a few more wagons than usual;
a carriage raising up the choking June dust, and beyond, in a meadow, a local militia company drilling with muskets, Kentuck' rifles, every kind of horse pistol, old sword, or cutlass.
The wraith-like events of the last few days flooded David's mind and he rubbed his unshaved chin and felt again the ache in his kidneys caused by his saddle odyssey from Boston.
Pensive, introspective, he ached.
He had sent the dispatches downtown to the proper people and had slept.
Now there was more to do.
Orders not written down had to be transmitted to the local provincial government.
He scratched his mosquito-plagued neck.
From the saddlebags, hung on a Hitchcock chair, David took out a good English razor, a present from John Hunter.
He found tepid water in a pitcher and a last bit of soap, and he lathered his face and stood stropping the razor on his broad leather belt, its buckle held firm by a knob of the bedpost.
He hoped he was free of self-deception.
Here he was, suddenly caught up in the delirium of a war, in the spite and calumny of Whigs and Tories.
There would be great need soon for his skill as surgeon, but somehow he had not planned to use his knowledge merely for war.
David Cortlandt had certain psychic intuitions that this rebellion was not wholly what it appeared on the surface.
He knew that many were using it for their own ends.
But it did not matter.
He stropped the razor slowly;
what mattered was that a new concept of Americans was being born.
That some men did not want it he could understand.
The moral aridity of merchants made them loyal usually to their ledgers.
Yet some, like Morris Manderscheid, would bankrupt themselves for the new ideas.
Unique circumstances would test us all, he decided.
Injury and ingratitude would occur.
No doubt John Hancock would do well now;
war was a smugglers' heaven.
And what of that poor tarred and feathered wretch he had seen on the road driving down from Schuyler's?
Things like that would increase rather than be done away with.
One had to believe in final events or one was stranded in the abyss of nothing.
He saw with John Hunter now that the perfectability of man was a dream.
Life was a short play of tenebrous shadows.
David began to shave with great sweeping strokes.
Time plays an essential part in our mortality, and suddenly for no reason he could imagine (or admit) the image of Peg laughing filled his mind--so desirable, so lusty, so full of nuances of pleasure and joy.
He drove sensual patterns off, carefully shaving his long upper lip.
It is harder, he muttered, to meditate on man (or woman) than on God.
David finished shaving, washed his face clean of lather, and combed and retied his hair.
He was proud that he had never worn a wig.
More and more of the colonials were wearing their own hair and not using powder.
He felt cheerful again, refreshed;
presentable in his wide-cut brown suit, the well-made riding boots.
It is so easy to falsify sentiment.
In the meadow below, militia officers shouted at their men and on King's Bridge two boys sat fishing.
The future would happen;
he did not have to hurry it by thinking too much.
A man could be tossed outside the dimension of time by a stray bullet these days.
He began to pack the saddlebags.
Burly leathered men and wrinkled women in drab black rags carried on in a primitive way, almost unchanged from feudal times.
Peasants puzzled Andrei.
He wondered how they could go on in poverty, superstition, ignorance, with a complete lack of desire to make either their land or their lives flourish.
Andrei remembered a Bathyran meeting long ago.
Tolek Alterman had returned from the colonies in Palestine and, before the national leadership, exalted the miracles of drying up swamps and irrigating the desert.
A fund-raising drive to buy tractors and machinery was launched.
Andrei remembered that his own reaction had been one of indifference.
Had he found the meaning too late?
It aggravated him.
The land of the Lublin Uplands was rich, but no one seemed to care.
In the unfertile land in Palestine humans broke their backs pushing will power to the brink.
He had sat beside Alexander Brandel at the rostrum of a congress of Zionists.
All of them were there in this loosely knit association of diversified ideologies, and each berated the other and beat his breast for his own approaches.
When Alexander Brandel rose to speak, the hall became silent.
I do not care if your beliefs take you along a path of religion or a path of labor or a path of activism.
We are here because all our paths travel a blind course through a thick forest, seeking human dignity.
Beyond the forest all our paths merge into a single great highway which ends in the barren, eroded hills of Judea.
This is our singular goal.
How we travel through the forest is for each man's conscience.
Where we end our journey is always the same.
We all seek the same thing through different ways--an end to this long night of two thousand years of darkness and unspeakable abuses which will continue to plague us until the Star of David flies over Zion.
This was how Alexander Brandel expressed pure Zionism.
It had sounded good to Andrei, but he did not believe it.
In his heart he had no desire to go to Palestine.
He loathed the idea of drying up swamps or the chills of malaria or of leaving his natural birthright.
Before he went into battle Andrei had told Alex, I only want to be a Pole.
Warsaw is my city, not Tel Aviv.
And now Andrei sat on a train on the way to Lublin and wondered if he was not being punished for his lack of belief.
Warsaw!
He saw the smug eyes of the Home Army chief, Roman, and all the Romans and the faces of the peasants who held only hatred for him.
They had let this black hole of death in Warsaw's heart exist without a cry of protest.
Once there had been big glittering rooms where Ulanys bowed and kissed the ladies' hands as they flirted from behind their fans.
Warsaw!
Warsaw!
Miss Rak.
I am a Jew.
Day by day, week by week, month by month, the betrayal gnawed at Andrei's heart.
He ground his teeth together.
I hate Warsaw, he said to himself.
I hate Poland and all the goddamned mothers' sons of them.
All of Poland is a coffin.
The terrible vision of the ghetto streets flooded his mind.
What matters now?
What is beyond this fog?
Only Palestine, and I will never live to see Palestine because I did not believe.
By late afternoon the train inched into the marshaling yards in the railhead at Lublin, which was filled with lines of cars poised to pour the tools of war to the Russian front.
At a siding, another train which was a familiar sight these days.
Deportees.
Jews.
Andrei's skilled eye sized them up.
They were not Poles.
He guessed by their appearance that they were Rumanians.
He walked toward the center of the city to keep his rendezvous with Styka.
Of all the places in Poland, Andrei hated Lublin the most.
The Bathyrans were all gone.
Few of the native Jews who had lived in Lublin were still in the ghetto.
From the moment of the occupation Lublin became a focal point.
He and Ana watched it carefully.
Lublin generally was the forerunner of what would happen elsewhere.
Early in 1939, Odilo Globocnik, the Gauleiter of Vienna, established SS headquarters for all of Poland.
The Bathyrans ran a check on Globocnik and had only to conclude that he was in a tug of war with Hans Frank and the civilian administrators.
Globocnik built the Death's-Head Corps.
Lublin was the seed of action for the final solution of the Jewish problem.
As the messages from Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann came in through Alfred Funk, Lublin's fountainhead spouted.
A bevy of interlacing lagers, work camps, concentration camps erupted in the area.
Sixty thousand Jewish prisoners of war disappeared into Lublin's web.
Plans went in and out of Lublin, indicating German confusion.
A tale of a massive reservation in the Uplands to hold several million Jews A tale of a plan to ship all Jews to the island of Madagascar Stories of the depravity of the guards at Globocnik's camps struck a chord of terror at the mere mention of their names.
Lipowa 7, Sobibor, Chelmno, Poltawa, Belzec, Krzywy-Rog, Budzyn, Krasnik.
Ice baths, electric shocks, lashings, wild dogs, testicle crushers.
The Death's-Head Corps took in Ukrainian and Baltic Auxiliaries, and the Einsatzkommandos waded knee-deep in blood and turned into drunken, dope-ridden maniacs.
Lublin was their heart.
In the spring of 1942 Operation Reinhard began in Lublin.
The ghetto, a miniature of Warsaw's, was emptied into the camp in the Majdan-Tartarski suburb called Majdanek.
As the camp emptied, it was refilled by a draining of the camps and towns around Lublin, then by deportees from outside Poland.
In and in and in they poured through the gates of Majdanek, but they never left, and Majdanek was not growing any larger.
What was happening in Majdanek?
Was Operation Reinhard the same pattern for the daily trains now leaving the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw?
Was there another Majdanek in the Warsaw area, as they suspected?
Andrei stopped at Litowski Place and looked around quickly at the boundary of civil buildings.
His watch told him he was still early.
Down the boulevard he could see a portion of the ghetto wall.
He found an empty bench, opened a newspaper, and stretched his legs before him.
Krakow Boulevard was filled with black Nazi uniforms and the dirty brownish ones of their Auxiliaries.
Captain Androfski!
Andrei glanced up over the top of the paper and looked into the mustached, homely face of Sergeant Styka.
Styka sat beside him and pumped his hand excitedly.
I have been waiting across the street at the post office since dawn.
I thought you might get in on a morning train.
It's good to see you again, Styka.
Styka studied his captain.
He almost broke into tears.
To him, Andrei Androfski had always been the living symbol of a Polish officer.
His captain was thin and haggard and his beautiful boots were worn and shabby.
Remember to call me Jan, Andrei said.
Styka nodded and sniffed and blew his nose vociferously.
When that woman found me and told me that you needed me I was never so happy since before the war.
I'm lucky that you were still living in Lublin.
Styka grumbled about fate.
For a time I thought of trying to reach the Free Polish Forces, but one thing led to another.
I got a girl in trouble and we had to get married.
Not a bad girl.
So we have three children and responsibilities.
I work at the granary.
Nothing like the old days in the army, but I get by.
Who complains?
Many times I tried to reach you, but I never knew how.
I came to Warsaw twice, but there was that damned ghetto wall
I understand.
Styka blew his nose again.
Were you able to make the arrangements?
Andrei asked.
There is a man named Grabski who is the foreman in charge of the bricklayers at Majdanek.
I did exactly as instructed.
I told him you are on orders from the Home Army to get inside Majdanek so you can make a report to the government in exile in London.
His answer?
Ten thousand zlotys.
Can he be trusted?
He is aware he will not live for twenty-four hours if he betrays you.
Good man, Styka.
Captain Jan must you go inside Majdanek?
The stories Everyone really knows what is happening there.
Not everyone, Styka.
What good will it really do?
I don't know.
Perhaps perhaps there is a shred of conscience left in the human race.
Perhaps if they know the story there will be a massive cry of indignation.
Do you really believe that, Jan?
I have to believe it.
Styka shook his head slowly.
I am only a simple soldier.
I cannot think things out too well.
Until I was transferred into the Seventh Ulanys I was like every other Pole in my feeling about Jews.
I hated you when I first came in.
But my captain might have been a Jew, but he wasn't a Jew.
What I mean is, he was a Pole and the greatest soldier in the Ulanys.
Hell, sir.
The men of our company had a dozen fights defending your name.
You never knew about it, but by God, we taught them respect for Captain Androfski.
Andrei smiled.
Since the war I have seen the way the Germans have behaved and I think, Holy Mother, we have behaved like this for hundreds of years.
Why?
How can you tell an insane man to reason or a blind man to see?
But we are neither blind nor insane.
The men of your company would not allow your name dishonored.
Why do we let the Germans do this?
I have sat many hours with this, Styka.
All I ever wanted was to be a free man in my own country.
I've lost faith, Styka.
I used to love this country and believe that someday we'd win our battle for equality.
But now I think I hate it very much.
And do you really think that the world outside Poland will care any more than we do?
The question frightened Andrei.
Please don't go inside Majdanek.
I'm still a soldier in a very small way, Styka.
It was an answer that Styka understood.
Grabski's shanty was beyond the bridge over the River Bystrzyca near the rail center.
Grabski sat in a sweat-saturated undershirt, cursing the excessive heat which clamped an uneasy stillness before sundown.
He was a square brick of a man with a moon-round face and sunken Polish features.
Flies swarmed around the bowl of lentils in which he mopped thick black bread.
Half of it dripped down his chin.
He washed it down with beer and produced a deep-seated belch.
Well?
Andrei demanded.
Grabski looked at the pair of them.
He grunted a sort of yes answer.
My cousin works at the Labor Bureau.
He can make you work papers.
It will take a few days.
I will get you inside the guard camp as a member of my crew.
I don't know if I can get you into the inner camp.
Maybe yes, maybe no, but you can observe everything from the roof of a barrack we are building.
Grabski slurped his way to the bottom of the soup bowl.
Can't understand why the hell anyone wants to go inside that son-of-a-bitch place.
Orders from the Home Army.
Why?
Nothing there but Jews.
Andrei shrugged.
We get strange orders.
Well--what about the money?
Andrei peeled off five one-thousand-zloty notes.
Grabski had never seen so much money.
His broad flat fingers, petrified into massive sausages by years of bricklaying, snatched the bills clumsily.
This ain't enough.
You get the rest when I'm safely out of Majdanek.
I ain't taking no goddamned chances for no Jew business.
Andrei and Styka were silent.
She was getting real dramatic.
I'd have been more impressed if I hadn't remembered that she'd played Hedda Gabler in her highschool dramatics course.
I didn't want her back on that broken record.
Nothing's free in the whole goddam world, was all I could think of to say.
When I'd delivered myself of that gem there was nothing to do but order up another drink.
I am, she said.
I'd forgotten all about Thelma and the Kentucky Derby and how it was Thelma's fifty dollars I was spending.
It was just me and Eileen getting drunk together like we used to in the old days, and me staring at her across the table crazy to get my hands on her partly because I wanted to wring her neck because she was so ornery but mostly because she was so wonderful to touch.
Drunk or sober she was the most attractive woman in the world for me.
I was crazy about her all over again.
It was the call of the wild all right.
That evening turned out to be hell like all the others.
We moved down Broadway from ginmill to ginmill.
It was the same old routine.
I did have the decency to call up Thelma and tell her I'd met old friends and would be home late.
I could scratch her eyes out, Eileen cried and stamped her foot when I came back from the phone booth.
You know I don't like my men to have other women.
I hate it.
I hate it.
She got so drunk I had to take her home.
It was a walk up on Hudson Street.
She just about made me carry her upstairs and then she clung to me and wouldn't let me go.
There was a man's jacket on the chair and a straw hat on the table.
The place smelt of some kind of hair lotion these pimplike characters use.
What about Ballestre?
I had to shake her to make her listen.
Precious.
What about him?
Suddenly she was very mysterious and dramatic.
Precious and I allow each other absolute freedom.
We are above being jealous.
He's used to me bringing home strange men.
I'll just tell him you're my husband.
He can't object to that.
Well I object.
If he pokes his nose in here I'll slug him.
That really would be funny.
She began to laugh.
She was still laughing when I grabbed her and started rolling her on the bed.
After all I'm made of flesh and blood.
I'm not a plaster saint.
Waking up was horrible.
Never in my life have I felt so remorseful about anything I've done as I did about spending that night with my own wife.
We both had hangovers.
Eileen declared she couldn't lift her head from the pillow.
She lay under the covers making jabbing motions with her forefinger telling me where to look for the coffeepot.
I was stumbling in my undershirt trying to find my way around her damn kitchenette when I smelt that sickish sweet hairtonic smell.
There was somebody else in the apartment.
I stiffened.
Honest I could feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck like a dog's that is going to get into a fight.
I turned around with the percolator in my hand.
My eyes were so bleary I could barely see him but there he was, a little smooth olivefaced guy in a new spring overcoat and a taffycolored fedora.
Brown eyes, eyebrow mustache.
Oval face without an expression in the world.
We didn't have time to speak before Eileen's voice was screeching at us from the bed.
Joseph Maria Ballestre meet Francis Xavier Bowman.
Exboyfriend meet exhusband.
She gave the nastiest laugh I ever heard.
And don't either of you forget that I'm not any man's property.
If you want to fight, go down on the sidewalk.
She was enjoying the situation.
Imagine that.
Eileen was a psychologist all right.
Instead of wanting to sock the poor bastard I found myself having a fellowfeeling for him.
Maybe he felt the same way.
I never felt such a lowdown hound in my life.
First thing I knew he was in the kitchenette cooking up the breakfast and I was handing Eileen her coffeecup and she was lying there handsome as a queen among her courtiers.
I couldn't face Thelma after that night.
I didn't even have the nerve to call her on the telephone.
I wrote her that I'd met up with Eileen and that old bonds had proved too strong and asked her to send my clothes down by express.
Of course I had to give her Eileen's address, but she never came near us.
All she did was write me a pleasant little note about how it was beautiful while it lasted but that now life had parted our ways and it was goodbye forever.
She never said a word about the fifty dollars.
She added a postscript begging me to be careful about drinking.
I must know that that was my greatest weakness underlined three times.
Afterwards I learned that Eileen had called Thelma on the telephone and made a big scene about Thelma trying to take her husband away.
That finished me with Thelma.
Trust Eileen to squeeze all the drama out of a situation.
And there I was shacked up with Eileen in that filthy fourth floor attic on Hudson Street.
I use the phrase advisedly because there was something positively indecent about our relationship.
I felt it and it ate on me all the time, but I didn't know how right I was till later.
What I did know was that Precious was always around.
He slept in the hall bedroom at the head of the stairs.
Who do you think pays the rent?
You wouldn't have me throw the poor boy out on the street, Eileen said when I needled her about it.
I said sure that was what I wanted her to do but she paid no attention.
Eileen had a wonderful way of not listening to things she didn't want to hear.
Still I didn't think she was twotiming me with Precious right then.
To be on the safe side I never let Eileen get out of my sight day or night.
Precious had me worried.
I couldn't make out what his racket was.
I'd thought him a pimp or procurer but he didn't seem to be.
He was smooth and civil spoken but it seemed to me there was something tough under his selfeffacing manner.
Still he let Eileen treat him like a valet.
Whenever the place was cleaned or a meal served it was Precious who did the work.
I never could find out what his business was.
He always seemed to have money in his pocket.
The phone had been disconnected but telegrams came for him and notes by special messenger.
Now and then he would disappear for several days.
Connections was all he would say with that smooth hurt smile when I put leading questions.
Oh he's just an international spy, Eileen would shout with her screechy laugh.
Poor devil he can't have been too happy either.
He got no relief from drink because, though sometimes Precious would buy himself a drink if he went out with us in the evening, he'd leave it on the table untouched.
When I was in liquor I rode him pretty hard I guess.
Occasionally if I pushed him too far he'd give me a look out of narrowed eyes and the hard cruel bony skull would show through that smooth face of his.
Some day, I told Eileen, that guy will kill us both.
She just wouldn't listen.
Getting drunk every night was the only way I could handle the situation.
Eileen seemed to feel the same way.
We still had that much in common.
The trouble was drinking cost money.
The way Eileen and I were hitting it up, we needed ten or fifteen dollars an evening.
Eileen must have wheedled a little out of Precious.
I raised some kale by hocking the good clothes I had left over from my respectable uptown life, but when that was gone I didn't have a cent.
I don't know what we would have done if Pat O'Dwyer hadn't come to town.
Pat O'Dwyer looked like a heavier Jim.
He had the same bullet head of curly reddish hair but he didn't have Jim's pokerfaced humor or his brains or his charm.
He was a big thick beefy violent man.
Now Pat may have been a lecher and a plugugly, but he was a good churchgoing Catholic and he loved his little sister.
Those O'Dwyers had that Irish clannishness that made them stick together in spite of politics and everything.
Pat took Eileen and me out to dinner at a swell steak house and told us with tears in his eyes how happy he was we had come together again.
Whom God hath joined etcetera.
The O'Dwyers were real religious people except for Kate.
Now it would be up to me to keep the little girl out of mischief.
Pat had been worried as hell ever since she'd lost her job on that fashion magazine.
It had gone big with the Hollywood girls when he told them his sister was an editor of Art And Apparel.
How about me trying to help her get her job back?
All evening Eileen had been as demure as a little girl getting ready for her first communion.
It just about blew us both out of the water when Eileen suddenly came out with what she came out with.
But brother I can't take a job right now, she said with her eyes on her ice cream, I'm going to have a baby, Francis Xavier's baby, my own husband's baby.
My first thought was how had it happened so soon, but I counted back on my fingers and sure enough we'd been living together six weeks.
Pat meanwhile was bubbling over with sentiment.
Greatest thing that ever happened.
Now Eileen really would have to settle down to love honor and obey, and she'd have to quit drinking.
He'd come East for the christening, by God he would.
When we separated that evening Pat pushed a hundred dollar bill into Eileen's hand to help towards a layette.
Before he left town Pat saw to it that I was fixed up with a job.
Pat had contacts all over the labor movement.
A friend of Pat's named Frank Sposato had just muscled into the Portwatchers' Union.
The portwatchers were retired longshoremen and small time seafarers off towboats and barges who acted as watchmen on the wharves.
Most of them were elderly men.
It was responsible and sometimes dangerous work because the thieving is awful in the port of New York.
They weren't as well paid as they should have been.
One reason the portwatchers let Sposato take them over was to get the protection of his musclemen.
Sposato needed a front, some labor stiff with a clean record to act as business agent of the Redhook local.
There I was a retired wobbly and structural iron worker who'd never gouged a cent off a fellow worker in my thirty years in the movement.
For once radicalism was a recommendation.
Sposato couldn't wait to get me hired.
With my gray hair and my weatherbeaten countenance I certainly looked the honest working stiff.
The things a man will do for a woman.
There was one fact which Rector could not overlook, one truth which he could not deny.
As long as there were two human beings working together on the same project, there would be competition and you could no more escape it than you could expect to escape the grave.
No matter how devoted a man was, no matter how fully he gave his life to the Lord, he could never extinguish that one spark of pride that gave him definition as an individual.
All of the jobs in the mission might be equal in the eyes of the Lord, but they were certainly not equal in the eyes of the Lord's servants.
It was only natural that Fletcher would strive for a position in which he could make the decisions.
Even Rector himself was prey to this spirit of competition and he knew it, not for a more exalted office in the hierarchy of the church--his ambitions for the bishopry had died very early in his career--but for the one clear victory he had talked about to the colonel.
He was not sure how much of this desire was due to his devotion to the church and how much was his own ego, demanding to be satisfied, for the two were intertwined and could not be separated.
He wanted desperately to see Kayabashi defeated, the Communists in the village rooted out, the mission standing triumphant, for in the triumph of the Lord he himself would be triumphant, too.
But perhaps this was a part of the eternal plan, that man's ambition when linked with God would be a driving, indefatigable force for good in the world.
He sighed.
How foolish it was to try to fathom the truth in an area where only faith would suffice.
He would have to work without questioning the motives which made him work and content himself with the thought that the eventual victory, however it was brought about, would be sweet indeed.
His first move was to send Hino to the village to spend a few days.
His arm had been giving him some trouble and Rector was not enough of a medical expert to determine whether it had healed improperly or whether Hino was simply rebelling against the tedious work in the print shop, using the stiffness in his arm as an excuse.
In any event Rector sent him to the local hospital to have it checked, telling him to keep his ears open while he was in the village to see if he could find out what Kayabashi was planning.
Hino was elated at the prospect.
He was allowed to spend his nights at an inn near the hospital and he was given some extra money to go to the pachinko parlor--an excellent place to make contact with the enemy.
He left with all the joyous spirit of a child going on a holiday, nodding attentively as Rector gave him his final instructions.
He was to get involved in no arguments;
he was to try to make no converts;
he was simply to listen and report back what he heard.
It was a ridiculous situation and Rector knew it, for Hino, frankly partisan, openly gregarious, would make a poor espionage agent.
If he wanted to know anything, he would end up asking about it point-blank, but in this guileless manner he would probably receive more truthful answers than if he tried to get them by indirection.
In all of his experience in the mission field Rector had never seen a convert quite like Hino.
From the moment that Hino had first walked into the mission to ask for a job, any job--his qualifications neatly written on a piece of paper in a precise hand--he had been ready to become a Christian.
He had already been studying the Bible;
he knew the fundamentals, and after studying with Fletcher for a time he approached Rector, announced that he wanted to be baptized and that was that.
Rector had never been able to find out much about Hino's past.
Hino talked very little about himself except for the infrequent times when he used a personal illustration in connection with another subject.
Putting the pieces of this mosaic together, Rector had the vague outlines of a biography.
Hino was the fourth son of an elderly farmer who lived on the coast, in Chiba, and divided his life between the land and the sea, supplementing the marginal livelihood on his small rented farm with seasonal employment on a fishing boat.
Without exception Hino's brothers turned to either one or both of their father's occupations, but Hino showed a talent for neither and instead spent most of his time on the beach where he repaired nets and proved immensely popular as a storyteller.
Rector was often curious;
often tempted to ask questions but he never did.
If and when Hino decided to tell him about his experiences, he would do so unasked.
Rector had no doubt that Hino would come back from the village bursting with information, ready to impart it with his customary gusto, liberally embellished with his active imagnation.
He was surprised to find Kayabashi's secretary on the other end of the line.
He was even more startled when he heard what Kayabashi wanted.
The oyabun was entertaining a group of dignitaries, the secretary said, businessmen from Tokyo for the most part, and Kayabashi wished to show them the mission.
They had never seen one before and had expressed a curiosity about it.
Oh?
Rector said.
I guess it will be all right.
When would the oyabun like to bring his guests up here?
This afternoon, the secretary said.
At three o'clock if it will be of convenience to you at that time.
All right, Rector said.
I will be expecting them.
He was about to hang up the phone, but a note of hesitancy in the secretary's voice left the conversation open.
He had something more to say.
I beg to inquire if the back is now safe for travelers, he said.
Rector laughed despite himself.
Unless the oyabun has been working on it, he said, then checked himself and added: You can tell Kayabashi-san that the back road is in very good condition and will be quite safe for his party to use.
Arigato gosaimasu.
The secretary sighed with relief and then the telephone clicked in Rector's hand.
Rector had no idea why Kayabashi wanted to visit the mission.
For the oyabun to make such a trip was either a sign of great weakness or an indication of equally great confidence, and from all the available information it was probably the latter.
Kayabashi must feel fairly certain of his victory in order to make a visit like this, a trip which could be so easily misinterpreted by the people in the village.
At the same time, it was unlikely that any businessmen would spend a day in a Christian mission out of mere curiosity.
No, Kayabashi was bringing his associates here for a specific purpose and Rector would not be able to fathom it until they arrived.
Fujimoto had a pile of cuttings near one side of the lawn.
Rector asked him to move it for the time being;
he wanted the mission compound to be effortlessly spotless.
A good initial impression would be important now.
He went into the print shop, where Fletcher had just finished cleaning the press.
How many pamphlets do we have in stock?
Rector said.
I should say about a hundred thousand, Fletcher said.
Why?
I would like to enact a little tableau this afternoon, Rector said, He explained about the visit and the effect he wished to create, the picture of a very busy mission.
He did not wish to deceive Kayabashi exactly, just to display the mission activities in a graphic and impressive manner.
Fletcher nodded as he listened to the instructions and said he would arrange the things Rector requested.
Rector's next stop was at the schoolroom, where Mavis was monitoring a test.
He beckoned to her from the door and she slipped quietly outside.
He told her of the visitors and then of his plans.
How many children do you have present today?
He said.
She looked back toward the schoolroom.
Fifteen, she said.
No, only fourteen.
The little Ito girl had had to go home.
She has a pretty bad cold.
I would like them to appear very busy today, not busy exactly, but joyous, exuberant, full of life.
I want to create the impression of a compound full of children.
Do you think you can manage it?
Mavis smiled.
I'll try.
As Rector was walking back toward the residential hall, Johnson came out of the basement and bounded up to him.
The altercation in the coffee house had done little to dampen his spirits, but he was still a little wary around Rector for they had not yet discussed the incident.
I think I've fixed the pump so we won't have to worry about it for a long time, he said.
I've adjusted the gauge so that the pump cuts out before the water gets too low.
Fine, Rector said.
He looked out over the expanse of the compound.
It was going to take a lot of activity to fill it.
Have you ever operated a transit?
He said.
No, sir, Johnson said.
You are about to become a first-class surveyor, Rector said.
When Konishi gets back with the jeep, I want you to round up two or three Japanese boys.
Konishi can help you.
You'll find an old transit in the basement.
The glass is out of it, but that won't matter.
It looks pretty efficient and that's the important thing.
He went on to explain what he had in mind.
Johnson nodded.
He said he could do it.
Rector was warming to his over-all strategy by the time he got back to the residential hall.
It was rather a childish game, all in all, but everybody seemed to be getting into the spirit of the thing and he could not remember when he had enjoyed planning anything quite so much.
He was not sure what effect it would have, but that was really beside the point when you got right down to it.
He was not going to lose the mission by default, and whatever reason Kayabashi had for bringing his little sight-seeing group to the mission, he was going to be in for a surprise.
He found Elizabeth in the parlor and asked her to make sure everything was in order in the residential hall, and then to take charge of the office while the party was here.
When everything had been done, Rector went back to his desk to occupy himself with his monthly report until three o'clock.
At two thirty he sent Fujimoto to the top of the wall at the northeast corner of the mission to keep an eye on the ridge road and give a signal when he first glimpsed the approach of Kayabashi's party.
Then Rector, attired in his best blue serge suit, sat in a chair out on the lawn, in the shade of a tree, smoking a cigarette and waiting.
The air was cooler here, and the lacy pattern of the trees threw a dappled shadow on the grass, an effect which he found pleasant.
She concluded by asking him to name another hour should this one be inconvenient.
The fish took the bait.
He replied that he could not imagine what importance there might be in thus meeting with a stranger, but--joy of joys, he would be at home at the hour mentioned.
But when she called he had thought better of the matter and decided not to involve himself in a new entanglement.
She was told by the manservant who opened the door that his lordship was engaged on work from which he had left strict orders he was not to be disturbed.
Claire was bitterly disappointed but determined not to let the rebuff daunt her purpose.
She wrote again and now, abandoning for the moment the theme of love, she asked for help in the matter of her career.
She could act and she could write.
His lordship was concerned in the management of Drury Lane but, if there were no opportunities there, would he read and criticize her novel?
At last he consented to meet her, and following that brief interview Claire wrote him a yet more remarkable proposal:
Have you any objection to the following plan?
On Thursday evening we may go out of town together by some stage or mail about the distance of ten or twelve miles.
There we shall be free and unknown;
we can return the following morning
She concluded by asking for a brief interview--to settle with you where--and she threw in a tribute to his gentle manners and the wild originality of your countenance.
She opened his reply with trembling fingers he agreed!
And he would see her that evening.
Victory at last!
At their meeting he told her not to bother about where--he would attend to that.
There was one of the new forte-pianos in the room and, as Claire rose to go, he asked her to sing him one song before she left.
She sang him Scott's charming ballad Rosabelle, which was the vogue of the moment.
She had never sung better.
Your voice is delightful, he approved with a warm smile.
Tomorrow will be a new experience--I have never before made love to a nightingale.
There have been cooing doves, chattering magpies, thieving jackdaws, a proud peacock, a silly goose, and a harpy eagle--whom I was silly enough to mate with and who is now busy tearing at my vitals.
And so they went, he choosing of all places an inn near Medmenham Abbey, scene a generation ago of the obscene orgies of the Hellfire Club.
He regaled Claire with an account of the mock mass performed by the cassocked bloods, which he had had at firsthand from old Bud Dodington, one of the leaders of the so-called Order.
Each wore the monkish scourge at his waist but this, it seems, was not employed for self-flagellation.
Naked girls danced in the chancel of the Abbey, the youngest and seemingly the most innocent being chosen to read a sermon filled with veiled depravities.
The jaded amorist conjured up pictures of the blasphemous rites with relish.
Alas, all that belonged to the age of Devil Dashwood and Wicked Wilkes, abbot and beadsman of the Order!
The casual seduction of a seventeen-year-old bluestocking seemed tame by comparison.
They passed close by the turn to Bishopsgate.
A scant half mile away Shelley and Mary were doubtless sitting on their diminutive terrace, the air about them scented with stock, and listening to the nightingale who had nested in the big lime tree at the foot of the garden.
Charming and peaceful--but what were charm and peace compared to high adventure?
Alone with the fabulous Byron!
How many women had longed for the privilege that was hers.
How was she to behave, Claire wondered.
To be passive, to be girlishly shy was palpably absurd.
She was the pursuer as clearly as was Venus in Shakespeare's poem.
And while her Adonis did not suffer from inexperience, satiety might well be an equal handicap.
No, she would not pretend modesty, but neither must she be crudely bold.
Mystery--that was the thing.
In the bedroom she would insist on darkness.
With his club foot he might well be grateful.
At the inn, which was situated close to a broad weir, Byron was greeted by the landlord with obsequious deference and addressed as milord.
The place was evidently a familiar haunt and Claire wondered what other illicit loves had been celebrated in the comfortable rooms to which they were shown.
The fire in the sitting room was lighted.
What about the bedroom?
Byron inquired.
Seems to me last time I was here the grate bellowed out smoke as it might have been preparing us for hell.
We found some owls had built a nest in the chimney, milord, but I promise you you'll never have trouble of that sort again.
So, not only had he been here before, but it seemed he might well come again.
Claire felt suddenly small and cheap, heroine of a trivial episode in the voluminous history of Don Juan.
A cold supper was ordered and a bottle of port.
When Napoleon's ship had borne him to Elba, French wines had started to cross the Channel, the first shipments in a dozen war-ridden years, but the supplies had not yet reached rural hostelries where the sweet wines of the Spanish peninsula still ruled.
As they waited for supper they sat by the fire, glasses in hand, while Byron philosophized as much for his own entertainment as hers.
Sex is overpriced, he said.
The great Greek tragedies are concerned with man against Fate, not man against man for the prize of a woman's body.
So don't see yourself as a heroine or fancy this little adventure is an event of major importance.
The gods seemed to think sex pretty important, she rebutted.
Mars and Venus, Bacchus and Ariadne, Jupiter and Io, Byron and the nymph of the owl's nest.
That would be Minerva, I suppose.
Wasn't the owl her symbol?
Byron laughed.
So you know something of the classics, do you?
Tell me about Minerva, how she behaved, what she did to please you.
I'll tell you nothing.
I don't ask you who 'tis you're being unfaithful to, husband or lover.
Frankly, I don't care.
For a moment she thought of answering with the truth but she knew there were men who shied away from virginity, who demanded some degree of education in body as well as mind.
Very well, she said, I'll not catechize you.
What matter the others so long as I have my place in history.
She was striking the right note.
No man ever had a better opinion of himself and indeed, with one so favored, flattery could hardly seem overdone.
Brains and beauty, high position in both the social and intellectual worlds, athlete, fabled lover--if ever the world was any man's oyster it was his.
The light supper over, Claire went to him and, slipping an arm about his shoulder, sat on his knee.
He drew her close and, hand on cheek, turned her face to his.
Her lips, moist and parted, spoke his name.
Byron!
His hand went to her shoulder and pushed aside the knotted scarf that surmounted the striped poplin gown;
then, to better purpose, he took hold of the knot and with dextrous fingers, untied it.
The bodice beneath was buttoned and, withdrawing his lips from hers, he set her upright on his knee and started to undo it, unhurriedly as if she were a child.
But, kindled by his kiss, his caressing hand, her desire was aflame.
She sprang up and went swiftly to the bedroom.
Lord Byron poured himself another glass of wine and held it up to the candle flame admiring the rich color.
He drank slowly with due appreciation.
It was an excellent vintage.
He rose and went to the bedroom.
Pausing in the doorway he said: The form of the human female, unlike her mind and her spirit, is the most challenging loveliness in all nature.
When Claire returned to Bishopsgate she longed to tell them she had become Byron's mistress.
By odd coincidence, on the evening of her return Shelley chose to read Parisina, which was the latest of the titled poet's successes.
As he declaimed the sonorous measures, it was as much as Claire could do to restrain herself from bursting out with her dramatic tidings.
Although it is not the best of which he is capable, said Shelley as he closed the book, it is still poetry of a high order.
If he would only leave the East, said Mary.
I am tired of sultans and scimitars.
The hero of his next poem is Napoleon Bonaparte, said Claire, with slightly overdone carelessness.
How do you know that?
Demanded Mary.
I was told it on good authority, Claire answered darkly.
I mustn't tell, I mustn't tell, she repeated to herself.
I promised him I wouldn't.
Chapter 9
winter came, and with it Mary's baby--a boy as she had wished.
William, he was called, in honor of the man who was at once Shelley's pensioner and his most bitter detractor.
With a pardonable irony Shelley wrote to the father who had publicly disowned his daughter:
Fanny and Mrs. Godwin will probably be glad to hear that Mary has safely recovered from a very favorable confinement, and that her child is well.
At the same time another child--this one of Shelley's brain--was given to the world: Alastor, a poem of pervading beauty in which the reader may gaze into the still depths of a fine mind's musings.
Alastor was published only to be savagely attacked, contemptuously ignored.
Shelley sent a copy to Southey, a former friend, and another to Godwin.
Neither acknowledged the gift.
Only Mary's praise sustained him in his disappointment.
She understood completely.
Not a thought nor a cadence was missed in her summary of appreciation.
You have made the labor worth while, he said to her, smiling.
And in the future, since I write for a public of one, I can save the poor publishers from wasting their money.
A public of one, Mary echoed reprovingly.
How can you say such a thing?
There will be thousands who will thrill to the loveliness of Alastor.
There are some even now.
What about that dear, clever Mr. Thynne?
I am sure he is in raptures.
Poor Mr. Thynne, he always has to be trotted out for my encouragement.
There are other Mr. Thynnes.
Not everyone is bewitched by Byron's caliphs and harem beauties.
Mary's supercritical attitude toward Byron had nothing to do with his moral disrepute.
She was resentful of his easy success as compared with Shelley's failure.
The same month that Alastor was published, Murray sold twenty thousand copies of The Siege Of Corinth, a slovenly bit of Byronism that even Shelley's generosity rebelled at.
The lordly poet was at low-water mark.
The careless writing was in keeping with his mood of savage discontent.
On all sides doors were being slammed in his face.
The previous scandals, gaily diverting as they were, had only served to increase his popularity.
Now, under the impact of his wife's disclosures, he was brought suddenly to the realization that there was a limit to tolerance, however brilliant, however far-famed the offender might be.
He tried defiance and openly flaunted his devotion to his half sister, but he soon saw, as did she, that this course if persisted in would involve them in a common ruin.
For the moment there was no woman in his life, and it was this vacuum that had given Claire her opportunity.
But the liaison successfully started in the last days of autumn was now languishing.
Byron, since the separation from his wife had been living in a smallish house in Piccadilly Terrace.
He refused to bring Claire to it even as an occasional visitor, claiming that his every move was watched by spies of the Milbankes.
Beckworth handed the pass to the colonel.
He had thought that the suggestion of taking it himself would tip the colonel in the direction of serving his own order, but the slip of paper was folded and absently thrust into the colonel's belt.
Despite his yearning, the colonel would not go down to see the men come through the lines.
He would remain in the tent, waiting impatiently, occupied by some trivial task.
-- Beckworth.
-- Sir?
-- Fetch me the copies of everything B and C companies have requisitioned in the last six months.
-- The last six months, sir?
-- You heard me.
There's a lot of waste going on here.
It's got to stop.
I want to take a look.
This is no damned holiday, Beckworth.
Get busy.
-- Yes, sir.
Beckworth left the tent.
Below he could see the bright torches lighting the riverbank.
He glanced back.
The colonel crouched tensely on one of the folding chairs, methodically tearing at his thumbnail.
The bombproof was a low-ceilinged structure of heavy timbers covered with earth.
It stood some fifty paces from the edge of the bank.
From the outside, it seemed no more than a low drumlin, a lump on the dark earth.
A crude ladder ran down to a wooden floor.
Two slits enabled observers to watch across the river.
The place smelled strongly of rank, fertile earth, rotting wood and urine.
The plank floor was slimed beneath Watson's boots.
At least the Union officer had been decent enough to provide a candle.
There was no place to sit, but Watson walked slowly from the ladder to the window slits and back, stooping slightly to avoid striking his head on the heavy beams.
In the corner was the soldier with the white flag.
He stood stiffly erect, clutching the staff, his body half hidden by the limp cloth.
Watson hardly looked at him.
The man had come floundering aboard the flat-bottomed barge at the last instant, brandishing the flag of truce.
Someone had hauled him over the side, and he had remained silent while they crossed.
An officer with a squad of men had been waiting on the bank.
The men in the boats had started yelling happily at first sight of the officer, two of them calling him Billy.
When the boat had touched, the weaker ones and the two wounded men had been lifted out and carried away by the soldiers.
Watson had presented his pouch and been led to the bombproof.
The officer had told him that both lists must be checked.
Watson had given his name and asked for a safe-conduct pass.
The officer, surprised, said he would have to see.
Watson had nodded absently and muttered that he would check the lists himself later.
He had peered through the darkness at the rampart.
The men he would take back across the river stood there, but he turned away from them.
He wanted no part of the emotions of the exchange, no memory of the joy and gratitude that other men felt.
He had hoped to be alone in the bombproof, but the soldier had followed him.
Though Watson carefully ignored the man, he could not deny his presence.
Perhaps it would be better to speak to him, since silence could not exorcise his form.
Watson glanced briefly at him, seeing only a body rigidly erect behind the languid banner.
-- We won't be too long.
If my pass is approved, I may be a half hour.
The soldier answered in a curious, muffled voice, his lips barely moving.
Watson turned away and did not see the man's knees buckle and his body sag.
-- Yes, sir.
He had acknowledged the man.
It was easier to think now, Watson decided.
The stiff figure in the corner no longer blocked his thoughts.
He paced slowly, stooping, staring at the damp, slippery floor.
He tried to order the words of the three Union officers, seeking to create some coherent portrait of the dead boy.
But he groped blindly.
His lack of success steadily eroded his interest.
He stopped pacing, leaned against the dank, timbered wall and let his mind drift.
A feeling of futility, an enervation of mind greater than any fatigue he had ever known, seeped through him.
What in the name of God was he doing, crouched in a timbered pit on the wrong bank of the river?
Why had he crossed the dark water, to bring back a group of reclaimed soldiers or to skulk in a foul-smelling hole?
He grew annoyed and at the same time surprised at that emotion.
He was conscious of a growing sense of absurdity.
Hillman had written it all out, hadn't he?
Wasn't the report official enough?
What did he hope to accomplish here?
Hillman had ordered him not to leave the far bank.
Prompted by a guilty urge, he had disobeyed the order of a man he respected.
For what?
To tell John something he would find out for himself.
The figure in the corner belched loudly, a deep, liquid eruption.
Watson snorted and then laughed aloud.
Exactly!
The soldier's voice was muffled again, stricken with chagrin.
He clutched the staff, and his dark eyes blinked apologetically.
-- 'scuse me, sir.
-- Let's get out of here.
Watson ran up the ladder and stood for a second sucking in the cool air that smelled of mud and river weeds.
To his left, the two skiffs dented their sharp bows into the soft bank.
The flat-bottomed boat swung slowly to the pull of the current.
A soldier held the end of a frayed rope.
Three Union guards appeared, carrying their rifles at ready.
Watson stared at them curiously.
They were stocky men, well fed and clean-shaven, with neat uniforms and sturdy boots.
Behind them shambled a long column of weak, tattered men.
The thin gray figures raised a hoarse, cawing cry like the call of a bird flock.
They moved toward the skiffs with shocking eagerness, elbowing and shoving.
Four men were knocked down, but did not attempt to rise.
They crept down the muddy slope toward the waiting boats.
The Union soldiers grounded arms and settled into healthy, indifferent postures to watch the feeble boarding of the skiffs.
The crawling men tried to rise and fell again.
No one moved to them.
Watson watched two of them flounder into the shallow water and listened to their voices beg shrilly.
In a confused, soaked and stumbling shift of bodies and lifting arms, the two men were dragged into the same skiff.
The third crawling man forced himself erect.
He swayed like a drunkard, his arms milling in slow circles.
He paced forward unsteadily, leaning too far back, his head tilted oddly.
His steps were short and stiff, and, with his head thrown back, his progress was a supercilious strut.
He appeared to be peering haughtily down his nose at the crowded and unclean vessel that would carry him to freedom.
He stalked into the water and fell heavily over the side of the flat-bottomed barge, his weight nearly swamping the craft.
Watson looked for the fourth man.
He had reached the three passive guards;
he crept in an incertain manner, patting the ground before him.
The guards did not look at him.
The figure on the earth halted, seemingly bewildered.
He sank back on his thin haunches like a weary hound.
Then he began to crawl again.
Watson watched the creeping figure.
He felt a spectator interest.
Would the man make it or not?
If only there was a clock for him to crawl against.
If he failed to reach the riverbank in five minutes, say, then the skiffs would pull away and leave him groping in the mud.
Say three minutes to make it sporting.
Still the guards did not move, but stood inert, aloof from the slow-scrambling man.
The figure halted, and Watson gasped.
The man began to creep in the wrong direction, deceived by a slight rise in the ground!
He turned slowly and began to crawl back up the bank toward the rampart.
Watson raced for him, his boots slamming the soft earth.
The guards came to life with astonishing menace.
They spun and flung their rifles up.
Watson gesticulated wildly.
One man dropped to his knee for better aim.
-- Let me help him, for the love of God!
The guards lowered their rifles and their rifles and peered at Watson with sullen, puzzled faces.
Watson pounded to the crawling man and stopped, panting heavily.
He reached down and closed his fingers on the man's upper arm.
Beneath his clutch, a flat strip of muscle surged on the bone.
Watson bent awkwardly and lifted the man to his feet.
Watson stared into a cadaverous face.
Two clotted balls the color of mucus rolled between fiery lids.
Light sticks of fingers, the tips gummy with dark earth, patted at Watson's throat.
The man's voice was a sweet, patient whisper.
-- Henry said that he'd take my arm and get me right there.
But you ain't Henry.
-- no.
-- It don't matter.
Is it far?
How far could it be, Watson thought bleakly, how far can a blind man crawl?
Another body length or all the rest of his nighted life?
-- Not far.
-- You talk deep.
Not like us fellas.
It raises the voice, bein in camp.
You Secesh?
-- yes.
Come on, now.
Can you walk?
-- Why, course I can.
I can walk real good.
Watson stumbled down the bank.
The man leaned his frail body against Watson's shoulder.
He was no heavier than a child.
Watson paused for breath.
The man wheezed weakly, his fetid breath beating softly against Watson's neck.
His sweet whisper came after great effort.
-- Oh, Christ.
I wish you was Henry.
He promised to take me.
-- hush.
We're almost there.
Watson supported the man to the edge of the bank and passed the frail figure over the bow of the nearest skiff.
The man swayed on a thwart, turning his ruined eyes from side to side.
Watson turned away, sickened for the first time in many months.
He heard the patient voice calling.
-- Henry?
Where are you, Henry?
-- Make him lie down!
Watson snatched a deep breath.
He had not meant to shout.
He stood with his back to the skiff.
The men mewed and scratched, begging to be taken away.
Watson spoke bewilderedly to the dark night flecked with pine-knot torches.
-- Goddamn you!
What do you do to them?
Intelligence jabbed at him accusingly.
He was angry, sickened.
He had not felt that during the afternoon.
No, nor later.
All his emotions had been inward, self-conscious.
In war, on a night like this, it was only the outward emotions that mattered, what could be flung out into the darkness to damage others.
Yes.
That was it.
He was sure of it.
John's type of man allowed this sort of thing to happen.
What a fool he had been to think of his brother!
So Charles was dead.
What did it matter?
His name had been crossed off a list.
Already his cool body lay in the ground.
What words had any meaning?
What had he thought of, to go to John, grovel and beg understanding?
To confess with a canvas chair as a prie-dieu, gouging at his heart until a rough and stupid hand bade him rise and go?
Men were slaughtered every day, tumbled into eternity like so many torn parcels flung down a portable chute.
What made him think John had a right to witness his brother's humiliation?
What right had John to any special consideration?
Was John better, more deserving?
To hell with John.
Let him chafe with impatience to see Charles, rip open the note with trembling hands and read the formal report in Hillman's beautiful, schoolmaster's hand.
John would curse.
He believed that brave boys didn't cry.
Watson spat on the ground.
He was grimly satisfied.
He had stupidly thought himself compelled to ease his brother's pain.
Now he knew perfectly that he had but longed to increase his own suffering.
As I say, I wouldn't want to begin a day like this, but I often wonder what the dead would have done.
But the shelter is as much a part of my landscape as the beech and horse-chestnut trees that grow on the ridge.
I can see it from this window where I write.
It was built by the Pasterns, and stands on the acre of ground that adjoins our property.
It bulks under a veil of thin, new grass, like some embarrassing fact of physicalness, and I think Mrs. Pastern set out the statuary to soften its meaning.
It would have been like her.
She was a pale woman.
Sitting on her terrace, sitting in her parlor, sitting anywhere, she ground an axe of self-esteem.
Offer her a cup of tea and she would say, Why, these cups look just like a set I gave to the Salvation Army last year.
Show her the new swimming pool and she would say, slapping her ankle, I suppose this must be where you breed your gigantic mosquitoes.
Hand her a chair and she would say, Why, it's a nice imitation of those Queen Anne chairs I inherited from Grandmother Delancy.
These trumps were more touching than they were anything else, and seemed to imply that the nights were long, her children ungrateful, and her marriage bewilderingly threadbare.
Twenty years ago, she would have been known as a golf widow, and the sum of her manner was perhaps one of bereavement.
She usually wore weeds, and a stranger watching her board a train might have guessed that Mr. Pastern was dead, but Mr. Pastern was far from dead.
He was marching up and down the locker room of the Grassy Brae Golf Club shouting, Bomb Cuba!
Bomb Berlin!
Let's throw a little nuclear hardware at them and show them who's boss.
He was brigadier of the club's locker-room light infantry, and at one time or another declared war on Russia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and China.
It all began on an autumn afternoon--and who, after all these centuries, can describe the fineness of an autumn day?
One might pretend never to have seen one before, or, to more purpose, that there would never be another like it.
The clear and searching sweep of sun on the lawns was like a climax of the year's lights.
Leaves were burning somewhere and the smoke smelled, for all its ammoniac acidity, of beginnings.
The boundless blue air was stretched over the zenith like the skin of a drum.
Leaving her house one late afternoon, Mrs. Pastern stopped to admire the October light.
It was the day to canvass for infectious hepatitis.
Mrs. Pastern had been given sixteen names, a bundle of literature, and a printed book of receipts.
It was her work to go among her neighbors and collect their checks.
Her house stood on a rise of ground, and before she got into her car she looked at the houses below.
Charity as she knew it was complex and reciprocal, and almost every roof she saw signified charity.
Mrs. Balcolm worked for the brain.
Mrs. Ten Eyke did mental health.
Mrs. Trenchard worked for the blind.
Mrs. Horowitz was in charge of diseases of the nose and throat.
Mrs. Trempler was tuberculosis, Mrs. Surcliffe was Mothers' March of Dimes, Mrs. Craven was cancer, and Mrs. Gilkson did the kidney.
Mrs. Hewlitt led the birthcontrol league, Mrs. Ryerson was arthritis, and way in the distance could be seen the slate roof of Ethel Littleton's house, a roof that signified gout.
Mrs. Pastern undertook the work of going from house to house with the thoughtless resignation of an honest and traditional laborer.
It was her destiny;
it was her life.
Her mother had done it before her, and even her old grandmother, who had collected money for smallpox and unwed mothers.
Mrs. Pastern had telephoned most of her neighbors in advance, and most of them were ready for her.
She experienced none of the suspense of some poor stranger selling encyclopedias.
Here and there she stayed to visit and drink a glass of sherry.
The contributions were ahead of what she had got the previous year, and while the money, of course, was not hers, it excited her to stuff her kit with big checks.
She stopped at the Surcliffes' after dusk, and had a Scotch-and-soda.
She stayed too late, and when she left, it was dark and time to go home and cook supper for her husband.
I got a hundred and sixty dollars for the hepatitis fund, she said excitedly when he walked in.
I did everybody on my list but the Blevins and the Flannagans.
I want to get my kit in tomorrow morning--would you mind doing them while I cook the dinner?
But I don't know the Flannagans, Charlie Pastern said.
Nobody does, but they gave me ten last year.
He was tired, he had his business worries, and the sight of his wife arranging pork chops in the broiler only seemed like an extension of a boring day.
He was happy enough to take the convertible and race up the hill to the Blevins', thinking that they might give him a drink.
But the Blevins were away;
their maid gave him an envelope with a check in it and shut the door.
Turning in at the Flannagans' driveway, he tried to remember if he had ever met them.
The name encouraged him, because he always felt that he could handle the Irish.
There was a glass pane in the front door, and through this he could see into a hallway where a plump woman with red hair was arranging flowers.
Infectious hepatitis, he shouted heartily.
She took a good look at herself in the mirror before she turned and, walking with very small steps, started toward the door.
Oh, please come in, she said.
The girlish voice was nearly a whisper.
She was not a girl, he could see.
Her hair was dyed, and her bloom was fading, and she must have been crowding forty, but she seemed to be one of those women who cling to the manners and graces of a pretty child of eight.
Your wife just called, she said, separating one word from another, exactly like a child.
And I am not sure that I have any cash--any money, that is--but if you will wait just a minute I will write you out a check if I can find my checkbook.
Won't you step into the living room, where it's cozier?
A fire had just been lighted, he saw, and things had been set out for drinks, and, like any stray, his response to these comforts was instantaneous.
Where was Mr. Flannagan, he wondered.
Travelling home on a late train?
Changing his clothes upstairs?
Taking a shower?
At the end of the room there was a desk heaped with papers, and she began to riffle these, making sighs and and noises of girlish exasperation.
I am terribly sorry to keep you waiting, she said, but won't you make yourself a little drink while you wait?
Everything's on the table.
What train does Mr. Flannagan come out on?
Mr. Flannagan is away, she said.
Her voice dropped.
Mr. Flannagan has been away for six weeks.
I'll have a drink, then, if you'll have one with me.
If you will promise to make it weak.
Sit down, he said, and enjoy your drink and look for your checkbook later.
The only way to find things is to relax.
All in all, they had six drinks.
She described herself and her circumstances unhesitatingly.
Mr. Flannagan manufactured plastic tongue depressors.
He travelled all over the world.
She didn't like to travel.
Planes made her feel faint, and in Tokyo, where she had gone that summer, she had been given raw fish for breakfast and so she had come straight home.
She and her husband had formerly lived in New York, where she had many friends, but Mr. Flannagan thought the country would be safer in case of war.
She would rather live in danger than die of loneliness and boredom.
She had no children;
she had made no friends.
I've seen you, though, before, she said with enormous coyness, patting his knee.
I've seen you walking your dogs on Sunday and driving by in the convertible.
The thought of this lonely woman sitting at her window touched him, although he was even more touched by her plumpness.
Sheer plumpness, he knew, is not a vital part of the body and has no procreative functions.
It serves merely as an excess cushion for the rest of the carcass.
And knowing its humble place in the scale of things, why did he, at this time of life, seem almost ready to sell his soul for plumpness?
The remarks she made about the sufferings of a lonely woman seemed so broad at first that he didn't know what to make of them, but after the sixth drink he put his arm around her and suggested that they go upstairs and look for her checkbook there.
I've never done this before, she said later, when he was arranging himself to leave.
Her voice shook with feeling, and he thought it lovely.
He didn't doubt her truthfulness, although he had heard the words a hundred times.
I've never done this before, they always said, shaking their dresses down over their white shoulders.
I've never done this before, they always said, waiting for the elevator in the hotel corridor.
I've never done this before, they always said, pouring another whiskey.
I've never done this before, they always said, putting on their stockings.
On ships at sea, on railroad trains, in summer hotels with mountain views, they always said, I've never done this before.
Where have you been?
Mrs. Pastern asked sadly, when he came in.
It's after eleven.
I had a drink with the Flannagans.
She told me he was in Germany.
He came home unexpectedly.
Charlie ate some supper in the kitchen and went into the TV room to hear the news.
Bomb them!
He shouted.
Throw a little nuclear hardware at them!
Show them who's boss!
But in bed he had trouble sleeping.
He thought first of his son and daughter, away at college.
He loved them.
It was the only meaning of the word that he had ever known.
Then he played nine imaginary holes of golf, choosing his handicap, his irons, his stance, his opponents, and his weather in detail, but the green of the links seemed faded in the light of his business worries.
His money was tied up in a Nassau hotel, an Ohio pottery works, and a detergent for window-washing, and luck had been running against him.
His worries harried him up out of bed, and he lighted a cigarette and went to the window.
In the starlight he could see the trees stripped of their leaves.
During the summer he had tried to repair some of his losses at the track, and the bare trees reminded him that his pari-mutuel tickets would still be lying, like leaves, in the gutters near Belmont and Saratoga.
Maple and ash, beech and elm, one hundred to win on Three in the fourth, fifty to win on Six in the third, one hundred to win on Two in the eighth.
Children walking home from school would scuff through what seemed to be his foliage.
Then, getting back into bed, he thought unashamedly of Mrs. Flannagan, planning where they would next meet and what they would do.
There are, he thought, so few true means of forgetfulness in this life that why should he shun the medicine even when the medicine seemed, as it did, a little crude?
It was not as though she noted clearly that her nephews had not been to see her for ten years, not since their last journey eastward to witness their Uncle Izaak being lowered into the rocky soil;
that aside from due notification of certain major events in their lives (two marriages, two births, one divorce), Christmas and Easter cards of the traditional sort had been the only thin link she had with them through the widowed years.
Her thoughts were not discrete.
But there was a look about her mouth as though she were tasting lemons.
She grasped the chair arms and brought her thin body upright, like a bird alert for flight.
She turned and walked stiffly into the parlor to the dainty-legged escritoire, warped and cracked now from fifty years in an atmosphere of sea spray.
There she extracted two limp vellum sheets and wrote off the letters, one to Abel, one to Mark.
Once her trembling hand, with the pen grasped tight in it, was pressed against the paper the words came sharply, smoothly, as authoritatively as they would dropping from her own lips.
And the stiffly regal look of them, she saw grimly, lacked the quaver of age which, thwarting the efforts of her amazing will, ran through her spoken words like a thin ragged string.
Please come down as soon as you conveniently can, the upright letters stalked from the broad-nibbed pen, I have an important matter to discuss with you.
To Abel: I am afraid there is not much to amuse small children here.
I should be obliged if you could make other arrangements for your daughters.
You may stay as long as you wish, of course, but if arranging for the care of the girls must take time into account, I think a day or two should be enough to finish our business in.
To Mark: Please give my regards to Myra.
She signed the letters quickly, stamped them, and placed them on the hall table for Raphael to mail in town.
Then she went back to the wicker chair and resolutely adjusted her eyes to the glare on the water.
My nephews will be coming down, she said that evening as Angelina brought her dinner into the dining room, the whole meal on a vast linen-covered tray.
She looked at the girl speculatively from eyes which had paled with the years;
from the early evening lights of them which had first startled Izaak to look at her in an uncousinly way, they had faded to a near-absence of color which had, possibly from her constant looking at the water, something of the light of the sea in them.
Angelina placed the tray on the table and with a flick of dark wrist drew off the cloth.
She smiled, and the teeth gleamed in her beautifully modeled olive face.
That will be so nice for you, Mrs. Packard, she said.
Her voice was ripe and full and her teeth flashed again in Sicilian brilliance before the warm curved lips met and her mouth settled in repose.
Um, said the old lady, and brought her eyes down to the tray.
You remember them, I suppose?
She glinted suspiciously at the dish before her: blowfish.
I hope Raphael bought them whole.
Angelina stepped back, her eyes roaming the tray for omissions.
Then she looked at the old woman again, her eyes calm.
Yes, she said, I remember that they came here every summer.
I used to play with the older one sometimes, when he'd let me.
Abel?
The name fell with lazy affectionate remembrance from her lips.
For an instant the old aunt felt something indefinable flash through her smile.
She would have said triumph.
Then Angelina turned and with an easy grace walked toward the kitchen.
Jessica Packard lifted her head and followed the retreating figure, her eyes resting nearly closed on the unself-conscious rise and fall of the rounded hips.
For a moment she held her face to the empty doorway;
then she snorted and groped for her fork.
There's no greater catastrophe in the universe, she reflected dourly, impaling tender green beans on the silver fork, than the dwindling away of a family.
Procreation, expansion, proliferation--these are the laws of living things, with the penalty for not obeying them the ultimate in punishments: oblivion.
When the fate of the individual is visited on the group, then (the warm sweet butter dripped from her raised trembling fork and she pushed her head forward belligerently), ah, then the true bitterness of existence could be tasted.
And indeed the young garden beans were brackish in her mouth.
She was the last living of the older generation.
What had once been a widespread family--at one time, she knew, there were enough Packards to populate an entire county--had now narrowed down to the two boys, Abel and Mark.
She swung her eyes up to the blue of the window, her jaws gently mashing the bitter beans.
What hope lay in the nephews, she asked the intensifying light out there, with one married to a barren woman and the other divorced, having sired two girl children, with none to bear on the Packard name?
She ate.
It seemed to her, as it seemed each night, that the gloom drew itself in and became densest at the table's empty chairs, giving her the frequent illusion that she dined with shadows.
Here, too, she talked low, quirking her head at one or another of the places, most often at Izaak's armchair which faced her across the long table.
Or it might have been the absent nephews she addressed, consciously playing with the notion that this was one of the summers of their early years.
She thought again of her children, those two who had died young, before the later science which might have saved them could attach even a label to their separate malignancies.
The girl, her first, she barely remembered.
It could have been anyone's infant, for it had not survived the bassinet.
But the boy the boy had been alive yesterday.
Each successive movement in his growing was recorded on the unreeling film inside her.
He ran on his plump sticks of legs, freezing now and again into the sudden startled attitudes which the camera had caught and held on the paling photographs, all carefully placed and glued and labeled, resting in the fat plush album in the bottom drawer of the escritoire.
In the cruel clearness of her memory the boy remained unchanged, quick with the delight of laughter, and the pain with which she recalled that short destroyed childhood was still unendurable to her.
It was one with the desolate rocks and the alien water on those days when she hated the sea.
The brothers drove down together in Mark's small red sports car, Mark at the wheel.
They rarely spoke.
Abel sat and regarded the farm country which, spreading out from both sides of the road, rolled greenly up to where the silent white houses and long barns and silos nested into the tilled fields.
He saw the land with a stranger's eyes, all the old familiarness gone.
And it presented itself to him as it would to any stranger, impervious, complete in itself.
There was stability there, too--a color which his life had had once.
That is what childhood is, he told himself.
Solid, settled lost.
In the stiff neutral lines of the telephone poles he saw the no-nonsense pen strokes of Aunt Jessica's letter.
What bad grace, what incredible selfishness he and Mark had shown.
The boyhood summers preceding their uncle's funeral might never have been.
They had closed over, absolutely, with the sealing of old Izaak's grave.
The small car flew on relentlessly.
The old woman, stubbornly reigning in the house above the crashing waters took on an ominous reality.
Abel moved and adjusted his long legs.
I suppose it has to do with the property, Mark had said over the telephone when they had discussed their receipt of the letters.
Not until the words had been spoken did Abel suddenly see the old house and the insistent sea, and feel his contrition blotted out in one shameful moment of covetousness.
He and Mark were the last of the family, and there lay the Cape Ann property which had seemed to have no end, stretching from horizon to horizon, in those golden days of summer.
Now Abel turned his head to look at his brother.
Mark held the wheel loosely, but his fingers curved around it in a purposeful way and the deliberate set of his body spoke plainly of the figure he'd make in the years to come.
His sandy hair was already beginning to thin and recede at the sides, and Abel looked quickly away.
Mark easily looked years older than himself, settled, his world comfortably categorized.
The vacation traffic was becoming heavier as they approached the sea.
She didn't mention bringing Myra, Mark said, maneuvering the car into the next lane.
She's probably getting old--crotchety, I mean--and we figured uh-uh, better not.
They've never met, you know.
But Myra wouldn't budge without an express invitation.
I feel kind of bad about it.
He gave Abel a quick glance and moved closer to the wheel, hugging it to him, and Abel caught this briefest of allusions to guilt.
I imagine the old girl hasn't missed us much, Mark added, his eyes on the road.
Abel ignored the half-expressed bid for confirmation.
He smiled.
It was barely possible that his brother was right.
He could tell they were approaching the sea.
The air took on a special strength now that they'd left the fecund warmth of the farmland behind.
There was the smell of the coast, like a primeval memory, composed of equal parts salt water, clams, seaweed and northern air.
He turned from the flying trees to look ahead and saw with an inward boy's eye again the great fieldstone house which, built on one of the many acres of ancestral land bordering the west harbor, had been Izaak's bride-gift to his cousin-wife as the last century ended.
Mark's thoughts must have been keeping silent pace beside his own, climbing the same crags in dirty white sneakers, clambering out on top of the headland and coming upon the sudden glinting water at the same instant.
Remember the Starbird?
Mark asked, and Abel lifted his eyes from the double lines in the middle of the road, the twin white ribbons which the car swallowed rapidly as it ascended the crest of the hill and came down.
The Starbird, Abel said.
There was the day Uncle Izaak had, in an unexpected grandiose gesture, handed over the pretty sloop to Abel for keeps, on condition that he never fail to let his brother accompany him whenever younger the boy wished.
The two of them had developed into a remarkable sailing team all of this happening in a time of their lives when their youth and their brotherhood knitted them together as no other time or circumstance could.
They seemed then to have had a single mind and body, a mutuality which had been accepted with the fact of their youth, casually.
He saw the Starbird as she lay, her slender mast up and gently turning, its point describing constant languid circles against a cumulus sky.
Both of them had known the feeling of the small life in her waiting, ready, for the two of them to run up her sails.
The Starbird had been long at the bottom of the bay.
They came unexpectedly upon the sea.
Meeting it without preparation as they did, robbed of anticipation, a common disappointment seized them.
They were climbing the hill in the night when the headlights abruptly probed solid blackness, became two parallel luminous tubes which broadened out into a faint mist of light and ended.
Mark stopped the car and switched off the lights and they sat looking at the water, which, there being no moon out, at first could be distinguished from the sky only by an absence of stars.
His eyes were old and they never saw well, but heated with whisky they'd glare at my noise, growing red and raising up his rage.
Oh he'd not care about the Pedersen kid.
He'd not care about getting waked so he could give up some of his whisky to a slit of a kid and maybe lose one of his hiding places in the bargain.
That would make him mad enough if he was sober.
I didn't hurry though it was cold and the Pedersen kid was in the kitchen.
He was all shoveled up like I thought he'd be.
I pushed at his shoulder, calling his name.
I think his name stopped the snoring but he didn't move except to roll a little when I shoved him.
The covers slid down his skinny neck so I saw his head, fuzzed like a dandelion gone to seed, but his face was turned to the wall--there was the pale shadow of his nose on the plaster--and I thought, Well you don't look much like a pig-drunk bully now.
I couldn't be sure he was still asleep.
He was a cagey sonofabitch.
I shook him a little harder and made some noise.
Pap-pap-pap-hey, I said.
I was leaning too far over.
I knew better.
He always slept close to the wall so you had to lean to reach him.
Oh he was smart.
It put you off.
I knew better but I was thinking of the Pedersen kid mother-naked in all that dough.
When his arm came up I ducked away but it caught me on the side of the neck, watering my eyes, and I backed off to cough.
Pa was on his side, looking at me, his eyes winking, the hand that had hit me a fist in the pillow.
Get the hell out of here.
I didn't say anything, trying to get my throat clear, but I watched him.
He was like a mean horse to come at from the rear.
It was better, though, he'd hit me.
He was bitter when he missed.
Get the hell out of here.
Big Hans sent me.
He told me to wake you.
A fat hell on Big Hans.
Get out of here.
He found the Pedersen kid by the crib.
Get the hell out.
Pa pulled at the covers.
He was tasting his mouth.
The kid's froze good.
Hans is rubbing him with snow.
He's got him in the kitchen.
Pedersen?
No, Pa.
It's the Pedersen kid.
The kid.
Nothing to steal from the crib.
Not stealing, Pa.
He was just lying there.
Hans found him froze.
That's where he was when Hans found him.
Pa laughed.
I ain't hid nothing in the crib.
You don't understand, Pa.
The Pedersen kid.
The kid --
I goddamn well understand.
Pa had his head up, glaring, his teeth gnawing at the place where he'd grown a mustache once.
I goddamn well understand.
You know I don't want to see Pedersen.
That cock.
Why should I?
What did he come for, hey?
God dammit, get.
And don't come back.
Find out something.
You're a fool.
Both you and Hans.
Pedersen.
That cock.
Don't come back.
Out.
Out.
He was shouting and breathing hard and closing his fist on the pillow.
He had long black hairs on his wrist.
They curled around the cuff of his nightshirt.
Big Hans made me come.
Big Hans said --
A fat hell on Big Hans.
He's an even bigger fool than you are.
Fat, hey?
I taught him, dammit, and I'll teach you.
Out.
You want me to drop my pot?
He was about to get up so I got out, slamming the door.
He was beginning to see he was too mad to sleep.
Then he threw things.
Once he went after Hans and dumped his pot over the banister.
Pa'd been shit-sick in that pot.
Hans got an axe.
He didn't even bother to wipe himself off and he chopped part of Pa's door down before he stopped.
He might not have gone that far if Pa hadn't been locked in laughing fit to shake the house.
That pot put Pa in an awful good humor whenever he thought of it.
I always felt the memory was present in both of them, stirring in their chests like a laugh or a growl, as eager as an animal to be out.
I heard Pa cursing all the way downstairs.
Hans had laid steaming towels over the kid's chest and stomach.
He was rubbing snow on the kid's legs and feet.
Water from the snow and water from the towels had run off the kid to the table where the dough was, and the dough was turning pasty, sticking to the kid's back and behind.
Ain't he going to wake up?
What about your pa?
He was awake when I left.
What'd he say?
Did you get the whisky?
He said a fat hell on Big Hans.
Don't be smart.
Did you ask him about the whisky?
Yeah.
Well?
He said a fat hell on Big Hans.
Don't be smart.
What's he going to do?
Go back to sleep most likely.
You'd best get that whisky.
You go.
Take the axe.
Pa's scared to hell of axes.
Listen to me, Jorge, I've had enough to your sassing.
This kid's froze bad.
If I don't get some whisky down him he might die.
You want the kid to die?
Do you?
Well, get your pa and get that whisky.
Pa don't care about the kid.
Jorge.
Well he don't.
He don't care at all, and I don't care to get my head busted neither.
He don't care, and I don't care to have his shit flung on me.
He don't care about anybody.
All he cares about is his whisky and that dry crack in his face.
Get pig-drunk--that's what he wants.
He don't care about nothing else at all.
Nothing.
Not Pedersen's kid neither.
That cock.
Not the kid neither.
I'll get the spirits, Ma said.
I'd wound Big Hans up tight.
I was ready to jump but when Ma said she'd get the whisky it surprised him like it surprised me, and he ran down.
Ma never went near the old man when he was sleeping it off.
Not any more.
Not for years.
The first thing every morning when she washed her face she could see the scar on her chin where he'd cut her with a boot cleat, and maybe she saw him heaving it again, the dirty sock popping out as it flew.
It should have been nearly as easy for her to remember that as it was for Big Hans to remember going after the axe while he was still spattered with Pa's yellow sick insides.
No you won't, Big Hans said.
Yes, Hans, if they're needed, Ma said.
Hans shook his head but neither of us tried to stop her.
If we had, then one of us would have had to go instead.
Hans rubbed the kid with more snow rubbed rubbed.
I'll get more snow, I said.
I took the pail and shovel and went out on the porch.
I don't know where Ma went.
I thought she'd gone upstairs and expected to hear she had.
Oh, he was being queer and careful, pawing about in the drawer and holding the bottle like a snake at the length of his arm.
He was awful angry because he'd thought Ma was going to do something big, something heroic even, especially for her I know him I know him we felt the same sometimes while Ma wasn't thinking about that at all, not anything like that.
There was no way of getting even.
It wasn't like getting cheated at the fair.
They were always trying so you got to expect it.
Now Hans had given Ma something of his--we both had when we thought she was going straight to Pa--something valuable;
but since she didn't know we'd given it to her, there was no easy way of getting it back.
Hans cut the foil off finally and unscrewed the cap.
He was put out too because there was only one way of understanding what she'd done.
Ma had found one of Pa's hiding places.
She'd found one and she hadn't said a word while Big Hans and I had hunted and hunted as we always did all winter, every winter since the spring that Hans had come and I had looked in the privy and found the first one.
Pa had a knack for hiding.
He knew we were looking and he enjoyed it.
But now Ma.
She'd found it by luck most likely but she hadn't said anything and we didn't know how long ago it'd been or how many other ones she'd found, saying nothing.
Pa was sure to find out.
Sometimes he didn't seem to because he hid them so well he couldn't find them himself or because he looked and didn't find anything and figured he hadn't hid one after all or had drunk it up.
But he'd find out about this one because we were using it.
A fool could see what was going on.
If he found out Ma found it--that'd be bad.
He took pride in his hiding.
It was all the pride he had.
I guess fooling Hans and me took doing.
But he didn't figure Ma for much.
He didn't figure her at all, and if he found out a woman it'd be bad.
Hans poured some in a tumbler.
You going to put more towels on him?
No.
Why not?
That's what he needs, something warm to his skin, don't he?
Not where he's froze good.
Heat's bad for frostbite.
That's why I only put towels on his chest and belly.
He's got to thaw slow.
You ought to know that.
Colors on the towels had run.
Ma poked her toe in the kid's clothes.
What are we going to do with these?
Big Hans began pouring whisky in the kid's mouth but his mouth filled without any getting down his throat and in a second it was dripping from his chin.
Here, help me prop him up.
I got hold his mouth open.
I didn't want to touch him and I hoped Ma would do it but she kept looking at the kid's clothes piled on the floor and the pool of water by them and didn't make any move to.
Come on, Jorge.
All right.
Lift, don't shove lift.
O.K., I'm lifting.
I took him by the shoulders.
His head flopped back.
His mouth fell open.
The skin on his neck was tight.
He was cold all right.
Hold his head up.
He'll choke.
His mouth is open.
His throat's shut.
He'll choke.
He'll choke anyway.
Hold his head up.
I can't.
Don't hold him like that.
Put your arms around him.
Well Jesus.
He was cold all right.
I put my arm carefully around him.
Hans had his fingers in the kid's mouth.
Now he'll choke for sure.
Shut up.
Just hold him like I told you.
He was cold all right, and wet.
I had my arm behind his back.
He was in his mid-fifties at this time, long past the establishment of his name and the wish to be lionized yet once again, and it was almost a decade since he had sworn off lecturing.
There was never a doubt any more how his structures would be received;
it was always the same unqualified success now.
Stowey Rummel was internationally famous, a crafter of a genuine Americana in foreign eyes, an original designer whose inventive childishness with steel and concrete was made even more believably sincere by his personality.
He had lived for almost thirty years in this same stone farmhouse with the same wife, a remarkably childish thing in itself;
This was an enormously long building whose walls were made of rocks, some of them brought home from every continent during his six years as an oil geologist.
The debris of his other careers was piled everywhere;
His files, desk, drafting board and a high stool formed the only clean island in the chaos.
Everywhere else his ideas lay or hung in visible form: his models, drawings, ten-foot canvases in monochromes from his painting days, and underfoot a windfall of broken-backed books that looked as though their insides had been ransacked by a maniac.
He worked standing, with his left hand in his pocket as though he were merely stopping for a moment, sketching with the surprised stare of one who was watching another person's hand.
Sometimes he would grunt softly to some invisible onlooker beside him, sometimes he would look stern and moralistic as his pencil did what he disapproved.
It all seemed--if one could have peeked in at him through one of his windows--as though this broken-nosed man with the muscular arms and wrestler's neck was merely the caretaker trying his hand at the boss's work.
This air of disengagement carried over to his apparent attitude toward his things, and people often mistook it for boredom in him or a surrender to repetitious routine.
But he was not bored at all;
he had found his style quite early in his career and he thought it quite wonderful that the world admired it, and he could not imagine why he should alter it.
There are, after all, fortunate souls who hear everything, but only know how to listen to what is good for them, and Stowey was, as things go, a fortunate man.
He left his home the day after New Year's wearing a mackinaw and sheepskin mittens and without a hat.
He would wear this same costume in Florida, despite his wife Cleota's reminders over the past five days that he must take some cool clothes with him.
But he was too busy to hear what she was saying.
So they parted when she was in an impatient humor.
Finding the key under his shoe, he started the engine, and while it warmed up he turned to her standing there in the dripping fog, and said, Defrost the refrigerator.
He saw the surprise in her face, and laughed as though it were the funniest expression he had ever seen.
He kept on laughing until she started laughing with him.
He had a deep voice which was full of good food she had cooked, and good humor;
an explosive laugh which always carried everything before it.
He would settle himself into his seat to laugh.
Whenever he laughed it was all he was doing.
And she was made to fall in love with him again there in the rutted dirt driveway standing in the cold fog, mad as she was at his going away when he really didn't have to, mad at their both having got older in a life that seemed to have taken no more than a week to go by.
She was forty-nine at this time, a lanky woman of breeding with an austere, narrow face which had the distinction of a steeple or some architecture that had been designed long ago for a stubborn sort of prayer.
Her eyebrows were definite and heavy and formed two lines moving upward toward a high forehead and a great head of brown hair that fell to her shoulders.
There was an air of blindness in her gray eyes, the startled-horse look that ultimately comes to some women who are born at the end of an ancestral line long since divorced from money-making and which, besides, has kept its estate intact.
She was personally sloppy, and when she had colds would blow her nose in the same handkerchief all day and keep it, soaking wet, dangling from her waist, and when she gardened she would eat dinner with dirt on her calves.
She even spoke differently when she was clean, and she was clean now for his departure and her voice clear and rather sharp.
Now drive carefully, for God's sake!
She called, trying to attain a half humorous resentment at his departure.
But he did not notice, and was already backing the car down to the road, saying Toot-toot!
To the stump of a tree as he passed it, the same stump which had impaled the car of many a guest in the past thirty years and which he refused to have removed.
She stood clutching her shawl around her shoulders until he had swung the car onto the road.
Then, when he had it pointed down the hill, he stopped to gaze at her through the window.
She had begun to turn back toward the house, but his look caught her and she stood still, waiting there for what his expression indicated would be a serious word of farewell.
Now she kept herself protectively ready to laugh again and sure enough he pointed at her with his index finger and said Toot!
Once more and roared off into the fog, his foot evidently surprising him with the suddenness with which it pressed the accelerator, just as his hand did when he worked.
She walked back to the house and entered, feeling herself returning, sensing some kind of opportunity in the empty building.
There is a death in all partings, she knew, and promptly put it out of her mind.
She enjoyed great parties when she would sit up talking and dancing and drinking all night, but it always seemed to her that being alone, especially alone in her house, was the realest part of life.
Now she could let out the three parakeets without fear they would be stepped on or that Stowey would let them out one of the doors;
she could dust the plants, then break off suddenly and pick up an old novel and read from the middle on;
improvise cha-chas on the harp;
and finally, the best part of all, simply sit at the plank table in the kitchen with a bottle of wine and the newspapers, reading the ads as well as the news, registering nothing on her mind but letting her soul suspend itself above all wishing and desire.
She did this now, comfortably aware of the mist running down the windows, of the silence outside, of the dark afternoon it was getting to be.
Every few minutes she would awaken for a moment to review things: Stowey, yes, was on his way south, and the two boys were away in school, and nothing was burning on the stove, and Lucretia was coming for dinner and bringing three guests of hers.
Then she fell asleep again as soddenly as a person with fever, and when she awoke it was dark outside and the clarity was back in her eyes.
She went into the living room and turned on three lamps, then back into the kitchen where she turned on the ceiling light and the switch that lit the floods on the barn, illuminating the driveway.
She knew she was feeling afraid and inwardly laughed at herself.
They were both so young, after all, so unready for any final parting.
How could it have been thirty years already, she wondered?
But yes, nineteen plus thirty was forty-nine, and she was forty-nine and she had been married at nineteen.
She stood still over the leg of lamb, rubbing herbs into it, quite suddenly conscious of a nausea in her stomach and a feeling of wrath, a sensation of violence that started her shivering.
But they all said, No, your time will come.
Enjoy being a bride while you can.
There was no room for company in the tiny Weaning House (where the Albright boys always took their brides, till they could get a house and a farm of their own).
So when the Big House filled up and ran over, the sisters-in-law found beds for everyone in their own homes.
And there was still not anything that Linda Kay could do.
So Linda Kay gave up asking, and accepted her reprieve.
Without saying so, she was really grateful;
for to attend the dying was something she had never experienced, and certainly had not imagined when she thought of the duties she would have as Bobby Joe's wife.
She had made curtains for all the windows of her little house, and she had kept it spotless and neat, shabby as it was, and cooked good meals for Bobby Joe.
She had done all the things she had promised herself she would do, but she had not thought of this.
People died, she would have said, in hospitals, or in cars on the highway at night.
Bobby Joe was gone all day now, not coming in for dinner and sometimes not for supper.
When they first married he had been working in the fields all day, and she would get in the car and drive to wherever he was working, to take him a fresh hot meal.
Now there was no work in the fields, nor would there be till it rained, and she did not know where he went.
Not that she complained, or had any cause to.
Four or five of the cousins from East Texas were about his age, so naturally they ran around together.
There was no reason for her to ask what they did.
Thus a new pattern of days began to develop, for Granny Albright did not die.
She lay still on the bed, her head hardly denting the pillow;
sometimes she opened her eyes and looked around, and sometimes she took a little milk or soup.
They stopped expecting her to die the next minute, but only in the next day or two.
Those who had driven hundreds of miles for the burial would not go home, for she might die any time;
but they might as well unpack their suitcases, for she might linger on.
So the pattern was established.
When Linda Kay had put up her breakfast dishes and mopped her linoleum rugs, she would go to the Big House.
There was not anything she could do there, but that was where everyone was, or would be.
Bobby Joe and the boys would come by, say How's Granny?
And sit on the porch a while.
The older men would be there at noon, and maybe rest for a time before they took their guns off to the creek or drove down the road towards town.
The women and children stayed at the Albrights'.
The women, keeping their voices low as they worked around the house or sat in the living room, sounded like chickens shut up in a coop for the night.
The children had to play away from the house (in the barn loft or the pasture behind the barn), to maintain a proper quietness.
Off and on, all day, someone would be wiping at the powdery gray dust that settled over everything.
The evaporative cooler had been moved to Granny's room, and her door was kept shut;
so that the rest of the house stayed open, though there was a question as to whether it was hotter or cooler that way.
The dust clogged their throats, and the heat parched them, so that the women were always making ice water.
They had cleaned up an old ice box and begun to buy fifty-pound blocks of ice in town, as the electric refrigerator came nowhere near providing enough ice for the crowds who ate and drank there.
One afternoon, as the women sat clucking softly, a new carload of people pulled up at the gate.
It was a Cadillac, black grayed with the dust of the road, its windows closed tight so you knew that the people who climbed out of it would be cool and unwrinkled.
They were an old fat couple (as Linda Kay described them to herself), a thick middle-aged man, and a girl about ten or twelve.
There was much embracing, much exclaiming.
Cousin Ada!
Cousin John!
Cousin Lura!
Cousin Howard!
And how is she?
About the same, John, about the same.
All the women got up and offered their chairs, and when they were all seated again, the guests made their inquiries and their explanations.
We were on our vacation in Canada, Howard explained, in a muffled voice that must have been used to booming, and the news didn't catch up with us till we were nearly home.
We came on as soon as we could.
There was the suggestion of ice water, and--in spite of the protest We're not really thirsty--Linda Kay, to escape the stuffy air and the smothering soft voices, hurried to the kitchen.
She filled a big pitcher and set it, with glasses, on a tray.
Carrying it to the living room, she imagined the picture she made: tall and roundly slim, a bit sophisticated in her yellow sheath, with a graceful swingy walk that she had learned as a twirler with the school band.
Almost immediately she was ashamed of herself for feeling vain, at such a time, in such a place, and she tossed back her long yellow hair, smiling shyly as she entered the room.
Howard (the thick middle-aged man) was looking at her.
She felt the look and looked back because she could not help it, seeing that he was neither as old nor as thick as she had at first believed.
And who is this?
He asked, when she passed him a glass.
Oh that's Linda Kay, Mama Albright said fondly.
She married our baby boy, Bobby Joe, this summer.
Let's see, Cousin Ada said.
He's a right smart younger than the rest?
Oh yes, Mama laughed.
He's ten years younger than Ernest.
We didn't expect him to come along;
thought for the longest he was a tumor.
This joke was not funny to Linda Kay, and she blushed, as she always did;
then, hearing the muffled boom of Howard's laughter, blushed redder.
Who is Howard, anyway?
She asked Bobby Joe that night.
He makes me uncomfortable.
Oh he's a second cousin or something.
He got in the oil business out at Odessa and lucked into some money.
How old is he?
Gosh, I don't know.
Thirty-five, I guess.
He's been married and got this half-grown kid.
If he bothers you, don't pay him any mind.
He's just a big windbag.
Bobby Joe was thinking about something else.
Say, did you know they're fixing to have a two-day antelope season on the Double J?
He was talking about antelope again when they woke up.
Listen, I never had a chance to kill an antelope.
There never was a season before, but now they want to thin 'em out on account of the drouth.
Did he ever visit here when he was a kid?
Linda Kay asked.
Who?
Howard.
Hell, I don't know.
When he was a kid I wasn't around.
Bobby Joe took a gun from behind the door, and with a quick Bye now was gone for the day.
Almost immediately Howard and his daughter Debora drove up in the Cadillac.
We're going after ice, Howard said, and thought maybe you'd go along and keep us company.
There was really no reason to refuse, and Linda Kay had never ridden in a Cadillac.
Driving along the caliche-topped road to town, Howard talked.
Finally he said, Tell me about yourself, and Linda Kay told him, because she thought herself that she had had an interesting life.
She was such a well-rounded teenager, having been a twirler, Future Farmers sweetheart, and secretary of Future Homemakers.
In her sophomore year she had started going steady with Bobby Joe, who was a football player, Future Homemakers sweetheart, and president of Future Farmers.
It was easy to see that they were made for each other, and they knew what they wanted.
Bobby Joe would be a senior this year, and he planned to graduate.
But there was no need for Linda Kay to go on, since all she wanted in life was to make a home for Bobby Joe and (blushing) raise his children.
Howard sighed.
You lucky kids, he said.
I'd give anything if I could have found a girl like you.
Then he told Linda Kay about himself.
Of course he couldn't say much, really, because of Debora, but Linda Kay could imagine what kind of woman his wife had been and what a raw deal he had got.
It made her feel different about Howard.
She was going to tell Bobby Joe about how mistaken she had been, but he brought one of the cousins home for supper, and all they did was talk about antelope.
Bobby Joe was trying to get Linda Kay to say she would cook one if he brought it home.
Cook a whole antelope?
She exclaimed.
Why, I couldn't even cook a piece of antelope steak;
I never even saw any.
Oh, you could.
I want to roast the whole thing, and have it for the boys.
Linda Kay told him he couldn't do anything like that with his Grandma dying, and he said well they had to eat, didn't they, they weren't all dying.
Linda Kay felt like going off to the bedroom to cry;
but they were going up to the Big House after supper, and she had to put on a clean dress and fix her hair a little.
Every night they all went to Mama and Papa Albright's, and sat on the open front porch, where they could get the breeze.
It was full-of-the-moon (or a little past), and nearly light as day.
They all sat around and drank ice water, and the men smoked, and everybody had a good time.
Once in a while they said what a shame it was, with Granny dying, but they all agreed she wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
That night the older men got to talking about going possum-hunting on a moonlight night.
Bobby Joe and two or three of the other boys declared they had never been possum-hunting, and Uncle Bill Farnworth (from Mama Albright's side of the family) said he would just get up from there and take them, right then.
After they had left, some of the people moved around, to find more comfortable places to sit.
There were not many chairs, so that some preferred to sit on the edge of the porch, resting their feet on the ground, and others liked to sit where they could lean back against the wall.
Howard, who had been sitting against the wall, said he needed more fresh air, and took the spot on the edge of the porch where Bobby Joe had been sitting.
You'll be a darn sight more comfortable there, Howard, Ernest said, laughing, and they all laughed.
Linda Kay felt that she was not exactly more comfortable.
Bobby Joe had been sitting close to her, touching her actually, and holding her hand from time to time, but it seemed at once that Howard sat much closer.
Perhaps it was just that he had so much more flesh, so that more of it seemed to come in contact with hers;
but she had never been so aware of anyone's flesh before.
Still she was not sorry he sat by her, but in fact was flattered.
He had become the center of the company, such stories he had to tell.
He had sold oil stock to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in person;
he had helped fight an oil-well fire that raged six days and nights.
But tell me, doctor, where do you plan to conduct the hatching?
Alex asked.
That will have to be in the hotel, the doctor retorted, confirming Alex's anticipations.
What I want you to do is to go to the market with me early tomorrow morning and help smuggle the hen back into the hotel.
The doctor paid the bill and they repaired to the hotel, room number nine, to initiate Alex further into these undertakings.
The doctor opened the smallest of his cases, an unimposing straw bag, and exposed the contents for Alex's inspection.
Inside, carefully packed in straw, were six eggs, but the eye of a poultry psychologist was required to detect what scientifically valuable specimentalia lay inside;
to Alex they were merely six not unusual hens' eggs.
There was little enough time to contemplate them, however;
in an instant the doctor was stalking across the room with an antique ledger in his hands, thoroughly eared and big as a table top.
He placed it on Alex's lap.
This is my hen ledger, he informed him in an absorbed way.
It's been going since 1908 when I was a junior in college.
That first entry there is the Vermont Flumenophobe, the earliest and one of the most successful of my eighty-three varieties--great big scapulars and hardly any primaries at all.
Couldn't take them near a river, though, or they'd squawk like a turkey cock the day before Thanksgiving.
Below these particulars was a series of alpha-beta-gammas connected by arrows and crosses which denoted the lineage of the breed.
Alex's instruction was rapid, for the doctor had to go off to the Rue Ecole De Medecine to hear more speeches with only time for one sip of wine to sustain him through them all.
A knocking at Alex's door roused him at six o'clock the following morning.
It was the doctor, dressed and ready for the expedition to the market, and Alex was obliged to prepare himself in haste.
The doctor stood about, waiting for Alex to dress, with a show of impatience, and soon they were moving, as quietly as could be, through the still-dark hallways, past the bedroom of the patronne, and so into the street.
The market was not far and, once there, the doctor's sense of immediacy left him and he fell into a state of harmony with the birds around him.
He stroked the hens and they responded with delighted clucks, he gobbled with the turkeys and they at once were all attention, he quacked with the ducks, and cackled with a pair of exceedingly flattered geese.
The dawn progressed and it seemed that the doctor would never be done with his ministrations when quite abruptly something broke his revery.
It was a fine broody hen, white, with a maternal eye and a striking abundance of feathers in the under region of the abdomen.
All search was ended;
he had found his fowl.
The purchase was effected and they made their way towards the hotel again, the hen, with whom some sort of communication had been set up, nestling in the doctor's arms.
The clocks struck seven-thirty as they approached the hotel entrance;
and hopes that the chambermaid and patronne would still be abed began to rise in Alex's well exercised breast.
The doctor was wearing a long New England greatcoat, hardly necessary in the June weather but a garment which proved well adapted to the sequestration of hens.
Alex entered first and was followed by the doctor who, for all his care, manifested a perceptible bulge on his left side where the hen was cradled.
They advanced in a line across the entrance hall to the stairway and up, with gingerly steps, towards the first landing.
It was then that they heard the tread of one descending and, in some perturbation glancing up, saw the patronne coming towards them as they gained the landing.
Bonjour, messieurs, vous etes matinals, she greeted them pleasantly.
Alex explained that they had been out for a stroll before breakfast while the doctor edged around behind him, attempting to hide the protuberance at his left side behind Alex's arm and back.
Vous voulez vos petits dejeuners tout de suite alors?
Their hostess enquired.
Alex told her that there was no hurry for their breakfasts, trying at the same time to effect a speedy separation of the persons before and behind him.
The doctor, he noticed, was attempting a transverse movement towards the stairs, but before the movement could be completed a distinct and audible cluck ruffled the air in the hollow of the stair-well.
Eyes swerved in the patronne's head, Alex coughed loudly, and the doctor, with a sforzando of chicken noises floating behind him, took to the stairs in long-shanked leaps.
Comment?
Ejaculated the surprised woman, looking at Alex for an explanation but he, parting from her without ceremony, only offered a few words about the doctor's provincial American speech and a state of nerves brought on by the demands of his work.
With that he hurried up the stairs, followed by her suspicious gaze.
When Alex entered his room, the doctor was already preparing a nest in the straw case, six eggs ready for the hen's attentions.
There was no reference to the incident on the stairs, his powers being absorbed by this more immediate business.
The hen appeared to have no doubts as to her duties and was quick to settle down to the performance of them.
One part of her audience was totally engaged, the connoisseur witnessing a peculiarly fine performance of some ancient classic, the other part, the guest of the connoisseur, attentive as one who must take an intelligent interest in that which he does not fully understand.
The spectacle progressed towards a denouement which was obviously still remote;
the audience attended.
Time elapsed but the doctor was obviously unconscious of its passage until an unwelcome knock on the door interrupted the processes of nature.
Startled, he jumped up to pull hen and case out of view, and Alex went to the door.
He opened it a crack and in doing so made as much shuffling, coughing, and scraping noise as possible in order to drown emanations from the hen who had begun to protest.
It was Giselle, the fille de chambre, come to clean the room, and while she stood before him with ears pricked up and regard all curiosity, explaining her errand, Alex could see from the corner of his eye the doctor doing all he could to calm the displeased bird.
Giselle was reluctant but Alex succeeded in persuading her to come back in five minutes and the door was shut again.
Who was that, young feller?
The doctor instantly asked.
That was the fille de chambre, the one you thought couldn't get the eggs out.
She looked mighty interested, though.
Anyhow she's coming back in five minutes to do the room.
The doctor's mind was working at a great speed;
he rose to put his greatcoat on and addressed Alex in a muted voice.
Have you got our keys handy?
Right in my pocket.
All right.
Now you go outside and beckon me when it's safe.
The hall was empty and Alex beckoned;
they climbed the stairs which creaked, very loudly to their sensitive ears, and reached the next floor.
A guest was locking his room;
they passed behind him and got to Alex's room unnoticed.
The doctor sat down rather wearily, caressing the hen and remarking that the city was not the place for a poultry-loving man, but no sooner was the remark out than a knock at this door obliged him to cover the hen with his greatcoat once more.
At the door Alex managed to persuade the increasingly astonished fille de chambre to return in ten minutes.
It was evident that a second transfer had to be effected, and that it had to take place between the time the fille finished the doctor's room and the time she began Alex's.
They waited three minutes and then crept out on tip-toe;
the halls were empty and they passed down the stairs to number nine and listened at the door.
A bustle of sheets being smoothed and pillows being arranged indicated the fille de chambre's presence inside;
they listened and suddenly a step towards the door announced another important fact.
The doctor shot down to the lavatory and turned the doorknob, but to no effect: the lavatory was occupied.
Although a look of alarm passed over his face, he did not arrest his movements but disappeared into the shower room just as the chambermaid emerged from number nine.
Alex suppressed those expressions of relief which offered to prevail in his face and escape from his throat;
unwarranted they were in any case for, as he stood facing the fille de chambre, his ears were assailed by new sounds from the interior of the shower room.
The events of the last quarter of an hour, mysterious to any bird accustomed only to the predictable life of coop and barnyard, had overcome the doctor's hen and she gave out a series of cackly wails, perhaps mourning her nest, but briefly enjoyed.
The doctor's wits had not left him, however, for all his sixty-eight years, and the wails were almost immediately lost in the sound of water rushing out from the showerhead.
Alex nodded to the maid as though nothing unusual were taking place and entered the doctor's room.
Shortly, the doctor himself entered, his hair somewhat wet from the shower, but evidently satisfied with the outcome of their adventures.
Without comment he opened the closet and from its shelves constructed a highboard around the egg case which he had placed on the floor inside.
Next, the hen was nested and all seemed well.
The two men sat for some time, savoring the pleasure of escape from peril and the relief such escape brings, before they got up and left the hotel, the doctor to go to the conference house and Alex to go to the main post office.
Alex returned to the hotel, rather weary and with no new prospects of a role, in the late afternoon, but found the doctor in an ebullient mood.
At the time Alex arrived he was engaged in some sort of intimate communication with the hen, who had settled herself on the nest most peacefully after the occurrences of the morning.
Chickens have short memories, the doctor remarked, that's why they are better company than most people I know, and he went on to break some important news to Alex.
Well, he began, It seems like some people in Paris want to hear more from me than those fellers over at the conference house do.
They've got a big vulture from Tanganika at the zoo here, with a wife for him, too, very rare birds, both of them, the only Vulturidae of their species outside Africa.
Seems like she's willing, but the male just flops around all day like the bashful boy who took Jeannie May behind the barn and then didn't know what to do, and the people at the zoo haven't got any vulture chicks to show for their trouble.
Going downstairs with the tray, Winston wished he could have given in to Miss Ada, but he knew better than to do what she said when she had that little-girl look.
There were times it wasn't right to make a person happy, like the times she came in the kitchen and asked know we don't keep peanut butter for a peanut butter sandwich.
You in this house, he always told her.
Why, Winston, she'd cry, I just now saw you eating it out of the jar!
But he knew how important it was for her to keep her figure.
In the kitchen, Leona, his little young wife, was reading the morning paper.
Her legs hung down long and thin as she sat on the high stool.
Here, Winston said gently, what's these dishes doing not washed?
The enormous plates which had held Mr. Jack's four fried eggs and five strips of bacon were still stacked in the sink.
Leave me alone, Leona said.
Can't you see I'm busy?
She looked at him impudently over the corner of the paper.
This is moving day, Winston reminded her, and I bet you left things every which way upstairs, your clothes all over the floor and the bed not made.
Leona!
His eye had fastened on her leg;
bending, he touched her knee.
If I catch you one more time down here without stockings --
She twitched her leg away.
Fuss, fuss, old man.
She had an alley cat's manners.
Winston stacked Miss Ada's thin pink dishes in the sink.
Then he spread out the last list on the counter.
To Be Left Behind was printed at the top in Miss Ada;
fine hand.
Winston took out a pencil, admired the point, and wrote slowly and heavily, Clothes Stand.
Sighing, Leona dropped the paper and stood up.
I guess I better get ready to go.
Winston watched her fumbling to untie her apron.
Here.
Carefully, he undid the bow.
How come your bows is always cockeyed?
She turned and put her arms around his neck.
I don't want to leave here, Winston.
Now listen to that.
He drew back, embarrassed and pleased.
I thought you was sick to death of this big house.
Said you wore yourself out, cleaning all these empty rooms.
At least there is room here, she said.
What room is there going to be in an apartment for any child?
I told you what Miss Ada's doctor said.
I don't mean Miss Ada!
What you think I care about that?
I mean our children.
She sounded as though they already existed.
In spite of the hundred things he had on his mind, Winston went and put his arm around her waist.
We've got plenty of time to think about that.
All the time in the world.
We've only been married four years, January.
Four years!
She wailed.
That's a long time, waiting.
How many times have I told you--he began, and was almost glad when she cut him off--Too many times!
-- and flounced to the sink, where she began noisily to wash her hands.
Too many times was the truth of it, Winston thought.
He hardly believed his reason himself any more.
Although it had seemed a good reason, to begin with: no couple could afford to have children.
How you going to work with a child hanging on you?
He asked Leona.
You want to keep this job, don't you?
He doubted whether she heard him, over the running water.
He sat for a while with his hands on his knees, watching the bend of her back as she gathered up her things--a comb, a bottle of aspirin--to take upstairs and pack.
She made him sad some days, and he was never sure why;
it was something to do with her back, the thinness of it, and the quick, jerky way she bent.
She was too young, that was all;
too young and thin and straight.
Winston!
It was Mr. Jack, bellowing out in the hall.
Winston hurried through the swinging door.
I've been bursting my lungs for you, Mr. Jack complained.
He was standing in front of the mirror, tightening his tie.
He had on his gray tweed overcoat and his city hat, and his brief case lay on the bench.
I don't know what you think you've been doing about my clothes, he said.
This coat looks like a rag heap.
There were a few blades of lint on the shoulder.
Winston took the clothesbrush out of the closet and went to work.
He gave Mr. Jack a real going-over;
he brushed his shoulders and his back and his collar with long, firm strokes.
Hey!
Mr. Jack cried when the brush tipped his hat down over his eyes.
Winston apologized and quickly set the hat right.
Then he stood back to look at Mr. Jack, who was pulling on his pigskin gloves.
Winston enjoyed seeing him start out;
he wore his clothes with style.
When he was going to town, nothing was good enough--he had cursed at Winston once for leaving a fleck of polish on his shoelace.
At home, he wouldn't even wash his hands for supper, and he wandered around the yard in a pair of sweaty old corduroys.
The velvet smoking jackets, pearl-gray, wine, and blue, which Miss Ada had bought him hung brushed and unworn in the closet.
Good-by, Winston, Mr. Jack said, giving a final set to his hat.
Look out for those movers!
Winston watched him hurry down the drive to his car;
a handsome, fine-looking man it made him proud to see.
After Mr. Jack drove away, Winston went on looking out the window.
He noticed a speck of dirt on the sill and swiped at it with his finger.
Then he looked at his finger, at the wrinkled, heavy knuckle and the thick nail he used like a knife to pry up, slit, and open.
For the first time, he be sad about the move.
That house was ten years off his life let himself.
Each brass handle and hinge shone for his reward, and he knew how to get at the dust in the china flowers and how to take down the long glass drops which hung from the chandelier.
He knew the house like a blind man, through his fingers, and he did not like to think of all the time and rags and polishes he had spent on keeping it up.
Ten years ago, he had come to the house to be interviewed.
The tulips and the big pink peonies had been blooming along the drive, and he had walked up from the bus almost singing.
Miss Ada had been out back, in a straw hat, planting flowers.
She had talked to him right there, with the hot sun in his face, which made him sweat and feel ashamed.
Winston had been surprised at her for that.
Still, he had liked the way she had looked, in a fresh, neat cotton dress--citron yellow, if he remembered.
She had had a dignity about her, even barefoot and almost too tan.
Since then, the flowers she had planted had spread all over the hill.
Already the jonquils were blooming in a flock by the front gate, and the periwinkles were coming on, blue by the porch steps.
In a week the hyacinths would spike out.
And the dogwood in early May, for Miss Ada's alfresco party;
and after that the Japanese cherries.
Now the yard looked wet and bald, the trees bare under their buds, but in a while Miss Ada's flowers would bloom like a marching parade.
She had dug a hole for each bulb, each tree wore a tag with her writing on it;
where would she go for her gardening now?
Somehow Winston didn't think she'd take to window boxes.
Sighing, he hurried to the living room.
He had a thousand things to see to.
Still, he couldn't help thinking, we're all getting old, getting small;
the snail is pulling in her horns.
In the living room, Miss Ada was standing by the window with a sheaf of lists in her hand.
She was looking out at the garden.
Winston, she said, get the basket for the breakables.
Winston had the big straw basket ready in the hall.
He brought it in and put it down beside her.
Miss Ada was looking fine;
she had on her Easter suit, blue, with lavender binding.
Halfway across the house, he could have smelled her morning perfume.
It hung in all her day clothes, sweet and strong;
sometimes when he was pressing, Winston raised her dresses to his face.
Frowning, Miss Ada studied the list.
Well, let's see.
The china lemon tree.
The alabaster cockatoo.
Winston followed her around the room, collecting the small frail objects (Christmas, birthday, and anniversary) and wrapping them in tissue paper.
Neither of them trusted the movers.
When they came to Mr. Jack's photograph, twenty by twelve inches in a curly silver frame, Miss Ada said, By rights I ought to leave that, seeing he won't take my clotheshorse.
She smiled at Winston, and he saw the hateful hard glitter in her eyes.
He picked up the photograph and began to wrap it.
At least you could leave it for the movers, Miss Ada said.
What possessed you to tell me a clotheshorse would be a good idea?
Winston folded the tissue paper carefully.
He's used it every day;
every morning, I lay out his clothes on it.
Well, that's over now.
And it was his main present!
Leave that fool picture out, she added sharply.
Winston laid it in the basket.
Mr. Jack sets store by that.
Really, Winston.
It was meant to be my present.
But she went on down the list.
Winston was relieved;
those presents had been on his mind.
He had only agreed with Miss Ada about getting the valet, but he had actually suggested the photograph to Mr. Jack.
You know what she likes, Winston, he had said wearily, one evening in November when Winston was pulling off his overshoes.
Tell me what to get her for Christmas.
She's been talking about a picture, Winston had told him.
Picture!
You mean picture of me?
But Winston had persuaded him.
On Christmas night, they had had a disagreement about it.
Winston had heard because he was setting up the liquor tray in the next room.
Through the door, he had seen Mr. Jack walking around, waiting for Miss Ada.
Finally she had come down;
Winston had heard her shaking out the skirt of her new pink silk hostess gown.
How do you like it?
She had asked.
Mr. Jack had said, You look about fifteen years old.
Is that a compliment?
I don't know.
He had stood at a little distance, studying her, as though he would walk around next and look at the back of her head.
Lovie, you make me feel naked.
Miss Ada had giggled, and she went sweeping and rustling to the couch and sank down.
You look like that picture I have at the office, Mr. Jack had started.
Not a line, not a wrinkle.
I look like an old man, compared, and he had picked up his photograph with the red Christmas bow still on it.
Look, an old man.
Will you wear pink when you're sixty?
Darling, I love that photograph.
I'm going to put it on my dresser.
I guess it's children make a woman old.
A man gets old anyhow.
After a minute he went on, People must think the curse is on me, seeing you fresh as an apple and me old and gray.
I'll give you a medical certificate, framed, if you like, Miss Ada had said.
No.
All I want is a picture--with a few lines.
Make the man put them in if he has to.
After that they had sat for five minutes without saying a word.
Then Miss Ada had stood up, rustling and rustling, and gone upstairs.
Was it love?
I had no doubt that it was.
During the rest of the summer my scholarly mania for making plaster casts and spatter prints of Catskill flowers and leaves was all but surpassed by the constantly renewed impressions of Jessica that my mind served up to me for contemplation and delight.
Nothing in all the preceding years had had the power to bring me closer to a knowledge of profound sorrow than the breakup of camp, the packing away of my camp uniforms, the severing of ties with the six or ten people I had grown most to love in the world.
In final separation from them, in the railroad terminal across the river from New York, I would nearly cry.
My parents' welcoming arms would seem woeful, inadequate, unwanted.
These letters became the center of my existence.
I lived to see an envelope of hers in the morning mail and to lock myself in my room in the afternoon to reread her letter for the tenth time and finally prepare an answer.
In my letters I took on a personality that differed from the self I knew in real life.
For many nights afterward, the idea of her having been so close to me in that imagined bed would return and fill me with obscure and painful desires, would cause me to lie awake in shame, tossing with irresolution, longing to fall into a deep sleep.
The weeks went by, and the longer our separation grew, the more unbounded and almost unbearable my fantasies became.
They caused my love for Jessica to become warmer and at the same time more hopeless, as if my adolescent self knew that only torment would ever bring me the courage to ask to see her again.
As it turned out, Jessica took matters into her own hands.
Having received permission to give a camp reunion-Halloween party, she asked that I come and be her date.
I went and, mum and nervous, all but made a fool of myself.
I remember standing in a corner, watching Jessica act the hostess, serving soft drinks to her guests.
She was wearing her dark hair in two, thick braids to attain an American Girl effect she thought was appropriate to Halloween.
It made her look sweet and schoolgirlish, I was excited to be with her, but I did not know how to express it.
Yet a moment did come that night when the adventurous letter writer and fantasist seemed to stride off my flashy pages, out of my mind, and plant himself in reality.
It was late, we were playing kissing games, and Jessica and I were called on to kiss in front of the others.
We blushed and were flustered, and it turned out to be the fleetest brush of lips upon cheek.
The kiss outraged our friends but it was done and meanwhile had released in me all the remote, exciting premonitions of lust, all the mysterious sensations that I had imagined a truly consummated kiss would convey to me.
It was at that party that, finally overcoming my timidity, inspired by tales only half-understood and overheard among older boys, I asked Jessie to spend New Year's Eve with me.
Lovingly, she accepted, and so great was my emotion that all I could think of saying was, You're amazing, you know?
Later, we agreed to think of how we wished to spend that night.
We would write to one another and make a definite plan.
She was terribly pleased.
Among my school and neighborhood friends, during the next months, I bragged and swaggered and pompously described my impending date.
But though I boasted and gave off a dapper front, I was beneath it all frightened.
It would be the first time I had ever been completely alone with a girl I loved.
I had no idea of what subjects one discussed when alone with a girl, or how one behaved: Should I hold her hand while walking or only when crossing the street?
Should I bring along a corsage or send one to her?
Was it preferable to meet her at home or in the city?
Should I accompany her to the door of her home, or should I ask to be invited in?
In or out, should I kiss her goodnight?
All this was unknown to me, and yet I had dared to ask her out for the most important night of the year!
When in one letter Jessica informed me that her father did not like the idea of her going out alone on New Year's Eve, I knew for a moment an immense relief;
but the letter went on: she had cried, she had implored, she had been miserable at his refusal, and finally he had relented--and now how happy she was, how expectant!
Her optimism gave me heart.
I forced confidence into myself.
I made inquiries, I read a book of etiquette.
In December I wrote her with authority that we would meet on the steps of the Hotel Astor, a rendezvous spot that I had learned was the most sophisticated.
We would attend a film and, later on, I stated, we might go to the Mayflower Coffee Shop or Child's or Toffenetti's for waffles.
I set the hour of our meeting for seven.
At five o'clock that night it was already dark, and behind my closed door I was dressing as carefully as a groom.
I wore a new double-breasted brown worsted suit with a faint herringbone design and wide lapels like a devil's ears.
My camp-made leather wallet, bulky with twisted, raised stitches around the edges, I stuffed with money I had been saving.
Hatless, in an overcoat of rough blue wool, I was given a proud farewell by my mother and father, and I set out into the strangely still streets of Brooklyn.
Heavy-coated, severe-looking policemen sat astride noble horses along the curbside to prevent the revellers from spilling out in front of the crawling traffic.
The night was cold but the crowd kept one warm.
The giant electric signs and marquees were lit up for the first time since blackout regulations had been instituted, and the atmosphere was alive with the feeling that victory was just around the corner.
Cardboard noisemakers, substitutes for the unavailable tin models, were being hawked and bought at makeshift stands every few yards along Broadway, and one's ears were continually serenaded by the horns' rasps and bleats.
An old gentlemen next to me held a Boy Scout bugle to his lips and blasted away at every fourth step and during the interim shouted out, V for Victory!
His neighbors cheered him on.
There was a great sense of camaraderie.
How did one join them?
Where were they all walking to?
Was I supposed to buy a funny hat and a rattle for Jessica?
It was a quarter of seven when the crowd washed me up among the other gallants who had established the Astor steps as the beach-head from which to launch their night of merrymaking.
I looked over their faces and felt a twinge: they all looked so much more knowing than I.
I looked away.
I looked for Jessica to materialize out of the clogging, curdling crowd and, as the time passed and I waited, a fiend came to life beside me and whispered in my ear: How was I planning to greet Jessica?
Where exactly would we go after the movie?
Suppose the lines in front of the movie houses were too long and we couldn't get in?
Suppose I hadn't brought along enough money?
I felt for my wallet.
Its thick, substantial outline calmed me.
But when I saw that it was already ten past seven, I began to wonder if something had gone wrong.
Suppose her father had changed his mind and had refused to let her leave?
Suppose at this very moment her father was calling my house in an effort to cancel the plans?
I grew uneasy.
All about me there was a hectic interplay of meetings taking place, like abrupt, jerky scenes in old silent movies, joyous greetings and beginnings, huggings and kissings, enthusiastic forays into the festive night.
Whole platoons were taking up new positions on the steps, arriving and departing, while I stayed glued, like a signpost, to one spot.
My heart almost stopped beating.
There were thirty-eight patients on the bus the morning I left for Hanover, most of them disturbed and hallucinating.
An interne, a nurse and two attendants were in charge of us.
I felt lonely and depressed as I stared out the bus window at Chicago's grim, dirty West Side.
It seemed incredible, as I listened to the monotonous drone of voices and smelled the fetid odors coming from the patients, that technically I was a ward of the state of Illinois, going to a hospital for the mentally ill.
I suddenly thought of Mary Jane Brennan, the way her pretty eyes could flash with anger, her quiet competence, the gentleness and sweetness that lay just beneath the surface of her defenses.
We had become good friends during my stay at Cook County Hospital.
I had told her enough about myself to offset somewhat the damaging stories that had appeared in local newspapers after my little adventure in Marshall Field & Co..
She knew that I lived at a good address on the Gold Coast, that I had once been a medical student and was thinking of returning to the university to finish my medical studies.
She knew also that I was unmarried and without a single known relative.
She wasn't quite sure that I felt enough remorse about my drinking, or that I would not return to it once I was out and on my own again.
This had worried her.
I read those newspaper stories about you, she had said.
You must have loved that girl very much, but you couldn't have meant it when you said that you wanted to kill her.
Why do you say that?
I asked.
I was full of booze and, well, a drunk is apt to do anything he says he'll do.
Nonsense!
I grew up in an Irish neighborhood on Chicago's West Side.
Don't tell me about drunks.
You're not the kind to go violent.
Were you in love with that girl?
Would it make any difference to you if I were, Mary Jane?
She met my eyes, suddenly angry.
I wouldn't have gone into nursing if I didn't care about people.
I'm interested in every patient I've helped take care of.
When I think of people like you, well, I --
You what, Mary Jane?
You are young, intelligent, have a whole lifetime before you to make something worth while of yourself, but you mess it up with whiskey, indifference, self-destructive attitudes.
I don't blame that girl for breaking her engagement with you.
Was she pretty?
Oh, yes, I said, feeling annoyed, she was very pretty.
You don't believe that I'm going back to medical school and finish, do you?
Why should I?
I've worked this ward for three months now.
We keep getting the same ones back again and again.
They all mean well, have great promises to make when they are about to go home, but drinking is their sickness.
You've not seemed like them, but maybe you are.
You've treated your stay here like a big joke.
It's not a joke to be sent to a place like this or to Hanover.
I wanted to go to college, too --
Why didn't you?
I asked.
Chicago has some of the best --
Her eyes flashed angrily.
That's what I mean about you, Anderson, she said.
You don't seem to know much about reality.
I'll tell you why I didn't go to college;
I'm the oldest of six children.
My father's a policeman and makes less than seven thousand dollars a year.
There was no money for tuition, for clothes, for all the things you apparently take for granted.
Nurses' training here doesn't cost anything.
They even pay me six dollars a month.
I think it's a good deal.
I'm going to become a good nurse, and I've got two baby brothers that are going to have college if I have to work at my profession until I'm an old maid to give it to them.
Do you have a boy friend?
I asked.
That's none of your business, she said, then changed the subject.
What about your father and mother, don't you think of them when you're in a place like this?
My father and mother died when I was two years old, I said.
My aunt raised me.
Aunt Mary died when I was doing my military service.
I have no one but myself to worry about.
Something in my voice must have touched her deeply because her anger passed quickly, and she turned away to keep me from seeing her face.
I'm sorry, she said.
I don't know what I'd do without my family.
We've always been so close.
Tell me more about them.
Her eyes became bright as she talked about her father and mother, aunts and uncles, cousins.
Listening, I felt cheated and lonely as only an orphan can.
When she had finished I said:
Your dad sounds like a good father and a good policeman.
I'll bet he wouldn't be pleased if a rumdum like me were to ask his daughter for a date--I mean, after I'm out of the hospital, a month or so from now.
My father is a sergeant of detectives and has been attached to Homicide for five years.
He's a pretty good judge of character, Anderson.
I don't think he'd mind too much if he were sure you'd decided not to be a rumdum in the future.
What about you?
How would you feel about it if I were to ask you for a date when I get through at Hanover?
If I thought you were serious about going back to school, that you'd learned something from your experiences here and at Hanover--well, I might consider such an offer.
What about your that girl you were going to kill?
It suddenly seemed very important to me that Mary Jane Brennan should know the truth about me--that I was not the confused, sick, irresponsible person she believed me to be.
There are things about me that I can't tell you now, Mary Jane, I said, but if you'll go out to dinner with me when I get out of Hanover, I'd like to tell you the whole story.
I can say this: I'm dead serious about going back to school.
As for that other girl, let's just say that I never want to see her again.
You will get to come home on long weekends from Hanover, won't you?
Yes, I'll get one overnight a month.
We'll go up to the Edgewater Beach Hotel for dinner, I said.
Do you like to dance?
They always have a good orchestra.
I like to dance, she said, then turned and walked away.
There hadn't been anything really personal in her interest in me.
I knew that.
It was just that she felt deeply about every patient on the ward and wanted to believe that they might benefit from their treatment there.
Now, riding this hospital bus, feeling isolated and utterly alone, I knew that she was genuine and unique, quite unlike any girl I had known before.
It seemed the most important thing in my life at this moment that she should know the real truth about me.
It was a fantastic story.
Only two people in the state of Illinois knew that I was entering Hanover State Hospital under an assumed name, or why.
It was unlikely that any girl as sharp as Mary Jane Brennan would believe it without proof.
But I had the proof, all documented in a legal agreement which I would show her the moment I was free to do so.
As the bus turned into the main highway and headed toward Hanover I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes, thinking over the events of the past two weeks, trying to put the pieces in order.
I wondered suddenly as I listened to the disconnected jabberings coming from the patient behind me, if I had not perhaps imagined it all.
Perhaps this was reality and Dale Nelson, the actor, was delusion;
a figment of Carl Anderson's imagination.
Four
I had come to Chicago from New York early in September with a dramatic production called Ask Tony.
It was a bad play, real grade-A turkey, which only a prevalence of angels with grandiose dreams of capital gain and tax money to burn could have put into rehearsal.
No one, not even the producer, had any real hope of getting it back to Broadway.
But because it was a suspense gangster story of the Capone era, many of us felt that it might catch on for a run in Chicago, continue as a road company, and eventually become a movie.
Such optimism was completely unjustified.
The critics literally screamed their indignation.
Ask Tony was doomed from the moment Kupcinet leveled on it in his Sun-Times column.
We opened on Friday and closed the following Monday.
Out of the entire cast I alone received good notices for my portrayal of a psychopathic killer.
This let me in for a lot of kidding from the rest of the company, two members of which were native Chicagoans.
We were paid off Tuesday morning and given tickets back to New York.
I felt lonely and depressed as I packed my bags at the Croydon Hotel.
It seemed to me that my life was destined to be one brilliant failure after another.
I had been among the top third in my class at N.Y.U., had wanted desperately to go to medical school, but I'd run out of money and energy at the same time.
Then later I had quit my safe, secure five-a-week spot on a network soap opera to take a part in this play.
It seemed to me that I was not only unlucky but quite stupid as well.
I knew that I'd soon be back working as an orderly at the hospital or as a counterman at Union News or Schraffts while waiting for another acting job to open.
It suddenly occurred to me that I did not particularly like acting, that I was at some sort of crossroads and would have to decide soon what I was going to do with my life.
I closed the last bag and stood all three at the door for the bellboy to pick up, then went to the bathroom for a drink of water.
The telephone rang.
When I answered it a voice too dignified and British to be real said, Is this Mr. Dale Nelson, the actor?
All right, I said.
Why don't you bastards lay off for a while?
I beg your pardon, sir?
All right.
This is Dale Nelson the actor.
Good.
I'm calling you, Mr. Nelson, at the request of Mr. Phillip Wycoff.
Could you possibly have lunch with him today?
His car could pick you up at your hotel at twelve.
I smiled.
You'll send the Rolls-Royce, of course?
Yes, of course, Mr. Nelson.
I started to say something else appropriate, but the man had hung up.
I finally went downstairs to the bar off the main lobby where most of the cast were drowning their sorrows over the untimely passing of Ask Tony.
They all bowed low as I approached them.
All right, you bastards, I said, the great actor is about to buy a drink.
I laid a tenspot on the bar and motioned to the bartender to serve a round.
He had just returned my change when the doorman came in off the street to page me.
I walked over to him.
You Mr. Nelson?
He asked.
That's right.
Mr. Wycoff's car is waiting for you at the east entrance.
I followed him out through the lobby to the street.
An ancient Rolls-Royce, as shiningly impressive as the day it came off the ship, was parked at the curb.
The elderly chauffeur, immaculate in a dark uniform, stood stiffly at attention holding open the door of the town car.
I was giving the parked cars the once-over.
The Oldsmobile with the license number JYJ 114 was in stall number five.
Okay, I said to the attendant, I'll let you know if I close the deal on the office in this building.
I walked with him back to the entrance.
He gave me a ticket on the agency car and parked it.
I was back in ten minutes.
Forgot to get something out of the car, I told him, showing him my ticket.
He started to say something as I walked in and then suddenly grinned and said, Oh, yes.
You're the one I was talking to about a monthly rental.
That's right, I told him.
He consulted the parking ticket, then looked at a notation and said, You're in the third row back toward the rear.
Can you find it all right?
Sure, I told him.
I went back to the agency car and got out an electric bug, one of the newest devices for electronic shadowing.
I always keep a set in the car.
I put in new batteries so as to be certain I'd have plenty of power and on my way out walked over to the regular parking stalls and stood looking at them thoughtfully.
I waited until the parking attendant was busy with a customer, then slipped around the back of the car with license number JYM 114, attached the electronic bug to the rear bumper and walked out.
The attendant waved me on.
One of the hardest chores a detective has is hanging around on a city street, trying to make himself inconspicuous, keeping an eye on the entrance of an office building and waiting.
For the first fifteen or twenty minutes it's possible to be more or less interested in window displays, then in people passing by.
After a while, however, a person's mind gets fed up and that magnifies all of the disagreeable physical symptoms which go with that sort of an assignment.
You want to sit down.
Your leg muscles and back muscles feel weary.
You're conscious of the fact that your feet hurt, that the city pavements are hard.
I waited a solid two hours before my man came out of the office building.
He came out alone.
I wasn't far behind him when he entered the parking lot and hurried over to his car.
The attendant recognized me once more and said, What did you do about that office?
I haven't made up my mind yet, I said.
It's a sublease.
I have a couple of them I'm figuring on;
one here and one that's out quite a ways where there's usually curb parking.
That curb parking is undependable and annoying, particularly when it rains, he said.
I kept trying to get him to take my money.
Okay, I told him.
I'm in a rush right now.
I know where the car is.
Want me to drive it out?
I'll have one of the boys get it, he said.
It's one of the rules on transients.
Regulars drive out their own cars.
Make it as snappy as you can, will you?
I asked.
Oh, that's all right, he said.
You're going to be a regular.
You'll get in the office building here.
You don't want to lease a place way out in the sticks.
You get business where the business is, not where it isn't.
I grinned at him, handed him a couple of dollars and said, By the time you get the parking charge figured up, there should be a cigar in it for you.
I hurried over to the agency heap, jumped in, started the motor and was just in time to see the car I wanted to shadow turn to the left.
I was held up a bit trying to make a left turn.
By the time I'd made it he was gone.
Traffic was pretty heavy.
I turned on the electric bug, and the signal came in loud and clear.
I made time and picked him up within ten blocks.
I stayed half a block behind him, letting lots of cars keep in between us, listening to the steady beep beep beep.
After fifteen minutes of traffic driving he turned to the left.
I couldn't see him, but the electric bugging device gave steady beeps when it was straight ahead, short half beeps when the car I was following was to the left, and long drawn-out beeps when it turned to the right.
If it ever got behind me, the beep turned to a buzz.
I turned left too soon and got a signal showing that I was still behind him but he was to the right.
After a while the signal became a buzz and I knew he was behind me.
That meant he'd parked someplace.
I made a big circle until I located the car parked at the curb in front of an apartment house.
I found a parking place half a block away, sat in the car and waited.
My quarry was in the apartment house for two hours.
Then he came out and started driving toward the beach.
By this time it was dark.
I could get up close to him where there was traffic but had to drop far behind when there wasn't traffic.
My lights would have been a giveaway if I'd tried to shadow him in the conventional manner.
Moreover, I'd have lost him if it hadn't been for the electronic shadowing device.
His signal was coming loud and clear and then all of a sudden it turned to a buzz.
I circled the block and found he was in the parking lot of a high-class restaurant.
I sat where I could watch the exit and realized I was hungry.
I sat there with the faint odor of charcoal-broiled steaks tantalizing my nostrils and occasionally catching the aroma of coffee.
My man came out an hour later, drove to the beach, turned right and after half a mile went to the Swim and Tan Motel.
It was a fairly modern motel with quite a bit of electrical display in front.
I remembered it was the Peeping Tom place.
I waited until my man was coming out of the office with the key to a cabin before I went in to register.
The card the man I was shadowing had filled out was still on the counter.
I noticed that he was in Unit 12 and that he had registered under the name of Oscar L. Palmer and wife, giving a San Francisco address.
He had written out the license number of his car but had transposed the last two figures, an old dodge which is still good.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the motel manager doesn't check the license number on the plates against the license number the tenant writes out.
If he does, it's still better than an even chance he won't notice the transposition of the numbers, and if he should notice it, the thing can be passed off as an honest mistake.
I used the alias of Robert C. Richards, gave the first three letters and the first and last figure of the license number on the agency heap, but a couple of phony numbers in between.
I could have written anything.
The manager of the motel was a woman who apparently didn't care.
She was complying with the law in regard to registrations but she certainly wasn't checking license numbers or bothering the tenants.
You mean you're all alone, Mr. Richards?
That's right.
Your wife isn't going to join you--later?
I don't think so.
If you expect her to show up, she said, you'd better put'and wife'on there.
It's a formality, you know.
Any difference in the rate?
I asked.
Not to you, she said smiling.
It's ten dollars either way.
There are ice cubes in a container at the far end and in another by the office.
There are three soft-drink vending machines, and if you should be joined by--anybody--try to keep things quiet, if you will.
We like to run a nice quiet place.
Thank you, I told her.
I took another sidelong glance at the other registration card, then took the key to Unit 13 that she had given me and went down long enough to park the car.
The construction was reasonably solid;
not like the cracker-box construction of so many of the motel units that have stucco all over the outside but walls that are thin enough so you can hear every movement of the people in the adjoining apartment.
I put a small electric amplifier against the wall on the side I wanted to case.
With the aid of that I could hear my man moving around, heard him cough a couple of times, heard the toilet flush, heard the sound of water running.
Whoever his companion was going to be, she was going to join him later.
She knew where to come.
He didn't have to telephone.
I was so hungry my stomach felt all lines of communication had been severed.
It's one thing to go without food when you're occupied with some work or when you're simply postponing a meal, but when you're dependent on someone else and know that you can't eat until he's bedded down for the night, hunger can be a gnawing torture.
I had noticed a drive-in down the road a quarter of a mile.
The batteries on the bugging device I had put on the car were still fresh enough to send out good strong signals.
The powerful microphone I could press against the wall between my motel unit and that occupied by the man would bring in the sound of any conversation, and I was positively nauseated I was so hungry.
I got in the car, drove down to the drive-in and ordered a couple of hamburgers with everything included, a cup of coffee and the fastest service possible.
The place wasn't particularly busy at that time of night, and the girl who was waiting on me, who was clothed in the tightest-fitting pair of slacks I had ever seen on a woman and a sweater that showed everything there was--and there was lots of it--wanted to be sociable.
You really in a hurry, Handsome?
She asked.
I'm in a hurry, Beautiful.
It's early in the evening to be in a hurry.
There's lots of time left.
There may not be any women left, I said.
She gave a little pout and said, I don't get off work until eleven o'clock.
That's when my evening commences.
I'll be here at ten-fifty-five, I said.
Oh, you!
She announced.
That's what they all say.
What's that thing going buzz-buzz-buzz in your car?
I said Darn it, that's the automatic signal that shows when the ignition key is on.
I didn't turn it off.
I reached over and switched off the electronic bugging device.
She went in to get the hamburgers, and I switched on the device again and kept the signal from Dowling's car coming in steady and clear until I saw her starting back with the hamburgers.
Then I shut off the device again.
She wanted to hang around while I was eating.
Don't you think it's selfish to have dinner before you go to pick her up?
No, I said.
It's a kindness to her.
You see, she's on a diet.
She'll eat just a pineapple and cottage cheese salad and I'm to have one with her so she won't feel out of place.
Diets can be terrible, the girl said.
How much overweight is she?
Not a bit, I said, but she's keeping her figure in hand.
She looked at me provocatively.
Good figures should be kept in hand, she said, and walked away with an exaggerated wiggle.
I turned on the device again, half fearful that I might find silence, but the buzzes came in loud and clear.
When I switched on the lights for her to come and get the check, I had the exact change plus a dollar tip.
The fat man said, All we gotta do is go around the corner.
The gun moved.
The thin man said, That-a-way.
--second building on the right.
--it says police right on the door.
--so even if we was as dumb as you take us for, we could still find it.
Roberta and Dave began to back toward the door.
The thin man waved the gun again.
He said, Right around the corner.
It says water works, but there is a policeman on duty, too.
A night policeman just like in the States.
You know?
Canada doesn't have much of this here juvenile delinquency problem, but we keep a night policeman all the same on account of the crazy tourists.
At the door, Dave paused to feel for the latch.
Roberta glanced up at her husband.
He was going to be sensible and not try to do anything rash with that gun pointed at him.
She measured the distance from where they stood to the men and the gun, measured the distance from the men to the back room.
She decided to risk it.
There was something phony about all this gun waving--something not quite what it seemed in the detailed directions for finding the police.
Dave had the latch under his thumb now and he removed his arm from his wife in order to pull the door open.
In a flash she was away to the back, paying no attention to three angry shouts from the male throats.
She tore open the back door.
It was dark inside the room but enough light spilled from the restaurant behind her to enable her to make out a round table with a green cloth top.
There was a small sideboard with some empty beer bottles on it and perhaps fifteen wooden chairs.
Slowly she turned to face the men again.
Rat-face at the counter was on his feet.
The distance between where she stood and where Dave waited at the outside door was a hundred miles.
Keeping her frightened gaze on the men at the counter, she began to feel her way to the door.
She sidled along the booths one step at a time.
The gun followed her.
As she reached Dave and felt his arm go around her, felt him pull her to the safety of his person, she knew with the certainty of despair that something bad had happened to Lauren.
The two men watched as Dave closed the door behind them, watched them cross the sidewalk to their car.
It was getting light.
The fat man removed his apron, put on a greasy and wrinkled jacket, and zipped it over his paunch.
The thin man moved swiftly to the phone and dialed a number.
When he was answered, he said, Albert?
Vince.
Got it?
He turned from the phone and strode to the front of the restaurant.
The white Buick hadn't moved away yet.
Good.
A line of worry formed, a twitch pulled his mouth over to one side.
He said, Grosse?
You ain't kidding me--the kid don't know the name of this town?
I ain't kidding you, Vince.
How could she?
She musta been walking in her sleep--you seen her yourself in here.
Howda I know?
Remember how she looked when Barney held the door for her?
Kinda like a zombie?
She was just waking up when we found her at the garage.
Vince swore.
Stupid fools--ain't got enough brains between the two of you --
Grosse muttered, his head down, one hand playing with the zipper on his jacket.
--had enough brains to call ya up so as ya could do sompin about it when the parents--I coulda let her go go--His eyes were lowered, so he couldn't have seen the narrow, pointed face of his companion suddenly writhe with fury;
but he was aware of it just the same.
He knew Vince Steiner was one of those men who had to work up a fury once in a while just to prove how dangerous he could be.
With a curse, Vince seized the thing nearest, a glass sugar container with a spouted metal top, and threw it against the wall opposite.
The heavy glass didn't break, but the top flew off;
sugar sprayed with a hiss that was loud in the silence.
Not really startled, but careful to appear so, Grosse sucked noisily on his pipe.
Vince cursed steadily.
Why does everything have to happen to me?
Grosse quietly got a broom and started to sweep up the sugar.
Vince watched him.
His mouth worked over the profanity, the obscenities in his vocabulary.
Once he said, Why'n hell didn't you look in the back seat of the car before you drove off?
Don't you and Barney ever use your brains?
The fat man didn't answer.
He got one of the menus and brushed the spilled sugar onto it and carried it to a box on the floor behind the counter.
He returned the menu to its place between catchup bottle and paper napkin dispenser.
He spoke soothingly.
She don't know nothing about them cars.
She thinks she's in a ordinary garage.
How do you know, stupid?
And put Cate's gun back.
I know.
Grosse tucked the gun under the counter.
--one word of this gets to Guardino --
Who's telling Guardino?
Vince swore again.
You get that kid over to Rose's house.
The fat man winced.
He ran a finger down his cheek, tracing the scratch there.
Why can't I leave her locked up in the tool crib?
The thin man stopped his pacing long enough to glance at the clock.
You and Barney get her over to Rose's before it gets too light.
After Guardino's left, we'll dump the kid somewhere near the border where she kin get home.
God help you if she knows where she's been.
Grosse spread his hands.
What am I going to do with her all day?
In the tool crib she can't get away.
What the hell do I care what you do with her all day?
Just get her where Guardino won't see her and start asking questions.
Grosse swore now.
Dammit all, Vince.
I ain't no baby sitter.
Vince shouted finally, Get her over to Rose's and I'll come by and see that she stays put.
Grosse rubbed the bridge of his nose where it was swollen.
He spoke sullenly.
You don't hafta get nasty.
I wish you luck when you try scaring that kid.
Suddenly he grinned.
His voice lost its sullen tones and he chuckled.
I got one question.
What is it?
Impatiently.
Are you a poor dumb Canadian or a smart aleck from the States?
Vince lifted his hand as if to strike, but his thin lips spread in a smile.
Where'd you say you was born?
In a Chicago slum just like you.
And I ain't going back there on account of one lousy kid.
Lauren Landis rubbed her face against the blanket.
She had cried a little because she was frightened.
She could easily understand why the two men had been startled to find a strange girl in the back seat of their car (she had figured that out), but she couldn't understand their subsequent actions.
Was it because she had shown panic?
Who could blame her for that?
It was one thing to awaken outside a restaurant where your parents were eating and quite another to awaken in a strange garage and know your parents had gone on home without you.
She was glad the fat man had left.
Barney was not really frightening.
She jumped as the little man now appeared at the window and, reaching through the opening, offered her a bottle of coke.
She smiled at him wetly.
Although she found she was thirsty, she was about to refuse (never, never take candy from a strange man) when she saw the bottle was unopened.
He placed a bottle opener on the counter.
So, he understood her panic.
She blew her nose on a tissue and opened the coke bottle.
It was icy cold and tasted delicious.
She felt a lift in spirit.
When she was finished she pushed it back.
The man was busy doing something to the inside of the door-frame on the driver's side of a car.
She called softly, Barney.
He looked in her direction but he didn't answer.
She said, Barney, why is he keeping me here?
Still no answer.
He seemed to be looking at a point above the little window.
Lauren said, Why can't I call my home?
Or borrow some money from someone and go home by bus?
I could send the money right back.
Barney finished the cigarette he had been smoking.
He dropped it and carefully ground it to nothing with the sole of his heavy shoe.
Now he looked at her.
He said, I only work here.
Lauren said, Please?
But he was back at work on a car.
She dropped her head on her arms on the counter.
How could he be kind one moment and cruel the next?
Did he know something that made him feel sad and sorry for her?
And was he afraid to do anything as definite as releasing her?
Her heart was thumping painfully;
the unknown was so much worse than--what dangers lay ahead for her?
What awful thing had she to face in the next few hours?
Something wet and hot was trickling on her wrists.
Tears?
With a sturdy act of will she turned her mind away from herself;
as long as she could do nothing constructive about the situation she was in, she would think about something else.
Her mother and father, for instance.
Where were they now?
In her mind she followed the white Buick along the road somewhere between here and the Niagara River.
Her father's attention would be on the road ahead and it wouldn't deviate an inch until he crossed the bridge at the Falls and took the River Road to LaSalle and, finally, turned in at their own driveway at 387 Heather Heights.
Then he would yawn and stretch and shout, All out.
This is the end of the line.
And what would her mother be doing right now?
Her mother would be fast asleep curled up against that wonderful, big, safe, solid shoulder next to her on the front seat.
Lauren Landis was in trouble and she was alone.
Roberta Landis put her hand on her husband's arm as he slid in the driver's seat beside her.
Somewhere birds were sweetly calling, were answered.
Her teeth chattered so that she made three attempts at speech before she became intelligible.
Dave.
I saw that woman's apron behind the door.
There was a wet spot--she couldn't have been gone long.
Dave made some sound meant to convey agreement.
He inserted the car key in the lock.
Roberta was violently trembling.
She stammered, You heard what he said about police?
Why don't we drive around the corner?
The car door crashed shut.
The engine throbbed into life.
Dave said, I got the message.
We're going.
Roberta said, no.
You go.
Walk.
Suppose Lauren comes looking for us?
I can sit here in the car while you walk around the corner.
The big car sprang away from the curb like something alive.
He said, I'm not going to leave my wife and my car out here in sight of those --
Roberta glanced at him and stopped trembling.
His jowls were spiked by barbs of graying beard.
His small, mean eyes regarded Marty steadily, unblinkingly.
His eyes were threaded by little filaments of red as if tiny veins had burst and flooded blood into them.
As he chewed his gum and exuded wheezing breath, Marty smelt the reek of bad whiskey.
Marty recognized the man.
He had driven the car that passed them on the road outside Admassy's place.
This was Acey Squire, proprietor of the juke joint.
Marty smiled at Squire pleasantly and said, There was a cab waiting for me here.
Do you know where it might have gone?
Squire chewed his gum, his jaw moving in a steady rhythm.
He looked straight at Marty.
He did not answer.
Marty scanned the faces of the others nearest him, looked into their staring eyes.
Did anyone see my cab?
He asked, keeping his voice casual.
He avoided showing any surprise or annoyance when no one answered him.
I have to get back to Jarrodsville, he went on.
I see there are some cars here.
I wonder if one of you gentlemen could drive me back to town?
I'd be happy to pay for the favor, of course.
The seventeen men stood and stared at him for a moment longer.
And then a startling thing occurred.
It was so utterly unexpected that Marty stood for several moments with his mouth hanging open foolishly after it had happened.
There was no word spoken, no apparent signal given.
Yet the men all moved at the same instant.
They piled into the waiting cars, motors roared, the cars sped off.
The station wagon and the old Plymouth headed east toward Jarrodsville.
The Ford and the pickup truck sped west toward Sanford's Run.
In seconds all four cars were out of sight.
Marty Land stood alone on a red-clay road as storm clouds gathered ominously in the sky again.
From a great distance thunder growled and broke the silence.
Land looked back toward the dilapidated house.
He thought he saw a pale face at a window.
Perhaps it was Dora May.
Perhaps she would be glad that they hadn't hurt him.
There were other farmhouses nearby.
Across the road there was one no more than a hundred yards away.
There was another on this side, a little further down.
There were many more between here and Jarrodsville.
Telephone poles lined the road.
They reared tall and mocking.
Their wires stretched out into infinity.
Not a single strand of wire reached into the silent houses beside the red-clay road.
There was nothing he could do but walk.
And Jarrodsville was more than three miles away, down an old dirt road that the rain had turned into a quagmire.
Marty faced east and started walking down the left side of the road.
After he had proceeded a few feet, he paused and turned up the cuffs of his trousers, which were already damp and mud-caked.
The viscous mud was ankle-deep, and in places great puddles spread across the road and reflected the murky light.
As he approached the first farmhouse, thunder sounded behind him again, closer now and louder, like a steadily advancing drum corps.
There were several people on the porch of the farmhouse.
There was a very old man and a young woman and a brood of children ranging from toddlers to teen-agers.
For just an instant he thought of appealing to them for help.
Perhaps they had a car or truck and would drive him into town.
Then he realized the utter futility of the idea.
They were staring at him in the same blank and menacing way that the men outside the gate had stared.
Even the eyes of the smallest children seemed malicious.
On his side of the road there were two farm hands, well back in a field, leaning against a plow.
They, too, stared at him.
The drums of thunder were right behind him now.
A foolish thought came into his head.
He remembered a story he had read as a youth.
It was probably one of Kipling's tales of the British Army.
It concerned an officer who had been disgraced and drummed out.
The steady roll of the drums had sounded behind him as he walked between the endless ranks of the men he had commanded, and each man about-faced and turned his back as the officer approached.
Marty wished these poor farm people would turn their backs.
The fencing by the roadside ended.
Now the dirt highway was bordered on either side by a fairly deep drainage ditch, too broad to leap over unless you were an Olympic star.
The day's rain had been added to the stagnant water.
He was trapped on the road when he heard the sound of an approaching car.
It was coming toward him.
The car was now in sight.
Marty's heart skipped a beat when he recognized it.
It was the station wagon that had passed his cab on the road, the station wagon that had been parked at the Burch farm.
Acey Squire's station wagon.
It had headed back toward Jarrodsville.
That had only been a ruse to lure him out on the deserted road.
Now Acey and his friends were returning to seek him out.
The station wagon came to a stop a couple of hundred feet in front of him, beside a fenced field.
Then there was another sound.
A second car was coming from the west, from the direction of Sanford's Run.
It was the Ford that had been outside Burch's farm.
Marty looked helplessly in both directions.
It was a narrow road, barely wide enough for two cars to pass.
He could not leave the road because of the water-filled drainage ditch.
When the two cars were equidistant from him, the station wagon started up again and the Ford gathered speed.
They bore down on him.
There was nothing he could do except jump into the ditch.
He jumped, and sank to his knees in muddy water.
As the two cars roared by, there was a high-pitched eerie, nerve-shattering sound.
Marty knew how the Union soldiers must have felt at Chancellorsville and Antietam and Gettysburg when the ragged gray ranks charged at them, screaming the wild banshee howl they called the Rebel yell.
For moments he stood in water, shivering and gasping for breath.
He had turned his ankle slightly, and it pained him.
The cars, with their load of howling men, had disappeared in the distance.
There had been two more cars parked at the farm, a Plymouth and a pickup truck.
They would be coming for him next, bearing down on him from both directions.
And then the station wagon and the Ford would seek him out again.
He would be harassed repeatedly and would escape death by inches time after time, all the way to Jarrodsville.
He still had three miles to go.
Back East the more affluent juvenile delinquents, who could afford hyped-up autos instead of switch blades as lethal weapons, played this same game and called it Chicken.
He could not go through the fields.
That way was barred on both sides of the road by a high barbed-wire fence.
He had to make for the section of road just ahead that was bordered by the rail fence, the section by the farmhouse.
At least he could climb up on the fence when his tormenters roared by again.
The Admassy place could not be far now.
He would go in there, climb through the window, and at least be safe for a little while and able to rest.
There was even a bare chance that the phone had not been disconnected.
He did not dare climb back up to the road.
He was deep in water, but at least they could not reach him there.
He splashed on, mud sucking at his feet with each step, until he reached the end of the drainage ditch and the beginning of the fence that enclosed the farm.
He climbed back to the road, and he felt utterly exhausted.
He stood, panting, for a moment.
And then he saw something that he had not seen before, and panic gripped him again.
The fence, his only refuge when the metal death came roaring at him, was made of rails, all right, but the rails were protected by a thick screening of barbed wire that would rip his flesh if he pressed against it.
He lurched on down the road despairingly, because there was no place else to go.
He lost all sense of dignity.
You could not stand on dignity when you were soaked and muddied and your life was at stake.
Probably people were watching him from the porch or from behind the windows of this farmhouse, too, but he did not bother to look.
He broke into a dogtrot, breathing heavily, streaming with sweat.
He had to reach Admassy's place.
It was his only sanctuary.
The fences on both sides of the road bristled with the barbed wire.
The fences stretched on endlessly.
And then he heard them.
And now he saw them.
The Plymouth was coming at him from the east, the pickup truck from the west.
They had timed it better this time.
They would reach him at almost exactly the same instant.
He stopped stone-still.
If he backed against the fence, one of the cars would brush him as it passed, and he would be cruelly lacerated by the wire.
He stumbled to the middle of the road and simply stood there, waiting for them, a perfect target.
The cars must have had their gas pedals pushed down to the floor boards.
They were coming on at reckless speed for such old vehicles.
They thundered at him.
He held his arms close to his sides and made himself as small as possible.
When the Plymouth neared, it veered toward him and seemed about to run him down.
He forced himself to stay frozen there.
If he moved, he would be in the path of the other car.
He thought the fender of the Plymouth brushed his jacket as it went by.
In a fraction of a second the pickup truck hurtled by on the other side.
The weird, insane sound of the Rebel yell reverberated again and echoed from the distant hills.
He did not leave the middle of the road.
He did not try to run.
He trudged on, his aching eyes focused straight ahead.
He was nearing the Admassy house.
He was going to make it, he told himself.
And then he heard a car coming from the east, and he felt as if he would break down and weep.
Oh, no, not again, he said aloud.
Not again so soon.
There was a new sound, a sound as piercing as the Rebel yell, yet different.
It was the sound of a siren.
Now he saw that the approaching car was painted white, and he began to wave his arms frantically.
It was the prowl car from the sheriff's office.
The car drew up alongside him and stopped.
Get in, Charley Estes said brusquely.
He staggered into the back seat and lay back, fighting for breath.
There was someone in front with the sheriff.
It was Pete Holmes, the cabdriver.
Pete turned around and said to Marty, I guess you think I'm a yellow-bellied hound.
But there wasn't no use in me staying there.
I couldn't fight a dozen or so of 'em.
If I'd stayed, all that I'd have got was four punctured tires and one busted head.
Why didn't you wait at the Burch house?
You must've known I'd gone to get the sheriff.
I was lucky they let me go, I guess.
The sheriff was occupied with maneuvering the car around in a very narrow space.
When it was finally pointed east, he said, You should never have come out here alone.
This is redneck country.
Every man in every one of these houses is a Night Rider.
Then he turned the telephone over to Rourke, and went into the bedroom to change his slippers for dry socks and shoes.
Rourke was talking on the phone when he came back.
About an hour, eh?
Are you positive?
He listened a moment and then said, Hold it.
He turned his head and said, Alvarez will definitely be in a back room at the Jai Alai Club on South Beach within an hour.
Want to try and meet him there?
Shayne looked at his watch.
That wasn't too far from Fifth Street, and should allow him to make Scotty's Bar by midnight.
He said with satisfaction, That's fine, Tim.
I'll be there.
Rourke confirmed the appointment over the phone and hung up.
I don't know what you're getting into, Mike, he said unhappily.
I hope to Christ.
Shayne said briskly, Grab another drink if you want it.
We've got one other call to make before I meet Alvarez.
Where?
It's out in the Northeast section.
Have you got my car here?
It's parked in front.
Rourke hastily slopped whiskey into his glass on top of half-melted ice-cubes.
I'd better keep on driving yours, Shayne decided, because I'll be going on over to the Beach.
I can drop you back here to pick mine up.
He went to a closet to get a light jacket, and took his hat from beside the door.
Timothy Rourke gulped down the whiskey hastily and joined him, asking, Who are we going to call on in the Northeast section?
A lady.
That is, maybe not too much of a lady.
At least, I want to find out whether she's home yet or not.
He opened the door and followed Rourke out.
In Rourke's car, Shayne drove east to Biscayne Boulevard and north toward Felice Perrin's address which had been given to him by the Peralta governess.
As he drove, he filled in Timothy Rourke briefly on the events of the evening after leaving the reporter to go to the Peralta house, and on his own surmises.
I want to be in Scotty's Bar at midnight when Marsha makes her phone call there, he ended grimly.
I don't know whether that threatening letter of hers has anything to do with this situation or not, but I want to see who takes the call.
This deal at Las Putas Buenas where the two knife-men jumped you, said Rourke with interest, that sounds like it was set up with malice aforethought by the luscious Mrs. Peralta, doesn't it?
It does, Shayne grunted sourly, still able to taste her mouth on his in the Green Jungle parking lot.
That story of hers about an unsigned note directing her to be there tonight sounds completely phony.
If it was designed to put me on the spot, it would have to have been written before Peralta ever called me in on the case.
Do you think Laura did have the counterfeit bracelet made without her husband's knowledge?
I haven't the faintest idea.
I think her husband strongly suspects so, and that's why he called me in on the thing in direct defiance of his confederates and almost certainly without telling them why he was doing so.
Isn't this Felice's street?
Shayne asked, peering ahead at the partially obscured street sign.
Rourke could see it better out the right-hand side, and he said, yes.
Turn to the left, I think, for that number you gave me.
Not more than a block or so.
Shayne got in the left-hand lane and cut across the Boulevard divider.
Shayne drove westward from the Boulevard slowly, letting Rourke crane his head out the window and watch for street numbers.
A single automobile was parked half-way up the block on the left-hand side.
Shayne noted idly that it carried Miami Beach license plates as he approached, and then saw the flare of a match in the front seat as they passed, indicating that it was occupied.
He turned to see the briefly-illumed faces of two men in the parked car just as Rourke said, It's the next house, Mike.
On the right.
Instead of pulling into the curb, Shayne increased his speed slightly to the corner where he swung left.
He went around the corner and parked, turning off his lights and motor.
I told you, Mike, said Rourke in an aggrieved voice.
It was back there.
Shayne said, I know it was, Tim.
His voice was chilling and cold.
Did you see the car parked across the street?
I didn't notice it.
I was watching for numbers.
It has a Beach license, Tim.
Two men in the front seat.
I got a quick look at their faces as we went past.
Unless I'm crazy as hell, they're two of Painter's dicks.
A couple named Harris and Geely.
Those names mean anything to you?
Wait a minute, Mike.
In Painter's office this evening.
Shayne nodded grimly.
The pair whom Petey is officially commending for slapping me around and pulling me in.
What are they doing here?
A stake-out, I suppose.
On Felice Perrin.
Maybe with specific orders to see that I don't make contact with her.
I'm not positive, Tim.
I may be wrong.
I'll slide out and walk around the block back to the cocktail lounge on Biscayne.
You drive on and circle back and pull up beside them parked there.
You're a reporter, and you're looking for Miss Perrin to interview her.
Make them show their hands.
If they are Beach cops on a stake-out, they'll admit it to a reporter.
They've got no official standing on this side of the Bay.
As soon as you find out if they are Geely and Harris, come on around to the lounge where I'll be waiting.
Shayne opened the door on his side and stepped out.
Timothy Rourke groaned dismally as he slid under the wheel.
The things you talk me into, Mike.
Shayne chuckled.
How often do they add up to headlines?
You should complain.
He crossed the street and walked swiftly southward to circle back to the Boulevard and north a block to the open restaurant.
He was standing at the end of the bar enjoying a slug of cognac when Rourke came in six or eight minutes later.
The reporter nodded as he moved up beside him at the bar.
Shayne told the bartender, Bourbon and water, and Rourke told him, It's those two, all right.
Harris and Geely.
I made them show me their identification before I could be persuaded not to call on Felice Perrin.
Shayne said happily, I've got it all worked out, Tim.
Take your time with your drink.
I'll beat it.
In exactly three minutes, go in that phone booth behind you and call Police Headquarters.
Be excited and don't identify yourself.
Just say that a couple of drunks are having a hell of a fight down the street, and they better send a patrol car.
Then hang up fast and come walking on down to the Perrin address.
I'll be waiting for you there.
The bartender brought Rourke's drink and Shayne laid a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.
He said in a low voice, I've got a date with a lady, Mister.
Will that pay for a pint I can take with me.
You know how it is, he added with a conspiratorial wink.
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker and you don't have any candy for sale here anyhow.
We sure don't.
The bartender winked back at him and palmed the bill.
He turned away and returned in a moment with a pint of brandy in a small paper sack which he slid over the counter to Shayne.
As the detective slid it into his pocket, Rourke asked sadly, What in hell are you going to do, Mike?
Make a couple of punk detectives named Geely and Harris wish to God they'd stayed out of my way this afternoon.
Three minutes, Tim.
Shayne strode out blithely, and Rourke checked his watch and sipped his drink, getting a dime ready to make the telephone call to the police.
Outside, Shayne hesitated when he saw that Rourke had parked his coupe directly in front of the bar headed south.
He walked over to the right-hand door, opened it and got the reloaded automatic out of the glove compartment and put it in his hip pocket.
He hoped he wouldn't be forced to use it in taking care of the Beach detectives, but its weight was comforting at his hip.
On this side of the Bay, Miami Beach cops had no more legal rights than any ordinary citizen, and Shayne's pistol permit was just as good as theirs.
He went swiftly up the sidewalk toward the parked car with the two Beach detectives in the front seat.
He tugged the brim of his hat low as he approached, stepped out into the street just behind the car and strode around to the right-hand side.
The big, paunchy man named Geely was on that side, half-turned in the seat toward his hatchet-faced companion so that his back partially rested against the closed door.
Shayne turned the handle and jerked the door open before either of the men were quite aware of his presence in the night.
Geely grunted and slid partly out, and Shayne's left arm snaked in around his neck to help him, while he set himself solidly on the roadway and swung his right fist to the big, gum-chewing jaw before Geely could straighten up.
Shayne stepped back to let him slump to the ground, and then dived over him through the open door into Harris who was cursing loudly and trying to drag a gun from a shoulder holster, somewhat impeded by the steering wheel.
Shayne locked his big hands around Harris' thin neck and dragged him out over the seat into the roadway.
He hit him once on the sharp point of his chin and felt the body go limp.
He dropped him into the street a couple of feet away from Geely's recumbent figure and stared down at both of them for a moment before kicking the big man lightly in the side.
He didn't stir.
They were both breathing heavily, out cold, and Shayne didn't think either of them had recognized him or could describe him.
He got the pint of liquor out of his pocket and unscrewed the top, sprinkled the pungent stuff liberally over both men, and then tossed the open bottle in on the front seat.
He turned, then, to look toward the lighted Boulevard, and saw Rourke's tall, emaciated figure come out of the lounge and hurriedly start to angle across the street toward the opposite side.
Shayne strolled across to intercept the reporter in front of the two-story house where Felice Perrin lived, and asked casually, Get the police okay?
Sure.
Said they'd have a patrol car here fast.
Let's get inside.
What happened with you?
Why the two damned fools got all excited when they saw the bottle, and knocked each other out cold, Shayne said good-humoredly.
They'll have fun explaining that to the Miami cops.
Got no business over here on a stake-out anyway.
They went up onto a front porch and into a small hallway where a dim bulb burned high in the ceiling.
A row of mailboxes along the wall had numbers and names on them.
Shayne found one marked Perrin Aj.
The stairway on the right was dark, but there was a wall-switch at the bottom which lighted another dim bulb at the top, and they went up.
There were two front rooms, both dark behind their transoms, and there was no sound or light in the entire house to indicate that any of the occupants were awake.
Eight, nine steps above him, Roberts had paused.
Mickey paused with him, waiting, no longer impatient, trying now to think it out, do a little planning.
He looked down over the banister at the hotel desk, with the telephone and pen set.
If I could call in, they could check the story while we were on our way.
I wouldn't have to tell them I had Roberts --
Then he heard it, like a muffled thud, felt a subtle change in air pressure.
He glanced up in time to see Roberts hurtling down on him from above, literally flying through the air, his bloody face twisted.
Mickey tried to flatten against the banister, gripped it with one hand, but Roberts' full weight struck him at that moment in the groin.
He gasped for air and the impact tore his hand from the rail.
He tumbled with Roberts, helpless and in agony, over and over, down the steps.
By a wrenching effort, he managed to hunch and draw in, to take the final fall on his back and shoulders rather than his head.
He was fuzzy in his mind and, for a moment, helpless on the lobby floor, but he was conscious, and free of the weight of Roberts' body.
When his vision cleared he saw the taller one scrambling upward, reaching.
Mickey was on his knees when Roberts turned on the stairs and the razor flashed in his hand.
He felt his empty pocket and knew that Roberts had retrieved the only weapon at hand.
Mickey's eyes fixed on the other's feet, which would first betray the moment and direction of an attack.
He rose stiffly, forcing his knees to lock.
The knifelike pain in his groin nearly brought him down again.
He made himself back off slowly, his eyes wary on Roberts, who now had no more to lose than he.
The pain dulled as he moved, and he steadied inside.
After a moment he extended one hand, the fingers curled.
Come on, he said.
You want to be that big a fool--I was hoping for this.
Roberts brushed at his eyes with his free hand and started down the steps.
He held the razor well out to one side.
He was invulnerable to attack, but he could be handled, Mickey knew, if he could be brought to make the first move.
They were eight feet apart when Roberts cleared the last step.
Mickey waited with slack arms.
Any time, Roberts, he said.
Or would it be easier if I put my hands in my pockets?
The taunt was lost on Roberts.
He advanced slowly, directly, giving no hint of a feint to either side.
He was just short of arm's reach when he stopped.
Mickey backed off two steps, forcing him to come on again.
There was a fixed grin on Roberts' face, made hideous by the swollen nose and the smeared blood.
Mickey backed off again and Roberts hesitated, then came along.
They moved in a series of rhythmic fits and starts, a macabre dance--two steps back, two steps forward, two steps back.
Mickey felt his shoulders come up against the wall beside the heavy slab front door.
This was going to be it now, any second, and what he had to remember was to keep his eye on the razor, no matter what, even if Roberts should feint with a kick to the groin, the deadly hand was his exclusive concern.
The kick came, sudden and vicious but short.
Mickey's guts twisted with the effort, but he kept his eye on the weapon.
It moved in a silver arc toward his throat, then veered downward.
He hunched his left shoulder into it and slashed at Roberts' forearm with his own, felt the blade slide off his sleeve.
Before Roberts could move inside to cut upward toward his face, he slammed his right fist into Roberts' belly.
Roberts sagged and slashed at him wildly.
Ducking, Mickey tripped and fell to one side, landing heavily on the wood floor.
Then Roberts was on him, gasping for breath and for a couple of seconds Mickey lost sight of the blade.
He felt it rip at the side of his jacket and a momentary sting under his left ribs.
He got a knee up into Roberts' belly, used both hands and heaved him clear, then scrambled to his feet.
They were in the center of the lobby now.
Still clutching the razor, Roberts came up into a crouch, shaking his head.
When he charged Mickey was ready.
He hit Roberts with his left fist in the ribs and the razor cut toward him feebly, then wobbled in mid-air.
With his right fist, and nearly all his weight behind it, he smashed at the bloodstained face.
Roberts careened backward, his back arched, fought for balance and, failing, stumbled against the newel post at the foot of the stairs.
The sound of his head striking the solid wood was an ultimate, sudden-end sound.
He fell on his side across the lowest step, rolled over once, then lay still.
Mickey found himself leaning against the desk, with stiff hands, panting for breath.
After a minute he went to Roberts, looked at one of his eyes and felt for a pulse.
He couldn't feel any.
Roberts appeared to be dead;
if not yet, then soon, very soon.
Suddenly it was cold in the lobby.
It seemed to him that a long time had passed before he decided what to do.
Actually it was no more than eight or ten minutes, and the sum of his reasoning came to this:
There's no way to take him in now and keep those other two--Wister and the one who hired the two of them--from finding out about Roberts and lamming out.
The local law here would hold me till they check clear back home, and maybe more than that.
They would have to.
By then they could never catch up with the others.
There's no other way;
I'll have to do it myself.
He looked at where Roberts lay sprawled on the step.
Mickey was sure now he was dead.
One thing, he thought, nobody knows about it yet.
Only me.
He climbed the stairs, went into Roberts' room, found a suitcase and packed as much into it as he could.
He left a few things.
It didn't have to be perfect.
Roberts was a wastrel.
Walking away on impulse, he might logically leave behind what it was inconvenient to carry.
When he had closed the suitcase he found a rag and moved about the room, wiping carefully everything he might have touched.
It took him nearly an hour.
He went to the room he had rented and got into his overcoat.
He left the rest of his things and returned to the lobby.
He set Roberts' suitcase near the front door, went outside and walked back to the garage.
He was mildly surprised to find it was snowing.
It snowed softly, silently, an undulating interruption of his vision against the night sky.
He could feel it on his face and in his hair.
He found the key to the Jeep, got it started and warmed it up for five minutes.
Then he backed out and swung around to the front drive.
He went into the hotel and searched till he found the razor.
He put it in his own pocket for safekeeping.
He took the suitcase out to the Jeep and put it in the front seat.
Then he went back for Roberts.
The body was heavier than he had anticipated.
He got it onto his shoulder after some work and carried it outside and down to the Jeep.
He dumped it into the back and made sure it wouldn't roll out, then returned to the porch and closed the front door, making sure it was unlocked.
He drove carefully in the direction of the brief tour they had taken earlier.
It snowed continuously, but quietly, evenly.
When he reached the dip in the woods, he saw that already the earlier ruts were barely discernible.
The Jeep fought its way through the low spot and got onto higher ground.
He drove in low gear to the fork in the road and swung as close as possible to the entrance to the abandoned mine.
He parked facing it and left the headlights on, but when he started into the tunnel with the suitcase, he found the illumination extended no farther than half a dozen feet into the passage.
He went back and got the flashlight, returned to the tunnel and carried the suitcase to the edge of the pit he had found earlier.
He tossed the bag into the pit and watched dry dust spray up around it.
When the dust settled, he went back to the Jeep and carefully worked Roberts' body onto his shoulder.
It wasn't like carrying the suitcase.
The soft snow was deceitful underfoot.
Twice he nearly fell.
Inside the passage, he had to work his way over the fallen timber and nearly collapsed under his clumsy burden.
By the time he reached the edge of the pit he was panting and his shoulder and back ached under the drag of the dead weight.
He stood looking down for a few seconds, then backed up two or three paces from the edge.
There was too much weight casually to toss it away.
He could feel himself falling in with it and being unable to get out.
It would be a bad place to die.
It was a bad place for Roberts to wind up, but Roberts had asked for it.
It was too late to worry about that.
He knelt slowly and dumped the corpse onto the floor of the tunnel.
It was a relief to get rid of the weight.
He was shaking with tension and it took him a couple of minutes to get his breath and settle down.
Then he got on his knees and rolled Roberts' body toward the edge.
It hung momentarily on the point of dropping off.
He gave it a strong push, heard it slide, then tumble dryly into the hole.
He got to his feet and threw the flashlight beam into the pit.
The body lay in an awkward sprawl twelve or fifteen feet below the level of the tunnel floor.
Deep enough, he decided.
There was little chance anyone would enter this shaft during the winter.
The external signs of his approach to it would be covered by the snow, probably by the next day.
It wasn't cold enough in the tunnel to preserve the body intact.
By spring it would be a skeleton.
He made his way back to the Jeep.
He had started to back into the turn when he remembered the razor in his pocket.
He climbed down, went back into the tunnel and tossed the razor into the pit.
It landed on Roberts' sprawled right thigh, poised precariously, then slid off to the ground.
He went back once more to the Jeep and started the short drive to the hotel.
In the garage he checked the Jeep for signs of the use he had made of it.
There were stains here and there and he cleaned them off, using an oiled rag he found on a nail.
He wiped the steering wheel and all the places he might have touched the Jeep.
He replaced the flashlight where it had been stowed, got into his own car and backed it out of the garage.
There were tire marks where it had been, but they were overlapped by others and on the dusty floor would not be noticeable except under close scrutiny.
Liz Peabody, he thought, might spend some time grieving for her lost lover, but he doubted that she would launch an investigation.
He judged her to be a woman of some pride, though not much sense.
Still she would probably have sense enough not to call in the local sheriff to find her boy friend who, apparently, had run away.
He put in a call to Cunningham from his hotel room.
The maid answered and he decided Nancy must be at work.
Jeb cautioned him not to be too hopeful and then, ignoring his own advice, said excitedly, But it does sound good.
A woman named Lisa who tells nobody anything about herself.
That courtyard picture with the same initials.
I'm not exactly jumping up and down with enthusiasm.
I'll call you in a day or so.
On the highway he relaxed and enjoyed the drive over Lake Pontchartrain and along the coast.
Gulf Springs was ten miles inland--more of a quaint old coast town than those along the beach made garish by tourist attractions.
He checked into a motel and drove downtown.
The courthouse was a white-stucco building minus the customary dome.
Instead of the usual straggling privet hedges and patches of bare dirt in most small-town squares, the building was hemmed in by a semitropical growth of camellias and azaleas and a smooth lawn the improbably bright-green shade of florist's grass.
He figured his best bet was a call on the sheriff.
A clerk in the outer office took him in to Sheriff Carruthers, a big, paunchy man with thick, white hair and a voice with a senatorial resonance which suggested he should be running for higher office.
Seated in front of the desk, Hank said, I'm looking for some information with very little to go on, Sheriff.
He explained the background of the case, ending with the tenuous clue which had brought him to Gulf Springs.
The sheriff's swivel chair tilted back.
So you're looking for a woman who married a man who might have lived here a year ago and might have been poisoned.
If there was such a person, I'm afraid she got away with it.
Pity we don't know more about him.
I think the best bet is to go through the society columns of last year and see if any of the grooms match with the obituaries a little later.
It'll be a tedious job, but if you want to try it, the old newspaper files are in the basement here in the county supervisor's office.
Maybe the society editor would remember a good-looking out-of-town bride.
That's an idea.
Mrs. Calhoun has been society editor here for twenty-five years.
The editor says that marriages may be made in heaven, but weddings are made in Mrs. Calhoun's columns.
She's the one who decides which wedding is to get the lead space in the Sunday paper and all that.
He smiled.
Once, when the editor was just out of the hospital from a gallstone operation, Mrs. Calhoun and the mother of the bride went out to his house and fought it out beside his bed.
She'd be sure to remember any bride who was vague about background.
She'd have made a great scientist dedicated to tracking down heredity and environment.
She'd also remember if the groom died later.
He stood up.
I wish you good luck, but please don't dig up too tough a case for me this close to election.
If you find out anything, come on back here and we'll get started on it.
Tracking down Mrs. Calhoun was like trying to catch up with Paul Revere between Lexington and Concord.
It turned out that she also sold real estate, cosmetics, and hospital insurance.
The wearying trek stretched into the afternoon--from newspaper plant to insurance office to her house and back to the newspaper, where he found her at five o'clock.
She was a large woman with a frizzled gray poodle cut and a pencil clamped like a bit between her teeth while she hunted and pecked on an old typewriter.
It took a couple of minutes to run through her various businesses and get down to the one he wanted.
Last year?
Well, I do remember one.
From Baton Rouge.
Married a man named Vincent Black.
I remember her because she didn't want her picture in the paper.
First bride like that I've seen in twenty-five years.
What reason did she give?
Said she had a breaking-out on her face--some sort of allergy--and none of her old pictures was good enough.
I didn't see her till several days later at the wedding, and her face looked like it had never had a blemish on it.
But, of course, you couldn't see too well through the veil.
Was her name Lisa Carmody?
Now how in hell would I remember that?
Never mind.
I can look it up.
Do they still live here?
I think they moved away shortly after they were married.
He was a salesman for something or other and must have been transferred.
I'm sure it'll be in the files.
We usually run a social note when somebody moves away.
He stood up and thanked her.
Have they inherited some money or something?
She asked with a reportorial gleam in her eye.
He said vaguely, Well, it is a little legal matter, but nothing like that.
He hurried across to the courthouse and caught the sheriff just as he was leaving.
Sounds like what you're after, he said when Hank had finished.
Come on, let's hurry down before they lock up for the day.
In the basement the sheriff took him to a small, dingy office occupied by a tall, thin man informal in rolled-up shirt sleeves.
Mr. Ferrell Hirey Lindsay, chairman of the board of supervisors.
Mr. Ferrell is a private detective, Hirey.
Wants to look up something in the newspaper files, so don't lock him in here.
Sure, said Hirey.
I'll just leave the door open.
It latches when you close it, so stay as long as you like.
Carruthers crossed the room to a metal door with an open grillework in the top half.
He pulled it open.
Now don't shut this door.
It won't open from inside.
Before we built the new jail, we used to keep prisoners in here overnight sometimes when the old jail got too crowded.
Hirey treats himself a lot better than we do prisoners.
They were a sight more comfortable than the ones in the jail with the cold air from Hirey's air conditioner coming through the grille.
He walked past the sheriff into a windowless room with shelves full of big, leather-bound volumes from floor to ceiling all around the walls.
A metal table and four chairs stood in the center.
They're all here, back to 1865, Carruthers told him.
It's all right to smoke, but make sure your cigarettes are out before you leave.
And, of course, you know not to take clippings.
I'll leave the air conditioner on for you, Mr. Ferrell, said Hirey.
Don't forget to turn it off and close the door good so it'll latch.
Hank thanked them and promised to observe the rules.
When they had gone, he stood for a minute breathing in the mustiness of old paper and leather which the busily thrumming air conditioner couldn't quite dispel.
Chapter fourteen
In a tour around the stacks, he found that the earliest volumes began on the left and progressed clockwise around the room.
An old weakness for burrowing in records rose up to tempt him.
It was, indeed, all here--almost a century.
From reconstruction to moon rockets.
But he pulled away from the irrelevant old volumes and walked around to the newer ones.
Last year's volume was at the top a couple of inches below the ceiling.
Near it was a metal ladder on casters attached to the top shelf.
He pulled it over, climbed up, and lifted out the big volume, almost losing his balance from the weight of it.
He staggered over and dropped it on the table.
Since Mrs. Calhoun remembered only that the marriage had been in the spring, he started to plod through several months.
He tried to turn right to the society page in each one, but interesting stories kept cropping up to distract him.
At last he found it in the paper of April 2.
It told him little more than Mrs. Calhoun had remembered, stating that it had been a small, modest wedding compared to some of the others.
There was a marked contrast in the amount of information on bride and groom.
The one line on the bride said she was Miss Lisa Carmody from Baton Rouge.
No mention of New Orleans.
Hank was beginning to feel sharp concern for Mr. Black.
If Mrs. Black was who he thought she was, Mr. Black's Peerless selling days might well be over.
Now for their exodus from Gulf Springs.
This time the search took twice as long, cutting down on his extra reading, for he had to pick through several columns of one- and two-line social notes in each issue.
He found it in the edition of May 15.
The item said Mr. and Mrs. Black had moved to Jackson, his home town--so the lovely Lisa had been with him a year ago.
Next on his program was a call to the Jackson office of Peerless Business Machines to find out if Vincent Black was still with them--or, more specifically, still with us.
He glanced at his watch, saw it was only seven, and decided to indulge his weakness now.
For the next hour he scrambled happily up and down the ladder, sharing the excitement of reporters who had seen McKinley's assassination, the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago, and the Hall-Mills trial.
In the middle of the stock market crash, he heard a slight noise in the outer office.
He turned around, saw nothing, and decided it must be a mouse.
Something else distracted him, yet there was no sound, only tomblike silence.
Then he knew it was not sound, but lack of it.
The air conditioner was no longer running.
He jumped up and turned around to see the metal door closing.
It clanged shut as he sprang toward it.
He pressed his face against the grille.
Who's there?
The light shining through the grille dimly illumined the office beyond--enough for him to see there was no one there.
Then he heard the outer door closing.
Hey, come back, he shouted.
He thought it must be some damn janitor or cleaning woman puttering around, figuring that Hirey had gone off and forgotten to turn off everything and lock up.
Then the faint beginnings of fear stirred in his mind.
Unless he was stone-blind, the person who'd just left couldn't have missed seeing Hank through the open door of the brightly lighted room.
And even if he'd somehow missed seeing him, he wouldn't have gone off and left the light on and door open in the file room.
Whoever it was had meant to shut him up in here, had followed him and waited till the courthouse and square were deserted.
But why?
To search his room at the motel?
To come back later and kill him after the stores had closed around the square and everybody had left?
No, they could kill him just as easy right now.
Nobody could hear what was going on in this underground vault.
Then he heard it and smelled it--the steady hissing, the dread, familiar pungency of gas escaping.
It must be coming from an upright heater against the far wall in the supervisors' office.
Until now, Lilac Gaylor and Lila Kingsley had been like an anagram which he could unscramble at his own pace and choosing.
Except for those minutes in her room, he had lost touch with her as a reality.
Gaylor's obsession and Cunningham's chimera-chasing reminiscences had mesmerized him into thinking of Lila and Lilac, separately or together, as a legend.
They kept drifting apart and merging again in his mind like some minute form of life on a microscope slide.
Well--said Mr. Skyros.
I take a little time to think it over.
It was awkward: very awkward.
There would be all the nuisance of contacting someone else to take over.
Someone reasonably trustworthy.
And Angie would hear about it.
And Angie knew --
Time, said Angie, and he smiled very sweet and slow at Mr. Skyros.
Not too much time, because I'll be needing some more myself pretty much right away.
And I done favors for you, big favor not so long back, didn't I, and I'm right here to take on where Pretty left off.
No trouble.
I don't want no trouble, you don't want no trouble, nobody wants trouble, Mr. Skyros.
Dear heaven, no, thought Mr. Skyros, turning away as another man came in.
He straightened his tie at the mirror with a shaking hand;
the genial smile seemed painted on his face.
Angie knew--Speak of dangerous information!
Angie knew too much entirely already.
Really he had Mr. Skyros at bay
Big favor I done you.
Acourse there's this deal o' Denny's--and Jackie's--kinda hangin' fire, ain't it, maybe you've been kinda worryin' over that.
And can't say I blame you, said Angie thoughtfully.
This deal with the ace o' spades.
Anything to do with an ace o' spades, bad luck.
Ace of spades--a widow, that was what they called a widow, these low-class crooks remembered Mr. Skyros distractedly.
All about that Angie knew, too.
When things got a little out of hand, they very rapidly got a lot out of hand--it seemed to be a general rule.
All just by chance, and in a way tracing back to poor Frank, all of it, because naturally--brothers, living together--and Angie --
Mr. Skyros did not at all like the look on Angelo's regular-featured, almost girlishly good-looking face--or indeed anything about Angelo.
Mr. Skyros was not a man who thought very much about moral principles;
he found money much more interesting;
but all the same he thought now, uneasily, of the way in which Angelo earned his living--and paid for his own stuff--and eyed the soft smile, and the spaniel-like dark eyes, and he felt a little ill.
Look, my friend, he said, in my life I learn, how is it the proverb says, better an ounce of prevention to a pound of cure.
I stay in business so long because I'm careful.
Two weeks, a month, we talk it over again, and maybe if nothing happens meanwhile to say the cops know this and that, then we make a little deal, isn't it?
That's a long while, said Angie.
I tell you, you want to leave it that way, I don't fool around with it.
I go over to Castro and get fixed up there.
I can't wait no two weeks.
Denny said stupidly, Why, you ain't turning Angie down, are you, Mr. Skyros?
I mean, we all figured--I guess anybody'd figure--Angie --
Angelo gave him an affectionate smile.
Mr. Skyros too smart a fellow want to get rid of me, he said.
It's O.K., Denny, everything's O.K. Ain't it, Mr. Skyros?
Oh, God, the name repeated over and over, anybody to hear--Not being a fool, Mr. Skyros knew why.
But aside from everything else, it would scarcely be pleasant to have dealings with one who was nominally an underling and actually held--you could say--the whip hand.
And all because of Domokous!
If Mr. Skyros had dreamed of all the trouble that young man would eventually cause --
Of course, there was another factor.
Angie worth his weight in gold right now, but these users, they sometimes went down fast.
Who knew, Angie might not last long.
The sweat broke out on Mr. Skyros' forehead as he realized he had been actually thinking--hoping--planning--perhaps --
Good God above, had not Domokous been enough?
He patted Angelo's thin shoulder paternally.
Now you don't want to go talking that way, he said.
Sure, sure, you're the one take over for Pretty, soon as I get the supply, get started up again, isn't it?
You don't need worry, Angelo.
I tell you, I know how it is with you, my friend, I sympathize, and I'll make it a special point--a special favor--get in touch, and get some stuff just for you.
I don't know if I can manage it tonight or tomorrow, but I'll try my best, my friend.
You see, you got to remember, we all got schedules, like any business!
My man, he won't be around a little while, he just fixed me up with this stuff they took out of the Elite.
It's awkward, you see that, isn't it?
Well, that's your business, Mr. Skyros, said Angie, and his dreamy eyes moved past Mr. Skyros' shoulder to gaze vaguely out the ground-glass window.
I appreciate it, you do that.
Sure.
We don't none of us want no trouble.
I'm in a room over the Golden Club on San Pedro, you just ask for me there, you want see me.
Or maybe I call you--tonight?
About nine o'clock, I call and see if you got any.
A couple decks for me, Mr. Skyros--and ten-twelve to sell, see, I like to have a little ready cash.
Oh, now, I don't know about that much, said Mr. Skyros.
And you know, Angelo, Pretty, he always keeps it a strict cash basis, like they say --
Sure, said Angie.
Sure, Mr. Skyros.
Fifty a throw, that the deal?
Sure.
I bring you the cash, say five hundred for ten decks.
Never mind how much I cut it, how much I get, and he smiled his sleepy smile again.
Standard deal, Mr. Skyros.
You go 'n' have a look round for it.
I do my best, said Mr. Skyros earnestly, just for you, my friend.
This is awkward for everybody, isn't it, we all got to put up with inconvenience sometimes.
But I do my best for you.
He got out of there in a hurry, brushing past another man in the door, mopping his brow.
The expedient thing--yes, very true, one must make do as one could, in some situations.
It could all be straightened out later.
Not very much later, but when things had settled down a little.
After this deal with the Bouvardier woman went through.
An ace of spades.
He was not a superstitious man, but he felt perhaps there was a little something in that, indeed.
He rather wished he had never got into the business, and still--scarcely to be resisted, a nice little profit with not much work involved, easy money
Katya Roslev, who would be Katharine Ross so very soon now, rang up her first sale of the day and counted back the change.
She did not notice that the customer seized her purchase and turned away without a smile or a word of thanks.
Usually she marked the few who did thank you, you didn't get that kind much in a place like this: and she played a little game with herself, seeing how downright rude she could act to the others, before they'd take offense, threaten to call the manager.
Funny how seldom they did: used to it, probably.
The kind who came into a cheap store like this!
Grab, snatch, I saw that first!
And, Here, I'll take this, I was before her, you wait on me now or I don't bother with it, see!
This kind of place
She'd be through here, just no time at all--leave this kind of thing 'way behind.
Off at noon, and she'd never come back.
Never have to.
Money--a lot of money, enough.
She'd be smart about it, get him to give it to her in little bills so's nobody would suspect--maybe couldn't get it until Monday account of that, the banks--But that wasn't really long to wait.
Not when she'd waited so long already.
No need say anything at all to the old woman.
She had it all planned out, how she'd do.
Then on Monday morning--or it might have to be Tuesday--get up and leave just the usual time, and last thing, put the money in an envelope under the old woman's purse there in the drawer.
She wouldn't be going to get that for an hour or so after Katya had left, go do the daily shopping.
No need leave a note with it, either--or maybe just something like, Don't worry about me, I'm going away to make a better life.
A better life.
Escape.
It wasn't as if she wanted much.
She didn't mind working hard, not as if she figured to do anything wrong to live easy and soft--all she wanted was a chance, where she wasn't marked as what she was.
Prettier, she'd do her hair another way;
smarter, and wear different kinds of clothes--she'd be Katharine Ross, just what that sounded like.
You've give me the wrong change, said the customer sharply.
Think I can't count?
Katya made up the amount in indifferent silence.
She was listening to other voices, out of the future.
Some of those vaguely-imagined new, different people.
Oh, Katharine's awfully nice, and pretty too, I like Katharine--Let's ask Katharine to go with us, she's always lots of fun--Katharine --
Soon, very soon now
sixteen
Mendoza didn't wake until nearly nine-thirty.
It was going to be another hot day;
already the thermometer stood close to ninety.
Alison was still sound asleep;
he made fresh coffee and searched through all the desk drawers for more cigarettes before thinking of her handbag, and found a crumpled stray cigarette at its bottom, which tasted peculiarly of face powder.
He left a note propped on the desk asking her to call him sometime today, and drove home.
After he'd got out fresh liver for Bast, he paused to look at her crouched daintily over her dish.
Surely she was just a trifle fatter around the middle?
He seemed to remember reading somewhere that Abyssinians had large litters, and suffered a dismaying vision of the apartment overrun with a dozen kittens.
Y que sigue despues?
-- What then?
He asked her severely.
A lot of people are so peculiar that they don't like cats, it's not the easiest thing in the world to find good homes for kittens--and, damn it, you know very well if I have them around long, impossible to give them away!
And I suppose now that you've finally grown up, if a little late, you'd go on producing kittens every six months or so.
Yes, well, it's a pity to spoil your girlish figure--which all those kittens would do anyway--but I think when you've raised these we'll just have the vet fix it so there won't be any more.
I wonder if the Carters would take one.
And it's no good looking at me like that, as she wound affectionately around his ankles.
Maude's long nose unexpectedly wrinkled up.
Happened to be in the hall!
Happened to hear you quarrel about her!
Oh, well, you can't really blame Lolotte.
She lost her beau to you.
But she was talking of Emile when she saw the black line of the open door;
Sarah remembered it clearly.
Maude went on.
I've got to get busy.
Miss Celie's taken to her bed, with the door locked.
She opened it an inch and poked out the keys for me to give you.
Here--She thrust a bundle of keys strung on a thick red cord into Sarah's hand.
Not that there's much use in locking up the smokehouse and the storehouse now.
Drink your coffee --
coffee.
It's--cold.
Maude suddenly looked quite capable of pouring it down her throat.
I don't want it, Sarah said, firmly.
Oh.
Well--I'll take it down with me as I go.
Maude swooped up the cup and hiked up her top hoop as if about to take off with a racing start.
At the door she turned back, her Roman nose looking very long now and satiric.
I forgot.
Ben and Lucien have gone after them.
It's just like that book your Northern friend wrote--except there aren't any ice floes to cross and no bloodhounds.
I don't know Mrs. Stowe.
What can they do if they find them?
They can't do anything.
It's silly, childish, running after them like that.
I told Ben so.
But of course the paterollers won't be of any help, not with everything so upset and that Yankee cavalry outfit they say is running around, God knows where.
She had swished away, she had been gone for a long time probably when Sarah suddenly realized that she ought to stop her, pour out the coffee, so no one would drink it.
But then the so-called coffee was bad enough at best, cold it was all but undrinkable--especially that cup!
She was deeply, horribly sure that Lucien had filled it with opium.
She felt cold and hot, sticky and chilly at the same time.
Now wait a minute, she told herself, think about it;
Lucien is not the only person in this house who could have put opium in that coffee.
She had lost a bottle of opium--but that was on the trip from New Orleans.
Or someone had taken it during her first day at Honotassa.
Yes, she had missed it after her talk with Emile, after dinner, just before Emile was shot.
Rilly or Glendora had entered her room while she slept, bringing back her washed clothes.
So somebody else could have come in, too--then or later while she was out of the room.
It would have been easy to identify as opium by its odor.
It was not very reasonable to believe that Lucien had procured unprocurable opium and come back to Honotassa with a formed plan to murder her.
He didn't even know that she was there.
And he certainly couldn't have guessed that she would resist his demand for the gold or that she was not the yielding--yes, and credible fool he had every right to expect.
No, he had been surprised, unpleasantly surprised, but surprised.
Then somebody else?
Don't question, Rev had said, don't invite danger.
Her skin crawled: Lolotte had told Maude that she was in the hall and the door was open.
Sarah had begun to tell Lucien of Emile, she had begun to question and a little draft had crept across the room from the bedroom door, open barely enough to show a rim of blackness in the hall.
So Lolotte--or anybody--could have listened, and that somebody could have already been supplied with the missing bottle of opium.
That was not reasonable either.
The opium had disappeared before Emile's death and whoever shot him could not by any stretch of the imagination have foreseen Sarah's own doubts and suspicions--and questions.
She began to doubt whether there had been in fact a lethal dose of opium in the cup.
So suppose somebody only wished to frighten her, so she would leave Honotassa!
That made a certain amount of logic.
Added to the argument was the fact that while she might have tasted the coffee if it had been still hot, she might even have drunk some of it, she wouldn't have taken enough to kill her, for she would have been warned by its taste.
No.
It was merely an attempt to frighten her.
She wouldn't go back to New York as Maude suggested;
she wouldn't run like a scared cat.
But--well, she'd be very careful.
She dressed and the accustomed routine restored to her a sense of normal everyday life.
But before she left her room she dug into her big moire bag, took out the envelope holding her marriage contract and the wax seal had been broken.
So somebody else knew what would happen to her father's money if she died.
Rev had known all along.
Rev didn't need to break the wax seal, read the contract and find out.
He could conceivably have wished to make sure;
Rev loved Honotassa, it was like a part of his breath and body;
Rev had stressed the need for money.
Rev would never have tried to give her poison!
She thrust the envelope back in the bag;
there was no point in locking it up in the armoire now, it was like locking the barn after the horse was stolen.
And in all likelihood, by now, there was more than one person in the house who knew the terms of her marriage contract.
There was no point either in telling herself again what a fool she'd been.
She went downstairs and received another curious shock, for when Glendora flapped into the dining room in her homemade moccasins, Sarah asked her when she had brought coffee to her room and Glendora said she hadn't.
Too much work this morning, Miss Sarah--everybody gone like that --
Sarah swallowed past another kind of constriction in her throat.
Well, then who brought it?
Miss Maude.
She come to the kitchen and say she take it up to you.
Glendora put down a dish of lukewarm rice.
Not much breakfast this morning.
I don't know what we're going to do, Miss Sarah.
We've got to eat, Sarah said, curtly, because a chill crawled over her again.
Maude?
Glendora flapped away.
The rice wasn't dosed with opium, indeed it had no taste at all, not a grain of salt.
She ate what she could and went out along the covered passageway, with the rain dripping from the vines.
In the kitchen Glendora was despairingly picking chickens.
Get a basket, Sarah told her.
We'll go to the storehouse.
Glendora dropped a chicken and a flurry of feathers, and went with her through the drizzle, to the storehouse.
Sarah found the right key and unlocked the door.
It was a long, low room, like a root cellar, for it was banked up with soil, and vines had run rampant over that, too.
It was dark but dry and cool.
She doled out what Glendora vaguely guessed were the right amounts of dried peas, eggs, cornmeal, a little salt.
The shelves looked emptier than when Miss Celie had shown her the storeroom, and since the men from the Commissary had called;
there were certainly now fewer mouths to feed but there was less to feed them with.
She took Glendora to the smokehouse, unlocked it and saw with satisfaction there was still a quantity of hams and sides of bacon, hanging from the smoke-stained rafters.
They wouldn't go hungry, not yet.
And the fields were green and growing.
Can't you possibly imagine what life is going to be like, here?
Maude had said.
Maude.
She sent Glendora back to the house, her basket and her apron laden.
She stood for a moment, rain dripping from the trees over her head, thinking of Maude.
Maude had the opportunity to take the bottle of opium from Sarah's room.
Maude had the cool ruthlessness to do whatever she made up her mind to do.
She couldn't see how her death could affect Maude.
She couldn't see any reason why Maude would attempt to frighten her.
Besides, there was something hysterical and silly, something almost childish about an attempt to frighten her.
Maude was neither hysterical nor silly and Sarah rather doubted if she had ever been childish.
Yet Maude had suggested that Sarah return to New York.
Maude could have shot Emile--if she'd had a reason to kill him.
There was no use in standing there in the drizzle, trying to find a link between Emile's murder and opium in a cup of coffee.
She started back for the house, saw a light in the office, opened the door and surprised a domestic little scene which was far outside the dark realm of murder or attempted murder.
Rev, George and Lolotte were mending shoes.
A lighted lamp stood on the table that dusky, drizzling day.
They were all three bent over a shabby riding boot;
George had a tack hammer.
Lolotte held a patch of leather, Rev steadied something, a tiny brad, waiting for George's poised hammer.
George said, First thing I do when I get to Vicksburg again, is get me a Yankee --
With boots on, Lolotte laughed softly.
Rev looked up and saw her.
Lolotte looked up and stiffened.
George didn't look up at all.
There was no way to know, no way to guess whether any one of them was surprised at Sarah's appearance, believing her to be drugged and senseless--and just possibly dead.
Rev said, Come in, Sarah.
Reckon you know the news.
And what news, Sarah thought as satirically as Maude might have said it.
Rev's face was suddenly a little fixed and questioning.
He turned to George and Lolotte.
Take your cobbler's shop somewhere else.
I want to talk to Sarah.
Everything in the office, the spreading circle of lamplight, the patch of leather in Lolotte's hands.
George poised with the tack hammer, the homely, everyday atmosphere, all denied an attempt at murder.
A rush of panic caught Sarah.
No.
Not now.
I mean I've got to--to see to the kitchen.
Glendora --
Her words jumbled together and she all but ran from the office and from the question in Rev's face.
Now why did I do that?
She thought as warm, drizzling rain touched her face.
She was no schoolgirl, refusing to bear tales.
As she reached the kitchen door the answer presented itself;
if she told anyone of the opium it must be Lucien, her husband.
It might be, indeed it had already proved to be a marriage without love, but it was marriage.
So she couldn't choose Rev as a confidant;
it must be Lucien.
Always provided that Lucien himself had not dosed her coffee with opium, she thought, as coldly and sharply, again, as Maude might have said it.
She paused at the kitchen door, caught her breath, told herself firmly that the opium was only an attempt to frighten her and went into the kitchen, where Glendora was eyeing the chickens dismally and Maude was cleaning lamp chimneys.
Glendora gave a gulp.
Miss Sarah, I can't cut up no chicken.
Miss Maude say she won't.
Again the homely, everyday details of daily living refuted a vicious attempt to frighten her--or to murder her.
The homely everyday details of living and domestic requirements also pressed upon her with their immediate urgency.
No matter what had happened or hadn't happened, somebody had to see about dinner.
She eyed the chickens with, if she had known it, something of Glendora's dismal look and thought with a certain fury of the time she had spent on Latin verbs.
Not since last night.
I didn't think there was any reason to.
Maybe there isn't.
Speak to him again anyway.
Try talking to some of the fellows he works with, friends, anyone.
Try to find out how happy he is with his wife, whether he plays around with women.
You might try looking into his wife too.
She might have been talking to some of her friends about her husband if they've been having any trouble.
You think Black's the one we're looking for?
Yeah.
I think he might be, Conrad said grimly.
Then again he might not.
What a stinking world, Rourke said.
Black is Gilborn's best friend.
I know.
Will you be coming back soon?
I think so.
I'm on my way to see the Jacobs woman.
Gilborn's secretary?
What for?
You don't think Gilborn is the--''?
I don't think anything.
I just don't want to go off half-cocked before picking up Black, that's all.
Conrad interrupted.
Gilborn says he was in his office all day with her yesterday.
I'd like to make sure.
Also, it's just possible she might know something about Mrs. Gilborn.
Right.
I'll see you later.
Aren't you ever going to go home?
It sure as hell doesn't look like it, does it?
I'm telling you, if these corpses ever knew the trouble they put us to, they'd think twice before letting themselves get knocked off.
Remember to tell that to the next corpse you meet.
Conrad hung up and sat on the small telephone-booth bench, massaging his right leg.
He looked at his watch.
It was ten minutes before eleven.
He wondered how long it would be before they had a signed confession from Lionel Black.
Thirty years' experience let him know, even at this early stage, that Black was his man.
But he still wanted to know why.
It was a cold, windy day, the day after Kitti's death, but Stanley Gilborn paid no attention to the blustery October wind.
After leaving Conrad, Gilborn had no destination.
He simply walked, not noticing where he was, not caring.
He stopped automatically at the street corners, waiting for the traffic lights to change, unheeding of other people, his coat open and flapping.
As he walked, he tried to think.
Of Kitti.
Of himself.
Mainly of what Conrad had tried to make him believe.
There was nothing coherent about his thinking.
It was a succession of picture-images passing through his mind: the same ones, different ones, in no apparent sequence, in no logical succession.
The enormity of what Conrad had told him made it impossible for Gilborn to accept, with any degree of realism, the actuality of it.
Conrad's words had intellectual meaning for him only.
Emotionally, they penetrated him not at all.
Whoever he was and your wife were intimate.
Gilborn remembered Conrad's exact words.
They made sense and yet they didn't.
He knew Conrad had told him the truth.
It was so.
Yet it wasn't so.
It wasn't so because it couldn't be so.
When Kitti was alive--and he remembered the pressure of her hand resting lightly on his arm--she had been the center of his life.
She was the sun, he the closest planet orbiting around her, the rest of the world existing and visible yet removed.
For fifty-five years he had lived, progressing towards a no-goal, eating, working, breathing without plan, without reason.
Kitti had come along to justify everything.
She was his goal, she was his reason.
He had lived all his life waiting for her.
Not once, in the time that he had known her, had he ever considered the possibility, not once, not for one one-thousandth of a second, of her infidelity.
He could not consider it now.
Not really.
And so he walked, aimless again.
The walk ended, inevitably, right in front of his hotel building.
The doorman began to nod his head automatically, then remembered who Gilborn was, what had happened to him the night before.
He looked at Gilborn with undisguised curiosity.
Gilborn passed by him without seeing him.
He crossed the lobby and rode up in the elevator lost in his own thoughts.
In the apartment itself, all was still.
The police were no longer there.
There was no evidence that anything was different than it had been.
Except that Kitti wasn't there.
Without taking off his coat, he sat in the blue chair which still faced the closed bedroom door.
At last, sitting there, in the familiar surroundings, the truth began to sink in.
Who?
He felt no anger towards Kitti, no sense that she had betrayed him.
Who?
She was all he had, everything he had, everything he wanted.
Someone had taken her away from him.
Who?
Where there is a left-hand entry in the ledger, there is a right-hand one, he remembered from his school days.
Where there is a victim, there is a killer.
Who?
Whoever he was and your wife were intimate.
He rose from the chair, took off his coat.
Quickly, he went into the bedroom.
The bed still showed signs of where Kitti had lain.
Gilborn stood there for a long time.
He looked at the bed unblinkingly.
The bed was empty now.
Kitti would lie in it no more.
He would lie in it no more.
Gilborn wondered whether Kitti had lain in that same bed with Who?
For thirty minutes, Stanley Gilborn stood there.
At the end of the half-hour, racking his brains, thinking over and over again of Kitti, her friends, her past, he left the bedroom.
Who?
He could think of no answer.
Gilborn put on his coat again.
Before leaving, he took one last, lingering look at the apartment.
He knew he would never see it again.
In the street, walking as quickly as he could, Stanley Gilborn was a lone figure.
On Blanche Jacobs, Kitti Gilborn's death had a quite different effect.
For Blanche, Kitti's death was a source of guilty, but nonetheless soaring, happy hope.
In Blanche's defense, it must be said she was unaware of the newborn hope.
If anyone had asked her, she would have described herself only as nervous and worried.
The figures on the worksheet paper in front of her were jumping and waving around so badly it was all she could do to make them out clearly enough to copy them with the typewriter.
She wondered whether Stanley would call.
She wanted to be with him, to give him the comfort and companionship she knew he needed.
She had skipped her lunch hour in the fear that he might call while she was out.
He hadn't.
And now she was feeling sick, both from concern about Stanley and hunger.
Why hadn't he called?
Men, she reflected, even men like Stanley, are unpredictable.
She tried to think of his unpredictable actions in the eleven years she had known him and discovered they weren't so many after all.
Stanley really was quite predictable.
That was one of the things she liked about Stanley.
He wasn't like so many other men.
The dentist last night, for instance.
Dinner and the movies had been fine.
He had taken her upstairs to say good night.
She had invited him in for coffee.
It was in the kitchen, as she was watching the kettle, waiting for the water to boil, that he had grabbed for her.
Without warning, without giving her a chance to prepare for it.
From behind, he had put his arms on her shoulders, turned her around, and pressed her to him, so close she couldn't breathe.
Later, she apologized for the long scratch across his face, tried to explain she couldn't help herself, that the panic arose in her unwanted.
But he hadn't understood.
When he left, she knew she would never see him again.
Stanley wasn't like that.
She could always predict what Stanley was going to do, ever since she first met him.
Except for that one morning.
The morning he walked in to announce to her, blushing, that he was married.
She thought she was going to die.
She had assumed before then that one day he would ask her to marry him.
Blanche couldn't remember when she had first arrived at this conclusion.
She thought it was sometime during the second week she worked for Stanley.
It was nothing that he said or did, but it seemed so natural to her that she should be working for him, looking forward to his eventual proposal.
She was thirty-one years old then.
Her mother was already considerably concerned over her daughter's future.
But Blanche had been able to maintain a serene and assured composure in the face of her widowed mother's continued carping, had been able to resist her urgings to date anyone who offered the slightest possibility of matrimony.
For Blanche, it was only a matter of time before Stanley would propose.
It was to be expected that Stanley would be shy, slow in taking such a momentous step.
Stanley went along in life, she knew, convinced that he deserved the love and faith of no woman.
As a result, he never looked for it.
But one day, she expected, he would somehow discover, without her having to tell him, that there was such a woman in the world;
a woman who was willing to give him love, faith, and anything else a woman could give a husband.
Indeed, there was a woman who, unasked, had already given him love.
Unquestionably, Blanche loved Stanley.
And then, unexpectedly, Stanley made his announcement.
On that first day, Blanche literally thought she was going to die, or, at the very least, go out of her mind.
It might have been easier for her if Kitti Walker hadn't been everything that Blanche was not.
Kitti was thirty years younger than Stanley, taller than Stanley, prettier than Stanley had any right to hope for, much less expect.
Kitti could have married a score of men.
There was no reason for her to marry someone like Stanley Gilborn, there was no need for her to marry Stanley.
Kitti had come into the office, on somebody's recommendation, because she needed help in preparing her income tax return.
Stanley had filled out the return and because, when he was finished, it was close to the lunch hour, he had politely asked Kitti to join him, never expecting her to accept.
Blanche knew all this because the door to Stanley's office was open and, without straining too hard, she could hear everything that was said.
Stanley had gone out, saying he would be back in an hour.
He hadn't come back for over two.
After that day, Blanche still didn't know exactly what had happened.
There were mornings when Stanley came in late, afternoons when he left early, days when he didn't come in at all.
Blanche knew something must be causing Stanley's new, strange behavior but she never once connected it with Kitti Walker.
It was too unprecedented.
Then, six weeks after the day Kitti first came into the office, Stanley announced he and Kitti were married.
Somehow, Blanche managed to cover the stunned surprise and offer her congratulations.
That night the two of them left for a week's honeymoon in Acapulco.
While they were away Blanche came into the office every morning, running things as she had always run them for Stanley, going through the week in a dazed stupor, getting things done automatically, out of habit.
For exactly one week, she was able to continue in this manner.
On the morning of Stanley's return, however, her strength left her.
Two hours of watching his serenely happy face, listening to his soft humming as he bent over his penciled figures, and Blanche had to leave.
She stayed away for ten days.
Those ten days were like no others that Blanche had known.
Mostly, she stayed in bed.
She didn't tell anyone, even her mother, what was wrong.
She refused to have a doctor, insisting there was nothing a doctor could do for her.
Right, said the fingerprint man.
Also, if you're going to believe those prints, you'll have to look for a killer who's a top-grade piano player.
He demonstrated by playing an imaginary piano, doing a staccato passage with a broadly exaggerated attack.
To make it clearer he shifted to acting out, but with no change of manner, the killing of Rose Mallory.
His hands snatched at an imaginary bucket, swooping down hard to grab it and coming away with equal snap like a ball that's been bounced hard.
In the same way he pantomimed grasping a mantel and bouncing cleanly off that, pressing his hands against the floor and bouncing cleanly off that.
He was moving like a ballet dancer, playing for laughs.
If Rose Mallory's killer acted this way, catching up with him was going to be a cinch.
We'd know him by his stretch pants and the flowers he'd wear twined in his hair.
Perhaps if Felix had first come upon us when this boy was not cavorting so gaily up and down the hall outside the murdered woman's apartment, we might have had less trouble convincing Felix of our seriousness.
This, you will remember, was still New Year's Day.
Felix was the exception.
He had retained his hat and his horn, and, whatever fun might still be going, he was ready to join it.
That, incidentally, might give you some idea of what Felix was like.
After all, he hadn't happened upon us in that second-floor hall without warning.
The M.E.'s boys had finished their on-the-spot examination and the body had been removed for autopsy.
The meat wagon, therefore, was not out in front of the house any more, but the cluster of squad cars was still there and there was a cop on the door downstairs to screen any comings and goings.
There was, furthermore, the crowd of curious onlookers gathered in the street and a couple more cops to hold them at a decent distance.
Just put yourself in Felix's place for a moment.
You're a taxpayer, householder, landlord.
You've been away from home for the New Year festivities, but now the party is over and you come home.
Defining sobriety in the limited sense of being free from the clinical symptoms of the effects of alcohol ingested and not yet eliminated from the system, you are sober.
You still have your paper hat and you're wearing it, but then, it is an extraordinary paper hat and, in addition to anything else you may be, you are also the sculptor who created that most peculiar dame out in the back yard.
It's not too much to assume that you will have a more lasting interest in paper hats than will Mr. Average Citizen.
You have your paper horn clutched in your big, craggy fist, and for your entrance you have planned a noisy, colorful and exuberant greeting to your friends and tenants.
You find your house a focus of public and police attention.
Can you imagine yourself forgetting under the circumstances that you are approaching this startling and unexpected situation so unsuitably hatted and armed with a paper horn?
Maybe one could be startled into forgetfulness.
You shoulder your way through the cluster of the curious and you barge up to the cop on the door.
You identify yourself and ask him what's going on.
Instead of answering you, he sticks his head in the door and shouts up the stairs.
Got the upstairs guy, he bellows.
The owner.
Do I send him up?
Then he turns back to you.
Go on in, he says.
They'll tell you what's cooking.
What I'm getting at is that we were fully prepared for Felix's being an odd one.
We'd seen his handiwork out in the back yard, and the little his tenants had told us of him did make him sound a little special.
We were not, however, prepared for anything like the apparition that confronted us as Felix came up the stairs.
He, of course, must have been equally unprepared for what confronted him, but, nonetheless, I did find his reaction startling.
If Felix was still wearing the hat and carrying the horn because he'd forgotten about them, he now remembered.
He came bounding up the stairs and joined the dance.
He adjusted the hat, lifted the horn to his lips as though it were a flute, and fell in alongside our fingerprint expert to cavort with him.
Our man stopped dead and glowered at Felix.
Felix threw his head back and laughed a laugh that shook the timbers of even that solidly built old house.
This was a bull of a man.
He was big-chested, big-shouldered and heavy-armed.
His face was ruddy and heavy and unlined, and when he laughed he showed his teeth, which were big and white and strong and unquestionably home-grown.
I don't remember ever seeing teeth that were quite so white and at the same time quite so emphatically not dentures.
His hair had receded most of the way to the back of his neck.
He had only a fringe of hair and he wore it cropped short.
It was almost as white as his teeth.
For a man of his mass he was curiously short.
He wasn't a dwarf but he was a bit of a comic figure.
A man with so big and so staggeringly developed a torso and such long and powerful arms is expected to stand taller than five feet five.
For Felix it was a bit of a stretch to make even that measurement.
The man was just this side of being a freak.
We waited till he had finished laughing, and that gave us a few moments for taking stock of him.
He was dressed in a manner Esquire might suggest for the outdoor man's country weekend.
Dark gray sports jacket, lighter gray slacks, pink flannel shirt, black silk necktie.
His eyes were clear.
He was freshly shaved, and if there had been any alcohol in him we could never have missed detecting some scent of it on the massive gusts of his laughter.
Not even a whiff.
Eventually he subsided.
Felix?
Gibby said.
Me, he said merrily.
Me, the happy one.
That much Latin we remember, Gibby said dryly.
You always live up to your name, always like this, always making happy?
I try, Felix said blithely.
The world is full of blokes who put their hearts into making the tragic scene.
I've never noticed that it improves things any.
Bully for you, Gibby said.
What's the rest of your name?
No rest of it.
Felix is all there is.
All there ever was?
The past I leave to historians, Felix intoned, demonstrating that he could be pompous as well as happy.
You live in the present?
In the present, Felix proclaimed.
For the future.
Is there any other time in which a man can live?
We, Gibby announced, are not philosophers.
We are Assistant District Attorneys.
This gentleman is a police officer.
He is a fingerprint specialist.
Could your future, your immediate future, be made to include taking us upstairs, giving us a bit of space in which our friend can work, and making available to him your finger tips?
The happy one could never have looked happier.
This was more than joy.
It was ecstasy.
Those lovely whorls, he chortled.
So intricate, so beautiful.
Come right along.
I love fingerprints.
He was prancing along the hall, heading for the next flight of stairs.
Gibby called him back.
We're here because of what happened last night, he said.
Past, yes, but important.
Since it is important, for the record let's have the full name.
That important?
Felix asked.
That important.
Grubb, Felix whispered.
Felix Grubb?
Gibby asked, not bothering to whisper.
Shh, Felix implored.
I can't see what would make it necessary for you to know.
Nothing could make it necessary to proclaim it to the whole world.
Obligingly Gibby lowered his voice.
Felix Grubb?
He repeated.
No.
Edmund, but not for years.
For years it's been just Felix.
First thing I did after my twenty-first birthday was go into court and have it officially changed, and this is something I don't tell everybody.
That was almost forty years ago.
Having volunteered that he was a man of about sixty, he bounded up the stairs and with each leap rendered the number less credible.
This was a broth of a boy, our Felix, and nothing was more obvious than the joy he took in demonstrating how agile he was and how full of juice and spirit.
We followed him up the stairs.
The cops would gather up Connor and the foursome on the third floor and bring us those of them who would voluntarily submit to fingerprinting.
You may think we didn't need Nancy and Jean, but you always get what you can when you can, and we had no guarantee that a fingerprint record on them couldn't be useful before we were through with this case.
Also, if we had excluded the ladies we would have to that extent let the whole world know at least that much of where we stood.
The killer, if in our present group, would certainly be interested in knowing that much, and even though with the fingerprint evidence what it was I could see no way he could use this bit of information to improve on his situation, there might always be some way.
If you can possibly avoid it, you don't hand out any extra chances.
Felix took us into his studio.
It was that oddly shaped space at the very top of the house, where ceiling heights had to accommodate themselves to the varying angles of roof slope.
At each angle of its pitch a big skylight had been fitted into the roof and all these skylights were fitted with systems of multiple screens and shades.
When Felix first opened the door on it, all these shades were tightly drawn and the whole studio was as dark as night.
He quickly fixed that, rolling back the shades on some of the skylights and adjusting screens on the others.
He flew about the place making these adjustments and it was obvious that what he was doing was the fruit of long experience.
None of his movements was tentative.
There was no process of trial and error.
Starting with the room completely blacked out, as it was when we came in, he unerringly fixed things so that the whole place was bathed in the maximum of light without at any point admitting even so much as a crack of glare.
Expecting something more-than-average wacky, I was surprised by what we found.
There was no display of either works in progress or of finished work.
Here and there on work table or pedestal stood a shape with a sheet or a tarpaulin draped over it.
These shapes might have been mad, but there was no telling.
They were all completely shrouded.
The equipment was solid and heavy and in good condition.
Everything was orderly and it seemed to be arranged for the workman's comfort, convenience and efficiency.
There were tools about but they were neatly kept.
There was no confusion and no litter.
Supplies of sheet metal were neatly stacked in bins.
Andy did not see the newspapers the next day.
Someone on his staff--he suspected it was Ed Thornburg--intercepted them and for this Andy was grateful.
He finally fell asleep around six in the morning with the aid of a sleeping capsule, a crutch he rarely used, and didn't awaken until early afternoon.
Memory flooded him the instant he opened his eyes and the sick feeling knotted his stomach.
Outside his window bloomed a beautiful summer day.
Presumably the same sun was shining upon little Drew also, and those who had kidnapped him.
But where?
It was still a very big world, despite all the modern cant to the contrary.
Hub was sitting in a chair that blocked the hall door.
He was dozing, perhaps the only sleep he'd gotten.
He snapped to alertness at Andy's entrance.
Sorry, Mr. Paxton.
Nothing new.
Lot of people waiting to see you, though.
Reporters?
Our own people.
Questions about the show tonight.
Hub picked up the telephone.
Shall I let them know you're awake?
I suppose.
How's Lissa, do you know?
Hub considered.
Some better.
She's got plenty of guts, Mr. Paxton.
You want me to call her?
She expecting me to?
Hub shook his head so Andy told him not to bother.
The only reason for contacting Lissa was to comfort or to be comforted.
He could not manage the former or expect the latter;
they had nothing to give to each other.
The omission might look peculiar to outsiders, but Andy could not bring himself to go through the motions simply for the sake of appearances.
He had little time to himself, anyway.
As the afternoon sped toward evening, the suite saw a steady procession of Paxton aides pass in and out, each with his own special problem.
Thornburg arrived with the writers.
They had spent the morning revising the act, eliminating all the gay songs, patter and dancing with a view of the best public relations.
What remained lacked the original verve but it was at least dignified, as befitting the tragic circumstances.
Raymond Fox reported that the orchestra had hastily rehearsed Cradle Song in case it was needed.
And once Bake slipped in, pale and drawn, last night's liquor still on his breath with some of today's added to it.
He asked if there was anything he could do.
Andy invented a job to keep him busy, sending him ahead to El Dorado to supervise last minute arrangements.
But from Rocco Vecchio, they heard nothing.
At last it was time to depart.
Hub, nosing about, spotted reporters in the lobby, so Andy was hustled away quietly through the hotel's service entrance in a strange car which Hub had procured somewhere.
They succeeded in eluding the curious at the hotel, but there was no chance of avoiding them at the nightclub.
El Dorado was surrounded by a mob.
They overflowed the parking lot, making progress by automobile difficult.
Long before he reached the protection of the stage door, Andy was recognized.
Word of his arrival spread through the crowd like a brushfire.
They surged around him, fingers pointing, eyes prying.
It was not a hostile gathering but Andy sensed the difference from last night's hero-worshippers.
They had come not to admire but to observe.
It's worse inside, Thornburg informed Andy.
Skolman's jammed in every table he could find.
Under the heading of it's an ill wind, et cetera.
Backstage was tomblike by contrast.
Andy's co-workers kept their distance, awed by the tragedy.
But in his dressing room was a large bouquet and a card that read, We're with you all the way.
It was signed by everyone in the troupe.
Andy couldn't help but be touched.
He instructed Shirl Winter to compose a note of thanks to be posted on the call board.
Bake was waiting to report that Lou DuVol had been sobered up to the point where he could function efficiently.
Andy gathered that this had been no small accomplishment.
Bake himself looked better;
any kind of job was better than brooding.
Andy told him, Bake, I wish you'd talk to Skolman, see if some kind of p. a. system can be rigged up outside.
It's just barely possible with this crowd that the kidnapper wasn't able to get a table.
I wouldn't want him to miss the message.
I'll try.
Skolman isn't going to like it much, though, giving away what he should be selling.
Skolman wasn't the only one who didn't care for Andy's scheme.
A short time later, Lieutenant Bonner stomped into the dressing room.
I got a bone to pick with you, Mr. Paxton.
It's those damn loudspeakers.
Andy rolled up the revised script he had been studying.
What about them?
They're going to louse me up good.
My men have been here all afternoon, setting up for this thing.
Bonner explained that, with the nightclub's cooperation, the police had occupied El Dorado like a battlefield.
Motion picture cameras had been installed to film the audience, the reservation list was being checked out name by name, and a special detail was already at work in the parking lot scrutinizing automobiles for a possible lead.
However, it was virtually impossible to screen the mob outside, even if Bonner had manpower available for the purpose.
I want you to have the speakers taken out.
Andy sighed.
Seems like we're never going to see eye to eye, Lieutenant.
Didn't they tell you what I wanted the p. a. system for?
Sure, I know.
But it's such a long shot --
No longer than yours.
What do you expect to get tonight, anyway?
You think somebody is going to stand up in the audience and make guilty faces?
Or have a sign on his car that says,'Here Comes the Paxton Kidnapper'''?
Andy crumbled the script in his fist.
I can't stop you from doing what you think is right.
But don't try to stop me, either.
Someday, Bonner said, you're going to ask us for help.
I can hardly wait.
What you don't understand is that I'm asking for it now.
But Bonner departed, still full of ill will.
He had gotten stuck with a job too big for his imagination;
he had to cling to routine, tested procedures.
To act otherwise would be to admit his helplessness.
But, admit or not, Bonner was helpless.
The crime showed too much planning, the kidnappers appeared too proficient to be caught by a checklist.
Andy's performance was scheduled for eleven o'clock.
He stalled for a half-hour longer, hoping to hear something from Vecchio about the ransom money.
Bake and Shirl Winter, on separate telephones, could not reach him at any conceivable location in Los Angeles, nor could they secure any clear-cut information regarding his efforts.
Bake cursed.
The sweaty bastard's probably halfway to Peru with our money by now.
When no one smiled, he felt constrained to add, Just kidding, natch.
Thornburg popped in to advise, Andy, Skolman's sending up smoke signals.
You about ready?
What's he complaining about?
Bake asked.
They're drinking, aren't they?
No.
We got a bunch of sippers out there tonight.
I guess nobody wants to pass out and miss anything.
Thornburg added in a lower voice but Andy overheard, They act more like a jury than an audience.
Andy said, Well, I guess we can't wait any longer.
Hub, you stick by the stage door.
If Rock shows up during the number--or you hear anything--give me the signal.
Shirl Winter said, I'll stay on the phone, Mr. Paxton.
There's a couple of call-backs I can work on.
You're a sweetheart--but leave one line open.
He may try to phone us.
Andy passed into the corridor, their good lucks!
Following him.
It was what they said before every performance but tonight it sounded different, as if he really needed it.
They were right.
The act, cut to shreds and hastily patched together during the afternoon, had not been rehearsed sufficiently by anyone.
The result had nothing of the polish, pace or cohesion of the previous night.
Here's where luck would normally step in.
But this was no ordinary show and Andy knew it.
Whether he sang well or badly had nothing to do with it.
The audience had come not to be entertained but to judge.
Twenty-four hours had changed him from a performer to a freak.
Within this framework, what followed was strained, even macabre.
Eliminating the patter and the upbeat numbers left little but blues and other songs of equal melancholy.
The effect was as depressing as a gravestone, the applause irresolute and short-lived.
Yet Andy plowed ahead, mouthing the inconsequential words as if they possessed real meaning, and gradually his listeners warmed to him.
Their clapping grew more fervent;
the evening was still not beyond salvaging, not as a show but for him as a person.
The worst was yet to come.
As Andy reached the finale of his act, a subdued commotion backstage drew his attention to the wings.
Rocco Vecchio--a perspiring, haggard Vecchio--was standing there, flanked by two men in the uniforms of armored transport guards.
Vecchio was nodding and pointing at the large suitcase he held.
Andy felt his heart thud heavily with relief.
He waved at Fox to cut off the finale introduction.
The music died away discordantly.
He drew a deep breath.
Ladies and gentlemen, in place of my regular closing number tonight, I'd like to sing something of a different nature for you.
Ray, if you please--the'Cradle Song'''.
He sensed rather than heard the gasp that swept across the audience.
Nor could he blame them.
This particular song at this particular time could only be interpreted as the ultimate in bad taste, callous exploitation beyond the bounds of decency.
Having no choice, he plunged into it, anyway, holding onto the microphone for support.
Lullaby and goodnight.
His voice shook.
For the first time in his life he forgot the lyrics midway through and had to cover up by humming the rest.
He wondered if the audience would let him finish.
They did;
though contemptuous, they were still polite.
But when he was finally through, their scorn was made apparent.
Someone clapped tentatively then quickly stopped.
Otherwise, the silence was complete.
As the lights came up, Andy could see that a number of patrons were already on their way toward the exit.
He stumbled off-stage.
My God, he muttered.
My God.
Hub was there to support him.
It's okay, Mr. Paxton.
The money's here, all of it.
At this moment, all he could think of was what he'd been forced to undergo.
Did you hear them?
Do you know what they think of me?
Bunch of damn jerks, Hub growled.
Who needs them?
Thornburg patted his arm.
Sure, Andy, it'll be all right.
Nothing broken that can't be mended.
The words were hollow.
Thornburg knew, better than any of them, that a public image was as fragile as Humpty Dumpty.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Vecchio shouldered in.
I got it, Andy.
God knows how, but I got it.
You'll never believe the places I've been today.
I practically had to sign your life away, you'll probably fire me for some of the deals I had to go for, but --
Andy nodded dully.
It doesn't matter, Rock.
We've done our part.
He clutched that knowledge to him as he returned to his dressing room.
The usual congratulatory crowd was conspicuously absent;
the place had the air of a morgue.
Andy had no desire to linger himself but Hub reported that the mob outside was still large despite the efforts of the police to disperse them.
His son watched until he got as far as the hall, almost out of sight, then hurried after.
Dad.
Dad, wait.
He caught up with the old man in the living room.
Old man Arthur had put down the suitcase to open the front door.
Just this one favor, Dad.
Just don't tell Ferguson that crazy opinion of yours.
Why not?
The old man gave the room a stare in leaving;
under the scraggly brows the pale old eyes burned with a bitter memory.
It's the truth.
The Bartlett girl was killed by Mr. Dronk's son.
Rossi and Ferguson have been across the street, talking to the kid.
They've found some sort of new evidence, a bundle of clothes or something, and it must link the kid even stronger to the crime.
Why won't you accept facts?
The two kids were together a lot, they were having some kind of teen-age affair--God knows how far that had gone--and the kid's crippled.
He limps, and the man who hit you and took the cane, he limped.
My God, how much more do you want?
His father looked him over closely.
You sound like an old woman.
You should have gone to work today, 'stead of sneaking around spying on the Dronk house.
Now, see here --
The trouble with you, old man Arthur began, and then checked himself.
Young Mrs. Arthur had opened the oven and there was a drifting odor of hot biscuits.
The old man opened the door and stepped out into the sunlight.
Isn't enough time to go into it, he finished, and slammed the door in his son's face.
Mrs. Holden turned from the window draperies.
They found something else up there, she said half-aloud to the empty room.
They took it away, overalls or something.
She walked restlessly across the room, then back to the windows.
Now they've gone, they didn't come back, and they didn't arrest that Dronk boy.
She stood frowning and chewing her lip.
She was wearing a brown cotton dress, cut across the hips in a way that was supposed to make her look slimmer, a yoke set into the skirt and flaring pleats below.
She smoothed the skirt, sat down, then stood up and went back to the windows.
Why on earth did I send him off to work?
There was excuse enough to keep him home that young Mr. Arthur's still over there.
With sudden energy, she went to the phone and rang Holden's office and asked for him.
I think you had better come home.
Mae, we're so busy.
Mr. Crosson's been on everybody's neck, an order he expected didn't come through and he's --
I don't care.
I want you here.
I'm all alone and certain things are going on that look very ominous.
I need someone to go out and find out what's happening.
But I couldn't do that, even if I were home!
His voice grew high and trembling.
I can't be underfoot every time those cops turn around!
They'll they'll think I did something.
He couldn't see the grin that split her mouth;
the teeth that shone into the phone were like a shark's.
You'll just have to risk it.
You can't wander along in the dark, can you?
I'd think that you even more than I would be wondering what they're up to.
They found some clothes, she tossed in.
What?
Deliberately, she ignored the yelp.
Also, that Mr. Ferguson was here.
I guess he wants to ask you some questions.
I stalled him off.
He doesn't expect you until five.
Then I'd better wait until five.
No-o-o.
Come home right away.
She slapped the receiver into its holder and stepped away.
Her eyes were bright with anticipation.
In his office, Mr. Holden replaced the phone slowly.
He rose from his chair.
He had to cough then;
he went to the window and choked there with the fresh breeze on his face.
He got his hat out of the closet.
For a moment he thought of going into Crosson's office to explain that he had to leave, but there was now such a pain in his chest, such a pounding in his head, that he decided to let it go.
He passed the receptionist in the outer office, muttering, I've got to go out for a little while.
Let her call Crosson if she wanted to, let Crosson raise the roof or even can him, he didn't care.
He got into the car.
Putting the key into the switch, pressing the accelerator with his foot, putting the car into reverse, seemed vast endeavors almost beyond the ability of his shaking body.
Once out in the street, the traffic was a gadfly maze in which he wandered stricken.
When he turned into the highway that led to the outskirts of the city and then rose toward home, he had to pull over to the curb and wait for a few minutes, sucking in air and squinting and blinking his eyes to clear them of tears.
What on earth was in Mae's mind, that she wanted him up there spying on what the cops were doing?
What did she think he could do?
He tried to ignore what his own common sense told him, but it wasn't possible;
her motives were too blatant.
She wanted him to get into trouble.
She wanted the police to notice him, suspect him.
She was going to keep on scheming, poking, prodding, suggesting, and dictating until the cops got up enough interest in him to go back to their old neighborhood and ask questions.
And he knew in that moment, with a cold sinking of despair, a dying of old hopes, that Mae had spread some kind of word there among the neighbors.
Nothing bald, open;
but enough.
They'd have some suspicions to repeat to the police.
Though his inner thoughts cringed at it, he forced himself to think back, recreating the scene in which Mae claimed to have caught him molesting the child.
It hadn't amounted to anything.
There had been nothing evil or dirty in his intentions.
A second scene flashed before his mind, the interior of the garage at the new house and the young Bartlett girl turning startled to meet him, the dim dark and the sudden confusion and fear and then the brightness as Mae had clicked on the light.
Suppose the cops somehow got hold of that?
Well, it hadn't been what it seemed, he'd had no idea the girl was in there.
He hadn't touched her.
And when he came to examine the scene, there was a certain staginess to it, it had the smell of planning, and a swift suspicion darted into his mind.
Too monstrous, of course.
Mae wouldn't have plotted a thing like that.
It was just that little accidents played into her hands.
Like this murder.
He leaned on the wheel, clutching it, staring into the sunlight, and tried to bring order into his thoughts.
He felt light-headed and sick.
There was no use wandering off into a territory of utter nightmare.
Mae was his wife.
She was married to him for better or for worse.
She wouldn't be wilfully planning his destruction.
But she was.
She was.
Even as the conviction of truth roared through him, shattering his last hope of safety, he was reaching to release the hand brake, to head up the road for home, doing her bidding.
He drove, and the road wobbled, familiar scenes crept past on either side.
He came to a stretch of old orange groves, the trees dead, some of them uprooted, and then there was an outlying shopping area, and tract houses.
He had the feeling that he should abandon the car and run off somewhere to hide.
But he couldn't imagine where.
There was really no place to go, finally, except home to Mae.
At the gate he slowed, looking around.
Cooper was beside his car, on the curb at the right, just standing there morosely;
he didn't even look up.
Behind him on the steps of the little office sat old man Arthur;
he was straight, something angry in his attitude, as if he might be waiting to report something.
Holden stepped on the gas.
A new idea drifted in from nowhere.
He could go to the police.
He could throw himself on the mercy of the Police Department.
It wasn't what Mae would want him to do, though.
He was sure of this.
Once he had abandoned himself to the very worst, once he had quieted all the dragons of worry and suspense, there wouldn't be very much for Mae to do.
At that moment, Holden almost slammed on the brakes to go back to Cooper and ask if Ferguson was about.
It would be such a relief.
What was that old sign, supposed to be painted over a door somewhere, Abandon hope, all ye who enter here?
Why, Holden said to himself, surprised at his own sudden insight, I'll bet some of those people who enter are just as happy as can be.
They've worried, they've lain awake nights, they've shook at the slightest footstep, they've pictured their own destruction, and now it's all over and they can give up.
Sure, they're giving up hope.
Hand in hand with hope went things like terror and apprehension.
Good-bye.
Holden waved a hand at the empty street.
Glad to see you go.
He drove into the paved space before the garage and got out, slamming the car door.
He looked up and down the street.
If Ferguson's car had been in sight, Holden would have walked directly to it.
He went to the front door and opened it and looked in.
Mae entered the room from the hallway to the kitchen.
She had a cup of something steaming, coffee perhaps, in one hand, a fresh piece of toast in the other.
She stood there, watching Holden come in, and she put the piece of toast in her mouth and bit off one corner with a huge chomp of her white teeth.
Mae --
I've been thinking, she said, swallowing the toast.
Didn't you have an old pair of painting overalls in the garage?
You used them that time you painted the porch at our other house.
And then you wiped up some grease.
She had caught him off guard, no preparation, nothing certain but that ahead lay some kind of disaster.
No.
Wait a minute.
What do you --
I've been looking for them, and they're gone.
I'm sure they were in the garage up until a couple of days ago.
Or even yesterday.
You used to paint in them, and then you just took them for rags.
The police have them now.
I don't remember any overalls at all.
They were all faded.
Worn through at the knees.
She stood sipping and chewing and watching.
Green paint, wasn't it?
Well, I'm not sure of the color.
But you had them.
Mae, sit down.
Put down the cup of coffee.
Tell me what this is all about.
She shook her head.
She took another bite of toast.
Holden noticed almost absently how she chewed, how the whole side of her cheek moved, a slab of fat that extended down into her neck.
My goodness, you ought to remember if I do.
You're going to have to go to the police and explain what happened.
Tell them the truth or something before they come here.
A seeping coldness entered Holden's being;
his nerves seemed frost-bitten down to the tips of his tingling fingers and his spine felt stiff and glass-like, liable to break like an icicle at any moment.
I've never owned any painting overalls.
A man with a sketch pad in hand sat with a large pink woman in a small office at the end of a long, dim corridor and made pencil lines on paper and said, Is this more like it, Mrs. MacReady?
Or are the eyebrows more like this?
When he had finished with that, he would go to another part of the hotel and say much the same things to someone else, most probably a busboy.
Begin to look like him now, would you say?
Different about the mouth, huh?
More like this, maybe?
Men blew dust on objects in a room on the seventeenth floor of the Hotel Dumont and blew it off again, and did the same in a tiny, almost airless room in a tenement in the West Forties.
And men also used vacuum cleaners in both rooms, sucking dust up once more.
Men from the Third Detective District, Eighteenth Precinct, had the longest, the most tedious, job.
At the Hotel Dumont there had, at the time in issue, been twenty-three overnighters, counting couples as singular.
These included, as one, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Payne, who had checked in a little after noon the day before, and had not checked out together.
But Gardner Willings was not included;
he had been at the Dumont for almost a week.
There was, of course, no special reason to believe that the man or woman they sought had stayed only overnight at the hotel.
The twenty-three (or twenty-two with the Paynes themselves omitted) provided merely a place to start, and their identification was the barest of starts.
With names and addresses listed, verification came next.
It would take time;
it would, almost inevitably, trouble some water.
(I certainly was not at the Dumont last night and my husband couldn't have been.
He's in Boston.
Of course he's in --)
The Hotel King Arthur across the street provided almost twice as many problems.
The King Arthur offered respectable and convenient lodgings to people from the suburbs who wanted to see a show and didn't want--heaven knew didn't want!
-- to lunge anxiously through crowded streets to railroad stations and, at odd hours of night, drive from smaller stations to distant homes, probably through rain or, in November, something worse.
The King Arthur was less expensive than the Dumont.
The King Arthur had fifty-four overnighters, again counting rooms rather than people.
Check the overnighters out.
Failing to find what was wanted, as was most likely, check out other guests, with special--but not exclusive--attention to those with rooms on the street.
(Anyone active enough can reach a roof, wherever his room may be.
) And know, while all this went on, that there was no real reason to suppose that the murderer had been a guest in either hotel.
It was not even certain the shot had been fired from either hotel.
There were other roofs, less convenient but not impossible.
It is dull business, detecting, and hard on feet.
There was also the one salient question to ask, and ask widely: Did you notice anything out of the way?
Like, for example, a man carrying a twenty-two rifle, probably with a telescopic sight attached?
There was, of course, no hope it really would be that simple.
The sniper, whether psychopathic marksman or murderer by intent, would hardly have walked to his vantage point with rifle over shoulder, whistling a marching tune.
Anybody carrying anything that might hide a rifle?
Long thin suitcase?
Or long fat suitcase, for that matter?
Shrugs met that, from room clerks, from bellhops.
Who measures?
But nothing, it appeared, long enough to attract attention.
Cases, say, for musical instruments?
None noted at the Dumont.
Several at the King Arthur.
A combo was staying there.
And had been for a week.
Anything else?
Anything at all?
Shrugs met that.
(Detective Pearson, Eighteenth Precinct, thought for a time he might be on to something.
A refuse bin at the Dumont turned up a florist's box--a very long box for very long-stemmed flowers.
Traces of oil on green tissue?
The lab to check.
The lab: sorry.
No oil.
Anything at all strange?
Well, a man had tried, at the King Arthur, to register with an ocelot.
At the Dumont, a guest had come in a collapsible wheel chair.
At the King Arthur one guest had had his head heavily bandaged, and another had a bandaged foot and had walked with crutches.
There had also been a man who must have had St. Vitus or something, because he kept jerking his head.
As reports dribbled in, William Weigand tossed them into the centrifuge which had become his head.
Mullins came in.
There was no sign of Mrs. Lauren Payne at her house on Nod Road, Ridgefield, Connecticut.
The house was modern, large, on five acres.
Must have cost plenty.
The State cops would check from time to time;
pass word when there was word to pass.
Weigand tossed this news into the centrifuge.
Sort things out, damn it.
Sort out the next move.
Try to forget motive for the moment.
Consider opportunity.
Only those actually with Payne when he was shot, or who had left the party within not more than five minutes (make five arbitrary) positively had none.
The Norths;
Hathaway, Jerry's publicity director;
Livingston Birdwood, producer of Uprising.
They had been with Payne when he was shot, could not therefore have shot him from above.
Take Gardner Willings.
He had left after the scuffle;
had been seen to leave.
He would have had ample time to go into a blind somewhere and wait his prey.
Consider him seriously, therefore?
Intangibles entered, then--hunches which felt like facts.
Willings would ambush, certainly;
Willings undoubtedly had.
Willings was, presumably, a better than average shot.
But--hunch, now--Willings would not ambush anything which went on two legs instead of four.
Because, if for no other reason, Willings would never for a moment suppose he was not bigger, tougher, than anything else that went on two legs.
Ambushes are laid by those who doubt themselves, as any man may against a tiger.
Faith Constable had had to go on from the party and had, presumably, gone on.
To be checked out further.
Forget motive?
No, motive is a part of fact.
Nobody in his right mind punishes a quarter-century-old dereliction.
Grudges simply do not keep that well in a sane mind.
Faith Constable had accomplished much in a quarter of a century.
Jeopardize it now to correct so old a wrong?
Bill shook his head.
Also, he thought, I doubt if she could hit the side of a barn with a shotgun.
Lauren herself?
She had left the party early, pleading a headache.
No lack of opportunity, presuming she had a gun.
She might, conceivably, have brought one in in a large-enough suitcase.
(Check on the Payne luggage.
) She might now have taken it away again.
Motive--her husband wandering?
Bitter, unreasoning jealousy?
Heaven knew it happened and hell knew it too.
But--it happened, almost always, among the primitive and, usually, among the very young.
(Call it mentally young;
call it retarded.
) There was nothing to indicate that Lauren Payne was primitive.
She did not move in primitive circles.
She was young, but not that young.
It occurred to Bill Weigand that he was, on a hunch basis, eliminating a good many.
He reminded himself that all eliminations were tentative.
He also reminded himself that he had an unusual number of possibilities.
The Masons, mother or son, or mother and son?
Opportunity was obvious.
Motive.
Here, too, the cause to hate lay well back in the years.
But bitterness had more cause to remain, even increasingly to corrode.
With the boy, particularly.
The boy had, apparently--if Mrs. MacReady was right in what she had told Mullins--only in recent months been forced to give up college, to work as a busboy.
Seeing the man he blamed for this made much of--youth and bitterness and --
Bill picked up the telephone;
got Mullins.
Send out a pickup on Mrs. Mason and the boy when you've got enough to go on, Bill said.
Right?
Mullins would do.
A man named Lars Simon, playwright-director, had expressed a wish that Anthony Payne drop dead.
He would say, of course, that he had not really had any such wish;
that what he had said was no more than one of those things one does say, lightly, meaning nothing.
Which probably would turn out to be true;
which he obviously had to be given the opportunity to say.
A man named Blaine Smythe, with y and e but pronounced without them, had been fired at Payne's insistence.
He was also, if Pam North was right, a closer acquaintance of Lauren Payne's than she, now, was inclined to admit.
He might deny the latter;
would certainly deny any connection between the two things, or any connection of either with murder.
He would have to be given the opportunity.
Mullins?
It was evident that Mullins was the man to go.
It was evident that a captain should remain at his desk, directing with a firm hand and keeping a firm seat.
Bill Weigand was good and tired of the wall opposite, and the crack in the plaster.
Let Mullins keep the firm seat;
let Stein.
When Siamese cats are intertwined it is difficult to tell where one leaves off and another begins.
Stilts and Shadow, on Pam's bed, appeared to be one cat--rather large, as Siamese cats go, and, to be sure, having two heads and two tails.
On the other hand, they, or it, seemed to have no legs whatever.
Pamela North said, Hi, to her cats, and added that proper cats met their humans at the door.
Of four dark brown ears, one twitched slightly at this.
All right, Pam said.
I know it isn't dinnertime.
But at this the one too-large cat suddenly became two cats, stretching.
Shadow, the more talkative, began at once to talk, her voice piteous.
Stilts, a more direct cat, leaped from the bed and trotted briskly toward the kitchen.
Shadow looked surprised, wailed, and trotted after her.
The hell it isn't dinnertime, two waving tails told Pam North.
It was not, whatever tale was told by tails.
Martha presumably would cope.
She might be firm.
It was most unlikely that she would be firm.
They want to be fat cats, Pam thought, and lighted a cigarette and leaned back on a chaise and considered pulling her thoughts together.
After a time, it occurred to her that her thoughts were not worth the trouble.
A vague feeling that Anthony Payne had had it coming was hardly a thought and was, in any event, reprehensible.
Had Faith Constable's explanation of her confidence, so uninvited, been a little thin?
That was more like a thought, but not a great deal more.
Had that tall dark boy, carrying trays too heavy for him, found what he might have considered adulation of a man he probably hated more than he could bear?
And possessed himself--how?
-- of a rifle and killed?
Pam found she had no answers;
had only a hope.
The poor kid--the poor, frail kid.
Some people have luck and some have no luck and that, whatever people who prefer order say, is the size of it.
The poor, unlucky --
The telephone rang.
Pam realized, to her surprise, that she had been almost dozing.
At four o'clock in the afternoon.
Two martinis for lunch--that was the trouble.
I ought to remember.
Don't pretend.
You do remember.
You just--Hello?
Yes, this is she?
What?
The voice had music in it.
Even with words coming too fast, they came on the music of the voice.
I said I would, Pam said.
They won't talk about who gave the information.
Not unless they have to.
They don't, Mrs. Constable.
Not unless they have --
She was interrupted.
Call this a cry for help, Faith Constable said.
Through a door conveniently unlocked, Madden supplemented.
That damn door, said the police chief.
A gift horse to be viewed with suspicion.
Madden's dark face wore a meditative look.
If there was collusion between an outside murderer and a member of the household it would be an elementary precaution to check on the door later.
And it makes a very poor red herring for an inside job.
Much better to break a cellar window.
Don't forget, there was the hope it would pass for a natural death, Pauling reminded him.
Well, with a house as big as that there must be at least one cellar window that wouldn't be noticed right away unless there was a police investigation.
Yeah.
And a pane of glass isn't hard to --
The telephone interrupted him.
He scooped up the receiver and said, Police chief, into the mouthpiece, and then, Oh yes, Mr. Benson.
I was hoping I'd hear from you today.
With his free hand he pulled a pad and pencil toward him and began to make notes as he listened, saying, Uh-huh and I see at intervals.
At last he said, Well, thank you for calling, Mr. Benson.
Although there was no doubt in my mind and we've been handling it as one I'm glad to have it made official.
He hung up.
Coroner, he said to Madden.
He's just heard from the pathologist who says Mrs. Meeker apparently died from suffocation.
Pauling looked at his notes.
Many minute hemorrhages in the lungs;
particles of lint and thread in the mouth and nostrils.
Scrapings from the bed linen identical with the lint and thread found in the nasal and oral cavities.
No other cause of death apparent.
Trachea clear of mucus and foreign objects.
Brain examined for thrombosis, clot or hemorrhage.
No signs of these, no gross hemorrhage of lungs, heart, brain or stomach.
He paused.
That's about it.
Oh, the time of death.
The duration of the digestive process varies, the pathologist says, but the empty stomach and the findings in the upper gastrointestinal tract indicate that Mrs. Meeker died several hours after her seven-o'clock dinner.
Probably around midnight, give or take an hour either way.
Pauling paused again.
So there it is, he said.
Not your problem, of course, unless Johnston and the murderer are one and the same.
They discussed this possibility.
However likely it was, Pauling said, he couldn't limit himself to it.
He had to look for other prospects, other motives until more conclusive evidence pointing to Johnston came to light.
Madden, with his investigation centered on the fraud, said that tomorrow he would go to the Bronx bank through which Mrs. Meeker's checks to Johnston had cleared.
Arthur Williams had to be located, they agreed.
He might have been in collusion with Johnston on the fraud;
he might be Mrs. Meeker's murderer or have played some part in her death.
This was Madden's suggestion;
the police chief shook his head over it.
If Arthur Williams was involved in the fraud or the murder, then he too had another identity.
No one the Medfield police had questioned professed to know any more about him than about Johnston.
Scholarship applicant?
Pauling looked doubtful.
Madden explained that he was thinking of an application sent directly to Mrs. Meeker.
Then he asked to use the phone and called Brian Thayer, who said that he was just leaving to keep a lunch date but would be home by two o'clock.
Madden said that he would see him at two and made another call, this one to Mrs. Meeker's lawyers.
Mr. Hohlbein was out for the day, but Mr. Garth would be free at one-thirty.
The secretary's tone indicated that an appointment at such short notice was a concession for which Madden should be duly grateful.
He inferred that Hohlbein and Garth were high-priced lawyers.
He had lunch with Pauling.
Promptly at one-thirty he entered Hohlbein and Garth's elegant suite of offices in Medfield's newest professional building.
He disliked Garth on sight, conservative clothes and haircut, smile a shade too earnestly boyish for a man who must be well into his thirties, handclasp too consciously quick and firm.
Youngish man on the make, Madden labeled him, and was ready to guess that in a correct, not too pushing fashion, the junior partner of the firm had political ambitions;
that Mrs. Garth would be impeccably suitable as the wife of a rising young lawyer;
that there were three children, two boys and a girl;
that she was active in the Woman's Club and he in Lions, Rotary, and Jaycee;
and finally, that neither of them had harbored an unorthodox opinion since their wedding day.
Madden knew that he could be completely wrong about all this, but also knew that he would go right on disliking Garth.
Garth was prepared to be helpful in what he referred to with fastidious distaste as this unfortunate Johnston affair, which would not, he said more than once, have ever come about if Mrs. Meeker had only seen fit to consult Mr. Hohlbein or him about it.
Madden regretted not being able to find fault with so true a statement.
He asked to see a copy of Mrs. Meeker's will.
Garth brought one out.
The date, October 8, 1957, immediately caught the inspector's eye.
Fairly recent, he remarked.
Was she in the habit of making new wills?
Oh no.
She had reason to change the one she made right after Mr. Meeker's death.
Her estate had grown considerably.
She wanted to make a more equitable distribution of it among the groups that would benefit the most;
particularly the scholarship fund.
At the time the will was drawn Mr. Hohlbein mentioned to me how mentally alert she seemed for her age, knowing just what changes she wanted made and so forth.
Garth hesitated.
Mr. Hohlbein and I have noticed some lapses since, though.
Most of them this past year, I'd say.
Even two or three years ago I doubt that she'd have become involved in this unfortunate Johnston affair.
She'd have consulted us, you see.
She always did before, and showed the utmost confidence in whatever we advised.
The inspector nodded, doubting this.
Mrs. Meeker hadn't struck him as ready to seek anyone's advice, least of all Garth's.
With her sharp tongue she'd have cut his pompousness to ribbons.
It would have been Hohlbein who handled her affairs.
Madden settled back to read the will.
He skimmed over the millions that went to Meeker Park, Medfield Hospital, the civic center, the Public Health Nursing Association, the library, and so on, pausing when he came to the scholarship fund.
A splendid vote of confidence in Thayer, Madden reflected.
Tenure, too.
Very nice for him.
He went on to personal bequests, a list of names largely unknown to him.
Twenty-five thousand to each of the great-nieces in Oregon (not much to blood relatives out of millions) ten thousand to this friend and that, five thousand to another;
to Brian Thayer, the sum of ten thousand dollars;
to the Pecks, ten thousand each;
to Joan Sheldon the conditional bequest of ten thousand to be paid to her in the event that she was still in Mrs. Meeker's employ at the time of the latter's death.
(No additional five thousand for each year after Joan's twenty-first birthday;
Mrs. Meeker hadn't got around to taking care of that.
Too bad, Madden thought.
Joan Sheldon had earned the larger bequest.
Mr. Hohlbein was left twenty thousand, Garth ten.
There were no other names Madden recognized.
Arthur Williams's might well have been included, he felt.
Mrs. Meeker had spent a small fortune on a search for him but had made no provision for him in her will if he should be found after her death, and had never mentioned his name to her lawyers.
Madden took up this point with Garth, who shrugged it off.
Old people have their idiosyncrasies.
This one came a bit high at thirty thousand or more.
Well, she had a number of them where money was concerned, Garth said.
Sometimes we'd have trouble persuading her to make tax-exempt charitable contributions, and I've known her to quarrel with a plumber over a bill for fixing a faucet;
the next moment she'd put another half million into the scholarship fund or thirty thousand into something as impractical as this unfortunate Johnston affair.
There was no telling how she'd react to spending money.
Madden inquired next about the audit of the scholarship fund.
There was an annual audit, Garth informed him.
No discrepancies or shortages had ever been found.
Brian Thayer was a thoroughly honest and competent administrator.
His salary had reached the ten thousand mark.
His expenses ran another four or five thousand.
The lawyer didn't know him very well although he saw him occasionally at some dinner party--Thayer, like himself, Madden reflected, was the extra man so prized by hostesses--and found him easy enough to talk to.
But he didn't play golf, didn't seem to belong to any local clubs--his work took him away a lot, of course--which probably accounted for his tendency to keep to himself.
Garth's glance began to flicker to his watch.
He said that he had already told the police chief that he didn't know what insurance man had recommended Johnston to Mrs. Meeker.
He would offer no theory to account for her murder.
The whole thing, his manner conveyed, was so far outside the normal routine of Hohlbein and Garth that it practically demanded being swept under the rug.
No doubt Mrs. Meeker had snubbed him many a time and he felt no grief over her passing.
Even so, Madden's dislike of the suave, correct lawyer deepened.
It would be all right with him, he decided, if his investigation of the fraud, with its probable by-product of murder, led to Garth's door.
Motive?
Ten-thousand-dollar bequest.
At first glance, not much of a motive for a man of his standing;
but for all his air of affluence, who could tell what his private financial picture was?
The inspector knew as he left that this was wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, he made a mental note to look into Garth's financial background.
Brian Thayer had a downtown address.
He lived in an apartment house not over three or four years old, a reclaimed island of landscaped brick and glass on the fringe of the business district.
He occupied a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor, using the second bedroom as his office.
Airy and bright, the apartment was furnished with good modern furniture, rugs, and draperies.
Done by a professional decorator, Madden thought, and somehow as impersonal, as unremarkable as its occupant.
In Dunston the rent would run close to two hundred a month;
in Medfield, perhaps twenty-five less, not all of it paid by Thayer, who could charge off one room on his expense account.
He took Madden into the room he used as an office.
It contained a desk, files, a typewriter on a stand, and two big leather armchairs.
A newspaper open at stock-market reports lay on one of them.
Thayer folded it up and offered a drink.
The inspector declined.
To begin the interview, he asked if Thayer, with more time to think it over, could add to what he had said the other day about Johnston.
Thayer shook his head.
It's all I think about, too.
That and her death.
It's still unbelievable that it was murder.
For all her domineering ways, I can't conceive of her having had a deadly enemy.
Dammit, Phil, are you trying to wreck my career?
Because that's what you're doing--wrecking it, wrecking it, wrecking it!
Griffith had confronted Hoag on the building's front steps--Hoag had been permitted no further--and backed him against a wrought-iron railing.
His rage had built up as he made his way here from the second floor, helped by the quantity of champagne he had consumed.
Hoag said, I didn't send for you, Leigh.
I want the captain in charge.
Where is he?
Phil, for God's sake, go away.
The undersecretary's in there.
I told you there's nothing between Midge and me, nothing.
It's all in your mind.
A couple of sobs escaped him, followed by a sentiment that revealed his emotional state.
Why, I'm not fit to touch the hem of her garment.
Leigh, get a grip on yourself.
It's not about you or Midge.
I have some security information about the prime minister.
Griffith looked at him suspiciously through red-rimmed eyes.
Not about me?
You mean it, Phil?
You wouldn't pull my leg, old man?
I did get you on the platform this morning.
I'm not pulling your leg.
Will you call that captain?
No use, he won't come.
He peered closely at Hoag in the gathering darkness.
What happened to your head?
I was hit--knocked out.
Now will you get him?
He says I'm to take the message.
He stared at Hoag drunkenly.
Who'd hit you in the head?
It doesn't matter.
You get back to the captain and tell him this: Somebody's going to take a shot at the prime minister, and Mahzeer is in on the plot.
Tell him under no circumstances to trust the prime minister with Mahzeer.
Griffith said, That's impossible.
Mahzeer's the ambassador.
Nevertheless it's true.
Impossible.
Griffith was trying to clear his head of the champagne fuzz that encased it.
I'll show you how wrong you are.
Mahzeer and the prime minister are alone right now.
He nodded triumphantly.
So that proves it!
Hoag looked terrified.
Where are they?
Where'd you expect, the john?
Mahzeer's office.
Where is that?
Facing us, two flights up.
Look, old man, you can't go up.
They won't even let you in the front door.
So why don't you be a good boy and --
Hoag grabbed him by the shoulders.
Listen to me, Leigh.
If you want to spend another day in the State Department--another day--you get in there and tell that captain what I told you.
He bit out the words.
And you know I can do it.
Griffith raised placating hands.
Easy does it, Phil.
I was just going.
I'm on my way.
He turned and fled into the house and made his way up the marble stairs without once looking back.
On the second landing he paused to look for Docherty, didn't see him, and accepted a glass of champagne.
He took several large swallows, recollected that Docherty had gone up another flight, and decided he would be wise to cover himself by finding him.
The way Hoag was, no telling what he might say or do.
He finished his champagne and climbed uncertainly to the next landing.
At the top a uniformed officer blocked further progress.
Yes, what is it?
He asked.
I want Captain Docherty.
He spotted Docherty coming out of a room at the far end of the corridor and called to him.
Docherty said, It's okay, Bonfiglio, let him by.
They walked toward each other.
Well?
Griffith said, Hoag told me to tell you--he waited until they were close;
it was hideously embarrassing--not to let the prime minister be alone with Mahzeer.
Griffith looked half-crocked to the captain;
it would be just like him.
Why not?
He claims Mahzeer's in a plot to kill the P.M..
Docherty went taut: was it possible?
Could the ambassador himself be the man on this side the prime minister feared?
Not possible, he thought;
the prime minister knew who his enemy was here;
he wasn't going to allow himself to be led meekly to the slaughter.
And if by some wild chance Mahzeer was the man, he wouldn't dare try anything now--not after Docherty had looked in on the two of them to see that all was well.
Docherty was damned if he would make a fool of himself again the way he had earlier over the laundry truck.
One more muddleheaded play like that one and they'd be leading him away.
Still, this had to be checked out.
Where'd your friend Hoag get his information?
He asked.
Haven't the faintest, Captain.
Would you mind sending him up here?
I'd like to talk to him.
Troubled, he continued along the corridor, poking his head into the next office for a careful look around.
But Hoag had not stayed on the front steps when Griffith disappeared into the building.
He was unwilling to rely on Griffith's carrying his message, and he had no confidence the police would act on it.
If Mahzeer was alone with the prime minister he could be arranging his execution while Hoag stood out here shivering in the darkening street.
He would have to do something on his own.
But what?
The door opened and three men and a woman in a sari swept past him and down the stairs.
In the lighted interior he saw other men and women struggling into their wraps.
These were the early departures;
in half an hour the reception would be over.
If Mahzeer was planning to set up the prime minister for Muller he would have to do it in the next few minutes.
Hoag descended the stone steps to the street and looked up at the building.
Wide windows with many small leaded panes swept across the upper stories.
On the second floor he saw the animated faces of the party guests;
the scene looked like a Christmas card.
On the third floor one of the two windows was lighted;
it was framed in maroon drapes, and no faces were visible.
This would be Mahzeer's office.
He and the prime minister would be back from the window, seated at Mahzeer's desk;
they would be going over papers Mahzeer had saved as excuse for just such a meeting.
In a minute, or five minutes, the business would be done;
Mahzeer would stand up, the prime minister would follow.
Mahzeer would direct the prime minister's attention to something out the window and would guide him forward and then step to one side.
The single shot would come;
Hoag would carry its sound to his grave.
Mahzeer, of course, would be desolate.
How was he to suspect that an assassin had been lurking somewhere across the street waiting for just such a chance?
Hoag turned.
Where across the street?
Where was Muller waiting with the rifle?
Narrow four-story buildings ran the length of the block like books tightly packed on a shelf.
Most of them could be eliminated;
Muller's would have to be one of the half dozen almost directly opposite.
The legation was generously set back from the building line;
if the angle of fire were too great the jutting buildings on either side would interfere.
Would the shot come from a roof?
He ran his eye along the roof copings;
almost at once a figure bulked up.
But dully glinting on the dark form were the buttons and badge of a policeman.
With a cop patrolling the road Muller would have to be inside a building--if he was here at all, and not waiting for the prime minister somewhere between this street and the terminal building at La Guardia Airport.
Hoag crossed the narrow street, squeezing between parked cars to reach the sidewalk.
From this side he could see farther into the legation's third-story window, but he saw no faces;
the room's occupants were still seated or they had been called into the hallway by an alarmed police captain.
If only the latter were true.
He walked rapidly along the buildings scanning their facades: one was a club--that was out;
two others he ruled out because all their windows were lighted.
That left three, possibly four, one looking much like the next.
He climbed the steps of the first and opened the door to the vestibule.
He quickly closed it again.
He had assumed that all these buildings had been divided into apartments, but this one, from a glance at the hall furnishings, was obviously still a functioning town house, and its owners were in residence;
that made it doubtful as the hiding place of a man whose plans had to be made in advance.
He went on to the next building and found what he expected--the mingled cooking aromas of a public vestibule.
On one wall was the brass front of a row of mailboxes;
there were six apartments.
Now what?
The names on the mailboxes meant nothing to him.
This was senseless--he had no idea what to look for.
He peered in the boxes themselves;
all were empty except one, and that one was jammed with letters and magazines.
The occupants of Apartment Number 3 were probably away for a few days, and not likely to return on a Friday.
Had Muller made the same deduction?
Muller was attracted to the lore of mailboxes.
He opened the inner door;
the cooking odors were stronger--all over the city, at this hour, housewives would be fussing over stoves.
He climbed, as quickly as he could urge his body, up the two unbroken flights to the third floor, pulling himself along on a delicate balustrade, all that remained of the building's beauty.
He paused on the landing to steady his breathing and then bent to examine the single door by the light of the weak bulb overhead.
Now he was certain: the lock had not yielded to Muller's collection of keys;
fresh scars showed that the door had been prized open.
It had been shut again, but the lock was broken;
he noted with a thrill of fear that the door moved under his touch.
What was he to do now?
He had thought no further than finding Muller.
He realized now he had more than half hoped he wouldn't find him--that Muller would not be here, that the attempt would be scheduled for somewhere beyond Hoag's control.
He could not break in on an armed man.
He would have to climb back down to the street and signal a cop.
Was there time?
His thoughts were scattered by the sharp report of a rifle from the other side of the door.
Hoag pushed open the door: at the far end of the long dark room Muller was faintly silhouetted against the window, the rifle still raised;
he stood with his feet apart on a kitchen table he had dragged to the sill.
He turned his head to the source of the disturbance and instantly back to the window and his rifle sight, dismissing Hoag for the moment with the same contempt he had shown in their encounter at Hoag's apartment.
Hoag stretched his left hand to the wall and fumbled for the switch: evil flourishes in the dark.
The room was bathed in light at the instant Muller's second shot came.
Muller, nakedly exposed at the bright window like a deer pinned in a car's headlights, threw down the rifle and turned to jump from the table;
his face wore a look of outrage.
A shot caught him and straightened him up in screaming pain;
a following volley of shots shattered glass, ripped the ceiling, and sent him lurching heavily from the table.
He was dead before his body made contact with the floor.
Hoag stumbled back into the hall, leaned against the wall, and started to retch.
After Captain Docherty sent Arleigh Griffith for Hoag he was able to complete his detailed inspection of the third floor and to receive a report from his man covering the floors above before Griffith returned, buoyed up by a brief stop for another glass of champagne.
The safe at Ingleside District Station stands next to the gum machine in a narrow passageway that leads to Captain Harris's office (to the left), the lieutenant's office (farther along and to the left) and the janitor's supply closet (straight ahead).
The safe is a repository for three dead flashlight batteries, a hundred and fifty unused left-hand fingerprint cards, a stack of unsold Policemen's Ball tickets from last year, and thirty-seven cents in coins and stamps.
Gun set the captain's fifth of Hiram Walker inside the safe before he reported to Lt. Killpath, though he knew that Killpath's ulcer prevented him from making any untoward incursion on Herman Wolff's gift.
It was more a matter of tact, and also it was none of Killpath's goddam business.
He walked up to the lieutenant's office, leaned wearily against the gun rack that housed four rifles and a gas gun nobody remembered having used and a submachine gun that was occasionally tried out on the Academy Range.
He stared at the clerk who sat at a scarred and ancient fumed-oak desk stuffing envelopes.
Where's the Lieut?
The clerk wagged his head toward the captain's office.
Gun went to the connecting door, which was open, and stood at attention while Orville Torrence Killpath, in full uniform, finished combing his hair.
The lieutenant's sparse brown hair was heavily pomaded, and as Killpath raked the comb through it, it stuck together in thatches so that it looked like umbrella ribs clinging to his pink skull.
The lieutenant eyed Gun's reflection in the mirror over the washbowl and then glanced back at his own face, moving the comb methodically around his head.
Leave me alone, Gun thought.
Fight with Sam Schaeffer, fight with the whole damned Bureau.
But leave me alone.
Because I'm looking for the son of a bitch that killed that old man, and I'm going to get him.
If you just leave me to hell alone, Lieutenant.
Killpath peered through half-closed lids at his reflection, thrust up his chin in a gesture of satisfaction and about-faced.
Gun waited for Killpath to sit down behind the desk near the window.
He sat stiff-backed in a chair that did not swivel, though it was obvious to Gun that Killpath felt his position as acting captain plainly merited a swivel chair.
The desk before him was in no better repair than the rest of the furniture crowded into the room, including wooden file cabinets with some of their pulls yanked off and a wardrobe stained with the roof seepage of countless seasons.
Killpath pulled one thin leg up, clamping his arms around the shinbone to press his knee into an incredibly scrawny gut.
It was the posture which the men had come to recognize as that of Killpath defying his ulcer.
He put his chin on his kneecap, stretching his neck like that of a turkey on a chopping block, and stared wordlessly at his sergeant.
Gun waited.
The 7:45 bell rang and he could hear the outside doors bang shut, closing in the assembled day watch.
Finally, Orville intoned through his hawk nose, We can't have people running in any time they please, Sergeant.
No, sir.
Running in, running out.
Can't have it.
Makes for confusion and congestion.
He rocked back in the chair, knee locked against stomach, his beady eyes fixed on Matson.
He was silent again, possibly listening to the sounds in the squadroom.
Roll was being called.
Gun cleared his throat.
Killpath said, You were expected to report to my office twenty minutes ago, Sergeant.
That's not getting all the juice out of the orange, now is it?
No, sir.
Then Killpath smiled.
Gun knew that nothing but aces back to back would give the lieutenant an ulcer and a smile at the same time.
The day-watch platoon commander, Lt. Rinker, was calling out the beat assignments, but Matson couldn't make the names mean anything.
I called the station at three this morning, Killpath's nasal voice pronounced.
Do you have any idea who might have been in charge at the time?
Sergeant Vaughn, sir.
Now, now, you're just guessing, Sergeant.
He smiled thinly, savoring his joke.
What if I said nobody was here but a couple of patrolmen?
Sir, Vaughn knows better than to leave the station without a relief.
He must have --
He let a patrolman take over the duties of the station keeper.
Now that's not regulation, is it?
No, sir.
But you didn't know a thing about it, did you?
Killpath leaned forward;
his foot slipped off the chair and he put it back again, frowning now.
That's not taking one's command with a responsible attitude, Matson.
Gun told himself that the old bastard was a fool.
But stupidity was no consolation when it had rank.
I was out in the district, sir.
Oh, yes.
So I have heard.
He stretched a pale hand out to the scattered papers on his desk.
I might point out that your inability to report to my office this morning when you were instructed to do so has not ah limited my knowledge of your activities as you may have hoped.
He took up a white sheet of paper, dark with single-spaced data.
A car pulled into the driveway outside the window.
Gun knew it was Car 12, the wagon, returned from delivering Ingleside's drunk-and-disorderlies to the City Jail.
But for some fool reason he couldn't remember which men he'd put on the transfer detail.
He stared at the report in Killpath's hand, sure it was written by Accacia--just as sure as if he'd submitted it in his scrawled longhand.
What have you to say to that, Sergeant?
Killpath sailed the paper across the desk, but Matson didn't pick it up or even glance at it.
Well?
I didn't think Accacia knew so many big words, Lieutenant.
Killpath licked his lips.
Patrolman Accacia is an alert and conscientious law-enforcement officer.
I don't think his diligence mitigates your negligence, Matson.
Negligence, hell!
Gun held his breath a moment, pushing the volume and pitch of his voice down under the trapdoor in his throat.
Sir.
I would have been negligent and a goddam lousy cop to boot, if I'd sat around this station all night when somebody got away with murder in my district.
It's too bad I didn't call you, and it's too bad I let Schaeffer use Accacia when he could have had a boy who'd be glad to learn something of Homicide procedure.
But I'm not one damned bit sorry I went out to question the people I know in the places they hang around, and --
Let's not push our patience beyond the danger line, Sergeant, Killpath nasaled.
I shouldn't like to have to write you up for insubordination as well as dereliction of duty.
Gun stiffened, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
He clamped his jaws to keep the fury from spilling out.
An argument with Orville Torrence Killpath was as frustrating and as futile as a cap pistol on a firing range.
Killpath leaned forward again, rocked comfortably with his arms still wrapped around one knee.
Let's just remember, Sergeant, that we must all carry our own umbrella.
A district station can't run smoothly, unless--He interrupted himself, looking around Gun at the doorway.
Morning, Lieutenant Rinker.
Sorry, Orville.
I thought you hadn't come in yet.
I've been here for some time.
He stood up, cocked his head and eyed Gun coldly.
The sergeant is just leaving.
It had come as no great surprise to Matson that the hot water in the showers didn't work, that Loren Severe had thrown up all over the stairs, or that some thieving bastard of a cop had walked off with his cigarettes.
It was the best he could hope for on a watch that had ended with a session in Killpath's office.
Now, as he passed the open counter that divided the assembly room from the business office, he nodded and said good night to the station keeper and his clerks, not stopping to hear the day-watch playback of his chewing out.
Not that he gave a damn what the grapevine sent out about Killpath's little speech on the comportment of platoon commanders.
He just didn't want to talk about it.
If the acting captain wanted his acting lieutenant to sit on his ass around the station all night, Killpath would just have to go out and drag Gun back by the heels once an hour;
because he'd be damned if he was going to be a mid-watch pencil-pusher just to please his ulcerated pro-tem captain.
At the doorway he squinted up at the gray morning overcast and patted his jacket pockets for the cigarettes, remembering then that he'd left them at the Doughnuttery.
He could pick up another pack on his way home, if he were going home.
But even before he started across the oiled road to his Plymouth, parked in the lot under the cypress trees across from the station, he knew that he wasn't going home.
Not yet.
It was nine o'clock in the morning: the hour which, like a spade turning clods of earth, exposed to the day a myriad of busy creatures that had lain dormant in the quiet night.
Mission Street at this hour was populated by a whole community that Gun could not have seen on his tour of duty--the neighborhood that had known Urbano Quintana by day.
Then
Sol Phillips had purchased the Alliance Furniture Mart seventeen years ago.
It was professedly worth three thousand dollars in stock and good will, and the name was written in gold in foot-high letters across each of the two display windows.
On the right window, at eye level, in smaller print but also in gold, was Gonzalez, Prop., and under that, Se Habla Espanol.
Mr. Phillips took a razor to Gonzalez, Prop., but left the promise that Spanish would be understood because he thought it meant that Spanish clientele would be welcome.
Language was no problem anyway;
Mr. Phillips had only to signal from his doorway to summon aid from the ubiquitous bilingual children who played on the sidewalks of Mission Street.
She's honest as the day, Mr. Phillips said, and added, Mr. Gunnar, I can say this to you: Beebe is a little too honest.
You can't tell a customer how much it's going to cost him to refinance his payments before he even signs for a loan on the money down!
A time plan is a mere convenience, you understand, and when--He interrupted himself, smiling.
I put her in lamps.
That way I don't lose so much.
Why don't you just hire somebody else?
She says she has to finish a story.
He shrugged.
I asked her why she couldn't do it tomorrow, but it seems the muse is working good tonight and she's afraid to let it go.
Casey made some comment, but his mind was busy as he considered the man.
His name was George Needham and he, too, had come from a good family.
He was perhaps thirty-two, nicely set up, with light brown hair that had a pronounced wave.
He was always well groomed and well tailored, and he had that rich man's look which was authentic enough and came from two good prep schools and a proper university.
An only child, he had done all the things that young men do who have been born to money and social position until his father double-crossed him by dying broke.
Since then he had worked at this and that, though some said his main interest was gambling.
All this went through Casey's mind in the first instant, but what held his interest was the fact that these two should be together at all.
For he had understood that Betty had been engaged to a boy named Barry Jenkins.
She had grown up with young Jenkins, and he had heard that they had been at the point of getting married at least twice.
He wanted to ask her about Jenkins now, but he knew he couldn't do so in Needham's presence.
And so, still wondering and a little perplexed, he grinned at the girl and spoke lightly to make sure that she would know he was kidding.
Where did you pick him up?
Oh, I've known him quite a while.
She glanced at her companion fondly.
Haven't I, George?
I've been after her for years, Needham said, but I've never been able to get anywhere until the last few days.
The girl's eyes were softly shining as she reached out and touched Casey's hand.
Can I tell you a secret?
We're going to get married.
Do you approve?
Casey kept his smile fixed, but some small inner disturbance was working on him as he thought again about Needham, who was eight or ten years older than the girl.
He wondered whether Needham was going to swear off gambling and get a steady job or whether he was counting on the income from Betty's estate to subsidize him.
None of this showed in his face, and he tried to keep his skepticism in hand.
He made a point of frowning, of acting out the part of the fond father-confessor.
I'll have to give it some thought, he said.
You wouldn't want me to say yes without making sure his intentions are honorable, would you?
She made a face at him and then she laughed.
Of course not.
I'll get my references in order, Needham said, and though he spoke with a smile, Casey somehow got the idea that he was not particularly amused.
Stop by any time, Casey.
He stood up and touched the girl's arm.
Come on, darling.
If you're really serious about working on that story, I'd better take you home.
Casey watched them go, still frowning absently and then dismissing the matter as he called for his check.
As he went out he told Freddie the dinner was perfect, and when he got his hat and coat from Nancy Parks and put a fifty-cent piece in the slot, he told her to be sure that it went toward her dowry.
A taxi took him back to the bar and grill where he had left his car, and a few minutes later he found a parking place across the street from his apartment.
Because his mind had been otherwise occupied for the past couple of hours, he did not think to look and see if Jerry Burton's car was still there.
In fact, he did not think about Jerry Burton at all until he entered his living room and closed the door behind him.
Only then, when his glance focused on the divan and saw that it was empty, did he remember his earlier problem.
Even from where he stood he could see the neatly folded blanket that he had spread over Burton, the pillow, the sheet of paper on top of it.
Then he was striding across the room, his thoughts confused but the worry building swiftly inside him as he snatched up the note.
Jack:
Look in the wastebasket.
I knew the only way I could beat you was to play possum, but it was a good try, kid, and I appreciate it.
The wastebasket stood near the wall next to the divan, and the instant Casey picked it up he knew what had happened.
The discarded papers inside were sodden, there was a glint of liquid at the bottom, and the smell of whisky was strong and distinct.
He put the basket down distastefully, muttering softly and thoroughly disgusted with himself and his plan that had seemed so foolproof.
For he remembered too well how he had brought back the loaded drinks to Burton and then returned to the kitchen to get weaker drinks for himself.
For another second or two he gave in to the annoyance that was directed at himself;
then his mind moved on to be confronted by something far more serious, and as the thought expanded, the implications jarred him.
It no longer mattered that Burton had outsmarted him.
The important thing was that Burton had gone somewhere to meet a blackmailer with a gun in his pocket.
And that gun was empty.
Even before his mind had rounded out the idea, he thrust one hand into his trousers pocket and pulled out the six slugs he had taken from the revolver.
He considered them with brooding eyes, brows bunched as his brain grappled with the problem and tried to find some solution.
He said: The crazy fool, half aloud.
He put the shells on the table, as though he could no longer bear to hold them.
He thought: Where the hell could he have gone?
How can I find him?
There was no answer to this and he began to pace back and forth across the room, his imagination out of control.
He tried to tell himself that maybe Burton had sobered up enough to get some sense.
Maybe he only intended to scare the blackmailer, whoever he was, in which case an unloaded gun would be good enough.
He thought of other possibilities, none of them satisfactory, and finally he began to think, to wonder if there was some way he could reach Burton.
Then, as he turned toward the telephone, it rang shrilly to shatter the stillness in the room and he reached for it eagerly.
Yeah, he said.
Casey?
Yeah.
Tony Calenda.
Casey heard the voice distinctly and he knew who it was, but it took him a while to make the mental readjustment and control the disturbance inside his head.
When he heard Calenda say: What about that picture you took this afternoon?
It still took him another few seconds to remember the job he had done for Frank Ackerly.
What picture?
He demanded.
You took a picture of me at the corner of Washington and Blake about three thirty this afternoon.
Who says so?
One of my boys.
Casey believed that much.
Calenda was not the sort who walked around without one of his boys close at hand.
So?
With my trial coming up in Federal Court next week I wouldn't want that picture published.
Who says it's going to be published?
I wouldn't even want it to get around.
Under normal circumstances Casey was a little fussy when people told him what to do with pictures he had taken.
Even so, he generally listened and was usually reasonable to those who voiced their objections properly.
Right now, however, he was still too worried about Jerry Burton, and the gun that had no bullets, and the story Burton had told him, to care too much about Tony Calenda.
His nerves were getting a little ragged and his impatience put an edge in his voice.
Look, he said.
I was hired to take a picture.
I took it.
That's all I know about it and that's all I care.
Maybe you'd better tell the guy who hired you what I said.
You tell him.
All right, Calenda said, his voice still quiet.
But I meant what I said, Casey.
If that picture gets around and I find out you had anything to do with it, I'm going to send a couple of my boys around to see you.
You do that, Casey said.
Just be sure to send your two best boys, Tony.
He hung up with a bang, annoyed at himself for running off at the mouth like that but still terribly concerned with the situation he had helped to create.
As soon as he could think logically again he reached for the telephone directory and found Jerry Burton's home number.
He dialed it and listened to it ring ten times before he hung up.
He called the bar and grill where he had picked Burton up that afternoon.
When he was told that no one had seen Burton since then, he thought of three other places that were possibilities.
Each time he got the same answer and in the end he gave up.
By the time he had smoked three cigarettes he had calmed down.
He had done all he could and that was that.
And anyway Burton was not the kind of guy who would be likely to get in trouble even when he was drunk.
He, Casey, had been scared for a while, but that had come mostly from the fact that he felt responsible.
He should have stayed here and watched Burton.
He didn't.
So he made a mistake.
So what?
He kept telling himself this as he went out to the kitchen to make a drink.
Only then did he decide he didn't want one.
He considered opening a can of beer but vetoed that idea too.
Finally he went into the bedroom and sat down to take off his shoes.
He had just finished unlacing the right one when the telephone rang again.
When he snatched it up the voice that came to him was quick and urgent.
Casey?
You don't know me but I know you.
If you want a picture get to the corner of Adams and Clark just as fast as you can.
If you hurry you might beat the headquarters boys.
Casey heard the click of the distant receiver before he could open his mouth, and it took him no more than three seconds to make his decision.
For over the years he had received many such calls.
Some of them came from people who identified themselves.
Some telephoned because he had done them a favor in the past.
Others because they expected some sort of reward for the information.
A few passed along a tip for the simple reason that they liked him and wanted to give him a break.
Only an occasional tip turned out to be a phony, and, like the police, Casey had made a point of running down all such suggestions and he did not hesitate this time.
He was in his car with his camera and equipment bag in less than two minutes, and it took him only three more to reach the corner, a block from Columbus Avenue.
It was a district of small factories and loft buildings and occasional tenements, and he could see the police radio car as he rounded the corner and slammed on the brakes.
He did not bother with his radio--there would be time for that later--but as he scrambled out on the pavement he saw the filling station and the public telephone booth and knew instantly how he had been summoned.
The police car had pulled up behind a small sedan, its headlights still on.
Slowly he pulled out the hand throttle until the boat was moving at little more than a crawl, and watched Elaine rapidly spin from one station to another, tune in the null, then draw in a line on the chart.
We're out just a little too far.
Make a 90 degree straight for shore.
Poet came in, raising his eyebrows appreciatively as he saw Elaine.
Now?
He asked.
Pretty quick, she replied.
Will you drop the anchor?
Poet nodded, swung below and a moment later emerged from the forward hatch where he picked up the anchor.
The rock and roll music coming from the radio station suddenly faded as the boat coasted into the null on the Aj.
Reverse, Elaine said, then peered through the loop of the RDF and waved to Poet.
A second later she came behind the wheel and backed off the anchor line until it was set in the ocean floor.
She cut the engines and slowly the cruiser swung around on the end of its lines until its bow was pointing into the wind and the cockpit faced toward the shore.
Nick watched her somewhat enviously as she efficiently cut the engines, and started the auxiliary motor.
Poet came up from below, wearing new bathing trunks.
The price tag hung from the belt and he pulled it off as he entered the chartroom and looked at it curiously.
Nick wondered if Elaine had bought them, but he said nothing.
Nobody, he suddenly realized, was saying anything.
It seemed as if they were all under a spell.
There should be an excited conversation, for somewhere, directly below them, was a treasure lost for more than four hundred years.
But instead of chatter there was a null, like on the radio direction finder.
Once, in New York, he had gone flying with some friends in a small private airplane with a single engine.
They had all been laughing, joking, when suddenly the engine had failed.
No one had screamed.
No one had prayed.
All had fallen into a complete silence, listening to the wind whistle over the wings.
The pilot had been good.
He'd landed the plane on a small airstrip in Connecticut and as soon as the aircraft had coasted to a stop, everyone had burst into chatter at the same moment.
There had been tension in the plane during the silent descent;
a tension similar to the one now.
But in the plane there was a concrete reason for it.
Now, at this moment, there should be none unless skin diving was much more dangerous than he had been led to believe.
Yet tension existed.
The same taut-nerved relationship as there had been between the passengers on the plane now strained at the three of them here on the boat.
It hung over them like a cloud, its arrival as sudden as a cloud skidding over the sun.
Silently, Elaine picked up her keys from the table and went out into the cockpit, Poet behind her, Nick trailing behind him.
She threw back a cushion over one of the seats, unlocked a padlock on the chest beneath it, then presently straightened, holding a long knife and a wicked looking spear gun in her hand.
Poet whistled softly as he looked at the gun.
Hydraulic?
He asked.
Elaine nodded.
They are the best.
She kicked the locker lid shut and replaced the cushion.
They are the most efficient.
And the deadliest, Poet commented as he buckled on his tank harness.
Why do you need an arsenal?
Nick asked, apprehensively, staring at the weapon.
It's quite possible there's more than codfish down there, man, Poet replied with a short, nervous laugh as he held the harness for Elaine.
A moment later, moving awkwardly because of the swimming fins, she picked up the gun, handed the knife to Poet, then rolled off the transom of the boat, back first.
Poet nodded to Nick and entered the water in a similar fashion.
Another moment and they were out of sight, leaving behind only a string of bubbles as a clue to their whereabouts.
For a while Nick followed the twisting course of the bubbles, wondering which set came from Elaine.
They remained close together, their air trail wiggling like serpents traveling side by side.
Eventually the bubbles became lost in the sparkle of the ocean surface, and he rolled over on his back.
Clasping his hands behind his head, he stared at the blue sky.
There was nothing quite like being alone on a boat on the ocean.
Alfredo certainly must have enjoyed being alone.
Next to the ocean, probably the loneliest spot was the desert.
If Elaine's uncle had stuck to this desire for aloneness, he probably would still be alive.
Yet Alfredo wanted money wanted money to roam through the deserts.
And Graham wanted money probably to roam among the dice tables in Las Vegas.
It was an odd combination a strange pair to stumble upon the wreck of the Trinidad.
But Graham hadn't stumbled on it.
Two to three weeks prior to the charter of the Virginia, Graham had been snooping around the San Luis Rey Mission.
The small helicopter with its two steel skids churned offshore and Nick raised up to watch it heading south.
That was a hell of a note, he thought.
A couple couldn't even find a secluded spot anywhere on a beach to neck nowadays without someone swooping down upon them.
If the character flying that thing had gone over San Clemente Island yesterday he would have had an eyeful.
Off to the west a beautiful schooner slowly beat its way into the wind, headed on a tack toward San Clemente.
Behind it a cabin cruiser drifted crossways in the small ground-swell, a lone fisherman in the chair aft.
The fisherman was right in the middle of the Deep.
Nick recalled stories that the two best fishing spots in Southern California were over the La Jolla Deep and the Redondo Deep, two spots where the ocean dropped off to fantastic depths almost from the shoreline.
Someday, geologists had warned, the land on both sides of these deeps would fall into the ocean and no more La Jolla or Redondo Beach.
Meanwhile, fishermen took advantage of them to pull up whoppers.
Sometimes the fish exploded as they neared the surface because of the difference in pressure.
Why, he wondered, had Elaine wanted him along on this trip?
He couldn't skindive, he couldn't run a boat, except on the open sea.
He stood up, stretched, looked around for the bubbles, but could see none.
Strolling down to the galley, he lit the butane under the coffee pot and when the brew was heated, poured himself a cup and went up to the chartroom.
Turning on the hi-fi, he went back to the cockpit, stretched out on the cushions and listened to the music.
Elaine and Poet returned together, popping up over the transom almost like dolphins breaking water.
He sat up and watched as they pulled themselves over the stern.
Any luck?
He asked.
Poet shook his head, sliding his face mask up on his forehead.
We're right on the edge of the Deep, Elaine said.
Pulling off her face mask, she carefully placed the spear gun across the stern, then lifted her wet hair from her back and squeezed out the water.
Which is a break as the area to search is less than a square mile, she added as she swung her legs over the transom.
Any news?
Not a thing.
He tossed her a towel, then repeated the service for Poet.
Cigarette?
Elaine shook her head as she slipped out of her harness, but Poet nodded.
His feet still hung over the stern of the transom, but as he reached for the smoke he raised them to swing them in.
The fin on his foot caught on the moulding, throwing him off balance.
His forearm smashed painfully into the narrow washboard and he grimaced as he grabbed his bruised limb with his other hand and rolled into the boat.
Kee-reist!
The word hissed distinctly from Poet's lips as he struggled to his feet.
Nick's body became rigid.
Turning slowly he saw Poet in a brilliant glare of horror.
Poet!
His face was still creased in pain as he studied the underside of his arm.
Poet a murderer?
Turning quickly toward Elaine, Nick saw that she, too, stood in shocked surprise.
The sudden silence was too silent.
Instinctively aware of the charged atmosphere, Poet raised his head slowly, looking first at Elaine.
She had caught the implication of the oath.
Her face was frozen into the mask of a mannequin, her body absolutely motionless.
And then Nick knew that all of them knew Elaine, himself and Poet.
Elaine recovered first, so quickly that Nick thought he might have imagined her sudden reaction.
Do you need a bandage?
She asked steadily.
Poet rubbed his arm.
It's like banging a shin, he said, his eyes lingered on Nick's face, then moved back to Elaine.
Hurts like hell for a second, then it disappears.
I'll get some ointment.
Elaine turned and started toward the companionway.
But her walk was too steady, too slow, telegraphing her fear.
Nick sensed it.
So did Poet.
Springing like a cat, he leaped back, swooped up the spring gun and, whirling, pointed it toward the cabin.
At the same instant, Nick hit the barrel and threw himself upon the smaller man.
The gun fired next to his ear with a vicious whoosh like the first stroke of an old steam engine.
At the same instant, Elaine screamed wildly, the sound ending abruptly as Nick went off the boat and into the water on top of the frantic, struggling Poet.
The moment the sea closed over Nick, some atavistic sense warned him that he would survive in this alien element only if he did not panic.
But the murderer to whom he clung had a tremendous advantage.
The wide flippers on Poet's feet gave his legs incredible power, driving the two of them down into the water as they rolled over and over.
Poet was the captured, arms pinioned to his side, and he twisted convulsively trying to escape.
Poet would escape, Nick thought grimly, because he wore the apparatus which would keep him alive under water.
But Nick would not let go.
The rubber and glass face mask slipped from Poet's forehead, bounced painlessly off Nick's chin, then disappeared.
Poet twisted again and Nick's knuckles scraped on the air tank, ripping off the skin.
For a split second, Nick relaxed his grip and Poet's slippery body spun completely around before Nick could stop him, holding him now from the rear.
Something flailed at the side of Nick's head as they rolled around and around.
Suddenly Poet stopped struggling and the two of them hung suspended in the water, not rising, not sinking.
A sharp pain lanced across Nick's chest and a bubble of air escaped from his tortured lungs, joining dozens of others that sailed lazily toward the surface like helium balloons rising into the sky.
A black, snake-like object swayed eerily in front of him, spewing bubbles from its flat cobra head.
The air hose was free!
The discovery struck Nick like a blow.
Desperately, Nick flashed one hand up, catching Poet's neck in the bend of his elbow.
At the same instant, he grabbed the loose, writhing hose with his other hand and bit down on the hard rubber mouthpiece.
Instinctively he exhaled through his nose then sucked in the air from the hose.
At once the excruciating pain in his chest stopped and he was seized with a sudden, wild exultation.
As if this was a signal, Poet abruptly began to thrash the water and the quick movement slowly made them sink through the water.
Relentlessly, Nick held on, sucking on the hose, inhaling the air that belonged to Poet.
Poet was not fighting Nick now.
Harbor Point sticks out into the ocean like the fat neck of a steamer clam.
It's a rich village but not much for action--too many solid residents, not enough tourists or working stiffs.
It's at the far end of the county and the last time I came here was for a hit and run manslaughter--about seven months ago.
Chief Bob Moore looked his same hick-self;
a man mountain running to lard in his middle-age.
Seeing me he said with real surprise, Well, well, ain't we honored!
Hardly expected the head of County Homicide up for this murder.
You sure climbed fast, Jed.
Rookie investigator last summer and now it's Inspector Jed.
Took me 19 years to become Chief of our three man police force.
Proves a college education pays off.
His sarcasm was followed by a stupid grin of his thick mouth and bad teeth.
I guess it helps, I said, paying no attention to his ribbing.
Never could figure out why you ever wanted to be a cop, Jed.
You're not only young but well, you don't even look like a police officer.
A runt with narrow shoulders and that brush haircut hell, you'd pass for a juvenile delinquent of the hotrod set.
In my day the first requirement for a cop was to look like the law, big and tough.
Man, when my 275 pounds and six-four comes along, why it's the same as another badge.
When I say move, a guy moves!
Don't worry about my being tough, Moore.
Also, it's far too early in the day for corny lines like the bigger they come You've had your gassy lecture, let's get to work.
Who was the murdered woman Mrs. Buck?
Widow, nice sort of woman.
Comfortably fixed.
Ran a fair-sized farm.
Came to the Harbor as a bride and Don't worry Jed, this one is in the bag.
I know the killer, have the only road off the peninsula covered.
Yeah, passed your road block as I drove in, I said, sitting on his polished desk.
Although Bob dressed like a slob, he kept a neat office.
Okay, what happened?
About nine this morning Mrs. Buck phones me she's having trouble with one of her farm hands--money trouble.
Colored fellow named Tim Williams--only hand she has working for her now.
Tim come with the migratory workers that follow the crops up from the South last year, but Tim and his wife settled here.
Never had no trouble with him before, thought he was a hard worker, hustling around to get a full week's work.
Anyway, Julia asks me to.
Julia?
Come on, Inspector, look alive.
Julia Buck, the deceased, Moore said, slipping me his smug, idiot-grin again.
Julia asks me to come out at once.
But she didn't sound real alarmed you know, like there was any immediate danger.
I got there at 9:47 A.M., found her strangled.
I would have come sooner if I'd known.
No doubt about Tim being the killer--I have a witness.
Don't know why the County had to send anybody up here.
Told them I can handle this.
Yeah, seems you have a nice package, with all the strings tied.
Who's?
I'll collar Tim before night.
Who's your witness?
Julia had--has--an old Indian woman cooking for her--Nellie Harris.
Probably the last of the original Island Indians.
Nellie was in the kitchen, had just come to work, when she heard Tim arguing with Julia in the living room.
Swears she recognized his voice, that Tim yelled,'It's my money and I want it '!
And then rushed out of the house.
Then she heard Julia phone me.
Nellie went on with her house work--until I found Julia dead.
And before you say it, Nellie ain't near strong enough to have strangled Julia.
There's no doubt this Tim sneaked back and killed Mrs. Buck.
Another fact: Tim's disappeared--on the run.
But there's no way off the Point except through my road block.
Guess you want to see the body--have her up the street in Doc Abel's office.
Let's see it.
We walked up Main Street to this big white house, then around to the back.
Being the Harbor's sole doctor, Abel was also its Medical Examiner.
The corpse was on a table, covered by a sheet.
Doc Abel was busy up front with some of his live patients.
Pulling back the sheet, I examined the bruises around Julia Buck's once slender throat.
Powerful hands had killed her.
Find any prints?
Chief Moore shook his big head, seemed lost in thought as he stared at the nude body.
Then he said, Never noticed it before I mean, when she was dressed but for a woman her age, Julia had a real fine figure.
I dropped the sheet, glanced at my watch.
It was almost one and I hadn't had lunch.
Still, I wanted to get this over with, had a lot of paper work waiting in my own office.
I told him, I want to go see the Buck house.
Sure.
Walking back down Main Street, I said, I saw the Harbor's one squad car at the road block, we'll ride out in my car.
Naw, we'll use mine, Moore said, opening the door of a sleek white Jaguar roadster.
As I slid in beside him he said, Some heap, hey?
Got a heck of a buy on this, dirt cheap.
Yeah, it's a real load, I told him, looking up the street at my battered Ford.
Five racing minutes later we pulled into the driveway of this typical two-story house, and when the Jaguar stopped I managed to swallow.
There was a garage and a modern barn in the rear, all of it standing between two large flat fields planted in early potatoes.
Everything shouted gentleman farming, the kind of grandfather-father-to-son folding money the Point is known for.
The fins of a Caddy were sticking out of the garage, while the inside of the house was a comfortable mixture of old and expensive contemporary furniture.
Nellie Harris wasn't old, she was ancient--a tiny shriveled woman with a face like a tan prune.
She was also stone deaf in her right ear.
She calmly repeated what Moore had told me.
When I asked, Why didn't you go into the living room to see how Mrs. Buck was?
The old gal stared at me with her hard eyes, said, She didn't call.
I do the living room last.
I went up stairs and did the bath and her bedroom--way I always do in the morning.
Have you any idea what this Tim and Mrs. Buck were arguing about?
Probably wages.
Miss Julia was a hard woman with a dollar.
Years ago when I asked her to put me in Social Security, so's I wouldn't have to be working now, Miss Julia threatened to fire me--all because it would mean a few more dollars a year to her.
Did you hear Tim return?
No sir.
Nobody came until Chief Moore.
I drummed on the kitchen table with my pencil.
Mrs. Buck have any men friends?
Her?
The wrinkled mouth laughed, revealing astonishingly strong, white, teeth.
I never see none.
But then I wasn't her social secretary.
Was she on friendly terms with other members of her family?
Didn't have no family--around here.
They had a son--killed in the war.
I walked into the living room.
There didn't seem to be any signs of a struggle.
I told Moore, Where does Tim's wife live?
I'll take you there.
Look Jed, this is an open and shut case and I have to relieve my men at the road block soon.
Okay, come on.
We did 80 miles an hour across a hard dirt road to a cluster of shacks.
In late summer migratory workers lived five and six to a room in these.
Now they were empty, except for a cottage across the road.
Mrs. Tim Williams was about 21, with skin the color of bitter chocolate, and if you discounted the plain dress and worn slippers, she was startlingly pretty.
The inside of their place was full of new furniture, five bucks down and a buck a week stuff, but all of it clean and full of the warmth of a home.
Mrs. Williams was both sullen and frightened.
She said she didn't know a thing--Tim had left the house at six in the morning, as usual.
She hadn't seen him since.
Did Mrs. Buck owe him any wages?
I asked.
Well, for this week, but they wasn't due 'till Saturday.
Listen, Mr. Inspector, no matter what anybody say, my Tim didn't kill that woman!
Tim is a good man, hard working.
He strong as a bull but gentle as a baby.
Even if he angry, Tim wouldn't hurt a woman.
He never in his life took a hand to a woman or
We'll get him soon, see what he says, Chief Moore cut in.
Does your husband have a car?
I asked.
Got us an old station wagon.
Need it for the job.
I asked a silly question: You've no idea where your husband could be, now?
She shook her head.
I knew she was lying.
I stood there, staring at her for a moment--thinking mostly of her beauty and her poverty.
Moore said, Come on, Jed, I have to get to my men.
On my way out I told her, If you should eh just happen to see your husband, get him to give himself up.
He'll get a fair trial.
Hiding out like this won't get him anything, except more trouble, or a bullet.
Yes.
I'll tell him--if I see him.
We made it back to the Harbor in less than four minutes.
I tried not to act scared.
That Jaguar could really barrel along.
I told Moore I was going to eat, get some forms filled out by Doc Abel.
Chief Moore said, If I don't see you when I return, see you for certain at my road block, Inspector.
I had a bowl of decent chowder, phoned the Doc and he said he'd leave the death statements with his girl--in a half hour.
Lighting my pipe, I took a walk.
The Harbor is a big yachting basin in the summer.
Even now, there were several slick cruisers tied to the dock, an ocean-going yawl anchored inside the breakwater.
There was a 34 foot Wheeler with Chief Bob's in big gold letters on its stern also tied up at the dock.
It wasn't a new boat, about five years old, but fitted with fishing outriggers and chairs.
I asked an old guy running a fishing station if the boat was Moore's.
He said, You bet.
Bob Moore is plumb crazy about blue fishing.
I dropped into the doctor's office, picked up my forms.
As I was walking back to the Police Station, which was in the same building with the City Hall and Post Office, I saw Mrs. Tim Williams sneaking into the back of my car.
If she moved gracefully, she was clumsy at it.
I got into the front seat.
She was'hiding'on the floor of the back seat, the soft curves of her back and hips--rousing lines.
I drove out of the Harbor, turned off into a dirt road among the scrub pine trees and stopped.
I waited a few minutes and she sat up.
For another moment we didn't talk, then she began to weep.
She mumbled, I just know that Chief Moore is out to kill my Tim!
Maybe.
I never saw him so anxious before, I said, lighting my pipe and offering her a cigarette.
Of course, it could be because this is his first murder case.
You know where Tim is, don't you, Mrs. Williams?
She puffed on the cigarette slowly, sitting slumped against the back seat;
didn't answer.
But the police have dropped the case.
I want you to go to Pearson City and find out why--first-hand stuff for your modern crime series.
Take the same train Diana Beauclerk took and get there at the same time.
Go to the same hotel and occupy the same suite--1105.
Will the hotel rent it so soon after the crime?
Why not?
The police have finished with it.
Besides, the number of the suite hasn't been published in any newspaper.
To the hotel people, you'll just be an innocent tourist who happens to ask for that particular suite.
Still, they may not want to rent it.
That's your headache.
Once inside, keep your eyes open!
For what!
Alec was growing more and more skeptical.
The police will have gone over every square inch of the place with a fine-tooth comb.
The hotel people will have scoured and vacuumed it.
Ten to one, it's even been redecorated!
There's always a chance they may have overlooked something, returned the chief.
I'm betting on that chance.
Interview the bellboy and chambermaid who waited on Beauclerk.
Study the topography of the suite.
Soak up local color.
Reenact everything Beauclerk did.
Try to imagine you're going to be murdered yourself--between eleven p.m. and one a.m. the night you arrive.
Alec smirked.
Cheerful way to spend an evening!
A sudden thought wiped the smirk from his face.
Suppose the murderer should return to the scene of the crime!
The chief's eyes gleamed.
He spoke softly.
That is exactly what I'm hoping for.
After all, the murderer is still at large.
And the key to the suite is still missing.
On the train Alec refreshed his memory of the Beauclerk case by reading teletype flimsies--spot-news stories about the crime sent out by the Pearson City Star, a member of the Syndicate Press.
Diana Beauclerk was a second-rate actress living in New York.
Two weeks ago she had gone west to Pearson City.
Daniel Forbes, her divorced husband, lived there.
So did the firm of lawyers who had got her the divorce, Kimball and Stacy.
She reached Pearson City at nine p.m. and went straight to the Hotel Westmore.
She telephoned the junior partner of her law firm, Martin Stacy, and asked him to call at her hotel that evening.
At the time of her divorce Forbes had promised to pay her a lump sum in lieu of further alimony if she remarried.
According to Stacy, she told him she was planning to remarry and she wanted him to ask Forbes for the lump sum.
Stacy replied that it would bankrupt Forbes, who had just sunk all his money in a real estate venture.
Stacy said he left her suite at nine forty-five p.m..
She was in good health and spirits, but still determined to get the money from Forbes.
No one saw Stacy leave.
No other visitor inquired for her that evening.
Next morning she was found dead in her suite with a bullet from a
Colt revolver in her brain.
According to the medical examiner, she was shot between eleven p.m. and one a.m..
Her door was locked and the key was missing.
So was the gun.
When Alec finished reading he was sure that either Forbes or Stacy had killed Diana Beauclerk.
Forbes had motive and Stacy had opportunity.
Find a motive for Stacy or an opportunity for Forbes and the case would be solved.
The Hotel Westmore proved to be one of the older hotels in Pearson City, and definitely second-rate.
Alec's first impression of the lobby was gloomy, Victorian dignity--black walnut and red plush, a black and white tiled floor, and Persian rugs.
He studied the night clerk as a man measures an adversary.
I'd like the room I had the last time.
Certainly, sir.
The clerk was young and limp, with a tired smile.
Do you recall the number?
It was 1105.
The clerk's smile congealed.
That suite is taken.
Alec's glance went to a chart of guest names and room numbers hanging on the wall behind the clerk.
Opposite the number 1105 stood one word: Unoccupied.
The clerk's glance followed Alec's.
We have better rooms vacant now, he babbled.
Larger and more comfortable.
At the same rate.
Alec's face was dark, blunt, and sulky.
He always looked impertinent and he could look dangerous.
He was looking dangerous now.
He raised his voice.
Anything wrong with the plumbing in 1105?
There was a sudden stillness in the lobby.
Two women, who had been chattering like parrots, were struck dumb.
A man, lighting a match for his cigar, paused until the flame burned his fingers.
Even the bellboys on their bench were listening.
The clerk's eyes flickered.
Of course not!
Anybody with a contagious disease been in there?
No!
The clerk was almost hysterical.
It's just that--well, 1105 is being redecorated.
I don't believe it.
Alec leaned on the desk, holding the clerk's eyes with his.
Suppose you tell me the real reason, he drawled.
There might be a story in it.
St-story?
I'm with the Syndicated Press, Feature Service.
Either I get the story--or I get the suite.
It was blackmail and the clerk knew it.
There is no story, he piped tremulously.
Front!
Show this gentleman to 1105!
The stillness persisted as Alec followed a bellboy across the lobby to the elevator.
He could feel eyes on his back.
He wished it had not been necessary to announce the number of his suite quite so publicly.
The corridor on the eleventh floor was dimly lighted by electric globes at intervals of thirty feet.
A thick, crimson carpet muffled every footfall.
At the end of the corridor Alec noticed a door marked: Fire Stairs.
It was a neat setup for murder.
The bellboy unlocked a white door numbered 1105.
The room was dark but a neon sign flashed and faded beyond the window.
A few snowflakes sifted down through that theatrical red glow, languid as falling feathers.
Hastily the boy switched on a ceiling light.
The room looked normal and even commonplace.
There was no hint of a violent struggle now.
Deal furniture with a mahogany finish was neatly arranged as if it stood in the window of a department store.
The blue rug was suspiciously bright and new.
It had never been stained with blood.
Table covers and towels were clean, ashtrays empty and supplied with fresh matches.
The mirror over the bureau was a blank eye, round and innocent.
Alec played the part of an innocent tourist.
Is there anything wrong with this room?
N-no.
The boy dropped his eyes.
Afraid you'll lose your job if you don't keep your mouth shut?
The boy raised his eyes.
Listen, mister.
If you want my advice, pack up and take the next train back to New York.
Were you on duty here two weeks ago?
The boy hesitated.
Then, I'm not talking.
But I wouldn't spend a night in here for a million bucks!
He was in a hurry to get out of the room.
Alec gave him a tip and let him go.
Alone, Alec examined the doors.
There were three--one leading to a bathroom, one to the hall, and one to the room next door which was immovable--locked or bolted on the other side.
Alec locked the hall door and put the key with his watch on the bedside table.
It was just quarter of nine.
As he ranged his belongings on the bureau he noticed a film of white dust on the dark surface of the wood beyond the linen cover.
Not gray like the dust that collects in an unused room, but white.
Women didn't use white face powder nowadays, he recalled.
They used pink, tan, or cream powder.
Alec glanced into the bathroom.
Blood in the bathtub where the murderer appears to have washed his hands.
It seemed clean now, but Alec decided against a bath.
He crawled into bed and switched off the light.
In the darkness he could see the rosy reflection of the neon sign on the wall opposite the window.
It winked as steadily as a metronome--on, off--on, off.
In less than five minutes Alec was asleep.
He never knew just what woke him.
Yet suddenly he was wide-awake.
There was no sound and apparently no movement in the room except the noiseless pulsation of the red light on the wall.
He lay still, listening to the silence, watching the light.
Somewhere in the city a big clock sounded twelve solemn notes--midnight.
According to the medical examiner she was shot between eleven p.m. and one a.m..
Alec heard a faint sound.
His heart seemed to swell and knock against the wall of his chest.
For the sound was inside the room.
He let his eyelids droop and breathed heavily, feigning sleep.
The sound was coming nearer.
A monstrous shadow fell across the illuminated wall, distorted and indefinable.
When the neon sign faded out, the shadow disappeared.
When the neon sign flashed on, the shadow was still there.
It stretched to an impossible height, climbing the wall to the ceiling.
That meant that something between the light and its reflection on the wall was moving closer to the source of the light--in this case, the window.
Cautiously Alec tensed his muscles, ready to jump.
The bedsprings betrayed him with a creak.
The shadow vanished.
Someone had moved beyond the range of the light from the window.
Abandoning caution, Alec leaped out of bed and groped for the light switch.
Before he could snap it on, a stinging blow caught him in the ribs.
He lashed out blindly with his right.
There was a thick, squashy crack of fist on flesh.
Something hard grazed his knuckles.
He put everything he had into the next and aimed down where the stomach ought to be.
Rough cloth rasped his fist.
There was a grunt, curiously inarticulate, like that of an animal in pain.
Something heavy shook the floor as it dropped.
Alec waited a moment, on guard.
Nothing happened.
Again he groped for the light switch.
The blue rug had been rolled up and stacked in one corner of the room.
On the bare floorboards a man lay face down.
He had a short, heavy, powerful body.
Alec turned him over and discovered a round, lumpy face with narrow, slanting eyes--a primitive Tartar face from Russia or the Balkans.
The man's shoes were too pointed, his overcoat too broad at the shoulders and too narrow at the waist.
There was a slight bulge under the left armpit--a shoulder holster.
Alec promptly removed the gun.
He was familiar with this type.
He had seen it in the lineup at Police Headquarters in New York, in Broadway night clubs and Seventh Avenue pool rooms, in the criminal courts.
But he was surprised to meet it here.
Diana Beauclerk had no connection with the underworld.
A professional gunman would not have killed her with a weapon of such small caliber as a
Nor would he choose a respectable hotel as the scene for a killing when it would be so much safer to take his victim for a one-way ride on a lonely country road.
The man's eyelids fluttered.
He opened his eyes.
What are you doing here?
Demanded Alec.
The man made no reply.
His eyes were dazed.
His lips were bruised and swollen where Alec had hit him.
Did you kill Diana Beauclerk?
Alec expected an indignant denial, but there was no response at all.
Oh, come on, snap out of it!
Or I'll turn you over to the police!
The silence was getting on Alec's nerves.
The man opened his mouth, but no words came.
Only that curious, animal grunting Alec had heard during their fight.
Don't you speak English?
The man opened his mouth wider.
A forefinger pointed toward his gullet.
Alec leaned forward to look.
There were hideous scars inside the throat and the palate was mutilated.
In good time I shall get to the distressing actuality, to Red McIver and Handley Walker, to murder and sudden death.
But you realize, I am sure, how much old deeds incite to new ones, and you must forgive me if I tell you first of the old ones.
It was in 1814 that Abraham Wharf and his sister sat by a meager fire in their house on Dogtown Common, a desolate place even then.
He was sharpening his razor.
Sister, said he do you think people who commit suicide go to heaven?
And she answered, I don't know, but I hope you'll never do such a thing.
Without a tremor, God forbid!
He said, and went out and cut his throat in the cave near Granny Day's swamp.
What has this to do with the present?
Much, I assure you.
You must know what gets into people, even such as Red and Handley, before you can tell what comes out of them.
They had learned, both of them, about Abraham Wharf.
That's why I beg you not to forget him.
His ghost is not laid.
Red and Handley, God help them, knew the old Dogtown lore;
and I knew they knew it, for I'd told them a lot of it.
And isn't it true that you get a deeper perception about a man and his motives when you know what it is he knows?
Yes, gentlemen, I am getting to the point, to my point.
You know the facts;
they are set forth in your own newspapers.
You want from me the story, but a story is about'why'and then, perhaps, about how.
The'when'you know;
yesterday morning.
So what I am trying to tell you is the'why '--that is my point--and that concerns the spirit of the matter.
There is an inwardness and a luster to old furniture (look at that mahogany highboy behind you) which has a provocative emanation, if I may say so.
Places, too, have their haunting qualities.
Even people.
And my point in this sad story is the spirit of the matter.
When you hold the spirit of a thing, then somehow you know the truth--you know a fake antique from the real thing.
And the truth is what you've come for, is it not?
Now, Dogtown is one of those places that creeps into the marrow as worms get into old wood, under the veneer.
In fact, all the folk who lived on the back of Cape Ann, they are not just like others.
There's a different hall-mark on them.
There were no witch burnings here because everyone had a witch in the family.
Just think of old Granther Stannard who pulled the teeth of Dark Younger (her real name was Dorcas), and because he bungled the job and left two protruding tusks she put such a hex on him that he thought his legs were made of glass.
After that he was never known to run or even walk fast.
Today Dogtown is the only deserted village in all New England that I know of.
There it sits, a small highland, with towns like Gloucester near by;
but now it's the most lost and tortured place in the world.
Those who lived in that desolation of rocky deformity took on some of the moraine's stony character.
Scientists say it is the last spewings of a great glacier, but one rather feels that only a malevolent giant could have piled up those crouching monsters of granite which still seem to preserve a sort of suspended, ominous life in them.
We'll walk up there later.
It's perhaps a mile from here where we sit.
And not one single dwelling left there, though once, in the early eighteenth century, there were close to a hundred houses.
(I myself have identified about sixty sites, from the old maps and registers.
A fascinating pursuit, I assure you.
) Even I can remember nothing but ruined cellars and tumbled pillars, and nobody has lived there in the memory of any living man.
It is now a sweep of boulders and ledges, with oak, walnut and sumac creeping across the common, and everywhere the ruins and the long, long shadows.
That's your setting, and a sinister one.
Please get that in your reports.
It accounts for so many things.
Both Red McIver and Handley Walker lived nearby, almost as near as I do.
Red lived at Lanesville, and from his house he could be up on the Common in a half hour's brisk walk;
Handley lived further on, at Pigeon Cove.
I'd often find one or other of them up around Dogtown sketching.
They were both painters, (They were?
They are?
What should one say?
) Well, anyhow, Dogtown Common is so much off the beaten track nowadays that only Sunday picnickers still stray up there, from time to time.
Sea-road, railroad, lack of water, killed Dogtown.
Dead, dead as a brass door nail, and I sometimes feel like the Sexton, for I'm about the last to be even interested.
I knew Red and Handley well.
As I said, they were both painters.
They'd come, separately, to Gloucester some twenty years ago--there's always been an artists' colony somewhere on Cape Ann--and each married here.
They married cousins, Anta and Freya Norberg.
There are a lot of Scandinavians in this neck of the woods, and many still make painted furniture and take steam-baths.
Pretty girls among them, with blonde hair and pert faces.
Handley married Freya and Red, of the red beard, married Anta.
And it was because of an old Norberg inheritance that I got to understand them all so well.
The quarrel ended in a ridiculous draw, but I must tell you about it.
Oh, yes, I'm quite sure it's important, because of the Beech Pasture.
What's that?
Why, that's what gave me the feeling, gave me as-it-were the spirit, the demoniac, evil spirit of this whole affair.
You see, besides being custodian of antiquities, I am also registrar.
No, I don't hold with those who live entirely among dead things.
I know as well as the next man that a ship is called from the rigging she carries, where the live wind blows, and not from the hull.
But you've got to know both.
What's below the water-line interests me also.
As I was saying, I've known all about the old records, including the old Norberg deed.
Some ten years ago that page was torn out, I don't know by whom.
About five years ago, Handley came to ask me if he could see the tattered register.
He was courteous and casual about it, as though it were of no consequence.
He's always like that, in spite of being a big man.
(When you see him, you'll notice his habit of fingering, I might almost say, stroking a large mole with black hairs on it, by his right temple.
) A sensual man, but very courteous, some would say slick.
Like his glossy black hair.
Too many outside manners, to my taste.
He is the sort who, with an appraising eye, would cross the street to help a strange woman on to a bus and then pinch her.
A real gentleman, I feel, would do neither.
He's always worn a broad-brimmed hat, and I've noticed, in my small study at the Society, that he rather smells of cosmetics.
The next week, cousin Red wandered in as casually, but curt and untidy.
Red was small and fine-boned, like ivory-inlay.
He too asked to see the same page.
When I told him someone had torn it out, he shouted.
By God, it's that damn Handley, the sneak!
And later in the same week they both came together to examine the register.
Fortunately we were alone in the building--so few people nowadays are interested even in their own past or in the lovely craft of other days--for they began to abuse each other in the foulest language.
Red thrusting out his tawny beard, Handley glowering under his suddenly rumpled black hair.
They actually bristled.
Le rouge et le noir.
Violent men both.
Red always was morose, yet that day the dapper Handley was the louder of the two.
But for my presence, they would have been at each others' throats.
During the quarrel I learned what the trouble was, from the accusations each hurled at the other.
The Beech Pasture had suddenly become valuable.
There's a fine granite quarry there, and granite's coming back for public buildings.
Both men knew it was in the Norberg family holdings, but to which of the cousins did it belong, Anta or Freya?
Fortunately, I knew almost exactly what the will had said.
It began with a preamble, of course.
This explained that the judge of probate of Essex County, 1785 or 1786, appointed three free-holders of Gloucester to divide and establish the Norberg estate.
And I remember that the whole of the privileges, not counting the Beech Pasture, was valued at twenty pounds.
I wish you could have seen the crests fall on these two sparring coxcombs when I told them that obviously the pasture belonged to their wives jointly.
That battle scene, ridiculous as it was, remained in my mind.
A disturbing picture of bad blood, to be further heightened with illicit if buccolic colors, for on a subsequent day I saw Handley escorting Anta, Red's wife, up on Dogtown Common.
I felt it would be inopportune to disclose my presence.
Not that I intentionally go unperceived, but the boulders up there are very high and I am a small woman.
One other cause of jealousy between them I must tell you.
Paint!
Gloomy and unkempt as Red McIver was, he was much the better painter.
I suppose Handley knew it.
If Red had a show at Gloucester, Handley would hurry to hang his pictures in Rockport.
You may say this has little pertinence, but, gentlemen, remember that all this prepared my mind, alerted my intelligence.
By such touches the pattern takes shape.
You would call these the motives of crime.
I would call them the patterns of life, perhaps even the designs of destiny.
Yet with all this knowledge I had nothing of substance to unravel our case, as you would call it, till yesterday.
One month ago, on the 20th of October, was the opening of the gunning season in Massachusetts.
Not much to shoot, but there are a few pheasant.
Rabbits, too, if you care for them, which most of the folk around here haven't the sense to appreciate.
Any more than they have the sense to eat mussels.
That was the day Red was said to have gone away.
Oh yes, he'd talked about doing so.
In fact, he often disappeared, from time to time,--off to paint the sea, aboard a dragger out from Gloucester.
Anta, his wife, never seemed to mind.
I suppose these absences gave her more clearance for her embraces with Cousin Handley.
Anyhow, I wasn't surprised, early that morning, to see Handley himself crossing from Dogtown Common Road to the Back Road.
No, he didn't have his gun, which he should have.
It would have been a good excuse for his being there at all.
I myself had been up there by seven o'clock, after mushrooms, since there'd been a week of rain which had stopped early that morning and the day was as clear as Sandwich glass.
That's what the man had said.
Haney peered doubtfully at his drinking companion through bleary, tear-filled eyes.
He had no ready answer, as much from surprise as from the fit of coughing.
Was the man drunk or crazy or both?
But his new-found buddy had matched him drink for drink until he lost count, and the man's eyes were still clear.
The guy is off his rocker, Haney thought to himself, and looked away from those eyes.
Eyes that were clear, but also bright with a strange intensity, a sort of cold fire burning behind them.
Why hadn't he noticed it before?
No, the man was not drunk
He wondered how he got tied up with this stranger.
But, of course, he remembered now.
It was blurred, after two hours of steady drinking, but the occasion of it came back to him.
The stranger, his head seemingly sunk in thought, started to cross the street against the light just as a huge moving van roared through the intersection.
Brakes howled and a horn blared furiously, but the man would have been hit if Phil hadn't called out to him a second before.
His shout had been involuntary, something anybody might have done without thinking, on the spur of the moment.
As a matter of fact, he wouldn't have cared at all if the guy had been hit.
Actually, he regretted having opened his mouth when the truck came to a stop and the angry driver jumped down from the cab and walked back toward them.
By then, the stranger was thanking Haney profusely and had one arm around his shoulders as if he were an old friend.
So the driver started to curse at both of them as if they had been in a plot together to ruin his safe-driving record.
Then the man he saved turned and looked squarely into the truck driver's face, without saying a word.
Very suddenly, the driver stopped swearing at them, turned on his heel and went back to his truck.
Haney hadn't given it much thought at the time.
Now he recalled it very clearly, and wondered what the truck driver had seen in those eyes to make him back off.
It must have been the sort of look that can call a bluff without saying a word.
When the light went their way, they went on across the street.
And when the stranger found out that Phil was on the way to one of his favorite bars, he insisted on offering to buy drinks for both of them.
Phil usually went alone and kept to himself, sitting in a corner and passing the time by nursing his favorite grudges.
But he decided he wouldn't mind company in return for free drinks, even though he made good money at his job.
Phil was like that.
Now he wondered if it was worth it, having a screwball for company.
He really didn't take the offer seriously, but he began to feel uneasy.
When he finally got the coughing under control, he realized that Pete (all he gave was his first name) was still waiting for an answer--he didn't even seem to wink as he continued to stare.
Haney managed a weak laugh.
Guess I can't think of anyone, Pete.
Thanks anyhow.
A faint crease appeared between the man's eyebrows.
I think you aren't taking me seriously, Phil.
I meant it.
And everybody has some kind of grudge.
I might have got hit by that truck if it wasn't for you.
I believe in returning favors.
I'll do anything for somebody I like.
It won't cost you a cent, Phil.
Go ahead and try me!
Phil rubbed his forehead wearily.
He was beginning to feel woolly.
Maybe it would be better to humor the guy and then make an exit.
He really didn't expect anything to come of it, and there were a few people
All right, he conceded finally, if you must know, I don't get along with the landlord.
He keeps riding me because I like to listen to the radio and sing while I'm taking a bath.
He says the neighbors complain, but I don't believe it.
Why don't they tell me themselves if it bothers them?
The man closed his eyes and nodded.
When he looked up again, he seemed almost contented.
Fine.
Give me your address.
It will take a little time.
I want to study your landlord's habits and movements first.
You see, I always make it look like an accident.
Maybe suicide, if it looks reasonable.
In that way there's no trouble for the customer.
Haney's eyebrows flew up.
Customer?
Pete smiled modestly.
It's my line of work, he said
Five minutes later, before Haney could make his break, the stranger stood up and nodded farewell.
Haney watched the small but wiry man slip out the door quickly and silently, and felt relieved to see that nobody else seemed to notice his departure.
Phil decided to stay a little longer, and as time passed it seemed as if the strange little man had never been there, but for the other glass on the table.
Some time before midnight he returned to his apartment and hit the sack, putting the whole incident out of mind before he fell asleep.
The next day, Sunday, the hangover reminded Haney where he had been the night before.
The hangover in turn reminded him of his conversation with the weirdy, and he groaned.
He went for more aspirin later in the day, and passed the surly landlord on the way--he was still alive and scowling as usual, as if tenants were a burden in his life.
Phil shrugged and ignored him.
He went back to work Monday.
By Wednesday the landlord was still alive.
Of course On Thursday, Haney mailed the monthly check for separate maintenance to his wife Lolly, and wished the stranger could do something about her
Coming home from work, he was startled to see a police car parked in front of the apartment building.
Inside the lobby, people were standing around, talking excitedly.
His spine crawled with a foreboding premonition as he asked one of his fellow tenants what had happened.
The landlord had died.
Late that afternoon, it seemed, he had fallen off the roof while on some obscure errand or inspection.
He had apparently been alone.
Nobody witnessed the fall--just the sickening impact when his body smashed on the pavement just outside the basement delivery entrance.
Haney hoped that nobody noticed his sudden pallor, as he felt the blood drain from his cheeks.
He muttered something about how terrible it was, and walked with deliberate slowness to the elevator.
Once inside his apartment, he poured a drink with trembling hands and flopped limply in a chair.
After a while he began to feel better about it, especially when no one bothered to ask any questions.
But after all, why should they?
Still later, he finally convinced himself that it was an accident--just a coincidence.
The stranger really had nothing to do with it, of course
Haney went to bed, happy that at least he was rid of that lousy landlord.
After all, the man had no family, so no one suffered, and everybody was better off for it.
Really, he said to himself, nobody kills a man just as a favor!
So you thought I didn't mean what I said.
The stranger's eyes were large and sad, as if Phil Haney had hurt his feelings.
It was like a recurrent, annoying dream, but now the dream was beginning to take on overtones of a nightmare.
However, Haney knew it was not a dream.
He might be very tight, but he knew where he was.
It was the same bar, and it was two weeks later--Saturday night, when he had an excuse to drink heavier than usual.
He had been sitting in the usual corner at the little table, as far as possible from any talkative, friendly lushes.
He was enjoying the weekly ritual of washing down his pet grievance with bourbon slightly moistened with water.
This favorite grievance was not the landlord.
He had already quite forgotten about him.
In fact, he had only mentioned him on the spur of the moment.
His real grievance was Lolly.
Toward the end of his fourth hairy highball, while he was moodily making wet rings on the table-top with the bottom of the glass, he became aware that he was not alone.
He looked up with bloodshot eyes and beheld the stranger sitting across the table, smiling a secret smile at him, as if they were fellow conspirators.
He hadn't even noticed--what was his name?
Pete?
-- he hadn't seen him sit down.
The man was uncanny, like a shadow, and made as much noise as a shadow.
Haney felt like shrinking out of sight, but he was already trapped in the corner with the wiry, dark little man.
He began to wish that he hadn't shouted that other evening when the truck bore down through the crossing.
Was he going to be saddled from now on with a creep for a bar-buddy?
He'd have to start going to some of the other places again.
In a low voice, almost whispering, the man had asked Phil if he was happy with the way the landlord had been taken off his back.
He made the mistake of answering in an offhand way, and instantly realized that his skepticism must have showed in his face or voice.
Pete frowned slightly, then became sad and moody.
Haney didn't want to encourage his company, but felt he ought to buy him a drink anyhow, to prevent possible trouble.
But there was no trouble.
The guy sulked over his drink, obviously upset by Haney's lack of appreciation.
To break the uncomfortable silence, Haney began to talk.
In time, and two drinks later, he was complaining bitterly about his wife, He was on the subject for ten minutes or so when he noticed the renewed interest in his listener--it showed in the alert face and the suddenly bright eyes.
When he paused to moisten his throat, the stranger broke in.
But why pay her bills?
If she runs around with other men, and if you hate her as you say, why not just divorce her?
Haney scowled.
That bitch would love a divorce, he growled.
Then she'd get half of everything I have.
Community property deal--you know.
I'd have to sell out my business to pay her off with her share.
She can drop dead!
Pete nodded understandingly.
Oh yes.
Now I see.
You must understand, I haven't been in this state too long.
I came out here to retire.
That's why I--why I do a free job now and then.
You should have told me about her before.
Haney felt a twinge of annoyance when he heard the now familiar line again.
Then a wild thought ran circles through his clouded brain.
Suppose--just suppose this guy was really what he said he was!
A retired professional killer If he was just a nut, no harm was done.
But if he was the real thing, he could do something about Lolly.
He felt very cunning, very proud of himself as he played on the other man's soft spot.
No offense intended, he said gently.
But it's just that--well, you know.
The cops didn't suspect a thing, and I thought it was a coincidence.
After all, I didn't know you, Pete.
It could have been an accident.
He shrugged casually.
But if you say you managed it The stranger was hooked.
His eyes burned feverishly.
Yes, yes, he muttered impatiently.
Of course it looked like an accident.
I always work it that way--and always at a time when the customer has an alibi.
Let me prove it, Phil.
I think I can manage one more favor for you.
He waited eagerly.
Haney swished the liquor in the bottom of his glass.
About halfway back Pops groped against a wall and stopped, pulled away two loosely nailed wide boards at one end, and went through.
C'mon, he whispered;
floor level's about three feet down, so don't fall.
I went through and down, into pitch darkness.
He said, Jist stay still.
I'll pull the boards back and then get us a light.
Jist stay where you are.
I jist stayed where I was while he fumbled around and then walked away.
A moment later he struck a match and lighted a candle, and I could see.
It was a big room, empty except for a few things of Pops's at the far end--a wooden crate on which stood the candle, a spread out blanket, and an unrolled bindle.
I looked back over my shoulder while I went to join him;
he'd hung another half of a blanket over the boarded window so no light would show through.
I took the pint bottle from my pocket and handed it over as I sat down beside him on the spread blanket.
You first, I said.
He drank and handed it back.
Nice place, I told him.
Listen, I got a buddy I travel with, real nice guy named Larry.
I know where he is, right near here.
Could he join the party and sleep here tonight too?
We'll both be blowing town tomorrow so we won't be moving in on you.
He hesitated a second, looking at the bottle, before he said Sure-sure, and I reassured him.
He'll bring a bottle too, and I'll get another one or maybe two while I'm out.
You can work on this one while I'm gone, kill it if you want.
I took a short swallow from it myself and handed it to him.
His sure-sure was enthusiastic this time.
He put the bottle down.
Git over by the window while there's light, an' I'll put th' candle out.
When yuh come back I'll put it out agin till you're both inside.
Charlie was waiting, leaning against a building front.
Perfect set-up, I told him.
But we got to go back to Fifth and get another bottle or two.
On the way I'll give you the scoop.
On the way I gave him the scoop.
I bought another pint of sherry and when we got back Pops let us in in the dark, put back the blanket and then lighted the candle again.
I introduced my friend Larry to Pops and we made ourselves comfortable.
There was still a little, not much, left in the first bottle and we passed it around once and killed it, and Charlie opened his.
I was reminded, amusedly, by a poem of Kenneth Patchen's called The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon Colored Gloves, which Patchen himself read on a record against jazz background.
The poem consisted of only two words, the word Wait, repeated over and over at irregular intervals and with different inflections, and then the word Now!
And a blaring final chord from the jazz group.
This was the same, except that it was the murder of one man by two men and neither of us was wearing gloves.
But we could wait all right;
there was no hurry.
I said, Wait wait to Charlie and he grinned, digging the reference.
We'd heard the record together once.
The second bottle passed a few times.
Pops was taking long ones, but not showing the effect yet.
He seemed as drunk as when I'd first talked to him, but no drunker.
He had a capacity;
if we'd really been trying to get him dead drunk we'd have had to go out for more wine.
About halfway through the second bottle, Charlie looked at me across Pops, who was sitting between us and asked Now?
I said, Wait, and handed the bottle to Pops for his final drink.
When he handed it back and I had hold of it safely, Pops was looking toward me and I said Now, to Charlie and he swung the short length of lead pipe he'd meanwhile taken from his pocket, once.
It was a lead pipe cinch.
There was a sound like the one you produce by flicking a watermelon with your finger, only louder, and Pops fell forward from the waist and then over sidewise.
Out cold, if not dead;
and he'd never known what hit him--he'd never known that anything had hit him.
I reached my hand toward him to put it inside his shirt to feel for a heartbeat, but Charlie said Wait!
-- and said it sharply, not as in the Patchen bit, but as an order--so I stopped my hand and looked at him.
He was holding the piece of lead pipe out to me.
We don't want to know whether he's dead, yet.
I gauged that blow to be borderline.
To kayo him and maybe or maybe not kill.
You hit again about twice that hard before we know whether he's dead or not.
That way we'll never know which of us really killed him and which was just the accomplice.
Dig?
I dug him, I saw his point;
it made sense.
I took the piece of pipe from Charlie's hand and used it, harder than he had.
The thunk was louder, anyway, and I thought I heard bone crack.
Charlie said, Good boy.
That did it, if mine didn't.
And we'll never know which.
All right, now I'll give you a hand.
We straightened Pops up and I made sure there was no trace of a heartbeat.
I nodded to Charlie.
Let's put him down again the way he was.
It's a more natural position.
We did that.
How do you feel?
Charlie asked me.
Cool, I told him.
What do you feel?
Nothing.
Well maybe I'm exaggerating.
It was a kick, but not a big enough one for me to want to take the chance again, except for stakes.
But let's not talk about it abstractly until we're out of here.
Now, first question: the bottles.
Shall we take them all with us, or leave one?
Take them, I said.
If we left one we'd have to wipe it for fingerprints.
Here's the picture we want to leave for the fuzz--whenever the body gets found.
This happened in the middle of a drinking bout with another bum.
If they'd been working on a bottle or a jug he'd have taken it with him.
Right.
And he'd have taken the weapon with him too, so we take that.
Now--He looked around.
I've been careful about fingerprints.
How about you?
Same.
There are the boards over the window, of course, but they're not painted and too rough to take prints.
Same goes for the rough cement of the ledge.
Besides, I doubt if the cops will even try dusting.
They find dead winos every day, maybe they won't even autopsy him for the cause of death.
We can't take a chance on that.
We've got to assume they'll decide he was murdered and we've got to keep the picture consistent.
Our hypothetical other bum who killed him would have turned out his pockets.
Let's do that.
We did that and found a dirty handkerchief, some matches and fourteen cents in change.
We took the matches--they were book matches and once they'd been touched might retain fingerprints--and the change.
We discussed the candle and decided the hypothetical other bum would have left it burning to light his way to the window and because he'd have no reason to blow it out.
The candle had been stuck on a tin lid so it wouldn't set fire to the crate when it guttered out.
A fire wouldn't have mattered except that it would cause Pops to be found sooner.
He might not be found for days, even weeks, otherwise.
We went once more over every point, then triple-checked.
Being picked up for questioning by a cop on the way out seemed to be the only possible remaining danger, and we weren't picked up by a cop.
In fact, nobody saw us, cop or citizen.
Winsett is a quiet street with no taverns and was completely deserted at that hour.
Which, if it matters, was one A.M..
Less than three hours ago we'd decided, in Maxine Wells's pad on Cosmo, to commit a trial murder.
It had gone like clockwork.
Almost too smoothly, I found myself thinking, and then told myself that was ridiculous.
How safe is too safe?
Thinking like that can get you into a padded pad.
An hour later we were back in my unpadded pad, killing what had been left of the second pint.
We decided to leave the third one intact for tomorrow.
Also our plans for me to commit Charlie's murder and for him to commit mine.
But we were really going to do it.
We shook hands on it.
We planned ahead only one step, a rendezvous for tomorrow when we could swap notes.
I'd tell him everything I'd learned about Seaton's habits and habitat, and he'd tell me the score on Radic.
We made the date for two o'clock in the afternoon at Maxine Wells's pad.
Charlie would get there early because he had the key.
From here on in, the less Charlie and I were seen together in public, or visited one another's rooms, the better.
I was dead tired and slept soundly, as far as I know dreamlessly.
We met at Maxine's and decided we were set to stay as long as it took, into or even through the evening, to talk things out.
Charlie had brought food and we'd decided on no drinks.
I'd brought along the virgin pint from last night, but we were going to kill that only when we were through talking.
I talked first, telling him everything I knew about Seaton and his house and domestic arrangements.
I drew diagrams and floor plans;
he memorized them thoroughly and then we tore them into tiny pieces and flushed them down.
He gave me equivalent and even more detailed dope on Radic, including diagrams--one of the apartment building Radic lived in and one of the apartment itself.
He'd been there several times, back when, while he and Radic had been friends, or at least not enemies.
It didn't take us as long as we'd thought it might;
it was not quite six o'clock when we finished and Charlie said, Well, I guess that's it.
Shall we flip a coin to see which of us goes first?
Or would you rather deal a hand of show-down poker or play a game of gin rummy, or what?
Wait a minute, Charlie, I said.
One thing we haven't discussed, expense money.
We'll need some at least, if only bus fare to the scene of the crime.
And if you're as flat broke as I am, I think we'll have to take the added risk of knocking over a filling station or something before we split for one of us to set up an alibi while the other does his dirty work.
He sighed.
All right, I'll come clean.
I've got a little stashed for a rainy day, and I guess this is rainy enough.
A couple of hundred.
If you draw the short straw I'll lend you some bread, like fifty bucks, before I take off to visit my sister in Frisco.
Then, after I'm back, another fifty so you can put some mileage on yourself and have a solid alibi somewhere while I take care of your seat cover boy.
Solid, I said.
I took a deep breath, and the plunge.
In that case, let's not draw.
I'll go to bat first.
You'd have to wait till Seaton's back from Mexico City and also while I set it up with Doris to have her have an alibi for D-night.
So it wouldn't be for days or even a week before you could do anything.
But your friend Manny can go any time.
He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.
I was hoping you'd say that, Willy.
But I wouldn't have suggested it.
Well--in that case, I take off tomorrow morning for Frisco.
And, in case, I brought the money with me.
Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers, merge without let.
Self's integrity was and is and ever had been.
Mike remained in trance;
Jubal's conversations coming and going--Jubal's words troubled him most;
he studied them, compared them with what he had been taught as a nestling, struggling to bridge between languages, the one he thought with and the one he was learning to think in.
The word church which turned up over and over again among Jubal's words gave him knotty difficulty;
Thou art God.
He was closer to understanding it in English now, although it could never have the inevitability of the Martian concept it stood for.
In his mind he spoke simultaneously the English sentence and the Martian word and felt closer grokking.
Repeating it like a student telling himself that the jewel is in the lotus he sank into nirvana.
Before midnight he speeded his heart, resumed normal breathing, ran down his check list, uncurled and sat up.
He had been weary;
now he felt light and gay and clear-headed, ready for the many actions he saw spreading out before him.
He felt a puppyish need for company as strong as his earlier necessity for quiet.
He stepped out into the hall, was delighted to encounter a water brother.
Hi!
Oh.
Hello, Mike.
My, you look chipper.
I feel fine!
Where is everybody?
Asleep.
Ben and Stinky went home an hour ago and people started going to bed.
Oh.
Mike felt disappointed that Mahmoud had left;
he wanted to explain his new grokking.
I ought to be asleep, too, but I felt like a snack.
Are you hungry?
Sure, I'm hungry!
Come on, there's some cold chicken and we'll see what else.
They went downstairs, loaded a tray lavishly.
Let's take it outside.
It's plenty warm.
A fine idea, Mike agreed.
Warm enough to swim--real Indian summer.
I'll switch on the floods.
Don't bother, Mike answered.
I'll carry the tray.
He could see in almost total darkness.
Jubal said that his night-sight probably came from the conditions in which he had grown up, and Mike grokked this was true but grokked that there was more to it;
his foster parents had taught him to see.
As for the night being warm, he would have been comfortable naked on Mount Everest but his water brothers had little tolerance for changes in temperature and pressure;
he was considerate of their weakness, once he learned of it.
But he was looking forward to snow--seeing for himself that each tiny crystal of the water of life was a unique individual, as he had read--walking barefoot, rolling in it.
In the meantime he was pleased with the warm night and the still more pleasing company of his water brother.
Okay, take the tray.
I'll switch on the underwater lights.
That'll be plenty to eat by.
Fine.
Mike liked having light up through the ripples;
it was a goodness, beauty.
They picnicked by the pool, then lay back on the grass and looked at stars.
Mike, there's Mars.
It is Mars, isn't it?
Or Antares?
It is Mars.
Mike?
What are they doing on Mars?
He hesitated;
the question was too wide for the sparse English language.
On the side toward the horizon--the southern hemisphere--it is spring;
plants are being taught to grow.
'Taught to grow'''?
He hesitated.
Larry teaches plants to grow.
I have helped him.
But my people--Martians, I mean;
I now grok you are my people--teach plants another way.
In the other hemisphere it is growing colder and nymphs, those who stayed alive through the summer, are being brought into nests for quickening and more growing.
He thought.
Of the humans we left at the equator, one has discorporated and the others are sad.
Yes, I heard it in the news.
Mike had not heard it;
he had not known it until asked.
They should not be sad.
Mr. Booker T. W. Jones Food Technician First Class is not sad;
the Old Ones have cherished him.
You knew him?
Yes.
He had his own face, dark and beautiful.
But he was homesick.
Oh, dear!
Mike do you ever get homesick?
For Mars?
At first I was homesick, he answered.
I was lonely always.
He rolled toward her and took her in his arms.
But now I am not lonely.
I grok I shall never be lonely again.
Mike darling--They kissed, and went on kissing.
Presently his water brother said breathlessly.
Oh, my!
That was almost worse than the first time.
You are all right, my brother?
Yes.
Yes indeed.
Kiss me again.
A long time later, by cosmic clock, she said, Mike?
Is that--I mean,'Do you know'--
I know.
It is for growing closer.
Now we grow closer.
Well I've been ready a long time--goodness, we all have, but never mind, dear;
turn just a little.
I'll help.
As they merged, grokking together, Mike said softly and triumphantly: Thou art God.
Her answer was not in words.
Then, as their grokking made them ever closer and Mike felt himself almost ready to discorporate her voice called him back: Oh!
Oh!
Thou art God!
We grok God.
25.
On Mars humans were building pressure domes for the male and female party that would arrive by next ship.
This went faster than scheduled as the Martians were helpful.
Part of the time saved was spent on a preliminary estimate for a long-distance plan to free bound oxygen in the sands of Mars to make the planet more friendly to future human generations.
The Old Ones neither helped nor hindered this plan;
time was not yet.
Their meditations were approaching a violent cusp that would shape Martian art for many millennia.
On Earth elections continued and a very advanced poet published a limited edition of verse consisting entirely of punctuation marks and spaces;
Time magazine reviewed it and suggested that the Federation Assembly Daily Record should be translated into the medium.
A colossal campaign opened to sell more sexual organs of plants and Mrs. Joseph (Shadow of Greatness) Douglas was quoted as saying: I would no more sit down without flowers on my table than without serviettes.
A Tibetan swami from Palermo, Sicily, announced in Beverly Hills a newly discovered, ancient yoga discipline for ripple breathing which increased both pranha and cosmic attraction between sexes.
His chelas were required to assume the matsyendra posture dressed in hand-woven diapers while he read aloud from Rig-Veda and an assistant guru examined their purses in another room--nothing was stolen;
the purpose was less immediate.
The President of the United States proclaimed the first Sunday in November as National Grandmothers' Day and urged America to say it with flowers.
A funeral parlor chain was indicted for price-cutting.
Fosterite bishops, after secret conclave, announced the Church's second Major Miracle: Supreme Bishop Digby had been translated bodily to Heaven and spot-promoted to Archangel, ranking with-but-after Archangel Foster.
The glorious news had been held up pending Heavenly confirmation of the elevation of a new Supreme Bishop, Huey Short--a candidate accepted by the Boone faction after lots had been cast repeatedly.
Digby was not pleased with his promotion.
The Man from Mars had interrupted him with his work half finished--and that stupid jackass Short was certain to louse it up.
Foster listened with angelic patience until Digby ran down, then said, Listen, junior, you're an angel now--so forget it.
Eternity is no time for recriminations.
You too were a stupid jackass until you poisoned me.
Afterwards you did well enough.
Now that Short is Supreme Bishop he'll do all right, he can't help it.
Same as with the Popes.
Some of them were warts until they got promoted.
Check with one of them, go ahead--there's no professional jealousy here.
Digby calmed down, but made one request.
Foster shook his halo.
You can't touch him.
You shouldn't have tried to.
Oh, you can submit a requisition for a miracle if you want to make a fool of yourself.
But, I'm telling you, it'll be turned down--you don't understand the System yet.
The Martians have their own setup, different from ours, and as long as they need him, we can't touch him.
They run their show their way--the Universe has variety, something for everybody--a fact you field workers often miss.
You mean this punk can brush me aside and I've got to hold still for it?
I held still for the same thing, didn't I?
I'm helping you now, am I not?
Now look, there's work to be done and lots of it.
The Boss wants performance, not gripes.
If you need a Day off to calm down, duck over to the Muslim Paradise and take it.
Otherwise, straighten your halo, square your wings, and dig in.
The sooner you act like an angel the quicker you'll feel angelic.
Get Happy, junior!
Digby heaved a deep ethereal sigh.
Okay, I'm Happy.
Where do I start?
Jubal did not hear of Digby's disappearance when it was announced, and, when he did, while he had a fleeting suspicion, he dismissed it;
if Mike had had a finger in it, he had gotten away with it--and what happened to supreme bishops worried Jubal not at all as long as he wasn't bothered.
His household had gone through an upset.
Jubal deduced what had happened but did not know with whom--and didn't want to inquire.
Mike was of legal age and presumed able to defend himself in the clinches.
Anyhow, it was high time the boy was salted.
Jubal couldn't reconstruct the crime from the way the girls behaved because patterns kept shifting--ABC vs D, then BCD vs A or AB vs CD, or AD vs CB, through all ways that four women can gang up on each other.
This continued most of the week following that ill-starred trip to church, during which period Mike stayed in his room and usually in a trance so deep that Jubal would have pronounced him dead had he not seen it before.
Jubal would not have minded it if service had not gone to pieces.
The girls seemed to spend half their time tiptoeing in to see if Mike was all right and they were too preoccupied to cook, much less be secretaries.
Even rock-steady Anne--Hell, Anne was the worst!
Absent-minded, subject to unexplained tears Jubal would have bet his life that if Anne were to witness the Second Coming, she would memorize date, time, personae, events, and barometric pressure without batting her calm blue eyes.
The expense and time involved are astronomical.
However, we sent a third vessel out, a much smaller and faster one than the first two.
We have learned much about interstellar drives since a hundred years ago;
that is all I can tell you about them.
But the third ship came back several years ago and reported
That it had found a planet on which human beings could live and which was already inhabited by sentient beings!
Said Hal, forgetting in his enthusiasm that he had not been asked to speak.
Macneff stopped pacing to stare at Hal with his pale blue eyes.
How did you know?
He said sharply.
Forgive me, Sandalphon, said Hal.
But it was inevitable!
Did not the Forerunner predict in his Time and the World Line that such a planet would be found?
I believe it was on page 573!
Macneff smiled and said, I am glad that your scriptural lessons have left such an impression.
How could they not?
Thought Hal.
Besides, they were not the only impressions.
I still bear scars on my back where Pornsen, my gapt, whipped me because I had not learned my lessons well enough.
He was a good impresser, that Pornsen.
Was?
Is!
As I grew older and was promoted, so was he, always where I was.
He was my gapt in the creche.
He was the dormitory gapt when I went to college and thought I was getting away from him.
He is now my block gapt.
He is the one responsible for my getting such low M. R.'s.
Swiftly, came the revulsion, the protest.
No, not he, for I, and I alone, am responsible for whatever happens to me.
If I get a low M. R., I do so because I want it that way or my dark self does.
If I die, I die because I willed it so.
So, forgive me, Sigmen, for the contrary-to-reality thoughts!
Please pardon me again, Sandalphon, said Hal.
But did the expedition find any records of the Forerunner having been on this planet?
Perhaps, even, though this is too much to wish, find the Forerunner himself?
No, said Macneff.
Though that does not mean that there may not be such records there.
The expedition was under orders to make a swift survey of conditions and then to return to Earth.
I can't tell you now the distance in lightyears or what star this was, though you can see it with the naked eye at night in this hemisphere.
If you volunteer, you will be told where you're going after the ship leaves.
And it leaves very soon.
You need a linguist?
Said Hal.
The ship is huge, said Macneff, but the number of military men and specialists we are taking limits the linguists to one.
We have considered several of your professionals because they were lamechians and above suspicion.
Unfortunately
Hal waited: Macneff paced some more, frowning.
Then, he said, Unfortunately, only one lamechian linguist exists, and he is too old for this expedition.
Therefore
A thousand pardons, said Hal.
But I have just thought of one thing.
I am married.
No problem at all, said Macneff.
There will be no women aboard the Gabriel.
And, if a man is married, he will automatically be given a divorce.
Hal gasped, and he said, A divorce?
Macneff raised his hands apologetically and said, You are horrified, of course.
But, from our reading of the Western Talmud, we Urielites believe that the Forerunner, knowing this situation would arise, made reference to and provision for divorce.
It's inevitable in this case, for the couple will be separated for, at the least, forty years.
Naturally, he couched the provision in obscure language.
In his great and glorious wisdom, he knew that our enemies the Israelites must not be able to read therein what we planned.
I volunteer, said Hal.
Tell me more, Sandalphon.
Six months later, Hal Yarrow stood in the observation dome of the Gabriel and watched the ball of Earth dwindle above him.
It was night on this hemisphere, but the light blazed from the megalopolises of Australia, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, India, Siberia.
Hal, the linguist, saw the glittering discs and necklaces in terms of the languages spoken therein.
Australia, the Philippine Islands, Japan, and northern China were inhabited by those members of the Haijac Union that spoke American.
Southern China, all of southeast Asia, southern India and Ceylon, these states of the Malay Federation spoke Bazaar.
Siberia spoke Icelandic.
His mind turned the globe swiftly for him, and he visualized Africa, which used Swahili south of the Sahara Sea.
All around the Mediterranean Sea, Asia Minor, northern India, and Tibet, Hebrew was the native tongue.
In southern Europe, between the Israeli Republics and the Icelandic-speaking peoples of northern Europe, was a thin but long stretch of territory called March.
This was no man's land, disputed by the Haijac Union and the Israeli Republic, a potential source of war for the last two hundred years.
Neither nation would give up their claim on it, yet neither wished to make any move that might lead to a second Apocalyptic War.
So, for all practical purposes, it was an independent nation and by now had its own organized government (unrecognized outside its own borders).
Its citizens spoke all of the world's surviving tongues, plus a new one called Lingo, a pidgin whose vocabulary was derived from the other six and whose syntax was so simple it could be contained on half a sheet of paper.
Hal saw in his mind the rest of Earth: Iceland, Greenland, the Caribbean Islands, and the eastern half of South America.
Here the peoples spoke the tongue of Iceland because that island had gotten the jump on the Hawaiian-Americans who were busy resettling North America and the western half of South America after the Apocalyptic War.
Then there was North America, where American was the native speech of all except the twenty descendants of French-Canadians living on the Hudson Bay Preserve.
Hal knew that when that side of Earth rotated into the night zone, Sigmen City would blaze out into space.
And, somewhere in that enormous light, was his apartment.
But Mary would soon no longer be living there, for she would be notified in a few days that her husband had died in an accident while on a flight to Tahiti.
She would weep in private, he was sure, for she loved him in her frigid way, though in public she would be dry-eyed.
Her friends and professional associates would sympathize with her, not because she had lost a beloved husband, but because she had been married to a man who thought unrealistically.
If Hal Yarrow had been killed in a crash, he must have wanted it that way.
There was no such thing as an accident.
Somehow, all the other passengers (also supposed to have died in this web of elaborate frauds to cover up the disappearance of the personnel of the Gabriel) had simultaneously agreed to die.
And, therefore, being in disgrace, they would not be cremated and their ashes flung to the winds in public ceremony.
No, the fish could eat their bodies for all the Sturch cared.
Hal felt sorry for Mary;
he had a time keeping the tears from welling to his own eyes as he stood in the crowd in the observation dome.
Yet, he told himself, this was the best way.
He and Mary would no longer have to tear and rend at each other;
their mutual torture would be over.
Mary was free to marry again, not knowing that the Sturch had secretly given her a divorce, thinking that death had dissolved her marriage.
She would have a year in which to make up her mind, to choose a mate from a list selected by her gapt.
Perhaps, the psychological barriers that had prevented her from conceiving Hal's child would no longer be present.
Perhaps.
Hal doubted if this happy event would occur.
Mary was as frozen below the navel as he.
No matter who the candidate for marriage selected by the gapt
The gapt.
Pornsen.
He would no longer have to see that fat face, hear that whining voice
Hal Yarrow!
Said the whining voice.
And, slowly, feeling himself icy yet burning, Hal turned.
There was the squat loose-jowled man, smiling lopsidedly up at him.
My beloved ward, my perennial gadfly, said the whining voice.
I had no idea that you, too, would be on this glorious voyage.
But I might have known!
We seem to be bound by love;
Sigmen himself must have foreseen it.
Love to you, my ward.
Sigmen love you, too, my guardian, said Hal, choking.
How wonderful to see your cherished self.
I had thought we would never again speak to each other.
the Gabriel pointed towards her destination and, under one-gee acceleration, began to build up towards her ultimate velocity, 99.1 percent of the speed of light.
Meanwhile, all the personnel except those few needed to carry out the performance of the ship, went into the suspensor.
Here they would lie in suspended animation for many years.
Some time later, after a check had been made of all automatic equipment, the crew would join the others.
They would sleep while the Gabriel's drive would increase the acceleration to a point which the unfrozen bodies of the personnel could not have endured.
Upon reaching the desired speed, the automatic equipment would cut off the drive, and the silent but not empty vessel would hurl towards the star which was its journey's end.
Many years later, the photon-counting apparatus in the nose of the ship would determine that the star was close enough to actuate deceleration.
Again, a force too strong for unfrozen bodies to endure would be applied.
Then, after slowing the vessel considerably, the drive would adjust to a one-gee deceleration.
And the crew would be automatically brought out of their suspended animation.
These members would then unthaw the rest of the personnel.
And, in the half-year left before reaching their destination, the men would carry out whatever preparations were needed.
Hal Yarrow was among the last to go into the suspensor and among the first to come out.
He had to study the recordings of the language of the chief nation of Ozagen, Siddo.
And, from the first, he faced a difficult task.
The expedition that had discovered Ozagen had succeeded in correlating two thousand Siddo words with an equal number of American words.
The description of the Siddo syntax was very restricted.
And, as Hal found out, obviously mistaken in many cases.
This discovery caused Hal anxiety.
His duty was to write a school text and to teach the entire personnel of the Gabriel how to speak Ozagen.
Yet, if he used all of the little means at his disposal, he would be instructing his students wrongly.
Moreover, even getting this across would be difficult.
For one thing, the organs of speech of the Ozagen natives differed somewhat from Earthmen's;
the sounds made by these organs were, therefore, dissimilar.
It was true that they could be approximated, but would the Ozagenians understand these approximations?
Another obstacle was the grammatical construction of Siddo.
Consider the tense system.
Instead of inflecting a verb or using an unattached particle to indicate the past or future, Siddo used an entirely different word.
Thus, the masculine animate infinitive dabhumaksanigalu'ahai, meaning to live, was, in the perfect tense, ksu'u'peli'afo, and, in the future, mai'teipa.
The same use of an entirely different word applied for all the other tenses.
Plus the fact that Siddo not only had the normal (to Earthmen) three genders of masculine, feminine, and neuter, but the two extra of inanimate and spiritual.
Fortunately, gender was inflected, though the expression of it would be difficult for anybody not born in Siddo.
The system of indicating gender varied according to tense.
All the other parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions operated under the same system as the verbs.
This was not, for the Angel, just a matter of running through a logical or deductive chain, or deciding on some action from some already established premise.
No doubt the Angels could do that kind of thing as fast as any computer.
What Gabriel was being asked to do now, however, was to re-examine all his basic assumptions, make value-judgments on them, and give them new and different powers in his mind to govern his motives.
This is not wholly a reasoning process--a computer cannot do it all--and even in an Angel it takes time.
(Or, perhaps, especially in an Angel, whose assumptions had mostly been fixed millions of years ago.
Being reasonably sure of the reason for the long pause, however, did not make it seem any less long to Jack.
He had already become used to Hesperus' snapping back answers to questions almost before Jack could get them asked.
There was nothing he could do but wait.
The dice were cast.
At last Gabriel spoke.
We misjudged you, he said slowly.
We had concluded that no race as ephemeral as yours could have had time to develop a sense of justice.
Of course we have before us the example of the great races at the galactic center;
individually they are nearly as mortal as you--the difference does not seem very marked to us, where it exists.
But they have survived for long periods as races, whereas you are young.
We shall recommend to them that they shorten your trial period by half.
For now, it is clear that we were in the wrong.
You may reclaim your property, and the penalty on Hesperus is lifted.
Hesperus, you may speak.
I did not perceive this essential distinction either, First-Born, Hesperus said at once, I was only practicing a concept that Jack taught me, called a deal.
Nevertheless, you were its agent.
Jack, what is the nature of this concept?
It's a kind of agreement in which each party gives something to the other, Jack said.
We regard it as fair only when each party feels that what he has received is as valuable, or more valuable, than what he has given.
His heart, he discovered, was pounding.
For instance, Hesperus agreed to help me find my property, and I agreed to take him to Earth.
Between individuals, this process is called bargaining.
When it is done between races or nations, it is called making a treaty.
And the major part of my mission to your nest is to make a treaty between your race and mine.
Recovering the property was much less important.
Strange, Gabriel said.
And apparently impossible.
Though it might be that we would have much to give you, you have nothing to give us.
Hesperus and Lucifer, Jack said, show that we do.
Another pause;
but this one was not nearly as long.
Then it is a matter of pleasure;
of curiosity;
of a more alive time.
Yes, those could be commodities under this concept.
But you should understand, Jack, that Hesperus and Lucifer are not long out of the nursery.
Visiting the Earth would not be an offering of worth to those of us who are older.
This explained a great deal.
All the more reason, then, Jack said, why we must have a treaty.
We will gladly entertain your young and give them proper living quarters, in return for their help in running our fusion reactors.
But we must know if this is in accordance with your customs, and must have your agreement they will not misuse the power we put in their hands, to our hurt.
But this simply requires that they behave in accordance with the dictates of their own natures, and respect yours in turn.
To this we of course agree.
Jack felt a wave of complete elation, but in a second it had vanished without a trace.
What Gabriel was asking was that mankind forego all its parochial moral judgments, and contract to let the Angels serve on Earth as it is in Heaven regardless of the applicable Earth laws.
The simple treaty principle that Gabriel was asking him to ratify, in short, was nothing less than total trust.
Nothing less would serve.
And it might be, considering the uncomfortable custom the Angels had of thinking of everything in terms of absolutes, that the proposal of anything less might well amount instead to something like a declaration of war.
Furthermore, even the highly trained law clerk who was a part of Jack's total make-up could not understand how the principle could ever be codified.
Almost the whole experience of mankind pointed toward suspicion, not trust, as the safest and sanest attitude toward all outsiders.
Yet there was some precedent for it.
The history of disarmament agreements, for instance, had been unreassuringly dismal;
but the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics nevertheless did eventually agree on an atomic bomb test ban, and a sort of provisional acceptance of each other's good intentions on this limited question.
Out of that agreement, though not by any easy road, eventually emerged the present world hegemony of the United Nations;
suspicion between member states still existed, but it was of about the same low order of virulence as the twentieth-century rivalry between Arizona and California over water supplies.
Besides, agreements in principle, with the petty details to be thrashed out later, were commonplace in diplomatic history.
The trouble with them was that they almost never worked, and in fact an agreement in principle historically turned out to be a sure sign that neither party really wanted the quarrel settled.
Suppose that this one were to work?
There was no question in Jack's mind of the good faith on one side, at least.
If mankind could be convinced of that
It was worth trying.
In fact, it had to be tried.
It would be at once the most tentative and most final treaty that Earth had ever signed.
Secretary Hart had taught Jack, at least partially, to be content with small beginnings in all diplomatic matters;
but there was no small way to handle this one.
He turned back to the screens, the crucial, conclusive phrase on his lips.
But he was too late.
He had lost his audience.
For a moment he could make no sense at all of what he saw.
It seemed to be only a riot of color, light and meaningless activity.
Gradually, he realized that the pentagon of Angel elders had vanished, and that the ritual learning dance of the nursery had been broken up.
The Angels in the nursery were zigzagging wildly in all directions, seemingly at random.
Hesperus!
What's going on here?
What's happened?
Your brothers have been found.
They are on their way here.
Where?
I don't see them.
The instruments don't show them.
You can't see them yet, Jack.
They'll be in range in a short while.
Jack scanned the skies, the boards, and the skies again.
Nothing.
No--there was a tiny pip on the radar;
and it was getting bigger rapidly.
If that was the skiff, it was making unprecedented speed.
Then the skiff hove into sight, just a dot of light at first against the roiling blackness and crimson streaks of the Coal Sack.
Through the telescope, Jack could see that both spacesuits were still attached to it.
The sail was still unfurled, though there were a good many holes in it, as Langer had predicted would be the case by now.
It was a startling, almost numenous sight;
but even more awesome was the fact that it was trailing an enormous comet's-tail of Angels.
The skiff was not heading for the nursery, however.
It seemed unlikely that her crew, if either of them were alive, could even see the Ariadne, for they were passing her at a distance of nearly a light-year.
And there would be no chance of signaling them--without the Nernst generator Jack could not send a call powerful enough to get through all the static, and by the time he could rebuild his fusion power the skiff would be gone.
Fuming, helpless, he watched them pass him.
The sail, ragged though it was, still had enough surface to catch some of the ocean of power being poured out from the nursery stars.
He would never have believed, without seeing it, that the bizarre little vessel could go so fast.
But where was it going?
And why was it causing so much agitation among the Angels, and being followed by so many of them?
There was only one possible answer, but Jack's horrified mind refused to believe it until he had fed the radar plots of the skiff's course into the computer.
The curve on the card the computer spat back at him couldn't be argued with, however.
The skiff was headed for the very center of the nebula--toward that place which, Jack knew now, could hold nothing less important than the very core of the Angel's life and religion.
It was clear that Langer had at last found a way to attract the Angel's attention.
It was equally clear that as of this moment, the treaty was off.
Stern chase 10
Langer would have to be headed off, whether he knew where he was going or not.
Almost surely he did;
after all, he had had the same set of facts as Jack had had to work from, and he was an almost frighteningly observant man.
But not having talked to the Angels, he had made a wrong turn in his reasoning somewhere along the line.
Had he decided, perhaps, that the center of the cloud was a center of government, instead of a center of life and faith?
But it didn't matter now whether he meant to invade the Holy of Holies, or was simply headed in that direction by accident.
If it was intentional, it was now also unnecessary;
and whether intentional or not, the outcome would be disastrous.
Jack crawled under the boards and restored the six feet of lead line he had excised from the Nernst generator switch.
When he was back on his feet again and about to reinstall the fuses, however, he hesitated.
He had to have fusion power to catch up with the skiff, and he had to have it fast.
But fusion power in the Coal Sack was what had triggered all the trouble in the first place--and he already had an Angel aboard.
Hesperus?
Receiving.
I'm going to turn my generator back on, as I promised to do.
But I can't take you to Earth yet.
First I've got to intercept my brothers before they get any deeper into trouble.
Will you obstruct this, or will you help?
I know it's not part of the bargain, and your elders might not like it.
Nobody else can live in your hearth while I am in it, Hesperus said promptly.
As for my elders, they have already admitted that they were wrong.
If because of this incident they become angry with Earth, I will not be permitted to go there at all.
Therefore of course I will help.
With a short-lived sigh of relief, Jack plugged the fuses back in and threw the switch.
Without an instant's transition, the green light that meant full fusion power winked on the board.
Always before, it had taken five minutes to --
Of course.
Hesperus was in there.
From here on out, the Ariadne was going to be hotter than any space cruiser man had ever dreamed of.
But since he had failed to anticipate it, he lost the five minutes anyhow, in plotting an intercept orbit.
Hesperus, don't use this t-tau vector trick of yours, please.
Ryan hefted his bulk up and supported it on one elbow.
He rubbed his eyes sleepily with one huge paw.
Ekstrohm, Nogol, you guys okay?
Nothing wrong with me that couldn't be cured, Nogol said.
He didn't say what would cure him;
he had been explaining all during the trip what he needed to make him feel like himself.
His small black eyes darted inside the olive oval of his face.
Ekstrohm?
Ryan insisted.
Okay.
Well, let's take a ground-level look at the country around here.
The facsiport rolled open on the landscape.
A range of bluffs hugged the horizon, the color of decaying moss.
Above them, the sky was the black of space, or the almost equal black of the winter sky above Minneapolis, seen against neon-lit snow.
That cold, empty sky was full of fire and light.
It seemed almost a magnification of the Galaxy itself, of the Milky Way, blown up by some master photographer.
This fiery swath was actually only a belt of minor planets, almost like the asteroid belt in the original Solar System.
These planets were much bigger, nearly all capable of holding an atmosphere.
But to the infuriation of scientists, for no known reason not all of them did.
This would be the fifth mapping expedition to the planetoids of Yancy-6 in three generations.
They lay months away from the nearest Earth star by jump drive, and no one knew what they were good for, although it was felt that they would probably be good for something if it could only be discovered--much like the continent of Antarctica in ancient history.
How can a planet with so many neighbors be so lonely?
Ryan asked.
He was the captain, so he could ask questions like that.
Some can be lonely in a crowd, Nogol said elaborately.
What will we need outside, Ryan?
Ekstrohm asked.
No helmets, the captain answered.
We can breathe out there, all right.
It just won't be easy.
This old world lost all of its helium and trace gases long ago.
Nitrogen and oxygen are about it.
Ryan, look over there, Nogol said.
Animals.
Ringing the ship.
Think they're intelligent, maybe hostile?
I think they're dead, Ekstrohm interjected quietly.
I get no readings from them at all.
Sonic, electronic, galvanic--all blank.
According to these needles, they're stone dead.
Ekstrohm, you and I will have a look, Ryan said.
You hold down the fort, Nogol.
Take it easy.
Easy, Nogol confirmed.
I heard a story once about a rookie who got excited when the captain stepped outside and he couldn't get an encephalographic reading on him.
Me, I know the mind of an officer works in a strange and unfathomable manner.
I'm not worried about you mis-reading the dials, Nogol, just about a lug like you reading them at all.
Remember, when the little hand is straight up that's negative.
Positive results start when it goes towards the hand you use to make your mark.
But I'm ambidextrous.
Ryan told him what he could do then.
Ekstrohm smiled, and followed the captain through the airlock with only a glance at the lapel gauge on his coverall.
The strong negative field his suit set up would help to repel bacteria and insects.
Actually, the types of infection that could attack a warm-blooded mammal were not infinite, and over the course of the last few hundred years adequate defenses had been found for all basic categories.
He wasn't likely to come down with hot chills and puzzling striped fever.
They ignored the ladder down to the planet surface and, with only a glance at the seismological gauge to judge surface resistance, dropped to the ground.
It was day, but in the thin atmosphere contrasts were sharp between light and shadow.
They walked from midnight to noon, noon to midnight, and came to the beast sprawled on its side.
Ekstrohm nudged it with a boot.
Hey, this is pretty close to a wart-hog.
Uh-huh, Ryan admitted.
One of the best matches I've ever found.
Well, it has to happen.
Statistical average and all.
Still, it sometimes gives you a creepy feeling to find a rabbit or a snapping turtle on some strange world.
It makes you wonder if this exploration business isn't all some big joke, and somebody has been everywhere before you even started.
The surveyor looked sidewise at the captain.
The big man seldom gave out with such thoughts.
Ekstrohm cleared his throat.
What shall we do with this one?
Dissect it?
Ryan nudged it with his toe, following Ekstrohm's example.
I don't know, Stormy.
It sure as hell doesn't look like any dominant intelligent species to me.
No hands, for one thing.
Of course, that's not definite proof.
No, it isn't, Ekstrohm said.
I think we'd better let it lay until we get a clearer picture of the ecological setup around here.
In the meantime, we might be thinking on the problem all these dead beasts represent.
What killed them?
It looks like we did, when we made blastdown.
But what about our landing was lethal to the creatures?
Radiation?
Ekstrohm suggested.
The planet is very low in radiation from mineral deposits, and the atmosphere seems to shield out most of the solar output.
Any little dose of radiation might knock off these critters.
I don't know about that.
Maybe it would work the other way.
Maybe because they have had virtually no radioactive exposure and don't have any R's stored up, they could take a lot without harm.
Then maybe it was the shockwave we set up.
Or maybe it's sheer xenophobia.
They curl up and die at the sight of something strange and alien--like a spaceship.
Maybe, the captain admitted.
At this stage of the game anything could be possible.
But there's one possibility I particularly don't like.
And that is?
Suppose it was not us that killed these aliens.
Suppose it is something right on the planet, native to it.
I just hope it doesn't work on Earthmen too.
These critters went real sudden.
Ekstrohm lay in his bunk and thought, the camp is quiet.
The Earthmen made camp outside the spaceship.
There was no reason to leave the comfortable quarters inside the ship, except that, faced with a possibility of sleeping on solid ground, they simply had to get out.
The camp was a cluster of aluminum bubbles, ringed with a spy web to alert the Earthmen to the approach of any being.
Each man had a bubble to himself, privacy after the long period of enforced intimacy on board the ship.
Ekstrohm lay in his bunk and listened to the sounds of the night on Yancey-6 138.
There was a keening of wind, and a cracking of the frozen ground.
Insects there were on the world, but they were frozen solid during the night, only to revive and thaw in the morning sun.
The bunk he lay on was much more uncomfortable than the acceleration couches on board.
Yet he knew the others were sleeping more soundly, now that they had renewed their contact with the matter that had birthed them to send them riding high vacuum.
Ekstrohm was not asleep.
Now there could be an end to pretending.
He threw off the light blanket and swung his feet off the bunk, to the floor.
Ekstrohm stood up.
There was no longer any need to hide.
But what was there to do?
What had changed for him?
He no longer had to lie in his bunk all night, his eyes closed, pretending to sleep.
In privacy he could walk around, leave the light on, read.
It was small comfort for insomnia.
Ekstrohm never slept.
Some doctors had informed him he was mistaken about this.
Actually, they said, he did sleep, but so shortly and fitfully that he forgot.
Others admitted he was absolutely correct--he never slept.
His body processes only slowed down enough for him to dispell fatigue poisons.
Occasionally he fell into a waking, gritty-eyed stupor;
but he never slept.
Never at all.
Naturally, he couldn't let his shipmates know this.
Insomnia would ground him from the Exploration Service, on physiological if not psychological grounds.
He had to hide it.
Over the years, he had had buddies in space in whom he thought he could confide.
The buddies invariably took advantage of him.
Since he couldn't sleep anyway, he might as well stand their watches for them or write their reports.
Where the hell did he get off threatening to report any laxness on their part to the captain?
A man with insomnia had better avoid bad dreams of that kind if he knew what was good for him.
Ekstrohm had to hide his secret.
In a camp, instead of shipboard, hiding the secret was easier.
But the secret itself was just as hard.
Ekstrohm picked up a lightweight no-back from the ship's library, a book by Bloch, the famous twentieth century expert on sex.
He scanned a few lines on the social repercussions of a celebrated nineteenth century sex murderer, but he couldn't seem to concentrate on the weighty, pontifical, ponderous style.
On impulse, he flipped up the heat control on his coverall and slid back the hatch of the bubble.
Ekstrohm walked through the alien glass and looked up at the unfamiliar constellations, smelling the frozen sterility of the thin air.
Behind him, his mates stirred without waking.
Ekstrohm was startled in the morning by a banging on the hatch of his bubble.
It took him a few seconds to put his thoughts in order, and then he got up from the bunk where he had been resting, sleeplessly.
The angry burnt-red face of Ryan greeted him.
Okay, Stormy, this isn't the place for fun and games.
What did you do with them?
Do with what?
The dead beasties.
All the dead animals laying around the ship.
What are you talking about, Ryan?
What do you think I did with them?
I don't know.
All I know is that they are gone.
Gone?
Ekstrohm shouldered his way outside and scanned the veldt.
There was no ring of animal corpses.
Nothing.
Nothing but wispy grass whipping in the keen breeze.
I'll be damned, Ekstrohm said.
You are right now, buddy.
ExPe doesn't like anybody mucking up primary evidence.
Where do you get off, Ryan?
Ekstrohm demanded.
Why pick me for your patsy?
This has got to be some kind of local phenomenon.
Why accuse a shipmate of being behind this?
Listen, Ekstrohm, I want to give you the benefit of every doubt.
But you aren't exactly the model of a surveyor, you know.
You've been riding on a pink ticket for six years, you know that.
No, Ekstrohm said, No, I didn't know that.
You've been hiding things from me and Nogol every jump we've made with you.
Now comes this!
It fits the pattern of secrecy and stealth you've been involved in.
What could I do with your lousy dead bodies?
What would I want with them?
All I know is that you were outside the bubbles last night, and you were the only sentient being who came in or out of our alarm web.
The tapes show that.
Now all the bodies are missing, like they got up and walked away.
It was not a new experience to Ekstrohm.
No.
Suspicion wasn't new to him at all.
Ryan, there are other explanations for the disappearance of the bodies.
Look for them, will you?
I give you my word I'm not trying to pull some stupid kind of joke, or to deliberately foul up the expedition.
Take my word, can't you?
Ryan shook his head.
I don't think I can.
There's still such a thing as mental illness.
You may not be responsible.
Ekstrohm scowled.
Don't try anything violent, Stormy.
I outweigh you fifty pounds and I'm fast for a big man.
I wasn't planning on jumping you.
Why do you have to jump me the first time something goes wrong?
She lived and was given a name.
Helva.
For her first three vegetable months she waved her crabbed claws, kicked weakly with her clubbed feet and enjoyed the usual routine of the infant.
She was not alone for there were three other such children in the big city's special nursery.
Soon they all were removed to Central Laboratory School where their delicate transformation began.
One of the babies died in the initial transferral but of Helva's class, seventeen thrived in the metal shells.
Instead of kicking feet, Helva's neural responses started her wheels;
instead of grabbing with hands, she manipulated mechanical extensions.
As she matured, more and more neural synapses would be adjusted to operate other mechanisms that went into the maintenance and running of a space ship.
For Helva was destined to be the brain half of a scout ship, partnered with a man or a woman, whichever she chose, as the mobile half.
She would be among the elite of her kind.
Her initial intelligence tests registered above normal and her adaptation index was unusually high.
As long as her development within her shell lived up to expectations, and there were no side-effects from the pituitary tinkering, Helva would live a rewarding, rich and unusual life, a far cry from what she would have faced as an ordinary, normal being.
However, no diagram of her brain patterns, no early I.Q. tests recorded certain essential facts about Helva that Central must eventually learn.
They would have to bide their official time and see, trusting that the massive doses of shell-psychology would suffice her, too, as the necessary bulwark against her unusual confinement and the pressures of her profession.
A ship run by a human brain could not run rogue or insane with the power and resources Central had to build into their scout ships.
Brain ships were, of course, long past the experimental stages.
Most babes survived the techniques of pituitary manipulation that kept their bodies small, eliminating the necessity of transfers from smaller to larger shells.
And very, very few were lost when the final connection was made to the control panels of ship or industrial combine.
Shell people resembled mature dwarfs in size whatever their natal deformities were, but the well-oriented brain would not have changed places with the most perfect body in the Universe.
Not so obvious to her, but of more importance to her teachers, Helva ingested the precepts of her conditioning as easily as she absorbed her nutrient fluid.
She would one day be grateful to the patient drone of the sub-conscious-level instruction.
Helva's civilization was not without busy, do-good associations, exploring possible inhumanities to terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial citizens.
One such group got all incensed over shelled children when Helva was just turning fourteen.
When they were forced to, Central Worlds shrugged its shoulders, arranged a tour of the Laboratory Schools and set the tour off to a big start by showing the members case histories, complete with photographs.
Very few committees ever looked past the first few photos.
Most of their original objections about shells were overridden by the relief that these hideous (to them) bodies were mercifully concealed.
Helva's class was doing Fine Arts, a selective subject in her crowded program.
She had activated one of her microscopic tools which she would later use for minute repairs to various parts of her control panel.
Her subject was large--a copy of the Last Supper--and her canvas, small--the head of a tiny screw.
She had tuned her sight to the proper degree.
As she worked she absentmindedly crooned, producing a curious sound.
Shell people used their own vocal cords and diaphragms but sound issued through microphones rather than mouths.
Helva's hum then had a curious vibrancy, a warm, dulcet quality even in its aimless chromatic wanderings.
Why, what a lovely voice you have, said one of the female visitors.
Helva looked up and caught a fascinating panorama of regular, dirty craters on a flaky pink surface.
Her hum became a gurgle of surprise.
She instinctively regulated her sight until the skin lost its cratered look and the pores assumed normal proportions.
Yes, we have quite a few years of voice training, madam, remarked Helva calmly.
Vocal peculiarities often become excessively irritating during prolonged intra-stellar distances and must be eliminated.
I enjoyed my lessons.
Although this was the first time that Helva had seen unshelled people, she took this experience calmly.
Any other reaction would have been reported instantly.
I meant that you have a nice singing voice dear, the lady amended.
Thank you.
Would you like to see my work?
Helva asked, politely.
She instinctively sheered away from personal discussions but she filed the comment away for further meditation.
Work?
Asked the lady.
I am currently reproducing the Last Supper on the head of a screw.
No, I say, the lady twittered.
Helva turned her vision back to magnification and surveyed her copy critically.
Of course, some of my color values do not match the old Master's and the perspective is faulty but I believe it to be a fair copy.
The lady's eyes, unmagnified, bugged out.
Oh, I forget, and Helva's voice was really contrite.
If she could have blushed, she would have.
You people don't have adjustable vision.
The monitor of this discourse grinned with pride and amusement as Helva's tone indicated pity for the unfortunate.
Here, this will help, suggested Helva, substituting a magnifying device in one extension and holding it over the picture.
In a kind of shock, the ladies and gentlemen of the committee bent to observe the incredibly copied and brilliantly executed Last Supper on the head of a screw.
Well, remarked one gentleman who had been forced to accompany his wife, the good Lord can eat where angels fear to tread.
Are you referring, sir, asked Helva politely, to the Dark Age discussions of the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin?
I had that in mind.
If you substitute'atom'for'angel ', the problem is not insoluble, given the metallic content of the pin in question.
Which you are programed to compute?
Of course.
Did they remember to program a sense of humor, as well, young lady?
We are directed to develop a sense of proportion, sir, which contributes the same effect.
The good man chortled appreciatively and decided the trip was worth his time.
If the investigation committee spent months digesting the thoughtful food served them at the Laboratory School, they left Helva with a morsel as well.
Singing as applicable to herself required research.
But singing for any shell person posed considerable technical difficulties to be overcome.
Shell people were schooled to examine every aspect of a problem or situation before making a prognosis.
Balanced properly between optimism and practicality, the nondefeatist attitude of the shell people led them to extricate themselves, their ships and personnel, from bizarre situations.
Therefore to Helva, the problem that she couldn't open her mouth to sing, among other restrictions, did not bother her.
She would work out a method, by-passing her limitations, whereby she could sing.
She approached the problem by investigating the methods of sound reproduction through the centuries, human and instrumental.
Her own sound production equipment was essentially more instrumental than vocal.
Breath control and the proper enunciation of vowel sounds within the oral cavity appeared to require the most development and practice.
Shell people did not, strictly speaking, breathe.
For their purposes, oxygen and other gases were not drawn from the surrounding atmosphere through the medium of lungs but sustained artificially by solution in their shells.
After experimentation, Helva discovered that she could manipulate her diaphragmic unit to sustain tone.
By relaxing the throat muscles and expanding the oral cavity well into the frontal sinuses, she could direct the vowel sounds into the most felicitous position for proper reproduction through her throat microphone.
She compared the results with tape recordings of modern singers and was not unpleased although her own tapes had a peculiar quality about them, not at all unharmonious, merely unique.
Acquiring a repertoire from the Laboratory library was no problem to one trained to perfect recall.
She found herself able to sing any role and any song which struck her fancy.
It would not have occurred to her that it was curious for a female to sing bass, baritone, tenor, alto, mezzo, soprano and coloratura as she pleased.
It was, to Helva, only a matter of the correct reproduction and diaphragmic control required by the music attempted.
If the authorities remarked on her curious avocation, they did so among themselves.
Shell people were encouraged to develop a hobby so long as they maintained proficiency in their technical work.
On the anniversary of her sixteenth year in her shell, Helva was unconditionally graduated and installed in her ship, the Aj.
Her permanent titanium shell was recessed behind an even more indestructible barrier in the central shaft of the scout ship.
The neural, audio, visual and sensory connections were made and sealed.
Her extendibles were diverted, connected or augmented and the final, delicate-beyond-description brain taps were completed while Helva remained anesthetically unaware of the proceedings.
When she awoke, she was the ship.
Her brain and intelligence controlled every function from navigation to such loading as a scout ship of her class needed.
She could take care of herself and her ambulatory half, in any situation already recorded in the annals of Central Worlds and any situation its most fertile minds could imagine.
Her first actual flight, for she and her kind had made mock flights on dummy panels since she was eight, showed her complete mastery of the techniques of her profession.
She was ready for her great adventures and the arrival of her mobile partner.
There were nine qualified scouts sitting around collecting base pay the day Helva was commissioned.
There were several missions which demanded instant attention but Helva had been of interest to several department heads in Central for some time and each man was determined to have her assigned to his section.
Consequently no one had remembered to introduce Helva to the prospective partners.
The ship always chose its own partner.
Had there been another brain ship at the Base at the moment, Helva would have been guided to make the first move.
As it was, while Central wrangled among itself, Robert Tanner sneaked out of the pilots' barracks, out to the field and over to Helva's slim metal hull.
Hello, anyone at home?
Tanner wisecracked.
Of course, replied Helva logically, activating her outside scanners.
Are you my partner?
She asked hopefully, as she recognized the Scout Service uniform.
All you have to do is ask, he retorted hopefully.
No one has come.
I thought perhaps there were no partners available and I've had no directives from Central.
Even to herself Helva sounded a little self-pitying but the truth was she was lonely, sitting on the darkened field.
Always she had had the company of other shells and more recently, technicians by the score.
The sudden solitude had lost its momentary charm and become oppressive.
No directives from Central is scarcely a cause for regret, but there happen to be eight other guys biting their fingernails to the quick just waiting for an invitation to board you, you beautiful thing.
It would have killed you in the cabin.
Do you have anything for me?
Mercer stammered, not knowing what B'dikkat meant, and the two-nosed man answered for him, I think he has a nice baby head, but it isn't big enough for you to take yet.
Mercer never noticed the needle touch his arm.
B'dikkat had turned to the next knot of people when the super-condamine hit Mercer.
He tried to run after B'dikkat, to hug the lead spacesuit, to tell B'dikkat that he loved him.
He stumbled and fell, but it did not hurt.
The many-bodied girl lay near him.
Mercer spoke to her.
Isn't it wonderful?
You're beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
I'm so happy to be here.
The woman covered with growing hands came and sat beside them.
She radiated warmth and good fellowship.
Mercer thought that she looked very distinguished and charming.
He struggled out of his clothes.
It was foolish and snobbish to wear clothing when none of these nice people did.
The two women babbled and crooned at him.
With one corner of his mind he knew that they were saying nothing, just expressing the euphoria of a drug so powerful that the known universe had forbidden it.
With most of his mind he was happy.
He wondered how anyone could have the good luck to visit a planet as nice as this.
He tried to tell the Lady Da, but the words weren't quite straight.
A painful stab hit him in the abdomen.
The drug went after the pain and swallowed it.
It was like the cap in the hospital, only a thousand times better.
The pain was gone, though it had been crippling the first time.
He forced himself to be deliberate.
He rammed his mind into focus and said to the two ladies who lay pinkly nude beside him in the desert, That was a good bite.
Maybe I will grow another head.
That would make B'dikkat happy!
The Lady Da forced the foremost of her bodies in an upright position.
Said she, I'm strong, too.
I can talk.
Remember, man, remember.
People never live forever.
We can die, too, we can die like real people.
I do so believe in death!
Mercer smiled at her through his happiness.
Of course you can.
But isn't this nice
With this he felt his lips thicken and his mind go slack.
He was wide awake, but he did not feel like doing anything.
In that beautiful place, among all those companionable and attractive people, he sat and smiled.
B'dikkat was sterilizing his knives.
Mercer wondered how long the super-condamine had lasted him.
He endured the ministrations of the dromozoa without screams or movement.
The agonies of nerves and itching of skin were phenomena which happened somewhere near him, but meant nothing.
He watched his own body with remote, casual interest.
The Lady Da and the hand-covered woman stayed near him.
After a long time the half-man dragged himself over to the group with his powerful arms.
Having arrived he blinked sleepily and friendlily at them, and lapsed back into the restful stupor from which he had emerged.
Mercer saw the sun rise on occasion, closed his eyes briefly, and opened them to see stars shining.
Time had no meaning.
The dromozoa fed him in their mysterious way;
the drug canceled out his needs for cycles of the body.
At last he noticed a return of the inwardness of pain.
The pains themselves had not changed;
he had.
He knew all the events which could take place on Shayol.
He remembered them well from his happy period.
Formerly he had noticed them--now he felt them.
He tried to ask the Lady Da how long they had had the drug, and how much longer they would have to wait before they had it again.
She smiled at him with benign, remote happiness;
apparently her many torsos, stretched out along the ground, had a greater capacity for retaining the drug than did his body.
She meant him well, but was in no condition for articulate speech.
The half-man lay on the ground, arteries pulsating prettily behind the half-transparent film which protected his abdominal cavity.
Mercer squeezed the man's shoulder.
The half-man woke, recognized Mercer and gave him a healthily sleepy grin.
'A good morrow to you, my boy.
That's out of a play.
Did you ever see a play?
You mean a game with cards?
No, said the half-man, a sort of eye-machine with real people doing the figures.
I never saw that, said Mercer, but I --
But you want to ask me when B'dikkat is going to come back with the needle.
Yes, said Mercer, a little ashamed of his obviousness.
Soon, said the half-man.
That's why I think of plays.
We all know what is going to happen.
We all know when it is going to happen.
We all know what the dummies will do--he gestured at the hummocks in which the decorticated men were cradled--and we all know what the new people will ask.
But we never know how long a scene is going to take.
What's a'scene'''?
Asked Mercer.
Is that the name for the needle?
The half-man laughed with something close to real humor.
No, no, no.
You've got the lovelies on the brain.
A scene is just a part of a play.
I mean we know the order in which things happen, but we have no clocks and nobody cares enough to count days or to make calendars and there's not much climate here, so none of us know how long anything takes.
The pain seems short and the pleasure seems long.
I'm inclined to think that they are about two Earth-weeks each.
Mercer did not know what an Earth-week was, since he had not been a well-read man before his conviction, but he got nothing more from the half-man at that time.
The half-man received a dromozootic implant, turned red in the face, shouted senselessly at Mercer, Take it out, you fool!
Take it out of me!
When Mercer looked on helplessly, the half-man twisted over on his side, his pink dusty back turned to Mercer, and wept hoarsely and quietly to himself.
Mercer himself could not tell how long it was before B'dikkat came back.
It might have been several days.
It might have been several months.
Once again B'dikkat moved among them like a father;
once again they clustered like children.
This time B'dikkat smiled pleasantly at the little head which had grown out of Mercer's thigh--a sleeping child's head, covered with light hair on top and with dainty eyebrows over the resting eyes.
Mercer got the blissful needle.
When B'dikkat cut the head from Mercer's thigh, he felt the knife grinding against the cartilage which held the head to his own body.
He saw the child-face grimace as the head was cut;
he felt the far, cool flash of unimportant pain, as B'dikkat dabbed the wound with a corrosive antiseptic which stopped all bleeding immediately.
The next time it was two legs growing from his chest.
Then there had been another head beside his own.
Or was that after the torso and legs, waist to toe-tips, of the little girl which had grown from his side?
He forgot the order.
He did not count time.
Lady Da smiled at him often, but there was no love in this place.
She had lost the extra torsos.
In between teratologies, she was a pretty and shapely woman;
but the nicest thing about their relationship was her whisper to him, repeated some thousands of time, repeated with smiles and hope, People never live forever.
She found this immensely comforting, even though Mercer did not make much sense out of it.
Thus events occurred, and victims changed in appearance, and new ones arrived.
Sometimes B'dikkat took the new ones, resting in the everlasting sleep of their burned-out brains, in a ground-truck to be added to other herds.
The bodies in the truck threshed and bawled without human speech when the dromozoa struck them.
Finally, Mercer did manage to follow B'dikkat to the door of the cabin.
He had to fight the bliss of super-condamine to do it.
Only the memory of previous hurt, bewilderment and perplexity made him sure that if he did not ask B'dikkat when he, Mercer, was happy, the answer would no longer be available when he needed it.
Fighting pleasure itself, he begged B'dikkat to check the records and to tell him how long he had been there.
B'dikkat grudgingly agreed, but he did not come out of the doorway.
He spoke through the public address box built into the cabin, and his gigantic voice roared out over the empty plain, so that the pink herd of talking people stirred gently in their happiness and wondered what their friend B'dikkat might be wanting to tell them.
When he said it, they thought it exceedingly profound, though none of them understood it, since it was simply the amount of time that Mercer had been on Shayol:
Standard years--eighty-four years, seven months, three days, two hours, eleven and one half minutes.
Good luck, fellow.
Mercer turned away.
The secret little corner of his mind, which stayed sane through happiness and pain, made him wonder about B'dikkat.
What persuaded the cow-man to remain on Shayol?
What kept him happy without super-condamine?
Was B'dikkat a crazy slave to his own duty or was he a man who had hopes of going back to his own planet some day, surrounded by a family of little cow-people resembling himself?
Mercer, despite his happiness, wept a little at the strange fate of B'dikkat.
His own fate he accepted.
He remembered the last time he had eaten--actual eggs from an actual pan.
The dromozoa kept him alive, but he did not know how they did it.
He staggered back to the group.
The Lady Da, naked in the dusty plain, waved a hospitable hand and showed that there was a place for him to sit beside her.
There were unclaimed square miles of seating space around them, but he appreciated the kindliness of her gesture none the less.
The years, if they were years, went by.
The land of Shayol did not change.
Sometimes the bubbling sound of geysers came faintly across the plain to the herd of men;
those who could talk declared it to be the breathing of Captain Alvarez.
There was night and day, but no setting of crops, no change of season, no generations of men.
Time stood still for these people, and their load of pleasure was so commingled with the shocks and pains of the dromozoa that the words of the Lady Da took on very remote meaning.
People never live forever.
Her statement was a hope, not a truth in which they could believe.
They did not have the wit to follow the stars in their courses, to exchange names with each other, to harvest the experience of each for the wisdom of all.
There was no dream of escape for these people.
Though they saw the old-style chemical rockets lift up from the field beyond B'dikkat's cabin, they did not make plans to hide among the frozen crop of transmuted flesh.
Far long ago, some other prisoner than one of these had tried to write a letter.
His handwriting was on a rock.
Mercer read it, and so had a few of the others, but they could not tell which man had done it.
Nor did they care.
The letter, scraped on stone, had been a message home.
They could still read the opening: Once, I was like you, stepping out of my window at the end of day, and letting the winds blow me gently toward the place I lived in.
Once, like you, I had one head, two hands, ten fingers on my hands.
The front part of my head was called a face, and I could talk with it.
Now I can only write, and that only when I get out of pain.
Dan Morgan told himself he would forget Ann Turner.
He was well rid of her.
He certainly didn't want a wife who was fickle as Ann.
If he had married her, he'd have been asking for trouble.
But all of this was rationalization.
Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night thinking of Ann, and then could not get back to sleep.
His plans and dreams had revolved around her so much and for so long that now he felt as if he had nothing.
The easiest thing would be to sell out to Al Budd and leave the country, but there was a stubborn streak in him that wouldn't allow it.
The best antidote for the bitterness and disappointment that poisoned him was hard work.
He found that if he was tired enough at night, he went to sleep simply because he was too exhausted to stay awake.
Each day he found himself thinking less often of Ann;
each day the hurt was a little duller, a little less poignant.
He had plenty of work to do.
Because the summer was unusually dry and hot, the spring produced a smaller stream than in ordinary years.
The grass in the meadows came fast, now that the warm weather was here.
He could not afford to lose a drop of the precious water, so he spent most of his waking hours along the ditches in his meadows.
He had no idea how much time Budd would give him.
In any case, he had no intention of being caught asleep, so he carried his revolver in its holster on his hip and he took his Winchester with him and leaned it against the fence.
He stopped every few minutes and leaned on his shovel as he studied the horizon, but nothing happened, each day dragging out with monotonous calm.
When, in late afternoon on the last day in June, he saw two people top the ridge to the south and walk toward the house, he quit work immediately and strode to his rifle.
It could be some kind of trick Budd had thought up.
No one walked in this country, least of all Ed Dow or Dutch Renfro or any of the rest of the Bar B crew.
Morgan watched the two figures for a time, puzzled.
When they were closer and he saw that one was a woman, he was more puzzled than ever.
He cleaned his shovel, left it against the fence, picked up his Winchester, and started downstream.
His visitors had crawled through the south fence and were crossing the meadow, angling toward the house.
Now he saw that both the man and woman were moving slowly and irregularly, staggering, as if they found it a struggle to remain on their feet.
Reaching the house ahead of them, he waited with his Winchester in his hands.
They crawled through the north fence and came on toward him, and now he saw that both were young, not more than nineteen or twenty.
They were dirty, their clothes were torn, and the girl was so exhausted that she fell when she was still twenty feet from the front door.
She lay there, making no effort to get back on her feet.
The boy came on to the porch and sat down, his gaze on Morgan as if half expecting him to shoot and not really caring.
Morgan hesitated, thinking that if this was a trick, it was a good one.
He didn't think it was possible for this couple to be pretending.
The boy licked his dry lips.
He asked, Could we have a drink?
Morgan jerked his head toward the front door.
In the kitchen, he said.
Leaning his Winchester against the front of the house, he walked to the girl.
Get up.
There's water in the house.
She didn't move or say anything.
Her eyes were glazed as if she didn't hear or even see him.
She had reached a point at which she didn't even care how she looked.
Her face was very thin, and burned by the sun until much of the skin was dead and peeling, the new skin under it red and angry.
Her blond hair was frowzy, her dress torn in several places, and her shoes were so completely worn out that they were practically no protection.
It must have hurt her even to walk, for the sole was completely off her left foot and Morgan saw that it was bruised and bleeding.
He picked her up, sliding one hand under her shoulders, the other under her knees, and carried her into the house.
She was amazingly light, and so relaxed in his arms that he wasn't even sure she was conscious.
Any lingering suspicion that this was a trick Al Budd had thought up was dispelled.
No girl would go this far to fool a man so she could kill him.
Besides, she had a sweet face that attracted him.
He put her down on the couch, and going into the kitchen, saw that the boy had dropped into a chair beside the table.
They looked a good deal alike, Morgan thought.
Both had blonde hair and blue eyes, and there was even a faint similarity of features.
Morgan filled the dipper from the water bucket on the shelf, went back into the front room, lifted the girl's head, and held the edge of the dipper to her mouth.
She drank greedily, and murmured, Thank you, as he lowered her head.
He stood looking down at her for a moment, wondering what could have reduced her to this condition.
He had seen a few nester wagons go through the country, the families almost starving to death, but he had never seen any of them on foot and as bad off as these two.
The girl dropped off to sleep.
Morgan returned to the kitchen, built a fire, and carried in several buckets of water from the spring which he poured into the copper boiler that he had placed on the stove.
He brought his Winchester in from the front of the house, then faced the boy.
Who are you and what happened to you?
He asked.
I'm Billy Jones, the boy answered.
That's my wife Sharon.
We ran out of money and we haven't eaten for two days.
What are you doing here?
Are we in Wyoming?
Morgan nodded.
About five miles north of the line.
Jones sighed as if relieved.
We've been looking for work, but all the ranchers have turned us down.
You mean you dragged your wife all over hell's half-acre looking for work?
Morgan demanded.
The town of Buckhorn's only about six miles from here.
Why didn't you go there?
We didn't want town work, Jones said.
This is a mighty empty country, Morgan said.
There's only one more ranch three miles north of here.
You'd have starved to death if you'd missed both places.
Then we're lucky we got here.
Could you give us a job, Mr.
Morgan.
Dan Morgan.
He was silent a moment, thinking he could use a man this time of year, and if the girl could cook, it would give him more time in the meadows, but he knew nothing about the couple.
They might kill him in his sleep, thinking there was money in the house.
He dismissed the possibility at once.
The girl's thin face haunted him.
It wasn't the face of a killer.
He wasn't so sure about the boy.
He hadn't shaved for several weeks, his sparse beard giving his face a pathetic, woebegone expression.
There was more to this than Jones had told him.
They were running from something.
He'd be an idiot to let them stay he thought, but he couldn't send them on, either.
I could use some help, Morgan said finally, but I can't afford to pay you anything.
I guess you'd better go on in the morning.
We'll work for our keep, the boy said eagerly.
I've been mucking in a mine in the San Juan, but I used to work on a ranch.
Sharon, she's cooked in a restaurant.
We'll work hard, Mr. Morgan.
I'll see, Morgan said.
Right now you need a meal and a bath.
Your wife's in terrible shape.
I know, Jones said dejectedly.
Morgan filled the fire box with wood again, then started supper and set the table.
When the meal was ready, he told Jones to wash up, and going into the front room, woke the girl.
He said, I've got some supper ready.
She rubbed her eyes and stretched, then sat up, her hands going to her hair.
I'm a mess, she said, and suddenly she was alarmed.
Who are you?
How did we get here?
I'm Dan Morgan.
This is the Rafter Aj.
You fell down in front of the house, and I carried you in.
I gave you a drink and then you went to sleep.
Oh.
She stared at him, her eyes wide as she thought about what he had said;
then she murmured: You're very kind, Mr. Morgan.
Do you take in all the strays who come by?
I don't have many strays coming to my front door, he said.
Think you can walk to the table?
Of course.
She got to her feet, staggered, and almost fell.
He caught her by an arm and helped her into the kitchen.
She sat down at the table, shaking her head.
I'm sorry, Mr. Morgan.
I'm usually a very strong woman, but I'm awfully tired.
And hungry, he said.
Start in.
It's not much of a meal, but it's what I eat.
Not much of a meal?
The girl cried.
Mr. Morgan, it's the best-looking food I ever saw.
He told himself he had never seen two people eat so much.
When they were finally satisfied, Jones said, I think he's going to give us work.
The grateful way she looked at Morgan made him ashamed of himself.
When he saw the expression in her eyes, he knew he couldn't send them on.
She said, I guess the Lord looks out for fools, drunkards, and innocents.
Morgan laughed.
Which are you?
We're not drunkards, she said.
That's all I'm sure of.
She helped him with the dishes, then he brought more water in from the spring before it got dark.
He carried the tub from the back of the house where it hung from a nail in the wall.
He said: You'll feel a lot better after you have a bath.
Your feet are in bad shape, Mrs. Jones.
You'll have to go to town to see the doc.
No, she'll be all right, Jones said quickly.
I mean, we don't have any way to get there and we can't expect you to quit work just to take us to town.
We'll see, Morgan said.
Could you find me a needle and thread?
The girl asked.
My dress needs some work on it.
He nodded and, going into the bedroom, brought a needle, thread, and scissors.
He said: I'm going to bed.
He nodded at the door in front of him.
That's my spare bedroom.
The bed isn't made, but you'll find plenty of blankets there.
You're awfully kind, the girl said.
We'll pay you back if you'll let us.
Some way.
It's all right, he said.
I get up early.
You'd better sleep.
Jones followed him into the front room, closing the door behind him.
He said: If it's all right with you, Mr. Morgan, I'll sleep out here on the couch.
We haven't slept together since we started.
I just can't take any chances on getting her pregnant, and if we were sleeping together
He stopped, embarrassed, and Morgan said, I understand that, but I don't savvy why you'd go off and leave your jobs in the first place.
We got fired, Jones said.
We had to do something.
They were a pair of lost, whipped kids, Morgan thought as he went to bed.
Gavin paused wearily.
You can't stay here with me.
It's late and you said they'd be here by dawn.
You can't make me go.
Gavin sank down again into his chair and began to rock.
He was thinking of Rittenhouse and how he had left him there, to rock to death on the porch of the Splendide.
It was the only thing in his life for which he felt guilt.
Beneath his black shirt his frail shoulders shook and croaks of pain broke from his throat, the stored pain shattering free in slow gasps, terrible to see.
Clayton tried to call back the face of the man he had known.
Against that other man he could rally his anger;
against this bent man in the chair he was powerless.
Gavin's lips moved so that Clayton had to stoop to catch the words.
Do you remember Big Charlie?
He whispered.
He stuck with me all these years.
Just a half-breed 'pache, never said much, never meant anythin to me, but he stuck with me.
He got into a fight with Tom English, your brother's son.
It was a fair fight, the boy provoked it--Big Charlie told me so.
I believed him.
They killed Big Charlie, dumped his body in my rose garden two nights ago.
My men, they all left me.
Just cleared out.
I didn't understand why, Clay.
They just all cleared out.
I treated them fair
He wiped his lips with a sleeve, then stared at Clayton in a childish kind of wonder.
Do you mean--he asked almost shyly--you want me to go with you, wherever you're goin?
Yes.
You don't hate me any more?
Clayton choked, shook his head, murmuring, No.
Come here.
The old man beckoned with one finger and Clayton went forward to him.
Gavin slipped his arms around his chest and hugged him fiercely.
All my life, he said, I tried.
I tried.
I saw you driftin away--but I tried.
And you wanted no part of me when I had so much to give.
Now there's nothin left of me.
Laurel is gone, my men are gone, Ed is dead--and you come to me, to help me.
Oh!
God in Heaven, I can't refuse you now.
That would mock me too much!
Can't let you go way from me again He closed his eyes, ashamed of his tears.
I'll go, Clay.
Clayton freed himself from the embrace and stepped back.
The eyes followed him fearfully.
The horses.
There isn't much time.
I'll saddle the horses and bring them round.
You get ready
He burst from the hot confinement of the room into the cold night air.
Gavin's stallion was in the barn and he tightened the cinches over the saddle blanket, working by touch in the darkness, comforting the animal with easy words.
When he had finished he led him and the mare to the porch.
The stallion had smelled the mare coming into heat and began to paw the turf, shaking his head.
Clayton looped the reins in a knot over the veranda post and patted the warm flesh of his neck.
The mare had backed away.
You take it easy, boy, Clayton whispered.
She doesn't want you now.
You take it easy, your time will come.
Gavin stood on the porch, a thin figure.
He had taken a carbine down from the wall and it trailed from his hand, the stock bumping on the wood floor.
Clayton called to him and he came slowly down the steps.
Clay, he said, where are we goin?
To a ranch in the valley.
There's someone there I have to see.
We may take her with us--to California.
I don't know yet, it's crazy;
I have to think about it.
But California is where we're goin.
California.
Gavin began to nod.
That's a new land.
A man could make a mark there.
Two men, together like us, we could do somethin fine out there, maybe find a place where no one's ever been.
Start out fresh, the two of us, like nothin had ever happened.
Yes, like a father and son.
I made you what you are, Gavin whispered.
I made you so you could stand up.
I made you a man.
Yes, Gavin, you did.
He approached the horse and laid a hand on the stallion's quivering neck.
Help me up, Clay.
Help me up, I feel kind of stiff.
Clayton lifted him gently into the saddle, like a child.
I hate to leave my garden, Gavin said.
They'll trample it down.
I loved my garden.
It will grow again--in California.
I loved this valley, he whispered huskily.
Lived alone here for three years, before any man came.
Lived alone by the river.
It was nice then, so peaceful and quiet.
There was no one but me.
I don't want to leave it.
Clayton swung into the saddle and whacked the stallion's rump.
The two horses broke from the yard, from the circle of light cast by the lamp still burning in the house, into the darkness.
Thirty-five
they rode at a measured pace through the valley.
Dawn would come soon and the night was at its coldest.
The moon had sunk below the black crest of the mountains and the land, seen through eyes that had grown accustomed to the absence of light, looked primeval, as if no man had ever trespassed before.
Gavin sighed bitterly.
In that inert landscape the caravan of his desires passed before his mind.
He saw them ambushed, strewn in the postures of the broken and the dying.
In vain his mind groped to reassemble the bones of the relationships he had sought so desperately, but they would not come to life.
The silence oppressed him, made him bend low over the horse's neck as if to hide from a wind that had begun to blow far away and was twisting slowly through the darkness in its slow search.
They passed ranches that were framed dark gray against the black hills.
Then at last the darkness began to dissolve.
A bold line of violet broke loose from the high ridge of the mountains, followed by feathers of red that swept the last stars from the sky.
The wan light spread over the ground and the valley revealed in the first glimmer the contours of trees and fences and palely shadowed gullies.
They had been seen as soon as they left the ranch, picked out of the darkness by the weary though watchful eyes of two men posted a few hundred yards away in the windless shelter of the trees.
The two men whipped their horses into town and flung themselves up the steps of the saloon, crying their intelligence.
The men in Pettigrew's were tired from a night's drinking, their faces red and baggy.
But the liquor had flushed their courage.
They greeted the news angrily, as though they had been cheated of purpose.
Lester heard their muttering, saw their eyes reveal their desire.
He worked his tongue round and round in the hollow of his cheek and his voice came out of his throat, dry and cracked.
He's leavin.
That's what you wanted, isn't it?
Clayton is with him, takin him out of the valley.
You can't --
Keep out of this, Purvis snarled.
He's not your brother, he's Gavin's son.
You see, he lied to us when he said he was leavin alone.
Joe Purvis was thinking back many years.
First he thought of the time he had ridden to Gavin and told him how his cattle were being rustled at the far end of the valley.
He remembered Gavin's smirk, his own cringing feeling, his impotence.
Then he thought of a time when Clayton's horse had fallen lame in the Gap.
His wife had said to him: Nellie is in love with Clayton Roy.
He wouldn't even dance with her at Gavin's party.
He treats her like she was dirt.
And you stand by like a fool and let him do it
He remembered Clayton's mocking smile in the saloon when he had asked him what he would do if they brought their cattle to water.
It was the night Clayton had tricked them in the poker game.
You're Gavin's son, Joe Purvis had said.
He turned to Lester.
You brought him back to this valley thinkin he would help you find your boy.
He meant to help Gavin all the time.
He made a fool of you, Lester.
He swung round to the other men--We can catch him easy!
There are plenty of fresh horses halfway at my place.
If we let them go, they won't stay away, they'll find men to ride with them and they'll be back.
There's only one way they can get out now and that's through the Gap--if we ride hard we can take them.
Lester's hand fluttered to Cabot's shoulder.
The boy jerked away.
He killed Tom--do you understand that?
Cabot turned back to the men and he was drunk with the thing they would do, wild to break from the cloying warmth of the saloon into the cold of the ebbing night.
He fled through the door and down the steps, running, and the men grunted and followed, pushing Lester to one side where he backed against the wall with the sleeve of his jacket raised before his eyes to shut out the light.
Purvis and Silas Pettigrew were the last to leave.
They mounted up and rode slowly behind the others at a safe distance.
Thirty-six
in the cold dawn the mist swirled low to the ground, then rose with a gust of sudden wind to leave the valley clear.
The clouds parted and hard gashes of sunlight swooped down to stain the earth with streaks of white and gold light so that the shadows of the running horses flowed like dark streams over the dazzling snow.
When they turned in the saddle they could see the men behind them, strung out on the prairie in a flat black line.
The wind of their running was cold and wild, the horses were lathered and their manes streamed like stiff black pennants in the wind.
The mare began to tire and Clayton felt the spray of snow from the hoofs of Gavin's stallion.
He looked over his shoulder at the thin dotting of pursuers.
They neither gained nor fell back.
He rode low on the mare's neck.
Ahead of him Gavin turned slightly off the trail and pointed for the Gap, no more than a mile away.
Gavin's face was bloodless with excitement.
He did not look back;
he could feel more than hear the staccato beat of hoofs that fanned out across the prairie to the north.
He knew who was riding after him--the men he had known all his life, the men who had worked for him, sworn their loyalty to him.
Now they were riding to kill him.
And he was fleeing, running--fleeing his death and his life at the same time.
The land over which he sped was the land he had created and lived in: his valley.
With every leaping stride of the horse beneath him he crossed one more patch of earth that had been his, that he would never see again.
The Gap looming before him--the place where had confronted Jack English on that day so many years ago--was his exit from all that had meaning to him.
California is too far, he thought.
He would never reach California.
He was too old--when he passed up and through the corridor of pines that lined the trail he could see ahead, he was passing from life.
The sentry was not dead.
He was, in fact, showing signs of reviving.
He had been carrying an Enfield rifle and a holstered navy cap-and-ball pistol.
A bayonet hung in a belt scabbard.
He was partially uniformed in a cavalry tunic and hat.
Mike stripped these from him and donned them.
He and Dean tied and gagged the man, using his belt and shirt for the purpose.
They dragged him inside the building.
Fiske joined them, unsteady on his feet.
Julia, seeing the bandage, rushed to him.
You are hurt!
She breathed.
I never felt better in my life, Fiske blustered.
He turned to Susan and kissed her on the cheek.
Thank you, My dear, he said.
You are very brave.
Mike silenced them.
We'll talk later.
First, we've got to get out of here.
We'll grab horses, Dean said.
The main bunch is outside, but there are some over there inside the wall.
Mike debated it, trying to decide whether Fiske was strong enough to ride.
But it at least offered him a chance for living.
He had none here.
And, for the sake of Julia and Susan, it had to be tried.
The guerrilla bivouac remained silent.
Light showed in the orderly room across the parade ground.
Someone evidently was on duty there.
No doubt there would be men guarding the horses.
About a dozen animals were held inside the stockade, as best Mike could make out in the moonlight.
Evidently this was a precaution so that mounts would be available in an emergency.
He handed the guard's rifle to Fiske.
Dean and myself will try to cut out horses to ride, he said.
We'll stampede the rest.
You stay with the ladies.
All of you be ready to ride hell for leather.
He added, If this doesn't work out, the three of you barricade yourself in the house and talk terms with them.
He handed the bayonet to Dean and kept the pistol.
Susan halted Dean and kissed him.
She clung to him, talking to him, and dabbing at her eyes.
Mike turned away.
He was thinking that the way she had responded to his own kiss hadn't meant what he had believed it had.
He felt unutterably weary.
Dean turned from Susan and took Julia Fortune in his arms.
He kissed her also, and with deep tenderness.
She too began to weep.
He released her and joined Mike.
All right, he said.
Mike only said, Later.
Be careful, McLish!
Susan said fiercely.
The way you were careful?
He snorted.
Running around in the moonlight almost naked and slugging a man with a rock?
He kept going.
He wanted no more sentimental scenes with her.
He might say or do something foolish.
Something all of them would regret.
He might tell her how sorry a spectacle she was making of herself, pretending to be blind to the way Julia Fortune had taken Dean's affections from her.
And using him, Mike McLish, as a sop to her pride.
He handed the bayonet to Dean and kept the pistol.
Stay well back of me, he said.
I'm going to walk up to the horses, bold as brass, pretending I'm one of the guerrillas.
There's bound to be someone on guard, but the hat might fool them long enough for me to get close.
Holding the pistol concealed, he walked to the rear wall of the stockade.
It was pierced by a wagon gate built of two wings.
One wing stood open.
Mike passed through it and moved toward the dark mass of horses.
They were tethered, army style, on stable lines.
A voice spoke near-at-hand.
Who's that?
Just me, Mike said.
Is that you, Bill?
He located his man.
The guard stood in the shadow of the stockade wall just out of reach of the moonlight.
Mike kept walking and got within arm's reach before the man became suspicious and straightened from his lax slouch.
Mike struck with the muzzle of the pistol.
But the luck that had been running their way left him.
The guard instinctively parried the blow with his rifle.
He tried to veer the rifle around to fire into Mike's body.
Mike, off balance, managed to bat the muzzle away a moment before it exploded.
The bullet went wide.
Mike swung the pistol in a savage backlash.
This time it connected solidly on the man's temple, felling him.
The explosion of the rifle had crashed against the walls of the stockade and the deep echoes were still rolling in the hills.
The startled horses began rearing on their tethers.
Dean came rushing up.
Are you hit?
He demanded.
No, but the fat's in the fire!
Mike said.
There's no chance now of all of us getting away.
You'll have to try it alone.
The sentry's saddled horse stood picketed nearby, having been kept handy in case of need.
Mike took the bayonet from Dean's hand and slashed the picket line.
Up you go!
He said.
Ride!
Dean resisted Mike's attempt to push him toward the horse.
Why not you?
He protested.
Dammit!
Mike said frantically.
You're lighter than me.
It's our only chance now.
Try to find these Feds.
The rest of us can fort up in the house and hang on until you get back.
You're the one that's taking the big chance.
Dean still hesitated, but Mike lifted him almost bodily into the saddle and thrust the reins in his hand.
No telling how good this horse is, Mike panted.
Favor him and save something in case you hit trouble.
Watch out for Apaches when it comes daylight.
Take the pistol.
You might need it.
We'll still have the rifle, and I might be able to round up some more.
I'll stampede the rest of these horses so they can't chase you.
Dean leaned from the saddle and gave him a mighty whack on the back.
McLish, he said as he kicked the horse into motion, I'd be a mighty sad man if we never met again.
Then he was on his way at a gallop.
Mike ran down the line, slashing picket ropes with the bayonet.
He lifted a screeching war whoop.
That touched off a total stampede.
He darted inside the stockade and freed the horses there.
These poured through the gate and joined the flight.
The animals thundered away into the moonlight, heading for the ridges.
The guerrillas were swarming from their bivouac at the west end of the enclosure.
Apaches!
Mike yelled.
They're stealin' the stock!
He scuttled in shadow along the east wall of the stockade and then followed the south wall until he was at the rear of the two frame buildings.
He crouched there.
His shout had been taken up and repeated.
The guerrillas were running across the parade ground and through the rear gate in the wake of the departing horses.
All were carrying guns they had seized up, but they were half-clad or hardly clad at all.
Durkin and Calhoun came running from the post.
They had pistols in their hands.
They bawled questions that were not answered in the uproar.
They followed the others toward the east gate.
Beyond the stockade rifles began to explode as some of the guerrillas fired at shadows that they imagined were Apaches.
Mike made a dash to the rear of the frame buildings.
He crawled beneath the two supply wagons which stood between the buildings and peered around a corner.
The area was deserted.
A man was standing in the open door of the lighted orderly room a few yards to Mike's left, but he, too, suddenly made up his mind and went racing to join the confused activity at the east end of the stockade.
Mike crawled to the door and peered in.
The orderly room seemed to be deserted.
A lantern hung from a peg, giving light.
Ducking inside, he found that three rifles were stacked in a corner.
A brace of pistols, holstered on belts, hung from a peg, along with ammunition pouches.
An ammunition case stood open, containing canisters which contained powder cartridges.
Mike seized a blanket from a pallet in a corner, spread it on the floor and used it to form a bag in which he placed his booty.
Shouldering the load he peered from the door.
His looting of the orderly room had taken only a minute or two and the vicinity was still clear of guerrillas.
He looked at the looming hoods of the supply wagons, struck by a new inspiration.
He set his bundle down.
Snatching the lantern from its peg, he shattered its globe with a blow against a post.
He picked up the powder canister and ran out.
Bursting paper cartridges, he scattered powder beneath the nearest wagon and dumped the contents of the canister upon it.
He shouldered the blanket again, backed off, and tossed the lantern with its open wick beneath the wagon.
He turned and raced across the parade ground toward the rock house.
Powder flame gushed beneath the wagon.
The stockade was brilliantly lighted and the guerrillas sighted him.
They realized the truth.
Bullets began to snap past him.
One struck the muzzle of one of the rifles that projected from the shoulder pack.
Its force spun him around, but he recovered and got into stride again.
A bullet tore the earth from beneath his foot when he was a stride or two from safety.
Another struck him heavily in the thigh and he went down.
Guerrillas were racing toward him.
Susan and Julia came from the door and dragged him with them.
The three of them floundered through the door into the interior and fell in a heap.
Susan bounced to her feet and slammed the door.
She crouched aside as bullets beat at the portal, chewing into the planks.
Some tore entirely through the whipsawed post oak.
The iron hinges held, but the planks were in danger of being torn from the crossbars.
Mike rolled to Susan, grasped her around the knees, dragging her off her feet.
He hovered over her to shield her, for spent bullets were thudding against the rear walls.
He peered from a loophole.
Guerrillas were only a dozen yards away, charging the house.
Mike snatched a pistol from the heap of scattered booty and fired.
He dropped a man with the first bullet.
At the same moment Wheeler Fiske fired the rifle Mike had given him and another guerrilla was hit.
That halted the rush.
The guerrillas scattered for cover.
The wagons were burning fiercely.
The mudwagon had caught fire also.
The blaze was spreading to the frame buildings.
The guerrillas realized they faced a new problem.
Gawdamighty!
One screeched.
There goes our grub an' ammunition!
Get a bucket line going!
Calhoun shouted.
Hurry!
Hurry!
The guerrillas began a frantic search for pails in which to bring water from the spring.
But what few containers they found were inadequate.
Many of them, in increasing panic, came running with water in their hats in a ludicrous effort.
Both buildings were in flames.
The heat drove the guerrillas back.
The roof of the command post began to buckle.
Drag the wagons to the spring!
Lew Durkin yelled.
Run 'em right into the spring!
Hustle!
One of the wagons erupted a massive pillar of flame.
A sizable supply of powder had been touched off.
The wagons and the coach were beyond saving and so were the buildings.
The glow of the fire reached through the openings in the windows, giving light enough to examine Mike's wound.
The bullet had torn through the flesh just above the knee, inflicting an ugly gash that was forming a pool of blood on the floor.
But it had missed the bone and had passed on through.
Susan and Julia ripped strips from their clothing and bound the injury.
Mike tested the leg and found that he was able to hobble around on it.
So it wasn't the earthquake that made him return to his village!
No.
Now dammit, I don't want to go into any more explanations.
Here comes Jason.
Keep this to yourself.
Reverend Jason, looking worried, hurried toward us.
Anything wrong, cap'n?
The men seem to think so.
Dirion found a large war party south of us.
They'll probably attack at dawn, Montero said.
He brushed past the clergyman and walked into the center of the camp.
Using his hands as a trumpet he shouted, Fort up!
Fort up!
There's a large war party on their way!
For a second, engages, cooks, voyageurs appeared struck dumb.
Then Little Billy began shouting orders to round up the ponies and fill the water buckets and for the cooks to hurry up with the meal.
They all flew into action.
That was a terrible thing to do, I said to Oso.
The Aricaras treated us like friends.
And here all the time you knew the Sioux would be using our rifles on them!
God, what a world you people live in.
Oso gave me an unruffled look.
Old Knife's got the largest war party ever seen on the river, he said calmly.
What would you have done in Montero's moccasins?
Let Old Knife come up and kill you and your people, or would you steer him on someone else?
He shook his head.
Mr. Manuel did that in the war.
That's why the British never got the tribes to fight for the King.
Mr. Manuel whispered in the ears of the Sioux that the Cheyennes were comin' to raid 'em for their horses.
Then he went on to the Cheyennes and told them that the Sioux was goin' to move up.
He did that with all the Nations.
Hell, they were fightin' each other so hard they had no time for anyone else.
The War Department wrote Mr. Manuel a letter and said he was a hero.
I saw that letter.
He carried it in a little wallet made of fish skin.
But that was war, I said.
There's no war on now.
You're wrong, Matt.
In this country there's a war on every time the grass turns green.
First it was the Nations against themselves, then it was them against the whites.
And it's goin' to go on like this year after year until the white people take over this land.
I remember being told it would happen so fast people would think it took place overnight.
That's why this company's important.
Once we get over the mountains others will come along.
That's why the Trust don't want us to make it.
That bastard Chambers!
-- Old Knife's not the only chief he'll get to do his dirty work!
Before we get through he'll have the Blackfeet hankerin' for our hair and our goods.
Well, talkin' ain't goin' to help--let's fort up!
As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.
For, unlike the Sioux and the Crows, the Aricaras are not great horsemen, nor are they aggressive like the savage Blackfeet.
More of an agricultural nation, they have relied on their warriors only for defense and for survival in the endless wars of the plains.
Still, I was disgusted with myself for agreeing with Montero's methods.
Surprisingly, he had told the others what he had done.
In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.
I think Montero did right, Amy said firmly.
Let the savages kill each other.
What do we care?
Reverend Jason was understandably bitter.
It was a terrible thing to do.
Those little children.
But Oso replied calmly, Trouble ain't easy to dodge out in this country, rev'rend.
28.
Attack
Gray Eyes attacked our camp just as the first pink threads stitched together the hills and the sky.
Our camp was in the center of a wide valley.
Montero had set up a strong position, using every bale and box we had in addition to barricades of logs and brush.
He had ordered the ponies brought inside the fortified circle and had assigned Pierre and a band of picked engages the job of trying to keep them steady under fire.
The pony herd was the one flaw in our defense;
the Rees undoubtedly would try to cut down as many of the animals as possible.
Wildly bucking horses would make the position difficult to defend against charging warriors.
The cooks had prepared one of the best meals we'd had in a long time, and on Montero's orders had baked enough bread to last the day.
Buckets were filled, the herd fed and watered.
The worst part had been the waiting;
although we didn't expect the attack before dawn, the long cloudy night, filled with the sounds of the industrious insects, seemed endless.
Coyotes and hunting wolves sounded like signaling Indian scouts, the whinny of a restless pony made one's skin crawl.
Oso slept unconcernedly, his rifle cradled in his arms;
I didn't catch a wink.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Gray Eyes rushing at me with a knife.
It was a relief when they finally came.
They poured through the opening in the valley, then spread out in a long line to come at us, brandishing their lances and filling the morning with their spine-chilling scalp cry.
Oso, Montero called I'll get Gray Eyes.
That'll be a pleasure to see, the big black murmured as he stared down the barrel of his rifle.
Hold your fire, Montero was shouting.
Wait until my shot.
I'll shoot the first man who doesn't.
I could see them in my sights.
They were about a mile off;
under me the ground quivered slightly.
At first they were only feathers and dark indistinguishable faces and bodies, hunched over their horses' heads.
Gradually they emerged as men.
Gray Eyes was in the lead.
His face was split by a vermilion streak, his eyes were pools of white;
jagged red and black medicine symbols covered his chest.
He was naked except for a clout.
Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.
His mouth was open, his neck corded with the strain of his screams.
I found his chest in my sights.
It had a red circle.
The circle came nearer and nearer.
My God, how long is he going to wait, I thought.
Montero's rifle cracked.
At first I thought he had missed.
Gray Eyes remained erect.
The feathered lance was still above his head.
As he started to slump over, another warrior swung him onto his horse.
I squeezed the trigger.
At the last second I dropped my sights from the bare chest and bright red circle to the chest of his pony.
I saw the pony fall like a stone and the young warrior flew over its head, bouncing like a rubber ball.
He started to run but Oso's shot caught him on the wing.
He jerked once in the grass and lay still.
If you're goin' to kill 'em--!
Kill 'em!
Oso growled.
What else he said was lost in the rattle of gunfire on all sides.
The Aricaras broke under the devastating fire, wheeled and retreated.
Lead up!
Lead up!
They'll be back!
Montero was shouting.
Far up the valley I could see the Rees circling and reorganizing.
Out in front of our walls the grass was covered with dead and dying men, war shields, lances, blankets and wounded and dead horses.
The morning air was filled with the sweetish odor of new-spilled blood, the acrid stench of frightened horses, and the bitterness of burned powder.
A horse screamed as it twisted from side to side in a frenzy.
A rifle cracked;
the square head fell over.
One of the warriors suddenly leaped to his feet and began running across the valley to the trees that lined the small creek.
His legs pumped furiously, his long black hair streamed out behind him.
There was a ragged volley.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
For Christ's sake, don't waste your powder on one of 'em!
Montero shouted furiously.
Wait for the charge!
The charge, I tell you!
The sharp cries at the end of the valley were faint.
They grew louder as the Indians charged again.
I could see their faces glistening with sweat and bear grease, their mouths open, shouting their spine-chilling cries.
Gray Eyes is back, Montero said.
The war captain had been badly wounded and was fighting to hold his seat.
I could see the blood running down his chest.
He was riding between two warriors, who held him erect when he started to slump.
I forgot to aim.
In my sights I watched him looming bigger and bigger.
Montero's shot had caught him high in the chest;
there was no doubt he was dying.
Again we waited for Montero.
This time he delayed so long that some of the engages shouted frantically, but they held their fire.
The horses were only several lengths away when he fired.
The bullet flung Gray Eyes from his horse.
Our rolling volley swept most of the other riders from their mounts.
But a few reached our wall.
I heard the whir of an ax and a Canadian's face burst apart in a bloody spray.
I saw Little Billy rise and fire almost point blank and an Indian's face became shattered flesh and bone.
A second leaped from his horse to the top of the bale, firing four arrows in such rapid succession it didn't seem possible they were in flight.
Men screamed.
Oso reached up, jerked the buck from the bale and snapped his neck.
Other Indians were running at the ponies, shrilling and waving blankets.
Reverend Jason got one, the Canadians the others.
I saw the clergyman kneel for a moment by the twitching body of the man he had shot, then run back to his position.
The ponies were almost uncontrollable.
The pall of dust they raised made it difficult to see when the Aricaras charged again.
This time more of them hurdled the barrier.
A small Indian dived at Montero, who caught him with a swift upward stroke of his rifle butt.
It sounded like a man kicking a melon.
Above me a dark rider was whipping his pony with a quirt in an attempt to hurdle the bales.
Although my shot killed his horse, he rolled off the bale on top of me.
I could smell woodsmoke, grease, and oil.
His eyes were dark, fluid, fearful, and he gave a sigh as my knife went in.
Coming over the wall he had seemed like a hideous devil.
Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.
The Aricaras made one last desperate charge.
It was pitiful to see the thin ranks of warriors, old and young, wheeling and twisting their ponies frantically from side to side only to be tumbled bleeding from their saddles by the relentless slam, slam of the cruelly efficient Hawkinses.
Others, badly wounded, gripped hands in manes, knees in bellies, held on as long as possible and then, weak from ghastly wounds, slipped sideways, slowly, almost thoughtfully, to be broken under the slashing hoofs.
Some gracefully soared from the backs of their wounded, screaming mounts to make one last defiant charge before the lead split their hearts or tore their guts.
None of them reached our walls again.
The few survivors grudgingly turned away.
In the distance we could hear the drums and the wail of the death song.
She was carrying a quirt, and she started to raise it, then let it fall again and dangle from her wrist.
I saw your fire, she said, speaking slowly, making an effort to control her anger.
You could burn down this whole mountainside with a fire that size.
It wouldn't matter to a fool like you.
It would to me.
All right, Wilson said quickly.
The fire's too big.
And I appreciate the advice.
He was losing patience again.
An hour before, with the children asleep and nothing but the strange darkness, he would have appreciated company.
She had helped him change his mind.
I'm not advising you, she said.
I'm telling you.
That fire's too big.
Let it burn down.
And make sure it's out when you leave in the morning.
He was taken aback.
It took him a long time to compose himself.
There's some mistake, he said finally.
You're right about the fire.
It's bigger than it has to be, though I don't see where it's doing any harm.
But you're wrong about the rest of it.
I'm not leaving in the morning.
Why should I?
I own the place.
She showed her surprise by tightening the reins and moving the gelding around so that she could get a better look at his face.
It didn't seem to tell her anything.
She glanced around the clearing, taking in the wagon and the load of supplies and trappings scattered over the ground, the two kids, the whiteface bull that was chewing its cud just within the far reaches of the firelight.
She studied it for a long time.
Then she turned back to Wilson and smiled, and he wasn't quite sure what she meant by it.
You own this place?
She said, and her tone had softened until it was almost friendly.
You bought it?
From a man in St. Louis, Wilson said.
Jake Carwood.
Maybe you know him.
The girl laughed.
I know him.
I ought to.
My father ran him off here six years ago.
Wilson didn't say anything.
He stood watching the girl, wondering what was coming next.
She had picked up the quirt and was twirling it around her wrist and smiling at him.
Carwood didn't tell you that, she said.
No, Wilson said.
But it's understandable.
It's not the kind of thing that a man would be proud of.
And it doesn't make any difference.
He sold me a clear title.
I have it with me, right here.
If you want to see --
Never mind, she said sternly.
It wouldn't matter to my father, and not to me.
I meant what I said about that fire.
Be sure it's out when you leave.
That's all.
I'll let you go back to doing the dishes now.
It was meant to insult him, and didn't quite succeed.
He took the reins just below the bit and held them firmly, and it was his turn to smile now.
I don't mind washing dishes now and then, he said pleasantly.
It doesn't hurt.
It might hurt you, though.
Somebody might mistake you for a woman.
He meant to say more, but he never got the chance.
She was quick.
She brought the quirt down, slashing it across his cheek, and he tried to step back.
She swung the quirt again, and this time he caught her wrist and pulled her out of the saddle.
She came down against him, and he tried to break her fall.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and went down on one knee, taking her weight so that some of the wind was driven out of him.
It made him a little sick, and he let go of her.
He got up slowly, and she was already on her feet, and he stood facing her.
He wiped the blood from his cheek.
I ought to--he said.
He was shaking with anger, his breath coming in long, painful gasps.
That quirt--I ought to use it on you, where it would do the most good.
If you were a man --
She isn't, mister.
The voice came from behind him, and Wilson turned.
The fire had gone down, and the man was only a shadow against the trees.
But a moment later he brought his horse forward into the light, and Wilson had a good look at him.
He was tall and dark-skinned, a half-breed, Wilson thought.
And he was handsome, despite the long thin scar that slanted across his cheek.
She's not a man, mister, he said.
I am.
If you've got any ideas.
He raised the Winchester and pointed it at Wilson's chest.
Put the rifle down, Joseph, the girl said.
She seemed irritated.
I thought I told you to stay home.
The half-breed eased the Winchester down and rested it across his lap.
The scar looked pure white in the half-darkness;
his eyes were black and deep-set, and expressionless.
You shouldn't be riding up here after dark, Judith, he said quietly.
I can take care of this.
It's no job for you.
The girl tapped the quirt impatiently against her knee and glared at him.
He took it without flinching.
I said go home, Joseph.
You've got no business up here.
The half-breed didn't answer this time.
But the scar seemed to pull hard at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were hurt and angry.
It made Wilson wonder.
He watched the half-breed as he turned silently.
They could hear the pony's feet on the dry leaves for a while, then the sound faded out.
Wilson brushed the dust from his coat.
Who was that?
He asked.
Your personal guard?
You're pretty hard on him.
He works for my father, the girl said, and then seemed to change her mind.
He's a friend.
His name's Joseph Sanchez.
Is there anything else you want to know?
Not now, Wilson said.
I guess I'll find out soon enough.
You've got blood on your cheek.
Not yours.
Mine.
It must have got there when you fell against me.
She wiped it off with the sleeve of her coat.
I'll bet that's as close as you've been to a man since you were a baby, Wilson said.
He saw her hand start to work down the leather thong toward the handle of the quirt, and he grabbed her wrist.
Oh, no, he said, and he was without humor now.
I've had enough of that.
I've had enough of you.
I don't know what goes on around here, and I don't care.
I don't know what makes you think you can get away with this kind of business, and I don't care about that, either.
You took me by surprise.
But I'll know how to handle you next time.
She brought up her free hand to hit him, but this time he was quicker.
He side-stepped her blow and she fell, stumbling against the gelding.
She finally regained her balance and got up in the saddle.
Her hat had come off and fallen behind her shoulders, held by the string, and he could see her face more clearly than he had at any time before.
He had forgotten that she was so pretty.
But her prettiness was what he had noticed first, and all the other things had come afterward: cruelty, meanness, self-will.
He had known women like that, one woman in particular.
And one had been too many.
He watched the girl until she had gone into the trees, and waited until he couldn't hear the sound of her horse any longer, then went up to where the children were sleeping.
They weren't sleeping, of course, but they thought they were doing him a favor by pretending.
He hadn't shown up too well in their eyes, letting himself be browbeaten by a woman.
They expected greater things from him, regardless of how trying the circumstances, and they were disappointed.
And determined not to show it.
They lay a little too stiffly, with their eyes straining to stay closed.
Go to sleep, he said.
Both of you.
There's better things to do than listen to something like that.
I'll be down at the creek finishing the dishes, if you want me.
He found the pan where he had dropped it and carried it back down to the stream.
The coyote was calling again, and he hoped that this time there would be no other sounds to interrupt it.
Not tonight, at any rate.
He had a feeling that the girl meant trouble.
If she did, he could stand it better in the light.
He scrubbed absent-mindedly at the pans and reflected on how things had turned out.
That afternoon when they had pulled up in front of the broken-down ranch house, his hopes had been high.
Already some of the pain had gone from Amelia's death.
Not all of it.
There would still be plenty of moments of regret and sadness and guilty relief.
But they were starting a new life.
And they had almost everything they needed: land, a house, two whiteface bulls, three horses.
The land wasn't all Wilson had expected of it.
Six hundred and forty acres, the old man back in St. Louis had said;
good grass, good water.
Well, the grass was there, though in some places the ground was too steep for a cow to get to it.
The water was there, so much of it that it spread all through the dead orchard.
And there was a house;
livable perhaps, but badly in need of repairs.
In the last analysis, though, Wilson had little cause to complain.
The place had been cheap--just the little he had left after Amelia's burial--and it would serve its purpose.
There was only one place where Jake Carwood's description had gone badly awry: the peace and quiet.
It hadn't started out that way.
And he had a feeling--thanks to the girl--that things would get worse before they got better.
They had the house cleaned up by noon, and Wilson sent the boy out to the meadow to bring in the horses.
He stood on the porch and watched him struggling with the heavy harness, and finally went over to help him.
Kathy was already in the wagon.
They were going to town, and they were both excited.
Wilson backed the team into the traces, and wished they weren't going to town at all.
He had an uneasy feeling about it.
That girl last night, what was her name?
Judith Pierce.
It was the only thing about her that was the least bit hard to remember.
He finished with the team and filled his pipe and stood looking about him.
He had spent two hours riding around the ranch that morning, and in broad daylight it was even less inviting than Judith Pierce had made it seem.
There was brush, and stands of pine that no grass could grow under, and places so steep that cattle wouldn't stop to graze.
But there was water.
There was an artificial lake just out of sight in the first stand of trees, fed by a half dozen springs that popped out of the ground above the hillside orchard.
Yes, there was plenty of water, too much, and that was probably the trouble.
There were tracks of cattle all over his six hundred and forty acres.
The first part of the road was steep, but it leveled off after the second bend and curled gradually into the valley.
It was hotter once they reached the flat, and drier, but the grass was better.
A warm breeze played across it, moving it like waves.
A red-tailed hawk flew in behind them and stayed there, watching for any snakes or rabbits that they might stir up from the side of the road.
It took them an hour before they came to the first houses of Kelseyville.
The town was about what Wilson expected: one main street with its rows of false-fronted buildings, a water tower, a few warehouses, a single hotel;
all dusty and sunbaked.
The place was quiet.
Such was my state of mind that I did not question the possibility of this;
under the circumstances I was only too willing to confess all.
I was nearly thirty at the time.
I went to the hall in the afternoons only, on these preliminary matters.
It was dark and, I sensed, very large;
only the counter at one end was lighted by a long fluorescent tube suspended directly above it.
Sometimes I was aware of people moving about in the darkness.
I would turn away from my writing in the hope of getting a good look at them but I never quite succeeded.
A glimpse of three of four vague figures, at the most.
Drifting here and there.
Squatting, as if waiting.
The pulsing glow of a cigarette.
Since they could see me but I not them, their presence in the hall disturbed me.
The clerk paid them no attention.
This impressed me, until I realized how limited was his sphere of influence.
His job simply consisted in registering new men.
When the phone rang he answered it.
His authority extended to the far edge of the counter, no further.
None of the men hanging around the hall bothered to speak to him.
Baldness was attacking his pate.
He spoke to me in a gruff voice, an affectation which quite belied his personality.
He wore his white shirt open at the neck, revealing a bit of scrawny pale chest underneath.
It was obvious that he wished himself different from the sort of person he thought he was.
But it was not easy for him and he often slipped.
When one of the men in the hall behind us spat on the floor and scraped his boot over the gob of spittle I noticed how the clerk winced.
I felt certain he was really a spineless little man.
His hat (the cause of his baldness?
) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.
The morning's tabloids were on the counter, and a stack of dog-eared men's magazines.
On a shelf in the office behind the counter was a small radio dialed permanently on a station which broadcast only vulgar commercials and cheap popular music.
Everything about the clerk was trivial.
Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.
Noticing my disappointment he attempted to salvage what scraps and shreds of authority he felt might still be clinging to his person.
With distaste I saw him assume a pompous air.
When he saw me coming he turned his radio off.
He made a show of rearranging my forms on the shelf.
He would pick up the ringing phone with studied negligence, then bark into it with gruff importance.
What limited knowledge he possessed he forced upon me.
In the mornings, I was informed, fluorescent tubes, similar to the one above the counter, illuminated the entire hall.
They, and the two large fans which I could dimly see as daylight filtered through their vents, down at the far end of the hall, could be turned on by a master switch situated inside the office.
He pointed out the switch to me and for a moment I foolishly believed that he would let deed follow words.
I was shown, instead, a batch of white tickets of the sort handed out, he told me, every morning.
Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.
He couldn't afford to have anyone mess around with them, he said.
Each of those tickets was of great value to its rightful recipient.
I withdrew my hand.
Later I would remember what this pompous little man had told me about the worth of a ticket.
Having nothing else to do except wait for my forms to be processed, I gave myself over to speculations concerning the hall itself.
When suitably lighted, what would it look like?
The presence of the two exhaust fans seemed to indicate that the hall could become crowded for air.
One afternoon, upon receiving permission and the necessary instructions from the clerk, I had visited the toilet adjoining the hall.
By counting the number of stalls and urinals I attempted to form a loose estimate of how many men the hall would hold at one time.
For although I had crossed a corner of the hall on my way to the toilet I still could not tell for sure how far to the rear the darkness extended.
I could observe the two fans down at the end, but their size in themselves meant nothing to me as long as I had no measure of comparison.
I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.
I knew that three or four of them were almost always present in the hall, but what they were doing, and exactly where, I could not tell.
It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.
This light did not penetrate very far back into the hall, and my eyes were hindered rather than aided by the dim daylight entering through the fan vents when I tried to pick out whatever might be lying, or squatting, on the floor below.
Also the clerk appeared to disapprove of my frequent curious glances back over my shoulder.
No sooner would I turn my head away from the counter before he would address me, at times quite sharply, in order to bring back my attention.
And I had hardly finished my business in the toilet on the aforementioned occasion when the lights in that place, like the hall lights controlled from the switch in the office, flicked off and on impatiently.
This sort of petty vigilance annoyed me.
I felt certain it was self-appointed.
It sprang from a type of mentality I'd encountered often enough but certainly had not expected to find here.
I decided to see no more of the clerk until the processing of my papers was completed.
I felt strongly attached to the hall, however, and hardly a day passed when I did not go to look at it from a distance.
I lived in a state of suspense because of it.
I could not cling to my past nor did I wish to.
I had signed it off on the forms.
My future lay solely with the hall, yet what did I know about the hall at this point?
Although I had been inside it I had not yet seen it functioning.
I wished to prepare myself but did not even know what sort of clothes I ought to be wearing.
I did not despair, however;
far from it!
I was constantly searching for clues around the neighborhood of the hall.
Though only a relatively short walk separated it from my own part of town, its character was wholly foreign to me.
Large warehouses flanked the street on which the hall fronted.
The river was only a few blocks away but an unbroken line of piers prevented me from seeing it.
Sometimes I noticed the tops of ships' masts and funnels reaching above the pier roofs.
The sounds issuing from beyond--winches whirring, men shouting--indicated great activity and excited me.
The hall, on the other hand, appeared lifeless and deserted on these long waterfront afternoons.
It resembled nothing I'd ever seen before.
Its front was windowless, but irregularities in the masonry might be an indication that windows, now blinded, had once looked out upon the street.
I kept circling the block hoping to see, from the street behind it, the rear of the hall.
But it was not a tall structure and other buildings concealed it.
For weeks I wandered about this neighborhood of warehouses and garages, truck terminals and taxi repair shops, gasoline pumps and longshoremen's lunch counters, yet never did I cease to feel myself a stranger there.
I returned to the hall, despite my dislike for the clerk.
As I had expected, he insisted that my visits to the hall would do nothing to further the process of my application.
Meanwhile spring had passed well into summer.
At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.
When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.
I could consult this personage on any weekday morning, though not before ten o'clock.
The clerk impressed this upon me: that I should not arrive in the hall before ten o'clock.
When I went for my interview with the director I saw why.
Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.
Cigarette butts littered the floor.
The big fans were going, drawing from the large room the remnants of stale smoke which drifted about in pale strata underneath the ceiling.
I had felt the draft they were making while mounting the stairs.
The staircase itself seemed still to be echoing the heavy footfalls of many men.
I stopped by the counter.
No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.
Past it I could see part part of a desk, a flag in a corner, a rug on the floor.
The director's office.
I rapped my knuckles on the counter.
The director came to the door.
I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.
He was a man in his late forties, with graying hair, of medium height;
he looked dapper in a lightweight summer suit, brown silk tie and green-tinted soft collar.
He wore perforated, white-topped shoes;
they somehow made me expect to see him launch into a vaudeville tapdance routine any moment.
But he came toward me sedately enough, showed me around the counter, offered me a seat inside his office, then walked to a file cabinet and got out my application.
I had the impression that he had read my forms, perhaps several times.
He did not look at them now.
As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.
He spoke, in a voice as immaculate as his appearance.
Why had I registered?
Begging my pardon, he must express his astonishment over seeing a person of my background applying at the hall.
He had looked over my forms and was impressed by what he had seen there;
indeed, my scholastic qualifications were such that he, a college graduate himself, must envy me them.
Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for?
What sort of men I would come into contact with, at the hall?
These questions did not surprise me;
I felt certain that the director, like the afternoon clerk, seldom moved beyond the counter, that the hall, to them, was a jungle, a dark and unwelcome place.
Though I doubted that he would understand me, I told the director my motives for applying.
I had always, I said, hankered after working hard with my hands.
This desire, I went on, growing voluble as my conviction was aroused, had mounted at such a rate recently that I now found its realization necessary not only to my physical but also to my spiritual wellbeing.
To this effect I had already severed all connections which bound me to my former existence.
The flat, hard cap was small, but he thrust it to the back of his head.
Tie him up.
Hell with it.
Before they could guess his intention Rankin stepped forward and swung the guard's own gun against the uncovered head, hard.
The man went over without sound, falling to the bare floor.
Barton said harshly, Why did you do that?
Rankin sneered at him.
What did you want me to do, kiss him?
He dumped me in solitary twice.
Barton caught the lighter man's shoulder and swung him around.
Let's get one thing straight, you and me.
The only reason we brought you was to get Miller out.
If you ever try anything without my orders I'll kill you.
Fred Rankin looked at him.
It seemed to Barton that the green eyes mocked him, the thin-lipped smile held insolence, but he had no time to waste now.
Come on.
Let's move.
They filed out through the guard-room door, into the paved square.
There were three other men within this prison whom Barton would have liked to liberate, but they were in other cell blocks.
There was no chance.
They moved slowly, toward the main gate, following the wall.
There was no moon.
They had chosen this night purposely.
They reached the guard house without alerting the men on the walls above, and Powers slipped through the door.
Two men were on duty inside, playing pinochle, relaxed.
They looked up in surprise as Powers came in.
What are you doing out of the block?
It's Curtiss, he said, naming the man Rankin had hit.
I've got to have help.
They stared at him.
The sergeant in charge climbed to his feet.
What's wrong with him?
He's having some kind of a fit.
The sergeant turned to the door.
As he passed through it Barton shoved his gun against the man's side.
One sound and you're dead.
The sergeant froze.
Powers had not followed.
Powers was covering the remaining guard.
The man half-reached for the cord of the alarm bell.
Powers knocked his arm aside.
Deliberately, with none of Rankin's viciousness, he laid the barrel of his gun alongside the guard's head.
They were free.
Even Barton could not quite believe it.
It had gone without a hitch.
They slid through the wicket in the big gate, ghosted across the dark ground.
Five minutes later they reached the horses.
Barton was relieved to see that Carl Dill and Emmett Foster had brought extra mounts.
He had been worried that with Miller and Rankin added to the escape party they would be short.
No one hurried.
They walked the horses, heading along the river, Barton and Emmett Foster in the lead, seven men riding quietly through the night.
The only thing which would have attracted attention was that two wore the uniform of prison guards, three the striped suits of convicts.
Five miles.
In a small grove against the river they halted, turning deep into the protection of the trees.
Foster had brought extra clothing also.
A good man, Emmett.
He had been one of the original Night Riders, one who had escaped the trial.
It was to him that Barton had sent Carl Dill on Dill's release from the prison.
Clyde Miller was crying softly to himself, shedding his striped suit and fumbling into the nondescript butternut pants, the worn brown shirt.
Kid Boyd was unusually silent, Rankin watchful, a few paces apart.
Barton finished his dressing and extended his hand to Powers.
I won't even try to thank you.
The ex-prison guard was embarrassed.
He said in a studied voice, I didn't do it for you.
I did it for the valley.
You're the only man the Night Riders will follow.
We've been starving and I don't like to starve.
Barton turned away, his eyes falling upon Rankin beside his horse.
Good luck.
The murderer lifted his head.
Meaning you want me to ride out?
You aren't one of us.
There's nothing for you here.
I got no place to go.
Barton hesitated.
He did not trust Rankin, his violent temper, his killer instinct.
But ten years in prison had taught him realities.
They were in a fight, outweighed in both numbers and money.
It was all right to put a bunch of ranchers onto horses, to call them Night Riders, to set out to attack the largest mining combination the country had ever seen if all they wanted was adventure.
But if they really hoped to succeed they needed professionals, men who knew how to use a gun against men, who would match the killers on the other side.
Your choice, he said briefly, and turned to Kid Boyd.
Bury those uniforms so they won't be found.
Then Barton touched Carl Dill's arm and moved off, up the river bank.
He wanted a careful, uninterrupted report from Dill on the conditions in the valley.
They squatted on their heels in the deep mud and Dill found a cigar in his breast pocket, passing it over silently.
He too knew the agony of going for weeks, sometimes months without the solace of tobacco.
Mitchell Barton drew in the fragrance deeply, letting the smoke lie warm and soothing in his throat for a moment before he exhaled.
Through the gloom he could not see the man beside him clearly but he knew him thoroughly.
For his first five years in prison, they had shared a cell.
Carl Dill was neither a rancher nor a valley man.
He had been the auditor for the mining syndicate, and he had stolen fifty thousand dollars of the syndicate's money.
He had done time for the theft.
The one thing they had in common was their hatred.
Both hated Donald Kruger.
It had drawn them together, and since his release from prison Dill had worked tirelessly to effect this night's escape.
He said now, I've got the perfect headquarters set up.
The old Haskell mine.
Mitch Barton knew the place.
Twenty years before a group of Easterners had bought out the Haskell claims in the rocky hills south of Grass Valley.
They had spent a million dollars, carving in a road, putting up buildings, drilling their haulage tunnel.
Then the vein had petered out and the whole project had been abandoned.
The road's washed badly, said Dill, but there's a trail you can get over with a horse.
A company of cavalry couldn't come in there if two men were guarding that trail.
Barton nodded.
How do the valley people feel?
As mad as ever.
But Kruger's men keep them off balance, and they don't trust me.
I'm an outsider.
When they learn you're in the hills though, they'll rally, don't worry about that.
Barton waited for a long moment, then asked the question which lay always uppermost in his mind.
My boy.
Did you find him?
Dill was silent as if he hated to answer, and Barton had a cold, sick feeling of apprehension.
He's in Morgan's Ferry.
Barton half-straightened in surprise.
What's he doing there?
Again Dill hesitated.
Dealing faro.
Dealing faro?
How come?
Your sister-in-law has the faro bank in Cap Ayres' saloon.
Barton cursed under his breath.
After another long pause he asked, How many people know who they are?
Everyone.
Your cousin Finley saw to that.
He's quite a rat, you know.
He sold out to Kruger's men.
He's informed them of everything you've ever written him.
He wants your ranch.
Barton stood up.
He said tensely, All right.
Let's go get the boy.
Dill had come up also.
I was afraid of this.
I almost didn't tell you.
If you hadn't I'd have killed you.
Dill's voice tightened.
But you can't ride into the Ferry.
That's what they'll expect you to do.
They'll be there waiting for you.
I understand how you feel about the child.
The hell you do.
Barton's voice was rougher than Dill had ever heard it.
I never saw him.
My wife died in childbirth after I was sent away.
I can't leave him there.
Donald Kruger would like nothing better than to hold him as hostage, and I wouldn't entrust a snake to his tender care.
I've got to get the boy.
Let's ride.
Chapter two
Barton's men cut the telegraph wires in half a dozen places, carrying away whole sections to make repairs more difficult.
It was over an hour before their escape was discovered, but still the news that Barton was free flashed across the central portion of the state.
It reached Donald Kruger in his massive home in Burlingame.
It reached the mines at North San Juan and Bloomfield.
It brought men out of bed and sent them into hurried conferences.
For everyone involved knew that the whole valley was a powder keg, and Mitchell Barton the fuse which could send it into explosive violence.
Creighton Hague sat in his office above the Ione pit.
The office was of logs, four rooms, each heated by an iron stove.
The building was dwarfed by the scene outside.
There a dozen giant monitors played their seventy-five-foot jets of water against the huge seam of tertiary gravel which was the mountainside.
The gravel was the bed of an ancient river, buckled in some prehistoric upheaval of earth.
It was partially cemented by ages and pressure, yet it crumpled before the onslaught of the powerful streams, the force of a thousand fire hoses, and with the gold it held washed down through the long sluices.
A million dollars' of gold a month.
A million tons of rock and soil and brush.
The monitors ran twenty-four hours each day.
Their roar, like the swelling volume of a hundred tornadoes could be heard for miles.
Hague, like all who worked near the pits, was partly deafened from the constant assault against his eardrums.
He was a big man, wearing a neat flannel shirt against the cold foothill air.
Fat showed in loose rolls beneath the shirt.
Ten years older than Mitch Barton, he had clawed his way up from mucker in the pits to manager of the operation.
He was proud of his accomplishments, proud of his job, proud that Donald Kruger and his associates trusted him.
He lived and breathed for the mining company.
No man could have reached his spot nor held it without being ruthless, and Hague had made a virtue of ruthlessness all of his life.
There came a ghost of noise at the office door and Hague swung to see Kodyke in the entrance from the outer room.
Hague had never accustomed himself to Kodyke.
The man was tall, thin, with a narrow face and a too-large nose.
The eyes always held Hague, eyes of a dead man, lidless as a lizard's, with the fixed intensity of a cobra.
Even Hague was repelled by the machinelike deadliness that was Kodyke.
He knew nothing about the man's history.
Kodyke had appeared at the mine one day bearing a letter from Kruger.
Kodyke was to head the dread company police.
He ran the change rooms.
He threw out the hi-graders.
He supervised the cleanups and handled the shipments of raw gold which each week went out to San Francisco.
Hague squeezed down his uneasy dislike.
He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and drew out a tintype.
This is Mitchell Barton.
He broke out of Folsom last night.
Apparently he bribed one of the guards.
We want him back there or we want him dead.
Kodyke took the picture in a lean hand, studying it thoughtfully.
Dangerous?
Dangerous, yes.
You know how the ranchers in the valley are.
They blame us for all their troubles.
Ten years ago they blew up some of our ditches.
It cost us a hundred thousand dollars and thirty days lost time to fix them.
We don't want Barton's Night Riders loose again.
The gunman nodded, slipping the picture into his breast pocket, saying nothing.
Normally Hague wasted no words, but now he found himself unable to stop their flow although he knew Kodyke was aware of all he said.
If she sensed any unusual preoccupation on the part of her mother, she did not comment upon it.
After they had finished eating, Melissa took Sprite the kitten under her arm--so that Auntie Grace can teach it about the whistle--and climbed into the station wagon beside her mother.
She had offered to walk, but Pamela knew she would not feel comfortable about her child until she had personally confided her to the care of the little pink woman who chose to be called Auntie.
When they reached their neighbor's house, Pamela said a few polite words to Grace and kissed Melissa lightly on the forehead, the impulse prompted by a stray thought--of the type to which she was frequently subject these days--that they might never see one another again.
Then she turned the station wagon around and headed it back down the hill, with the village as her ostensible destination.
As she drove, she thought about her plan.
It was really quite simple.
So simple, in fact, that it might even work--although Pamela, now, in her new frame of mind, was careful not to pretend too much assurance.
That mistake, she thought, had cost her dearly these past few days, and she wanted to avoid falling into any more of the traps that the mountain might set for her.
She must be cautious so as not to alert the scheming forest.
When the station wagon drew abreast of the dusty dirt road that led up to the porch of the Culver house, Pamela turned the wheel, guiding the car to its familiar parking spot close to the house, and stopped.
All of her movements were careful and methodical, partaking of the stealth of a criminal who has plotted his felony for months in advance and knows exactly which step to take next in the course of the final execution of his crime.
She locked the ignition, removed the keys, stepped out of the car and went into the house.
Here, she dropped the keys on a small table beside the door and went upstairs to her bedroom.
On her bureau lay a small, brass ornament of simple design and faded engraving--an object which, Pamela believed now, had been the property of her great-grandfather, Major Hiram Munroe Culver.
He had belonged to this land and, perhaps, had desecrated it--and this was the only material symbol that remained of him.
If she, Pamela, were being held responsible for his crimes, then hers must be the final act of expiation.
She would return this symbol to the mountain, as one pours seed back into the soil every Spring or as ancient fertility cults demand annual human sacrifice.
Slowly and thoughtfully, she slipped the ornament into the pocket of her slacks, moved down the stairs and out of the house.
There was only one place where the mountain might receive her--that unnamed, unnameable pool harbored in its secret bosom.
Atonement, if atonement were possible, could only be made at that sacred, sacrificial basin.
It was there that she would have to enact her renunciation, beg forgiveness.
Perhaps it was insane, Pamela thought.
Perhaps it was all a vividly conceived dream.
But she was caught in it, and she faced the terrible possibility that, if it were a dream, it was one from which she might never awaken.
Facing the forest now, she who had not dared to enter it before, walked between two trees at random and headed in what she believed was the direction of the pool.
She remembered little of her previous journey there with Grace, and she could but hope that her dedication to her mission would enable her to accomplish it.
The forest was open and freely welcoming, extending an enchanted hand.
The ground was covered with soft pine needles and the slope was gentle.
Birds chirped and chattered in the trees and the sun, all dewy-eyed and soft, caressed her shoulders warmly from time to time.
It was not, thought Pamela, such an evil place after all.
No wonder Melissa responded so completely to its beckoning.
Perhaps she had no reason to fear these trees that whispered their secrets above her head as she passed.
Was it not possible, after all, that the forest was in league with her and her child that its sympathy lay with the Culvers that she had erred in failing to understand this?
Pamela felt calm and peaceful as she walked along.
The slight flutter that had disturbed the motion of her heart when she entered the forest was gone now, and even the dim groves of trees through which she occasionally passed did not reawaken her fear.
She regarded them as signs that she was nearing the glen she sought, and she was glad to at last be doing something positive in her unenunciated, undefined struggle with the mountain and its darkling inhabitants.
Having persisted too long in deliberate ignorance and denial of the forces that threatened her, Pamela was relieved now to admit their potency and to be taking definite steps toward grappling with them.
A few days ago, she would have thought such an expedition as this utterly ridiculous;
today, on the contrary, it seemed utterly reasonable.
She did not pause to consider what she would do if her plan should fail;
she directed all of her mental and physical energy toward achieving this one goal.
If, as she walked, her steps fumbled from time to time, she chose to ignore that omen.
If the slope grew steeper and the groves more dim, she tried not to heed.
Success depended upon maintaining her equanimity;
she must be poised and proud and unafraid in order to prove to the mountain that she was in earnest.
The forest took on an impersonal aspect.
It did not care what sort of person prowled its woods, plucked at its bark or stripped the berries from its bushes.
Unconcerned, indifferent, unmotivated, the forest was simply there--fighting man's depredations with more abundant growth and man's follies with its own musical evening laughter.
Red man or white man, pacifist or killer, the forest would accept them all--knowing that it could thrive equally well on slaughter and beneficence;
knowing that its ageless mass would always dwarf the short span of time allotted to any man.
Pamela shook her head.
She must not think about time.
That was another one of those traps.
In her grim pursuit of tranquillity, Pamela focused her thoughts on her husband.
If, when this was all over, she found the words to tell him about it, she wondered if he would ever understand.
How could he comprehend her need when he himself was innocent?
Indian ghosts would not impinge upon his nights, nor would his days be haunted by the dimly-outlined, ill-conceived figure of her benighted ancestor.
His bright, daylight mind would whistle away such images;
they would not dare to face his scoffing.
Pamela was glad Jim was nowhere near.
His presence would have interfered with her duty.
The mountainside grew steeper and she slipped once or twice on the smooth pine needles.
The trees huddled more closely together, their limbs and leaves intertwined in a coarse curtain against the sun.
Bushes and vines abetted the rocks in forming thorny detours for the struggling stranger, and without the direct light of the sun to act as compass, Pamela could no longer be positive of her direction.
Nevertheless, she continued to move upward.
She was sure she would reach the pool by climbing, and she clung to that belief despite the increasing number of obstacles.
The forest had become an alien world where she strove, alone, unprotected, unguided, to deal with whatever hindrances were offered.
It was a bold, dark castle of pine boughs that stood like a medieval fortress, eclipsing the sun and human time.
At one and the same time, she was within it but still searching for the drawbridge that would give her entry.
Silence came into the forest--a solid being that clapped its hand over the murmuring mouths of the birds and the whispered comfort of the trees.
Silence walked at Pamela's side, its presence numbingly close, yet too far for her to hear.
Silence stood in front of her, waiting, and in back of her, blocking her retreat.
She stumbled over the root of a tree that protruded maliciously above the earth.
In spite of her attempt to preserve her balance, she fell, bruising her arm on a naked stone.
For a moment, she could not catch her breath and then, her breath returning in short, frightened spasms, she lifted herself to her feet laboriously.
She started to brush the dirt and bits of leaves off her clothes.
Her arm bled slightly, and the offended skin cried out in pain.
She looked around.
She was bewildered.
She seemed to have come such a long distance--too far for her destination which had wilfully been swallowed up in the greedy gloom of the trees.
She stood quite still, trying to focus upon a direction in which to turn, a path to follow, a clue to guide her.
She was standing in a thick grove.
The trees were crowded so closely together that their branches overlapped, virtually shutting out the sun completely.
The earth smelled moist and pungent as it might in a cave deprived of the cleansing effect of the sun's rays.
She had the feeling that, under the mouldering leaves, there would be the bodies of dead animals, quietly decaying and giving their soil back to the mountain.
The thought made Pamela shudder.
A terrible chill swept through the grove.
Not a breeze exactly, but a pocket of icy air that settled with a loathsome familiarity upon the deep confines of the grove, catching Pamela in a leering embrace.
There was a peculiar density about it, a thick substance that could be sensed but never identified, never actually perceived.
Where before had she felt or dreamt or imagined such a scene?
She already knew this unwholesome, chilling atmosphere that was somehow grotesquely alive.
It enclosed her clammy hands and twined around her ankles.
It crept into the open neck of her blouse and slid down her body, seeping into her flesh through all the quivering pores of her skin.
It crawled across her breasts, suffocating the life in her nipples.
It circled her thighs, exploring with its icy tentacles.
It entered her body with the ghastly intimacy of an incubus, and its particles, spreading, creeping, crawling, joined themselves into steel bands that constricted her knees so tightly that they ached;
stifled her lungs so that her breath came in harsh gasps;
clutched her throat and sucked up the moisture in her mouth so that her tongue was dry and hard and stuck to the roof of her mouth and her teeth were clenched together in the rigid fixture of her jaws.
She had to get away from here before this demoniac possession swallowed up the liquid of her eyes and sank into the fibers of her brain, depriving her of reason and sight.
But she did not know which way to go.
The shadows of the trees engulfed her, foreclosing every possible exit from the grove.
She had been snared here by a vile sensuality that writhed around her throat in ever-tightening circles.
She could not scream, for even if a sound could take shape within her parched mouth, who would hear, who would listen?
Does the mountain listen?
Pamela groped blindly.
She had to escape.
She had to move in some direction--any direction that would take her away from this evil place.
She thrust forward through the shadows and the trees that resisted her and tried to fling her back.
Her own body protested, aching painfully where the blood in her veins had congealed, where cold demon wisps still clung and caressed.
Every movement she made seemed unnecessarily noisy.
Twigs cracked loudly under her feet;
bushes swished and scratched at her slacks;
tree branches snapped as she pushed them ruthlessly away from her.
Miraculously, she found exactly the right statement.
She began it deliberately, so that none of her words would be lost on him.
I want to tell you something Thomas DeMontez Lord.
I'm well aware that you've got a pedigree as long as my leg, and that I don't amount to anything.
But --
But it don't matter a-tall, Lord supplied fondly.
To me you'll always be the girl o' my dreams, an' the sweetest flower that grows.
Beaming idiotically, he pooched out his lips and attempted to kiss her.
She yanked away from him furiously.
You shut up!
Shu-tt up-pp!
I've got something to say to you, and by God you're going to listen.
Do you hear me?
You're going to listen!
Lord nodded agreeably.
He said he wanted very much to listen.
He knew that anything a brainy little lady like her had to say would be plumb important, as well as pleasin' to the ear, and he didn't want to miss a word of it.
So would she mind speaking a little louder?
I think you stink, Tom Lord!
I think you're mean and hateful and stupid, and--louder?
Said Joyce.
Uh-huh.
So I can hear you while I'm checkin' the car.
Looks like we might be in for a speck of trouble.
He opened the door and got out.
He waited at the car side for a moment, looking down at her expectantly.
Well?
Wasn't you goin' to say somethin'?
Then, helpfully, as she merely stared at him in weary silence, Maybe you could write it down for me, huh?
Print it in real big letters, an' I can cipher it out later.
Aah, go on, she said.
Just go the hell on.
He grinned, nodded, and walked around to the front of the car.
Lips pursed mournfully, he stared down at its crazily sagging left side.
Then he hunkered down on the heels of his handmade boots, peered into the orderly chaos of axle, shock absorber, and spring.
He went prone on his stomach, the better to pursue his examination.
After a time, he straightened again, brushing the red Permian dust from his hands, slapping it from his six-dollar levis and his tailored, twenty-five-dollar shirt.
He wore no gun--a strange ommission for a peace officer in this country.
Never, he'd once told Joyce, had he encountered any man or situation that called for a gun.
And he really feels that way, she thought.
That's really all he's got, all he is.
Just a big pile of self-confidence in an almost teensy package.
If I could make myself feel the same way
She studied him hopefully, yearningly;
against the limitless background of sky and wasteland it was easy to confirm her analysis.
Here in the God-forsaken place, the westerly end of nowhere, Tom Lord looked almost insignificant, almost contemptible.
He was handsome, with his coal-black hair and eyes, his fine-chiseled features.
But she'd known plenty of handsomer guys, and, conceding his good looks, what was there left?
He wasn't a big man;
rather on the medium side.
Neither was he very powerful of build.
He could move very quickly, she knew (although he seldom found occasion to do so), but he was more wiry than truly strong.
And his relatively small hands and feet gave him an almost delicate appearance.
Just nothing, she told herself.
Just so darned sure of himself that he puts the Indian sign on everyone.
But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!
He caught her eye, came back around the car with the boot-wearer;
teetering, half-mincing walk.
Why did these yokels still wear boots, anyway, when most had scarcely sat a horse in years?
He slid in at her side, tucked a cigar into his mouth, and politely proffered one to her.
Oh, cut it out, Tom!
She snapped.
Can't you stop that stupid clowning for even a minute?
This ain't your brand, maybe, Lord suggested.
Or maybe you just don't feel like a cigar?
I feel like getting back to town, that's what I feel like!
Now, are you going to take me or am I supposed to walk?
Might get there faster walkin', Lord drawled, seein' as how I got a busted front spring.
On the other hand, howsomever, maybe you wouldn't either.
I figger it's probl'y a sixty-five-mile walk, and I c'n maybe get this spring patched up in a couple of hours.
How--with what?
There's nothing out here but rattlesnakes.
Now, ain't it the truth?
Lord laughed with secret amusement.
Not a danged thing but rattlesnakes, so I reckon I'll get the boss rattler to help me.
Tom!
For God's sake!
Looky.
He pointed, cutting her off.
See that wildcat?
She saw it then, the distant derrick of the wildcat--a test well in unexplored country.
And even with her limited knowledge of such things, she knew that the car could be repaired there;
sufficiently, at least, to get them back into town.
A wildcatter had to be prepared for almost any emergency.
He had to depend on himself, since he was invariably miles and hours away from others.
Well, let's get going, she said impatiently.
I--She broke off, frowning.
What did you mean by that rattlesnake gag?
Getting the boss rattlesnake to help you?
Why, I meant what I said, Lord declared.
What else would I mean, anyways?
She looked at him, lips compressed.
Then, with a shrug of pretended indifference, she took a compact from her purse and went through the motions of fixing her make-up.
In his mood, it was the best way to handle him;
that is, to show no curiosity whatsoever.
Otherwise, she would be baited into a tantrum--teased and provoked until she lost control of herself, and thus lost still another battle in the maddening struggle of Tom Lord Vs. Joyce Lakewood.
The car lurched along at a snail's crawl, the left-front mudguard banging and scraping against the tire, occasionally scraping against the road itself.
Lord whistled tunelessly as he fought the steering wheel.
He seemed very pleased with himself, as though some intricate scheme was working out exactly as he had planned.
Along with this self-satisfaction, however, Joyce sensed a growing tension.
It poured out of him like an electric current, a feeling that the muscles and nerves of his fine-drawn body were coiling for action, and that that action would be all that he anticipated.
Joyce had seen him like this once before--more than once, actually, but on one particularly memorable occasion.
That was the day that he had practically mopped up the main street of Big Sands with Aaron McBride, field boss for the Highlands Oil & Gas Company.
Tom had been laying for Aaron McBride for a long time, just waiting to catch him out of line.
McBride gave him his opportunity when he showed up in town with a pistol on his hip.
He had a legitimate reason for wearing it.
It was payday for Highlands, and he was packing a lot of money back into the oil fields.
Moreover, as long as the weapon was carried openly, the sheriff's office had made no previous issue of it.
So what's this all about?
He demanded, when Lord confronted him.
I'm not the only man in town with a gun, or the only one without a permit.
It was the wrong thing to say.
By failing to do as he was told instantly--to take out a permit or return the gun to his car--he had played into Lord's hands.
The trouble was that he had virtually had to protest.
The deputy had forced him to by his manner of accosting him.
So, How about it?
He said.
Why single me out on this permit deal?
Well, I'll tell you about that, Lord told him.
We aim t' be see-lective, y'know?
Don't like to bother no one unless we have to, which I figger we do, in your case.
Figger we got to be plumb careful with any of you Highlands big shots.
McBride reddened.
He himself had heard that there was gangster money in the company, but that had nothing to do with him.
He was an honest man doing a hard job, and the implication that he was anything else was unbearable.
Look, Lord, he said hoarsely.
I know you've got a grudge against me, and maybe I can't blame you.
You think that Highlands swindled you and I helped 'em do it.
But you're all wrong, man!
I'm no lawyer.
I just do what I'm told, and --
uh-huh.
An' that could mean trouble with a fella that's workin' for crooks.
So you get rid of that pistol right now, Mis-ter McBride.
You do that or take you out a permit right now.
McBride couldn't do either, of course.
Not immediately, as the deputy demanded.
Not without a face-saving respite of at least a few minutes.
To do so would make his job well-nigh impossible.
Oil-field workers were a rough-tough lot.
How could he exert authority over them--make them toe the line, as he had to--if he knuckled under to this small-town clown?
I'll get around to it a little later, he mumbled desperately.
Just as soon as I go to the bank, and --
huh-uh.
Now, Mis-ter McBride, said Lord, and he laid a firmly restraining hand on the field boss's arm.
It was strictly the deputy's game, but McBride had gone too far to throw in.
Now, he could only play the last card in what was probably the world's coldest deck.
He flung off Lord's hand and attempted to push past him, inadvertently shoving him into a storefront.
It was practically the last move that McBride made of his own volition.
Lord slugged him in the stomach, so hard that the organ almost pressed against his spine.
Then, as he doubled, gasping, vomiting the breakfast he had so lately eaten, Lord straightened him with an uppercut.
A rabbit punch redoubled him.
And then there was a numbing blow to the heart, and another gut-flattening blow to the stomach
But he couldn't keep up with them.
No more could he defend himself against them.
He seemed to be fighting not one man but a dozen.
And he could no longer think of face-saving, of honor, but only of escape.
Why, he's going to kill me, he thought wildly.
I meant him no harm.
I've given willful hurt to no man.
I was just doing my job, just following orders, and for that he's going to kill me.
Beat me to death in front of a hundred people.
Somehow more terrible than the certainty that he was about to die was the knowledge that Lord would probably not suffer for it: the murder would go unpunished.
He, McBride, would be cited as in the wrong, and he, Lord, would go scot-free, an officer who had only done his duty, though perhaps too energetically.
McBride staggered into the street, flopped sprawling in the stinging dust.
Fear-maddened, fleeing the lengthening shadow of death, he scrambled to his feet again.
He couldn't see;
he was long past the point of coherent thinking.
Dimly, he heard laughter, hoots of derision, but he could not read the racket properly.
He could not grasp that Lord had withdrawn from the fight minutes ago, and that his leaden arms were flailing at nothing but the air.
He hated them too much to understand--the people of this isolated law-unto-itself world that was Lord's world.
This, he was sure, was the way they would act;
laughing at a dying man, laughing as a man was beaten to death.
And nothing would be done about it.
Nothing unless
Donna!
Donna, his young wife, the girl who was both daughter and wife to him.
Donna was like he was.
She lived by the rules, never compromising, never blinded or diverted by circumstance.
And Donna would --
When he regained consciousness he was in Lord's house, in the office of Doctor Lord, the deputy's deceased father.
The Brannon outfit--known as the Slash-B because of its brand--reached Hondo Creek before sundown.
The herd was watered and then thrown onto a broad grass flat which was to be the first night's bedground.
Two of the new hands, a Mexican named Jose Amado and a kid known only as Laredo, were picked for the first trick of riding night herd.
The rest of the crew offsaddled their mounts and turned them into the remuda.
They got tin cups of coffee from the big pot on the coosie's fire, rolled and lighted brown-paper cigarettes, lounged about.
There was some idle talk, a listless discussion of this or that small happening during the day's drive.
But they deliberately avoided the one subject that had them all curious: the failure of the boss's wife and son to join the outfit.
It especially bothered the older hands.
The cook, Mateo Garcia, had arrived there long before the herd.
He'd started a fire and put coffee on, and now was busy at the work board of his chuck wagon.
He was readying a batch of sourdough biscuits for the Dutch oven.
Supper would be ready within the hour.
The Maguire family was setting up a separate camp nearby.
Billie had unhitched the mules from both Tom Brannon's and his father's wagon.
Hank had gathered wood for a cookfire, and his wife was busy at it now.
Conchita kept an eye on the twins and little Elena, trying to keep them from falling into the creek by which they persisted in playing.
Conchita nagged at the younger children, attempting without success to keep her thoughts off Tom Brannon.
Tom Brannon had caught up with the outfit shortly after the Maguires joined it, which had been at midday.
He'd come alone, without his wife and child.
He'd been in an angry mood: Conchita had thought his face almost ugly with the anger in him.
She wondered what had taken place in town, between him and his wife.
She wished that she could talk to her mother about it.
Not that her mother knew what had happened, but they could speculate upon it.
But her mother would rebuke her if she mentioned it, and say that it was none of her concern.
Pat, get out of that creek!
You too, Sean!
Elena, you'll get mud all over your dress!
Even as she called to the children, Conchita let her gaze seek Tom Brannon.
Tomas, she called him--as the Mexican hands did.
He was in earnest conversation with her father and the old vaquero, Luis Hernandez.
Whatever they are talking about?
Conchita wondered.
It bothered her that she probably would never know.
Certainly, she wouldn't dare ask her father afterward.
He would tell her not to pry into grownups' affairs--as though she were a little kid like Elena!
At the moment, the three men were not saying much of anything.
They were sitting on their heels, rider-fashion, over by the still empty calf wagon.
Brannon was hunkered down with his broad back to the left rear wheel, with the other two facing him.
He held a cigarette in his right hand.
It was burning away, forgotten.
His face was clouded with unhappiness.
He'd told Hank Maguire and Luis Hernandez about his wife's refusal to come with him and about what he now intended to do.
They were considering it gravely, neither seeming to like what he planned.
Finally Hernandez said, I could offer you advice, Tomas, but you wouldn't heed it.
Let's hear it, anyway.
Wait a little while.
Let Senora Brannon live in her father's house for a time.
Give her time to miss you.
Maybe she will then come to you.
After all, you want the senora as much as you want the boy.
You need her even more than you need him.
She won't change her mind, Brannon said.
John Clayton will see to that.
But after a time away from you.
A year, Luis?
Five?
Ten?
How long should I wait?
Maybe in a year, Tomas.
In a year she'll like living in Clayton's house too much to come back to me, Brannon said flatly.
And the boy will be too much under his influence by then.
I've got to take Danny away from Clayton before I lose him altogether.
Hell, in a year or five or ten, the boy will have forgotten me--his own father!
But to take him and leave his mother behind is not good.
In my place, you'd follow such advice as you give me?
Hernandez looked suddenly uncertain.
That I can't answer, for I can't imagine something like this happening to me.
Maybe I should withdraw my advice--no?
Brannon looked at Hank Maguire.
And you?
What would you do in my place?
Hank shook his head.
I don't know, Tom.
Like Luis, I can't see something like this happening to me.
With Maria and me, there's never any problem.
Where I go, she goes--and the kids with us.
You're going to need your woman.
And the boy will need his mother.
If you take the one, you'd better take both.
Brannon shook his head.
I won't force Beth to come against her will.
But I'm going to have my son.
They were silent for a little while, each looking glum.
Finally Luis Hernandez said, What must be, must be.
I am with you, of course, Tomas.
And Hank Maguire added, So am I, Tom.
All right, Brannon said, rising.
We'll ride out as soon as we've had chuck.
Brannon timed it so that they rode in an hour after nightfall.
They had for cover both darkness and a summer storm.
During much of the fifteen-mile ride they had watched a lurid display of lightning in the sky to the east.
Later, they'd heard the rumble of thunder and then, just outside Rockfork, they ran into rain.
Those who had slickers donned them.
The others put on old coats or ducking jackets, whichever they carried behind their saddle cantles.
There were seven of them, enough for a show of strength--to run a bluff.
It was to be nothing more than that.
There was to be no gunplay.
If the bluff failed and they ran into trouble, Brannon had told the others, they would withdraw--and he would come after his son another time.
He didn't want to put himself outside the law.
With him were Hank Maguire, Luis Hernandez, and Luis's son Pedro.
The Ramirez brothers were also along.
The seventh man was Red Hogan, a wiry little puncher with a wild streak and a liking for hell-raising.
They were all good men.
It was dark early, because of the storm.
Also because of the storm, the streets of Rockfork were deserted.
Lighted windows glowed jewel-bright through the downpour.
They reined in before the town marshal's office, a box-sized building on Main Street.
A lamp burned inside, but Brannon, peering through the window, saw that the office was empty.
He'd hoped to catch Jesse Macklin there.
Probably just stepped out, he said.
Maybe to have supper.
Red, come along.
The rest of you wait here.
With Red Hogan, he rode to the Welcome Cafe.
Hogan got down from the saddle and had a look inside.
Not there, he said, getting back onto his horse.
Maybe he's at the hotel.
They rode to the Rockfork House, a little farther along the opposite side of the street.
They reined in there, Brannon remaining in the saddle while Hogan went to look for Jesse Macklin in the hotel dining room.
Brannon had no slicker.
He'd put on his old brown corduroy coat and it was already soaked.
But he felt no physical discomfort.
He was only vaguely aware of the sluicing rain.
He hardly noticed the blue-green flashes of lightning and the hard claps of thunder.
Hogan reappeared, stopped on the hotel porch, lifted a hand in signal.
Brannon dismounted and climbed the steps.
He's finished eating, Hogan said.
Sitting with a cup of coffee now.
It shouldn't be long.
It seemed long, at least to Tom Brannon.
He and Hogan waited by the door, one to either side.
Macklin was the third man to come out, and he came unhurriedly.
He was puffing on a cigar, and he was turning up his coat collar against the rain.
It was not until he moved across the porch that he became aware of them, and then it was too late.
They closed in fast, kept him from reaching inside his coat for his gun.
Just come along, Brannon told him.
Don't start anything you can't finish.
Now, listen--Macklin began.
We'll talk over at your office.
Brannon, I warn you!
Let's go, Marshal, Brannon said, and took him by the arm.
Hogan gripped the lawman's other arm.
They escorted him down from the porch and through the rain to his office.
The other five Slash-B men followed them inside, crowding the small room.
His face was stiff with anger when they let go of his arms.
He looked at each of them in turn, Brannon last of all.
I'll remember you, he said.
Every last one of you.
As for you, Brannon --
Put your gun on the desk, Marshal.
Now, hold on, damn it;
I won't --
Red Hogan's patience ran out.
He lifted the skirt of Macklin's coat, took his gun from its holster, tossed it onto the desk.
Too much fooling around, he said.
Don't press your luck, badge-toter.
Brannon said, Now the key to the lockup, Marshal.
Key?
Macklin said.
What for?
Can't you guess?
Brannon said.
We're putting you where you won't come to harm.
Come on--the key.
Get it out!
Damned if I will.
Brannon, you've assaulted a law officer and --
They moved in on him, crowded him from all sides.
No man laid a hand on him, but the threat of violence was there.
His face took on a sudden pallor, became beaded with sweat, and he seemed to have trouble with his breathing.
He held out a moment longer, then his nerve gave under the pressure.
He swore, and said, All right.
It's here in my pocket.
Get it out, Brannon ordered.
Then, as Macklin obeyed: Now let's go out back.
Resignedly, Macklin turned to the back door.
They followed him into the rain and across to the squat stone building fifty feet to the rear.
The door of the lockup was of oak planks and banded with strap iron.
It was secured by an oversized padlock.
Macklin balked again, not wanting to unlock and open the door.
They crowded him in that threatening way once more, forced him to give in.
Once the door was open, they crowded him inside the dark building.
He was uttering threats in a low but savage voice when they closed and padlocked the door.
They returned to the street, mounted their horses, rode through the rain to the big house on Houston Street.
Its windows glowed with lamplight.
Deputy Marshal Luke Harper still stood guard on the veranda, a forlorn, scarecrowish figure in the murky dark.
He came to the edge of the veranda, peered down at them with his hand on his gun.
Don't try it, Brannon told him, dismounting and starting up the steps with his men following.
Don't get yourself killed for something that doesn't concern you.
He strode past the now frightened man, entered the house.
Miguel and Arturo Ramirez remained on the veranda to keep Harper from interfering.
The others followed Brannon inside.
They trailed him across the wide hallway to the parlor, four roughly garbed and tough-looking men who probably had never before ventured into such a house.
They brought to it all the odors that clung to men like themselves, that of their own sweat, of campfire smoke, of horses and cattle.
They tracked mud on the oaken floor, on the carpet.
Their presence fouled the elegance of that room.
And their arrival caught John Clayton and Charles Ansley off guard.
The author of the anonymous notes seemed to be all-knowing.
For men who had left cattle alone after getting their first notices had received no second.
But the day of the deadline came and passed, and the men who had scoffed at the warnings laughed with satisfaction.
For, with a single exception, nothing had happened to them.
The exception was an Iron Mountain settler named William Lewis.
After walking out to his corral that morning, he'd been amazed to see the dust puff up in front of his feet.
A split second later, the distant crack of a rifle had sounded.
He'd mounted up immediately and raced with a revolver ready toward the spot from which he'd estimated the shot had come.
But he had found all of the thickets and points of cover deserted.
There had been no sign of a rifleman and no track or trace to show that anyone had been near.
Lewis was a man who had made a full-time job of cow stealing.
He hadn't even pretended to be farming his spread.
His land had never been plowed.
He had done his rustling openly and boasted about it.
He had received both first and second anonymous notices, and each time he had accused his neighbors of writing them.
He had cursed at them and threatened them.
He was a man, those neighbors testified later, who didn't have a friend in the world.
William Lewis made the rounds of all who lived near him again, that August morning after a bullet landed at his feet, and once more he accused and threatened everyone.
I'll be ready next time!
He raged.
I'll be shootin' right back.
He had his chance the very next morning, for exactly the same thing happened again.
This time Lewis had his own rifle in his hands, and he threw some answering fire back at the mysterious far-off shot, then spent most of the day searching out the area.
He found nothing, but he still refused to give up and move out.
Just let me meet up with that damned bushwhackin' coward face-to-face!
He exploded.
That's all I ask!
He never got that chance.
For the unseen, ghostlike rifleman aimed a little higher the third time.
A bullet smashed directly into the center of William Lewis' chest.
He slumped against a log fence rail, then tried to lift himself.
Two more shots followed in quick succession, dropping him limp and huddled on the ground.
An inquest was held, and after a good deal of testimony about the anonymous notes, the county coroner estimated that the shooting had been done from a distance of 300 yards.
Rumors of the offer Tom Horn had made at the Stockgrowers' Association meeting had leaked out by then, and as a grand jury investigation of the murder got underway, the prosecuting attorney, a Colonel Baird, ordered that the tall stock detective be summoned for questioning.
It took some time to locate Horn.
He was finally found in the Bates Hole region of Natrona County, two counties away.
Prosecutor Baird immediately assumed he was hiding out there after the shooting and began preparing an indictment.
But that indictment was never made.
For Tom Horn, it turned out, had a number of rancher and cowboy witnesses ready and willing to swear with straight faces that he had been in Bates Hole the day of the killing.
The former scout's alibi couldn't be shaken.
The authorities had to release him.
He immediately rode on to Cheyenne, threw a ten-day drinking spree and dropped some very strong hints among friends.
Dead center at three hundred yards, that coroner said!
He'd grin.
Three shots in that fella 'fore he hit the ground!
You reckon there's two men in this state can shoot like that?
Publicly, he denied everything.
Privately, he created and magnified an image of himself as a hired assassin.
For a blood-chilling ring of terror to the very sound of his name was the tool he needed for the job he'd promised to do.
Tom Horn was soon back at work, giving his secret employers their money's worth.
A good many beef-hungry settlers were accepting the death of William Lewis as proof that the warning notes were not idle threats.
The company herds were being raided less often, and cabins and soddies all over the range were standing deserted.
But there were other homesteaders who passed the Lewis murder off as a personal grudge killing, the work of one of his neighbors.
The rustling problem was by no means solved.
Even in the very area where the shooting had been done, cattle were still disappearing.
For less than a dozen miles from the unplowed land of the dead man lived another settler who had ignored the warnings that his existence might be foreclosed on--a blatant and defiant rustler named Fred Powell.
Fred was mighty crude about the way he took in cattle his own hired man, Andy Ross, mentioned later.
Everyone knew it, but he sort of acted like he didn't care who knew it--even after them notes came, even after he'd heard about Lewis, even after he'd been shot at a couple o' times hisself!
On the morning of September 10, 1895, Powell and Ross rose at dawn and began their day's work.
Haying time was close at hand, and they needed some strong branches to repair a hay rack.
Harnessing a team to a buckboard, they drove out to a willow-lined creek about a half-mile off, then climbed down and began chopping.
Andy Ross had just started swinging an ax at his second willow when the distant blast of a rifle sounded.
He looked around in surprise, then noticed that Fred Powell was clutching his chest.
The hired man ran over to help his boss.
My God, I'm shot!
Powell gasped.
And he collapsed and died instantly.
Ross had no intention of searching for the assassin.
He heaved the dead man onto the buckboard, yelled and lashed at the team and got out of there fast.
But he brought back the sheriff and several deputies, and to the lawmen the entire affair seemed a repetition of the Lewis killing.
A detailed scouring of the entire area revealed nothing beyond a ledge of rocks that might have been the rifleman's hiding place.
There were no tracks of either hoofs or boots.
Not even an empty cartridge case could be found.
Once again, Tom Horn was the first and most likely suspect, and he was brought in for questioning immediately.
Once again, he shook his head, kept his face expressionless and his voice very calm, and had a strongly supported alibi ready.
Later, riding in for some lusty enjoyment of the liquor and professional ladies of Cheyenne, he laid claim to the killing with the vague insinuations he made.
Exterminatin' cow thieves is just a business proposition with me, he'd blandly announce.
And I sort o' got a corner on the market.
Tom, a friend asked him once, how come you bushwhacked them rustlers?
They wouldn't o' stood no chance with you in a plain, straight-out shoot-down.
He had lots of friends, then as always.
Even as he became widely known as a professional killer, nearly every cowboy and rancher in Wyoming seemed proud to call him a friend.
No man's name brought more cheers when it was announced in a rodeo.
Well, he explained, s'posin' you was a nester swingin' the long rope?
Which would you be most scairt of--a dry-gulchin' or a shoot-down?
Yeah, I can see that, the friend was forced to agree.
But well, it just don't seem sportin' somehow!
Sportin'!
The tall sunburnt rustler-hunter stared in amazement.
Sportin'!
He echoed again in soft wonder.
I seen a lot o' things in my time.
I found a trooper once the Apache had spread-eagled on an ant hill, and another time we ran across some teamsters they'd caught, tied upside down on their own wagon wheels over little fires until their brains was exploded right out o' their skulls.
I heard o' Texas cattlemen wrappin' a cow thief up in green hides and lettin' the sun shrink 'em and squeeze him to death.
But there's one thing I never seen or heard of, one thing I just don't think there is, and that's a sportin' way o' killin' a man!
After the first two murders, the warning notes were rarely ignored.
The lesson had been learned.
The examples were plain.
When Fred Powell's brother-in-law, Charlie Keane, moved into the dead man's home, the anonymous letter writer took no chances on Charlie taking up where Fred had left off and wasted no time on a first notice:
If you don't leave this country within 3 days, your life will be taken the same as Powell's was.
This was the message found tacked to the cabin door.
Keane left, within three days.
All through Albany and Laramie counties, other men were doing the same.
Houses of settlers who'd treated the company herds as a natural resource, free for the taking, were sitting empty, with weeds growing high in their yards.
The small half-heartedly tended fields of men who'd spent more time rustling cattle than farming were lying fallow.
No cow thief could count on a jury of his sympathetic peers to free him any longer.
Jury, judge and executioner were riding the range in the form of a single unknown figure that could materialize anywhere, at any time, to dispense an ancient brand of justice the men of the new West had believed long outdated.
For three straight years, Tom Horn patrolled the southern Wyoming pastures, and how many men he killed after Lewis and Powell (if he killed Lewis and Powell) will never be known.
It is possible, although highly doubtful, that he killed none at all but merely let his reputation work for him by privately claiming every unsolved murder in the state.
It is also possible, but equally doubtful, that he actually shot down the hundreds of men with which his legend credits him.
For that legend was growing explosively, Rumor was insisting he received a price of $600 a man.
(The best evidence is that he received a monthly wage of about $125, very good money in an era when top hands worked for $30 and found.
) Rumor had it he slipped two small rocks under each victim's head as a sort of trademark.
(A detailed search of old coroner's reports fails to substantiate this in the slightest.
One thing was certain--his method was effective, so effective that after a time even the warning notices were often unnecessary.
The mere fact that the tall figure with the rifle and field glasses had been seen riding that way was enough to frighten three rustling homesteaders out of the Upper Laramie country in a single week.
My reputation's my stock in trade, Tom mentioned more than once.
He evidently couldn't foresee that it might be his downfall in the end.
He had made himself the personification of the Devil to the homesteaders.
But to the cattlemen who had been facing bankruptcy from rustling losses and to the cowboys who had been faced with lay-offs a few years earlier, he was becoming a vastly different type of legendary figure.
Such ranchers as Coble and Clay and the Bosler brothers carried him on their books as a cowhand even while he was receiving a much larger salary from parties unknown.
He made their spreads his headquarters, and he helped out in their roundups.
In the cow camps, Tom Horn was regarded as a hero, as the same kind of champion he was when he entered and invariably won the local rodeos.
The hands and their bosses saw him as a lone knight of the range, waging a dedicated crusade against a lawless new society that was threatening a beloved way of life.
The wailing, guitar-strumming minstrels of the cattle kingdom made up songs about him.
By 1898, rustling losses had been driven down to the lowest level ever seen in Wyoming.
When several minutes had passed and Curt hadn't emerged from the livery stable, Brenner reentered the hotel and faced Summers across the counter.
I have a little job for you, Charlie.
I'm sure you won't mind doing me a small favor.
Brenner's voice was oily, but Summers wasn't fooled.
He moistened his lips uneasily.
What is it you want me to do, Mr. Brenner?
Brenner shrugged carelessly.
It's very simple.
I just want you to take a message to Diane Molinari.
Tell her to come here to the hotel.
Vastly relieved, Summers nodded and started toward the door.
One thing, Summers, Brenner said.
You're not to mention my name.
Tell her Curt Adams wants to see her.
Summers pulled up short, and turned around.
I don't know, Mr. Brenner, he said haltingly, beginning to get an inkling of Brenner's plans.
It doesn't seem quite right, telling her a thing like that.
Couldn't I just--His voice trailed off into silence.
Brenner continued to smile, but his eyes were cold.
He turned and looked around at the lobby as though seeing things he hadn't before noticed.
You know, Summers, he said thoughtfully.
Eagle's Nest ought to have a fire company.
If someone were to drop a match in here, this place would go up like a haystack.
He started toward the stairway, then turned to add, Tell her to come to Adams's room, that Adams is in trouble.
Tell her to hurry.
Yes sir.
His face pale, Summers headed for the street.
Curt's visit to the livery stable had been merely a precaution in case anyone should be watching.
He paused only long enough to ascertain that Jess's buckskin was still missing and that his own gray was all right, then climbed through a back window and dropped to the ground outside.
The fact that Jess's horse had not been returned to its stall could indicate that Diane's information had been wrong, but Curt didn't interpret it this way.
A man like Jess would want to have a ready means of escape in case it was needed.
Probably his horse would be close to where he was hiding.
From the back of the barn it was a simple matter to reach Black's house without using the street.
Curt approached the place cautiously, and watched it several minutes from the protection of a grove of trees.
There was a light in Black's front room, but drawn curtains prevented any view of the interior.
Curt circled the house and located a barn out back.
He could hear horses moving around inside, and nothing else.
There was no lock on the door, only an iron hook which he unfastened.
He opened the door and went in, pulling it shut behind him.
Again he stood in the darkness listening, but there was only the scrape of a shod hoof on a plank floor.
He moved ahead carefully, his left hand in front of him, and came to a wooden partition.
Horse smell was very strong, and he could hear the crunch of grain being ground between strong jaws.
He found a match in his pocket and lit it.
There were two horses in the barn, a sway-backed dun and Jess Crouch's buckskin.
Curt snuffed out the match.
It was certain now that Jess was in the house, but also, presumably, was Stacey Black.
Curt wanted to get Jess alone, without interference from anyone, even as spineless a person as the store owner.
He studied the problem for a few seconds and thought of a means by which it might be solved.
Reaching across the side of the stall, he slapped the buckskin on the rump.
The startled animal let out a terrified squeal and thrashed around in the stall.
As Curt had hoped, the house door banged open.
He slapped the buckskin again and it kicked wildly, its hoofs rattling the side of the stall.
Curt moved over beside the door and waited.
Presently he heard footsteps crossing the yard, and Jess's smothered curses.
The door swung open, and Jess said sourly, What the hell's the matter with you?
The horse continued to snort.
Curt doubted that any animal belonging to Jess would find much reassurance in its owner's voice.
Jess cursed again, and entered the barn.
A match flared, and he reached above his head to light a lantern which hung from a wire loop.
As he crossed to the side of the stall, Curt drew his gun and clicked back the hammer.
Before you try anything, he said.
Remember what happened to Gruller.
Jess caught his breath in surprise.
He started to reach for his gun, but apparently thought better of it.
That's the stuff, Curt said.
Just hold it that way.
He reached out to pull the door shut and fasten it with a sliding bolt.
You and I have a little talking to do, Jess.
You won't be needing this.
He moved up and lifted Jess's pistol out of its holster.
Damn you, Adams--Jess was beginning to recover from his initial shock.
We ain't got nothing to talk about.
If I don't come back in the house, Breed's going to --
Your trigger-happy brother isn't in the house.
About now he's probably having supper.
That long ride the four of you took must've given him a good appetite.
Now turn around so I can see your face.
Jess turned.
There was raw fury in his eyes, and the veins of his neck were swollen.
You're about as dumb as they come, Adams.
I don't know what you're up to, but when Brenner --
You can forget about Brenner, too, Curt said.
It's Ben Arbuckle we're going to talk about.
Arbuckle?
Jess stiffened.
I don't know nothin' about him.
No?
I suppose you don't know anything about a piece of two-by-four, either;
one with blood all over it, Arbuckle's blood.
Curt's fingers put a little more pressure on the trigger of his gun.
So help me, Crouch, I'd like to kill you where you stand, but, before I do, I'm going to hear you admit killing him.
Now start talking.
Who told you to do it?
Was it Dutch Brenner?
Curt was holding Jess's gun in his left hand.
He drew back his arm to slash the gunbarrel across Jess's face, but didn't finish the motion.
Pistol-whipping an unarmed man might come easy to someone like Jess, but Curt couldn't bring himself to do it.
Apparently sensing this, and realizing that it gave him an advantage, Jess became bold.
Having all the guns makes you a big man, don't it, Adams?
If we was both armed, you wouldn't talk so tough.
No?
Curt reached out and dropped Jess's pistol back into the holster.
He retreated a step and holstered his own.
All right, Crouch;
we're on even terms.
Now draw!
Sweat bubbled out on Jess's swarthy face.
The fingers of his right hand twisted into a claw, but he didn't reach for the gun.
Curt, angry enough to be a little reckless, raised his hands shoulder high.
Does this make it any easier, coward?
I ain't drawin' against you, Jess said thickly.
I heard how you outdrew Chico.
I ain't a gunslinger.
No.
You're the kind of bastard who sneaks up on a man from behind and hits him with a club.
I just wanted to hear you say so.
Jess stared at him without answering and let his hands fall to his sides.
He had found Curt's weakness, or what to Jess was a weakness, and was smart enough to take advantage of it.
Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed.
Curt was too involved in his own problems to pay much attention.
He had to make Jess talk, and he had to do it before Stacey Black got curious and came to investigate.
Once more he lifted Jess's gun from its holster, only this time he tossed it into the stall with the frightened buckskin.
He dropped his own beside it.
We'll do it another way, then, he said harshly.
Jess's coarse features twisted in a surprised grin which was smashed out of shape by Curt's fist.
With a roar of pain and fury Jess made his attack.
Curt managed to duck beneath the man's flailing fist, and drove home a solid left to Jess's mid-section.
It was like hitting a sack of salt.
Pain shot up Curt's arm clear to the shoulder, but Jess seemed hardly aware that he had been hit.
He slammed into the wall, bounced back, and caught Curt with a roundhouse right which sent him spinning.
An inch lower and it would have knocked him out.
As it was, his vision blurred and for a moment he was unable to move.
When his eyes began to focus, he saw Jess charging at him with a pitchfork.
Curt twisted to one side, and the tines of the fork bit into the floor.
Jess wasted a few seconds trying to yank them loose.
It gave Curt time to stagger to his feet.
The tines broke off under Jess's twisting, and he swung the handle in an attempt to knock Curt's brains out.
His aim was hurried;
so the pitchfork whistled over Curt's head.
By now Curt was seeing clearly again.
He stepped inside Jess's guard and landed two blows to the big man's belly, putting everything he had behind them.
They made Jess double over.
When his head came down, Curt grabbed him by the hair and catapulted him head first into the wall.
The building shook, setting the lantern to swaying, and the buckskin to pitching again.
Even Black's old crowbait began to snort, and from the house Black yelled, Jess!
What's going on out there?
Jess didn't seem too sure himself.
He lurched drunkenly to his feet, lowered his head, and took one step away from the wall.
Curt caught him flush on the nose with a blow which started at the floor.
Jess had had enough.
Blood gushed from his nose, and he backed off as rapidly as he could, stumbling over his own feet in his frantic haste to get away from Curt's fists.
Curt was in almost as bad shape, but he wouldn't quit.
He backed Jess into a corner, grabbed a handful of the man's shirtfront, and drew back his right fist.
Tell me about Arbuckle!
You killed him, didn't you?
It was Brenner's idea, Jess mumbled, dabbing at his nose.
He found out about you and Arbuckle talking.
He wanted to show the town what happened to anyone who tried to start trouble.
You mean anyone who stood up for his rights, Curt said.
He let go of the shirt, and Jess slumped to the floor.
Turning his back, Curt crossed to the stall, reached over to untie the buckskin's halter rope, and waved his hand in the animal's face.
The buckskin bolted out of the stall.
Curt moved in and picked up his gun.
He shook loose straw out of the action, and placed the gun in his holster.
Leaving Jess's where it lay, he left the stall.
Get up, Crouch.
We're going someplace.
Jess painfully got to his feet as someone rattled the door.
Who's in there?
Black called fearfully.
Curt opened the door, grabbed Black by the shoulder, and pulled him into the barn.
You're staying right here for a while.
This dirty coward just admitted killing Arbuckle.
I'm going to let him tell it to somebody else.
He shoved Black toward the stall, and pointed his pistol at Jess.
Get out of here.
You're coming along peacefully, or I'll put a bullet in your leg.
Jess stumbled through the door.
Curt followed, reaching behind him to shut the door and hook it.
Black would have little trouble getting out, but it might delay him a few minutes.
Where're you takin' me?
Jess asked worriedly.
We're going to Marshal Woods's house.
Maybe if the marshal hears this himself, it'll make a difference.
Somebody in this town must still have some backbone.
Over his shoulder he could see Max's loose grin and the Burnsides' glowering faces.
Honey, he whispered.
Soon as we send them on their way and make camp, let's you and me go for a walk down by the Snake--all by ourselves.
Sally, admonished her mother, you've got all evening to visit with Dan.
His wounds need dressing now.
Mrs. Jackson's words recalled Dan to his lack of fitness for courting.
What a spectacle he was, caked with dirt and sweat and blood, filthy as a pig and naked as an Indian, kissing the finest, the sweetest, the bravest, and absolutely the prettiest girl in this whole wonderful world.
He released her reluctantly for her enthusiastic reunion with Old Hap.
Got a lot to tend to, but I'll get back quick as I can, he assured her.
Dan could hear Clayton Burnside and Eben Jackson summing up their final reckoning for rental on the oxen.
Jackson was doing most of the talking.
So long as Sally's pa was coming out best on the haggle, Dan didn't feel the need of putting in his two-bits' worth.
Soon as the Burnsides moved on, he'd lead Rex down by the river;
there he could shave and scrub himself up for the evening.
Damn it, he thought bitterly, picking up his shirt and staring at the fresh bullet hole in the sleeve.
If I hadn't got Nate stopped when I did, my duds'd all be shot plumb to hell!
He stooped, picked up his ruined hat, and pursed his lips thoughtfully.
From the way the wound in his head was itching, Dan knew that it would heal.
But his only hat was something else again.
Nate!
Nate!
He shouted.
The Burnsides, now ready to roll, were purposefully deaf to his cry.
Nate!
He bellowed to the retreating back directly in front of him.
I ain't going to fight you no more.
Nate turned his head, attempting to speak in a soothing voice.
I know you ain't!
Dan affirmed, feeling ten feet tall.
He moved in close, jerked the handsome, broad-brimmed beaver hat from Nate's head and clamped it on his own.
Here's a present for you, he said, shoving his bullet-riddled hat down over Nate's purpling forehead.
Me and you's trading hats so's you'll have something permanent to remember me by!
Sally left her choring to stand beside Dan.
Slipping her hand in his, they silently watched the Burnsides make the bend in the road and disappear from sight.
Much as they had to look forward to, they didn't begrudge a moment of the time they spent seeing them go.
At first Matilda could not believe her own eyes.
She had spent too many hours looking ahead, hoping and longing to catch even a glimpse of Dan and finding nothing but emptiness.
And now she could see him, looking uncommon handsome, standing there beside Sally Jackson and her folks in front of their trail-worn wagon.
Seeing them waiting there at the foot of Emigrant Rock was so overwhelming that, for a good minute after they rounded the bend and started down the grade leading toward them, Matilda could not speak at all.
Then, with a glory that almost wiped out the deep, downward sags in her careworn face, Matilda leaned over the wheel and shouted to Hez, who was stumbling along in the heat and the dust on the opposite side of the wagon Pa!
Pa!
I can see Dan.
And he's with the Jacksons!
What about Burnsides?
Hez asked, who still believed they'd have them to lick.
They ain't even in sight!
She replied.
By then Hez could see for himself, and so could the others.
Soon they were all shouting greetings, exchanging smiles, and rejoicing to think that they were all back together again.
But even a reunion as joyous as this one did not make a break in the routines of the day.
Nor could they stop and find out about all that had happened until they made circle, tended the cattle, tethered the horses, gathered fuel, carried water, and started their cooking fires.
Then, and only then, with the Jacksons and Dan as their true guests of honor, did the Harrows take time to catch up on the news.
No sooner did they hear of Dan's injury than both Gran and Matilda went into immediate action.
The wound in his scalp was examined, pronounced healing, and well doctored with simples, before they dished up the victuals.
From then on, in keeping with the traditions they had followed since childhood, the whole group settled down to relish their food.
Even Sally, in spite of her gaiety and obvious welcome, followed the old taboo of quitting the gab when wearing the nosebag.
After their supper, the evening turned into a regular Hoe-Down.
Only, they carefully substituted old country folk dances for the Virginia Reels and square dances that were so popular among more worldly trains in the great westward migration.
But with Bill O'Connor on the fiddle, and Gran Harrow exuberantly shouting Glory Be and Hallelujah above their united chant of the lilting old ballads, they played their quaint folk games with all the fervor and abandon of a real celebration.
Golly, Rod exclaimed to Harmony as he dutifully stood by her side among the ringed spectators, don't that fiddle make you wish the Bible didn't say us Baptists can't dance?
Nor Methodists, neither, she replied.
Not that it matters to me, being this far along.
Rod gave her a warm pat on the shoulder before he replied.
Come spring, you'll be kicking up your heels and feeling coltish again too, gal.
At these words of sympathy and understanding, Harmony said generously, I don't mind setting here along with Gran while you go out and join in the games.
Rod shifted his eager eyes from the milling group out in the circle long enough to reply, I ain't much of a hand for Dare-Base and Farmer-in-the-Dell, but I'd sure like to get in on the handhold and wrestles.
He looked down at his big hands and slowly flexed his long fingers.
Don't reckon there's nobody out there, 'cept maybe Dan, who can outgrip me, Harmony.
And she was deeply thankful that she could see her now, out there in the midst of a gay, youthful circle, skipping and singing, Farmer in the dell, Farmer in the dell, Heigh-ho the dairy-oh, the farmer in the dell.
At the sight of Sally's happy face and carefree expression, Harmony's dark, brooding eyes quickly brightened with unshed tears.
She was glad, completely and unselfishly glad, to see that things were working out the right way for both Sally and Dan.
And she really tried to go a step further and say she hoped they'd be just as right as they now were for her and for Rod.
But she couldn't, not yet.
Not with the memory of her folks and the lost Conestoga still holding her close.
Out in the center of the circle the farmer, who was Dan, wasted no time when they came to the line, The farmer choose his wife.
With a swift swoop of his big arms, he grabbed Sally out of the circle surrounding him, and then kissed her soundly before setting her down so she could stand by his side while they jointly chose the rest of their outfit.
Soon the child, the dog, the cat and even the cheese, all joined them out there in the circle.
By now Harmony could see that most of the adults in the train were winded and resting, or else siphoned off from the games by the challenging lure of the great cliff towering above them.
No matter how many registry rocks they came to on this journey, each one exerted its own appeal.
Even strange names seemed to make them feel closer to some kind of civilization when stumbled across out here in this wilderness.
Already a few hardy folk from their own train were zealously chipping away at the register rocks, leaving their own records along with those made by the earlier trains.
Soon she saw Rod and Hez moving over to join them.
No sooner were they through and the guards posted, than the whole camp turned in for a night of sound sleep.
For Matilda, it was the first she had known in many a night.
Next morning, they moved on again.
My souls' a-gracious!
Gran Harrow exclaimed, watching their rippling muscles as Rod and Dan swung her up into the load.
A body would swear I floated right up here on a cloud!
Rod and Dan released their holds on the arms of her hickory rocker and exchanged embarrassed grins.
Shucks, Gran, they said almost in unison.
That wasn't nothing at all!
Leaning forward in her chair, Gran nearsightedly scrutinized Dan's face.
How's Sally like rubbin' agin that thar little ticklebrush ye're a-raising?
Quit ragging him, Gran, Rod protested.
I ain't ragging him!
Gran peered again at the week-old blond mustache shadowing Dan's upper lip.
But honest-to-Betsy, I've seed more hair than that on a piece o' bacon.
The two tall brothers waited silently while their mother handed Gran her cold snack and water jug, placed the chamber pot beside her feet, and returned to her place at the front of the wagon with Alice.
Rheumatics worse, Pa?
Dan asked Hez, who had limped back from his team to hold the notched-stick chair braces in place while his boys swung up the tailgate and tied it tight at the ends.
My right leg's stiff as a board this morning, he replied.
But the sun'll fry it out'n me onct we git to rolling.
The three men stepped out to the side to wait for Captain Clemens' signal.
Hez looked up at the high face of Emigrant Rock, official signboard for the Raft River turnoff, and gloated, Seems funny that them Burnsides never took time to leave their John-Henry up thar.
Wonder what made them hurry so, Rod drawled, giving Dan a sly wink.
Dan grinned, and changed the subject.
From now on, Sally and me and her folks aim to give you our turn when it comes up and fall in behind you and Rod's outfit.
Ain't no sense you eating our dust, Rod protested.
Sally and her ma want to trade off on account of Harmony being so far along, Dan explained.
Jackson recruited his critters, and him and me fixed up his wagon while we was waiting for you to catch up.
He's got the tightest running gear in the train now.
Besides, 'tain't no more'n right for me to follow with my black oxen, so's I can unhook and pull up fast if either of you get in a pinch.
Captain Clemens' signal shot sent the men hurrying to their waiting teams.
Reckon ye're right, Dan, Hez called back over his shoulder.
I'll shore be needing ye both on the pull out o' the canyon.
Rod looked apprehensively ahead at the narrowing, precipice-walled gorge.
We'll double teams zigzagging up the mountain, Harmony, he spoke reassuringly, concerned by the pinched look around her mouth.
Like enough we'll all be up on top by sundown.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his father's wheels beginning to turn.
Before Harmony had a chance to reply, Rod cracked his long whip over his thin oxen's backs.
While no larger than Dutch Springs, this mining supply town had the appearance of being far busier and more prosperous.
Men crowded the streets and freight rigs and teams were moving about.
Although they were forced to maintain a sharper watch, this activity enabled them to ride in and rack their broncs without any particular attention being paid them.
Gyp'll be holdin' forth in some bar if he's here at all, Cobb declared, glancing along the street as they stretched their legs.
There were no less than six or seven saloons in Ganado, not counting the lower class dives, all vying for the trade of celebrating miners and teamsters.
Pat only nodded.
Take one side of the street, and I'll take the other, he proposed.
If you spot Carmer give a yell before you move in.
Cobb's assent was tight.
You do the same.
It's all I ask, Stevens.
Separating, they took different sides of the main drag and systematically combed the bars.
Russ visited two places without result and his blood pressure was down to zero.
Suddenly it seemed to him insane that they might hope to locate Gyp Carmer so casually, even were he to prove the thief.
He tramped out of the Miners Rest with his hopes plummeting, and headed doggedly for the Palace Saloon, the last place of any consequence on this side of the street.
The Palace was an elaborate establishment, built practically on stilts in front, with long flights of wooden steps running up to the porch.
Behind its ornate facade the notorious dive clung like a bird's nest to the rocky ribs of the canyonside.
Russ ran up the steps quickly to the plank porch.
The front windows of the place were long and narrow, reaching nearly to the floor and affording an unusually good view of the interior.
Heading for the batwings, Cobb glanced perfunctorily through the nearest window, and suddenly dodged aside.
Nerves tight as a bowstring, he paused to gather his wits.
Against all expectation, Carmer was inside, clearly enjoying himself to the hilt and already so tipsy that it seemed unlikely he was bothering to note anything or anyone about him.
Fierce anger surged through Russ.
He fought down the impulse to rush in and collar the vicious puncher on the spot.
Reaching the porch rail beyond view of the bar windows, he feverishly scanned the busy street below.
Stevens was nowhere in sight.
Muffling an exclamation, Russ sprang to the nearest steps and ran down.
As luck had it, he had not gone twenty feet in the street before Pat appeared.
What luck, Cobb?
He said swiftly.
Russ pointed upward.
He's there, he got out tersely, curbing his rising excitement.
Hitching his cartridge belt around, Pat glanced upward briefly at the Palace and started that way with Cobb at his side.
Climbing the steps steadily, they reached the top and headed for the door.
Pat pushed through first.
Forced behind him momentarily, Russ followed at once and halted two steps inside.
His eyes widened.
While five minutes ago the place had presented a scene of easy revelry, with Gyp Carmer a prominent figure, it was now as somnolent and dull as the day before payday.
Carmer himself was nowhere to be seen.
A man knocked the roulette ball about idly in its track, and another dozed at one of the card tables.
Two men murmured with their heads together at the end of the bar, while the sleek-headed bartender absently polished a glass.
Looking the setup over, Stevens started coolly for the rear of the place.
Where yuh goin'?
It was the barkeep.
Halting, Pat turned to survey him deliberately.
He did not reply, going on toward the back.
Less assured than the tall, wide-shouldered man in the lead, Cobb followed alertly, a hand on his gun butt.
The bartender measured this situation with heavy eyes and decided he wanted no part of it.
He said no more.
A hall opened in back of the bar, running toward an ell.
Pat moved into it.
Small rooms, probably for cards, opened off on either side.
All the doors were open at this hour except one, and it was toward this that Stevens made his way with Russ close at his shoulder.
The door was locked.
A single kick made it spring open, shuddering.
Pat saw Gyp Carmer staggering forward, a half-filled bottle upraised as if to strike.
Russ sprang through to bat it nimbly aside.
With a bellow Carmer lunged at him.
But he was more than half-drunk, and his faculties were dulled.
Cobb unleashed a single powerful jab that sent Gyp reeling wildly and crashing down with a whining groan.
He started to struggle up, heaving desperately.
Russ gave him a brutal thrust that tumbled him over flat on his stomach.
Kneeling, Cobb planted a sturdy knee in the small of his back, holding him pinned.
Okay, Stevens.
I've drawn his fangs, he snapped.
Go through his pockets, will you?
If we have to we'll take him apart and see what he's made of!
Complying methodically, Pat pulled pocket after pocket inside out without finding a thing.
Cobb watched this with hunted eyes, his desperate hope waning by the moment.
Stevens was grunting over the last empty pocket when Russ abruptly rose and lunged toward Carmer's hat, which had tumbled half-a-dozen feet away when he first fell.
Cobb got it.
Straightening up, his eyes ablaze, he held out the battered Stetson.
Look at this!
Inside the crown, stuffed behind the stained sweatband, could be seen thin, crumpled wads of currency.
Carmer's ingenious cache for his loot had been found.
By golly, Stevens!
You were right, Russ exclaimed, tearing the loose bills out of Carmer's hat.
That is, if we can be sure this is Colcord's money --
Pat grunted.
Where else would he get it?
Count what you've got there, Cobb.
We can soon tell.
Russ ran through the bills and named an amount it was highly unlikely any cowpuncher would come by honestly.
Pat nodded.
It's within a hundred of what Crip had, he declared.
We know Penny spent some--and Carmer must have dropped a few dollars getting that load on.
Handing the money over, Russ wiped his hands on his pants-legs as if ridding himself of something unclean.
His glance at Gyp Carmer was disdainful.
Shall we get out of here?
Leaving the card room, they moved back through the Palace the way they had come.
Glowering looks met them in the bar, but there was no attempt to halt them.
Pausing in the outside door to glance behind him, Pat looked his unspoken warning and stepped out.
He and Cobb clattered down the high steps to the street.
Neither spoke till they reached their horses.
Pat paused there, looking across at the young fellow.
It'll be a pleasure for you to return this money to Colcord and tell him about it, Russ.
He started to return it.
To his faint surprise Russ held up his hand.
Not me, he ruled decidedly.
I've had enough.
It was you that tracked it down anyway, Stevens, he pursued strictly.
I'll shove along home.
Whatever you say.
Pat swung into the saddle, yet still he delayed, his brows puckered.
You owe it to Penny to give her a chance to explain that she was defending you, really, he observed mildly.
Old Crip wasn't, retorted Cobb tartly.
He'll know when you tell him.
But I want this to sink in awhile.
Then maybe next time he won't be so quick on the trigger.
Pat had never pretended to give advice in such affairs.
You're the doctor, he returned with a smile.
But I still think Penny's an awful nice girl, Russ --
You don't have to tell me, flashed Cobb.
Giving the other a dark look, he hauled his bronc around and trotted down off the street.
Pat let him go, following more leisurely.
At the first restaurant he sensibly pulled up to go in for his dinner, and as a consequence did not see Cobb strike the open range at the mouth of the canyon and head straight across the swells for Antler.
The truth was, the puncher was both bewildered and dismayed by his own mixed luck.
Penny's always glad to see me over there, he mused bleakly.
Yet had he not visited the girl at Saw Buck he would never have been involved in this latest tangle.
Over and above that, however, was his growing suspicion of Chuck Stober's part in recent events.
Gyp Carmer couldn't have known about Colcord's money unless he was told--and who else would have told him?
He asked himself.
It's the second time War Ax hands made a play for that money.
How much of an accident could that be?
Nearing home, he jerked to attention at the distant crack of a gun.
In town no one paid much attention to an occasional shot;
but on the range gunfire had a meaning.
Hauling up, Russ listened carefully.
Two minutes later it came again--a double explosion, followed by a third, sounding more distant.
As near as Cobb could determine the shots came from the direction of the Antler ranch house.
He tightened up in a twinkling.
So far as he knew, only his father could be there.
What did it mean?
Clapping spurs to the bronc he set off at a sharp canter, with growing alarm.
His first glimpse of the ranch house across the brushy swells told him nothing.
Still a quarter-mile away, the fresh clap of guns only served to increase his speed.
Setting a course straight for the house, he was covering ground fast when an angry bee buzzed past close to his face.
When it was followed by a second, whining even closer, Cobb swerved sharply aside into a depression.
He knew now what he was up against.
Whoever was out there hiding in the brushy cover was besieging the Antler house and, having spotted his approach, was determined to drive him off before he could get into the fight.
Cursing himself for having ridden out the last few days without a rifle in his saddle boot, Russ drew his Colt and examined it briefly.
If he wondered whether the attackers would allow him to pull away unmolested, he had his answer a moment later.
Over this way!
He ain't gone far!
A harsh cry floated to him across the brush.
A carbine cracked more loudly, and a slug clipped fragments from the brush off at one side.
The would-be assassin had his position figured pretty close.
Dismounting, Russ looked about hastily.
Toward the west this depression led toward a draw.
Leading his pony, he hurried that way, not remounting till he was well below the level of the surrounding range.
Swinging up then, and bending forward over the horn, he urged his mount down the meandering draw.
He had not covered a hundred yards before a gun crashed from somewhere behind.
He had been sighted, and his attacker pumping shot after shot.
A shot or two went wild before Cobb felt something tug at his foot.
A slug had torn half of his stirrup-guard away.
A second twitched his shirtsleeve, and he felt a brief burn on his upper arm.
Another snarled close overhead.
Jumping Jerusalem!
Let's get out of here!
At the first shot Russ had hurled his mount to the left toward the side of the winding draw.
The long minute before he reached effective cover seemed endless.
Sweeping a look around, he saw that he was safe for the moment.
He heard cries from behind him, but he could make out no words.
He dashed madly for the next elbow turn in the draw, and made it.
Recklessly hurling the bronc sidewise into an intersecting draw, he plunged forward with undiminished speed.
Gradually the wash climbed upward, forcing him toward open range.
Yet he must chance it.
He clambered out of the dwindling wash, the loose dirt flying behind him, and flashed a look about.
Early in November the clouds lifted enough to carry out the assigned missions.
And Sweeney Squadron put its first marks on the combat record.
Every plane that could fly was sent into the air.
Cricket took eight ships and went south across the Straits and along the north coast of Mindanao to Cagayan.
Anything the enemy flew or floated was his target.
Fleischman with eight was to patrol the Leyte Gulf area, with his main task to get any kamikaze before they got to the ships.
Greg himself took two flights, with Todman leading the second, to patrol and look for targets of opportunities around Ormoc on the east coast of Leyte.
Each plane carried two five-hundred pound bombs.
A weapons carrier took Greg, Todman, Belton, Banjo Ferguson, and Walters and the others the two miles from the bivouac area to the strip.
It was a rough long ride through the mud and pot holes.
No one had much to say.
The sky glowered down at them.
There was a feeling that this mission would be canceled like all the others and that this muddy wet dark world of combat would go on forever.
The truck dropped them off at the various revetments spread through the jungle.
Donovan snatched Greg's chute from him with a belligerent motion and almost ran to the plane with it.
His face was dark as the sky above it as he stood on the wing and waited for his pilot.
Greg climbed into the cockpit feeling as if he had never been in one before.
But his hands and those of Donovan moved automatically adjusting and arranging in the check-out procedure.
I've got her as neat as I can, Donovan said, as he dropped the straps of the Seton harness over Greg's shoulders.
But this goddamn climate.
It's for carabao not airplanes.
We'll make out.
Don't you worry, chief, Greg replied, wondering if he himself believed it.
Yeah.
See you, Donovan said as he jumped off the wing.
The expression was his trade-mark, his open sesame to good luck, and his prayer that pilot and plane would always return.
At the prearranged time, Greg started the engine and taxied out.
From the time the chocks were pulled until the plane was out of sight, he knew Donovan would keep his back to the strip.
He wondered where the superstition had originated that it was bad luck for a crew chief to watch his plane take off on a combat mission.
Yet long before the scheduled time for return, Donovan would be watching for every speck in the sky.
Greg rumbled down the rough metal taxi strip, and one by one the seven members of his flight fell in behind him.
The dark brown bombs hanging under each wing looked large and powerful.
The pilots' heads looked ridiculously small.
The control tower gave him immediate take-off permission, and the clean roar of the engine that took him off the rough strip spoke well of the skill of Donovan.
Greg's mission was the last to leave, and as he circled the ships off Tacloban he saw the clouds were dropping down again.
To the west, the dark green hills of Leyte were lost in the clouds about halfway up their slopes.
Underneath him the sea was a dark and muddied gray.
Water splashed against his windshield as he led the flight in and out of showers.
The metal strip they had taken off from was coal black against the green jungle around it.
He possessed the fighter pilot's horror of bad weather and instrument flying, and he wondered, if the ceiling did drop, whether he and the other flights would be able to find their way back in this unfamiliar territory.
He shivered in the warm cockpit.
The overcast was solid above him.
As far as he could see there was no hole to climb through it.
They would have to go west through the narrow river valley that separated Leyte from Samar and hope that it didn't close in before they returned.
Greg pushed the radio button on his throttle.
Todman, let's try to go under this stuff.
Stay in close and we'll go up the valley.
Roger, Sweeney, Todman called back, and pulled his four in and slightly above Greg.
Greg took the formation wide around three A-26 attack bombers that were headed north over the Gulf.
He dropped down to five hundred feet, swinging a little north of the city of Tacloban, and punched into the opening that showed against the mountain.
The valley was only a few hundred yards wide with just about room enough for a properly performed hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
It was only a fifteen-minute flight, but before it was through Greg felt himself developing a case of claustrophobia.
The ceiling stayed solid above them at about eight hundred feet, and at times the sheer cliffs seemed about to close in.
If the other pilots were worried, they did not show it.
The formation remained perfect.
When the sea was visible ahead of them, the relief was as great as if the sun had come out.
He spread the flight out and led them across a point of land and then down the coast.
Although they drew light ground fire they saw no signs of activity.
Once Todman thought he had spotted a tank and went down to investigate while Greg covered him.
Somebody beat us to it!
Todman said over the radio as he came back up in formation.
Visibility continued to be limited, and Greg was never able to get above a thousand feet.
It was frustrating.
His earphones were constantly full of the sounds of enemy contacts made by other flights.
He thought once that he identified the somewhat hysterical voice of Fleischman claiming a kill.
But Greg's area remained as placid as a Florida dawn.
Finally, as time began to run out, he headed into Ormoc and glide-bombed a group of houses that Intelligence had thought might contain Japanese supplies.
The low clouds made bombing difficult.
There was not enough room to make the usual vertical bomb run.
The accuracy was deplorable.
One of Greg's bombs hung up, and he was miles from the target before he could get rid of it.
Only one of the flight scored a direct hit and the rest blew up jungle.
With their load of bombs gone, the planes moved swiftly and easily.
Greg went up tight against the ceiling and led them back to their pass to home.
Mercifully, it was still open.
Like a man making a deep dive, Greg took full breath and plunged back into the valley.
He was about to make a gas check on his flight when Todman's voice broke in: Sweeneys!
Three bogies.
Twelve o'clock level.
Greg's eyes flicked up from his instrument panel.
He saw them, specks against the gray, but closing fast.
They were headed straight for each other on a collision course.
Friend or enemy?
The same old question.
And only a few seconds to answer it.
Zeros!
Todman said excitedly, and hopefully.
And then he thought Todman might be right.
His mind flicked through the mental pictures he had from the hours of Aircraft Identification.
He narrowed the shape down to two: either a Zero or a U. S. Navy type aircraft.
If it were the enemy, tactically his position was correct.
Japanese aircraft were strong on maneuverability, American on speed and firepower.
His present maximum altitude, up against the overcast, gave him the opportunity to exploit his advantages.
But it also made him conspicuous to the enemy, if it was the enemy, and he hadn't been spotted already.
But the closing aircraft showed no sign of deviating from their original course.
In seconds, Greg made his decision.
He pushed the radio button.
Sweeney Blue, hit the deck.
Lots of throttle.
Todman, you take the one on the left.
I'll take the middle.
Belton, the one on the right.
If they're Japs.
Let's make sure first.
Greg had the stick forward and the throttle up before he heard the two Rogers.
The planes, light with most of the gas burned out, responded beautifully.
Greg's airspeed indicator was over 350 when he leveled off just above the trees.
The opposing aircraft continued to come on.
They appeared to be the enemy.
Greg wished the Air Corps had continued to camouflage planes.
There was, of course, no way for the other planes to get by them.
It was a box.
But they could turn and escape to the east.
Greg pushed the radio button again.
Todman, drop your second element back.
If any of us miss, they can pick up the pieces.
Now let's make sure they're Japs.
Even as he said it, Greg knew they had found the enemy.
The shapes were unmistakable and the Rising Suns were showing up, slightly brighter pinpoints in the gray gloom.
Greg slapped his hand across the switches that turned on the guns and gun camera and gun sight.
The circle with the dot in the center showed up yellow on the reflector glass in front of him.
His hands shook.
Arm your guns, Sweeneys.
They're Japs.
They're Japs, came a high-pitched voice.
Greg to Sweeney Blue.
One pass only.
No turns.
You'll bust your ass in this canyon.
That's an order.
He moved the flights over against one wall.
It gave them all a chance to make a high-speed climbing turn attack and a break-away that would not take them into the overcast or force a tight-turn recovery.
If the turn was too tight, a barrel roll would bring them out.
A hell of an altitude for a barrel roll, but it could be done.
Greg slammed his throttle to the fire wall and rammed up the RPM, and the engine responded as if it had been waiting.
The clearly identifiable enemy continued on as if no one else were around.
They haven't seen us, Greg yelled to himself over the engine noise.
They haven't seen us.
He hit the radio button.
Now, Sweeneys, now.
Let's take 'em home.
He hauled back on the stick and felt his cheeks sag.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his wingman move out a bit and shoot up with him.
Perfect, he thought.
With the rapid rate of closure, the approach from below, the side, and ahead, there would be only a moment when damage could be done.
Just like shooting at a duck while performing a half-gainer from a diving board.
He tightened his turn.
His nose up.
It was going to be dangerous.
Eight aircraft in this small box.
Please, dear God, make my pilots good, he prayed.
He took a lead on the enemy, using a distance of five of the radii in his circular sight and then added another.
The enemy did not veer.
It did not seem possible that they hadn't been spotted.
Blind fools.
Now!
Greg's fingers closed on the stick trigger.
The plane rumbled and slowed.
Six red lines etched their way into the gray and vanished.
As if drawn by a wire the enemy flew into them.
Greg tightened his turn until the plane shuddered.
Luck was with him.
His burst held for a second on the engine section of the plane.
The Jap's propeller flew off in pieces.
A large piece of engine cowling vanished.
It was all Greg had time to see.
His maneuvering for the shot had placed him near the overcast, almost inverted and heading up into the clouds.
His speed was dropping rapidly.
If he spun out now, he would join his opponent on the ground.
Wingman, stay clear, he prayed.
He pushed stick and rudder and entered the overcast on his back.
He fought the panic of vertigo.
He had no idea which was up and which was down.
He held the controls where they had been.
Sweat popped out over him and he felt the slick between his palm and the stick grip.
His air speed dropped until he thought he would spin out.
Over the rattling of fenders, humming of tires and chattering of gears there was a charming melody of whispers and tiny giggles.
Cool air moving slowly through the open or smashed-out side windows hinted of blooming roadside vegetation, and occasionally a faint fragrance of perfume swirled from the back seat.
Moriarty, my driver suddenly exclaimed with something so definite, so final in his tone I once more repeated the absurdity, mustering all my latent powers of hypocrisy to sound convinced.
We were coming to an intersection, turning right, chuffing to a stop.
Forced to realize that this was the end of a very short line I scanned a road marker and discovered what the end of a slightly longer line would be for the old Mexican: Moriarty, New Mexico.
Gracias.
Adios, I said, exhausting my Spanish vocabulary on my host and exchanging one of a scarcely-tapped store of smiles with my host's daughters.
I waved with discretion and moderation to the vague golden faces fading through rising dust and the distortions of the back window glass.
Then I saw the father's head slightly turn;
gauche rainbow shapes replaced the poignant ovals of gold.
Autos whizzed past.
White-shirted and conservatively-cravated drivers stared conspicuously toward the eastern horizon and past my supplicating and accusing gaze.
Suddenly a treble auto horn tootley-toot-tootled, and, thumbing hopefully, I saw emergent in windshield flash: red lips, streaming silk of blonde hair and--ah, trembling confusion of hope, apprehension, despair--the leering face of old Herry.
Mor-ee-air-teeeee, he shrieked, his white teeth grossly counterpointing those of the glittering blonde.
Damn his luck.
I would have foregone my romantic chances rather than leave a friend sweltering and dusty and--Well, at least I wouldn't have shouted back a taunt.
Still nursing anger I listlessly thumbed a car that was slowly approaching, its pre-war chrome nearly blinding me.
It was stopping.
Just as I straightened up with my duffel bag, I heard: Sahjunt Yoorick, meet Mrs. Major J. A. Roebuck.
The voice was that of Johnson, tail gunner off another crew.
Squeezing a look between Johnson's fat jowls and the car frame a handsome and still darkhaired lady inquired Y'all drahve?
I nodded.
Onleh one thiihng, Mrs. Roebuck continued.
Ahm goin nawth t'jawn mah husbun in Sante Fe, an y'all maht prefuh the suhthuhn rewt.
But Corporal Johnson has alreadeh said it didn make no diffrunce t'hi-im.
I said that it didn't make any difference to me either, as far as I knew.
How far I knew will shortly become apparent.
Let me pass over the trip to Sante Fe with something of the same speed which made Mrs. Roebuck wonduh if the wahtahm speed limit (35 m.p.h.) is still in ee-faket.
When Johnson ejaculated Howsabout my buying us all a nice cold Co-cola, Ma'am?
Mrs. Roebuck smilingly declined and began suddenly to go on about her son, who was onleh a little younguh than you bawhs.
Johnson never would have believed she had a son that age.
Mrs. Roebuck thought Johnson was a sweet bawh t'lah lahk thet, but her Herman was getting to be a man, there was no getting around it.
Just befoh he left foh his academeh we wuh hevin dack-rihs on the vuhranduh, Major Roebuck an Ah, an Huhmun says'May Ah hev one too '?
Just as p'lite an--an cohnfidunt, an Ah says'Uh coahse you cain't ', but he says'Whah nawt, you ah hevin one '?
No, I don't, Johnson said.
I'm a good Baptist, and drinking
Mrs. Roebuck very kindly let me drive through Sante Fe to a road which would, she said, lead us to Taos and then Raton and eventshahleh out of New Mexico.
How lightly her eventshah-leh passed into the crannies where I was storing dialect material for some vaguely dreamed opus, and how the word would echo.
And re-echo.
Hardly had Mrs. Roebuck driven off when a rusty pick-up truck, father or grandfather of Senor Moriarty's Ford sedan, came screeching to a dust-swirling stop, and a brown face appeared, its nose threatened by shards of what had once been the side window.
Get in, buddies.
Get in.
The straight, black hair flopped in a vigorous nod, the slender nose plunged toward glass teeth and drew safely back.
Johnson unwired the right hand door, whose window was, like the left one, merely loosely-taped fragments of glass, and Johnson wadded himself into a narrow seat made still more narrow by three cases of beer.
In back, buddy, the driver said to me.
Quickly but carefully lowering my duffel bag over the low side-rack, I stepped on the running board;
it flopped down, sprang back up and gouged my shin.
The truck was hurtling forward.
I seized the rack and made a western-style flying-mount just in time, one of my knees mercifully landing on my duffel bag--and merely wrecking my camera, I was to discover later--my other knee landing on the slivery truck floor boards and--but this is no medical report.
I was again in motion and at a speed which belied the truck's similarity to Senor X's Ford turtle.
Maybe I would beat old Herry to Siberia after all.
Whatever satisfaction that might offer.
Something pulled my leg.
I drew back, drawing back my foot for a kick.
But it was only Johnson reaching around the wire chicken fencing, which half covered the truck cab's glassless rear window.
The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.
Wanna beer?
Hell, yes, I roared back between dusty lips.
Did I want a beer?
Did an anteater want ants?
Bueno, amigo.
Gracias, I hollered, my first long swallow filling me with confidence and immediately doubling the size of my Spanish vocabulary.
At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but--the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle--it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing;
I wouldn't have known the difference.
Johnson was trying to grab the wheel, though the swerve of the truck was throwing him away from it.
White teeth suddenly vanishing, the driver slammed the side of his bottle against Johnson's ear.
We were off the road, gleaming barbed wire pulling taut.
I ducked just as the first strand broke somewhere down the line and came whipping over the sideboards.
We were in a field, in a tight, screeching turn.
Prairie dogs were popping up and popping down.
When I fell on my back, I saw a vulture hovering.
Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously.
This time no wire came whipping into the truck.
We were back on the road.
I regained my squatting position behind the truck cab's rear window.
Johnson's left hand was pressed against the side of his head, red cheeks whitening beneath his fingers.
Tee-wah, the driver cackled, his black eyes glittering behind dull silver chicken fencing.
That was Tee-wah I was talking.
You thought I was a Mexican, didn't you, buddy?
I nodded.
Hell, that's all right, buddy, the Indian (I now guessed) said.
Drink your beer.
Miraculously, the bottle was still in my hand, foam still geysering over my (luckily) waterproof watch.
No sooner had I started drinking than the driver started zigzagging the truck.
The beer foamed furiously.
I drank furiously.
A long time.
Emptied the bottle.
Teeth again flashing back at me, the driver released a deluge of Spanish in which amigo appeared every so often like an island in the stormy waves of surrounding sound.
I bobbed my head each time it appeared.
Suddenly the Spanish became an English in which only one word emerged with clarity and precision, son of a bitch, sometimes hyphenated by vicious jabs of a beer bottle into Johnson's quivering ribs.
A big car was approaching, its chrome teeth grinning.
Beyond it the gray road stretched a long, long way.
The car was just about to us, its driver's fat, solemn face intent on the road ahead, on business, on a family in Sante Fe--on anything but an old pick-up truck in which two human beings desperately needed rescue.
I tossed the bottle.
High, so it would only bounce harmlessly but loudly off the car's steel roof.
Too high.
On unoccupied roadway the bottle shattered into a small amber flash.
Aye-yah-ah-ah!
The Indian was again raising his bottle, but to my astonished relief--probably only a fraction of Johnson's--the bottle this time went to the Indian's lips.
Another car was coming, a tiny, dark shape on a far hill.
I started looking on the splintery truck bed for a piece of board, a dirt clod--anything I could throw and with better aim than I had thrown the beer bottle.
We were slowing.
In the ditch sand was white and soft-looking, only an occasional pebble discernible, faintly gleaming.
But Johnson couldn't quickly unwire the truck door, and if I escaped, he might suffer.
The car was approaching fast.
On the truck bed there was nothing smaller than a piece of rusty machinery;
with more time I could have loosened a small burr or cotter pin --
Suddenly and not a second too soon I thought of the coins in my pocket.
There was no time to pick out a penny;
I got a coin between my thumb and forefinger, leaned my elbows in a very natural and casual manner on top of the truck cab and flipped my little missile.
There was a blur just under my focus of vision, a crash;
the car's far windshield panel turned into a silver web with a dark hole in the center.
I heard the screech of brakes behind me, an insane burst of laughter beneath me.
Looking back I saw a gray-haired man getting out of his halted car and trying to read our license number.
S-s-sahjunt.
Johnson's fat hand, another bottle were protruding from the truck cab, and that self-proclaimed Baptist teetotaler, had a bottle at his own lips.
Two cars came over a crest, their chrome and glass flashing.
The Indian's arm whipped sidewise--there was a flash of amber and froth, the crash of the bottle shattering against the side of the first car.
Brakes shrieked behind us.
I saw Johnson's bottle snatched from his hand, saw it go in a swirl of foam just behind the second car.
This time there was no sound of brakes but the shrieking of women.
I looked back at pale ovals framed in the elongated oval of the car's rear window.
Drink, you son of a bitch!
I quickly turned around and began to drink.
But the Indian was jabbing another bottle toward Johnson.
I guided her to the divan, turned off the TV, faced her.
She sat quietly, staring at me from the wide eyes.
And what eyes they were.
Big and dark, a melting, golden brown.
Eyes like hot honey, eyes that sizzled.
Plus flawless skin, smooth brow and cheeks, lips that looked as if you could get a shock from them.
It was a disturbingly familiar face, too, but I couldn't remember where we had met.
I said, Do we know each other, Miss?
No, I remembered reading about you in the papers and that you lived here, and when it happened all I could think of was--This time she stopped the rush of words herself.
I'm sorry.
Shall I go on?
She smiled.
It was her first smile.
But worth waiting for.
Sure.
I said.
But one word at a time, O.K.?
She was still hugging the stained coat around her, so I said, Relax, let me take your things.
Would you like a drink, or coffee?
No, thanks.
She stood up, pulled the coat from her shoulders and started to slide it off, then let out a high-pitched scream and I let out a low-pitched, wobbling sound like a muffler blowing out.
She was wearing nothing beneath the coat.
She jerked the coat back on and squeezed it around her again, but not soon enough.
There had been a good second or two during which my muffler had been blowing out, and now I was certain I'd seen her somewhere before.
I forgot!
She yelped.
Oh, do forgive me.
I'm sorry!
I forgive --
That's what started all the trouble in the first place.
Oh, dear, I'm all unstrung.
You and me both, dear.
Haven't we haven't I seen you.
I mean, surely we've --
You may have seen me on TV, she said.
I've done several filmed commercials for --
Then it hit me.
Zing!
I cried.
Why, yes.
And you recognized me?
Yes, indeed.
In fact, I was watching you on that little seventeen-inch screen when you rang my bell.
Man, you rang--it was in color, too, Miss, and Miss?
What's your name, anyway?
Ah, you were splendid.
I sat by her on the divan.
Splendid.
In a waterfall and all that.
That's the last one we did.
That was a fun one.
I'll bet.
It was fun for me, all right.
I don't mean to pry, but do they hide the swimsuit with the bubbles?
I mean: Is advertising honest?
It depends on who does it.
I never wear anything at all.
It wouldn't--wouldn't seem fair, somehow.
I couldn't agree with you more.
I really do have something important to tell you, Mr. Scott.
About the murder.
Murder?
Oh, yeah, I said.
Tell me about the murder.
She told me.
Zing was the creation of two men, Louis Thor and Bill Blake, partners in zing!
, Inc..
They'd peddled the soap virtually alone, and without much success, until about a year ago, when--with the addition of SX-21 to their secret formula and the inauguration of a high-powered advertising campaign--sales had soared practically into orbit.
Their product had been endorsed by Good Housekeeping, the A.M.A., and the Veterinary Journal, among other repositories of higher wisdom, and before much longer if you didn't have a cake of their soap in the john, even your best friends would think you didn't bathe.
My lovely caller--Joyce Holland was her name--had previously done three filmed commercials for zing, and this evening, the fourth, a super production, had been filmed at the home of Louis Thor.
The water in Thor's big swimming pool had been covered with a blanket of thick, foamy soapsuds--fashioned, of course, from zing--Joyce had dived from the board into the pool, then swirled and cavorted in her luxurious bath while cameras rolled.
The finished--and drastically cut--product would begin with a hazy longshot of Joyce entering the suds, then bursting above the pool's surface clad in layers of lavender lather, and I had a hunch this item was going to sell tons and tons of soap;
even to clean men and boys.
Joyce went on, When we'd finished, Lou--Mr. Thor--asked me to stay a little longer.
He wanted a few stills for magazine ads, he said.
Everybody left and I stayed in the pool, then Lou came back alone and leaped into the pool too.
And he didn't have any clothes on.
He didn't!
Yes, he didn't.
Did, I mean.
She paused.
Did leap into the pool, and didn't have anything on.
Anyway, it was evident what he had in mind.
You got away, didn't you?
Yes.
He caught up with me once and grabbed me, but I was all covered with zing--it's very slippery, you know.
I didn't know.
I wouldn't have the stuff in the house.
But I'm pleased to hear --
So I just scooted out of his clutches.
I swam like mad, got out of the pool, grabbed my robe, and ran to the car.
The keys were still in it, and I was miles away before I remembered that my clothes and purse and everything were still in the little cabana where I'd changed.
She'd driven around for a while, Joyce said, then, thinking Louis Thor would have calmed down by that time, she'd gone back to his home on Bryn Mawr Drive, parked in front, and walked toward the pool.
While several yards from it, still concealed by the shrubbery, she'd seen two men on her left at the pool's edge.
She went on:
A man was holding onto Lou, holding him up.
Maybe Lou was only unconscious, but right then I thought he must be dead.
The man shoved him into the water, then ran past the cabana.
There's a walk there that goes out to Quebec Drive.
I was so scared well, I just ran to my car and came here.
You know who the other man was?
No, I never did see his face.
I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared It was just somebody in a man's suit.
But I'm sure the other one was Lou.
What Joyce wanted me to do was go to Thor's house and do whatever detectives do, and get her clothes--and handbag containing her identification.
She realized I'd have to notify the police, but fervently hoped I could avoid mentioning her name.
Her impact in the zing commercials had led to her being considered for an excellent part in an upcoming TV series, Underwater Western Eye, a documentary-type show to be sponsored by Oatnut Grits.
But if Joyce got involved in murder or salacious scandal, the role would probably go to the sponsor's wife, Mrs. Oatnut Grits.
Or at least not to Joyce.
And I so want the part, she said.
The commercials have just been for money, there hasn't been any real incentive for me to do them, but in Underwater Western Eye I'd have a chance to act.
I could show what I can do.
As far as I was concerned, she had already and had dandily shown what she could do.
But I promised Joyce I would mention her name, if at all, only as a last resort.
Seeming much relieved, she smiled one of those worth-waiting-for smiles, and I smiled all the way into the bedroom.
There I got my Colt Special and shoulder harness, slipped my coat on, and went back into the front room.
Joyce squirmed a little on the divan.
I'm starting to itch, she said.
Itch?
Yes, I'm still all covered with that soap.
I was loaded with suds when I ran away, and I haven't had a chance to wash it off.
Mmmm, it sure itches.
You might as well wait here while I'm gone, so you can use my shower if you'd like.
Oh, I'd love to.
I showed her the shower and tub, and she said, smiling, If you really don't mind, I think I'll get clean in the shower, then soak for a few minutes in your tub.
That always relaxes me.
Doesn't it you?
Only when I do it.
I shook my head.
One of my virtues or vices is a sort of three-dimensional imagination complete with sound effects and glorious living color.
Soak as long as you want, Joyce.
It'll probably be at least an hour or two before I can check back with you.
So you'll have everything all to yourself, doggone
I looked at my watch.
Ten after nine.
Time to go, I supposed.
Well, goodbye, I said.
Goodbye.
You'd better hurry.
Oh, you can count on that.
She smiled slightly.
Softly.
Warmly.
Don't hurry too much.
I'll be soaking for at least half an hour.
That was all she said.
But suddenly those hot-honey eyes seemed to have everything but swarms of bees in them.
However, when there's a job to be done, I'm a monstrosity of grim determination, I like to think.
I spun about and clattered through the front room to the door.
As I went out, I could hear water pouring in the shower.
Hot water.
She wouldn't be taking a cold shower.
Hell, she couldn't.
Bryn Mawr Drive is only two or three miles from the Spartan, and it took me less than five minutes to get there.
But the scene was not the quiet, calm scene I'd expected.
Four cars were parked at the curb, and two of them were police radio cars.
Lights blazed in the big house and surrounding grounds.
I followed a shrubbery-lined gravel path alongside the house to the pool.
Two uniformed officers, a couple of plain-clothesmen I knew, and two other men stood on a gray cement area next to the pool on my left.
At the pool's far end was the little cabana Joyce had mentioned, and on the water's surface floated scattered lavender patches of limp-looking lather.
A few yards beyond the group of men, a man's nude body lay face down on a patch of thick green dichondra.
Lieutenant Rawlins, one of the plain-clothesmen, spotted me and said, Hi, Shell, and walked toward me.
How'd you hear about this one?
I grinned, but ignored the question.
He didn't push it;
Rawlins worked out of Central Homicide and we'd been friends for years.
He filled me in.
A call to the police had been placed from here a couple of minutes after nine P.M., and the first police car had arrived two or three minutes after that--10 minutes ago now.
Present at the scene--in addition to the dead man, who was indeed Louis Thor--had been Thor's partner Bill Blake, and Antony Rose, an advertising agency executive who handled the zing account.
Neither of them, I understood, had been present at the filming session earlier.
What were they doing here?
I asked Rawlins.
They were supposed to meet Thor at nine PM for a conference concerning the ad campaign for their soap, a new angle based on this SX-21 stuff.
Yeah, I've heard more about SX-21 than space exploration lately.
What is the gunk?
How would I know?
It's a secret.
That was the new advertising angle--something about a Lloyd's of London policy to insure the secrecy of the secret ingredient.
Actually, only two men know what the formula is, Blake and--He stopped and looked at Thor's body.
I said, O.K., so now only Blake knows.
How's it strike you, foul or fair?
Can't say yet.
Deputy coroner says it looks like he sucked in a big pile of those thick suds and strangled on 'em.
The PM might show he drowned instead, but that's what the once-over-lightly gives us.
Accident, murder, suicide--take your pick.
I'll pick murder.
Anything else?
According to Rose, he arrived here a couple minutes before nine and spotted Thor in the water, got a hooked pole from the pool-equipment locker and started hauling him out.
Too many people think that the primary purpose of a higher education is to help you make a living;
this is not so, for education offers all kinds of dividends, including how to pull the wool over a husband's eyes while you are having an affair with his wife.
If it were not for an old professor who made me read the classics I would have been stymied on what to do, and now I understand why they are classics;
those who wrote them knew people and what made people tick.
I worked for my Uncle (an Uncle by marriage so you will not think this has a mild undercurrent of incest) who ran one of those antique shops in New Orleans' Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter.
The arrangement I had with him was to work four hours a day.
The rest of the time I devoted to painting or to those other activities a young and healthy man just out of college finds interesting.
I had a one-room studio which overlooked an ancient courtyard filled with flowers and plants, blooming everlastingly in the southern sun.
I had come to New Orleans two years earlier after graduating college, partly because I loved the city and partly because there was quite a noted art colony there.
When my Uncle offered me a part-time job which would take care of my normal expenses and give me time to paint I accepted.
The arrangement turned out to be excellent.
I loved the city and I particularly loved the gaiety and spirit of Mardi Gras.
I had seen two of them and we would soon be in another city-wide, joyous celebration with romance in the air;
and, when you took a walk you never knew what adventure or pair of sparkling eyes were waiting around the next corner.
The very faces of the people bore this expectation of fun and pleasure.
It was as if they could hardly wait to get into their costumes, cover their faces with masks and go adventuring.
My Uncle and I were not too close socially because of the difference in our ages.
Sometimes I wondered vaguely what he did about women for my Aunt, by blood, had died some years ago, but neither of us said anything.
One Monday morning I saw him approach the store with a woman and introduce me to her as my new Aunt.
They were married over the week-end, though he was easily sixty and she could not have been even thirty.
She looked more like twenty-five or six.
It was really a May and December combination.
My new Aunt was perhaps three or four years older than I and it had been a long time since I had seen as gorgeous a woman who oozed sex.
There was something about the contour of her face, her smile that was like New Orleans sunshine, the way she held her head, the way she walked--there was scarcely anything she did which did not fascinate me.
Her legs were the full, sexy kind, full bodied like a rare wine and just as tantalizing to the appetite;
the calf was magnificent, the ankle perfect.
You must forgive me if I seem to dwell too much on her physical aspects but I am an artist, accustomed to studying the physical body.
The true artist is like one of those scientists who, from a single bone can reconstruct an animal's entire body.
The artist looks at an ankle, a calf, a bosom and, in his mind's eye, the clothes drop away and he sees her as she really is.
And that is the way I first saw her when my Uncle brought her into his antique store.
That she impressed me instantly was obvious;
I was aware that when our eyes met we both quickly averted them.
I thought I saw a faint surge of color rise to her neck and quickly suffuse her cheeks.
True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.
She was standing with her back to the glass door.
Her form was silhouetted and with the strong light I could see the outlines of her body, a body that an artist or anyone else would have admired.
As it is in so many affairs of the heart, a man and a woman meet and something clicks.
Something clicked in this instance, but I treated her circumspectly and I felt that she knew it, for we both kept our distance.
When she appeared at the store to help out for a few hours even my looking at her was surreptitious lest my Uncle notice it.
And then I became aware that she, too, glanced at me surreptitiously.
I felt that her eyes were undressing me as if she were a painter and I a nude model.
I dismissed these feelings as wishful thinking but I could not get it out of my head that we had a strong physical attraction for one another and we both feared to dwell on it because of our relationship.
When our eyes met the air was filled with an unuttered message of Me, too.
You have probably experienced this.
It is nothing you can put your fingers on but the air suddenly fills with a high charge of electricity.
Why she married him I do not know.
I myself was fond of him but what a young woman half his age saw in him was a mystery to me.
He already had that slow pace that comes over the elderly, while she herself had all the signs of one who appreciates the joys of living.
Perhaps, with my Uncle, she found a measure of economic security that she needed;
or maybe she liked men old enough to be her father;
some women with father fixations do.
For several weeks we eyed one another almost like sparring partners, and then one day Uncle was slightly indisposed and stayed home;
his bride opened the store.
I was waiting in front of it when she showed up and told me of my Uncle's indisposition.
Even as she was telling me about it I became aware of a give-away flush that suffused her neck and moved upwards to her cheeks, and subconsciously I realized that when she entered the store she did not switch on the lights.
The cavernous depth, cluttered with antiques, echoed to her hard heels as she walked directly to the office in the rear and took the seat at his desk.
She placed her palms, fingers outspread, on the desk in an odd gesture as if to say, Now, what next?
I was aware of a humid look in her eyes that told me the time was opportune.
There was little likelihood of any customers walking in at that hour.
I was standing beside her, watching the outspread palms and wondering about the old horsehair sofa against the wall on which he sometimes napped.
I bent and kissed the still pink neck and suddenly she jumped up, and her two arms encircled me in a bear-like crush.
Her mouth, which had been so much in my thoughts, was warm and moist and tender.
I heard her murmur, We'd better lock the door.
It did not take me long to slip the bolt securely and return to the rear and its couch.
When we opened the door again for business and switched on the lights she said:
He will not always be indisposed.
I know.
I was thinking about that.
How will we work it out?
I don't know, she said.
You're the man.
You figure it out.
I've noticed the way you've been looking at me ever since we met.
I guess we both felt it.
I said.
I guess so, she said.
But now what?
Even as I said it I realized that an education can be invaluable.
I know what we can do, I said.
Tell him I made a pass at you.
She raised a protesting hand with a startled air.
What are you trying to do?
Get thrown out?
If I even hint at it do you think it will matter that you are his nephew--and not even a blood nephew?
I don't want to be thrown out and I don't think I will.
I think I have a way so we can carry on without his suspecting us.
By telling him you are making passes at me?
She said incredulously.
When I was in college, I grinned, I remember a poem I had to read in my lit class.
I don't even remember who wrote it but it was one of those 15th or 16th century poets.
In those days poems often told a story in verse and those boys had some corkers to tell;
and now I think we can use the knowledge they passed on to us.
Tomorrow Mardi Gras opens officially.
A lot of people will roam the streets in costumes and masks, and having a ball.
There will be romance and flirtation.
If you tell him I made a pass at you he might think you misunderstood something I said or did, so instead of just telling him I made a pass, say I tried to date you and that you agreed so you could prove to him what a louse I really am.
We made a rendezvous tomorrow evening at nine on some street near Lake Ponchartrain.
And to prove what you tell him about me you suggest that he keep the date instead.
You are both the same size.
He could use your clothes for a costume and a heavy veil for a mask.
When I show up he will know you are a good wife to have told him about it.
But you--she began.
Don't worry about me.
It will turn out all right.
I don't understand, she insisted.
Are you trying to cut your throat?
No, I chuckled, I'm just beginning to collect dividends on my investment in education.
As we expected, on the following day my Uncle was completely recovered and opened the store as usual at 10 in the morning.
I felt that he looked at me coldly and appraisingly and seemed to be uncertain what his attitude towards me should be, but he did not say one word which might indicate that he had been told of advances to his wife.
I quit work at my usual hour as if this day was no different from other days.
I heard subsequently that my Uncle and Aunt had dinner in a nearby restaurant in the French Quarter after which he went home to get into his costume to keep the date.
Shortly before nine I drove my jalopy to the street facing the Lake and parked the car in shadows far enough away from the rendezvous corner but near enough to keep the corner in clear view.
A few minutes later I saw my Uncle's car drive up and a woman's figure emerge and walk to the corner.
I must say the figure was well made up.
If it were not that I knew who it was I could have mistaken it for my Aunt so well did her clothes fit him.
In one hand he gripped firmly a parasol though there had been no indication of rain.
I suspected why he brought it along.
In the half darkness I approached cautiously, making sure he did not see me.
He was looking out on the dark waters of the Lake when I came upon him and without wasting words I smacked him hard across the face.
You cheap bitch!
I exclaimed.
You cheap, no good, two-timing bitch!
You get a good, loyal husband--smack!
-- and you fall for a pass by his own nephew!
You should--smack!
-- be ashamed of yourself.
He had better write a postcard to Walter.
He opened the myth book again and there (along the margin next to Robert Graves' imaginative interpretation of the creation of the Dactyls from Rhea's fingertips) were the names of four Munich bars and Meredith Wilder's address.
The bars were marked as Walter had marked them in a small black book kept in a nearly secret drawer.
The code, which had probably something to do with sex or some other interest, Nicolas was determined to find out and put to use.
A card to Walter would get him an introduction to this Meredith, and that might be good for something.
Nicolas called on his muse, a line came back:
Squaresville, man, and all the palazzos are crummy Palasts.
That ought to draw a laugh, Nicolas reasoned, as he stored the line away on the wax tape that was his mind.
And indeed, his postcard did draw from Walter a letter recommending his friend, the poet Nicolas Manas, to his friend Meredith Wilder.
Five days later, on receiving it, Meredith sat drumming his dactyls on his writing table.
Dammit!
He inwardly cried.
His hand was large and square and heavily tanned.
The voice crying in him was the voice of guilt.
His four weeks in Italy had turned into nearer three months.
He had returned to the pension a week ago.
Now, he was just in the late poems of Holderlin and therefore had most of the nineteenth century before him--plus next semester's class preparation.
He was determined to spend an industrious summer.
Well, maybe Manas wouldn't call.
Meredith's fingers slowed and stopped over a line before him: Sie lacheln, die Schwarzen Hexen.
The menace of Manas gradually faded as Meredith asked himself should he translate it,'How the dark fates laughed '?
Or, more rhythmically,'The swarthy witches are laughing '?
And he missed the point that the swarthy witches might be laughing at him for hoping to escape Nicolas Manas.
But Nicolas, too, was being interrupted, that morning.
Not by the 11:00 sun which had spread a warmth around his spot of grass in the English Gardens and sent him off to sleep;
but by a blond girl in a sweater and skirt who stood a few yards off and tenderly regarded him.
Should she wake him?
She didn't have the heart.
Her heart, her maternal feeling, in fact her being was too busy expressing itself, as quietly thrilled by this sight of her Nicolas curled asleep under a blanket, in a park like a scene from Poussin.
She was just not able to break the spell.
(Would she have been able to had she known that the blanket belonged to a young ballet dancer Nicolas had found his first night in one of Walter's marked bars?
Nicolas: Look, Nicolas doesn't go to bed with boys--no sex, see?
So if all these beers was to get me in bed, man, you just spent a lot of money.
Ballet dancer: Protests, tears, and take what you want, Nicolas, I am a dancer, you are a poet, it is all beautiful.
To this meek conjugation Nicolas had replied, O.K. I can use this blanket.
And when you get off this job tonight, well, you can gimme something to eat.
And, as a matter of fact, Nicolas had slept in the park only part of one night, when he discovered that Munich's early mornings even in summer are laden with dew.
He had always known how to find a bed, and on his own terms.
He used the blanket for late morning naps when hosts of the night had gone off to jobs and proved reluctant to leave him in their small rooms with their few possessions.
Mary Jane Lerner knew none of this.
) Her Nicolas lay curled in the sun like a fawn, black hair falling over his eyes.
She was telling herself that this might just be her reward at the end of a long meaningful search for truth.
This was surely a reunion in art, it was all that poetry promised.
That long night with Nicolas and marijuana in Venice had opened her eyes.
His advice, his voice saying his poems, the fact that he had not so much as touched her--on the contrary, he had put his head back and she had stroked his hair--this was all new.
Her eyes had opened, she had caught a glimpse of a new faith.
The next day he was gone.
Mary Jane might not be the most intelligent woman, but she was one of the most determined.
Even so, it took her several days to force Walter to tell her Nicolas's whereabouts.
Packing a small suitcase, informing her husband whom she found in Harry's Bar that she was taking a train to Germany to get away for a while, patting his arm, refusing a drink, getting on the train--all this had only taken her two hours.
She had arrived this morning and come straight to the English Gardens.
Dear girl, Walter had finally said, he writes me that he is sleeping in the English Gardens.
How like him!
Mary Jane had smilingly said.
His address, Walter added, is that great foundling home, the American Express.
And I will greatly appreciate it if you will not tell your husband.
For the last half hour Mary Jane had criss-crossed half the length of the Gardens and, at last, come upon her knight.
His presence there, asleep in the grass, confirmed all that Mary Jane believed it was in his power to teach her: freedom from the tedium of needs such as hotels, the meaning of nature, how to live, simply, with the angels.
She set down her suitcase.
Should she wake him?
No.
Smiling, she sat down on the suitcase and waited and watched.
The sun grew hotter as it approached the midday.
Nicolas was dreaming he had his head pressed against the dashboard of a speeding car.
He began sweating.
In his dream he cried, Slow down, for Chrissake!
He half woke and rolled over with his face in the cooler grass.
His nose was tickled.
He sneezed.
He blew his nose expertly between his fingers.
He spit.
He half sat up and scratched at the hair on his forehead and then, more vigorously, between his legs.
He belched, he stretched.
Mary Jane got up, quietly, and walked away.
Twenty minutes later she was at the desk of the Grafin's pension, her tears dried, signing a hotel form and asking for a bath.
Mary Jane belonged to a world acquainted with small attractive hotels and pensions in all the major and minor cities.
She had retreated to this world.
The Grafin, who was charmed by her, told her, Your sister who was here two years ago has quite dark hair.
Families are very interesting.
Nevertheless, there is no bath.
But a young American has a bath next to his room and I shall ask him if you might use it this once.
And then we shall see.
(The Grafin was partial to the word shall.
Meredith was irritated when the Grafin knocked at his door and told him, She is a great beauty!
Shall we allow her not to have a bath?
Actually, she is a sad beauty, I believe.
You shall see her at dinner.
Rather erotically he listened to the bath water running;
when it stopped he began busily typing, sitting up in a virtuous way.
Before dinner, he shaved for the second time that day.
A thing he did not like doing, generally.
Singing into the mirror and his interested eyes, he was pleased to note, when he stripped for his own bath, that he still had the best part of his Italian sun tan.
He flexed his muscles for several minutes, got into the tub, and then grew self-conscious of splashing as he washed.
In the small gallery used as the guests' dining room, Meredith sat down at his place and, as always, began teasing the young waitress.
He was asking had it been she who left the love note in his sheets (she also served as maid) when he saw the Grafin followed by a stately blond girl approaching his table.
It would be literary license calculated to glamorize life to say that he, oh, dropped his napkin, so startled was he by Mary Jane's beauty.
Yet he did drop his badinage with the ordinary country girl as much in deference to the Grafin as acknowledgement that here, indeed, was something special.
Mary Jane had made very little effort.
Above a dark green skirt she wore a pale green cashmere sweater with, as he soon perceived, no brassiere beneath.
Her white blond hair was clean and brushed long straight down to her shoulders.
Perhaps her eyes were larger and more of a summer blue for all they had seen and wept that day.
She had touched her face, truly a noble and pure face, only with a lip salve which made her lips glisten but no redder than usual.
The result was grace and modesty.
As she was rather tired this evening, her simple Thank you for the use of your bath--when she sat down opposite him--spoken in a low voice, came across with coolnesses of intelligence and control.
Meredith began falling in love.
Soup: Only this morning;
veal cutlets: Oh, I couldn't possibly eat all this!
Wine: Then you were typing poems this afternoon?
Fruit compote: If you think I would understand it;
a smile.
What a beautiful room.
Like as if it were built of books.
Having opened the windows onto the terrace, lit the fire, translated the motto, Meredith grinned and took down a little triplet of books bound together in old calfskin.
Opening these he brought out a schnapps bottle and small gold thimble-sized glasses hidden inside it.
I think the maids tipple in the afternoon.
Those sweet girls?
Oh you're joking.
It tastes a little like poppyseed.
What's its name?
Steinhager She whispered Steinhager to herself, several times, memorizing it.
Would you first read the poem aloud to me and then let me read it to myself?
Meredith's voice was always deep, with rough bass notes in it;
in reading, on platforms, even in the large auditorium of the Y.M.H.A., Poetry Center nights, his voice was intimate, thoughtful, and a trifle shy.
His new poem, a love poem, told of a young husband leading his wife upstairs to the bedroom when the lights in the house have failed.
) But he read on.
In the bedroom before the husband and wife find their way to the bed, the lights go on: In dull domestic radiance I watch her staring face, still blind, Start wincing in obedience To dirty waters, counters, pots and pans, Waiting below stairs, in her mind.
Mary Jane took the page from him and began reading it, moving her lips with the words.
Oh, it's that myth, about Orpheus and What is her name?
I can never pronounce it.
She repeated Eurydice.
The third time rather urgently.
But with her hand poem again.
She raised her face and nodded, It's sweet, and very sad.
They discussed the way people never tell each other the things on their minds.
They finished the small bottle of Steinhager.
She confessed she was unhappy, he asked was it her husband?
She began to explain, There was this poet, in Italy He interrupted, Please don't judge all poets.
They smiled.
At her door, two or three hours later, Mary Jane whispered, Everyone is asleep.
Kissing her he whispered, several times, Eurydice.
The third time rather urgently.
But with her hand softly on his cheek for a last moment, she closed the door and he went back down the hall and into his bed excited, expectant, and finally faintly grinning with the feel of her hand against his mouth.
They were west of the Sabine, but only God knew where.
For three days, their stolid oxen had plodded up a blazing valley as flat and featureless as a dead sea.
Molten glare singed their eyelids an angry crimson;
suffocating air sapped their strength and strained their nerves to snapping;
dust choked their throats and lay like acid in their lungs.
And the valley stretched endlessly out ahead, scorched and baked and writhing in its heat, until it vanished into the throbbing wall of fiery orange brown haze.
Ben Prime extended his high-stepped stride until he could lay his goad across the noses of the oxen.
Hoa-whup!
He commanded from his raw throat, and felt the pain of movement in his cracked, black burned lips.
He removed his hat to let the trapped sweat cut rivulets through the dust film upon his gaunt face.
He spat.
The dust-thick saliva came from his mouth like balled cotton.
He moved back to the wheel and stood there blowing, grasping the top of a spoke to still the trembling of his played-out limbs.
The burning air dried his sweat-soaked clothes in salt-edged patches.
He cleared his throat and wet his lips.
As cheerfully as possible, he said, Well, I guess we could all do with a little drink.
He unlashed the dipper and drew water from a barrel.
They could no longer afford the luxury of the canvas sweat bag that cooled it by evaporation.
The water was warm and stale and had a brackish taste.
But it was water.
Thank the Lord, they still had water!
He cleansed his mouth with a small quantity.
He took a long but carefully controlled draught.
He replenished the dipper and handed it to his young wife riding the hurricane deck.
She took it grudgingly, her dark eyes baleful as they met his.
She drank and pushed back her gingham bonnet to wet a kerchief and wipe her face.
She set the dipper on the edge of the deck, leaving it for him to stretch after it while she looked on scornfully.
What happens when there's no more water?
She asked smolderingly.
She was like charcoal, he thought--dark, opaque, explosive.
Her thick hair was the color and texture of charcoal.
Her temper sparked like charcoal when it first lights up.
And all the time, she had the heat of hatred in her, like charcoal that is burning on its under side, but not visibly.
A ripple ran through the muscles of his jaws, but he kept control upon his voice.
There must be some water under there.
He tilted his homely face toward the dry bed of the river.
We can get it if we dig, he said patiently.
And add fever to our troubles?
She scoffed.
Or do you want to see if I can stand fever, too?
We can boil it, he said.
Her chin sharpened.
We're lost and burning up already, she bit out tensely.
The tires are rattling on the wheels now.
They'll roll off in another day.
There was no valley like this on your map.
You don't even know where we're headed.
Hettie, he said as gently as he could, we're still headed west.
Somewhere, we'll hit a trail.
Somewhere!
She repeated.
Maybe in time to make a cross and dig our graves.
His wide mouth compressed.
In a way, he couldn't blame her.
He had picked out this pathless trail, instead of the common one, in a moment of romantic fancy, to give them privacy on their honeymoon.
It had been a mistake, but anything would have been a mistake, as it turned out.
It wasn't the roughness and crudity and discomfort of the trip that had frightened her.
She had hated the whole idea before they started.
Actually, she had hated him before she ever saw him.
It had been five days too late before he learned that she'd gone through the wedding ceremony in a semitrance of laudanum, administered by her mother.
The bitterness of their wedding night still ripped within him like an open wound.
She had jumped away from his shy touch like a cat confronted by a sidewinder.
He had left her inviolate, thinking familiarity would gentle her in time.
But each mile westward, she had hated him the deeper.
He stared at the dipper, turning it over and over in his wide, calloused hands.
I suppose, he muttered, I can sell the outfit for enough to send you home to your folks, once we find a settlement.
Don't try to be noble!
Her laugh was hard.
They wouldn't have sold me in the first place if there'd been food enough to go around.
He winced.
Hettie, they didn't sell you, he said miserably.
They knew I was a good sharecrop farmer back in Carolina, but out West was a chance to build a real farm of our own.
They thought it would be a chance for you to make a life out where nobody will be thought any better than the next except for just what's inside of them.
Without money or property, what would you have had at Baton Rouge?
I might have starved, but at least I wouldn't be fried to a crisp and soaked with dirt!
He darkened under his heavy burn.
His blue eyes sought the shimmering sea of haze ahead.
To his puzzlement, there suddenly was no haze.
The valley lay clear, and open to the eye, right up to the sharp-limbed line of gaunt, scoured hills that formed the horizon twenty miles ahead.
Then he noticed the clouds racing upon them--heavy, ominous, leaden clouds that formed even as they sliced over the crests of the surrounding hills.
He had never seen clouds like them before, but he had the primitive feel of danger that gripped a man before a hurricane in Carolina.
He hollered hoarsely, Hang on!
And goaded the oxen as he yelled.
He wanted to turn them, putting the wagon against the storm.
Too late, he realized that in turning, he had wheeled them onto a patch of sandy ground, instead of atop a grade or ridge.
He swung up over the wheel.
You had better get inside, he warned her.
But she sat on in stubborn silence.
The clouds bulged downward and burst suddenly into a great black funnel.
Frozen, they stared at it whirling down the valley, gouging and spitting out boulders and chunks of earth like a starving hound dog cracking marrowbones.
The six-ton Conestoga began to whip and shake.
Their world turned black.
It was filled with dust and wind and sound and violence.
The heavens opened, pelting them with hail the size of walnuts.
And then came the water--not rain, but solid sheets that sluiced down like water slopping from a bucket.
Walls of water rushed down the slopes and filled the hollows like the crests of flash floods.
Through the splash of the rising waters, they could hear the roar of the river as it raged through its canyon, gnashing big chunks out of the banks.
The jetting, frothing surface of the river reached the level of the runoff.
The dangerous current upon the prairie ceased, but the water stood and kept on rising.
They cringed under sodden covers, listening to the waves slop against the bottom.
The cloudburst cut off abruptly.
They were engulfed by the weird silence, broken only by the low, angry murmur of the river.
Then the darkness thinned, and there was light again, and then bright sunlight.
Beaten with fear and sound and wet and chill, they crawled to the hurricane deck and looked out haggardly at a world of water that reached clear to the surrounding hills.
The water level was higher than their hubs.
Only the heavy bones of the oxen kept them anchored.
There was no real sign of the river now, just a roiling, oily ribbon of liquid movement through muddy waters that reached everywhere.
Clumps of brush rode down the ribbon.
Now and then, the glistening side of a half-swamped object showed as it swept past.
The girl crawled out into the renewing warmth of the sunshine, hugging her shoulders and still trembling.
Her face was pale but set and her dark eyes smoldered with blame for Ben.
Out of compulsion to say something cheery, Ben Prime blurted, Well, we were lucky to be on soft ground when the first floodheads hit.
At least, the wheels dug in.
The soaking will put life back in the wagon, too.
His wife didn't give a sign she'd heard.
She was watching a tree ride wildly down that roiling current.
Somebody was riding the tree.
It raced closer and they could see a woman with white hair, sitting astride an upright branch.
She did not call out.
But as the tree passed, she lifted an arm in gesture of better luck and farewell.
They watched the tree until it twisted sharply on a bend.
It speared up into the air, then sinking back, the up-jutting branch turned slowly.
The pale blob of the woman disappeared.
There's the one who's lucky!
The girl murmured harshly.
Ben's eyes strained with the bitter hurt, his homely face slashed with gray and crimson.
Then he took off his wet boots and dropped down into the water to talk with the beasts, needing their comfort more than they needed his.
It was nearly sundown and he went to the back of the wagon, half-swimming his way, for he was not a tall man.
He let down the tailgate and was knocked over by the sluice of water.
He sputtered back to his feet and scrambled madly to pull his bags of seed grain forward.
They were already swollen to bursting.
Of all their worldly belongings, next to the oxen and his gun, the seed grain had been the most treasured.
It was spoiled now for seed, and it would sour and mold in three days if they failed to find a place and fuel to dry it.
The oxen might as well enjoy it.
He examined the water marks on the iron tires when the animals were finished.
The waters lay muddy but placid, without a ripple of movement against the wheels;
there was not a match-width of damp mark to show they were receding.
He doubted if a man could wade as far as the desolate, dry hills that rimmed the valley.
A terrible, numbing sense of futility swept over him.
He gripped the wheel hard to fight the despondency of defeat.
Then he noticed that the dry wood of the wheels had swollen.
The spokes were tight again, the iron tires gripped onto the wheels as if of one piece.
Hope surged within him.
He swung toward the front to give the news to Hettie, then stopped, barred from her by the vehemence of her blame and hate.
Still, he felt better.
A tight wagon meant so much.
He got a small fire started and put on bacon and coffee.
He poured the water off the sourdough and off the flour, salvaging the chunky, watery messes for biscuits of a sort.
Their jams and jellies had not suffered.
He found a jar of preserved tomatoes and one of eggs that they had meant to save.
Now he broke them open, hoping a good meal might lessen this depression crushing Hettie.
His long nose wiggled at the smells of frizzling bacon and heating java, but the fire was low, and he wanted to waste no time.
He furled the slashed sides of the canvas tarpaulins, leaving the ribs and wagon open.
He looked thoughtfully at his wife's trunk, holding her meager treasures.
He said hesitantly, Hettie, I don't figure your things got wet too much.
That's a good trunk.
If you want to get them aired
She said without turning her head, After that rain beating in atop the dust, there isn't a thing that won't be streaked.
He drew a long breath and opened the trunk and hung out her clothes and spoilables upon the wagon ribs.
Sulphur, oil, and copra make the kind of tinder any firebug dreams of.
I suppose a Lascar sailor had sneaked a cigarette in the hold and touched off the blaze.
Now, roaring up in great oily clouds of smoke and flames, the fierce heat quickly drove us to the stern where we huddled like suffocating sheep, not knowing what to do.
The lifeboats were stuck fast.
We couldn't budge them.
I heard a cry from a stoker as a pillar of flame leaped from a hatch and tongued the man's bare back.
He sprinted to the rail and leaped overboard into the shark-infested waters.
One especially bad detonation shook Lifeboat No. 3 which trembled violently in the davits.
Brassnose yelled: Come on, Sommers, Max step on it, we got a chance now.
Heave on those ropes;
the boat's come unstuck.
We pulled and swore and yanked and wept, scraping our hands until they bled profusely.
The Bonaventure was quivering and lurching like an old spavined mare.
Her stern was down and a sharp list helped us to cut loose the lifeboat which dropped heavily into the water.
Brassnose, Max and I leaped into the sea and swam to the boat.
Let's get away fast, said Brassnose, shaking water from his mop of bleached hair.
That tub is going to explode all at once.
Then the Bonaventure seemed to disintegrate with a roar of live steam, geysers of sparks and flames, and a dense cloud of black-and-orange smoke.
Dimly, we heard the voices of men in mortal agony but we couldn't go back into that inferno.
Already our leaky lifeboat was filled with five inches of water.
Sommers, you bale while we row, Brassnose commanded.
As best as I could determine, we were some 700 miles west of New Guinea, in the Bismark Archipelago.
Three days previously, we had steamed past barren Rennell Island in the distance.
Now we peered anxiously for any speck of land in the Pacific, for this interminable bailing would have to stop soon.
There were gigantic blisters and rope burns on our hands;
our muscles were hot wires of pain.
Brassnose was strangely silent.
The big man with the whitened hair murmured something: his words sounded as if they were in the Manu tongue, which I recognized, having studied the dialect in my Anthropology 6, class at the University of Chicago.
He then said something which struck a chord in my memory.
God help us if we're near the island of Eromonga.
We'd be in real trouble then.
I'd rather keep bailing--or sink.
I was puzzled by the remark, then I recalled the voice of mild Professor Howard Griggs three years ago in a university lecture on primitive societies.
He had been speaking of this archipelago:
Even when the islands were under German mandate before World War 1, Europeans gave Eromonga a wide berth.
The place is inhabited by several hundred warlike women who are anachronisms of the Twentieth Century--stone age amazons who live in an all-female, matriarchal society which is self-sufficient.
I remembered, too, the jesting voice of a classmate, Bobby Pauson: But how do they reproduce, Dr. Griggs?
I'm sure that males have something to do with that process!
There had been classroom guffaws which quickly subsided as Professor Griggs said dryly: I see your point, Pauson.
Of course, males play a role there, but believe me when I say you wouldn't enjoy yourself one bit on Eromonga.
Indeed, you wouldn't live long, for the females either drive the men they've seized from neighboring islands back to their boats after exploiting them for amatory purposes, or they destroy them by revolting but ingenious methods.
In fact, one important aspect of their very religion is the annihilation of men.
I think I know what you mean, Brassnose, I said.
I know something about Eromonga.
Let's hope we come to a safer place.
But we didn't.
Three hours later, while we were bailing desperately, a dot of land came into view.
Foster Lukuklu Frayne made a sign over his heart with his two linked thumbs: I recognized it as an ancient Manu gesture intended to propitiate the Devil.
A half-hour passed;
we had drifted closer.
In a voice so frightened as to seem not his own, the big bo'sun's mate quavered:
Tchalo!
It is Eromonga--look hard, you can see with your naked eye the wooden scaffolding on the cliff.
I squinted at the looming shoreline.
There was a wooden tower or derrick there, something like a ski jump;
it was perhaps 80 feet high and had been artfully constructed of logs.
A fine example of engineering in a primitive society.
What is the scaffolding for, Brassnose?
He made a sound of despair deep in his throat.
It was embarrassing to see strapping, blonde Brassnose comport himself like a child who talks about bogeymen.
Aaa-ee!
It is their tultul, the'jumping platform'of death.
It is the last of the three tests of manhood which the women impose, to discover if a male is worthy of survival there.
Often, I heard my uncles and cousins speak of it when I was a small boy growing up in Rabaul.
They had never seen a tultul but they had heard about it from their fathers.
Our lifeboat was filling rapidly and despite what I had heard of the inhabitants of Eromonga, I was glad to see a long and graceful outrigger manned by three bronzed girls glide out of a lagoon into the open sea and toward our craft.
I expected Brassnose--as a man with a strain of Melanesian in his blood--to speak to them.
But he had turned a sickly green and appeared tongue-tied or panicked.
So, I mustered my few words of the Manu dialect and said, We greet you in peace.
In ngandlu.
My friends and I come from a ship which was destroyed by fire.
We are thirsty and hungry;
our sore and burned hands and arms need attention.
The girl in the prow of the outrigger turned a smile like a beacon on me.
I noted that her full breasts were bare and that she wore a garland of red pandanus fruit in her blue-black hair.
She said, My name is Songau and these girls are Ponkob and Piwen.
You are welcome to Eromonga.
My people await you on the shore.
You shall have food, water and rest.
Thirty minutes later, the outrigger grated on sand and other girls, waiting on shore, rushed forward to pull it up on the beach and make it fast with vine ropes to a large boulder.
I saw a dozen or so other outriggers moored there.
I looked.
All my rosy visions of rest and even pleasure on this island vanished at the sight.
There was a mound of bleached human bones and skulls at the base of the big wooden derrick.
Some had been there for years;
others still had whitened shreds of decayed flesh sticking to them.
There was one object which sickened yet fascinated me.
This was also a corpse--a male, judging from the coral arm bands, the tribal scars still discernible on the maggoty face, the painted bone of the warrior caste which still pierced the septum of the rotting nose.
The body may have been two or three weeks' dead.
I looked with revulsion at the legs.
They were shattered.
Many small bones protruded crazily from the shreds of flesh.
The man must have leaped to his death from the topmost rung of the tultul.
As if divining my thoughts, the girl Songau smiled warmly and said in the casual tone an American woman might use in describing her rose garden:
This is our tultul, a jumping platform, aku.
Later, you shall know it better.
Is it not well-made?
Our old one blew down in a storm at the time of the pokeneu festival fifteen moons ago.
It took thirty of our women almost six moons to build this one, which is higher and stronger than the old one.
We are very proud of it.
You have every right to be, I replied gravely in the Manu dialect, but my attention was fixed on Brassnose, the biggest and strongest of us.
He looked as if he was going to keel over.
I felt a queasiness in my own stomach but it wouldn't do to show these girls that we were afraid.
Not so soon, anyway.
I clapped the big man with the bleached hair on his shoulder and said heartily, hoping it would make an impression on the women: This one is the maku Frayne.
He speaks your language too, for he is the grandson of a chieftain on Taui who made much magic and was strong and cunning.
The maku Frayne has inherited this strength from his grandfather.
This was the worst thing I could have said.
Brassnose turned a stricken face toward me and said brokenly, Sommers, you meddling Yank, you're a fool!
They despise males who brag of their strength;
they destroy such men with their damned tests.
You've ruined me, blast you!
At first, I thought he was out of his head, talking wildly like this.
But a glance at Songau and the other women confirmed what Brassnose had blurted out.
The women's faces had hardened after my statement.
At a nod from Songau, four lithe and muscular girls darted to Frayne's side and seized him by the arms.
The man was an ox and he put up a creditable struggle;
but four Eromonga women are more than a match for the strongest male that ever lived.
Besides, terror had sapped some of Frayne's vitality and will.
My last impression as they led him off to a stockade was of his pale face
In the Manu tongue, eromonga means manhood--a quality which the women derisively toasted in weekly feasts at which great quantities of a brew like kava were imbibed.
In the hut to which I was assigned--Max had his own quarters--my food was brought to me by a wrinkled crone with bare drooping breasts who seemed to enjoy conversing with me in rudimentary phrases.
Her name was L'Turu and she told me many things.
For an anthropologist, loquacious old L'Turu was a mine of information.
Though I had a great dread of the island and felt I would never leave it alive, I eagerly wrote down everything she told me about its women.
(Her account was later confirmed by the Scobee-Frazier Expedition from the University of Manitoba in 1951.
From L'Turu, I heard that until about 1850 the people of this island--which was about the size of Guam or smaller--had been of both sexes, and that the normal family life of Melanesian tribes was observed here with minor variations.
But in the middle of the last century an island woman named Karipo seized a spear in the heat of an inter-tribal battle and rallied the women after their men had fled.
Miraculously, Karipo and her women had succeeded in driving a hundred invaders from the isle of Pamasu back to their war canoes, after considerable loss of life on both sides.
Karipo was something of a politician as well as a militarist.
She quickly exploited the exalted position she now occupied, by harassing the disorganized males and even putting many of them to death.
Within a decade or less, few men were left and a feminist society had sprung up.
Karipo was great goddess, told our mothers that men were not necessary except to father children, the crone told me.
All men went away from here.
Those who stayed had to pass tests.
Few passed.
She cackled with mirth, showing the stumps of betel-stained teeth.
Karipo's women then named this place'Eromonga '--manhood--for just the strongest men could stay here.
Come, I show you.
The old woman arose stiffly and led me to a clearing where a small hut stood.
In the shade of a palm tree in front of the squalid dwelling I saw four figures in a semi-circle on the ground.
I guess he spent the morning getting himself all organized, then headed for home.
Maybe to beat up on his squaw.
Benson looked up and saw Ramey's long head tilt forward to rub his chin on the stiff edge of the overall bib.
Ramey reached out with the tire iron and dislodged a chunk of mud that was caked on the spare tire rack.
I'd like to know just which it is that those guys don't understand, the liquor or automobiles.
Somehow the thought of a simple man bewildered by things no one had ever really helped him understand moved the driver.
For a moment his hatred toward drunken or careless drivers softened.
Maybe the Indian wasn't too much at fault, Ramey thought.
Maybe he was only doing the best he knew how, like any of us.
Anyway, he doesn't deserve to lie there in the sun and be stared at.
Ever see yourself spread out on the pavement, Benny?
He said to his partner.
You mean dream?
Not exactly.
Just see it.
Benson grinned and flipped a rock with his thumb like a marble.
Nope, just you, all the time--sometimes I think it's the only way I'll ever get a decent partner.
Ramey smiled but he thought to himself, I always see me too.
Never Benny.
Whenever he saw someone lying in the dirt, Ramey wondered what the person had been thinking and he would try out thoughts in his own mind.
Then he would realize they were really things that only he himself could think.
With this realization, sometimes, he saw himself as he looked down.
You seen him yet?
Benson said, referring to the Indian.
He wasn't in the car, Ramey said.
You didn't go clear around, Benson said.
If you want to see something, he's back on the other side by the trunk of the car.
Too long a waiting line, Ramey answered, pretending to joke.
A few minutes later the insurance man, a road checker, drove up in the gray coupe with license plates on it from a far-away state.
It was a trick they used to try and conceal their identity when they followed trucks to check their speed.
Sometimes they just parked at the side of the road and used radar on the trucks as they passed.
All the drivers knew about the plates and they also knew about the big floppy straw hat with shredded edges, the kind natives in travel ads wear when they are out joyfully chopping cane.
Horsely, an agent on the east end, wore the hat, trying to look like a tourist.
It had always seemed strange to Ramey that to disguise himself as a tourist, an ex-truck driver like Horsely would merely pick something outlandish and put it on his head.
The insurance man informed them that he had talked to Crumley who was all right and that he would watch the men's personal effects until they towed the rig back to town.
He chatted with Ramey and Benson for a minute or so in the meager shade of the trailer.
Every so often the diminishing sound of a car came under the trailer as it slowed down for the wreck then speeded up again as it got clear.
When they were ready to leave, Benson and Ramey walked back around the rear of the trailer.
There's a body you won't mind looking at, Benson said and they stopped.
She had driven up with her husband in a convertible with Eastern license plates, although the two drivers knew nothing at the moment about that.
She wore shorts and a loose terry-cloth shirt.
Slender and tanned, her dark brown hair was drawn straight back, simply.
What outfit does she drive for?
Benson said.
Seeing her caused a lurch in Ramey, a recognition.
She might have been someone he had once loved.
He had never seen her before, but now he thought of the manner in which he and Benson went in and out of the cities, at each end of their run.
The truck routes, the industrial areas with walls grimed with diesel smoke passed briefly through his mind--back alleys were their access to a city and they could never stay.
How would you ever see her again?
The feeling subsided, it was only a small yearning.
Their work was lonely.
What's she doing in this bunch?
Benson said, and Ramey wondered how close their thoughts might have been.
The girl looked around at the countryside.
Her glance swung past the trailer where the two drivers were standing.
It made only a tiny bump over the two men like a tire over a piece of gravel then moved on.
She began to watch a blonde-haired man, also in shorts, standing right at the rear of the wrecked car in the one spot that most of the crowd had detoured slightly.
What had caught his attention was obscured by the car itself, so that neither the girl nor the truck drivers could see, but Benson knew what it was.
The girl took a couple of steps toward the man in shorts when Benson, in that barefoot courtliness Ramey could never decide was real, said, You don't want to go around there, Ma'am.
The girl stopped but did not turn her head or acknowledge that someone had spoken to her.
The man stood near the bent levi-clad body of the Indian who lay face down almost under the car.
The two drivers moved closer.
What does he want, a spoon?
Benson said to Ramey.
One tiny detail in a happening can clog the memory and stick like meat in a crooked tooth, while the rest of the occurrence will go hazy and uncertain.
With Ramey it was a dusty work shoe that was half-off the Indian's foot that he would always remember.
The laces were broken at the bottom of the eyelets but there was still a bow knot at the top.
The slightest twitch would have parted the shoe entirely from the foot, yet the toes were still inside.
The two men in overalls stood just behind the blonde-headed man.
He wore tennis shorts and a white sweater with a red V at the neck, the sleeves pushed above the elbows.
He turned and looked at them with clear blue eyes, immaculate eyes.
He was very tanned--big hands might have torn him from a Coca-Cola poster.
He's dead, isn't he?
The man said.
He turned and bent over the body of the Indian.
There was nothing in particular on the man's face.
It was simply a matter of curiosity, a natural right to examine.
What's this?
The man said, backing up a step, still looking down.
His words were mostly to himself.
Don't.
There was a gentle concern in Benson's voice.
Ramey looked down and saw the white sneaker at the bottom of the man's tanned leg cautiously nudge a bit of folded, blood-flecked substance lying by itself on the pavement.
But what is it?
The man said with a tone of impatience.
But what is it?
The man had spoken only once.
Ramey heard the words again inside, weakened, the way moving water sounds through a grove of trees, until he was not sure whether it was sound or light-headedness pressing in his ears.
The sneaker reached out once more to tap against the mass and Ramey's vision darkened except for an unreasonable clarity of the man's leg.
Ramey saw sunlight touch the curly blonde hairs on the brown skin.
He stared at the shining, shining circles of hairs and heard the voice of his partner through trees, Don't do that, fella.
Them's brains.
The man seemed to sink a little as Ramey brought the tire iron down on his shoulder and it seemed that the blonde head was turning as he hit the man again, with his fist.
Ramey swung and caught the man just to the left of his mouth.
It was a straight, solid, once-in-a-lifetime shot;
he laid all four knuckles in between the man's cheekbone and his chin.
Ramey's fist and the air expelled from the man's collapsing cheek made a hollow pop in the air like cupped hands clapping together.
The man took two short steps backward then sat down heavily on the pavement.
Ramey heard a cry from the girl and felt a slight pain somewhere in his hand.
As he watched the man sit suddenly, a detached part of his mind observed how very difficult it was, really, to knock a man off his feet.
He hadn't done it this time and he would never again hit anyone so hard.
With a thoughtful look, the man sat on the pavement, legs straight out in front of him.
His arms hung like empty shirt sleeves, and his mouth was slightly open.
After what seemed several seconds, the open mouth grew dark inside then blood began to ooze from it.
The man brought one hand up slowly and the fingers fumbled across his face until he touched his mouth.
He moaned and pulled the hand away.
Even yet there was no realization in his eyes.
Ramey could hear the crowd coming up rapidly behind him and the questioning voices coming over his shoulder had no identity or importance to him.
He did not look around.
What happened?
Someone said.
He's hurt!
A woman's voice said, and then he heard a sort of wail from the man's wife.
The man on the ground began to move;
one of his hands flattened out on the pavement and supported him.
Blood dripped down the front of his sweater, soaking into a dark streak of dirt that ran diagonally across the white wool on his shoulder, as though the bright V woven into the neckline had melted, running a darker color.
The girl kneeled by her husband with one arm at his back.
Can you hear, can you talk to me?
She begged.
An incoherent, puzzled sound came from the red mouth.
The girl looked around quickly at several of the people.
None of the crowd had stepped forward to help.
Then she saw Ramey and her face was misshapen with bewilderment.
Why did you do it--why did you hit him?
She said, her voice rising.
Ramey said nothing.
A shine in her eyes suddenly became tears and she turned back to her husband again.
Behind Ramey feet scraped beneath sharp questioning whispers.
No one seemed to know for sure what had happened, nor was there any purpose or responsibility in the muttering feet and urgent voices behind the driver, beyond finding out.
Ramey looked around and caught sight of his partner near the front end of the wrecked truck talking to the patrolman.
Benson moved his arms, gesturing with an unfamiliar vigor and talking rapidly.
Ramey caught a glimpse of the insurance man.
Some of the ruddiness was gone from his face and he stared at Ramey.
It's all over now, the driver thought as he saw the patrolman turn and walk rapidly down along the trailer toward them.
Ramey watched him coming with a vision as clean as the glare on the metal sides of the trailer.
All right, step back!
The patrolman said to no one in particular as he pushed between the fat man in the baseball cap and a young boy in levis.
He walked straight up to the man sitting on the ground and bent over to look at him.
You all right?
Mough--it's my mough, the man said, trying to talk without moving his lips.
His brown face looked gray from dirt streaks where his hand had come off the dusty pavement and rubbed across it.
Then he calmly and carefully slugged the remaining five shots into the venomous head--caught in the wicker back of the chair, the eyes dead on him as the life finally went out of the brute.
The body continued to lash, but now Keith used the legs of the chair to fork the loathsome, bloody mass out of the bungalow.
He slammed the door and listened as his servants ran up, alarmed at the sound of the shots.
He heard their chattering, and then the sounds of hacking as they dismembered the snake right on the porch with wood axes.
It was only then that he turned to look at Penny.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed again, back in the same position where the snake had found her.
The fear had not entirely gone from her face, but there were some other emotions now, crowding into her eyes and the lines of her mouth.
But her hands were calm, now.
She's got guts, thought Keith.
She's got more guts than any other woman in the world.
Keith, said Penny, Keith, you were wonderful.
I don't suppose a wife should be grateful to her husband for saving her life, but I am.
Thank you, Keith.
He smiled at her sincerity.
And for the hundredth time that week, he was startled at her beauty.
Strange.
Seven years they'd been married.
He knew her mind pretty well, by now, its quick perceptions and sympathies, its painful insistence on truth and directness, its capacity for love almost too deep for a man to reciprocate, even in part.
But her beauty always surprised him anew.
I realize that this is hardly the time to say it, Penny, said Keith.
But knowing you, I know that you're glad to be alive, and grateful--and sorry because I killed the snake, even though I had to.
Isn't that so?
Penny lowered her eyes.
Yes, she said, almost in a whisper, as if admitting to a crime.
The snake was beautiful, wasn't it?
Asked Keith, his voice getting harsher in spite of himself, as he struggled to control his growing anger.
It was a king cobra, the largest you ever saw, and it deserved to live out its life in the jungle, didn't it?
didn't it?
Penny did not answer.
Now, she just sat there looking at him, without an expression except concern for him.
We're all God's creatures, aren't we?
Keith was snarling now.
All of us--every goddam roach and worm and killer in that jungle.
You love this village and these stinking brown people because they're God's creatures, too.
And you love Ahmiri, that black bastard of a servant even a little more, because he's a beautiful man.
And he loves you because you're a beautiful woman.
We're all God's creatures, aren't we, Penny?
All of us, that is, except me.
You hate me, you hate my guts, because I like to hunt.
You actually hate me--and we both know it--because I killed that filthy snake.
Well, why don't you say something?
Penny would not rise to his mood.
There isn't anything left to say, is there, Keith?
She softly let herself into the bed, and took her regular side, away from the door, where she slept better because Keith was between her and the invader.
He knew she was not sulking, not even angry at him.
Just as he knew that she had stopped loving him.
The Brahmaputra has its headwaters in the tableland of the world, the towering white headwalls of the Himalayas that are unknown to man as any other space on the planet.
Keith Sterling had looked down on the Brahmaputra more times than he could remember, during the war days when he flew over the Hump of the world, thinking it high adventure in those times before man was guiding himself through outer space.
But Keith looked down more than up.
He thought of the jungles below him, and of the wild, strange, untracked beauty there and he promised himself that someday he would return, on foot perhaps, to hunt in this last corner of the world where man is sometimes himself the hunted, and animals the lords.
At first it had been just a romantic dream of his, the same as the idea of finishing Oxford after the war.
But after the war was a luxury of a phrase he did not permit himself.
Wing Commanders in the RAF do not imply survival in the future either in their orders or in their attitudes, to their men or to themselves.
And Keith's record of kills made him a man to listen to--a man paradoxically, who might even survive.
He became a fighter pilot after the stint over the Hump in the big crates.
The RAF was Britain's weapon of attrition, and flying a fighter plane was the way her sons could serve her best at this point in the war.
He knew how to shoot down Nazis.
And he knew that the men talked about him behind his back, saying that he was one up on everybody else--including the pilot of the plane with the swastika on it--because he was chemically incapable of fear.
That was true, but only half the truth.
The other half he didn't like to recognize, even to himself.
He enjoyed the killing.
Not defending England, or being an ace, or fighting for humanity.
He enjoyed killing.
And he would have enjoyed it just as much if he had been a Nazi.
Nowadays, we talk as though the blitz were just a short skirmish.
The Nazis bombed Britain, so the RAF retaliated and shot them all down.
Not quite.
It was a war of nerves, of stamina, of dogged endurance in which the stupid insistence of the British on their right to their own country became ultimately an unsurmountable obstacle to the Nazis, who were better organized and technically superior.
It took a long time before the British tipped the balance.
Keith learned too much about air combat, and air killing, to be risked.
They grounded him (over his protests--not including his true reason for wanting to fly) and put him in the Command offices.
That was where he met Penny.
He was aware of her as a frightfully good-looking American WAC, a second lieutenant assigned to do the paper work, (regardless of how important she might have thought she was) in the Command offices, but that was all.
Penny knew him better, on her part.
He had a war reputation, but this was the kind of man women like even without medals.
They don't go for bull-like muscle, as a rule.
He had strength in his six-foot frame, but it was like the tensile steel in a rapier.
He was on the thin side, with big hands, and the kind of wrists that give away the power in forearm and bicep.
His hair was black, already greying at the temples in the classic beauty-idiom, the only one permitted to a man.
The pretty little twittering WACS said he had the look of eagles--and Penny, hating the cliche, had to admit that in this case it applied.
Keith was an eagle.
Penny and Keith had no romance.
No dates or hand-holding.
But they met in one searing moment that gave them to one another instantly.
The Command offices were in the border country, up north, where the radar systems centralized their intelligence reports, and the fighters were dispatched to harry the enemy.
The Nazis knew this, of course, and while their chief quarry was the industrial centers, they let a few drop every time they went over, hoping for a lucky hit.
This time, they had been lucky.
The Command post was underground, and well camouflaged.
But there hadn't been enough time to build it for keeps.
There was a measure of protection in its concrete walls and ceiling, but the engineers who hastily installed it were well aware that concrete is not much better than prayer, if as efficacious, when a direct hit comes along.
This one was actually more of a near miss.
The bomb plunged into the ground near the Post, but not precisely into the Command room itself.
There was a shattering, cracking sound as the concrete started to buckle, the air filled with dust and flying debris, and everyone in the room--men and women hit the floor and used the desks as turtlebacks, as ordered.
That is, everyone but Keith and Penny.
They stood there, just the two of them, in the rocking, shattering blast.
Keith was on his feet because he didn't care at all about life any more: Penny on her feet, proudly, because she cared too much.
The bomb was a solitary one.
The blast damaged, but did not destroy the room.
Keith's eyes met Penny's as they stood there in this strange marriage of destruction.
And, as the others began to crawl out from beneath the desks and tend to those wounded, and mark the several killed, he climbed across the debris to Penny and took her hand in his.
The chaplain married them, on the next day.
After the war, Penny had wanted Keith at least to visit her home with her.
She came from Ohio, from what she called a small farm of two hundred acres, as indeed it was to farmer-type farmers.
But to Keith's London-bred mind, such acreage sounded rather invincible.
It wasn't that, however, which decided them not to go to America.
Keith told Penny about his dream to return to India and Burma.
He stressed the wild beauty of the mountains, and the jungles.
He didn't tell her the truth he now freely admitted to himself.
He couldn't stop killing.
That was his true love, not Penny.
The terrible power of a gun, the thing that blasted the soul out of a living body, man or beast, was one he never wanted to lose.
And in the hunting land, this hunger was considered to be a noble thing.
When they got to Shillong, in Assam, he was happy.
This is a paradise for hunters.
This was the land of the sladang, the great water buffalo with horns forty inches across the spread.
The great black leopards.
The sambur buck, the jungle stag that is even more noble than the Scottish elk.
He even hunted elephant, although the Asian elephant is not quite as ferocious as his African cousin.
But there are big rogues in both countries.
These were the ones Keith sought out--the loners, the ones who killed for the joy of it, like himself.
He and Penny would go out on tame elephants, raised from babyhood in the keddah.
And while he was ever alert for game, and most particularly a tiger, Penny marvelled at the Eden they were traversing.
They came upon cheetal deer at woodland pools.
Peacocks strutted across their path, preening.
There were fantastic flowers without perfume, and gaudy birds without song.
Mouse deer played around the feet of the elephants, or fled when the mighty legs thrashed too close.
Wild boar watched their progress with little pig eyes, and grunted derision when they didn't consider such game worthy of a shot from the.
Now, the next morning, they were anchored at The Elbow and the boat was riding directly over the underwater ledge where the green water turned to deepest blue and the cliff dropped straight down 600 fathoms, with the weighted line beside it;
and Robinson Roy, who had gone down this line ten minutes before to set a new depth record for the free dive, was already back on the surface.
He and his safety man, Herr Schaffner, swam up to the boarding ladder together.
The German courteously indicated that Robinson should mount first.
Robinson clambered heavily into the boat, sat down, and stripped off his triple-tank assembly.
He was frowning.
He took his mask from his forehead and threw it, unexpectedly, across the deck.
Temper, temper, Mrs. Forsythe said, laughing uneasily.
A phony blonde hanging onto a bygone youth and beauty, but irreparably stringy in the neck, she was already working on her second gin and tonic, though it was not yet ten A.M.
I loused it, Rob said, with a savage note in his voice.
All I have to do to set the record is to go on down.
So instead I come up.
Was it my equipment?
The German asked.
Was it something went bad with the breathing?
The equipment was fine, Rob stated, standing up.
He was a huge young man of twenty-four, clothed in muscle, immensely strong, with a habitual gentleness and diffidence of manner that was submerged under his present agitation.
He stared stonily at the floor.
I was down to 275.
I've been that far half a dozen times.
I don't get it why this time I should pull such a stupid trick.
Well, I get it, Artie said, still on the ladder.
You are a big muscle-bound ape and you got this idea about setting a record.
And you also got this little spark in your bird-brain that tells you to turn around before you drown yourself.
So you turn around.
No, it wasn't that, Rob said.
A note of awe came into his voice.
When I came up, damnit, I thought I was going down.
I came up maybe fifty feet before I knew what was happening.
Pressure-happy, Artie said, and climbed in.
That's right, Robinson said.
I was expecting it, sure.
But when it happens to you like that, I tell you, and you're a hundred feet from where you thought you were--well, it makes you think.
You don't head back down again.
Not me, anyway.
Not right away.
He had his voice under control again: no one became aware that he was terrified by what had just happened to him.
Waddell, the newspaperman, was a fellow in his middle forties, with a graying crewcut, heavy-framed glasses, and a large jaw padded with fat.
Now he was going to show how much he knew.
Our boy didn't chicken out, no sir.
He ran into the rapture of the depths.
Nitrogen narcosis.
It makes the diver feel drunk.
Well, that's the only way to be, Mrs. Forsythe said, and gave her brassy laugh.
Maybe not, if you're 200 feet under water, Artie said.
Anyway, Waddell went on.
It's nothing to fool with.
It can kill you.
Personally, I don't blame him for giving up the dive, much as I regret losing the story.
Nobody's giving anything up, Robinson said.
He stood there, towering over them all: gentle, mighty, determined, the moving force in the group;
and yet like a child among adults.
You think I got you and Artie and Herr Schaffner all the way out here just for the boat ride?
I'm going down again.
That's my boy!
Mr. Forsythe exclaimed.
Rob's not going to give up as easy as all that.
He was a florid, puffy man in his early sixties, very natty in his yachting cap, striped jacket and white flannels.
He went to Key West every fall and winter and was the only man in town who did not know that his title of Commodore was never used without irony.
Old Commodore Forsythe, who had once lost a fifty-dollar bet on whether he could get both motors started and turn on the running lights without accidentally turning on something else first.
Now it did not occur to him even to wonder whether it was wise for Robinson to dive again: Rob was his boy, the kid he had rescued from the streets, the object of his pride.
Why, he went on, when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.
I've helped him along ever since he was a youngster hanging around his brother's tackle shop.
Hell, I gave him the first decent job he ever had, six, seven--how many years ago was it, Rob?
Seven years ago, Commodore, Rob said impassively.
He was thinking, big deal: skipper on his drunken fishing parties for seven years and no better off than when I started.
Excuse me, he said abruptly.
He went down the steps to the galley and sleeping quarters;
went into the forward stateroom and locked the door behind him.
When you gotta go, you gotta go, Mrs. Forsythe said.
Waddell muttered something about taking a look around and climbed up to the flying bridge.
He was disturbed by what had happened on the dive and by what he remembered of a conversation he had had the night before with the German, who had come out of the head while he was fixing himself a drink in the galley.
Hi there, Schaffner, he had said.
Can I make you one?
No thank you very much, Schaffner had answered in his accented English.
I do not drink so much, thank you.
Waddell had looked the man over, trying to size him up.
He was in his early forties, rather short and very compactly built, and with a manner that was reserved and stiff despite his efforts to adapt himself to American ways.
His open face seemed to promise a sort of innocence, until one looked into his eyes, which had no warmth in them but only alert intelligence.
Waddell had heard that he had been a commando in Rommel's Afrika Corps, and he said to himself: I'd hate to run into him in the desert on a dark night.
Aloud he had said, making conversation:
Rob tells me he's using your Atlantis equipment on the dive.
Yes, Herr Schaffner had said.
He's one hell of a decent boy.
I like that kid.
I agree, yes.
And if the dive goes OK he has the exclusive import rights to your line for this country, is that right?
Well, no, Herr Schaffner said.
Waddell turned to face him.
No?
He asked.
But that's what he told me.
Why, that's his main reason for making the dive.
Shaffner looked at him, altogether without guile, and shrugged his shoulders, making a little spreading gesture with his two hands.
What do you mean?
Waddell asked, frowning.
Please let me explain, the German said earnestly, his face still devoid of deceit.
I have in Europe a gross business of seven million dollars the year.
Now I wish to enter the American market, where the competition is very strong.
I must have a powerful representative here, a firm with a national distribution and ten, twenty thousand dollars to advertise my products.
With all respect to a fine young man, Mr. Roy is not able to provide these necessaries.
Waddell was not an eminently moral person, but he did not like what he had just heard.
Did you tell him all this?
He asked.
Perhaps not in so many words, the German said.
But surely you have misunderstood Mr. Roy.
Never, never did I offer him the exclusive rights.
We spoke of the need for advertising, and I agreed that the deep dive would be most useful for publicity.
He was most eager to make the dive;
of course, I was willing.
But there was no definite agreement about business arrangements.
Well, damn, Waddell said.
There was the end of his front-page feature story, with byline.
He started out the door.
One moment!
Herr Schaffner said.
You intend to speak with Mr. Roy?
What else?
Waddell asked.
If you will pardon, I think it would be better if not.
Mr. Roy is determined to make this dive.
Whatever you tell him he will dive.
I know this from my talks with him.
Well, let's let him make up his own mind, OK?
Waddell said.
On the basis of the facts.
You will make him unhappy and anxious, the German said.
At 200, 300, 400 feet under the water, when he must be paying very much attention, he will be thinking about what you are telling him.
It is not good, Mr. Waddell: you will do him great harm.
There was no doubt that Herr Schaffner meant every word of what he said.
Waddell came back from the door and sat on a bunk.
I am an honest man, the German said with fervor.
I will give Mr. Roy his due for this dive.
I will make him distributor for all of Florida--a big market.
All tourists come to Florida.
This will help him to get out of his little tackle shop.
Yes!
But there is no use causing him to worry at this time.
The German's words worked on the newspaperman like a reprieve from an odious duty.
He took a big swig of his drink.
It would be a colossal shame to throw away a story like this.
I think maybe you're right, Schaffner, he said.
He has the distributorship for Florida, you say?
Yes, the German said.
At least for South Florida.
By God, Waddell said, we don't want to upset the boy at this time of all times.
I guess you're right.
He sloshed his drink around and drained it in a few large gulps.
The story was shaping up nicely in his mind: the young pioneer, as of old, altruistically braving the unknown;
the rewards prompt and juicy in modern big-business America.
Join me in another?
He had asked.
Thank you, the German had said courteously.
I do not drink so much.
Now, in that same cabin, Robinson fell to his knees beside a bunk.
Fear and relief mingled in his churning emotions.
He pressed his palms together and addressed himself to the patron saint of divers in a hurried and anxious whisper.
Blessed Saint Nicholas, I thank thee for getting me out of that mess and sending me up instead of down when I was bewildered.
And when I make the dive again--He paused;
crossed himself;
said a Hail Mary, slowly and with understanding.
Folding between his hands the cross that hung from his neck, he took his appeal direct to Headquarters.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Star of the Sea, stay Thou with me on this next dive.
Make it come off all right.
Let me set the record this time, and let me get back OK, so the German will give me the exclusive.
And make my life different and better from this time on.
Amen.
He crossed himself again and rose.
He felt a good deal less shaky.
As he reached for the door there was a knock on it and when he opened he found Artie, who came in and sat down on a bunk.
Artie had picked up a snorkle and was twirling it on his forefinger.
He waited awhile before he said, Roy, you know your decompression table, don't you?
You know I know it, Robinson answered warily.
You came straight up from 275 without a stop, Artie said.
Well, I was a little bit confused.
Anyway, I wasn't down long enough to matter.
You don't see me stretched out on the deck, do you?
You know what they say about two deep dives in one day, Artie went on, still twirling the snorkle and studying it intently.
I don't think you should go down again.
Early that day Matsuo saw a marine.
The enemy came looming around a bend in the trail and Matsuo took a hasty shot, then fled without knowing the result, ran until breath was a pain in his chest and his legs were rubbery.
As his feet slowed, he felt ashamed of the panic and resolved to make a stand.
He crossed the next meadow and climbed a tree where the jungle trail resumed.
In the leafiest part of the tree, straddling a broad horizontal limb, he could see over the meadow.
For a while he was content to let events develop in their good time.
He had no doubt the marine was the lead scout of a column, and while his shot had probably bred indecision, they would soon come hunting.
His superiors had emphasized that marines tortured others for the sheer pleasure.
Yesterday;
today;
tomorrow: no surrender.
His remembering the self-dictate brought no peace--only a faint chill of doubt.
He murmured to himself, with firmness: No surrender.
It was best to die fighting the marines.
His superiors had also preached this, saying it was the way for eternal honor.
What if the marines never came?
His comrades were all dead.
He had no rice.
Then it would be a choice between starvation and suicide.
Whichever the way, he would rot in this vast choking green, his wife never to receive an urn of his ashes.
He sighed and leaned for a moment against the trunk.
His fingers touched the bone handle of a knife.
The knife, an ammunition pouch, and a half-filled bottle of purified water hung on his belt.
Besides the belt he wore a loin cloth.
As he looked up from picking at a leg ulcer, he saw a marine in the jungle across the clearing.
Gloom receded.
The marine came to the edge of the green jungle mist and stayed, as though debating whether to brave the sunlight.
His fatigues made a streak of almost phosphorescent green in the mist.
Come out, come out in the meadow, Matsuo said under his breath.
The man leaned against a tree and wiped a sleeve across his face.
A signal?
Matsuo lifted his rifle, easing the sling under his left upper arm for steadiness.
Fresh on his mind were events of the past day when his whole regiment was destroyed in the hills.
They had fought from caves, and the marines resorted to burning them out.
Even now, like a ringing in his ears, he heard the wooooosh of flame-throwers squirting great orange billows.
A wave of flame rippling through their cave had reached Nagamo, his friend, and with a shriek the man bolted through the entrance, then slowed to the jerky walk of a puppet, his uniform blazing.
The marines let him advance.
When he sank on his knees, they had allowed him to char without administering the stroke of mercy.
Matsuo had faked death and was pitched on a stack of corpses, both the burned and the unburned, the latter decomposing rapidly under the tropical sun.
The callous marines had laughed at each other's retching, while stacking bodies.
Matsuo repeatedly choked down his own nausea.
At nightfall he had been able to sneak down a hillside and into the jungle, reeking of death.
Apprehensively he peered to the left, to the right into the leafy, vine-crisscrossed maze.
He decided that the marines must be deploying around the meadow, with the one left to distract him.
He strained his hearing.
Cautious feet stepping on leafmold;
faint creaking of belts and slings;
whispers: he heard none of these.
Only the hum of insects and the distant fluttering call of a bird.
Because he couldn't hear them, he was more convinced they were there.
A spectacle occurred across the meadow: the lone marine took a seat on the ground;
leaning sidewise on a tree trunk, he embraced it.
Humiliation made Matsuo tremble.
While his comrades cocked the trap, that one behaved as if it was some dull maneuver.
Taking aim at the man's face, Matsuo squeezed the trigger up to the point of discharge, and then he changed his mind.
He wanted the arrogant marine to know fear, and so he aimed above the head.
The shot reverberated in diminishing whiplashes of sound.
Hush followed.
Like a mischievous boy expecting punishment, Matsuo awaited reaction from the jungle.
How stupid to give his position away.
The jungle did not retort.
The sitter remained seated hugging the tree.
Before long the atmosphere reverted to its old normalcy, and insects hummed and birds occasionally called.
Matsuo puzzled and grew anxious over the complete passiveness, concluding that he was the butt of a devilish joke.
Five or so minutes later the marine abruptly pulled up and stepped into sunlight, immediately throwing his hands over his eyes.
He went into a whirling dance, a sort of blind chasing of the tail.
It ended when he tumbled;
but jumping right up, he staggered in no particular direction.
He wore no head cover of any kind and, more odd, had no visible weapon.
With a sudden decisiveness he lurched in Matsuo's direction, crossing the meadow in a zigzagging gallop.
When he got closer to the tree, Matsuo noted the wild look on his face.
The pockets of his jacket bulged.
Hand grenades.
The bobbing head was a poor target, so Matsuo shot him in the upper trunk.
The marine spun, clapping a hand high on his chest, and dived forward.
In the hush that followed the echoes, Matsuo was tense.
They could come on him now without difficulty.
Gradually he reached a conclusion.
The marine was alone, for they were impatient people and by now would have vied to knock him from the tree.
Down the tree he scrambled and knelt at the edge of foliage.
The marine was sprawled some thirty yards away, one arm extended.
Matsuo jumped when the hidden arm flopped out.
Reflex?
Rifle leveled on the man, he made a rush.
Heat, in the sunlight, pressed in like an invisible crowd.
He squatted by the head, gently placing the rifle on the ground.
With a snakestrike motion he grasped the hair, and, twisting, pulled the marine over on his back.
He was bearded.
The bullet had penetrated in the area of the right collarbone;
around the hole, blood glistened in a little patch.
Maintaining his clutch on the hair, Matsuo watched the closed eyes while rummaging in the jacket pockets.
In one: a package of cigarettes and a tinplated lighter, both sticky from the man's bleeding.
In the other: a wristwatch with broken crystal wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.
One by one he tossed the objects aside.
He didn't smoke and could not light fires with a flintless lighter;
he had no use any longer for exact time, even had the watch been running.
Then there was no saying how many times the marine had blown his nose on the handkerchief.
Too bad the marine had no water.
From its holder he took his own canteen.
The cap was stuck and made a thin rusty squeaking as he applied pressure.
The marine's eyes opened, squeezed shut, then opened squinted in the glare.
So, alive.
Matsuo put the bottle to his own lips.
The marine reached up a hand.
Matsuo shook his head.
None for you.
The marine blinked, soon dropping his hand.
Not only had he no canteen, but he lacked even the belt to hang one on.
You came well equipped to die.
Some odor made him lean over the man.
He sniffed and recognized it.
Sake.
So that had been his difficulty.
Drunk on sake, he must have wandered off from his bivouac.
The marine tried to roll on his right side, and moaned.
When he rolled on the left side, propping on his left elbow, Matsuo seized his hair and pulled him back over.
Be a good turtle.
Awkwardly with one hand Matsuo got the cap back on the water bottle.
The smell of sake had freshened yesterday's events in his thoughts.
In the caves, with other supplies, they had kept cases of sake.
The marine shut his eyes.
Are you a thrower of flame, marine?
Matsuo took the small knife from its scabbard and laid it on the ground, out of the marine's reach and away from their shadows.
He waited in his squat, gripping the hair.
Every so often he turned the knife.
Its blade was dazzling in the intense sunlight.
The sun was noon high and Matsuo perspired until his body was dripping.
Wet also were the marine's fatigues and the face had an oily film.
The man had thrown the left hand over his eyes.
Now and again he murmured something that ended in a giggle.
He must have saturated himself in the drink, for the bullet not to shock him out of his drunken haze.
Matsuo shook his head.
Strange.
At last he reached for the knife.
Even the bone handle scorched, and he retrieved the marine's handkerchief to wrap it.
First he barely touched the blade on the hand which shaded the eyes.
The marine yelled and flung the hand away.
With a firm grip on the man's hair Matsuo applied the blade flat on a cheek.
A shrill yelp, kicked legs, and groping hands that circled Matsuo's wrist.
Matsuo wrenched free and burned the hands into retreat;
burned the other cheek;
burned each hand when they came groping again.
The marine commenced to weep and it blighted the sense of enjoyment.
Matsuo stood up.
A small measure of payment, marine.
He dropped the knife in its scabbard, hung the rifle behind a shoulder.
The marine, hands on cheeks, rolled by his unwounded side onto his stomach.
He ceased weeping.
Matsuo walked toward his tree, once glancing back.
The marine was still.
He would soon die.
As Matsuo climbed by using the vines and kicking his feet against the trunk, a mood of gloom immersed him like a jungle shadow.
What now?
In the jungle, birds were mute, while insects preserved only the monotony of living.
Someone called.
It was the marine: head lifted, he strained and called.
Then he astonished Matsuo by pushing and dragging himself until he sat.
He cupped his mouth and yelled.
Matsuo hustled the rifle off his shoulder.
Once and for all he'd finish this marine who would not die.
He aimed, but listened.
It sounded as if the man were calling him: Hey, Japanese hey there, Japanese.
The man tilted back his head and went through the pantomime of drinking from a container.
He performed the act twice more, and the begging in his tone grew more distinct.
Sake?
Matsuo called.
The marine nodded vigorously.
Matsuo laughed, slung the rifle.
The marine was a winehead.
His superiors had said that all marines were depraved.
The marine slumped forward into a bow like a priest before an idol.
Remembering his own thirst, Matsuo took out his water bottle.
One swallow was all he would have;
he was very thirsty, but he must observe water discipline.
His years of campaigning had taught him the value of water discipline.
He began to uncap the bottle, the rusty cap squealing on its threads.
Popping upright, the marine waved both hands and shouted.
Of course it was water he really craved;
down in the broil of the sun he was becoming dried out.
The marine shouted for it until it seemed that his voice had to crack.
Matsuo shook his head.
He had no water for an enemy.
And when this was gone, he hadn't even a little bitter tablet to purify other water if he were to discover some stagnant jungle pool.
He capped the bottle and replaced it.
After all, he had less reason to desire it than the marine.
Before much longer the marine quieted down.
His head slumped.
The upper part of his packet had stained dark.
Marine.
There is nothing for you, Matsuo said.
Your superiors will certainly beat you for your desertion, besides the dishonor of it.
I've nothing for you.
From the convulsive quivers of the man's shoulders it was plain he had resumed the weeping.
He reminded Matsuo of a similar thing he had witnessed in China.
In China it was a baby sitting on a railroad platform, smudged, blood-specked, with the village burning about him and shells exploding.
Chairs scraped back and customers hastily vacated their tables as the tall young buffalo hunter pushed open the swing doors and walked towards the bar.
Only Blue Throat and his gang stayed where they were.
Blue Throat was slumped with his back against the bar, elbows supporting his massive frame.
He leered at the stranger as the distance between them closed.
Since when did they allow beardless kids into the saloon bars of this town, boys?
He asked.
Seems to me I don't remember altering any law about that.
He straightened up, alert now as the buffalo hunter came closer.
Stay right here where you are, kid, he called.
I don't aim to have minors breathing down my neck when I'm a-drinking:
The stranger ignored him.
He didn't stop till he was within three feet of Blue Throat and by that time the gang leader's right hand was on the butt of his revolver.
I'm Billy Tilghman, said the stranger, and I've come for Pat Conyers' body.
And what makes you think you're going to get it, pretty boy?
Because I'm asking.
Most of the time I get what I ask for.
Blue Throat winked at his six cronies.
The kid has no manners, boys.
Shall we teach him some?
His gun was half drawn when he asked the question, but the weapon never left its holster.
Tilghman's clenched fist swept over in a terrific right cross and clipped the big gunfighter on the side of his chin.
His head snapped round and he reeled back, crashing into the table where his buddies were sprawling.
Tilghman leapt on to him, dragged him upright and hit him again, this time sending him careening against the bar.
A bullet gouged into the bar top an inch from Tilghman's stomach as Blue Throat's henchmen started shooting.
Tilghman flung himself aside, dropped on one knee and pulled his own gun.
The Colt roared twice and two men dropped, writhing.
A third shot doused the light.
Somewhere at the far end of the room a voice yelled, You all right, Billy?
Yes, George, but I ain't got poor old Pat's body yet.
And I aim to have it.
He fired again, and somewhere in the gloom a man screamed.
Another took off his gun belt and flung his weapons to the floor.
OK, Tilghman, I'm quitting.
And me, said another Blue Throat henchman.
Somebody brought a light.
Tilghman and his partner, George Rust, herded the men into a corner.
And now, said Tilghman with deadly calm, I'll repeat what I said.
I've come for Pat Conyers' body.
In two minutes the body of Tilghman's former comrade, who had been killed by Blue Throat in a gambling brawl the previous night, was carried into the town's funeral parlor to be prepared for decent burial.
Blue Throat, nursing an aching jaw and a collosal dose of wounded pride, rode out of town with the survivors of the fight.
That critter will be back tomorrow, predicted George Rust, and he'll bring fifty of his kind back with him.
Blue Throat won't stand for this.
He'll shoot up the town.
The prediction was correct.
The Reverend James Doran had scarcely completed Pat Conyers' last rites on Boot Hill in the township of Petrie, when shots were heard in the distance.
Amen, said the Reverend Doran, grabbing his rifle propped up against a tombstone, and now my brethren, it would seem that our presence is required elsewhere.
Billy Tilghman and his comrades rode off to the battle.
Blue Throat, who had ruled the town with his six-shooter for the last six months, certainly had no intention of relinquishing his profitable dictatorship.
It was essential that he should restore his formidable reputation as a rip-roaring, ruthless gun-slinger, and this was the time-honored Wild West method of doing it.
He rode in at the head of sixty trigger-happy and liquor-crazed desperadoes and took over a livery barn at the entrance to Main Street.
The entire length of the street could be raked with rifle fire from this barn.
Any posse riding down the street to demand Blue Throat's surrender would be wiped out with one deadly burst of fire.
The law-abiding citizens of Petrie had gathered inside Kaster's Store, halfway down the street.
Several were firing into the barn when Billy Tilghman arrived.
He sized up the situation and shook his head.
If Blue Throat has his way he'll keep us all cooped up in here for days, he said.
There's only one thing to move him fast, and we have it right here in this very store.
He called the store owner and together they went into the stockroom.
Billy returned with six sticks of dynamite.
I'm gonna drop these into Blue Throat's lap, he announced, and I'd like every gun to be firing into that barn while I get near enough to toss 'em through the window.
He slipped outside, hugging the walls of buildings and dodging into doorways.
Blue Throat's men spotted him and a hail of bullets splintered the store fronts and board walk as he passed.
Fifty yards away from the barn he dodged inside a barber's shop and came out at the back.
Here he couldn't be seen by Blue Throat and his gang.
All he had to do was light the fuses of the dynamite sticks, run to within ten yards of an open window in the barn and hurl the sticks through.
Billy Tilghman did just that.
Within seconds the big barn was blasted into smoking splinters, with every outlaw either dead or injured inside.
It was the abrupt end of Blue Throat's dictatorship in Petrie.
Though only slightly injured himself the big hoodlum never returned to those parts.
To Tilghman the incident was just one of a long list of hair-raising, smash-'em-down adventures on the side of the law which started in 1872 when he was only eighteen years old, and did not end till fifty years later when he was shot dead after warning a drunk to be quiet.
Of all the rip-roaring two-fisted tough boys of the Old West, Uncle Billy Tilghman stands out head and shoulders.
He was the lawman who survived more gunfights than any other famous gun-slinging character in the book.
He saw the most action, beat up more badmen with his bare fists, broke up the most gangs and sent more murderers to the gallows than any other U.S. marshal who lived before or after him.
For fifty years his guns and ham-like fists shot holes through and battered the daylights out of the enemies of law and order in the frontier towns of the West.
Citizens took the view that a lawman was expected to risk his life on the odd occasion anyway, but this fighting fury of a man risked it regularly over a period of half a century.
He came within an ace of being riddled with bullets during his long fight with the Doolin gang which terrorized Oklahoma in the 1890's.
Led by Bill Doolin, these mobsters specialized in train robberies but as a sideline they looted stores and robbed banks, making liberal use of their guns.
Bill Doolin's ambition, it appeared, was to carve out his name with bullets alongside those of Jesse James and Billy the Kid, and Bill Tilghman had sworn he would stop him.
Tilghman knew that some ranchers were hand-in-glove with the Doolin gang.
They bought rustled cattle from the outlaw, kept him supplied with guns and ammunition, harbored his men in their houses.
Billy decided to set an example by arresting one of the ranchers, named Ed Dunn, who lived at Rock Fort.
On a bitterly cold day in January, 1895, accompanied only by Neal Brown as his deputy, Tilghman left the township of Guthrie and headed for Rock Fort and Dunn's ranch.
It was snowing hard when they got there and they saw no horses outside.
The only evidence of occupation came from the chimney, which was belching out thick smoke.
The two lawmen halted their wagon about twenty yards from the door.
Wait here, Neal, said Tilghman.
If I don't come out within half an hour ride back to town and bring out a posse.
Leaving his rifle in the wagon, Tilghman walked up to the door and hammered on it.
There was no reply so he shoved it open with his foot and stepped inside.
Directly opposite the door was a roaring log fire, a welcome sight on that bitterly cold day.
Seated near it with his back to the door was the rancher, Ed Dunn.
Hello, Ed, said Tilghman.
The rancher grunted an acknowledgement but didn't move.
Tilghman closed the door behind him and walked towards the fire.
Suddenly he saw something which made his big heart give a sickening lurch and caused the hairs to bristle on the back of his neck.
Along each side of the room were six tiered bunks, each one screened off with a curtain.
And projecting wickedly through these curtains were the gleaming muzzles of six rifles, all trained on Billy Tilghman.
The fighting marshal had walked right into a trap and at any moment six slugs might slam into his hide.
Thinking fast, Tilghman never hesitated for one instant.
He walked right up to the fire as though blissfully unaware of the guns covering him.
The men behind them were Bill Doolin and five of his gang--every man a killer.
Cold day, said Tilghman, placing his hands behind him and casually presenting his backside to the fire.
Just dropped in to ask where Jed Hawkins lives.
Can't seem to locate landmarks in this snow.
The rancher was trembling.
He wouldn't look Tilghman in the face.
Follow the river for five miles, he said hoarsely.
Jed's homestead is on the south bank.
Resisting the overwhelming temptation to flng himself out of that bristling death-trap, Tilghman deliberately engaged the nervous rancher in trivial conversation for a good ten minutes.
All that time rifle barrels were pointing unwaveringly at his head and body.
One false move on his part and he would be a dead man.
Well, he announced, Guess I'll be going now, Ed, and thanks for the warmup.
He strolled back to the door, whistling softly, hands still clasped behind him.
He left the house and almost certain death without even increasing his pace and wondered by what remarkable stroke of Providence he had been allowed to come out alive.
But he knew well enough that those guns would still be trained on his back as he walked towards the wagon.
If he showed signs of collecting his rifle and going back with his deputy to the ranch he would be shot down instantly.
Leisurely he climbed on to the wagon next to Neal Brown.
Don't say or do anything, he said softly.
Just get out of here without it looking as though we're in a hurry.
That place is crawling with Bill Doolin and his gang.
Even as he spoke those words Billy Tilghman's life hung on a thread.
Back in the house a hoodlum named Red Buck, sore because Billy had been allowed to leave unscathed, jumped from a bunk and swore he was going after him to kill him right then.
You'll stay right here, commanded Bill Doolin, covering Red with his rifle.
Billy Tilghman is too good a man to shoot in the back.
We'll let him go.
But the fighting marshal's fifty-year run of immunity from violent death came to a full and final stop one night in a street at Cromwell, Oklahoma, where he had been sent to clean up the gambling and vice rackets.
Wiley Lynn, a self-styled prohibition officer, had hit town the previous day and had been drinking ever since.
That night he reeled out of Ma Murphy's dance hall and proceeded to disturb the peace by shooting off his revolver.
For several months now, Jack Carter, a big overgrown boy of fifteen with a fuzzy, pimpled face and greenish catlike eyes with a lot of red in them, had been haunted by a dream, a vision, of a Woman.
This Woman had no distinct shape or size and no particular face, but she radiated warmth, a sweet warmth;
she would talk to him in a soothing voice about things his mother would have said were not nice and put her hands on him and kiss him passionately.
When she would do these things, he would turn blind for an instant and become sick at his stomach.
Then he would run to the toilet behind the house.
Sometimes he did this three or four times a day, for this Woman was almost always with him.
He would feel ashamed each time and wonder whether his mother and father knew--thinking they might see it in his eyes or smell it on him.
But they never said anything, so he figured it was all right.
And so when Miss Langford came to teach at the one-room Chestnut school, where Jack was a pupil in the eighth grade, the Woman of Jack's mind assumed the teacher's face and figure.
He could not keep his eyes off her when at school;
when he went home at night, he took her with him in his mind, and she did the things the anonymous Woman used to do, and he did the thing afterwards each time as he used to do.
When he awoke in the mornings, she was in his mind and he could hardly wait to get to school to be near her in the flesh.
Miss Langford (her first name was Evelyn) was an attractive girl.
Tall, blonde, blue-eyes, fair, buxom without being heavy, she cut a fine figure of budding womanhood as she swished among the pupils in her fresh, starched summer dress.
Something was beginning to stir and come alive in her, too (it may have been there for a good while, since she was twenty now;
but if it had been, it had been smothered until now by fear): you could tell it by the way she watched the older, bigger boys, like Jack.
She would look at Jack, with that hidden something in her eyes, and Jack would see the Woman and become breathless and a little sick.
School began in August, the hottest part of the year, and for the first few days Miss Langford was very lenient with the children, letting them play a lot and the new ones sort of get acquainted with one another.
The first two or three days they went home early.
All, that is, except Jack.
He hung around the schoolhouse, watching through a window from outside while Miss Langford straightened desks and put the room in order.
Once (this was on the third day of school) she kneeled down to pick up some books where they'd dropped on the floor and Jack looked up her dress--at the bare expanse of incredibly white leg.
He thought for a moment his heart had stopped beating.
About that time Miss Langford straightened up and looked out the window directly at him, he thought, although probably she didn't even see him.
He jumped back, ducked and ran, crouching, down the hill away from the school.
He didn't look back and he ran until he was out of sight of the schoolhouse and out of breath;
then he slowed to a walk.
The vision became even stronger now.
I'll get her yet, he muttered to himself.
I've got to get her.
That night he dreamed a dream violent with passion, in which he and the Woman, now the teacher, did everything except engage in the act (and this probably only because he had never engaged in the act in reality), and when he awoke the next morning his heart was afire.
He ate litle that morning, and his mother became concerned, inasmuch as he usually ate heartily.
What's the matter, honey?
She said, with the solicitude of a middle-aged woman for her only child.
Aren't you hungry?
No, I'm not hungry, he said, pushing back the bacon and eggs.
Outside it was already hot at 7:30 A.M., and it was getting hot in the kitchen.
He felt a little sick at his stomach.
Are you sick?
No, he said.
I'll be all right.
I guess it's this hot weather.
Don't you play hard today then.
And if you get sick, ask the teacher to let you come home early.
Daddy left the car for me, and I'm going to town this afternoon.
OK., I won't play hard, he promised.
Just then Charles Lever yelled, Hey, Jack, from the quarry road which ran behind the Carter house, and Jack grabbed the lunch from the table and darted out the kitchen door, yelling Good-bye, Mom over his shoulder.
Whaddya say, boy?
Charles said, grinning, showing his huge yellow teeth.
Charles, also fifteen, was tall and skinny, scraggly, with straight black hair like an Indian's and sharp brown eyes.
He considered himself handsome and seemed to think all the girls were after him.
You know what I done last night?
Charles said as they picked their way over the rocky road which led up the hill away from the Dixie Highway, through a corn field and a patch of woods to the school.
Jack knew of course that the tale to be unfolded would involve a girl and probably be dirty, because girls were Charles' only apparent interest.
But Jack always derived vicarious sensual thrills from Charles' revelations (even when he suspected his friend of exaggeration or invention), so he usually invited them, as he did now.
No.
What?
I got Margaret Rider in one of them old box cars down there by the quarry.
A nude imaginary picture of Miss Langford flashed across Jack's mind.
His heart beat faster.
Hell you say?
He said, lapsing into the profanity he often used when away from his parents and especially when he was with Charles.
How'd you do it?
Hell, I jist got on top of--''
No, I mean how'd you get her to do it?
Hell, I jist ask her.
Jist like that?
Hell, yes.
She's been hangin' around me a lot here lately, and I figgered I might as well's try it.
Besides I heard her old uncle that stays there has been doin' it.
I never heard that.
It's all over Branchville.
If you'd get out of your back yard once in a while you might even get her your ownself.
I might try it one of these days, Jack said wonderingly, thinking of Miss Langford.
When they reached the school, a gang of boys and girls were already there playing crack the whip in front of the schoolhouse.
Miss Langford, in a fresh white dress and low-heeled white sandals, without socks, was out there with them, trying to get them inside.
Time for books, she yelled, jingling a little five-and-dime store bell in her right hand.
Let's go inside.
Oh, come on Miss Langford, play with us just onct, one of the little girls begged, smiling wistfully.
No, not now, said the teacher.
Maybe at dinner time.
Come inside now.
The children grudgingly stopped playing then and straggled into the schoolhouse.
Jack watched Miss Langford all morning.
He could think of nothing else save his mental image of her nude figure and what Charles had said that morning about Margaret Rider.
Occasionally he would look across the aisle at Margaret, fourteen and demure in a fresh green organdy dress, sitting in the sixth-grade row, and he could hardly believe she would do what Charles had said she did.
At noontime, remembering what the teacher had said about maybe playing with the kids, Jack stayed close to the schoolhouse while all the other big boys, except Charles, went off out the road to play ball.
Why ain't you playin' ball?
He asked Charles suspiciously as they sat in the well-house shade, watching the girls congregate in front of the schoolhouse.
Miss Langford, come out and play with us like you promised, several of the little girls called.
I'd druther stay here and watch the girls, Charles grinned.
Maybe some of 'em will fall down and we'll see up their dress.
Maybe, Jack said idly, watching for Miss Langford.
Presently she came out of the schoolhouse.
When she appeared, two or three of the little girls jumped up and down, yelling, Goody, goody.
Let's play with 'em, Jack said, rising from where he sat on the ground and dusting off his overall pants.
O.K. Charles rose also, and the two of them moved over to join the girls.
They played crack the whip a few minutes without mishap.
Then when Miss Langford was on the end of the line of girls, Jack, in the middle of the line, gave an extra hard pull and the young teacher sprawled backwards, sitting down hard, her dress flying over her head.
While she was struggling to get her skirt down and get on her feet again, Jack ran over, offered her his hand and said, Gosh, I'm sorry, Miss Langford.
I didn't mean to pull so hard.
That's all right, she said, tossing her head back to get the hair out of her eyes.
It was my fault.
With one hand she held her skirt down while she took Jack's extended hand with the other.
When her hand touched his, fire went through Jack and he felt weak, but he managed somehow to get her on her feet.
He thought she gave him that look with the hidden something in it as he let her hand go.
Thank you, she said, dusting herself off.
Will you play with us again, Miss Langford?
One of the little girls said.
No more today.
Maybe some other day.
Oh, shucks, the girl said.
I don't believe I'll play any more neither.
Me neither, others said, and soon the game broke up, the children going off in pairs, in larger groups and alone.
When he came back to the schoolhouse, his mind was made up.
He simply would not work his arithmetic problems when the teacher held his class.
That should do it, he thought, because Miss Langford had said she was going to be strict about school work.
The only drawback now to the plan he'd decided on was that someone else might fail to do his work, too, and the teacher would have that person stay late along with Jack.
But I've got to take a chance on it, he told himself desperately.
To his surprise his plan worked perfectly.
All right, if you can't do your arithmetic during school hours you can do it after school is out, Miss Langford said firmly, not smiling.
You will stay here thirty minutes after the others go home this afternoon and work your problems.
And so when the others stampeded out that afternoon Jack remained docilely in his seat near a window, looking out in what he hoped was a pitiable manner, while the other kids laughed and yelled in at him and made faces as they dispersed, going home.
He scarcely saw them.
His heart was pounding like a mighty dynamo and he was trying to think, his mind seeming to scream at him like a hurt or frightened child, How will I do it?
On the fringe of the amused throng of white onlookers stood a young woman of remarkable beauty and poise.
She munched little ginger cakes called mulatto's belly and kept her green, somewhat hypnotic eyes fixed on a light-colored male who was prancing wildly with a 5-foot king snake wrapped around his bronze neck.
The youth with the snake had a natural pride and joy of life which appealed to the woman.
Lithe and muscular, he had well-molded features, and his light color told of the European ancestors who had been intimate with the slave women of his family.
The haughty white girl turned to a distinguished, hawk-faced man standing at her side and murmured: Look at your watch, Col. Garvier.
It is almost time for and calinda to begin.
Col. Henri Garvier was one of New Orleans' most important and enlightened slave owners.
He chuckled and gave the signal for the dance to start.
The slaves ran gaily to the center of Congo Square and gathered around a sweaty youth they called Johnny No-Name.
Johnny vigorously pounded two bleached steer bones against the gourd which served as his drum.
He showed his gleaming tusks of teeth and bellowed incoherently, his brass earrings jangling discordantly as he shook and trembled in ecstasy.
The drummer flogged the gourd with frantic intensity as the dancers began the calinda, a sensual gyration which had long been a favorite of voodoo practitioners and their disciples in the Louisiana slave compounds.
The dance was of Haitian origin.
The white girl with the penetrating green eyes sipped the lemonade handed to her by a handsome man of about 30, who had coppery skin and beetling eyebrows.
He was possessive in his manner and, though a slave, obviously was educated after a fashion and imitated the manners of his owners.
He proudly wore the blue livery of her house, for the girl was Madame Delphine Lalaurie, wife of the prominent surgeon, Dr. Louis Lalaurie, who bore one of the South's oldest and most cherished names.
Delphine was a pace-setter in high society.
She was a top horsewoman and one of the city's most gracious hostesses.
Although New Orleans was not to learn of it for a spell, she also was a sadist, a nymphomaniac and unobtrusively mad--the perpetrator of some of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed on American soil.
Madame Lalaurie gestured with her riding crop toward the 20-year-old youth who was stomping and writhing with the king snake still draped over his bare shoulders.
The slender, handsome fellow was called Dandy Brandon by the other slaves.
He was gifted with animal magnetism and a potent allure for women of any race.
But Dandy had had little experience with girls on his master's plantation in Bayou St. John.
Shy, actually, he avoided feminine overtures and seemed truly ignorant of the girls' desires when they sought to make liaisons with him in the open fields, in carriages and in boathouses.
This young slave was therefore quite unprepared when Delphine Lalaurie signaled that she wanted him to draw near.
The woman eyed the youth with the avidity a coin collector might display toward a rare doubloon which is not yet in his collection.
What is your name, boy?
Come a bit closer.
I won't bite, you know.
He gaped at Madame Lalaurie and sniffed the Paris perfume which emanated from her.
Then he smiled shyly.
My name is Dandy Brandon, missy.
I belong to Master Alexander Prieur.
She said with intense feeling: Come near, let me feel your arms.
You look quite strong and healthy to me, Dandy.
Mrs. Lalaurie impatiently propelled the slave toward her waiting carriage.
Lifting her skirts, she climbed in, never relinquishing her grip on his arm.
The woman seemed utterly unafraid of the snake which coiled on the floor in a torpor.
Once inside the luxuriosly-upholstered landau, she drew the curtains and proceeded to give the startled youth the kind of physical examination usually reserved for army inductees.
Satisfied at last, and after a few amorous gambits on her part which convinced Delphine that Dandy was capable of learning new arts, she opened the window and called to her liveried driver.
This was the big man with the proprietory air and the beetling, shaggy eyebrows.
Aristide!
I want you to find Monsieur Prieur at once and give him this money for the boy's purchase.
There's $600 in gold in this chamois sack.
If the old fool argues about the price, tell him I shall order my husband not to treat him as a patient any longer.
Prieur has gout and depends on Louis' pills and bleedings.
Besides, he owns 300 slaves.
One less shouldn't matter to him.
Aristide Devol, the sardonic manservant who had been brought in chains years before from his native Sierra Leone, smiled thinly and touched his well-brushed beaver hat.
His bold eyes raked the woman, and a perceptive spectator might sense that there was more to their relationship than that of slave to owner.
Another youth, Madame?
The coachman said softly.
This one is a tender chicken, oui?
Such delicate beauty, such fine flesh.
It will rip and shred easily for Madame.
Be quiet, Devol!
You are forgetting your place.
The tall coachman walked off briskly in search of Alexander Prieur.
Delphine Lalaurie took the reins in her gloved hands and drove Dandy Brandon--cowering in the back seat of the carriage--to her mansion at 677 Perdido Street.
Dr. Louis Lalaurie stood on the veranda at the head of the driveway and watched his carriage as it approached the pillared mansion.
Dandy, curiosity overcoming his apprehensions, peered out at the doctor from the window of the vehicle.
He saw a pint-sized man with a graying spade beard and an unusually large head.
Dr. Lalaurie wore a maroon smoking jacket, and his myopic eyes were blurry and glistened behind thick octagonal lenses.
He was about 50 years old.
Another young man, my dear?
Really, you are most indiscreet to drive him here yourself, he said, frowning with displeasure.
Delphine presented her cheek for a kiss, and the physician pecked it like a timid rooster.
Dandy is to be our house guest, Louis.
I want the room in the attic prepared for him He is a most unusual lad, quite precocious in many ways.
He deserves a better life than just rotting away on the Prieur plantation.
Quite so, my dear.
His room will be ready shortly.
The physician led the horses to the stable after a cursory glance at the cringing slave.
Had Dandy been older or wiser, instinct might have warned him that he would be well advised to flee from the Lalauries' tender care if he valued his life.
But he liked the smell of Delphine's perfume.
Besides, her endearments and caresses in the carriage had been new and stirring experiences to the simple youth.
Also, he was weary of plantation drudgery and monotony.
So Dandy Brandon trustingly entered the house with Delphine Lalaurie and trudged up the rear steps to the attic room which was to be his new home.
Airless and dingy though it was, the attic represented luxury to a slave who had led a wretched life with six brothers and sisters and assorted relatives in a shanty at Bayou St. John.
He bounced exuberantly on the sagging bed and was even more delighted when Madame Lalaurie--after closing the door--showed the slave that the bed was designed for something other than slumber.
It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.
When he finally left the sinister mansion on Perdido Street, he was carried out in a coroner's basket.
Just six weeks after Dandy Brandon's arrival at the mansion, the little surgeon and his svelte young wife gave their annual open house and ball, to which only New Orleans' oldest and wealthiest families were invited.
A stringed orchestra played softly behind the potted palms, and Delphine circulated graciously among her guests, chatting airily of the forthcoming races, the latest fashions from Paris, and Louisiana politics.
Suddenly there was a commotion upstairs, a despairing boyish shriek, and the strains of the waltz faltered and died as the musicians and guests gaped at an apparition descending the marble staircase.
It was Dandy Brandon, clad only in a bloody loincloth, emaciated and quaking as if the devil were breathing hard on him.
The lad's once superb body was a mass of scars and welts.
His pinched face showed the ravages of malnutrition.
Feebly he pointed an accusing finger at Madame Lalaurie and shouted: Evil woman!
You did this you like to hurt to beat people I want to go home.
These were the last words he ever uttered.
Convulsively, he spat up some blood and collapsed into the arms of Senator Gaston Berche, crimsoning the frilly shirt and waistcoat the politician wore.
Dr. Louis Lalaurie examined the inert form of the slave on the parquet dance floor and pronounced him dead.
The ball broke up in confusion.
Guests stared with horror at Madame Lalaurie and made speedy departures.
Delphine stood like stone, her eyes alive with hate as she looked down at the sheeted corpse.
But at the coroner's inquest Delphine told a forthright story.
I saw the boy Dandy at the Congo Square festivities and felt sorry for him.
It was our hope to educate him and to give him his freedom when the right time came, for he was a bright and friendly youth who seemed worthy of our interest.
After I paid Monsieur Prieur for Dandy, I brought him home, but he was ill at ease and ran away the same night.
How he returned in such a ghastly condition, or why, I cannot say.
Dr. Lalaurie and I didn't even know he was in the house until the night of our ball when he came down the stairs.
She daubed at her swimming eyes with a lacy handkerchief and said with obvious emotion: That poor boy!
He must have fallen in with evil companions, for he was a simple youth and quite trusting and inexperienced.
Ruffians must have robbed and beaten him before bringing him back to our house to die.
Such a pitiful end!
Though the slave's dying words about the woman troubled the coroner's panel, Dandy's accusation was adjudged an aberration by the jury and disregarded.
The Lalauries were at the top rung of the social ladder, and even a jury didn't feel privileged to doubt the veracity of so illustrious a lady.
Moreover, runaway slaves frequently got into serious trouble in New Orleans' dives.
So the verdict was death at the hands of a person or persons unknown, and the elite of the city, accepting Delphine's testimony, welcomed her and the doctor back into the fold.
Once again life went its serene way--soirees, fox hunts, balls and dinners.
The excitement over Brandon's bizarre death abated and Madame Lalaurie's stock soared when she resumed her self-imposed chores of visiting the poor and bringing cakes and comfort to destitute patients in the county hospital.
Then, on July 2, there occurred another incident which set tongues to wagging at a furious clip.
Mrs. Victor Dominique, socially prominent and a neighbor of the Lalauries, chanced to glance out of her parlor window at dusk one evening and beheld an amazing sight.
The manservant Devol and his mistress, Delphine Lalaurie, were pursuing a young girl--an octoroon of cameo-like beauty--across the front lawn of the Lalaurie mansion.
The girl was not more than 16.
She was nude to the waist and her tumbled abundance of black hair did not conceal the knife slashes on her back.
The bleeding girl was tiring fast;
the coachman and Delphine were gaining on her as she raced down Perdido Street.
The fugitive cried out in an oddly sibilant voice: Help me, somebody!
They have pulled out all my teeth and now she will carve out my tongue with her hacksaw!
Bastards, he would say, all I did was put a beat to that Vivaldi stuff, and the first chair clobbered me!
Since then, and since the pure grain had gotten him divorced from every decent--and even indecent--group from Greenwich Village to the Embarcadero, he had become a sucker-rolling freight-jumper.
There ain't nothin' faster, or lonelier, or more direct than a cannonball freight when you wanna go someplace, Feathertop would say.
The accommodations may not be the poshest, but man!
There ain't nobody askin' for your ticket stub, neither.
He had been conning the freights for a long, long time now.
Ever since the hooch, and the trouble with the Quartet, and Midge and the child.
Ever since all that.
It had been a very long time that had no form and no end.
He was--as he told himself in the vernacular of a trade no longer his own--riding the dark train out.
Out and out and never to return again.
Till one day the last freight had been jumped, the last pint had been killed, the last beat had been rapped.
That was the day it ended.
The freight car was cold, early in the morning.
He was pressed far back into the corner of the car on his hay sacks, the rattling and tinning of the wheels on the rails almost covering the sound of his ocarina.
He held his elbows away from his body, and the little sweet potato trilled neatly and sweetly as he tickled its tune-belly.
The train slowed at a road crossing, and the big door slid open;
at first gratingly, caught by grains of corn--then with a clash into its slot.
The boy lifted the girl by the waist and set her on the lip of the floor.
She pulled her legs up under her, to rise, her full peasant skirt drawing up her thighs, and Feathertop's music pfffted away.
Now that is a very nice, a very nice, he murmured to himself, back in his corner.
A little thing, but the right twist for the action that counted.
Hot, that was the word, hot!
Hair like a morning-frightened sparrow's wings, with the sun shining down over them.
A poet, yet!
His thoughts for the swanlike neck, the full, high breasts, the slim waist, and the long legs were less than poetic, however.
Zingggg-O!
Then the boy straight-armed himself up, twisting at the last moment so he landed sitting.
He was less to see, but Feathertop took him in, too, just to keep the records straight.
Curly hair, high cheekbones, wide gnomelike mouth, a pair of drummer's blocky hands, and a body that said well, maybe I can wrestle you for ten minutes--but then I'm finished.
We made it, Cappy, the chick said.
Yeah, seems so, don't it, the boy laughed, hugging her close.
Ah-ah!
Feathertop interrupted, standing up, brushing the pig offal from his dirty pants.
None of that.
We run a respectable house here.
They whirled and saw him, standing there dim in the slatted light from the boarded freight wall.
He was big, and filthy, and his toes stuck out of the flapping tops of his shoes.
He held the black plastic kazoo lightly.
Come sit, said Feathertop, motioning them toward him.
That crap is softer over here.
The girl smiled, and started forward.
The boy yanked her back hard, tugging her off her feet, and gathered her into the crook of his arm.
Now stay with me, Kitty, he snapped irritably.
I vowed to take care of you--and that's what I'm gonna do.
We don't know this guy.
Oooo, square bit, Feathertop screwed his face up.
This guy was strictly from Outsville.
But nowhere!
What is with this vow jazz?
Feathertop inquired, lounging against the freight's vibrating wall.
We--we eloped, Cappy said.
His head came up and he said it defiantly.
Well, congratulations.
Feathertop made an elaborate motion with his hand.
These two were going to be easy pickins.
They couldn't have much dough, but then none of the freight-bums Feathertop rolled had much.
And besides, the chick had a little something the others didn't have.
That was gonna be fun collecting!
But not just yet.
Feathertop was a connoisseur.
He liked to savor his meat before he tasted it.
Come sit, he repeated, motioning to the piled hay bags, over the pig leavings.
I'm just a poor ex-jazz man, name of--uh--Boyd Smith.
He grinned at them wolfishly.
That ain't your name, Mister, the boy accused.
And you know--you're right!
Feathertop aimed a finger at him.
Oh, come on, Cappy, the girl chided.
He's okay.
He's a nice guy.
She started to move toward the hay bags, dragging the reluctant Cappy behind her.
Feathertop watched the smooth scissoring of her slim, trim legs as she walked to the bags, and tucked them beneath her, smoothing the skirt out in a wide circle.
He cleared his throat;
it had been a long, hot while since he'd seen anything as nice as this within grabbin' distance.
He had it all doped, of course.
Slug the kid, grab his dough--at least enough to get to Philadelphia--and then have a rockin' ball with the doll.
Hmm--diddle!
Where'd you come from, Mr.--uh--Mr. Smith?
Kitty inquired politely.
Where from?
He mused.
Out.
I been riding train for a ways now.
They lapsed into silence, and the freight wallowed up a hill, scooted down the other side, shaking and clanking to itself.
After a while, Kitty murmured something to Cappy, and he held her close, answering, We'll just have to wait till we pull into Philly, honey.
What's the matter, she wanna go the bathroom?
Ernie found it immensely funny.
The boy scowled at him, and the girl looked shocked.
No!
Certainly not, I mean, no that isn't what I said!
She snapped at him.
I only said I was hungry.
We haven't had anything to eat all day.
Joviality suffused Feathertop Ernie Cargill's voice as he reached behind him, pulling out a battered carpet bag, with leather handles.
Whyn't ya say so, fellow travelers!
Why, we got dinner right here.
C'mon, buddy, help me set up the kitchen and we'll have food in a minute or two.
Cappy looked wary, but he moved off the floorboards and followed the dirty ex-musician to the center of the refuse-littered boxcar.
Ernie crouched and opened the carpet bag.
He took out a small packet filled with bits of charcoal, a deep pot of thin metal, some sheets of newspaper, a book of matches and a wrinkled and many-times folded piece of tin foil with holes in it.
He put the charcoal in the pot, lit the paper with the matches, and carefully stretched the tin foil across the top of the pot.
A charcoal pit, man, he said, indicating the slightly-smoking makeshift brazier.
Fan it, he told Cappy, handing him a sheet of newspaper.
Yeah, but what're we gonna eat?
Charcoal?
Fella, Ernie waggled a dirty finger at the younger man, you try my ever-lovin' patience.
He reached once more into the carpet bag and brought up a package of wieners.
Hot dogs, man.
Not the greatest, but they stick to your belly insides.
He ripped down the cellophane carefully, and laid three dogs on the tin foil.
Almost immediately they began to sizzle.
He looked up and grinned.
A Kroger's self-serve, he explained.
I self-served.
When they had licked the last of the wieners' taste from their fingers, they settled back, and Cappy offered Ernie a cigarette.
Nice kid, Ernie thought, too bad.
How come you're riding the rods, kids like you?
Ernie asked.
Cappy looked down at his wide hands, and did not reply.
But surprisingly, Kitty's face came up and she said, My father.
He didn't want us to get married.
So we ran away.
Why didn't he want you to get hitched?
This time even she did not answer.
She looked down at her hands, too.
After a few seconds, she said, Dad didn't like Cappy.
It was my fault.
Cappy's head came around sharply.
Your fault, hell!
It was all my fault.
If I'd been careful it never woulda--he stopped abruptly.
Ernie's eyebrows went up.
What's the matter?
The girl still did not raise her eyes, but she added simply, I'm pregnant.
Cappy raged at himself.
Oh he was stupid, her old man!
You never heard nothin' like it: Kitty's gonna go have an abortion, and Kitty's gonna go away to a convent, and Kitty's this and Kitty's that like he was nuts or somethin', y'know?
Ernie nodded.
This was a slightly different matter.
He remembered Midge, and the child.
But that had been a time before all this, a time he didn't think about.
A time before the white lightning and the bumming had turned him inside out.
But these kids weren't like him.
Oh crap!
He thought, Pull out of it, old son.
These are just another couple of characters to roll.
What they got, you get.
Now forget all this other.
Wanna drink?
Ernie offered, taking the pint of sweet lucy from his jacket pocket.
Yeah.
Now that you offer.
The answer came from the open door of the boxcar.
From the man who had leaped in from the high bank outside, as the train had slowed on the grade.
Ernie stared at the man.
He was big.
Real big, with shoulders out to here, and hair all over him like a grizzly.
Road gang, Ernie thought.
You gonna give me a drink, fella?
The big man asked again, taking a step into the boxcar.
Ernie hesitated a moment.
This character could break him in half.
Sure, he said, and lifted the pint to his own lips.
He guzzled down three-quarters of the strong home-blend and proffered the remainder.
The man stalked toward them, his big boots heavy on the wooden flooring.
He took the bottle with undue belligerence, and making sucking noises with his thick lips, drained it completely.
He threw his head back, closed his eyes, and belched ferociously.
He belched again, and opening his eyes, threw the bottle out the open door.
Well, now, he said, and reached into his pocket.
I didn't know I was gonna have company in this car.
We're going to Philadelphia, Kitty said, pulling her skirt down around her legs all the more.
No, I don't think so, said the big man, and it was the final clincher for Ernie.
He had suspected this guy was trouble, and now he was sure of it.
Maybe you and me will, girlie, but these two ain't goin' nowhere.
He advanced on them, and abruptly there was a shocked electricity in the car.
Ernie was screaming inside himself: No, damn you, you ain't gonna take my meal ticket away from me!
The newcomer stalked toward them, and Kitty shied back, her hand to her mouth.
Her scream split up the silence of the car, accompanied by the rattling of the freight, and then Cappy came off the floor, his legs driving him hard.
The kid hit the bigger man with an audible thwump!
And carried him backward in a footballer's tackle.
They went down in a heap and for a long minute there was nothing to see but flailing arms and legs.
The kid showed for an instant, and his arm was cocked back.
The fist went down into the pile of flesh, and Ernie heard the bigger man's deeper voice go, Aaawww!
Then they were tumbling again, and the big man reached into the same pocket he had gone for earlier, and came up with a vicious switchblade.
He held the knife aloft an instant--an instant enough to press the stud.
The blade came out with a snick!
He fisted the knife overhand, and drew back to plunge it into the kid's throat.
Kitty screamed insanely and her face was white.
She grabbed at Feathertop's sleeve and shrieked, Help him!
Help him!
Do something!
They neither liked nor disliked the Old Man.
To them he could have been the broken bell in the church tower which rang before and after Mass, and at noon, and at six each evening--its tone, repetitive, monotonous, never breaking the boredom of the streets.
The Old Man was unimportant.
Yet if he were not there, they would have missed him, as they would have missed the sounds of bees buzzing against the screen door in early June;
or the smell of thick tomato paste--the ripe smell that was both sweet and sour--rising up from aluminum trays wrapped in fly-dotted cheesecloth.
Or the surging whirling sounds of bats at night, when their black bodies dived into the blackness above and below the amber street lights.
Or the bay of female dogs in heat.
They never called him by name, although he had one.
Filippo Rossi, that's what he was called in the old country;
but here he was just Signore or the Old Man.
But this was not unusual, because youth in these quarters was always pushed at a distance from its elders.
Youth obeyed when commanded.
It went to church on Sunday and one Saturday a month went to confession.
But youth asked nothing of its parents--not a touch of the hand or a kiss given in passing.
The only thing unusual about the Old Man had long since happened.
But the past was dead here as the present was dead.
Once the Old Man had had a wife.
And once she, too, ignored him.
With a tiny fur-piece wrapped around her shoulders, she wiggled her satin-covered buttocks down the street before him and didn't stop.
In one hand she clutched a hundred dollar bill and in the other a straw suitcase.
The way she strutted down the street, the Old Man would have been blind not to have noticed both.
Without looking at him, without looking at anything except Drexel Street directly in front of her, she climbed up into one of those orange streetcars, rode away in it, and never came back.
But she shouldn't have come here in the first place, the women had said.
No, no.
Not that one.
She thought she was bigger than we are because she came from Torino.
Eh, Torino!
She gave herself fancy airs!
Just because she had a part on the stage in the old country, she thought she could carry her head higher than ours.
They had slapped their thighs.
It's not for making pretty speeches about Dante those actresses get paid so good.
Henh!
Calloused fingers, caressed only by the smoothness of polished rosaries, had swayed excitedly beneath puckered chins where tiny black hairs sprouted, never to be tweezed away.
Mauve-colored mouths that had never known anything sweeter than the taste of new wine and the passion of man's tongue had not smiled, but had condemned again and again.
Puttana!
But if the Old Man even thought about his wife now, nobody cared a fig.
It was enough for people to know that at one time he had looked down the street at the fleshy suppleness of a woman he had consumed--watching her become thinner and thinner in the distance, as thin as the seams on her stockings, and still thinner.
His voice had not commanded her to stop.
It had not questioned why.
The women said they had seen him wave an exhausted farewell;
but he might have been shooing away the fleas that hopped from his yellow dog onto him.
(He was never without that dog.
) And his eyes--those miniature sundials of variegated yellow--had not altered their expression or direction.
The Old Man's very soul could have left him and flown down that street, but he wouldn't have had anyone know it.
Perhaps he had known then where that hundred dollar bill had come from and where it was taking his wife.
But when he called for his withered, wrinkled sister Rose to care for him and the children, had he guessed that all he would remember of his woman was the memory of her climbing into that streetcar?
There seemed to be a contemptuous purpose in the way he sat there with his eyes glued to Drexel Street and his back in opposition to the church behind him.
For all he saw or cared to see, this could have been a town in Italy, not the outskirts of Philadelphia.
It could have been Bari or Chieti for the way it smelled.
What did it matter to him that the park at the foot of Ash Road stretched beneath elevated trains that roared from the stucco station into the city's center at half-hour intervals?
Or that the tiny creek spun its silent course toward the Schuylkill?
This place was hatred to him, just as hatred was his only companion in his aloneness.
To him they were one and the same.
Sameness for the Old Man was framed in by a wall of ginkgo trees which divided these quarters from the city.
Sameness lined the streets with two-story houses the color of ash.
It slashed the sloping manure-scented lawns with concrete steps which climbed upward to white wooden porches.
It swayed with the wicker swings and screeched with the rusted hinges of screen doors.
Even the stable-garage, which housed nothing now but the scent of rot, had a lawn before it.
And the coffee shop on Drexel Street, where the men spent their evenings and Sundays playing cards, had a rose hedge beneath its window.
The hedge reeked of coffee dregs thrown against it.
Only one house on the street had no lawn before it.
It squatted low and square upon the sidewalk with a heavy iron grating supporting a glass facade.
That was Bartoli's shop.
Above it, from a second-story showroom, wooden angels surveyed the neighborhood.
Did the Old Man remember them there?
Yet everywhere else sameness was stucco and wood in square blocks--like fortresses perched against the slant of the hill, rising with the hill to the top where the church was and beyond that to the cemetery.
Only paved alleyways tunneled through the walls of those fortresses into the mysterious core of intimacy behind the houses where backyards owned no fences, where one man's property blended with the next to form courtyards in which no one knew privacy.
Love and hatred and fear were one here, shaded only by fig trees and grape vines.
And the forked tongue of gossip licked its sinister way from back porch to back porch.
The Old Man silently fed upon these streets.
They kept him alive, waiting.
Waiting for what and for whom, only he could tell and would not.
It was as though he had made a pact with the devil himself, but it was not yet time to pay the price.
He was holding out for something.
He was determined to hold out.
The Old Man's son threw himself down, belly first, upon a concrete step, taking in the coolness of it, and dreaming of the day he would be rich.
At fifteen he didn't care that he had no mother, that he couldn't remember her face or her touch;
neither did he care that Aunt Rose provided for him.
He was named Pompeii as a tribute to his heritage, and he couldn't have cared less about that either.
To him life was a restless boredom that began with the rising sun and ended only with sleep.
When he would be a man, he would be a rich man.
He would not be like the rich Americans who lived in white-columned houses on the other side of the park.
He would not ride the eight-thirty local to the city each morning.
He would not carry a brief case.
Nor would he work at all.
He would square his shoulders and carry a cane before each step.
He would sit inside the coffee shop and pound a gloved fist upon the table and a girl would hear him and come running, bowing with her running, calling out in her bowing, At your service.
He would order her to bring coffee, and would take from his vest pocket a thin black pipe which he would stuff--he would not remove his gloves--and light and smoke.
He could do that when he would be a man.
Hey, Laura!
He called to his sister on the porch above the steps.
She was only ten months older than he.
Laura, what would you say if I smoked a pipe?
Laura did not answer him.
She leaned unconcerned against the broken porch fence, brushing and drying her wet, gilded hair in the sun.
One lithe leg straddled the railing and swung loosely before the creaking, torn pales.
Her tanned foot, whose arch swept high and white, pointed artfully toward tapering toes--toes like fingers, whose tips glowed white.
All the while she sat there, her sinewy arms swirled before her chest.
Her face showed no sign of having heard Pompeii.
It was a face that had lost its childlike softness and was beginning to fold within its fragile features a harshness that belied the lyric lines of its contours.
The eyes, blue and always somewhat downcast, possessed a sullen quality.
Even though the boy could not see them, he knew they were clouded by distance.
He was never sure they fully took him in.
Pompeii called again, Laura!
But the only answer that reached him was the screeching of the porch rail from her leg moving against it.
She's in a mood, he thought There's not a month she doesn't get herself in a mood.
Well, what did that matter when the sun was shining and there were dreams to dream about?
And as for his pipe, if he wanted to smoke one, nobody would stop him.
Not even Laura.
Suddenly he was interrupted in his daydreaming by a warm wetness lapping against his chin, and his eyes opened wide and long at the sight of a goat's claret tongue, feasting against the salt taste of him.
Above the tongue, an aged yellow eye, sallow and time-cast, encrusted within a sphere of marbleized pink skin, stared unfalteringly at him.
Christ sake, goat, git!
But the goat would not.
You're boiling milk, ain't you?
Soothing it with his hand, knowing the whiskered jowls and the swollen smoothness of teats that wrinkled expectantly to his touch.
Pompeii rolled over.
His head undulated gradually, covering space, to come straining beneath the taut belly within the warmth of those teats.
With his mouth opened wide, he squirted the warm white milk against the roof of his mouth and his tongue savored the light, earthy taste of it.
The boy's fingers and mouth operated with the skilled unity of a bagpipe player, pressing and pulling, delighting in what he did.
Above him slid the evasive shadow of a storm cloud.
Its form was a heavy figure in a fluttering soutane.
But the boy could see only the goat's belly.
The Old Man near the corner let the shadow pass over him, sensing something portentous in it.
He knew it was there, knew also what it was about, but he wouldn't raise a finger except to smooth his yellow dog's back.
There would be time enough, perhaps the Old Man reassured himself, to pay the devil his due.
Time enough to give up his soul.
In the meantime, six sandals, stained an ocher, the same color as Pompeii's shaved hair, edged up close to him.
The clapping they made on the concrete interrupted him in the ecstatic pleasure he knew, so that he quickly released his hold on the goat and pretended to be examining its haunches for ticks.
He knew at a glance that the biggest sandals belonged to Niobe, the neatest ones to Concetta, and the laced ones to Romeo, Concetta's idiot brother.
Pompeii expected Romeo's small body to sink closer and closer to the ground.
He expected Concetta's thin hand to reach down to grasp the boy, and her shrill, impetuous voice to sound against the rotundity of his disfigured flesh that was never sure of hearing anything.
People came in and out all evening to see the baby and hold it.
The room filled with smoke, and Maggie's head throbbed with excitement and fatigue, but Stuart had such a happy, earnest look of proud possession on his face that Maggie couldn't bear to do anything to quench it.
Little Anne rapidly outdistanced her mother in recovery.
In two months she became a fat highly social baby, with a fuzz of flaxen hair all over her head.
She stopped flying into rages and started digesting her food;
she developed a peaches and cream complexion and a sunny disposition, and she asked for nothing more of life than that she be kept dry and comfortable and fed huge amounts of food at stated intervals and be carried to where she could watch activity going on around her.
She was so heavy that Maggie's arms shook from lifting her and taking care of her.
Maggie couldn't seem to get her strength back or catch up with herself with all she had to do: there was the big basket of clothes to be coaxed through the rackety old washer and lugged out and lugged back;
there was the daily round of household chores in which Maggie insisted on participating.
Worry had a great deal to do with it;
Stuart had been laid off at the produce company and had to go back to sitting in his father's office, taking what salary his father could hand out to him.
Maggie and Stuart pored over figures every night, trying to find how they could squeeze out a few pennies more.
In desperation Maggie consulted Eugenia one afternoon: Do you think you could find me something I could do here at home to make some money, so I could still watch the baby and do the rest of the things?
It seems to me you have enough to do as it is, Eugenia said.
She had been watching Maggie go from the washing machine to the baby to the stove and back again.
I have plenty of odd moments when I could be doing something, Maggie said.
It would make me feel a lot better, but the Woman's Exchange isn't taking baked goods any more and I can't leave the baby with Grandma because she isn't strong enough and the baby's too young to be put in a nursery.
I should think so, Eugenia said.
For one thing you can stop keeping that child in starched dresses and changed from the skin out nineteen times a day.
She's so beautiful, and I do like to keep her looking nice.
Maggie said.
She picked up the baby and nuzzled her fat warm little neck.
She'll be just as beautiful in something that doesn't have to be ironed, Eugenia said.
Evadna Mae Evans said she didn't put a thing on her child but a flannel wrapper until it was nine months old.
Evadna Mae Evans got all her baby clothes from Best's Liliputian Bazaar in New York, and I'm sick and tired of hearing about Evadna Mae Evans.
Well now, Maggie, you don't have to snap at me, Eugenia said.
I'm just thinking of a way for you to be sensible.
I'm sorry.
I do seem to snap at everybody these days, but I would like to think of a way to make a little extra money.
Well, let's see.
Let's make a list of your assets.
Maggie started laughing, and she laughed so hard she couldn't stop, and she kept on laughing while she lugged the clothes out to the yard to hang them up while the sun was still shining.
When she came back Eugenia was sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil and envelope jotting down words and figures.
I have here that you could run a nursery of your own for working mothers, Eugenia said.
We could put up cribs on the second floor sleeping porch and turn the front bedroom into a playroom where it's nice and sunny, but of course it would entail quite a bit of running up and down stairs and Chris said you were to be careful about that.
What else?
You might set up a dress shop in the living room.
Every woman in the block has tried that.
What about a tea room, then?
You could set up tables in the front room and serve salads and your baked beans and brown bread and Grandma could dress like a gypsy and tell fortunes.
It's too elaborate.
And Grandma isn't strong enough to take on something like that, and to tell you the truth neither am I.
Eugenia sighed.
She said, Well, those are the really interesting things, but if you don't like any of those I can turn over some of my extra typing jobs to you, if you think you can type well enough.
Oh, I'm sure I could do that, Maggie said.
But it really wouldn't be fair, taking your jobs away from you.
Don't worry, I can get plenty more, Eugenia said, wondering where in the world she could.
Maggie was looking much happier already, clearing a space on the table and chattering about how she could put up a typewriter right there, and be brushing up on her typing so Eugenia wouldn't be ashamed of it.
And then whenever I have a minute I can be working at it, and keep an eye on the baby and the stove at the same time.
And I can go back to my contests and be thinking while I'm doing the washing.
What are you going to do with your feet so you don't waste anything?
Maggie laughed.
She said, Oh Eugenia, I wish
What?
I wish I had three wishes, Maggie said.
All of them for you.
It grew bitterly cold toward the end of November, contributing to the miseries of countless numbers of people.
The temperature dropped to twenty below at night and stood at zero during the days.
The cold settled like a tangible pall over the Mile High City, locking it in an icy grip that harshened its outlines and altered its physical appearance;
it had a look of grim stark realism, resembling other cities whose habitual climate was cold, instead of the sprawling bumptious open-handed greedy Western city basking in eternal sunshine at the foot of mountains stored with endless riches and resources.
The jobless huddled in the streets outside of employment offices, outside newspaper buildings, in parks, in relief lines, outside government agencies.
There weren't facilities to take care of them;
there never had been a need felt for such facilities.
That kind of poverty was regarded as the exclusive property of the East, which created depressions with their stock markets and their congested populations and their greedy centralization of industries, protected by discriminatory freight rates.
The East was popularly supposed to have got the country into war and into depression, dragging the west along;
and now the East was creating government agencies for which the West doubtless would have to pay.
The government offices were being opened but they weren't being opened fast enough and meanwhile the cold penetrated everything.
Shivering, people talked and argued;
all this government spending would have to be paid for somehow, but on the other hand desperate circumstances called for desperate remedies and something had to be done.
Something had to be done;
it was the theme song of millions of American people, their personal problems no less urgent than those of the government.
Something had to be done.
The Abernathys said it to each other a dozen times a day.
about keeping warm, about keeping well, about meeting the minor emergencies that came up once, twice, fifty times a day.
Just dropping the baby's bottle and breaking it became a catastrophe, and Stuart wore out his shoes so fast that he was termed a major disaster.
The Abernathy furnace consumed fuel like a giant ravenous maw that had to be appeased by hurling tons of coal into its evil red depths, and no matter how much coal they put in the house remained cold.
Cold came in the innumerable cracks that seemed to have sprung up, under doors, around loosened window frames, from the sleeping porches, the attic, from the widened cracks between shingles on the roof.
Presently they had to give up running the furnace at full capacity and depend on the old coal range in the kitchen, which had never been removed when the new gas range was installed, and the fireplaces and an electric heater in Grandma's room.
The pipes burst and they all laughed and stood in ice water to their ankles while they swabbed the bathrooms.
They lived mainly in the kitchen;
they moved Maggie's bed and the baby's basket there, and the rest of them undressed by the stove and ran groaning and shivering to the upper polar regions and plunged into icy beds.
Grandma said it was just like the early mining camp days, and it was the way people ought to live, only she was getting too old to take the pleasure from it that she used to.
You said a mouthful, Eugenia said grimly.
Eugenia hated being cold worse than anything, and she was beginning to find the joys of poverty wearing thin.
She said to Maggie that it was one thing to meet an emergency and another to wallow in it, and it was beginning to look at if this one was going to last forever.
Plenty of people are poor all their lives.
Plenty of people haven't our brains and talent.
I know you when you start talking about brains and talent, Maggie said.
You're working up to something, and if you don't watch out you'll ruin your whole life one of these days just to prove that the Abernathy family is superior to everything, even a depression.
The only thing that worries me is how I'm going to prove it, Eugenia said.
She didn't want to be the only one with a stove in her room, especially as her life span was nearly run out anyway, and she insisted that Hope have the heater.
Hope wouldn't hear of it, and she took the heater back to Grandma's room, and Grandma took it back to Hope's room, and the two of them dragged it back and forth until Grandma tipped it over and almost set her bedspread on fire.
She said that proved she wasn't to be trusted with a fire in her room, and she could be burned to a crisp without anybody knowing it.
Eugenia suspected her of deliberately overturning the heater because she was getting tired of dragging it back and forth and still wanted her own way, but Hope said if Grandma wouldn't have the heater nobody would have it, so Grandma had to give in.
Thrifty of her to use it up.
Unusual in a case like this, but --
You can joke!
Didn't you read it?
She's married that tenant!
I read it, yes.
This ought to simplify Tolley's life.
Laban had more to say.
Tolley had gone to live in California.
He'd mentioned it, himself, at church and everybody seemed to have the idea that Tolley had left because Jenny had jilted him for Roy Robards.
It was plain as the nose on your face that they're laughing about it, Mamma.
Zion stayed to get my pin, but it'll be a cold day in June when I go back.
We will both go back, Laban!
Kizzie turned to go inside.
Let me stay and take the pictures you wanted, Mamma.
The sun's right --
Pictures?
She swung around.
What pictures?
In Brace's room!
You told me to bring my camera.
I'm not going back --
Indeed you are!
Why should I want pictures of an empty room now?
Tolley had no idea of marrying that sneaky little Jenny!
This--trip of his had nothing to do with her consorting with tenants, and I am going to see that everybody at Mt. Pleasant understands that simple fact.
Wait for me, Laban, I'll be dressed in half a second!
Frank followed her into the bedroom, hooked her dress up the back.
Hurry, Frank!
They're not going to laugh at the Fairbrothers and Labans very long!
Tolley's going is my fault.
I drove him away.
You know it and I'll tell everybody exactly how it happened.
She was so beautiful, so valiant, so pitiable.
He kissed her.
Make your confession to God, Kizzie dear, not to the congregation.
I'll decide that when I get there.
I was so cruel to Tolley, so unfair.
But I'll be fair now!
He is coming back, isn't he, Frank?
Yes, oh yes.
What else was there to say?
Returning to the log-house he found some favorite lines from Jonathan Swift on his lips:
Under the window in stormy weather
I marry this man and woman together.
Let none but Him who rules the thunder
Put this man and woman asunder.
Absolution for his lie?
He questioned God's taking time to telegraph the message, but he felt better about Kizzie, and he took the sealed envelope from its pigeonhole, wondering why he had preserved it.
If he died before she did, she would never be unable to resist opening it.
In any case he would be thrusting a burden on his remaining sons, making them parties to a deception peculiarly his own.
It was simply his necessity to confess which had made him write and keep this thing.
You've told God, Frank, he said.
Why lacerate the--congregation?
Reaching for an old clay pot, relic of pioneer days, he tore the envelope in pieces, dropping them into it, touching the little pyre to flame, watching it curl, the red sealing wax melting and bubbling in the feathery ash.
Surely now his beloved son could rest in peace.
'And let me go, for the night gathers me, and in the night shall no man gather fruit'''.
A beautiful and haunting line, a subtle genius, Swinburne, difficult not to envy a gifted man, and perhaps he did.
But there were great satisfactions, even for a small man.
Beyond his window were the greening trees, new spring, eternal hope, eternal life.
There lay Grand Fair's Quinzaine, his own young parents' graves, but new life and promise for his sons, grandsons.
He poured his thimble of wine for the toast he'd made so often.
To absent loved ones.
But this last time he drank not to Brace but To Tolley!
Mr. Robards--Jenny was the only person she knew of in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood who called him that--was kind but too easygoing.
It didn't bother him for everybody from the blacksmith to the preacher to say, Howdy, Miss Jenny, adding a careless Roy, but it did her.
He could put a stop to it, she told him again and again.
Simply call Mr. Whipsnade Oscar, and Dr. Dunne P.GA, and C'un Major Frank.
Mr. Robards laughed, said he'd feel a damn fool, plain-out couldn't do that even to please her.
You could try.
And if I ever hear you say'Mist Laban'again I'll scream.
And don't tell me you didn't at church Sunday.
I heard you!
He really hadn't meant to, he assured her, but it was plain to her that the importance of these small things was lost on Mr. Robards.
How strange it was that he could give her this handsome house and carte blanche as to its beautiful furnishings, and fail her in--spiritual ways.
Another weakness--far more irritating than his manner of speaking, which he made only token effort to change--was his devotion to that old horse of Tolley's.
Her horse, rather.
But Mr. Robards' now, oh my yes, indeed, yes!
He called her the Mare much as Mrs. Whipsnade spoke of the Queen, God bless her.
He, with fifteen or twenty horses or mares or geldings or what-nots out there in the barn, was reverent only of the Mare, the Racin' Mare, the revolting Gunny.
For the first few months of their marriage she had tried to be nice about Gunny, going out with him to watch this pearl without price stamp imperiously around in her stall.
And what had happened?
Gunny invariably tried to bite her.
Nerves, Mr. Robards said, just a nip anyway.
Stand back, Miss Jen, she's oneasy of your scarf.
Never, Quit that, you sor'l devil!
Never concern for his wife's nerves, or the danger that the curled lip and big teeth might mark their own dear baby due in January.
She musn't annoy Gunny whose foal was due then too!
Human birth was no novelty to Mr. Robards.
Tillie was a fine midwife and could get here quick, he suggested.
Jenny's aversion to having Dr. Dunne, a former admirer, seemed silly to him, but he would humor her, get anybody she wanted, the best never being too good for her.
The chances were against his being here to humor her when her time came, she was sure.
He would be in the barn, or riding for the veterinarian!
Night after night he stayed with Gunny in the dead of winter, rubbing her with quarts of expensive liniment, fussing over her bran mash as the cook did over charlotte russe, tracking manure on the pretty new carpet when he did come to the house.
Yet when the dear baby came, he had Tillie over here in a jiffy, and was as attentive and sweet and worried and happy when it was all over as any husband could have been.
Jenny wished now that she had had Dr. Dunne, feeling that somehow he wouldn't have allowed the dear baby to turn into triplets.
There was something not nice about triplets, though their father seemed pleased, showing no disappointment that they hadn't been the son he wanted, saying, You don't see triplets trippin' down the pike ever' day, Miss Jen, hon.
Rhyme 'em up cute--Arcilla, Flotilla
Edmonia for her mother, she said firmly, Jennifer, for herself, and --
Kezziah, for Miss Kizzie, he suggested.
She was mighty good to you past times, an' this'll fetch her.
Now she must be thinking of a boy-name, something special.
Just wait till she saw the Mare's foal.
Handsomest colt in all Kentucky.
Strong too, up on his legs when he was an hour old.
What about Royal Robards?
Why don't you name him Jesus Christ!
She burst into tears.
Roy was deeply distressed.
He'd had no idea how unhappy his sweet peach had been.
Of course she wasn't herself right now, but as her strength came back her spirits didn't seem to rise with it.
He had a good idea why not.
Those elegant At Home cards she sent out, now she could wear her pretty clothes again, and had the house all trimmed up, hadn't brought many callers in two whole months.
Doc Dunne and Miss Sis had come.
There was an idea.
Miss Kizzie had been right snippy ever since they were married, though you'd have thought a namesake would have brought her round.
Oh, she'd come to see them once, left silver teething rings for all of the trips.
But when Miss Jen went over right away to return the call, Miss Kiz couldn't have been very cordial, for she'd come back before she hardly had time to get there.
Though he was glad she got on well with his young folks, she ought to be welcome at the finest house in the land, too.
She hoped they were well.
He didn't tell Miss Jen, but she must have got word from the cook or nurse, who of course knew those Quinzaine nigs, and she really took a fit.
If he ever did such a thing again she'd die of shame.
Have a party an' leave 'em out, hon, he suggested.
A swell party, send an invite to ever'body but them--those folks you met at the Galt House, the ones I've got to know in this new Jockey Club affair, the whole dang neighborhood.
We'll have oystchers--couple bar'l oystchers'll fetch in a crowd any time.
I'll see word gets round.
Don't you dare!
Miss Jen was funny that way, funny that she didn't seem to take to his ideas and perk up.
He was downright worried about her, but there was one more thing he could try.
Zion was surprised when Roy's buggy stopped beside her on the pike one early summer day as she was walking home from the country school where she was teaching now that Eph Showers had had a call to preach in some mountain town.
Roy smiled--he did have a nice smile--took off his hat most politely, told her to hop in, and he'd give her a lift to Quinzaine.
Her hesitation was only momentary and she hoped he didn't notice it, as she settled herself, asked quickly how Miss Jenny and the babies were getting on.
See for yourself, Miss Zion.
It won't take a minute.
He swung in through his own wide gateway.
Them's the purtiest babes you ever did see, but Miss Jen gets mighty lonesome.
She'll relish the sight of a friendly face.
Miss Kiz won't care your comin', will she?
Why of course not, Zion said uncomfortably.
He must have forgiven me, Henrietta murmured to the room.
The absolution of Doaty's last will and testament was proof enough of that;
Doaty would never have left her house to a godless woman.
She found herself wishing an old wish, that she had told Doaty she was running away, that she had left something more behind her than the loving, sorry note and her best garnet pin.
Perhaps Doaty had guessed already and kept her counsel.
Henrietta thought, It's extraordinary how much she always knew about both of us.
There had been more to know about Hetty, inevitably, and most of it unfavorable.
Adelia was the good one, or, if not always good, less frequently tempted.
Their childhood would have been quite circumspect without Hetty's flair for drama, especially through the long summers.
In winter, in the city, there had been the Maneret School, which taught excellently with a kind of austere passion for knowledge;
there had been lessons in French from a small Polish nobleman with a really profound distaste for his pupils;
there had been the dancing class--Miss Craddock, thin and tireless, with her supervising wand and her everlasting one-two-three, one-two-three.
There had been supper parties and teas, fetes and little balls, Mama small and pretty and gay and Papa enormously jocular, enormously possessive, the sun around which the Blackwell planets revolved.
Mama had died before the corruption of the family circle, the interruption of Charles.
Mama was vulnerable;
one had always felt the need to make a safe world around her.
But I would have gone anyway, thought Henrietta.
She had always been able to ignore the moral question because there had been no choice.
Only at this moment--perhaps because it was before dawn and she was lying in Doaty's bed--she found herself examining how others might regard her.
Perhaps they would argue that morality consisted just of that ability to see a choice.
She turned on her side, finding the idea oppressive.
If Adelia had felt about someone as Henrietta felt about Charles, would she have run away with him?
Impossible to imagine Adelia feeling so about anyone.
No temptation, no sin.
No temptation, no virtue?
A curious thought to end a curious night.
The birds were really awake now in a colloquy of music, and light was beginning to creep across the room, touching sill and door, table and chair and all of Doaty's flowers in their artificial blossom and leaf.
Before anything else, she would go to Doaty's grave with flowers from Doaty's forgotten garden.
Everything must wait upon this mission, this sentimental duty of a pilgrim whose nature avoided graveyards.
She closed her eyes, remembering the small French cemetery, enclosed by stone walls.
It had always seemed to rain there, and even the grass was gray.
After the sad impatient moment, waiting for comfort which could not come, she slipped out of bed and went to the open window.
The garden below was lacy with dew and enchanting in its small wildness.
Leaning out, she could see a tangle of rosebush and honeysuckle, one not quite come to bloom, one just beyond it.
On a thrusting spray thick with thorns and dewdrops and swelling pink buds, like a summer Valentine, a bird balanced and sang, nondescriptly brown and alive with its own music, a little engine of song.
It was so pretty and artless that she felt like a child again and would have enjoyed running out barefoot to play on the wet grass with all the growing things, but Doaty never permitted bare feet and she was decidedly not a child but une femme d'un certain age.
Feeling suddenly neat and subdued, she dressed quite soberly and went downstairs.
Rosa, unbelievably, was not yet up and about, reassurance that Rosa was human.
Feeling protective toward this sleeping being, Henrietta found a yesterday bun and milk in a white jug, a breakfast which was somewhat the equivalent of going barefoot.
Outside, the garden, the tame wilderness, yielded a patchwork bouquet of daisies, sweet william, scented stock and lady's bedstraw, which she tied with long grasses and took back to show Rosa, who was now stirring about the kitchen and haranguing Folly.
The poodle came gleefully to Henrietta and begged for the flowers, supplicating the air with prayerful forepaws.
Henrietta held her bouquet out of reach and said it was for Doaty.
Rummaging in the dew, said Rosa coldly.
Go change your shoes before you turn around.
She sounded so exactly like Doaty that Henrietta obeyed her under the clear impression that she could either comply or stay home.
Folly danced, eager for whatever lay beyond the door.
To a Blackwell, there was only one church.
The cemetery slumbered just behind it, and the way lay through the village and close to the sea.
For the first time in thirty years, Henrietta walked down the narrow street with its shuttered shops just stirring and its inhabitants eying her with the frankest curiosity.
She smiled and bowed, recalling the princess-in-a-carriage feeling she had enjoyed when she was a child.
Now, some of the acknowledgments were cautious, but all were interested.
An old man, sitting against the wall of a cottage and waiting for the sun to find him, gave her a more than reflective look as she passed, the sap still plainly rising in his branches.
On an impulse, she turned back and said good morning.
He cupped his ear and shook his head at her repetition, announcing in a nettled way that he had heard her the first time.
He then offered his own estimate of the weather, which was unenthusiastic.
Summer's been slow to come, he said.
It's my dryin' out time.
He scowled at her flowers.
I'm taking them to the cemetery, said Henrietta, out of a vague feeling of hospitality.
They'll be takin' me next, he said pleasantly, but not so soon's they plan.
See half of 'em in their graves before I choose my own coffin.
It's dryin' myself out that does it.
He regarded her with rising hope.
You'd like to hear how I go about it.
It's nice of you, Henrietta said doubtfully.
Y're welcome.
He straightened himself, soldierly against the wall, and pulled his sprawled feet together so they stood side by side in their old boots.
His stick ceased to be a thing to rest his chin on and became a pointer for emphasizing the finer aspects of his text.
Every month, f'r three days, he said happily, I take no water into my system, no water whatsoever.
It rests the tissues.
Henrietta murmured that she could quite see how it would, and he nodded approval of her womanly good sense.
Rests the tissues, he said, and pacifies the system.
My dad did it, and he lived to a great age.
He looked up at her sharply.
Don't remember, do you?
She did suddenly, through the link of memory with his father, old Titus, who must have been in his nineties when Henrietta ran away.
Next to the Blackwells, Titus had owned the island most, and she and Adelia had often stood in front of him, silenced by his terrible years--a scanty man with a thin beard and very deep-set blue eyes like a mariner, more aged than possible.
He had never spoken once to the awed sisters, but his son had been friendly, a big fellow of fifty or more, a fishing-boat captain and powerful like the sea.
It must be that son who sat before her now, shriveled to half his size and half his senses.
She said gently, Of course I remember you.
Not so well's I remember you, he said.
Y're the young Blackwell woman.
Ran away on a black night with a lawful wedded man.
I know all about you.
You do seem to, said Henrietta, impressed.
Can't blame a man for leavin' his wife, he said quite cheerfully.
Left mine many a time, only she never knew it.
Man in a boat, there's a lot of places he can put in at and a lot of reasons he can be away for a bit.
Any harm in that?
Probably, said Henrietta dryly.
He gave a short hard laugh and looked at her knowingly.
You'd be the one to say, he observed, and she found herself liking his approval none too well, but she could not defend herself and say that her actions were different, since all actions had their own laws.
Only, this old man's connivance was even less to her taste than Selma Cotter's open censure.
Well, she had not come back to Great Island to be understood, praised or condemned.
She had come to make her peace with the past, and of that past this ancient of the earth was only a kind of shadow.
She started to move away, just as a woman came out of the cottage, a big-boned, drab-haired figure with a clean apron tied over her limp print dress.
She smiled vaguely at Henrietta and spoke to the old man.
You've not had your breakfast yet, gran'dad.
Y'r dam' porridge is no breakfast, he said.
Milk and sops!
He beat the air with his stick, and it fell from his claws and clattered on the stones.
He's lowly today, his grand-daughter said wearily, and bent to pick it up.
He's got this idea about drying out
It ain't an idea!
If it ain't an idea, she said, how comes it you can drink beer but not water?
He looked piously to heaven and said, Beer don't affect the tissues none, and the ingenious hypocrisy of this defense pleased Henrietta so that she forgave him his stint of malevolence.
His grand-daughter sighed.
Come on, do.
The children are eating, and Miss Blackwell's on her way somewheres.
To the graveyard.
Who ain't?
Not me.
I've got a day's work to do.
-- You'll be visiting Miss Doaty, Ma'am?
Henrietta nodded.
How much they knew about her!
The woman (she must have been a tiny baby when Hetty and Delia had stood arm in arm, watching great age grow small) answered the nod with her own.
God rest her soul, she was a sweet one.
Come on now.
She put a strong hand under the old man's arm and lifted him up, patiently, with the gentle cruelty and necessary tyranny that the young show toward the very old.
He mumbled at her but let himself be led off inside the house, shuffling mightily to make it clear how weak and aged he was and how he was buffeted about by those who still had their wicked strength.
There was a gabble of voices from indoors, young hungry sounds like cats after fish, and a burst of swearing from the old man.
Henrietta looked down at her bouquet, still lively with its color and scent, and set her feet on their journey's way again, leaving the village street and crossing the first field, Folly dancing ahead of her.
At the edge of the field, the wild rolling land took over, dotted with fat round bushes like sheep.
They were covered with tiny white blossoms, their scant roots clawing at the stony ground, and wild birds darted in and about and through them so they were nearly alive with the rustle and cry.
The air was full of sounds too but placid ones, a terrestrial humming as much out of the earth as out of the blue sky.
She felt mindless, walking, and almost easy until the church spire told her she was near the cemetery, and she caught herself wondering what she would say to Doaty.
Both church and graveyard were smaller than she remembered them (how many things had lessened while she was gone away) but the headstones had grown so thick in thirty years that to find one named Dorothy Tredding seemed suddenly impossible.
She sat down on the nearest, fallen with age and gray with sea-damp, her fingers tracing the indecipherable carved letters padded with green moss.
The day's sun was gathering its strength in gold, and she wished she had brought her parasol, if only to shade Doaty's flowers.
A small, rock-carved angel watched her from a nearby tomb, the only angel in the cemetery.
She remembered, suddenly, a night of savage moonlight and scudding clouds when she and Adelia, having dared each other, had stolen out of their great safe house and come here, hand in hand, hoping and fearing ghosts.
The Momoyama family had come from Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, where there are still traces of the mysterious Ainu strain.
The Ainus were a primitive people, already living on the island before the principal ancestors of the Japanese came from Southern Asia.
Apparently they were of Caucasian blood.
They had white skins and blue eyes;
all their men were bearded, and many of their women were beautiful.
A pitiful few of them are left now, to subsist mainly on the tourist trade and to sing their ancient tribal chants, which have the same haunting sadness as the laments of the American Indians.
Tommy Momoyama was one of these fortunate occasions.
She was taller than most Japanese girls, and had the exquisitely willowy form of the Japanese girl who is lucky enough to be tall.
Her nose was higher of bridge, her complexion so pale as to be quite susceptible to sunburn, and the fish and vegetable diet of her forebears had given her teeth that were white and regular and strong.
Her mouth, soft and full, was something for any man to dream about.
She had black eyes, long and intriguingly tilted, and the way she walked was melody.
She had been in Japan just one week.
It was an alien land, and she hated it intensely;
she was already considering putting in rebellious requests for duty at San Diego, Bremerton, the Great Lakes, Pensacola--any place the Navy had a hospital--with a threat to resign her commission if the request were not granted.
Anywhere would be better than the land of her ancestors.
There was nothing wrong with her job.
Tommy had been assigned to the psychopathic ward.
There were no depressingly serious cases: the ward doctor sometimes teamed up with the chaplain to serve as a marriage counselor--sometimes the Navy sent people back to the States to preserve a marriage--but mental health as a rule was very high.
At present the doctor's main concern was in seeing to it that Japanese salvage firms were not permitted to operate on the hulks of warships sunk too close inshore, because the work involved setting off nerve-shattering blasts at all hours.
Tommy was interested in psychiatry, because there was much an understanding nurse could do to help the patients.
But she suffered in her off-duty hours.
Such as now, when she sat at a table in the coffee shop at the Officers' Club, having coffee and a hamburger to sustain her until dinnertime.
She had changed into a cocktail dress, and the whole evening should have been before her, but already she was beginning to get a tight feeling at the back of her neck.
This was one of the Navy's crossroads--you find them all around the world.
Ships from the West Coast rotated on six-month tours of duty with the Seventh Fleet, and Yokosuka was the Seventh Fleet's principal port for maintenance, upkeep and shore liberty.
Sooner or later, all the gray Navy ships came in here;
if Tommy sat long enough, she would be sure to see all the young officers she had met in San Diego and Long Beach.
And she wanted desperately to see someone she had known back there.
She felt, rather than saw, the approach of the good-looking young man.
He came through from the Fleet Bar, which was stag, with the ice cubes tinkling in a glass he carried.
When he saw Tommy sitting alone, the tinkling sound stopped.
He was perhaps a trifle tipsy, having been long at sea where drinking is not permitted, and consequently out of practice;
he wore a brown tweed sports jacket obviously tailored in Hong Kong, and he was of an age that marked him as a lieutenant.
Probably off one of the carriers--an aviator.
There was a fifty-fifty chance, perhaps, that he would be unmarried, and an even more slender chance that his approach would be different.
Japan did something to a man--and it wasn't just Japan, either, because the same thing applied anywhere overseas.
It was as if foreign duty implied and excused license;
it intimated that the folks at home would never know about it, and, therefore, why not?
Then the young man in the brown sports jacket spoke, and it was no different.
Harro, girl-san!
He said, turning on what was meant to be charm.
You catchee boy-furiendo?
Maybe you likee date with me?
I beg your pardon!
Tommy said out of her cold rage.
I don't believe I know you, and I can't understand your quaint brand of English--it was meant to be English, wasn't it?
The nice-looking young officer fell back on his heels, open-mouthed and blushing.
At least, he had the decency to blush, she thought.
Oh--I'm sorry!
You see, I thought--I mean I really had no idea --
Oh, yes--you had ideas!
Tommy interrupted furiously.
All wrong ones!
Then she jerked her thumb toward the door in a very American gesture, and dropped into Navy slang.
Take off, fly-boy!
Uh--sorry!
He muttered, and took off, obviously feeling like a fool.
The trouble was that there was no lasting satisfaction in this for Tommy.
She felt like a fool, too.
It hadn't been this way in college, or in nurses' training;
it wasn't this way in the hospital at San Diego.
Everybody had accepted her for what she was--a very charming girl.
Nobody had addressed her in broken English at any of those places, nobody had suggested that she wasn't American.
There are Spanish girls who look like Tommy Momoyama, brunettes with a Moorish hint of the Orient in their faces;
there are beauties from the Balkan states who are similarly endowed, and--back in the blessed United States--they were regarded simply as pretty women.
Now, having been sent halfway around the world on a job she had not asked for, Tommy was being humiliated at every turn.
She looked around, self-consciously.
Four little Japanese waitresses were murdering the English language at the counter--Yuki Kobayashi happened to be one of them.
Everybody but Tommy seemed to think it was charming when they called, Bifutek-san!
For a steak sandwich, or Kohi Futotsu!
For one cup of coffee.
Two other Japanese girls were sitting at the tables, both quite pretty and well groomed.
One was with a whitehaired and doting lieutenant commander;
the other was with her American husband and their exceptionally appealing children.
Seeing these did nothing for Tommy's mood.
She told herself rebelliously, and with pride, I am an American!
And so she was, and would remain.
But she was learning that so long as she was in this country, and wore civilian dress in the Club, there would always be transient young men who would approach her with broken English.
There had been occasions when some of the more experienced had even addressed her in what might have been perfectly good Japanese.
Tommy wouldn't know;
after coming to America, her parents had spoken only English.
One thing was becoming increasingly sure.
She had been sent to the wrong place for duty.
There was more to service in the Navy Nurse Corps than the hours in the ward.
One had to have friends, and a congenial life in after-duty hours.
Now there was raucous male singing from the Fleet Bar.
It was terribly off key, and poorly done, and Tommy could never admit to herself that male companionship was a very natural and important thing, but all at once she felt lonesome and put-upon.
She finished her hamburger and drank her coffee and paid her check;
she got out of the coffee shop before the incident could be repeated.
Eating while angry had given her a slight indigestion.
Back in her living quarters at the hospital she took bicarbonate of soda, and sulked.
Then, after a while, she went to her mirror.
It was all true.
She certainly looked Japanese, and perhaps she could not really blame the young men.
And, still, they did not have to be so crude in their approach.
There was a letter to write to her mother, and she tried to make its tone cheerful.
She promised that she would soon take a few day's leave and visit the uncle she had never seen, on the island of Oyajima--which was not very far from Yokosuka.
And tomorrow she would take time to shop for the kimono her mother wanted to present to the young wife of a faculty member as a hostess gown.
Tommy, of course, had never heard of a kotowaza, or Japanese proverb, which says, Tanin yori miuchi, and is literally translated as Relatives are better than strangers.
Actually, this is only another way of saying that blood is thicker than water.
Doc Doolittle's scheduled appearance at captain's mast was a very unusual thing, because the discipline dispensed there is ordinarily for the young and immature, and a chief is naturally expected to stay off the report.
But the beer hall riot in Subic had been unusual, too, and Walt Perry was convinced that Doc had started it through some expert tactics in rabble rousing.
Just why anybody should wish to start a riot the executive officer didn't know.
In his opinion, Doc had not grown up.
The lieutenant was not entirely wrong in the belief.
There had never been a good reason for Doc Doolittle to grow up.
He had come into the Navy too young, with the image of the fun-loving Guns Appleby before him.
The war found him much too early, and its perils--and especially its awful boredom--were best forgotten in horseplay and elaborate practical jokes, and even now Doc had never found any stabilizing, sobering influence.
He remained young at heart, with an overdeveloped sense of humor.
He wisecracked about the captain's indoctrination of new men, took great delight in slaughtering cockroaches with ethyl chloride, and gave no thought for tomorrow.
He was doing thirty years, and the Navy would take care of him.
The job security enjoyed by Doc Doolittle, and nearly all members of the Armed Forces, is a wonderful thing.
Actually, all a man in uniform has to do is to get by.
He may not rise to the heights, but he can get by, and eventually be retired.
Doc had been under restriction to the ship since the Bustard left Subic.
This deprived him of liberty in Hong Kong, but he told Boats McCafferty that Hong Kong was a book he had read before, and the Navy would always bring him there again, some day.
At Yokosuka he was restricted to the confines of the Base because Walt Perry, being thoughtful, knew that Doc might have to draw some medical supplies from the hospital or the Supply Base.
This gave Doc the whole range of the naval establishment, and suited him quite well.
There were two things he wanted to do: inspect one of the many caves that had been dug into the hills on the Naval Base, and visit an old shipmate.
A telephone line had been hooked up to connect the ship with the Base exchange.
After supper, Doc called Whitey Gresham, who was now a lieutenant and had a family.
Well, Doc, you old sonofabitch!
Whitey exclaimed, with true affection.
Come over and have a drink.
We live down by the Base commissary.
Grab a taxi.
I'll be there, but I'll walk, Doc said.
I've got to run an errand on the way.
See you in about an hour.
He threw a smart salute at the gangway, went up the dock, and turned down the wide street in front of the Petty Officers' Club.
How, he wondered, does one enjoy one's spare time?
He considered some interesting excursion but he was on the road every day from dawn to dusk.
Then there was exercise, boating and hiking, which was not only good for you but also made you more virile: the thought of strenuous activity left him exhausted.
Perhaps golf, with a fashionable companion--but he'd lost his clubs, hadn't played in years.
There was swimming over at the Riverside Hotel, but his skin was so white he looked like the bottom of a frog.
Perhaps a packing trip into the Sierras, let his beard grow--but that was too stark.
I could, he thought, take a long walk--but where?
The telephone rang.
You missed it, Buzz's voice said, You should have gone over to the Pagan Room with us.
Wow.
Strippers, but scrumptious, and Toodle Williams and her all-lesbian band.
Hi, Buzz, Owen said.
I went over to the Willows and dropped two notes.
Tough, Buzz said, Listen, we're having a stag dinner over at the Pagan Room on Friday.
Imagine a stag dinner with Toodle Williams.
He laughed and laughed.
Owen wanted to be pleasant because Buzz worked the territory next to his, but he hadn't come to Reno for stag dinners.
Thanks, Owen said, but Friday is a long way off and anything can happen.
Buzz was a tireless instigator who never let his victims rest.
When Owen was finally rid of him, there was a timid rap at the door.
Yes, Owen called out.
Yes?
I'm Mrs. Gertrude Parker, a soft voice explained, And I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes, please.
Ahah, he thought, a lush divorcee at last.
Probably saw me in the lobby.
He was disappointed to find a nervous, scrawny woman with a big hat standing at the door.
She frowned at his green pajamas with the yellow moons.
How do you do?
She said, semi-professionally.
Our church is sponsoring a group of very courageous women up in Alaska.
We call them lay-sisters and they go among the Eskimos making friends and bringing the light.
They're up there in that freezing climate and all of us have to try and help them.
Oh?
You see, she said, looking past him into the room, where the highball glasses sparkled dully in the bright light, you and I can't understand the many hardships they have to undergo.
Why is that?
She apparently wasn't satisfied with his reaction.
Smug, Owen thought, smug and sappy.
There was a slight nervous twitch in the region of her left eye.
It gave her a lewd, winking effect.
Have you ever tried to reason with an Eskimo?
She asked, winking wildly.
They are a very difficult group of people.
I don't know much about them, Owen admitted, but I suppose they have their own religion and they probably resent outsiders coming in and telling them what to do and what not to do.
She smiled in a sickly-tolerant fashion.
You know, that's very interesting.
People don't know how much they give away about themselves by remarks like that.
The more canvassing I do, the more I note how far most people are from their personal God.
Forebearing, Owen kept his peace.
What would happen next?
That she was out for a touch was certain, but when did she get to the pitch?
Several people passed in the hall and stared as he slowly retreated, trying to close the door a little, and she slowly leaned toward him and raised her voice.
How did you get by the desk?
He asked curiously.
I'm sure the hotel doesn't know you're wandering around the corridors, knocking on strangers' doors and talking down Eskimos.
Oh, I just come once a week.
Every day I visit a different hotel.
I feel it's my duty.
I do this work all on my own, because I understand the difficulties and I want to help these lay-sisters.
Do you know these women go all through Alaska, and they don't have the proper facilities?
They travel in pairs as much as a hundred-and-fifty miles a day.
Do you have any idea how far I travel every day?
I have the whole Pacific Northwest.
Owen was aware he was getting overexcited but he couldn't help himself.
Mrs. Gertrude Parker drew back.
That's hardly a Christian approach, she remonstrated.
You're in the secular world.
I didn't say it was Christian.
I don't think you'll find many active Christian salesmen.
Not that religion isn't big business;
those bibles and prayer books make a lot of money for publishing houses, but they don't get top personnel.
Our key salesmen are in appliances and cosmetics.
God, I take it, plays no part in this, she said waspishly.
God doesn't have any appliance or cosmetics, he said heatedly before he caught himself.
It sounded silly;
why go on?
More people were passing;
he had to find some way to close this impossible conversation.
And whiskey, she said, smiling and blinking at the highball glasses.
Don't forget whiskey;
it's such a big seller.
You know, he said, getting a grip on himself, I think you're going to have to excuse me.
I have an appointment.
I can imagine, she said.
Probably down at the bar.
But what do you want to do about the lay-sisters?
They must be freezing up there now.
Can't you help them?
Leave a card or something.
I'll think it over.
I have no card, she said bitterly.
You haven't been listening to what I've been telling you.
I only hope my talking to you has helped you a little, anyway, because you need spiritual bucking-up.
She looked crestfallen, as if he had somehow disappointed the whole human race.
She stood indecisively for a moment, then walked down the hall;
he heard her knocking on another door.
It took him about fifteen minutes to calm himself;
then he realized he was hungry.
He showered, shaved, dressed and went down to the dining room for breakfast.
On the way he stopped at the desk to receive his mail.
There was a check from his company, and the usual enthusiastic bulletins on new lines they always issued.
His lawyer had sent him a statement on his overdue alimony, and there was a letter from the Collector of Internal Revenue asking him to stop in his office and explain last year's exemptions.
He ate breakfast in a sullen mood, but afterwards, when he walked out onto Virginia Street, he felt braced.
He looked off to the crest of the Sierras, still white-topped;
the glisten of the Truckee River made a wide spangle.
He felt suddenly elated, adventurous.
With any luck at all he could easily find a flowerpot.
Although it was only three o'clock, he stopped in at the Golden Calf.
The tables were all spinning, the dice rattling, the bar crowded.
Just to test himself, he played roulette for quarters on his old combination, five and seventeen, and within an hour, he had won, surprisingly, twenty dollars.
The way was opening up;
when the management brought around champagne, the breakfast settled its whirling around in his stomach.
The Golden Calf was dimly lit with shaded neon.
There were more women than men in the place, but he couldn't find a flowerpot.
They all had the hard look of gamblers who had stopped dreaming, who automatically turned the cards, hardly caring what showed up.
The mural around the wall depicted early settlers in covered wagons, who appeared much more animated than the gamblers.
The women had a bright shining expectancy as they leaned out from the wall and gazed splendidly into the distance, while the men were stern but hopeful.
All, of course, except the Donner party who were bent on starving to death.
I wonder if they did eat each other at the end, Owen mused.
He sat down next to a heavily-upholstered blonde, but she was cleaned out in twenty minutes.
She sighed a dirty word and left.
Owen was surprised to see Mrs. Gertrude Parker playing the one-arm bandits that were cunningly arranged by the entrance.
She sat down and played two slots at once, looking grim, as if bested by mechanical devices, and Owen felt sorry for the lay-sisters depending on her support.
A dried-up cowboy sat down next to him in the blonde's place.
He was a little more authentic than usual because he smelled slightly of the stables.
What you need is a steady martingale, the cowboy announced after watching Owen play.
You can't build on your hit-and-miss five-seventeen.
What are you playing?
Owen asked.
I'm just logging, the cowboy explained.
I keep all these plays in this little black book, and I watch over a twelve-hour period to find out what numbers are repeating.
But roulette's not my game.
I'm always trying to find a breaking table in blackjack.
Incidentally, I'm pretty famous in these parts: I'm called The Wrangler.
Nice to know you.
Don't you have to spend any time on your ranch?
Well, of course I do.
I'm with the Bar-H, pushing a horse called Sparky.
He's my own horse, and what I collect from him I use on blackjack.
This Sparky can rack and single-foot and he's the fastest thing in Washoe County.
I figure if I can get any kind of publicity campaign going, I'll land him on TV--you know, one of those favorite horses for some Western hero.
I once trained a horse for Hoot Gibson, but nothing like Sparky.
He's a pinto and he photographs wonderfully.
Five came up while Owen was listening to The Wrangler and he neglected to play, a loss of ten dollars.
This proved conclusively that The Wrangler was a jinx, so he walked on down to Hurrays, an even more glorified gambling den than the Golden Calf.
When he looked in the back, Mrs. Gertrude Parker was marking keno cards.
His adventurous spirit had waned;
he studied the pistol exhibition that Hurrays featured as an added attraction.
He ogled a long redhead with green eyes, but she was a shill with her money in front of her.
He had no great prejudice against shills;
it just seemed such a dry run.
There was no cash around;
everyone was flipping silver dollars.
The management discreetly withdrew the green stuff into the office and gave the customers chips or checks or premium points.
He read a special announcement whereby Hurrays would feature a special floorshow at three A.M. starring Adele (The Body) Brenner and fourteen glamorous schoolgirls.
He wondered if he might bag a tourist, but they looked frightened of him.
He passed two brides, both wearing orchids, and they made him feel a little sad.
Owen found Buzz watching chuck-a-luck.
Buzz had on a Hawaiian shirt and was carrying some sun-tan oil and dark glasses.
He was shorter and fatter than Owen, who felt good standing next to him.
We're all going over to Lake Tahoe and try our luck at Cal-Neva, Buzz explained, still instigating.
We ran into a guy at the Pagan Room who guarantees we can beat the wheel.
He started out as a stickman, then became a pit boss until the Club found him crossroading.
He was knocking down checks at faro.
I'm allergic to Tahoe, Owen explained.
Something about the pollen.
Well, okay, Buzz said.
We'll see you around later.
Owen went over to the crap table and the dice were hot, but he couldn't pyramid with any consecutive success.
How's your luck, honey?
A short platinum blonde in a bursting sun-suit addressed him.
She looked well-fed and prosperous, but he didn't get the impression he was being propositioned the way he'd been hoping.
I haven't had any luck since I was a baby.
Stake me, she said, and let me at those dice.
I'll make them dance the tango.
We'll get it in a hurry and get it out.
Let's have a drink and discuss a merger.
If you go broke, she said, smiling up at him, I'll leave you.
Sounds like real love, Owen said.
It sort of brings a lump to my throat.
My name's Gisele, the blonde said after she ordered a Scotch.
Named after the ballet.
My mother wanted to call me Sylphide, but it sounded too affected.
Spencer said nothing.
Is there any word you would like to offer in your own defense?
Spencer shook his head.
Alexander said, Answer me properly, Spencer.
Spencer was quiet for a moment longer, then he said, There is nothing I want to say, Captain.
Very well.
Alexander walked away.
Naval procedure, he thought, had its moments of grim humor.
Philip Spencer had cold-bloodedly planned the murder of his captain, yet it seemed in order to chide him for a lapse of proper address.
During the morning hours, it became clear that the arrest of Spencer was having no sobering effect upon the men of the Somers.
Those named in the Greek paper were manufacturing reasons to steal aft under pretence of some call of duty, so as to be near Spencer, watching an opportunity to communicate with him.
Hostile glances were flashed at both Alexander and Gansevoort.
The two met in the Captain's cabin.
What is the next step, Captain?
More arrests, I fear.
In your opinion, who is this E. Andrews on the'certain'list?
Cromwell, of course.
He is the oldest and most experienced of the lot.
He saw the dangers, not the glories of being identified as a mutineer.
Somehow he talked Spencer into letting him use another name.
There was a tap at the door and Oliver entered with the word that Heiser wished to see the Captain.
Have him come in.
Heiser, breathless and wild-eyed, brought the chilling news that the handspikes, heavers and holystones had been mysteriously removed from their customary places.
And also, sir, two articles which were considered souvenirs now must be regarded in another light entirely.
An African knife and battle-ax are at this moment being sharpened by McKinley and Green.
McKinley was overheard to say that he would like to get the knife into Spencer's possession and that --
Where did you gather all this information, Heiser?
Who reported to you the disappearance of handspikes and heavers and who --
He was interrupted by a crash from the deck and sprang toward the ladder, with Gansevoort and Heiser behind him.
A glance revealed that the main topgallant mast had been carried away.
The aimless milling about of what had been a well-trained, well-organized crew struck Alexander with horror.
He bellowed orders and watched the alert response of some of his men and watched, too, the way a dozen or more turned their heads questioningly toward the shackled figure as though for further instruction.
Adrien Deslonde hastened to Alexander's side.
Small violently jerked the weather-royal brace with full intention to carry away the mast.
I saw him myself and it was done after consultation with Cromwell.
I swear it, sir.
And it was clear that Adrien was not mistaken, for both Small and Cromwell took no step toward aiding in the sending up of the new topgallant mast till Philip Spencer had given the signal to obey.
Then, with disappointment evident upon their faces, they moved to the work.
Alexander guessed that they had planned confusion and turmoil, thinking it the ideal climate in which to begin battle and bloodshed.
Their strategy was sound enough and, he reasoned, had been defeated only by Philip Spencer's unwillingness to sanction an idea he had not originated.
When the mast was raised, Alexander gave the order for Small and Cromwell to be placed under arrest, and now three figures in irons sprawled upon the open deck and terror stalked the Somers.
Spencer's potential followers were openly sullen and morose, missing muster without excuse, expressing in ominous tones their displeasure at the prisoners being kept in irons, communicating with the three by glance and signal.
One of the missing handspikes came out of its hiding place after Midshipman Tillotson had been insolently disobeyed by Seaman Wilson.
Tillotson had reported the man to Gansevoort and an hour later, with back turned, had been attacked by Wilson, brandishing the weapon.
Wilson, shackled and snarling, was thrown with the other prisoners and was soon joined by Green, McKee and McKinley.
Not a man on the brig, loyal or villainous, could be unaffected by the sight of seven men involved in the crime of mutiny.
In the tiny cabin, Alexander met with Gansevoort, Heiser and Wales to speak and to listen.
Three days had passed since Spencer's arrest and each day had brought new dangers, new fears.
Gansevoort said, It requires an omniscient eye to select those if any on whom we can now rely.
To have the Greek paper is not the great help that at first flush it seemed.
From actions aboard, it is easy to guess that Spencer's boast of twenty staunch followers was a modest estimate.
Well, Heiser ventured, why don't we hold an investigation with questioning and --
That would be worse than useless, Alexander broke in.
There is not space to hold or force to guard any increased number of prisoners.
Besides, suppose we hold a court of inquiry, then what?
Then we have informed a large number of our crew that when they reach the United States, they will be punished but that in the meanwhile, they may run loose and are expected to perform their jobs in good order.
Mr. Heiser, does this sound like a truly workable plan to you?
Do you not think these men might choose the black flag here and now?
Wales said, Of course they would.
They are about to do so at any moment as it is.
All that is needed is for one man to feel self-confident enough to take the lead.
As soon as that one man is appointed by himself or the others or by a signal from Spencer, we are going to be rushed.
We are going to be rushed and murdered.
That is extravagant language, Mr. Wales.
We are not going to be rushed and murdered, Alexander said.
We are going to bring the Somers into New York harbor safe and sound.
Of course, I agree with the Captain, Gansevoort said thoughtfully, but the conspiracy is ferocious and desperate.
The instinct of discipline has been lost.
Anything is possible when anarchy has the upper hand.
He paused, then added, Everything on a ship is a weapon.
Implements of wood and iron are available for close and hasty combat no matter where a man stands.
And we are positive of so few and suspicious of so many.
We ourselves must stand sentinel.
Alexander said.
Under arms day and night, watch and watch about.
Those of us present, the Perry brothers, Deslonde and the other midshipmen now have the responsibility of the Somers.
A great deal of labor we have as well, for we are too uncertain of where trust may be placed.
And when he was alone again in the cabin, Alexander lowered his head into his arms and wept, for he knew full well what must be done, what in the end would be done.
With all his heart he had loved the Navy and now he must act in accordance with the Navy's implacable laws.
And when he did, when he gave to his ship that protection necessary to preserve her honor, he knew he would lose forever the Navy to which he had dedicated his soul.
Where had he failed?
How had he failed?
He who had tried so hard, who had yearned so passionately to be a great officer.
It came to him as he wept there aboard the Somers that it was as foolish to strive for greatness as to seek to storm the gates of heaven.
It was given or it was not given.
One did one's best and if fortune smiled, there was a reward.
One did one's best and if fortune frowned, an eighteen-year-old boy with murder in his heart sailed aboard one's ship.
And Alexander sobbed like a girl for the dreams he had had, and he felt no shame.
God knew his tears were his to shed if he so desired, for it had not been with an egotist's rage for fame that he had held precious his naval career.
Another field had given him fame enough to satisfy any egotist.
It was for love that he had served the Navy.
To have someday that love returned was what he had lived for.
Now the hope was gone.
Yes, he would bring the Somers safely into New York harbor but at a price.
Dear God, at what a price.
And after a while, he dried his tears and walked the deck as a captain should with assurance and dignity.
Stern-faced, he inspected the prisoners, satisfying himself that they were clean, well fed and comfortable within reason.
The prisoners averted their eyes but not before he had glimpsed hatred and anger.
Only Cromwell, the giant boatswain, was mild-mannered and respectful.
He said, Captain, may I speak, please?
Captain, I am innocent of any plot against you or the ship.
Are you, Cromwell?
Yes, sir.
Before God I swear I am innocent.
I know nothing of any plot, if there is such a thing.
You are the only man aboard who can be in doubt.
I cannot speak for others, sir, but I am innocent.
He leaned closer to Alexander, squinting up at him from the deck.
Surely, Captain, you did not find my name on any suspicious paper or anything.
No, Cromwell, I did not find your name.
You were careful about that.
Now Spencer, seeming with effort to shake himself from lethargy, spoke.
He said, Cromwell is telling you the truth.
He is innocent.
Alexander shifted his gaze to Spencer.
The calmness and detachment of his tone suggested unawareness of how implicit was his own guilt in the words he had used to defend Cromwell.
Alexander knew Spencer too well to think him naive or thick-skulled.
And in a sudden wave of painful clarity, Alexander recognized a kinship with Spencer.
Here was another human who understood the stupidity of quarreling with the inevitable.
There was good fortune and there was bad and Philip Spencer, in handcuffs and ankle irons, knew it to be a truth.
He expected nothing for himself but that which naturally follows those marked for misfortune.
The red-haired captain, towering above the prisoner as a symbol of decency and authority, was shocked to find himself looking with sympathy upon Philip Spencer.
This tragic lad had forged his own shackles.
But he could not have done so, could not have found the way, had fortune favored him.
And because fortune had favored neither the prisoner nor the red-haired captain, they would be each other's undoing.
Spencer, if there is guilt, if you do not deny your own, how is it possible for Cromwell to be innocent?
He was your constant companion.
The hazel eyes met Alexander's.
I tell you he is innocent.
And do you think there is a reason why I should accept your word?
Yes.
I have nothing to gain by defending Cromwell.
Nothing to lose, either, Spencer.
That's true, Spencer agreed and withdrew himself from the conversation.
His eyes went back to contemplation of the sea.
I am innocent, Captain, Cromwell said again.
Before God, Captain, I am innocent.
And though it was logical that a man who could plot mass murder would not hesitate to speak an untruth, still it was difficult to understand why Spencer spoke only for Cromwell.
The boatswain was as guilty as any.
No action of his could be interpreted in his favor and four midshipmen, prior to their knowing the significance of the Greek paper, had seen it in Cromwell's hands while Spencer whispered explanations.
I thought, Midshipman Rogers had told Alexander, that Spencer was teaching him geometry.
It was fantastic to turn from the seven men in shackles to the wardroom, where a class of apprentices awaited him.
This was a training ship and the training would continue, but there was an element of frightful absurdity here which Alexander recognized.
Some of these apprentices were, in physical strength, already men and doubtless a percentage of them were Spencer's followers.
Rachel steered me along toward a school for young boys beginning to study the Torah.
Bits of trash lay in the roadway.
The air smelled warmish and foul.
A young man appeared out of a side alley and walked toward us with quick strides.
He wore a long double-breasted coat of a heavy material, dark trousers, and black boots with buckles.
His black hat with its wide brim, high crown, and fur trim rode high.
With his head erect, he approached, not glancing at us, and passed by with his clear eyes raised and fixed straight ahead.
He had a pinkish-white complexion, a small straight nose, a short black beard, and tightly curled paot.
I was suddenly conscious of my bare arms.
The girls in the market place wore long-sleeved dresses and covered their legs with cloth stockings.
I turned and watched him stride down the center of the road.
His hands were swinging at his sides, and he passed through the dingy market place with his back straight and, pivoting on his heel, he entered an old stone building.
Rachel had seen me watching the young man.
She smiled.
When your mother was here he must have been a young boy.
Like the ones you will see now.
I swallowed hard and looked down at my feet plodding along beside Rachel.
She led me into a twisting side alley.
The dirty, discolored buildings looked boarded up, and their few windows stood high above our heads.
Rachel said that schools and synagogues occupied most of the buildings.
We entered one where the front door stood ajar and climbed a flight of steep steps to the main floor.
An old man with a white beard and dressed in a long shabby coat, baggy trousers, and a black skullcap greeted us.
Rachel talked to him.
He nodded, clasping and unclasping his hands over his paunch, and flicked glances at me.
I thought he would ask us to leave because Rachel and I were bare-armed, but he looked down into his beard and preceded us down the corridor.
His toes pointed out toward the walls.
He stopped in front of a door, placed a finger on his lips, and, still peering down into his beard, pushed open the door to a classroom.
We stepped inside.
He left us.
Little boys crowded together on long wooden benches, and in the center of the room sat the teacher.
His black beard dripped down over the front of his coat.
One white hand poised a stick above his desk.
He turned his surly, half-closed eyes toward us, stared for a second, then shouted in Yiddish, One, two, three!
Rapping the stick against the desk.
The little boys shrilled out a Yiddish translation or interpretation of the Five Books of Moses, which they had previously chanted in Hebrew.
They chanted a fixed tune in time to the report of the stick.
Each boy opened his small mouth wide and rocked back and forth on the bench in the way his grandfather and great-grandfather had studied and prayed in the ghettos of Europe.
The boys were tiny.
They had large bright eyes, the small upturned noses of all babies everywhere, and hair cropped short except for the long ringlets of paot framing their little white faces.
They bent over yellowed prayerbooks and looked up only to watch the teacher.
Since they did not glance curiously at us once, I guessed that there was a penalty for distraction.
The guttural language from the ghetto stopped.
The teacher plunged the children into a new portion, this time in Hebrew, rapping the stick incessantly.
One boy who rocked back and forth over his worn book had bright red hair and freckles.
His tightly curled paot hung down to his narrow shoulders.
In the center of his brilliant curls sat a small black skullcap.
His head barely rose above the table.
I stared at him for a long time.
He did not return my interest.
My eyes traveled over the bare walls and up to the one partially open window high above the little figures and back to the boys.
Some of them ignored the texts and had apparently memorized the words long ago.
They singsonged the portion at the teacher, who accompanied them in an off-key baritone and spurred them on with the stick.
The tapping defined the rhythm and kept the boys awake.
I could not keep my eyes away from the boy with the red hair.
His body pitched back and forth on the bench.
His front teeth were missing.
I shuddered and backed out of the room.
Rachel followed, looked at me, and clucked with her tongue.
We walked down the cool hall silently.
From behind us came the rapping of the stick and the high-pitched voices of the boys who would grow to devote their lives to rigid study and prayer.
I said, How long do they keep that up?
All day, she said.
Except for Shabbat, when they are praying all day.
I rubbed my hands together.
They had turned numb and prickly in the classroom.
The old man in the baggy clothes waited at the foot of the steps.
He glanced down into his beard and muttered something in Yiddish.
Rachel said, He asks for money.
She passed by him.
I reached into the pocket of my skirt, fingered ten pruta, and dropped the coin.
Then I picked it up again and handed it to the old man.
He thanked me.
I didn't look at him.
I grinned at Rachel.
Does this bother you?
I said.
She smiled to herself.
Most of our Sabras think it's horrible.
When we were fighting, a few of our orthodox people were lying down in the roads so we could not pass.
They said that we must not fight but wait for the Messiah.
I was amazed.
You had to have convictions to lie down in the road in all those clothes and appear as though you might wish to turn yourself out of your own home.
You had to be stupid or crazy or immortal.
And I wasn't.
I was American.
You had to know, also, that you were going to fail.
All of it might have been heroic, but they had done it in the wrong place.
I resented them.
Rachel faced me.
Her bright eyes were twinkling.
She said, Sometimes I think they are keeping religion for us while we play around.
Your mother hated this way of life.
She wished to change much for the children here.
I said quietly, respectfully, What did she do here?
In this section?
Rachel clicked her tongue behind her teeth.
Here, nothing.
But when she saw the children you have just visited, she wanted to take them away and put them out in the country, in the kibbutzim.
She loved the children.
She was a strange woman, your mother.
When she loved, it was with a passion that drove her along and carried along with her those things she loved.
Nothing was too impossible for her to do when she wanted.
She stayed here to work for Aliah.
For many immigrants, for many children, the first thing they knew of Israel and freedom was your mother.
Sometimes it was dangerous for her.
Rachel grinned slyly.
But she loved danger.
She took it with her wherever she went;
she chose it.
And I think she sought out danger as much as she sought out helping other people.
She was most strange woman.
Ready to follow her impulse.
It was an impulse when she was here in Me'a She'arim--I was with her--that led her to stay in Israel.
Your mother wanted to bring children to Israel so that they could leave their ghettos.
Here they did not need to be in ghettos.
If she could not take the children out of this section, at least she could take other children out of their countries and put them on the farms.
She set out to make sure that no Jewish child anyplace in the world had to live in a place such as this.
I said quietly, gaining nerve, ready to ask any question at all, no matter how intimate, ready to be rebuffed, Then why did she leave Israel?
I'd like to know that very much.
Rachel clasped her hands together and slowed her pace.
The soles of her sandals reported sharply on the cobblestones.
She pursed her lips, then clamped them together so tightly that I thought she was angry with me.
But she sighed and her face relaxed.
Trouble came into her life.
She had good friends here, people who liked her.
Who loved her.
But she had to go out and hurt herself.
There was a man here in town.
He helped her meet people so she could go out and do the work she wanted.
She worked very hard.
There was a refugee who was able to come here because of her.
He came with his son.
At first I thought they were relatives of your mother, but it was not so.
This refugee was a middle-aged man, a big, handsome man with a strut to his walk as I have never before seen.
He had the black numerals on his arm, so he had been branded in a concentration camp.
Yet he walked like a young man.
Often he was terribly despondent and talked to no one.
Then he would walk off for a few days alone in the direction of Europe.
All his family was dead, except for his son.
Your mother would always retrieve him when he wandered off, and she would send him home to his son.
He loved the son and was always glad to be sent back to him.
Then his son did something--Rachel threw up her hands--I don't know what, but something, to an official here--it was during the Mandate--and the son was imprisoned.
A few hours after the son was arrested, your mother was informed.
She ran from a little group of us.
We were sitting together, talking.
She went to the father and found he had hanged himself.
Rachel paused.
It was silent in the stone alley.
Then she continued with energy, I myself did not see her until a week after she had run off to find the father.
No one saw her except the man Reuveni.
Yes, I said.
I know him.
Rachel gave me a direct, bright-eyed look.
She said, Reuveni wanted your mother to give up her deep interest in this refugee.
He said she would only hurt herself.
He complained to me once that I must talk to her.
When I did, she shrugged her shoulders and said that Reuveni wanted her to marry him.
I asked her if she would, and she said she would not.
He had known when he first helped her to meet the right people and work with them that she did not intend to marry him.
Anyway, I did not see her until two weeks after the refugee hanged himself.
She came to me one day.
She was pale and skinny;
she was terribly alone.
And she said that after this man had been dead for a week she had gone to Reuveni and accepted his proposal.
He shouted at her and told her he loved her and couldn't understand why she had upset herself.
But now he was happy she would let him straighten out her life and take care of her.
He would never let her harm herself again.
For one whole week he never let her stay alone.
She let him lead her around.
He took her to a doctor, for she was run down, nervous, did not care where she was.
Reuveni took her with him wherever he went.
He did not let her talk to people;
he did not let her choose her own food.
She was limp and beaten from her loss;
she did not care.
And I'll take you with me.
The two of them against the world.
That had been how she imagined it.
For when he began to talk and dream all at the same time, making his plans as he went, she had begun dreaming too.
But now the dream was over.
The big waking up had happened.
What did I imagine?
She thought.
Did I see him about to swing low in a chariot?
Or maybe poling up the south fork of the Forked Deer River braving the wastes dumped in it?
Maybe I saw him on a barge with a gang of Ethiopians poling it.
And I'll take you with me.
He had taken her all right.
Wednesday nights after youth fellowship.
And Gratt Shafer would be in Memphis today for the wedding rehearsal and then tomorrow he would marry just like everybody knew he would, just like everybody knew all along.
Like Mattie and the mayor up there gripping the microphone and Toonker Burkette back in his office yanking out teeth, like they all knew he would.
Just like the balloon would go up and you could sit all day and wish it would spring a leak or blow to hell up and burn and nothing like that would happen.
You could wish that.
Or you could wish your daddy would really do it--kill Gratt Shafer like he said when you all the time, all along, could feel the nerve draining out of him like air out of a punctured tire when you are on a muddy road alone and it is raining and at night.
And every sound that might be the rain also might be the man who thinks after he has raped you he has to beat your brains out with a tire tool so you won't tell, a combination like ham and eggs, rape her and kill her, and that is being an old maid too.
It is not having his baby nestled warm and fat against your breast and it is not having somebody that really gives a damn whether some tramp cracks your skull.
He can even be a mild-voiced little-town guy with big-town ideas and level gray eyes and a heart even Houdini couldn't figure out, how it is unlocked.
And he can be on the way to Memphis, your Gratt Shafer can, and you discover you can stay alive and hate him and love him and want him even if it means you want him--really want him--dead.
Because if you can't then nobody else can either, nobody else can have him.
For you don't share him, not even with God.
If it is love, you don't.
And I'll take you with me.
Even when he is on the way to Memphis you will still have the promise resting inside you like a gift, and it is he inside of you.
And in a way the promise works out true, for whether he wants you or not, you go with him in your heart.
You feel him every mile further away.
You feel where he is and what he sees, and at night you feel when he is asleep or with the other woman, the one that never could love him the way you do, the one who got him because she didn't particularly give a damn whether she got him or didn't.
You think: Did he feel that way about me?
It comes to you that probably he did feel that way to let you use him like you did when you couldn't have Gratt Shafer;
that he must have since he was there like the radio for you to turn on or snap off when you got tired of him, that other guy.
It dawns on you that instead of a lump to fill the seat across the bridge table from you, he was a man, and that because Gratt Shafer was making you miserable, you were passing it down to him, to Gratt Shafer's substitute, that other guy.
And you wonder if that is why the little man lost his job and his car and stayed drunk about a year before he straightened out and moved to St. Louis, where he got to be a big unhappy success.
You wonder if he looks at his wife now and thinks of you.
You wonder about the Christmas card with no name on it, and it comes to you that maybe it would have been better to have made somebody else happy if you couldn't be happy yourself, to give somebody else the one they wanted--to give them you.
Damn the world, she thought.
She looked out at the corn field, the great green deep acres of it rolled out like the sea in the field beyond the whitewashed fence bordering the grounds.
The mayor envisioned factories there.
Homes and factories and schools and a big wide federal highway, instead of peaceful corn to rest your eyes on while you tried to rest your heart, while you tried not to look at the balloon and the bandstand and the uniforms and the flash of the instruments.
The bands were impatient, but they were the only ones.
The others, the ones in the stands, were spellbound, for hearing the mayor was for them like listening to a symphony was for sophisticated folks in New York City.
It was like being in the concert hall in the afternoon and hearing the piano virtuoso rehearsing.
He was good and they knew that what he was doing for them he would do all over the United States some day.
So they stayed quiet and hung not on what he said but on how he said it, not listening exactly, but rather, feeling.
If a man was good, if he was going to be governor, you felt it and you wanted him to go on forever.
You were sorry when he finished talking because while he was up there you were someone else and the world was something else too.
It was a place full of courage and hope and you were part of it.
You laughed and then your chest swelled and you felt you could cry for a little bit, and then a feeling hit you like a chill in your stomach and the goose bumps rippled along your arm.
He hit the theme about dying to defend your country, and you were ready to do it right then, without a second thought.
While he talked you wouldn't trade being a West Tennessee farmer for being anything else in the whole damned world, no matter if it hadn't, in six weeks, rained enough to wet a rat's ass.
I should have stayed at the store, she thought.
Back at the Factory-to-You with the other old maids, back there she was the youngest clerk and she was thirty-four, which made her young enough to resent the usual ideal working conditions, like the unventilated toilet with the door you had to hold shut while you sat down.
There was no lock because Herman didn't allow a lock.
A lock on the toilet would encourage malingering and primping.
The toilet hadn't had a sincere scrubbing in years and there were things written on the walls of the little boxed-in place because you couldn't keep the public out--entirely.
She could not count the times Herman had rapped on the door, just a couple of bangs that shook the whole damned closet and might, someday, break away the pipe connections from the wall.
And the hours were six-thirty in the morning until eleven at night on Saturdays and during sales, and there were no chairs and you couldn't smoke and the cooling was overhead fans and there was no porter or janitor.
Among us, we three handled quite a few small commissions, from spot drawings for advertising agencies uptown to magazine work and quick lettering jobs.
Each of us had his own specialty besides.
George did wonderful complicated pen-and-ink drawings like something out of a medieval miniature: hundreds of delicate details crammed into an eight-by-ten sheet and looking as if they had been done under a jeweler's glass.
He also drew precise crisp spots, which he sold to various literary and artistic journals, The New Yorker, for instance, or Esquire.
I did book jackets and covers for paperback reprints: naked girls huddling in corners of dingy furnished rooms while at the doorway, daring the cops to take him, is the guy in shirt sleeves clutching a revolver.
The book could be The Brothers Karamazov, but it would still have the same jacket illustration.
I remember once I did a jacket for Magpie Press;
the book was a fine historical novel about Edward 3, and I did a week of research to get the details just right: the fifteenth-century armor, furnishings, clothes.
I even ferreted out the materials from which shields were made--linden wood covered with leather--so I'd get the light reflections accurate.
McKenzie, the art editor, took one look at my finished sketch and said, Nothing doing, Rufus.
In the first place, it's static;
in the second place, it doesn't look authentic;
and in the third place, it would cost a fortune to reproduce in the first place--you've got six colors there including gold.
I said, Mr. McKenzie, it is as authentic as careful research can make it.
He said, That may be, but it isn't authentic the way readers think.
They know from their researches into television and the movies that knights in the middle ages had beautiful flowing haircuts like Little Lord Fauntleroy, and only the villains had beards.
And girls couldn't have dressed like that--it isn't transparent enough.
In the end, I did the same old picture, the naked girl and the guy in the doorway, only I put a Lord Byron shirt on the guy, gave him a sword instead of a pistol, and painted in furniture from the stills of a costume movie.
McKenzie was as happy as a clam.
That's authenticity, he said.
As for Donald, he actually sold paintings.
We all painted in our spare time, and we had all started as easel painters with scholarships, but he was the only one of us who made any regular money at it.
Not much;
he sold perhaps three or four a year, and usually all to Joyce Monmouth or her friends.
He had style, a real inner vision of his very own.
It was strange stuff--it reminded me of the pictures of a child, but a child who has never played with other kids and has lived all its life with adults.
There was the freshness of color, the freedom of perception, the lack of self-consciousness, but with a twist that made the forms leap from the page and smack you in the eye.
We used to kid him by saying he only painted that way because he was so nearsighted.
It may have been true for all I know, because his glasses were like the bottoms of milk bottles, but it didn't prevent the paintings from being exciting.
He also had, at times, an uncanny absent-minded air like a sleepwalker;
he would look right through you while you were talking to him, and if you said, For Christ's sake, Donald, you've got Prussian blue all over your shirt, he would smile, and nod, and an hour later the paint would be all over his pants as well.
Mrs. Monmouth thought of him as her discovery, and she paid two to three hundred dollars for a painting.
It was all gravy, and Donald didn't need much to live on;
none of us did.
We shared the expenses of the studio, and we all lived within walking distance of it, in cheap lodgings of one kind or another.
Attending the life class was my idea--or rather, Askington's idea, but I was ripe for it, and the other two wouldn't have gone if I hadn't talked them into it.
I wanted to paint again.
I hadn't done a serious picture in almost a year.
It wasn't just the pressure of work, although that was the excuse I often used, even to myself.
It was the kind of work I was doing, the quality of the ambition it awoke in me, that kept me from painting.
I kept saying, If I could just build up a reputation for myself, make some real money, get to be well known as an illustrator--like Peter Askington, for instance--then I could take some time off and paint.
Askington was a kind of goal I set myself;
I had admired him long before I talked to him.
It looked to me as though he had everything an artist could want, joy in his work, standing in the profession, a large and steady income.
The night we first met, at one of Mrs. Monmouth's giant parties, he was wearing a brown cashmere jacket with silver buttons and a soft pink Viyella shirt;
instead of a necktie he wore a leather bolo drawn through a golden ring in which was set a lump of pale pure jade.
This set his tone: richness of texture and color, and another kind of richness as well, for his clothing and decorations would have paid the Brush-off's rent for a year.
He was fifteen years older than I--forty-four--but full of spring and sparkle.
He didn't look like what I thought of as an old man, and his lively and erudite speech made him seem even younger.
He was one of the most prominent magazine illustrators in America;
you saw one of his paintings on the cover of one or another of the slick national magazines every month.
Life had included him in its Modern American Artists series and had photographed him at his studio in the East Sixties;
the corner of it you could see in the photograph looked as though it ought to have Velasquez in it painting the royalty of Spain.
I had a long talk with him.
We went into Mrs. Monmouth's library, which had low bookshelves all along the walls, and above them a Modigliani portrait, a Jackson Pollock twelve feet long, and a gorgeous Miro with a yellow background, that looked like an inscription from a Martian tomb.
The fireplace had tiles made for Mrs. Monmouth by Picasso himself.
Like certain expensive restaurants, just sitting there gave you the illusion of being wealthy yourself.
In the course of our talk, Askington mentioned that he spent part of each week studying.
By yourself?
I asked.
No, I take classes with different people, he said.
I don't think I've reached the point, yet, where I can say I know everything I ought to know about the craft.
Besides, it's important to the way a painter thinks that he should move in a certain atmosphere, an atmosphere in which he may absorb the ideas of other masters, as Durer went to Italy to meet Bellini and Mantegna.
He made a circle with his thumb and fingers.
Painting isn't this big, you know.
It doesn't embrace only the artist, alone before his easel.
It is as large as all of art, interdependent, varied, multitudinous.
He threw his arms wide, his face shining.
The artist is like a fragment of a mosaic--no, he is more than that, a virtuoso performer in some vast philharmonic.
One of these days, I'm going to organize a gigantic exhibition that will span everything that's being painted these days, from extreme abstract expressionism to extreme photorealism, and then you'll be able to see at a glance how much artists have in common with each other.
The eye is all, inward or outward.
Ah, what a title for the exhibition: The Eye is All!
What do you study?
I asked.
I was fascinated;
just listening to him made me feel intelligent.
I'm studying anatomy with Burns, he replied.
Maybe you know him.
He teaches at the Manhattan School of Art.
I nodded.
I had studied with Burns ten years before, during the scholarship year the Manhattan gave me, along with the five-hundred-dollar prize for my paintings of bums on Hudson Street.
Burns and I had not loved each other.
I'm also studying enameling with Hajime Iijima, he went on, and twice a week I go to a life class taught by Pendleton.
Osric Pendleton?
I said.
My God, is he still alive?
He must be a million years old.
I went to a retrospective of his work when I was eighteen, and I thought he was a contemporary of Cezanne's.
Not quite.
Askington laughed.
He's about sixty, now.
Still painting, still a kind of modern impressionist, beautiful canvases of mountains and farms.
He even makes the city look like one of Thoreau's hangouts.
I've always admired him, and when I heard he was taking a few pupils, I went to him and joined his class.
Yes, it sounds great, I said, but suppose you don't think of yourself as an impressionist painter?
You're missing the point, he said.
He has the magical eye.
And he is a great man.
Contact with him is stimulating.
And that's the trouble with so many artists today.
They lack stimulation.
They sit alone in their rooms and try to paint, and only succeed in isolating themselves still farther from life.
That's one of the reasons art is becoming a useless occupation.
In the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, right up to the early nineteenth century, the painter was a giant in the world.
He was an artisan, a man who studied his trade and developed his craftsmanship the way a goldsmith or a wood carver did.
He filled a real need, showing society what it looked like, turning it inside out, portraying its wars and its leaders, its ugliness and its beauties, reflecting its profound religious impulses.
He was a propagandist--they weren't afraid of the word, then--satirist, nature lover, philosopher, scientist, what you will, a member of every party and of no party.
But look at us today!
We hold safe little jobs illustrating tooth-paste ads or the salacious incidents in trivial novels, and most of our easel painting is nothing but picking the fluff out of the navel so it can be contemplated in greater purity.
A bunch of amateur dervishes!
What we need is to get back to the group, to learning and apprenticeship, to the cafe and the school.
He could certainly talk.
The upshot of the evening was that I got the address of Pendleton's studio--or rather, of the studio in which he gave his classes, for he didn't work there himself--and joined the life class, which met every Tuesday and Thursday from ten to twelve in the morning.
It was an awkward hour, but I didn't have to punch any time clock, and it only meant that sometimes I had to stay a couple of hours later at the drawing board to finish up a job.
After a short time, both George and Donald joined the class with me so they wouldn't feel lonely, and we used to hang a sign on the door of the Brush-off reading out to work.
It was mostly for the benefit of the mailman, because hardly anybody else ever visited us.
In a way, Askington was right.
Stimulating was the word for it.
I don't know that it was always as rewarding as I had expected it to be.
Partly, it was because Pendleton himself wasn't what I anticipated.
I had come prepared to worship at the feet of this classic, and he turned out to be a rather bitter old man who smelled of dead cigars.
No, that isn't quite fair.
Actually, there was a lot of force in him, which is why I kept on in that class instead of quitting after a week.
Such a little thing to start with--the car registration.
Ida, where is the car license?
She asked.
I can't find it in the glove compartment.
Via must have it, I answered readily enough, recalling her last visit.
Via, she was frowning.
Why should Via have it?
Had she forgotten she had signed the car away, that whatever they mutually owned had been divided among the children?
I was silent.
I didn't want to stir things up.
I drive my own car by courtesy of Via?
I'm sure she'd turn it over to you, if you'd rather.
You know that.
She looked as if she were accusing me of some fraud.
She must have taken the registration when she went to Walter's.
I'll call her.
No, thank you.
I want nothing of Via's.
Why should this suddenly assail her?
Walter was giving me checks for my pay, the household bills.
Had she been in such a turmoil that this had slipped her mind?
What a fool I've been, she said quietly.
I knew all this, but I paid no attention.
I don't even own the house I'm standing in.
I was so sure it was all temporary that we would all embrace, and then the lawyer would tear up all those things
It narrows down down down and finally there is no way out.
If I am not to be Mrs. Salter I am nothing.
I suppose I should have paid attention to that half-murmured remark, but it seemed one of those extreme statements women under stress indulge in.
I love you, I hate you, I feel like killing you and myself, and in the same sequence I love you I think you're the most wonderful the most noble and so on and on, meanwhile eating a good breakfast and dinner and enjoying living.
So I went about my business.
I made a lemon sponge, a light dessert, roasted a chicken, parboiled some frozen vegetables, so there would be something nice in the icebox for the weekend.
Don't bother, Ida, she said.
I have these appointments in town for Saturday, and I'll probably spend Sunday with Dolly or the Thaxters.
At last, I thought, she's recovering her spirits.
With this movie-to-be in London, and new faces about her there, she would soon be a more tranquil, a wiser person, all the better for her stay out here.
I felt more cheerful, as if I had had a part in bringing her through to a greater tolerance of herself.
And I went back to my own cottage to live my own little patch of life.
It was foggy that evening, but the path to my house was so well grooved that I could feel my way, accustomed as I was to the dense mists that rise from the sun-warmed palisades of the river and sometimes last for days.
In the morning the fog was still thick so that to go to the village I crept along with my headlights full on.
I did notice a twinkle of light from the big house through the woods but as I had left a light on in my own house because of the fog I assumed Mrs. Salter had done the same before she left for town.
I did my shopping, had my dentist appointment, and from there I went to the women's lunch at our parish church where we discussed plans for the annual Christmas bazaar, so that dusk was beginning to gather when I drove home in the late afternoon.
But the next day--Sunday.
Why, when I drove down to church, didn't it speak to me, seeing the lights still on and the day crisp and clear?
Prisoners brought to the dock accused of murder or accident say they cannot remember, and reading the accounts of their testimony you cannot believe that the mind can remove, absent itself, unsee.
When I came back from church at noon Mrs. Thaxter was turning into the Salter driveway.
Even at a car's length I could sense that something was wrong, and so I followed her up to the turnaround in front of the house.
Dolly Engisch was waiting there on the steps and she came running toward us.
She's nowhere, nowhere!
She screamed, and both women ran up to the house, and I followed.
The search began, in all the rooms, running upstairs, down, opening closets, talking, exclaiming in rushes and gasps.
Everything was as I had left it the night before last--her portfolio and bag for town, her lingerie and dress and shoes laid out only her mink coat was missing.
And she.
Then the telephoning began.
I, who until that day before had been Mrs. Salter's friend, her equal, was the servant now.
It was Dolly and Mrs. Thaxter who were calling Via, everybody.
And when they spoke they spoke to each other and not to me.
And after I brought them sandwiches and coffee I had to go back to my place in the kitchen and wait.
Sitting in the kitchen I recalled every word Mrs. Salter said that could have been a sign to me.
If I am not to be Mrs. Salter then I am nothing.
Why didn't that alarm me then?
And when she returned from taking her guests back to New York she had said, All they talked about was Harvie Harvie this, Harvie that When they know the truth will they drop away from me, will I become a nothing?
And then I remembered a few years before after their return from a short trip to Rome I had heard her boast, over and over again, On the boat people liked me for myself.
I had made a habit of calling her at night from my cottage, just to check.
The last night I had called, but the line was always busy and it reassured me.
I assumed it was one of those hour-long conversations with Dolly or Constance, she comfortable in bed.
But it seemed not from what they were saying.
Then was it a final desperate plea from her, to whom?
Hanging on and on past any man's patience some final stab of conclusion?
She was found the day after at the bottom of the cliff.
I tried to believe that what must have happened was that, restless, disturbed by this telephone call or whatever, she walked out in the night, as she had a habit of doing.
Sometimes she took the path that winds up around my cottage to the walk at the edge of the cliff.
It's so romantic up there, she used to say, with the broad river gleaming in its moontrack like an enormous dark mirror and all the sounds of the night, so poetic.
With all that warm rain and the fog it might have been as simple as a loosened rock, a misstep.
But I didn't really think it was as simple as that, nor did anyone else.
When a fisherman brought her up in his arms, still, small, as if she were a child asleep, I began to shudder with a terrible excitement, almost triumphant, that I still cannot account for.
Was it a hysterical release from the long strain of vigilance of those weeks?
That at last the vigilance, the will gives way?
Or what was it that, before Via, Sonny, Walter and all, I began almost to dance with shuddering and cry out, I knew she'd do it!
I knew!
Everyone stared at me and drew back.
Their eyes turned cold and accusing, even Via's.
And they have never changed.
At the same time that I thought I understood her at long last and pitied her, underneath this knowing had there burned unquenched by my pity a fire of hate, an enduring envy that burst out in that ghastly outcry?
Was that what had given way in me?
Even now I am appalled at how little anyone knows of what they really are.
It is absurd of course to say that that one exclamation estranged me from the family I considered my very own, but there it hangs, a cooling void that broke our close connection with each other.
At the time I was filled with self-pity at this separation, but in the years since I have come to understand that the sight of me was painful to them after that outcry.
In my person they would always remember that last long time of me alone with her, so if they told themselves that I could have prevented it, I can understand that by now and love them still, because everyone must justify, have a scapegoat for what is not to be borne.
It is not their avoidance that rankles;
it is when I meet someone who was a close friend of the family, and therefore of mine, and they nod to me so coolly and walk away, that it hurts.
I could tell them, but no one ever asked, why I had cried out so triumphantly at the sight of her body.
No, I forget Mrs. Mathias, who had been away visiting a married daughter when it happened.
She haunted me;
she persisted in explaining how and why she had advised Mrs. Salter to return to the country.
We all feel guilty, I turned away from her coldly.
It was nobody's fault.
She overplayed her hand.
What do you mean?
She frowned.
Why put such a high value on being top dog?
I added.
It was coarse, almost insulting, this harsh appraisal, and she has never come to see me since.
But suppose she had not taken Mrs. Mathias' advice and lived on like thousands of women in towns, dispossessed of love, hanging on to makeshifts, and altogether and finally arid.
If she chose, and in that final decision discarded, what, above all, all of us value, life itself, must she not have risen to her fullest height, and transcending her murky self, felt at last the passion of a great moral decision?
If they say I could have stopped her it is because they are ignorant of her last weeks of self-examination, her search into herself and its conclusions.
Yes, I had cried out that I knew she'd do it, but without my fully realizing it at the time, it was a cry of triumph for her, praise at her deliverance from pettiness and greed--and guilt.
She was finally at rest in truth, of her own proud free choice.
At rest with my darling Ellen, the first Mrs. Salter.
Mr. Salter came home.
I waited.
Then Via called to say they had decided to cremate her--as they had Ellen, the thought leaped to my mind--and did I want to meet her at the funeral home the next morning.
The coffin stood on trestles in a corner of the long low dimly lit funeral parlor, on its dark shining surface the sheaf of white roses I had ordered.
I knelt, just for decency I thought at the time, but found myself whispering, Our Father which Art in Heaven And it was only after that that something unlocked in me and I felt a grief.
Via was in the parking lot when I went outside.
Together we waited in her car until the hearse moved out and we followed it down into the heavy traffic of New Jersey.
By the time we arrived and entered the building sacred music was already swelling out into the chapel-like auditorium with its discreet symbols of religious faiths.
Again I felt impelled to kneel, and reached back and pulled Via down.
Something would come into her heart if nothing else the sounds of Bach would give her some healing.
I had a rather small place of my own.
A nice bachelor apartment in a place called the Lancaster Arms.
Uhhu, she said, hardly listening as she studied her left eyelid.
And then I had another place farther downtown I used as a studio.
Uhhu.
I'm not a man who has many close intimate friends, Carla, he said, wanting her to know all about him.
Oh, I'd drink with newspaper people.
I think I was what you might call a convivial man, and yet it was when I was alone in my studio, doing my work, that I really felt alive.
But I think a man needs at least one intimate friend to communicate with.
Pausing, he waited for her to turn, to ask a question.
She showed no interest at all in the life he had led back home, and it hurt him a little.
Well, what about you, Carla?
Me?
She asked, turning slowly.
What about me?
Did you make friends easily?
Umm, uhhu.
Somehow I imagine that as you grew up you were alone a lot.
How about it?
I guess so, she said taking a Kleenex from her purse.
When she had wiped some of the lipstick from her mouth, she stared solemnly at her image in the mirror.
Are your people still alive?
He asked, trying to touch a part of her life Alberto hadn't discussed;
so he could have something of her for himself.
You talk so well, Carla, he went on.
You seem to have read so much, you have a natural gift for words, he added, trying to flatter her vanity.
You must have been good at history at school.
Where did you go to school?
What is this?
She asked, turning suddenly.
Don't you know all about me by this time?
My name's Carla Caneli.
This is my town.
I sleep with you.
You know something more about me every day, don't you?
Would you be happier if I made up some stories about my life, told you some lies?
Why are you trying to worry me?
I'm not trying to worry you.
Well, all right then.
The cleansing tissues she had been using had been falling on the floor, and he got up and picked up one, then another, hoping she would notice what he was doing.
At home he had been a clean orderly man, and now he had to hide his annoyance.
Was she just naturally sloppy about everything but her physical appearance?
He wondered.
Would he have to clean up after her every day, clean the kitchen, the bathroom, and get down on his knees and scrub the kitchen floor, then hang up her dresses, pick up her stockings, make the bed while she lay around?
He straightened up, ready to vent his exasperation, then grew afraid.
If he dwelt on the indignities he suffered he would lose all respect for her, and without the respect he might lose his view of her, too.
What's the matter?
She asked suddenly.
Nothing.
Nothing at all, he said quietly.
Let's go out.
Are those the only shoes you have, Sam?
What's the matter with them?
The heavy thick soles.
Look at them.
They're an expensive English shoe for walking around a lot.
I like them.
Sam, no one around here wears such heavy soles.
Can't you get another pair?
Maybe I could, he said, surprised that she could turn from herself and notice anything about him.
I'll get an elegant pair of thin-soled Italian shoes tomorrow, Carla.
And I don't know why you want to go on wearing that outfit, she said, making a face.
What's the matter with it?
He had put on the gray jacket and the dark-gray slacks and the fawn-colored shirt he had worn that first night in Rome when he had encountered her on the street.
Oh, Sam.
You look like a tweedy Englishman.
Can't you wear something else and look a little more as though you belonged?
I don't mind at all, he said, delighted with her attention.
Changing his clothes, he put on his dark-blue flannel suit, and laid away the gray jacket with the feeling that he might be putting it aside for good.
But it was a hopeful sign, he told himself.
She no longer wanted anything about him to remind her of the circumstances of their meeting that first night in Parioli.
That day they loafed around, just getting the feel of the city.
They looked at the ruins of the old Roman wall on the lower Via Veneto, then they went to the Farnese Gardens.
She had some amusing scandal about the Farneses in the old days.
Then they took a taxi to Trastevere.
There's a church you should see, she said.
And when they stood by the fountain in the piazza looking at Santa Maria he had to keep a straight face, not letting on he had been there with Alberto.
He let her tell him all about the church.
Then they had dinner.
All evening she was eloquent and pleased with herself.
When they got home at midnight she was tired out.
And in the morning when he woke up at ten the church bells were ringing.
He had never heard so many bells, and as he lay there listening, he thought of her scolding him for his remarks when he had looked up at the obelisk and the church at the top of the Spanish Steps.
It was a good thing that she clung to her religion, he thought.
She might like to take him to St. Peter's.
Carla, wake up, he said shaking her.
It's ten o'clock.
Aren't you going out to mass?
You could take me to St. Peter's.
Uhhu, she muttered.
Come on, you'll be late.
I think I'll sleep in this morning, she said drowsily, and as she snuggled against him, he wondered if she ever went to church.
Why did he want her to go to church?
He wondered Probably because it was a place where she might get a feeling of certainty and security.
It would be good for her.
It was too bad he had no feeling himself for church.
Not his poor mother's fault.
She would have been better off if she had stuck to her Bible.
As for himself, he just didn't have the temperament for it.
From the time he had been at college he had achieved a certain tranquility and composure by accepting the fact that there were certain things he could never know.
Then he thought of those Old Testament figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Just figures out of a tribal folklore.
Could he honestly believe it would be good for Carla to have those old prophets gripping her imagination now?
Being a woman though, she would take only what she needed from church.
It was too bad he wasn't a Catholic himself.
Or a Protestant, or one of those amusing dogmatic atheists, or a strict orthodox Communist.
What was the matter with him that they all wearied him?
It was the times, he was sure.
All the ideologies changing from day to day, right under his eyes, so how could a man look to any one of them for an enlargement of his freedom?
It was all too wearying.
Look somewhere else.
But where?
Just the same, he thought, pondering over it, it would be a good thing for a girl like Carla if she got up and went to church.
A half hour later he got her up to go out for breakfast so the Ferraros, hearing them hurrying down the stairs, would think they were going to a late mass.
It seemed to him that if the Ferraros felt sure of them, could place them, it would help him to feel more sure of himself with Carla.
Since we're having coffee with them this afternoon, he said, I think I'll ask the daughter if we can pay her to come in every day to clean for us.
And he waited for her to say, Oh, no, I can do it, Sam.
There's so little to do.
Why not?
She said.
I'm not good at that kind of thing.
This afternoon let's take an air with them.
Let's be fine superior people of great dignity, he said as if he were joking.
If you find it necessary, Sam, go ahead, she said, turning on the stair.
I am what I am.
I can't help it.
Her words remained with him, worrying him for hours.
He didn't know how she would behave with other people.
When they walked into the Ferraro apartment, the old lady, bowing and smiling, said softly.
Ciao, and put out her hand.
Her little brown face wrinkled up, her brown eyes gleamed, and with her little gestures she said all the courteous things.
Agnese, smiling too, said, 'ello, and then more slowly, I am happy.
And they sat down and began their little coffee party.
The Ferraros offered them biscuits with the coffee.
Acting only as interpreter Carla, her hands folded on her lap, was utterly impersonal.
She would turn to them, then turn to him, then turn again.
Watching her, he felt like a spectator at a tennis game, with the ball being bounced back and forth.
Signora Ferraro, bobbing her head encouragingly, asked Sam about Canada, having a special interest.
Carla translated.
The old woman had a nephew from North Italy, a poor boy from a lumber mill who had got tired of the seasonal unemployment, and who had migrated to Canada to work on the railway.
For a year the boy had lived in the bush in a boxcar.
Did many of Sam's countrymen live in boxcars in the bush?
Had Sam ever lived in a boxcar?
She wanted to know.
Regretfully Sam explained that he had no experience with boxcars.
Just the same, the old woman said, she would write to her nephew in his boxcar and tell him she had met a nice man from his adopted country.
And Sam thanked her, and hoped he might meet her nephew back home, and asked her if she had any further news of the Pope.
A very great Pope, this one, the old woman explained, her black eyes sparkling.
An intellectual.
But very mystical too.
It was said that he had had a vision.
Just as thousands that day in Portugal had seen the sun dancing in the sky, he had seen the same thing later in his own garden, and she turned to Agnese for confirmation.
Agnese had been sitting quietly, listening with the serenity of the unaware.
Now a little flush came on her pale homely face and enchantment in her eyes.
The Holy Father would die soon, she said to Carla, so she could translate for Sam, although he had a brilliant doctor, a man who did not need the assistance of those doctors offered by the great rulers of the world.
Yes, the Pope could die and quickly be made a saint.
No, he was indeed a saint now.
Nodding approvingly and swelling with importance, the old lady whispered confidentially.
There was a certain discontent among the cardinals.
The Pope, in the splendor of his great intellect, had neglected them a little.
There would be changes made, and Signor Raymond should understand that when the Pope died it was like the end of a regime in Rome.
Jobs would be lost and new faces would become prominent.
Did Signor Raymond understand?
Indeed he did, Sam said solemnly, trying to get Carla's eye.
Surely she could see that these women were her Italians, too, he thought.
Devout, orthodox and plain like a family she might meet in Brooklyn or Malta or Ireland.
But Carla's eyes were on Agnese whose glowing face and softening eyes gave her a look of warmth and happiness.
And Carla, watching in wonder, turned to Sam.
It means so much to her.
It's like a flame, I guess, she said in a dreamy tone.
But one night Dookiyoon moved in the direction of the women's lodge, where Shades of Night had gone to purify herself.
With the blue flesh of night touching him he stood under a gentle hill caressing the flageolet with his lips, making it whisper.
In her dark, scornful fashion she proceeded to her destination, afraid of nothing, not even the evil spirits which kept her company in her time of bleeding.
Seeing her come, he caught his breath, feeling his heart bounce in him, and turned away, afraid now.
Even he, wanting her, afraid of her and not knowing how to press his suit, feared the evil presences in her metabolism more.
His breath caught, and, trembling, he closed his eyes and stumbled off.
Going, he saw as often before some queer, hideous yellow face over his head, shining and weird like the old images which had invested him at other times like those that appear sometimes near the eyeballs when they are perhaps pressed by the thumbs.
He cried out to her, his back turned.
Then he fled, not waiting to see if she minded him or took notice of his cry.
But she heard him go.
Yet she did not hesitate and only turned slightly, her neck tall as she looked in his direction, and continued on her way toward the end of the camp.
Elsewhere others heard and stopped and waited, the women peering from their lodges then gathering in small, curious clusters.
Early Spring came from her bed, from beside her half-drunk husband, Walitzee, and stood at the entrance way to her lodge hearing the mild commotion, the sound of hushed voices.
Standing there she saw Shades of Night come through the trees and stop beside the lodge, silent, almost imperious, her body taut, simply standing without speaking or moving while the wife of Walitzee waited, perhaps denying the dread that moved in her.
When at last she could suffer the insult no longer, nor face the girl's scorn, she said in a voice overloud:
I shall call your father!
Go back where you can bring no harm, or I will go and get the old man from his bed so he can see your shame!
But the girl said only, Tell him I am here, that I have come.
And it was not Pile of Clouds she meant.
But now with real anger at last, something proud and indignant, Early Spring stood like a she wolf before her den and cried, I will not shriek at you!
I will tell you to go, not begging.
Telling you!
And unsheathing the knife she used for curing hides she stepped away from the lodge, holding the knife at her side.
You bring only wickedness, she said and it was not to a child any longer but to another woman who had come to skirt her lodge with the cunning hunger of a wild animal.
Speaking in a low voice of loathing she went up to the girl, who stood with the same upright, scornful bearing and did not even look at the knife.
Go take helsq'iyokom, your evil spirit, to the young boys, the woman said.
They do not have to face battle.
I will not let your evil in.
I will simply kill you first.
Now go!
The other women had come close now, their voices murmuring together until they stood buzzing in an angry knot, their threats mingling, rising, nagging at each other, each trying to make her indignation and anger felt.
They picked up sticks and hurled them at the girl.
The sticks fell like a shower around her and she felt them sting her flesh and send tiny points of pain along her thighs.
They were all shouting at her as if she were the embodiment of the evil she brought.
But she did not move, taking the words and the sticks in that old defiance of her extreme youth until suddenly Pile of Clouds came howling among them, swinging a great bullhide whip.
Go back to your lodges!
He shouted.
A pack of dogs makes less noise!
He made the long whip sing and snap around their heads so that they ran screaming, some tripping over themselves in their flight.
And Early Spring seized the whip and said:
If you must flog someone, let it be her, your daughter.
Drive the demons out of her and teach her to stay away from my husband!
But the old man turned on her, jerking the whip from her hand.
Get into your hovel!
He spat.
Go back to that double-married man of yours who so parades his fine body among the young women.
Keep him back, if you must tell me what to do.
I will be the one to confront my daughter, not the wife of him who leads her to sin!
She retreated before the naked shame in the old man and the fury beyond it and sank into the darkness of her lodge where Walitzee stirred, mumbling, sitting up in a half stupor to say:
What worrisome thing happens?
I thought I dreamed of wolves fighting.
But she went to him and pressed herself against his nakedness, smelling the stale odor of the whisky he had stolen from TuHulHulZote.
She said, There is nothing that concerns you here.
Lie back and go to sleep.
But do not dream.
Do not let the wicked spirits enter your brain.
He sank back, sighing, and was soon asleep again.
Outside, the old man, beyond all the curses of the spirits his daughter bore, went to her and twisted the gnarled talons of his fingers in her hair and turned her and pushed her rudely ahead of him into the trees where the moon sent out a thousand arms.
She said to him, her father, How was I begotten, in pain or joy?
Is it for me to be forbidden the flesh you made grow on me?
They all know your foolish name!
She stared at the pale tracings on the tree, hearing her breath refracted from it, her face close and touching at time the rough edges of the bark.
She felt the lash bite and heard her father say in crazed monosyllables words which had no meaning, like, unnnt!
Sssshoo!
The sounds of an animal in rage and despair.
Suddenly the lash stopped fighting the air and she heard Pile of Clouds say in his high, quavering voice:
Did you follow me to see my shame?
Move from the line or I will settle the whip on you.
Move!
Do you hear the anger of the whip's whine?
Turning, the girl saw Dookiyoon standing between, his narrow shoulders unbent, his arms hanging long and resigned.
He said, Let me take her blows, for there are demons in me too.
For a while the young men waited outside the lodge of TuHulHulZote, glorying in his harsh language as he talked with himself.
He shouted like a hoarse old mastiff, his hair stiff and bristling.
He ranted and prophesied the doom of his enemies, walking in circles in and out of his living place, drinking stolen whisky in great, gasping draughts until finally, incoherent and sick, he fell into his own oblivion.
He amused the young men who had been silent long enough.
But they could taste the appeasement of violence and retribution through his antics.
Now they moved, rubbing their flesh alive again, disdaining the gloom they saw in the faces around them.
They came out and held their games and races.
It was they who held the future in their hands.
They went into the sun together and paraded grandly in their war clothes, painting their faces with the sacred attis dug far off in the cave of skeletons.
They danced the paxam wildly at night, the war dance, and dipped their arrowheads in the venom of rattlesnakes and rode their horses in swift maneuvers, firing their few guns in unison at some indeterminate signal.
Walitzee was among them, and Sarpsis, and they wore red blankets which flew like broad wings in the air of their passing.
And a very young one, Swan Necklace, tried to emulate them and followed timidly.
Yellow Wolf was there, nephew of the young chief by an older brother long dead, in whom also the disordered chemistries of youth worked.
He would spring bolt upright suddenly after sitting quietly with inaction, because something had boiled over in his fermenting juices.
All the young men, Alokut among them, challenged them in matched racing.
They raced and maneuvered for war, swinging their horses in single file and then abreast like cavalry.
At times they would ride frenziedly through the camp, letting the women see their courage, how handsome they were in their regalia.
Then again they would stand in circles making other preparations.
They combed their hair and streaked it at the part and greased the bangs so that the hair above their foreheads stood rigid like the tails of sage hens making love.
Walitzee whitened his leggings with clay, knowing the girl watched from her place in the trees.
He saw himself in a superior reflection, and he was as a speeding arrow from the taut bow, hurtling with a mad grace, his maleness shining and scented with meadow rue.
He was always aware of the women's eyes which followed him, admiring him.
And the suspicious, envenomed eyes of Pile of Clouds.
And those of Early Spring, haunted and now full of hurt and envy.
He felt so much like laughing;
even like shouting and crying out from the hilltops from which he could descend as an eagle in a mad caper from the cliffs.
He and Sarpsis planned a great parade with the young men.
They would give one final testimony of their challenge to let the people see their arrogance.
They would ride with streaming amulets, their colors ripening in the sun, shouting the last bellicosity of a nation in the throes of death.
And so the sun came up again and for a moment its color was the young men's blood, shifting then into the full heat and outcry which ran with their hearts.
They mounted their horses and rode off into the hills.
The,
young chief stared at the wall of his lodge, listening.
The sound rose on the other side of the hills, vanished and rose again and he could imagine the mad, disheveled hoofs of the Appaloosas, horses the white men once had called the Dogs of Hell.
He saw them in fleet images as they came rolling and now burst across the ridge.
Standing then with the others, peering into the sun, he saw the bright, multicolored legion, their hair flying like dark banners, only the thunder, the roll of drums, the mad cacophony of the hoofs accompanying them.
They leaned into the wind and seemed like one thousand-legged monster hurtling and plunging until suddenly they rose straight in their saddles and in one terrifying voice shouted, ejaculated their grotesque cry of war.
She was moving through a screen of hemlocks, in among the white birch and maples.
The sounds from the quarry began to pulse in her ears.
She stood, once more listening.
She had never been here at this hour.
She felt as if some dark, totally unfamiliar shape would clutch at her arm;
but she found the path she always used, the stubs of branches she had broken, those she had pushed aside;
and she walked easily now, and more slowly, until she could see the dark glisten of water beneath her.
If I ever committed suicide, she thought, I would dive straight down from here--and no one would find me for days.
She smiled, and expertly let herself downward, holding this known root or that, her sneakers sliding in the leaves.
She jumped out onto the flat expanse of rock and, seating herself, shook her short-cut brown hair and tilted her chin far upward.
The reedy music of the frogs had faded, but presently it began again, growing in volume until it was vibrant.
Julia felt at peace and drew her legs up and clasped her hands tightly around the bent knees.
She had accomplished a miracle.
This was her place.
The hour couldn't change it.
Only--only--her thoughts were a little strange.
They were becoming confused.
Perhaps it was because it was so late, and because she had no business to be here now.
She was thinking of Paul a few weeks ago, in the Easter holidays, with her at one of those awful Friday Evening Dancing Class parties her mother had made her attend.
Hello, Julie, how are you?
And then off he went so casually, to someone else with breasts better developed, more obvious in a lower-cut dress, someone without a mouthful of wire bands and an inability to find words that would hold him.
I wish he was with me now, she thought, and that we were both the ages we are and doing what was once only pretense and acute embarrassment.
Oh God!
I wish I were older or younger, Julia Bentley thought.
I wish so much someone loved me.
George Rawlings remembered seeing the door open sometime during the night--Millie, in a white robe, standing like a ghost at the threshold.
She had vanished;
he must have slept again.
He was staring at the blue china lamp left on beside him.
It seemed too much trouble even to reach for the switch;
but of course the impossible effort of leaving would have to be made on this Monday morning.
This room was like a prison.
He would not be indebted to Sam!
Below him, as if at the end of some remote tunnel, he heard the humming of a vacuum cleaner.
His fingers fumbled across the bandages.
They had left both of his eyes uncovered.
Well, he told himself, let's put the show on the road.
He was walking across to the bathroom.
He drank a glass of water and gripped the sink with both hands.
A fearful pain had come from his head, as if the water were coursing up through the blood vessels and expanding them.
He recognized his jacket and trousers.
The fabric was dark;
the stains weren't too apparent;
and there were his shoes, thank God, but his shirt was one terrible mess.
He shivered, and then tore away the blood-soaked parts and wound the rest around his neck like a scarf.
Sam would be amazed to find him gone.
Millie would have to understand.
She must have put his clothes in the closet.
He found a lump rising in his throat because of that one simple act of tidiness.
He was on the verge of tears.
Alex Poldowski--in a fashion he owed a debt to that effete gentleman.
At least Alex had told him he wasn't dying.
Perhaps George Rawlings would be better off dead.
What time was it?
He peered at his wristwatch.
Strange, it was still running.
A quarter to seven.
Too early for a vacuum cleaner, but probably Sam wanted the whole house in order before he came downstairs.
He was kneeling to tie his shoelaces.
His fingers felt absurdly thick and clumsy.
He rose slowly and looked into the mirror on the inside of the closet door.
He barely knew himself.
This was some freak, two strands of adhesive tape across his nose, like ugly roots from the mass of gauze, suddenly moist over his cheekbones.
The surface, however, was perfectly white.
He was drinking another glass of water.
It was after seven o'clock.
He was supposed to be in court this afternoon, at City Hall.
Who would take over?
He'd have to think, but the main thing, the imperative necessity, was to leave before Sam Bentley was up and about, and before Millie detained him with sympathy.
He entered the hallway.
He was actually walking down the stairs.
A plane up in the sky, above the clouds, and this freakish wreck of a man desperately trying to get away.
Father, is that you?
The voice issued from the cavern of the hall below.
George did not reply.
Is that you, Father?
Who's there?
For a moment he felt like a thief discovered.
Then Julia appeared under the arch leading to the dining room.
She stood gazing at him.
Uncle George!
He was trying to smile at her.
Gosh!
You shouldn't be up, should you?
I--I was just leaving here, Julie.
I'm all set.
Just about to call a taxi.
She was wearing some sort of gray blazer.
She seemed overly tall, her brow knitted in concern.
Well, at least you won't have to do that, she was saying.
I'm about to leave myself.
I'll drop you off.
You're leaving?
I'm going back to school, she answered.
Pietro's driving me.
I'm just finishing breakfast.
But have you told Mother you were going?
She asked him.
No.
I just don't want anyone disturbed, Julie.
That's my wish.
It's quite a big one, he added.
Her face seemed to float in an implausibly bright shaft of sunlight.
Well, won't you come in then, have a cup of coffee--or something?
Or maybe a drink?
She asked, in a way that seemed oddly sophisticated, considerate, and yet perhaps partly scornful.
He tried to see her face more clearly.
No--nothing at all, he said after a moment's hesitation.
I'll just wait for you here.
He leaned his head against the wood paneling behind him, but the vivid red images of pain inserted themselves against his eyelids.
He raised them.
Julia moved past.
I have to say good-bye upstairs.
I won't be long.
As a great favor, Julie, he said, please don't mention you've seen me.
Not to anyone?
No--please.
I'll call your mother as soon as I get home.
It'll be so much easier.
All right She was staring at him.
I'm fine, Julie.
Please, you just go ahead.
She had disappeared.
He could feel a pulse pounding against the bandages.
He imagined Sam's voice: George, what the hell goes on?
I wouldn't have the strength to answer, he thought.
Maybe I couldn't have called a taxi.
He could hear the footsteps overhead.
He saw the suitcase, which Julia was holding.
He stood up.
I'll take that, Julie--for you.
Oh no, she said.
I can manage.
She went ahead of him.
Outside the Lincoln was parked.
He could hardly believe he was getting in.
Pietro was gazing at him in an insolent, disdainful fashion;
but that didn't matter.
We'll drop Mr. Rawlings off in Ardmore, Julia said, and for the merest second George was reminded of her father's tone with servants.
To the manner born--odd to have such a thought at a time like this;
yet her inflection seemed forced or rehearsed.
He could not stop to analyze.
He had never felt particularly close to her.
Carrie seemed more affectionate, but obviously Julia had respected his request.
He took her hand.
I wish I didn't have to go back to school, she said, and then, I wish you lived in New York.
That's in the opposite direction.
I wish I did, he responded.
I wish I wasn't wearing this ridiculous costume, and that we could go to a theater together, or a nice restaurant, forget we knew He stopped speaking.
Forget we ever knew what?
Oh, just sort of everything in general.
She said nothing until Pietro had slackened their pace.
I know you feel badly, but that sounds like such a queer thing for you to say.
Does it?
He asked.
Yes, perhaps.
I'm supposed to joke about things, aren't I?
But sometimes life can be rather a disappointing business.
His voice seemed thick and purposeless.
He relinquished her hand.
He could see the stone building where he lived.
Just a few more steps.
Abruptly he reached into his pocket.
Yes, there was the key.
Are you positive you'll be all right by yourself?
She asked him.
For a moment he smiled.
Yes, Julie dear.
You've done me the greatest possible service.
By myself I'll be fine.
Take care of yourself then.
I will.
You, also.
Don't work too hard.
It was an automatic phrase;
as he crossed through the courtyard he regretted it.
He should have discovered a more tender farewell.
Someone shouted at him, Well!
Will you look at George Rawlings!
What happened to you?
I bumped into a door handle, George said.
Someone laughed.
George walked steadily ahead into his entry.
His bandages seemed on fire.
He had shut his door with the brass number screwed to it.
In the kitchenette the raw whiskey made him gasp.
Just one or two swallows, he told himself, enough to lessen some of the pain.
He was telephoning.
No, Millie, I'm home.
No, really, right as rain.
Tell Sam not to worry about the car.
I'll get it hauled away.
No, please--no visit today--I'll be asleep.
For God's sake, don't worry.
That upsets me more than anything.
Yes, sure, I'll see the doctor--this evening, if you insist.
There was one more call to make.
Joan, did I wake you?
He asked.
Yes, I thought you'd probably be up.
Look, sweetheart, some fool was.
Happened to be driving somewhat intoxicated last night.
Unfortunately it turned out to be me, but I wouldn't quite put it that way to the boss.
Oh hell no, I'm not in a hospital.
I won't be in town for a couple of days, though, and there's that case I was supposed to handle this afternoon.
Too bad a jury isn't involved.
I might struggle in for a jury.
I'd win hands down.
But I thought maybe Tony Elliott could pinch-hit for me.
He'll understand--you might give him sort of a tactful nudge.
He's got all the facts.
I wouldn't want to ask for a postponement--it's really just a routine thing.
What?
No, darling I'd rather you didn't come out.
A smile pulled at the lower strip of adhesive tape.
Don't even send flowers.
I'll see you Wednesday.
I'll bribe you with a nice--He was about to say double martini but thought better of it.
I'll take you out to dinner.
Okay?
He had put down the receiver.
A strange relationship between Joan Fulbright and himself.
Who knew about it?
She lived alone in the older part of the city, in one of those renovated houses whose brick facade some early settler had constructed.
She had two tiny rooms on the second floor.
She was a clever girl, a most efficient secretary.
She let him come and go as he pleased, or as it pleased her.
In the office you might have thought them only casual friends;
yet if he said: Make an excuse yourself, come out here today, she would have been on the next train--and, similarly, if she had been in need, he would have gone to her.
They make us conformists look good.
That's a peculiar way to think.
It wasn't just the obnoxious birds that had ruffled her own feathers, of course;
she knew that.
It was Jim's little sister Myra, the unreliable, irresponsible, forever flyaway, Myra.
She's a year older than I am, Lucy told herself.
Come, come, Jim said, jollying Lucy a little.
I love you.
Susan ready?
Lucy listened.
Obviously, Susan was not.
Upstairs, busy feet, showering like raindrops, pattered around her room.
Susan would be visiting her grandmother for only a few days, but even at seven she was a prudent soul;
she always packed for a lifetime, just in case.
Not yet.
Every doll in the house must be going with her.
She'd better step on it.
It's a long way to Websterville.
Jim's fine young face was an expressive one, too;
as he looked at her, it registered anxiety.
You know, he said.
Myra wanted me to thank you for taking Cathy.
It'll be only a couple of weeks before she finds a home for them in Paris--but even so, she wants you to know that she's awfully grateful.
Lucy did not believe him;
Myra appreciated nothing.
Jim had put the thanks in his sister's mouth.
Darling--she said, and the single word mingled love and exasperation in an equal blend.
She should have told me herself.
And will it be only a couple of weeks?
Remember what happened the last time?
Leaving Cathy with them, Myra had gone out to the Coast for a supposedly brief visit;
but she had stayed all winter, and Cathy had stayed all winter too--with them.
Lucy suspected that Myra would never have come home if Gregg, Myra's husband, hadn't gone out to fetch her.
That was an awfully long two weeks.
For an otherwise silent moment, Jim's keys jingled nervously in his pocket.
But she promised--This will be different, he said at last.
You've got to admit she was smart to scare up this fine government job over there--she'll get a home for herself and Cathy in no time.
You'll see, Myra's settling down.
On the defensive, he added, I wish you'd think what it must be like for her to be without Greg, to be a new widow, a young widow.
It depends on the widow.
Lucy had an idea that Myra loved it.
And not for one moment did she believe that Myra had settled down.
It seemed to Lucy that all their married life, she and Jim had been doing nothing but rescue his sister from the constant crises that were her way of life.
Remembering that succession of disasters, she now considered Cathy, an ominous child-cloud on her horizon.
It was not that she disliked Cathy.
The youngster drew her, troubled her depths;
whenever Lucy saw her, she tried, without noise or fuss, to give her the warmth she had never had from Myra.
But Cathy was Myra's responsibility, not hers.
I wouldn't even be surprised, she said unhappily, if Myra tried to leave her with us forever.
Myra loved big cities;
thousands of miles away--in Paris, of all places--she might forget she had ever been a mother.
Lucy knew her too well to find it impossible.
That's a horrible thing to accuse her of!
Jim was so indignant it was obvious that no matter what he said, he too had seen the looming specter of a forever-Cathy.
He went to the foot of the stairs and shouted up, fiercely, Susan!
Susan!
Get moving!
A startled piping sound returned.
Don't yell at Susan, Lucy said.
Was it only a few nights ago that they had been standing together in front of the house looking at the moon-washed river?
Their arms around each other, they had been talking of the present and the future;
their talk and their feeling had been as deep and warm, as steeped in light, as the air around them.
Then, from within the still, sleeping house, the telephone had rung;
Myra, with her news, was on the other end of the line.
Jim turned back from the stairway and looked at her.
His dark brows, which had been lowered in anger, smoothed.
Please, he said.
There isn't a chance of Myra's letting anything like that happen.
Let's stay friends.
But they weren't just friends, Lucy thought;
they were husband and wife, and Myra had no right muddling and chilling their marriage.
The only thing that had ever come between them was that worthless, selfish sister of his.
Lucy was sick of it.
Well, at last, she said, because Susan was clattering down the stairs.
Susan looked like an overwhelmed baby nurse;
her arms were straining with a burden of dolls.
I'm ready, she announced.
Do you need that big bundle?
Jim said.
His voice had sharp edges, as though he knew very well Lucy and he were not friends at the moment.
All that junk?
Susan stared at him with hurt blue eyes that gushed an instant grief;
to her, each of her dolls was a real person with a living heart.
Now, now, Lucy said, approaching Susan with a handkerchief, mopping skillfully.
Your father didn't mean it, Susan.
She gave Jim a quick, shape-up look of warning.
She'll take every one of them.
Jim groaned, but he lifted Susan's suitcase and said, in a gentler tone, Sure--the entire thousand.
And when you get back from Grandma's, Cathy will be here to play with you.
Nice?
No, Susan said, grappling with her outsized armload of dolls with a Scrooge-like effect.
And at this point, Lucy thought, there should be a lecture on little cousins' sharing dolls--but she could sympathize with Susan;
there ought to be a limit to sharing, too.
That was one more reason she didn't look forward to Cathy's visit, short or long;
the last one had been a Lilliputian war.
She suspected that Cathy had been competing with Susan for attention that she had never had.
Well, Jim said, out of the silence, let's get going, dolls and all.
When the car, with Susan's hands waving wildly from the rear window, disappeared down the driveway, Lucy stood looking after its pale dust.
The day was brilliant around her--flower-scented, crisp with breeze--yet her inner turmoil darkened it.
She had let Jim go with a chilly good-by, a chillier kiss.
She was sorry, and angry at herself, because never in their life together had she done that.
She turned and began to walk toward the house.
At the feeding station, the raffish group of cowbirds again bobbed and gobbled over the ground, but now, gorgeous among them, was a beautiful red cardinal, radiant in its feathered vestments.
The handsome bird was solitary;
its mate must be at home, silently guarding their nest.
She had better stay there, Lucy thought;
the sly female cowbirds took instant advantage of nests without sentinels.
Well, Lucy?
She said to herself, abandoning the cardinals and the cowbirds.
She had a day of things to do;
among them, she had to prepare the guest room.
How long would it be occupied?
She wondered, with a baffled feeling of helplessness.
As long as the unscrupulous Myra chose?
For a moment, her mind returned again to the strange, flying world of birds, and she said to herself.
It isn't only birds that dump their children in other people's nests.
In the sunshine of late afternoon, Lucy stood looking at the ready guest room.
There were new yellow curtains, bright as a child's life ought to be, a new bedspread, lively with hopping rabbits, and hanging from the ceiling was an airy Mother Goose Mobile, spinning slowly in the breeze.
A row of little hangers waited for a child's clothes in the neatly empty closet;
since Myra had always put most of Greg's money on her own back, Lucy suspected that no more than a few of that long row would be needed.
The closet was faintly fragrant with lavender, and as Lucy shut the door an unhappy memory slipped into her mind, like a lavender ghost: Greg's house, on the day he was buried, and the child, pale, silent, baffled, watching the funeral guests with panicky eyes.
Many times since his death that memory had worried and troubled her.
Out in the hall, the upstairs phone shrilled, and the small ghost vanished.
When she picked up the receiver, her mother's cheerful voice was there.
Websterville Junction calling, she said.
I just thought I'd let you know.
Myra dropped Cathy this morning, and Jim picked Cathy up and left Susan a few hours ago.
I'd have phoned sooner but I've been busy.
I can imagine!
Susan was an active character;
for Mother to be able to call, Susan must be napping now, surrounded by her multitude of dolls.
Lucy drew out the chair and sat down;
she relaxed a little, and some of the tension went out of her.
You could think yourself as grown up as Methuselah, yet the maternal voice still kept its comforting magic.
How was Cathy?
Subdued.
But Myra was the merriest widow I ever saw.
On her way to the airport, on her way to Paris--you bet, Lucy said to herself.
I've been fixing up the guest room for Cathy.
There was a momentary pause, and then her mother said, How long is she supposed to stay?
Just for a couple of weeks, till Myra finds a place for them.
Well--This time there was a long silence, while the telephone hummed faintly with a voiceless life.
Puzzled, Lucy stared at the flowered wallpaper;
her mother was forthright;
she was not usually given to mysterious silences.
Was she thinking along the same lines Lucy was--that it was quite possible Cathy might be left with her for good?
You mean once Myra gets to Paris?
Once the soft, pretty moth found the bright light she had always wanted?
Suddenly, seekingly, Lucy asked, Mother, do you know something I don't know?
Again there was that curious pause, and then her mother said, I guess I do.
Just before Myra left--She was saying good-by to Cathy, and she didn't realize I was near.
She hesitated, as though hunting over words and ways of putting them.
Cathy was in tears, of course, and I heard Myra say,'Now be good, and at Christmastime I'll send you a wonderful present from Paris'''.
Shocked speechless, Lucy sat there.
Then she jumped to her feet, the elastic phone cord uncoiling like a black snake.
Christmastime!
Then it was no bogey she had dreamed up;
it was only too true.
Myra had no intention whatever of sending for Cathy in two weeks.
For a moment, anger darkened the hallway about her, and when she found her voice, anger thickened it.
That does it!
She said.
I'll keep Cathy for two weeks.
Then, if Myra does nothing about fetching her, I'll pack her right back to her mother--if I have to take her myself!
Her hand tightened on the receiver.
And that's what I'm going to tell Jim.
For Lucy, the day's nagging to-and-fro had come to an abrupt end.
As she hung up, she saw through the hall's open window the purple-black flying of the cowbirds' wings, and heard their grotesque singing.
Cowbird Myra!
She's not going to get away with it.
Cathy is tired, Lucy thought, watching them come slowly up the path.
The child's thin legs were plodding.
She trudged along slowly, both hands clutching a tired teddy bear.
She was at the moment just a small, walking package, being delivered to her aunt's and uncle's house.
Unlike Susan, she was traveling light;
the worn teddy bear, a tiny suitcase that Jim carried, and the clothes she wore, were all she had.
Lucy glancing at the miniature case, knew there would not be enough in it for the shortest of stays;
they would have to buy things for her.
She opened the door.
Unimpressed, the dog plopped on the sand.
Quint couldn't blame Maggie for disbelieving.
For eleven days they'd done the same thing, leaving the cottage quietly before breakfast, before Esperanza Beach got jammed with tourists and beach balls and show-offy lifeguards.
The swirling sand made Quint's limp more pronounced.
They walked slowly past the sherbet-colored cottages--eleven lemon, nine mint, seven orange--around the curve to a deserted stand with an Eats sign jiggling in the wind.
Now they were in friendly territory.
Nobody around.
Nothing but sand and a ridge of rocks sloping jaggedly to the water's edge.
His rock was to the right of a V-shaped inlet, a big, brown, lumpy rock trailing seaweed whiskers.
His rock was special because no one on the beach could see him here.
Here he was enclosed and safe.
(If a dragon or a sea monster came along, didn't he have a red Swiss hunting knife on his belt--ten blades and a corkscrew?
Here was a perfect place to lie down and make believe.
He was Canute controlling the waves.
He was a knight of the Round Table, Sir Quintus the Brave, slaying evil spirits and banshees and vampires and witches with warty noses.
(One good thing about a suit of armor, his leg wouldn't show.
) He was the first astronaut on the moon, chosen because of his small size and intrepid nature.
He was six feet one like his father, with big hands and a hairy chest, a man the weak and persecuted would turn to.
Fearless.
Every night when he wanted a drink of water, didn't he practice being fearless by not turning on the bathroom light?
A dark bathroom can be pretty scary, and he'd creep back to bed, proud of himself, thinking: Tomorrow, for sure, I'll go down to the rock and keep my promise to Dad.
He hadn't intended to make the promise.
It happened two weeks ago, the night before his father left on a business trip to South America.
Every piece of the nightmare was clear, in place;
and when he woke up, his father was saying, Stop screaming, Quint.
It's all right.
Stop shaking.
He could remember the feel of his father's big hands, the thump of his father's heart sending out signals--regular, like radar.
Let's talk about the beach.
Son.
While I'm gone you get brown and fat as a pig, hear?
Look, I can put two fingers between the cords in the back of your neck.
Dr. Fortman says swimming would help your leg.
He says you're limping more than you need to.
How does he know?
Big dumb nut.
He never had polio.
In the light from the bedside table his father looked so worried that the promise spilled out.
You just wait, Dad.
When you get back I'll probly be swimming better than Victoria.
Wait and see, Dad.
Victoria was fourteen months younger than Quint, a head taller, and could lick any boy or girl on the beach.
He called her Fatso.
She called him Stuck-up--that's why nobody plays with you, Mister Stuck-up.
Or, what was worse, she prayed for him out loud at bedtime: Please, Lord Gord, please give my brother the strength to go swimming like he promised.
She's got a nerve.
Quint said now to the clouds.
Strength began to zip up and down his chest.
He felt strong as a giant.
He unlaced his high brown shoes and took off the metal brace on his leg.
He wadded his sweat shirt into a ball and stripped down to his swimming trunks.
Goolick, goooolick, creaked a sea gull.
Aw, shut up, he said.
He stood on the rock, a skinny, dignified boy surrounded by the ocean.
The wind bored a hole between his shoulder blades, and when he looked at the choppy waves coming and going and crossing each other he could see his head down there, bleeding, wedged between the rocks and the waves.
I can't go in.
I'm scared of the nightmare.
Shivering, he put on his clothes.
And shivering with shame, he crawled to the narrow end of the rock and spat into the water.
Watch it, big shot, a hoarse voice yelled back.
She was holding on to his rock with one hand.
She smelled of peppermints.
She wore a bathing suit like his mother's, no straps on the shouders.
Why didn't you duck?
He snapped.
This is my rock.
Isn't.
Is.
Isn't.
Is.
She was sore as a boil.
Ever hear of squatter's rights?
Sure.
They started with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of eighteen --
Mister Big Britches, aren't you?
I'm Mark Gordon Peters the Fifth.
They call me Quint.
Then why don't you stop squinting?
I said Quint.
That's short for Quintus.
Quintus in Latin means --
I can speak both kinds of Latin, smart aleck.
Her cough sounded like cloth ripping.
You shouldn't smoke so much, he said, unconsciously imitating Victoria's holier-than-thou voice.
I don't smoke.
She was horrified.
Do you?
Hell, yes.
Not having said hell before, he stumbled a bit before gathering momentum.
Sometimes eleven, fourteen a day.
If I was your mama, I'd wop your tail off.
My mother never wops me.
I've got this leg brace.
She seemed so unimpressed that he was obliged to roll up his blue jeans so she could see his brace.
Dingy-looking, was what she said.
Why don't you paint it red and white like a barber pole?
Because maybe I won't have to wear it always.
Dr. Fortman says if I exercise my leg more, maybe I can use a cane when I'm big.
She spouted a mouthful of water into the air.
A cane's mighty handy.
Someone's walking past, you want to stop him, zoooop, snag him around the neck with the crook in your cane.
Or say a waiter brings you a bowl of soup with a dead fly in it--all you got to do is bannnnnng, stooooomp your cane on the floor.
Hey, will you look at that?
Maggie had shaken himself awake and was licking the sand off his stubby whiskers and his long plume of a tail.
That's some dog.
What kind?
Part collie, part wire-haired terrier.
Quint glared.
He always did when people asked.
Holy mackerel, that's the most unique dog I ever saw, she said firmly.
His real name's DiMaggio, only we call him Maggie because he has to take tranquilizers.
He's braver than he looks.
He's been sick lately.
Last Tuesday he went on a ham jag.
A what?
He would have told her, but Victoria was yodeling.
That meant Mama wants you Quint.
Come home or I'll come find you.
I gotta go.
Even though this is my rock, you can use it sometimes.
I come early in the morning.
So do I.
See you around, Mister Squint.
That was how they started being friends.
They met next morning and all the mornings thereafter.
Same time, early, before the fog burned off, because she didn't like the sun;
it made her blister.
Her name was Sabella, and the strip of seaweed around her neck was an emerald necklace the King gave her as a token of his undying love.
You going to marry the King?
No.
He's got a long beard and picks his teeth with a fork.
My hair is what he's nuts about.
Naturally curly hair runs in my family.
Personally, I prefer straight hair like yours, but as they say on the Continent,'What can one do'''?
Which continent?
Name one, I been there.
Japan, she said, smelled pugh because people let dead fish lie on the beaches till the fish got hard as rocks;
then they scraped off the mold and made fish soup.
Pugh.
Camels in Tripoli had harelips.
Near Galway the tinkers drove their caravans down to the beach and sang and drank and fought all night.
As for dancing--holy mackerel, he ought to see the gypsies in Jerez;
they danced on the sand till your blood got hot and danced with them.
Really.
Quint smothered a yawn.
She made better pictures than any book he'd read, but he didn't say so.
Artfully, as the days went by, he found occasion to tell her that his father had won the Navy Cross in the Korean War;
that his baby sister could spit up through her nose when she felt like it;
that he personally had an IQ of 141 and was currently reading the Mushr to Ozon volume of the encyclopedia.
Books are for schnooks.
She skipped a piece of water at him and laughed, a funny, hoarse laugh he liked to hear.
Nobody ever appreciated his jokes as much as Sabella.
(What did one tonsil say to the other tonsil?
Let's get dressed up--the doctor's taking us out tonight.
And What time did the Chinaman go to the dentist?
Tooth-hurty.
) Encouraged by her giggles he imitated Maggie who was crazy about ham.
He described the ham decorated with pineapple and cherries, cooling on the porch.
He snuck up on the ham like Maggie, gumming it with soft, stumpy teeth, then panting with thirst, lapping up the water in the lagoon, swelling up like a balloon, staggering home to be sick, while his mother said, That does it.
That dog has to go.
Say, you're quite a comic, Sabella said admiringly.
Ever thought about going on the stage?
He hadn't.
But it was such a nice thought that he nodded his head.
Either that or a veterinarian.
Better make up your mind, son, Sabella said.
You can't serve cod and salmon.
Sometimes they argued.
She said sharks have no bones and shrimp swam backward.
His encylopedia agreed with Sabella.
Next morning he tied a bunch of sea daisies with string and threw them across the V-shaped inlet to the rock where she was swimming around.
Boy, could she catch!
Like Willie Mays in the outfield.
Nobody gave me flowers before.
Thank you, Quint.
Her face turned pink with pleasure and a smothered cough.
You can always tell a real gentleman--they got a certain je ne say quok.
Sometimes they didn't talk at all.
He daydreamed on the rock while she swam and splashed around.
Once when she asked why he never went swimming and he answered, Don't feel like it, he was tempted to tell her about being scared.
But Victoria began yodeling just then and he went home, carrying Sabella in the back of his head, not thinking about her, just knowing she was there, smiling, smelling of peppermints.
As for his promise--oh, he had plenty of time, buckets of time.
Wednesday morning it happened.
They were eating breakfast.
We beseech thee, Lord Gord, to bless this food--that was Victoria saying grace while the baby sprayed raisin toast on her plastic bib.
Same old breakfast till the phone rang, making his mother's voice shake with excitement.
Your Daddy's in San Francisco, she told them.
He says he'll be here on the one-o'clock plane.
Fifteen days early--isn't that wonderful?
Yeah, keen.
A cave seemed to be opening in Quint's stomach.
Children, we'll have to get organized.
The baby can have an early nap.
Victoria, I want you to--''
Quint closed the screen door quietly so Maggie wouldn't be scared.
Hurry up, we're late, he said, noticing with a chill how gray the sky was this morning, the fog like a rope along the horizon, the choppy waves sending off sheets of blue and Kool-Aid green.
The cave in his stomach hurt.
He had to go into the water.
He'd tell Sabella about the nightmare.
It had started two years ago when he was in an iron lung.
What caused it, he didn't know.
The metal collar gagging his neck?
Sweating so much?
The unbearable weight on his chest?
All of it together meant drowning.
The first time the nurse took him out of the lung, she said if he got frightened, she'd put him back for a second.
Linda looked remote yet lovely in black, and everyone held his or her breath.
Not that Linda was heartless, not that she would do anything prematurely or in bad taste any more than John Cooper would.
Hadn't Linda been a perfect wife to Bobbie, who was the least bit of a disappointment all these years?
Wasn't John Cooper even more attractive at forty-seven than he had been twenty-five years earlier?
And wasn't John's wife, Edythe, even more appalling, if possible?
Didn't John Cooper, after all this time, deserve something better of life?
Wasn't it adult and realistic to look at it that way?
And romantic?
Everybody knew that John Cooper had married Edythe on the rebound.
It was the kind of thing that could ruin a man's life, and it was a tribute to John's strength of character and very real business ability that it hadn't ruined his.
Of course, there was nothing you could do, but you still ought to be ashamed of yourself for letting it happen, Mousie Chandler said to Linda Stuart.
Poor John!
For it had been John and Linda ever since she had come out two seasons before at the Golf Club to the goggle-eyed admiration not only of the stag line but even of her fellow debs.
John had claimed her from the stag line, a young man a year out of Dartmouth with skiing crinkles still around his eyes.
You saw them always together those years.
You talked about John-and-Linda as an entity.
John-and-Linda were at Longue Vue last night;
John-and-Linda drove to Conneaut in three and a half hours.
Then there was a spat over something, as there had been lovers' spats before;
only this one didn't heal.
You still said John-and-Linda, but as if you were speaking of a national catastrophe such as the depression or Dillinger.
It got worse instead of better.
First, it came out after Mr. Cooper's will was settled--he had died the year before--that John and his mother weren't rich any more.
And then there was Linda's engagement to Bobbie Evans.
There was no connection between the two events, because Bobbie wasn't rich, either, though he was more aggressive than John.
He was a bright and handsome young man from New York, who worked for the same steel company as John did.
Some people said Linda had just announced the engagement to jolt John into some action, but when John came home from a business trip to Cleveland with Edythe, with Edythe his bride, it could no longer be John-and-Linda even to sentimental wishful thinkers.
It wasn't even John and Edythe.
It was simply Poor John.
There was nothing specifically wrong with Edythe, but there was absolutely nothing right about her either.
Mousie Chandler had been to school with her someplace near Baltimore and tried to explain rather than defend her to the gang having lunch at Horne's.
Well, you shouldn't underestimate Edythe, Mousie said.
I know she gives the impression of being shallow and frivolous and scatterbrained.
She is frivolous and scatterbrained, but she really isn't shallow.
Bobbie and Linda looked magnificent at their wedding.
John was at the church with Edythe.
She giggled during the ceremony, and Mousie Chandler, who was one of Linda's bridesmaids, said John glared black as death at her.
As if he were choking, she said.
Poor John!
Edythe settled down to become a social myth and a horrible example.
Her hair never seemed to be in place and her skirts were never quite the correct length.
She didn't have a bad shape when you caught her at the pool at Longue Vue, but her bathing suits were far from smart.
And you didn't see her much at Longue Vue or anywhere, for John had drifted away from the gang.
Mousie said it was because he was too proud to stand pity.
Others thought he couldn't stand seeing Linda, Mrs. Bobbie Evans, still so beautiful, so much in command of everything.
There were less-dramatic reasons too.
John's mother died not long after his marriage, and there was even less Cooper money left.
John sold the big old place in Sewickley and bought a smaller house in Fox Chapel.
He was not reduced to poverty, but his job at the steel company had become a real job and not a method of passing the day.
John was good at his job.
It probably wasn't hard for him to keep his nose to the grindstone with nothing but Edythe to come home to.
Though that may be unfair since Ben Cooper, John's first son, came along early in 1938, the cutest baby you ever saw and a blessing that he looked all Cooper from fontanel to pink toes, nary a trace of Edythe.
But the continuing charm of the other children--Sally in 1940 and Jack in 1944--and all John's success at his work only made Edythe's dizziness and general uselessness more glaring.
She never could fit into a crowd which had known, which still knew and admired Linda.
When there was bridge at Edythe's house, the cards shuffled like wet graham crackers and the food probably was wet graham crackers.
John did find the missing checks and money afterward, and the drive was actually oversubscribed, which was a real bit of luck for the missionaries.
Being an intelligent man, John must have guessed what everyone thought about Edythe, but he never let on by so much as a brave smile.
Poor John was the kind of stock that keeps a bargain without whimpering and maybe bends over backward to keep a bad one.
He was an attentive and generous husband, overgenerous, a lot of people felt, because they knew that money must be a problem to him.
But he got ahead in business: on leave from his job to an important Washington assignment during the war;
after the war back to the heir apparency of the steel company.
The Coopers saw Bobbie and Linda socially, but no more than was necessary.
Bobbie had been successful, too, though he didn't match John's pace, and after all he didn't need to, with all the Stuart money.
He and Linda settled down to being social leaders, and Linda managed to look a little more beautiful each year.
And then came the hairpin turn, the smashed Jaguar and Linda, mourning alone and lovely.
Everyone held his or her breath.
Don't think Linda couldn't have got John back any time, if she'd tried, Mousie Gordon, who had been Mousie Chandler, said between bites of a chicken sandwich at a luncheon table at Le Mont.
Now you know she could've, but she isn't that kind of girl.
But now--well, it would be a blessing, I think.
Poor John.
Linda Evans felt more wretched than she had ever dreamed Bobbie's death could move her to feeling.
What she felt was a bone-deep loss with a sense of waste to it, not so much sorrow for handsome, ambitious Bobbie, but for the lost years that had been brought into high relief by his death.
She knew what people were thinking;
it was what she had been thinking herself.
It was up to her to save Poor John, dear John, to undo the wrong she had done, but she trembled at the decision as at the brink of a cold stream.
There was no one who would blame her or John;
she could be sure of that.
It might be rough on Edythe at first, but Linda and John between them could make a settlement handsome enough to soothe her, to send her back to Cleveland or anywhere.
And Linda felt capable of capturing the affection of the children, anxious even, since she and Bobbie had had none of their own.
It would be good for them to have a mother they need not be ashamed of.
Linda would have to wait, she knew.
But what was a decent six months or so after the more than twenty years gone by?
Years of watching while Poor John struggled without the help and understanding of the kind of wife a man needed to get ahead.
Of course, he had done wonders.
Alloy steels and regular steels had different sales departments at Smith & MacIsaacs, where John and Bobbie both worked.
Bobbie had been head of the alloy division, while John was just another good salesman in the regular branch.
So when old Mr. Lovejoy, the company president, talked about putting in a single sales manager for both branches after the head of the regular steels had gone with Carnegie-Illinois, it looked like the perfect chance for Bobbie.
For Linda knew how to help her husband, not just the Stuart-family contacts but also the little dinners for Reuben Lovejoy.
She was almost sick when Bobbie came home with the news that Poor John had won the job.
What did you do?
She asked Bobbie.
You must have done something, something wrong.
Lord knows I had everything set for you.
Bobbie said something about damned Pittsburghers sticking together, and Linda got angry at him.
They had their first real fight, and Bobbie went off to get drunk.
Linda dragooned her uncle, Donald Murkland, into a lunch the next day to find out what had happened.
He was a director of S. & M. and must have been in on the decision.
But jolly old Uncle Donald would tell her no more than that Bobbie had certainly been considered for the job, but there were factors in a large company which outsiders and even some insiders couldn't understand.
He didn't tell her of the long board meeting where Bobbie and John were weighed one against the other.
I'm behind John Cooper, Mr. Lovejoy said finally.
I think we're agreed that he and Evans are equal in ability, so we have to look at the thing in terms of incentive.
Now, I believe Poor John'll work just a little harder.
With that wife of his, I think he feels every chance he gets is his big chance.
Bobbie, with Linda behind him, will have plenty of other opportunities.
And also, the money can't mean as much to Bobbie.
Bobbie will take the job as his just reward and work hard at it;
Poor John will take it as a miracle and have every other independent steel company sitting up nights worrying about us.
Most of the directors nodded.
Uncle Donald Murkland found himself nodding agreement too.
After the surprise was over, Linda was almost as pleased as anyone with John's good luck, though she agreed with Bobbie's decision some months later to move to Funk Furnaces.
The job at Funk wasn't particularly better, but it got him away from being subordinate to John and assured him steady advancement, since Funk was owned to a large degree by various branches of Linda's family.
Poor John's rise continued to be meteoric.
When he was made a vice president only a year after the new sales job, a leading business magazine ran his photograph with a brief biography in a series on national business leaders of the future.
She called then to say she had a baby-sitter for that night.
Shirley appreciated the chance to make some money.
Such a nice little thing--lives right in the building.
That's swell, I said sweetly.
I could get along without that three dollars.
In some ways it was worth being out the money--just knowing I was no longer obligated to Nadine!
It was past midnight and we were in bed when the phone rang.
I stumbled through the hall, wondering who would be calling at this hour.
I answered to find Nadine at the other end.
You scared me half to death, I said shakily.
What's wrong?
Janice, nobody answers at the apartment!
Her voice came shrill.
I'm absolutely frantic!
That stupid girl might have gone off and left Francie!
Oh, she wouldn't do that, I said.
She's probably fallen asleep and doesn't hear the phone.
But if you're worried you can go home and check --
I can't leave the party!
We're at Ken Thom's apartment, and when one couple leaves early everything falls flat!
Old Mr. Thom is already down on Wally, and we simply can't afford to get Ken mad at us --
I was all set for what came next.
Janice, could you possibly go over and make sure everything's all right?
I'll call you there in ten minutes --
I can't make it in ten minutes--Wondering, as I said it, why I should make it at all.
Why should I go over at midnight to check on Francie, when her parents didn't care enough to leave a party?
Fifteen minutes, then!
Please, Janice.
I'll be glad to pay you --
So sure that money could do anything!
All right, I said.
I'd do it.
Not for the dollar or so Nadine would give me.
But because there was the chance that something had gone wrong at the apartment, and if I didn't go over, who would?
Chris was sound asleep, and I didn't see any sense in waking him.
I dressed in the kitchen, then left a note on the table telling him what had happened.
I drove off through the cool darkness to Nadine's apartment and rang the bell, and in a few seconds a young girl opened the door.
Her face was flushed from sleep.
It's all right, I said, as she started to look scared.
Mrs. Roberts had called, and couldn't wake you.
I just came over to make sure everything was all right.
I'm--hard to wake up, she faltered.
She didn't look over thirteen.
And Nadine insisted that her sitters be reliable!
I have to get up early for church tomorrow, she went on.
I didn't know it was going to be this late!
The phone started ringing.
That's Mrs. Roberts again, I said.
I'll answer it.
I crossed the beautifully furnished living room to the pale yellow phone.
I told Nadine everything was fine, and that I'd be getting on home.
Janice, would you mind staying?
There was a ragged edge to her voice now, as if she'd been crying.
Wally's drunk--I'll get him out of here as soon as I possibly can, but I don't want Shirley to see him like this.
You know how gossip of that sort spreads through an apartment building --
Not a word of thanks for what I'd already done.
The receiver clicked in my ear.
She didn't even give me a chance to refuse.
Well, there wasn't any law that said I had to stay!
But then I looked at Shirley and thought that I might as well--the child needed her sleep, and Heaven knew what kind of a mess it would be, with Wally coming home drunk.
So I told her Mrs. Roberts would pay her in the morning, and she scooted off to her own apartment.
After I looked in at Francie, I went into the living room and waited.
I must have dozed off, because I came to with a start at the sound of voices.
Nadine's, shrill with anger--Wally's loud and thick--As I went to the door I heard the clock strike two.
I opened the door, and Wally stumbled in--fast--as if Nadine had pushed him.
I had always thought she was so beautiful.
But now she looked ugly.
Her skin was stretched so tight that her cheekbones stuck out, and if looks could kill, Wally would have been dead.
Pack your clothes, she hissed.
Pack--and get out!
You're crazy, Wally said thickly.
He lurched and stumbled to the davenport and sank down on it, and was instantly asleep.
Nadine strode over to him, and her pointed nails raked across his face.
I grabbed her arm and she turned on me and for a scared second I thought that maybe Wally was right, and she was crazy.
You stay out of this, she spat at me.
He's ruined us--do you hear me--he's ruined us!
He insulted Ken Thom!
Her eyes were wild.
He told Ken to his face that he doesn't have what it takes to get a woman!
And the other people there were listening!
We're ruined and he's going to get out if I have to throw him down the stairs --
you'd better simmer down, I said nervously.
I was plenty scared.
In the state she was in, she could actually kill him!
Now you just take it easy, and I'll make you some tea --
Tea, Nadine screeched.
How can you be so damn stupid?
Wally's lost his job!
Ken will never forgive him--never!
And we don't have any money--we don't have a dime!
All we own is Francie's bedroom set and the televison-record player and we even owe on them.
And we'll be poor and have to live in a grubby little house like yours--and all because of that --
I clamped my hand over her mouth to stop the stream of filth.
Stop that!
You'll wake up the whole building.
Wally can't go any place at this hour --
Well then, I'll get out--But she looked uncertain.
She was coming to her senses enough to realize that you don't go traipsing off anywhere at two in the morning.
You go to bed, I said curtly.
In the morning you and Wally can talk things out --
She collapsed against me, as if everything inside her snapped.
I got her into bed, and sat with her until she had sobbed herself out.
It was three o'clock before I figured it was all right to go.
I left her, a limp bundle of self-pity, shivering with terror because her bubble had burst around her.
Wally was snoring on the davenport.
I had done all I could.
I had done all I was going to do.
Whether or not Wally lost his job was no concern of mine.
I drove home, found Chris still asleep.
I snuggled up close to him--loving him--thankful for a man like him.
Thankful I wasn't Nadine.
I kept on being thankful.
In the afternoon Nadine and Wally came over with Francie.
Wally sat in our big chair, his hands between his knees, looking ready to cry.
I'd had all this trouble with the old man, that's why I drank so much.
I--got fired yesterday for not attending to business --
Old Mr. Thom himself had stopped at the service station for a grease job, Wally confessed, and couldn't get one because there were cars on the pits waiting to be repaired.
Seems that the kid Wally had hired had a repair business of his own going on the side.
Mr. Thom had gotten Wally on the phone, and fired him.
I thought I'd smooth things over through Ken, Wally said miserably.
But Ken got coy and wouldn't make any promises.
And I was plastered and I blew my stack --
And told him right to his face he'd never slept with a woman!
I tried to quiet Nadine because the children were there.
But she was beyond caring what she said.
Things may smooth over yet, Chris said, his nice lean face grave with honest concern.
But I couldn't help thinking that Nadine and Wally were getting just what they deserved.
Now maybe they'd realize that life can be tough.
When A bubble breaks, there's nothing.
Little by little, during the week, Chris and I discovered the crazy unbelievable way Nadine and Wally had lived.
They had not only spent every cent--they were in debt up to their necks, owing on everything they owned.
On top of everything else they were two months behind on their apartment rent, and the day Wally received written notice that he was fired, they were evicted.
Worst of all, Wally had no training for any kind of work.
He had fallen into a soft job, and now the job was gone and he was stranded.
Chris fretted.
I wish we were in a position to offer a little money to tide them over.
I said I wished we were, too.
It was easy enough to say it, because of course we couldn't spare a cent.
But Chris brightened up like a candle.
I'm glad you feel that way, honey.
There is one big way we can help them.
We can let them move in with us --
Something I had simply never thought of.
Something so incredible --
I just stared at him.
It was incredible--He gave me an embarrassed, pleading look.
I know we'd be pretty crowded.
But it would only be for a couple of weeks--until they get straightened out.
Straightened out--They'd had years of making all that money!
I won't do it, I said flatly.
Nadine was always too good to live in a little house like this!
Well, now she can sleep in the street for all I care!
That isn't like you, Janice, Chris said uncomfortably.
Then I felt uncomfortable, too.
I didn't want to be like that, mean and bitter.
But, darn it all, why should we help a couple of spoiled snobs who had looked down their noses at us?
But, in the end, we did.
It just seemed as if there was nothing else to do.
The finance company took all their furniture--and they didn't have a cent to their name.
Then Wally got sick.
To my way of thinking, he was scared sick.
His luck had failed him, and it was easier to crawl off into bed than to get out and fight the world.
Chris made trip after trip in our old car, moving the clothes and dishes and the stock of groceries Nadine had bought on special.
At least we'll eat, I thought grimly as I put all the food away.
While I worked, Nadine sat and cried.
When she wasn't crying, she was in our bedroom fighting with Wally.
Virus infection nothing, she'd scream at him.
You're too lazy to go out and look for another job.
You're just a no-good bum!
It was a mess, all right.
But it couldn't go on forever--A couple of weeks, Chris had said.
I figured I could stand practically anything for a couple of weeks.
But the two weeks dragged into three, and they were still with us.
Nadine's constant nagging had finally gotten Wally out of bed.
He set out every morning looking for work, and come home around noon, full of alibis and excuses.
Wendell Thom had black-balled him.
Nobody would even take his application.
You can get something, Nadine would snap.
You can get a job working in a grocery store, if nothing else.
The high school kids have got everything sewed up, he said, a whine in his voice.
Those damn punks--taking work away from men who need it.
By fall they'll be back in school, I'd say, trying to sound encouraging.
But this was only the middle of July.
And I couldn't take six more weeks of this.
I mentioned it to Chris one stifling hot night, when I had slipped outside for a breath of fresh air.
I don't really believe in intuition.
But I swear to you from the moment I opened my eyes, I knew it was going to be a bad day.
Part of it was the weather, so foggy it would take me twice as long to get to the hospital.
Part of it was being so tired--I'd not only had my usual full day yesterday, but a dinner meeting as well, that kept me up late.
But the rest of it, the main part, wasn't based on logic at all.
It was just going to be one of those days.
For the thousandth time, I wished I'd chosen some nice, nine-to-five, five-days-a-week profession.
And for the thousandth time, I answered myself.
I hadn't chosen medicine--it had chosen me.
Actually, I shouldn't complain, I told myself in the shaving mirror.
I had a lot to be thankful for.
A profession that brought me as good an income as mine wasn't to be sneezed at.
Maybe I didn't see as much of Gladdy as I'd like, but how much worse it would have been if I'd had to board her out somewhere after Alice went--send my daughter to an orphanage or a boarding-home.
At least, we were together and we had Mrs. Hodges, bless her, to look after us--no mother could be fonder of Gladdy than Mrs. Hodges was.
I was lucky in lots of ways, no doubt about it.
Especially in the way Gladdy had turned out.
Growing up without a mother from the time she was three--it wasn't a good thing for a child, even knowing the kind of mother Alice had been.
But I mustn't start on Alice.
She is a closed book, a picture I keep on my bureau, but never look at.
If she'd kept on as she'd been going, the story I'd told Gladdy would probably have been true by now, anyhow
As usual, Gladdy's bright smile greeted me at the breakfast table.
Her first class wasn't until ten, but she always got up to have breakfast with me.
It made me feel good and knowing that she'd decided, all on her own, to go to college right here in town made me feel good, too.
Oh, I knew that I couldn't give myself all the credit for her decision.
I had a feeling that young Pete Michelson, the most promising intern at Fairview, had something to do with it, too.
She'd been out with Pete the night before and her gay chatter about their date lightened my mood a little.
But once I was alone again, driving to the hospital, the heaviness returned.
If she and Pete were really getting serious, I'd have to do some hard thinking.
Should I tell him the truth about Alice?
Did he have a right to know the secret I'd kept from Gladdy all these years?
The boys were already waiting in the corridor outside my office when I got to Fairview.
Two interns and Dick Ishii, the other resident.
I'm Chief of Medicine here and this morning would start like all others, with me taking the boys on the rounds.
Pete was down on Seven, Dick told me, and he'd meet us there.
There wasn't anything of special interest that morning, no one sicker than they should have been.
Pete came to meet us when we stepped out of the elevator on Seven--he'd had a case of post-operative shock, but it was all taken care of now.
Seven is a women's floor and, as it happened, not very busy right then.
When we'd finished our regular rounds, Pete pointed me toward the small ward at the end of the floor.
Got a new one in last night, he said.
I haven't seen her yet, but I hear she's a lulu!
I wasn't surprised.
The ward was a small one, four beds, kept reserved for female alcoholics.
We didn't get many at Fairview and they were never pretty sights.
It was thought wiser to keep them segregated from the patients in the regular charity ward.
The moment I walked in, the whole miserable feeling of the day seemed to focus on the woman in the bed.
They'd cleaned her up some, of course, and she'd pretty much slept off her drunk.
But there was something about her--and I felt my lips forming a name.
Alice But this woman's name was Rose Bancroft!
I looked at the chart for reassurance.
Yes, Rose Bancroft, diagnosis: acute alcoholism.
She looked about sixty, though I recalled that the chart gave her age as forty-four.
An ugly scar disfigured the somewhat familiar puffy face, already marred by the tell-tale network of broken red veins that heavy drinkers carry.
Her coarse hair was two-colored--bleached blonde and its real, dirty gray.
Oh, could it be?
No, no it was an unfortunate resemblance, that was all it was, and I turned to Dick, forcing myself to put my disquiet out of my mind.
In a low voice, Dick filled us in
she'd been picked up downtown, passed out in the doorway.
Although quiet when they brought her in, she'd suddenly turned violent and had to be knocked out.
It was the old story.
We'd keep her a day or two, and the AA people would talk to her.
But if she wasn't interested, she'd just go back to the same life she'd left.
Turning toward the patient again, I--I can't describe what happened to me then, except to say that I felt sick.
I tell you, it took every ounce of control I had to be able to speak.
Now, Miss--or is it Mrs. Bancroft?
I never liked going straight into an examination with patients--it relaxes them, I've always thought, to chat first.
This was one time I'd have gladly broken my own rule, but habit was too strong.
Hey!
Her voice was flat and dull.
But those penetrating eyes--I had to turn my head away.
It was then that I saw what the drawn-back covers revealed.
There were bloodspots on the sheet.
What's this?
I asked.
Your period?
She shook her head.
I been spotting a little now and then, she said quietly, no emotion in her voice.
Have you spoken to a doctor about it?
Once again, there was a negative shake.
I told Miss Groggins to move her down the hall where we had an examining table.
Better do a Papanicolaou, I told Pete.
It was only a few moments before Miss Groggins had her in the proper position for a vaginal, but I couldn't see anything wrong on gross examination.
Pete stood by with a slide and took the smear, sent it down to the lab with a request for the test.
That done, I told Miss Groggins to take her patient back to bed and again put her out of my mind.
I was busy the rest of the day.
Late in the afternoon, I was up on Seven again.
One of my private patients was being admitted and I went in to see her settled.
On my way to the elevator, I ran into Pete.
I've got the results on the Bancroft smear test, he said.
There's something there, all right.
Class Three, they said.
Do you want to talk to her, Doctor?
Well--I didn't--I didn't ever want to see that woman again.
But that was ridiculous, of course.
All right.
We'll do a D. and C. and get her permission for a hysterectomy.
Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's intraepithelial or in situ--can't take any chances.
If you can keep her here that long, Pete said wryly.
Groggins tells me she's started badgering already, wants to get out.
Wants to get to her booze, I guess.
I grimaced in distaste.
Well, better see what I can do.
We'd been standing right outside Miss Bancroft's door and as I went to turn the knob to enter, I was surprised to find that the door was slightly ajar.
But she seemed to be dozing and in any case, we'd been talking in low tones.
Her eyes opened as soon as she heard me, though, and once again, I felt an inward shiver.
I sure can't complain about the service in this place, she said.
I just got through seeing one of you guys.
What do you want?
There was something almost insulting in her tone, but I disregarded it.
I've just been talking to Dr. Michelson, I said.
We'd like you to have a dilatation and curettage.
That's quite minor, nothing to worry about.
But we would like your permission to do--that is, to go further if it proves necessary.
No.
It was flat, definite.
Suppose you let me explain.
Actually, I rather doubt that we'll have to do this.
Even if we do, you'll be out of here in a week, probably.
I was sure that was the difficulty--she just didn't want to stay here, where she couldn't get to the liquor.
No.
I looked at her in amazement.
I'd had patients who'd refused surgery before, of course, but never one who didn't show, in one way or another, the reason why.
Mostly, it was fear, but this woman's voice didn't tremble and her hands were still on the coverlet.
Will you tell me why?
I asked.
She smiled, a smile without humor.
You shouldn't tell your little secrets outside of the patient's door, she said.
I've got cancer, haven't I?
She went on, disregarding my protests.
I'm not going to be one of your guinea pigs.
Let your pupils learn on someone else, Doctor.
Just let me die in peace.
I stared at her, almost speechless.
Her little speech was totally out of character with the sort of person I thought she was.
Even her voice had taken on a more cultivated tone.
This was someone who'd come down in the world, I thought.
A long, long way down.
Again there was something familiar about her, something --
You haven't got cancer, I said as strongly as I could.
I don't know what you heard that would make you think so, but I assure you I don't even know myself, so how can you be so sure?
And even if --
Don't give me a lot of talk, Joe.
I gaped at her.
She could have found out my first name, of course--that wouldn't be difficult.
But there was that something, some echo in the way she spoke.
She was watching me intently, a funny little half-smile on her lips.
Surprised, baby?
Guess I've changed, haven't I?
But you haven't changed much, Joe.
I knew then, knew with a heart-stopping shock.
Alice--I stammered through dry lips.
Alice, for goodness sake --
Alice, she echoed mockingly.
What's the matter, Joe, you scared of me?
Think I'm going to make you introduce a drunk as your wife?
Well, don't worry.
Just let me outta here --
But why did you come back?
I'd found my voice.
Where have you been all these years?
She shrugged.
Here and there.
As for coming back here--well, I'll tell you the truth, I didn't even know where I was when I came to.
The last thing I remember is a bar in San Diego --
The way she spoke, her flat acceptance of her alcoholic blackout, made me shudder.
And this was Gladdy's mother!
I never asked you for any favors, Joe, she went on, but I'm asking one now.
Let me outta here!
You doctors are all alike--all you want is to cut up people and what's the good?
No, I want out, Joe!
I looked at the pathetic wreck of a woman before me.
Let her out, let her out--that would be the solution, wouldn't it?
What she'd said was true--in all these years, she'd never asked for anything from me.
If I let her go, she'd disappear once more.
And Gladdy would be safe!
I was slowly swimming down to the bottom of the sea.
She made me welcome.
Her dark cool caresses were sweeter than any woman's;
the many little tricks she knew made her embrace the ultimate one--the ever more fantastic pressures deeper in her body squeezed not me but the air I breathed into a nitrogen anesthetic.
yielding-Mediterranian-woman-, she soothed me, and drew me deeper into her.
I no longer knew how deep I was, somewhere under 230 feet, getting drunker, happier and more contented by the second.
The reasons for this dive seemed foolish now.
Only the dive itself had any meaning.
The metal-tasting nitrogen made me wonder if I should remove the mouthpiece and suck in the sweet water.
Perhaps if I took off the aqua-lung I could swim better, love my woman better.
I chuckled aloud, and the mouthpiece fell out.
While a hazy part of my mind concentrated on swimming down, a clear part sorted over recent events, among them my only positive act in a long time.
It was when I packed up what duds I had and went to Paris.
It was no vacation, just me getting out after a bellyfull.
I knew it wouldn't be the same.
Wild kicks never are, but I hoped to dig up a better frame of mind.
Once before I had been to Paris, long before I married Valery.
That first time was good and it stuck with me.
I was twenty-one back then, in the army, and fog put our plane down at Orly instead of Rhine-Main.
It was a Saturday evening in April with a mist-like rain, and I was a little high on the good taste of life.
I had a pocketful of money, which was unusual when I was in the army, and the plane would be grounded all night.
In less than an hour I had gotten a hotel, showered, shaved and was out on the Champs Elysees in a fresh uniform.
I felt like a Hun in Rome.
All the women were beautiful, and the men were equal to them;
everything was glamorous to my dazzled eyes.
There were some sweet machines other than women: an old Bugatti, a lean Farina coachwork on an American chassis, a Swallow, a type A40-AjK Mercedes and lots more.
There was the Arc de Triomphe and the Tour d'Eiffel--I was no yokel, but I was young, and this was Paris!
I had champagne at Maxim's, then went into a cafe called the Jour et Nuit to ask the way to Montmartre.
I never got there.
I met Claire, which was better.
She was eating bread and cheese just as fast as she possibly could, and washing it down with red wine.
I stared.
I didn't know a human could feed so fast and still be beautiful.
She was blonde, and young, and nice and round in a tight white dress.
Maybe her ravenous eating wasn't grotesque because she was so positive about it.
When she had drained the last of the bottle and paid her bill, she came directly to my table and said:
Handsome soldier, I have assuaged one hunger with food.
I feel another of terrible urgency.
Is your evening free?
Madame, I said with noblesse oblige because of the handsome--yeah.
And so off we went to her apartment.
She was a nymphomaniac, of course, the poor girl.
Toward the break of day I waxed philosophical, and drew analogies about her way of eating bread and cheese.
Now it was nine years later, and it wasn't spring but winter when I returned.
I got there on a Saturday evening.
I made the mistake of going to the Jour et Nuit.
The place was busy but I didn't feel like a Hun.
I sat waiting for Life to come along and sweep me up.
I had part of a bottle of French beer called Panther Pils (so help me), then switched to Tuborg.
After a few hours, Life hadn't showed, and I was crocked.
I went to my hotel and slept.
The next morning a little cognac made me feel better--but what can you do in Paris on Sunday morning?
So I drank more cognac.
All that day and Monday I drank just enough to orbit but not make deep space.
I read the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer.
Elemental, but sex.
That's what was on my mind.
I was turning over the idea of a good debauchery when I dozed off.
I felt better Tuesday evening when I woke up.
My head was clear, my thinking sober and I was reconciled to this Paris idea as a flop on top of all my others.
A good binge has that kind of therapeutic value.
Sometime earlier the weather had turned cold and it was snowing.
I went out into it.
I walked around breathing the cold wine of the air until I found a park, and I sat down on a snowy bench where the light was dim and came from the sky.
There was dignity and beauty in the little white flakes falling through the blue night.
I had on only a topcoat, but I wasn't cold.
I was just miserable.
Pretty soon a woman came along carrying a folded umbrella as a walking stick.
She saw me and sat down beside me, three feet away.
Suddenly I understood why she had the umbrella.
It gave her poise and posture.
Without it she would have been drab and limp.
It gave her propriety.
It gave her the right to sit down beside me, back straight, one hand out on the handle.
I couldn't imagine her without it.
I knew all about her.
She was another human being and happened to be a hustler.
I didn't much care if she were there or not.
After a while she said with sort of an unuttered laugh, You have snow in your hair and ears.
(I didn't have on a hat.
Hardly glancing at her, I smiled a bleak one which said, Thanks, baby, but I'd rather be alone.
She was silent for a while, then said, Why are you so unhappy?
I'm not unhappy, I lied, staring at the snow.
She was trying to make a hole in my armor, and I didn't want it.
Is it a woman?
She asked gently.
She must have seen the ring on my left hand.
Well--women and unhappiness go together, I observed profoundly, adding, You can wager your derriere on that.
Ah, Monsieur, it is not my business to wager it.
This took me so funny I had to look at her.
I felt my frozen sad face crumble, and I grinned a silly one I couldn't have helped.
I even snorted a chuckle.
She smiled at me, but it was an awfully sad smile.
She was even more miserable than me.
Her eyes were smiling, too, but so sadly, and there was tiredness and infinite wisdom in them.
Now isn't it better to smile?
She asked.
Because I liked this sad person so much, I said, Will you have a drink with me?
I could see the ancient cynicism reinforce itself in her eyes, and I wondered how many men she had picked up with this same gambit.
Anyway, I pulled a bottle of Remy Martin out of my topcoat, drew the cork, and passed it to her.
I could see she was shocked.
I'm sorry I haven't got a glass, I said.
Non, non, she said, taking the bottle, not for that be sorry.
She tilted up and drank, and then I drank.
It's really rotten to drink good cognac like that, but I hadn't cared before.
I wasn't going to lug around a glass.
There wasn't much light in the blue dark, but I could see her well.
No child, this tart, she must have been thirty-five or even forty.
I couldn't be sure.
Somehow she was attractive.
Not good looking, but self-confident and wise so that it made her attractive.
I liked her, and all at once I was glad she was there.
We finished the bottle--I hadn't had a lot out of it earlier--not speaking much to each other, and we stayed sober.
I suppose we were cold, but we didn't feel it.
We seemed to be drowsing, sadly, soberly, in the cold, cold air while the snow fell.
Then she said, Allons, and we got up and went to my hotel without another word.
I sensed no stranger in her.
We undressed and made love with the comfortable acceptance I had once known with Valery.
I decided thirty-five was the best estimate of her age.
She had a funny little scar on her stomach, on the left side.
I think we were very tired, for we awoke at the same moment, deeply rested, surprised to see the late morning sun on the windows, which were wet where the rime had melted.
I felt wonderful, the absolute opposite of last night's melancholy.
My head was clear.
I was hungry as a wolf, and my body felt lean and vital.
Bon jour, I said brightly, sitting up, which pulled the covers to her hips.
She looked good, with her short tousled hair and no make-up.
Maybe closer to thirty, I thought.
Bon jour!
She exclaimed, smiling.
J'ai faim!
Yeah, but breakfast first.
With a laugh she beat me to the bathroom.
I called downstairs for food and a toothbrush for her.
She came out pink from a hot bath, and I gave her my robe.
I had brushed my teeth, showered, shaved and dressed by the time a waiter wheeled in breakfast.
The toothbrush Monsieur, he said, presenting it.
I gave it to the woman.
What is this for?
She asked innocently.
Why, to brush your teeth.
But I already have!
I used yours.
Oh?
I said with round eyes.
I wondered if I ought to go use the new one myself.
But I smelled the coffee, and thinking, What the hell, live dangerously, I decided I would scald my worries away.
The coffee wasn't very hot though, made in a filter pot, but it was good.
We sent the waiter away and ate a tremendous amount of cold ham, hot hard-boiled eggs and hot garlic bread.
As we ate, we talked.
Her name was Suzanne, and mine Stephen.
We sat back comfortably on the bed with our last cups of coffee.
You are very tactful, do you know, Stephen, she remarked.
Um?
I grunted, sipping.
Yes, because you didn't run off to use that new toothbrush.
I raised my eyes to look at her in the mirror.
I didn't really use yours, she went on.
I carry one in my purse.
I know men never kiss les putains.
To my immense relief, she changed the subject in the next sentence: Shall we go to the Louvre today?
All right.
I said with enthusiasm at the idea.
But not immediately.
I put aside my empty cup.
She smiled all the way to her wise, sad eyes, and drained her own.
We were not rushed.
What is this from?
I asked, touching the scar on her stomach.
It was like a long thin line drawn through a pink circle.
A bullet, she answered.
The cynicism was back in her eyes, a bitter wisdom, and I wondered if forty were not so far wrong after all.
She understood sex anyway, and played at it well.
We went to the Louvre for a few hours, then by Metro to a cabaret in Montmartre.
It was a nice place, not filled with smoke.
We had champagne and steamed mussels.
The sommelier brought the wine first, a magnum instead of the bottle I had ordered.
He must have thought I was a tourist.
I fixed him with a steely eye and said, What's this for?
I didn't ask for a Jeroboam of champagne.
I thought that was pretty humorous, but I didn't laugh.
Two letters had arrived for Miss Theresa Stubblefield: she put them in her bag.
She would not stop to read them in American Express, as many were doing, sitting on benches or leaning against the walls, but pushed her way out into the street.
This was her first day in Rome and it was June.
An enormous sky of the most delicate blue arched overhead.
Pictures in old Latin books returned to her: the Appian Way Today, the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine.
She would see them, looking just as they had in the books, and this would make up a part of her delight.
Moreover, nursing various Stubblefields--her aunt, then her mother, then her father--through their lengthy illnesses (everybody could tell you the Stubblefields were always sick), Theresa had had a chance to read quite a lot.
England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy had all been rendered for her time and again, and between the prescribed hours of pills and tonics, she had conceived a dreamy passion by lamplight, to see all these places with her own eyes.
The very night after her father's funeral she had thought, though never admitted to a soul: Now I can go.
There's nothing to stop me now.
So here it was, here was Italy, anyway, and terribly noisy.
In the street the traffic was really frightening.
Cars, taxis, buses, and motorscooters all went plunging at once down the narrow length of it or swerving perilously around a fountain.
Shoals of tourists went by her in national groups--English school girls in blue uniforms, German boys with cameras attached, smartly dressed Americans looking in shop windows.
Glad to be alone, Theresa climbed the splendid outdoor staircase that opened to her left.
The Spanish Steps.
Something special was going on here just now--the annual display of azalea plants.
She had heard about it the night before at her hotel.
It was not yet complete: workmen were unloading the potted plants from a truck and placing them in banked rows on the steps above.
The azaleas were as large as shrubs, and their myriad blooms, many still tight in the bud, ranged in color from purple through fuchsia and rose to the palest pink, along with many white ones too.
Marvelous, thought Theresa, climbing in her portly, well-bred way, for she was someone who had learned that if you only move slowly enough you have time to notice everything.
In Rome, all over Europe, she intended to move very slowly indeed.
Halfway up the staircase she stopped and sat down.
Other people were doing it, too, sitting all along the wide banisters and leaning over the parapets above, watching the azaleas mass, or just enjoying the sun.
Theresa sat with her letters in her lap, breathing Mediterranean air.
The sun warmed her, as it seemed to be warming everything, perhaps even the underside of stones or the chill insides of churches.
She loosened her tweed jacket and smoked a cigarette.
Content excited;
how could you be both at once?
Strange, but she was.
Presently, she picked up the first of the letters.
A few moments later her hands were trembling and her brow had contracted with anxiety and dismay.
Of course, one of them would have to go and do this!
Poor Cousin Elec, she thought, tears rising to sting in the sun, but why couldn't he have arranged to live through the summer?
And how on earth did I ever get this letter anyway?
She had reason indeed to wonder how the letter had managed to find her.
Her Cousin Emma Carraway had written it, in her loose high old lady's script--t's carefully crossed, but l's inclined to wobble like an old car on the downward slope.
Cousin Emma had simply put Miss Theresa Stubblefield, Rome, Italy, on the envelope, had walked up to the post office in Tuxapoka, Alabama, and mailed it with as much confidence as if it had been a birthday card to her next-door neighbor.
No return address whatsoever.
Somebody had scrawled American Express, Piazza di Spagna?
, across the envelope, and now Theresa had it, all as easily as if she had been the President of the Republic or the Pope.
Inside were all the things they thought she ought to know concerning the last illness, death, and burial of Cousin Alexander Carraway.
Cousin Emma and Cousin Elec, brother and sister--unmarried, devoted, aging--had lived next door to the Stubblefields in Tuxapoka from time immemorial until the Stubblefields had moved to Montgomery fifteen years ago.
I'm supposed to care as much now as then, as much here as there, she realized, with a sigh.
This letter would have got to me if she hadn't even put Rome, Italy, on it.
She refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and turned with relief to one from her brother George.
But alas George, when he had written, had only just returned from going to Tuxapoka to Cousin Elec's funeral.
He was full of heavy family reminiscence.
All the fine old stock was dying out, look at the world today.
His own children had suffered from the weakening of those values which he and Theresa had always taken for granted, and as for his grandchildren (he had one so far, still in diapers), he shuddered to think that the true meaning of character might never dawn on them at all.
A life of gentility and principle such as Cousin Elec had lived had to be known at first hand.
Poor George!
The only boy, the family darling.
Together with her mother, both of them tense with worry lest things should somehow go wrong.
Could it just be, Theresa wondered, that Anne had understood only too well, and that George all along was extraordinary only in the degree to which he was dull?
There they all did their uttermost to help Cousin Elec get a cramp out of his foot.
He had hobbled downstairs into the parlor, in his agony, and was sitting, wrapped in his bathrobe, on a footstool.
He held his long clenched foot in both hands, and this and his contorted face--he was trying heroically not to cry out--made him look like a large skinny old monkey.
They all surrounded him, the family circle, Theresa and George as solemn as if they were watching the cat have kittens, and Cousin Emma running back and forth with a kettle of hot water which she poured steaming into a white enamelled pan.
Can you think of anything to do?
She kept repeating.
I hate to call the doctor but if this keeps up I'll just have to!
Can you think of anything to do?
You might treat it like the hiccups, said Papa.
Drop a cold key down his back.
I just hope this happens to you someday, said Cousin Elec, who was not at his best.
Poor Cousin Elec, George said.
He was younger than Theresa: she remembered looking down and seeing his great round eyes, while at the same time she was dimly aware that her mother and father were not unamused.
Poor Cousin Elec.
Now, here they both were, still the same, George full of round-eyed woe, and Cousin Emma in despair.
Theresa shifted to a new page.
Of course (George's letter continued), there are practical problems to be considered.
Cousin Emma is alone in that big old house and won't hear to parting from it.
Robbie and Beryl tried their best to persuade her to come and stay with them, and Anne and I have told her she's more than welcome here, but I think she feels that she might be an imposition, especially as long as our Rosie is still in high school.
The other possibility is to make arrangements for her to let out one or two of the rooms to some teacher of good family or one of those solitary old ladies that Tuxapoka is populated with--Miss Edna Whittaker, for example.
But there is more in this than meets the eye.
A new bathroom would certainly have to be put in.
The wallpaper in the back bedroom is literally crumbling off.
(Theresa skipped a page of details about the house.
) I hope if you have any ideas along these lines you will write me about them.
I may settle on some makeshift arrangements for the summer and wait until you return in the fall so we can work out together the best.
I really shouldn't have smoked a cigarette so early in the day, thought Theresa, it always makes me sick.
I'll start sneezing in a minute, sitting on these cold steps.
She got up, standing uncertainly for a moment, then moving aside to let go past her, talking, a group of young men.
They wore shoes with pointed toes, odd to American eyes, and narrow trousers, and their hair looked unnaturally black and slick.
Yet here they were obviously thought to be handsome, and felt themselves to be so.
Just then a man approached her with a tray of cheap cameos, Parker fountain pens, rosaries, papal portraits.
No, said Theresa.
No, no!
She said.
The man did not wish to leave.
He knew how to spread himself against the borders of the space that had to separate them.
Carrozza rides in the park, the Colosseum by moonlight, he specialized.
Theresa turned away to escape, and climbed to a higher landing where the steps divided in two.
There she walked to the far left and leaned on a vacant section of banister, while the vendor picked himself another well-dressed American lady, carrying a camera and a handsome alligator bag, ascending the steps alone.
Was he ever successful, Theresa wondered.
The lady with the alligator bag registered interest, doubt, then indignation;
at last, alarm.
She cast about as though looking for a policeman: this really shouldn't be allowed!
Finally, she scurried away up the steps.
Theresa Stubblefield, still holding the family letters in one hand, realized that her whole trip to Europe was viewed in family circles as an interlude between Cousin Elec's death and doing something about Cousin Emma.
They were even, Anne and George, probably thinking themselves very considerate in not hinting that she really should cut out one or two countries and come home in August to get Cousin Emma's house ready before the teachers came to Tuxapoka in September.
Of course, it wasn't Anne and George's fault that one family crisis seemed to follow another, and weren't they always emphasizing that they really didn't know what they would do without Theresa?
The trouble is, Theresa thought, that while everything that happens there is supposed to matter supremely, nothing here is supposed even to exist.
They would not care if all of Europe were to sink into the ocean tomorrow.
It never registered with them that I had time to read all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation.
It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore.
She arranged the letters carefully, one on top of the other.
Then, with a motion so suddenly violent that she amazed herself, she tore them in two.
Signora?
She became aware that two Italian workmen, carrying a large azalea pot, were standing before her and wanted her to move so that they could begin arranging a new row of the display.
Mi diapiace, Signora, ma insomma.
Oh put it there!
She indicated a spot a little distance away.
I knew it as surely as everybody in Westfield--that Lucille was a husband stealer.
You can't keep that kind of information quiet in a town of only 4000-plus.
And I've been told that just about every town, no matter what its size, has its Lucille Warren.
Just as it has its Susan Dolan, though nobody'd ever bothered to tell me that.
Susan Dolan, that's me.
They even talked about Lucille down at the Young Christians' League where I spent a lot of time in Bible classes and helping out with the office work for our foreign mission.
I never heard my folks talk about her, though.
They were good-living religious people, and I can truthfully say I never heard them spread any gossip about anybody.
Even if they ever did say anything about people like Lucille Warren, I know they wouldn't have dreamed of saying it in front of me.
My folks and my faith protected me from things like that.
And so I was really upset the first time I discovered that my boy friend Johnnie was seeing Mrs. Warren.
I asked him about it one night while we were sitting in his truck.
I asked him if it was true.
He gave me a straight, honest answer.
Look, Sue baby, he'd said.
Much as I love you--well, a guy's a guy and Lucille's willing to--to come across.
Honest, kitten, that's all it is--I don't even like Lucille much.
I guess it was at that moment that I realized what I was up against in the person of Lucille Warren.
But it didn't seem fair.
My love for Johnnie was young and clean--how could I possibly compete with a woman like that, who didn't hesitate to use her sex.
Johnnie was a trucker with a small lumber outfit in a town about twenty miles away, and he was also pretty good at anything in the carpentry line.
It was a vivid, sharp February morning that Johnnie first made his appearance in my back yard, bringing some stuff Dad had ordered.
I wasn't in the habit of batting my eyes at delivery men, but the moment I saw Johnnie, I knew he was different.
He wasn't only different--he was it.
He had an easy masculine grace about him, the kind that kids don't have, but that I had sometimes admired in other older men.
His smile was quick, and his eyes held some promised secret that made my knees go limp.
The most unbelievable thing about the chance meeting was that he seemed interested in me, too.
I could hardly believe such good luck was mine.
And now Lucille Warren had gotten a look at him.
I guess she was between affairs or something, but anyway, she had set her sights on Johnnie, my Johnnie.
I didn't like it one bit.
But what could I do?
A man had to have his release--at least that's what the boys used to say in high school--and I wasn't providing it for Johnnie.
Neither was his wife.
She wouldn't have, even if he'd asked her.
But he wouldn't ask her--he wasn't the kind of man who would force his wife to submit to him against her will.
And he wouldn't leave her either--he'd told me that.
He was too honorable to leave his wife penniless and leave those helpless children without their daddy.
Johnnie loved me and wanted me.
But the only love I was giving him was the pure kind.
It was weeks before we even kissed for the first time.
Against my folks' wishes, we'd been seeing each other for short rides in the truck.
The rides were tame enough--mostly we talked.
But by the time the first crackling of spring came around, we both knew we were hopelessly in love.
Yet even then we did nothing much but talk, and maybe neck a little.
It's so crazy, I told him once.
I always imagined I would probably end up marrying a minister or somebody like that.
Somebody with no vices.
You know.
And you fall for a lumber jockey.
Who drinks far too much.
And smokes too much.
And, I was ticking off the items on my fingers, swears too much and goes out with the boys, whoever they are, too much, and who ever goes to church and won't even listen when I try to persuade him to come back to the fold.
He examined his nails carefully.
I could walk out the door.
Don't you dare.
And never show my face or my truck around here again.
He still wasn't looking at me.
You wouldn't.
Or I could visit Lucille Warren.
You wouldn't.
Please!
You wouldn't.
He shrugged noncommittally.
I might.
And now he was seeing her.
He'd just admitted it to me.
I huddled miserably beside him in the truck.
It was all my doing--his seeing her.
Johnnie and I had been innocent in our love, and that was the way I wanted to keep it.
At first, Johnnie hadn't understood--how could he, not being a religious person like me?
But then he had said, All right, kid, if that's how you want it, that's how it'll be.
But what had I done, trying to keep us pure?
I had driven him into the arms of that scheming woman.
I had just the same as delivered him into the hands of the Devil!
So one week later, I surrendered to him in the little motel on Route 10.
My very first time.
I was desperate to hold him, to give him whatever in this world he wanted or needed, and to keep him from the clutches of Lucille Warren.
And, though at the time I blushed to admit it even to myself, there was in me a growing desire, a sexual awareness, that Johnnie had set in motion, an awareness that no other man had ever triggered.
I wanted him, with a terrifying fierceness.
Astonishingly enough, it was my own voice I heard there in the darkness, begging this man to make love to me.
Love me, Johnnie.
I will, kitten!
Outside, in the summertime fields behind the motel, a thousand crickets serenaded us.
Will you always love me this way?
Uh huh.
Always.
Mmm.
And I snuggled closer to the man I loved.
It was as blissful and fulfilling a night as any bride ever experienced.
I had had no wedding ceremony, no witnesses, no certificate of marriage, but I had all the joy that goes with them.
Johnnie?
It can't be wrong, can it?
Not really.
Johnnie rose on one elbow.
Stop worrying.
It's never wrong if love is real.
I took great comfort from his words, and smiled to myself in the darkness.
Infinite peace, complete contentment.
Idiot's delight, I later discovered.
I felt no conflict between what I was doing and my strict religious upbringing.
I had always resisted the passes made at me by other kids, and many times I had thought about my love for Johnnie who, being thirty, brought a maturity to love that the kids around town could know nothing about.
I had also thought a lot about how God must look on true love, and so in a way I was keeping my promise to God, my promise to remain pure until I was married.
I was practically a bride, after all.
There would have been a ceremony if it had been possible.
Of this, I had no doubt.
Wouldn't Johnnie do practically anything in the world to insure my happiness?
Of course he would.
He'd not only told me so, he'd proved it.
It wasn't Johnnie's fault that he was hopelessly tied down to that frightful woman who did her best to make his life unbearable.
Just because he was honorable enough to want to continue supporting his two children, as any decent man would, that was no reason he should be denied his own small share of happiness too.
And if I could contribute to that, I'd do it.
The cost didn't matter.
No price is too high when true love is at stake.
And I had no doubts about how true this love was.
I'd never even petted with a boy, and after I met Johnnie he never touched me for the longest while, not until I all but threw myself at him.
He was plenty attentive, all right, but he behaved like a gentleman, and I figured that, emotionally, I was closer to his age than to my own eighteen and a half.
What could a mere twelve years matter?
It wasn't, I was sure, a difference in age that came between people, but a difference in maturity.
And hadn't I rescued him from Lucille Warren?
She'd have gotten him, if I hadn't stopped her.
After all, Lucille Warren was a husband-stealer from way back.
But I'd been a good girl and now God was blessing me with the gift of this magnificent man and the wondrous love we shared.
It was only fitting that we seek out whatever joy our union might bring.
Love me?
Uh-huh.
Love you.
Always and always, Johnnie?
Always.
Mmm.
Convention time in Boston.
A chill wind in the air and the narrow streets packed with snow.
From the entire eastern half of the nation they'd be coming, members of the Young Christians' League, and I'd been chosen to represent our chapter.
I had mixed emotions about going.
I'd been seeing Johnnie almost a year now, but I still didn't want to leave him for five whole days.
But I had looked forward so much to being with this church group.
I hadn't been doing as much work as I used to in Westfield and I felt funny about that and wanted to work harder than ever.
I wanted to just throw myself into the good works of this fine group.
So I went to Boston.
The first meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, a great big place where we were able to meet members from all the other states.
My cousin Alma, at whose home I was staying during the convention, introduced me to a group of young people from Rhode Island.
One of them was a very friendly, lovely fellow named Ronald, a boy about my age with slick, blond hair and dancing blue eyes.
He looked very different from Johnnie--in fact, he looked sort of like me.
I thought so, and he mentioned it, and Alma said so too.
After the meeting, there was going to be a party at someone's house.
I assumed Alma would get me there, but in the confusion of the meeting breaking up, we were separated.
Outside the hall, I anxiously looked around for her, then all at once there was a hand on my elbow.
Hey, there, beautiful twin of mine, Ronald said.
Need a pumpkin to get to the party?
I couldn't help laughing with him.
Well, I should find Alma--I began.
Alma, Schmalma.
Come along with me.
I went.
By the time we arrived, the party was already going strong.
A couple of the girls were laughing rather shrilly and I realized they were drinking.
My folks wouldn't dream of having alcohol in the house, so my first taste of it had been--of course--with Johnnie.
I hadn't liked it at first--it was bitter and burning.
But when Johnnie disguised the taste with ginger ale, I enjoyed it.
Of course I enjoyed 'most anything if I did it with Johnnie.
Johnnie I suddenly realized he'd been totally out of my thoughts all evening.
But that was only natural, I decided;
surely he was still resting snugly in my heart.
I don't see Alma anywhere, I said.
She's invisible tonight.
C'mon, let's find out where they're keeping the glasses.
I drew back.
I--I don't think so, Ronald.
Not for me.
Aw, come on.
No--really.
He shrugged.
Okay.
But at least come along while I get lubricated.
The kitchen was jammed.
Strange faces, most of them, and I wasn't even sure all of them had come from the League meeting.
Under normal circumstances, he had a certain bright-eyed all-American-boy charm, with great appeal for young ladies, old ladies, and dogs.
Today, he looked like an Astronaut who had left his vitamin pills on the bureau and spent six months in space: hollow eyes, hollow cheeks, hollow stomach.
Breakfast, he thought.
A shot of orange juice would make everything seem better.
He looked around his little Eden: bureau, bed, table, chair, two-burner stove.
Then he remembered.
You share a refrigerator, Mrs. Kirby had said, and somehow, at midnight, after the long drive from New York in pelting rain, that had sounded reasonable.
In the cold light of day, it seemed a lunatic arrangement.
Share bath, maybe--but share refrigerator?
She had explained it--something about summer people's eating out and not enough space in the units.
And where was the thing?
He remembered seeing it last night, when he put away his small store of bachelor-type eatables.
Ah, yes--his half of a refrigerator stood outside, on the curving veranda between Unit Number Three and Unit Number Four.
It was still raining, and Mrs. Kirby's cottages bloomed through the gray haze like the names they bore, vivid blue and green and magenta.
Charlie downed his orange juice and one of the long, skinny green pills, his spirits as damp as the day.
This vacation had seemed like a good idea last week, when his doctor had prescribed it.
Take a full month, the doctor had said.
Lots of sun, lots of rest.
The red pills are a vitamin-and-iron compound.
This is a sleeping capsule.
The others will make you a little more comfortable until you get it licked.
You young men get to be my age, you won't take flu so lightly.
Charlie had accepted the diagnosis without comment.
The doctor could call it anything from flu to beriberi;
but Charlie knew what was wrong with him and knew, too, that there was no pill to cure it.
He had loved and lost Vivian Wayne to somebody else, had watched her marry the somebody else, and had caught a bear of a cold by kissing the bride good-by forever, which was really piling it on.
He had caught, too, like an ailment, a confirmed distrust of women.
Once burned--scalded, really, because Vivian had given him every encouragement--forever shy.
From now on, his was going to be a man's world: the North Woods, duck blinds at dawning, beer and poker and male secretaries.
Meanwhile, he had this miserable cold, and as he leaned against the refrigerator, watching the rain make sandy puddles at his feet, the doctor's prescription for lots of sun seemed like a hollow mockery.
In these damp circumstances, he was an odds-on bet to develop pneumonia.
He looked up to see Mrs. Kirby, awesome in a black-and-yellow polka-dotted slicker, bearing down on him.
Three-day blow!
She bellowed triumphantly.
He had noticed before that the natives seemed to regard really filthy weather as a kind of Pyhrric victory over the tourists.
Fine, day after tomorrow, she added.
I hope so, he said.
I've got this cold.
Thought I'd bake it out in the sun.
Ah.
She studied him briefly.
You've got a peaked look.
Better get in out of the wet.
Charlie forbore to mention that the wet was somewhat universal, Peony being less than weatherproof.
As for its being fine, day after tomorrow, he had the unhappy conviction that it would never be fine again, with Vivian lost to him forever.
He could imagine her at this minute, honeymooning in Nassau with what's-his-name, lounging on golden sands, looking forward to a life of unalloyed bliss.
All Charlie could look forward to was a yellow pill at noon, a salami sandwich for lunch, and a lonely old age--if he lived that long.
He dozed, only to dream of Vivian, and woke, only to crash into the night table, bruising his other shin.
He took a yellow pill, only to choke on it, and went for the salami, only to find something alive in the refrigerator--something pink and fuzzy.
His first thought was that Mrs. Kirby, in her mania for color, had dyed a cat and that cat had somehow managed to open the refrigerator door and climb in;
but on further investigation, the thing proved to be a sweater, of the long-hair variety that sheds onto men's jackets--pale, pale pink and, according to the label, size thirty-four.
He thought about it for a minute, could find no reasonable explanation for the presence of a sweater in the refrigerator, got the salami, bread, and a Bermuda onion, and put the whole thing out of his mind.
Next morning, he found a note in the refrigerator.
Would you mind wrapping your onion?
Said this note.
The smell permeates everything!
Everything being the sweater, a lipstick case, and a squirt bottle of Kissin' Kare pink hand lotion.
The note paper was pink, too, and the handwriting small and dainty and utterly feminine.
Not that he had supposed, considering the evidence, that he was sharing this refrigerator with a member of the Beach Patrol.
He scrawled Sorry across the bottom of the note and then, against his better judgment, added: Don't you eat?
He didn't want to encourage anything here;
but on the other hand, he didn't want her swiping his salami.
Not onions, came the answer the following day.
Ugh.
Must have really smelled up her sweater, he thought, and wondered idly just why she kept the sweater fast-frozen.
But then, as he well knew, women are not guided by logic or common sense.
Take Vivian.
Yes, take Vivian.
Somebody had.
Now, if this were Vivian next door to him and if, for some obscure female reason, she kept her clothes in the refrigerator, they would not be pink.
They would be black or white or horse-blanket plaid, chic and splashy, like Vivian herself.
Pink, Vivian once had told him, was for baby girls, and grown-up girls who wore pink were subconsciously clinging to their infancy.
Why does this girl keep a sweater in the refrigerator?
He mused aloud.
Eh?
It was Mrs. Kirby, making her toilsome way along the veranda, laden with a clattery collection of mops, brushes, and pails.
What's that you say?
Oh, nothing.
Just glad the rain's stopped.
Oh, yes.
Just look at that sky.
Be a scorcher by afternoon.
I hope so.
I've got this cold.
So you said.
She scrutinized him.
My, you're peaked.
You want to watch out that you don't get burned to an ash, first sunny day.
I must remember to warn the girl next to you in Larkspur.
That pale kind's the worst.
That pale kind, Charlie thought.
Hardly an inviting description.
But then, neither was peaked.
He could hear Mrs. Kirby now, warning her pale guest against sunburn.
I spoke to the fellow next door, too, she might say.
He's that peaked kind.
Surely there was a better word.
Charlie looked in the mirror.
Run-down, iron-poor.
He looked more closely.
Frail, feeble--peaked.
Clearly, two damp days with the Bobbsey Twins had done him no good.
The sun, blazing hot as prophesied, was far from kind to Mrs. Kirby's varicolored properties.
This weekend, he thought, he would look around for some more subdued retreat, with Cape roses, maybe, at the door.
He could not imagine a flower's being brave enough to grow beside Peony, Larkspur, and the rest.
The sweater was gone from the refrigerator, and in its place was a large plastic bag, full of wet pink clothes.
No wonder she was so pale, wearing all those cold clothes.
He got a red pill and a beer and then, on impulse, transferred the rest of his salami to her side of the refrigerator and scrawled Be my guest on the wrapping.
It gave him a good feeling.
M-m-m.
Thanks, was her answer the next day.
The note was propped against his pill bottles and bore a postscript: You're not at all well, are you?
I've got this cold, he wrote.
Not that it was any of her business.
It's none of my business, said the next note, but my Aunt Elsie used to take lemon juice and honey in hot water for a cold, and she lived to be ninety-six.
I mean, she's still living, and she's ninety-six.
Why don't you try that?
I don't have a lemon.
He had to write very small to get it on the bottom of the scrap of paper.
By the next morning, she had turned the paper over.
Gee, neither do I.
Charlie grinned.
She didn't sound like a pale girl.
She sounded a little like a redhead.
But then, redheads are often pale.
He stuck his head in Mrs. Kirby's little rental office.
I guess that redhead next to me took your advice.
I haven't seen her on the beach.
You won't, if you're looking for a redhead.
She's got browny hair.
He spent that afternoon on the beach, looking for a pale, browny-haired girl in a pink bathing suit.
There were pink bathing suits on blondes, and browny-haired girls in red or black or green bathing suits.
There were a sprinkling of daring bikinis and a preponderance of glorified tank suits.
Up on a dune, he saw a girl, all by herself, sitting on a camp stool before an easel and absorbed in her painting.
He paid little attention to her because she was a redhead and because she was wearing white--one of those bulky, turtle-neck sweaters.
On the beach, there were pale girls and not-so-pale girls.
And he saw them all as he walked up and down.
At two that morning, he was still walking--up and down Peony, up and down the veranda, up and down the silent, moonlit beach.
Finally, in desperation, he opened the refrigerator, filched her hand lotion, and left a note.
I've got this sunburn, said the note, and I used some of your hand lotion.
Hope you don't mind.
Of course I don't mind, she answered.
You're having a miserable time, aren't you?
Use all the lotion you want, and for goodness' sake, stay in out of the sun for a couple of days.
This was a very warm, sympathetic girl, he decided.
Sympathy is a fine quality in a woman.
Now Vivian, for instance, was not too long on sympathy.
She felt, and said, that sympathy only made people feel sorry for themselves;
it was a tough world, and you had to be tough to hold your own.
He didn't know what was so tough about Vivian's world, slopping around Nassau with what's-his-name.
Suppose what's-his-name got a sunburn?
Charlie couldn't see Vivian offering any hand lotion.
She might peel him, once the worst of the agony was over.
Charlie spent the next two days in his pajama bottoms, waiting for the fire in his back to subside, and used generous quantities of the hand lotion.
Correspondence passed back and forth.
How's your sunburn now?
The only thing, this lotion has glycerin in it, and that whitens the skin, so if you're so anxious to get a tan, you may not want to use it.
I'm not that anxious, but maybe that's why you're so fair.
That Mrs. Kirby!
I'll bet she told you I was puny, too.
How's your cold?
Broiled out.
She didn't say you were puny.
Are you?
What's puny?
Puny goes with pale and peaked.
Do you have anything to read while you're shut up?
There are two things here about Surviving in the Wilderness, and a book called'Tom Swift and His Speedy Canoe ';
but the picture of Tom Swift is pretty sinister.
Also the canoe.
There was a crowd in the stands for a change and the sun was hot.
The new Riverside pitcher turned out to have an overhand fast ball that took a hop.
For a few innings the Anniston team couldn't figure him out.
Then, in the fifth, Anniston's kid catcher caught onto a curve and smacked the ball into left center field.
Eddie Lee, Riverside's redheaded playing manager, ran after the ball but it rolled past him.
Phil Rossoff cut over to center from left field to get the relay.
Eddie caught up with the ball near the fence and threw it to Phil.
Third!
Third base!
Eddie shouted.
Phil spun around and made an accurate throw into Mike Deegan's hands on third base.
Mike caught the ball just as the catcher slid into the bag.
But the Anniston boy had begun his slide too late.
He came into the bag with his body and Mike Deegan brought the ball down full in his face.
You bastard!
The Anniston catcher screamed.
He jumped to his feet and started to throw punches.
Mike Deegan tossed his glove away and began to swing at the catcher.
This brought in everybody from both sides, while the spectators stood up and added to the uproar.
The fighters were separated in a few minutes.
The game was resumed.
But Mike Deegan was boiling mad now.
When the inning was over he cursed the Anniston catcher all the way into the dugout.
Phil Rossoff, coming in from left field, stopped at the water fountain for a drink.
Mike Deegan was standing beside it, facing the field.
He was eyeing the Anniston catcher warming up his pitcher before the inning began.
Keep your eyes open, sonny!
Mike yelled to the catcher.
You're in for trouble.
The Anniston catcher did not reply with words.
He simply turned to Mike and smiled.
This so infuriated Deegan that he spun around and said: I'll get that little bastard.
So help me God, I'll get him.
Phil Rossoff said: Why don't you leave him alone?
Mind your own goddamn business, Mike Deegan said.
Phil shrugged.
He stepped into the dugout, wondering why Deegan was always looking for trouble.
Maybe the answer was in his eyes.
When Deegan smiled his eyes never fit in with his lips.
In the last of the sixth inning Mike Deegan got up to bat and hit a fast ball over the left fielder's head.
By the time the fielder got his hands on the ball Deegan was rounding third base and heading for home.
The left fielder threw and it was a good one.
But Mike had no chance of being tagged.
The Anniston catcher was straddling home plate.
All Deegan had to do was slide, fall away, but instead, he rammed into the catcher.
Both fell heavily to the ground.
Only Mike got to his feet.
He went back to touch home plate, turned and walked to the dugout without looking back.
The Anniston players and their manager ran out on the field.
They poured water over their catcher's face.
He did not move.
Then the manager called for a doctor.
The Riverside physician came down to look over the injured ballplayer.
Then, quickly, and a little nervously, the doctor ordered a couple of ballplayers to carry the catcher into the dressing room.
Mike Deegan was sitting on the bench, watching.
When the ballplayers started to carry the catcher off the field he said: That ought to teach the sonofabitch.
Phil Rossoff, seated next to Deegan, got up and moved to the other end of the bench.
The Anniston manager was coming over to the Riverside dugout.
He was followed by four of his men.
It began to look as if something was going to happen.
Mike sat quietly watching the manager come nearer.
Eddie Lee moved over to Mike Deegan's side.
No one said a word.
The Anniston manager came right up to the dugout in front of Mike.
His face was flushed.
Deegan, the manager said, his voice pitched low, quivering.
That was a rotten thing to do.
For God's sake, Mike said, waving the manager away.
Stop it, will you?
Tell your guys not to block the plate.
You didn't have to ram him.
That's what you say.
The Anniston manager looked at Eddie Lee.
It was a cold and calculated look.
He turned and went back across the field to his dugout.
He called in the pitcher who had been pitching, and a big, heavy, powerfully built right hander moved out to the mound for Anniston.
The game started again and in the eighth inning Mike Deegan came up to bat.
Everyone in the ball park seemed to be standing and shouting.
The first ball the hefty pitcher threw came in for Mike's head.
Deegan fell into the dirt, the ball going over him.
He arose slowly and brushed himself off.
He got back into the batter's box and on the next pitch dropped into the dirt again.
Hit the bum!
Somebody yelled from the Anniston bench.
In the Riverside dugout Frankie Ricco, shortstop, whispered into Phil's ear: There's gonna be a fight.
Look at those bastards!
Charlie Haydon, a pitcher, said.
They're looking for trouble.
Mike was slow getting into the box this time.
When he finally did he had to duck his head quickly away as the pitch came in.
Listen!
He shouted to the pitcher.
One more and I'm coming out there!
I'll be waiting!
The pitcher yelled back.
Mike Deegan pounded the rubber plate with the end of his bat.
He stood flat-footed in the box, but not very close to the plate now.
The pitcher wound up and the ball came in straight for Mike's head.
Deegan dropped, got up, turned and, holding the bat with both hands up against his chest, began to walk slowly out to the mound.
The pitcher tossed his glove away and came towards Mike Deegan.
They were both walking towards each other, unhurried.
Riverside and Anniston players rushed out on the field.
In the next moment, it seemed, the infield was crowded with spectators, ballplayers, cops, kids and a dog.
There was much shouting and screaming.
Fights sprang up and were quickly squelched.
Mike and the Anniston pitcher were pulled away before they even came together.
Phil Rossoff and two other Riverside players did not go out on the field when the fighting started.
After the game, Phil was taking off his sweatshirt in the dressing room when Mike Deegan came in.
It's a helluva thing, Mike said, looking at Phil, when a guy's own team-mate won't come out and help him in a fight.
Phil sighed and pulled the wet sweatshirt over his head.
Frankie Ricco sat down on the bench near Phil.
The other players were undressing quietly.
Eddie Lee had not come in yet.
Mike went over to Phil and stood over him.
Why the hell didn't you come out when you saw them gang up on me?
I didn't think it was necessary.
Well!
Now that's just fine!
You didn't think it was necessary.
Mike placed both his hands on his hips.
He pushed his jaw forward.
Listen, wise guy, if you think I'm gonna do all the fighting for this ball club you're crazy.
Mike had a good two inches over Phil and Phil had to look up into Mike's face.
I didn't ask you to fight for the ball club, Phil said slowly.
Nobody else did, either.
You trying to say I started the fight?
I'm not trying to say anything.
Phil turned away and opened his locker, and then he heard Mike Deegan say: You're yellow, Rossoff!
And Phil banged his locker door shut and spun around.
But before anything could happen Frankie Ricco was between them and Eddie Lee had come into the dressing room.
Phil, come into my office, Eddie said.
Phil followed Eddie into the office and shut the door.
He sat down before Eddie's desk.
I'm doing you a favor, Eddie said quickly.
You get your unconditional release as of today.
Phil's eyes widened just a trifle.
The best thing for you to do, Eddie said, is go home.
You don't belong in professional baseball.
Phil had to clear his throat.
Is this because of what happened out there?
No, Eddie said.
But it does confirm what I've suspected all along.
Phil stood up.
Listen!
This is the second time.
Sit down, sit down, Eddie said.
I'm not saying you're yellow.
I am saying you're not a professional ballplayer.
Eddie Lee leaned forward over the desk.
Now listen to me, Phil.
I'm not steering you wrong.
You haven't got the heart for baseball.
Phil shook his head and Eddie frowned.
Suddenly his voice grew hard.
What the hell do you think baseball is?
You're not in the big leagues, but if you can't give and take down here what the hell do you think it'll be like up there?
Phil started to say something but Eddie cut him short.
Now don't tell me what a good ball player you are.
I know you've got talent.
But what you haven't got is the heart to back up that talent with.
The heart, Phil.
You just haven't got the heart for pro-ball, and that's it.
Dazed, Phil said: I don't get it.
My batting average
Eddie stood up abruptly, then sat down just as abruptly.
What difference does your batting average make?
Or your fielding average.
Or even the way you run bases.
I tell you when it's necessary to hurt in order to win--you won't do it.
That's what I mean by no heart for the game.
Baseball's no cinch.
Deegan had no business ramming into that kid out there.
He did it because he knows for each guy he puts out of commission that's one less who might take his job away later on.
What the hell do you think baseball is?
A sport?
It's a way of life, goddamit!
And you've got to be ready to cut to ribbons anybody who wants to take your way of life away from you!
He's wrong!
Phil thought.
It's only his opinion.
There were other clubs in this league.
He stood up slowly.
He was a little pale and shaky.
His lips felt glued together.
I think you're wrong, Eddie, he said finally.
Eddie nodded.
Okay.
You'll get your pay in the morning.
Phil turned and left the room, hearing Eddie say: Someday you'll see I was right.
Phil shut the door behind him.
Outside in the dressing room, Frankie Ricco sat on the bench dressed in his street clothes.
What happened?
Frankie asked.
Phil said: I got my release.
You crazy?
Phil shrugged.
What for?
Phil sighed.
Frankie shook his head.
I don't get it.
I don't know, Phil said.
They were silent for a few moments.
Then Frankie said: What are you gonna do?
Phil started to take his clothes off and Frankie sat down on the bench again.
Phil took off one shoe and stared at it.
Don't take it like this, Frankie said.
Hell, plenty of guys get let out and come back later.
The leagues are full of guys like that.
Phil was very quiet.
What are you gonna do, Phil?
Phil did not answer.
Why not try another club?
Phil looked up.
What the hell right did Eddie have saying a thing like that?
Springfield's in tomorrow, Frankie said.
Talk to Whitey Jackson.
He just didn't know what he was talking about, saying a thing like that.
Will you do it, Phil?
Do what?
Ask Whitey for a job.
Phil nodded.
Sure, he said.
Springfield come in tomorrow?
Frankie nodded.
I'll speak to Whitey.
Atta boy.
I'll talk to him, all right.
Don't worry, Frankie said.
You'll get a job there.
He needs outfielders bad.
I'm not worried about it, Phil said.
That's the way to talk.
What else did Eddie have to say?
Nothing, Phil said.
Richard's next interest seemed the product of his insularity.
His broad reading took him into certain by-ways of religion and the subject of religion began to fascinate him.
When he was twelve he took to reading St. Augustine and Aquinas, then Lao-tse, Confucius, Mencius, Suzuki, Hindu tomes by endless Krishnaists and numerous socio-archaeological papers.
For his birthday, because Richard had seen them in a store and asked for them, his mother bought him the Zend-Avesta and a little image of the Indian god, Acala.
And one day, on her own, his mother came home with a present entitled The Book of the Dead, which she suspected Richard would enjoy.
He was enormously happy with her gift and smiled, then went to his room to read.
At dinner one night, when he was fourteen, Richard announced, There is only one god.
Did you think there were two?
Grinned his father.
You don't understand, Richard said gloomily.
Through quiet laughter his mother said, Don't speak to your father like that, Richard.
Richard seldom spoke anyhow and he didn't speak to his parents about religion again.
His interest in the formal study of religion waned when he was sixteen and he substituted for it an interest in Asian affairs.
Although he still didn't speak to anyone, he grew fond of saying, The future lies in Asia, when the opportunity arose, and when he graduated from high school his parents sent him to New York to give him a foundation, they said, for his life in Asian studies.
Richard was a solitary student in New York and acquired, in his remoteness, a thorough if bookish knowledge of Asian lore, literature, life, politics and history.
He was awarded a fellowship to continue his studies in Tokyo and he packed up his clothes, the biwa upon which he had been practicing and his image of Acala, and left to spend a week at home before leaving the country.
The week at home was not comfortable.
His mother, who had seen little of him for four years, appeared worried about his sailing off by himself for an Orient which, she herself having slight knowledge of it, had to be distrusted.
She seemed to work to grow close to her son in the few days he spent at home, talking to him about some of the more pleasant moments of his childhood and then trying to talk to him about those things in which he alone was interested.
Do you still have The Book of the Dead?
She asked him and, laughing, she added, I was nervous about buying a book with a title like that, but I knew you'd like it.
Yes, he lied to shorten the conversation, I still have it.
He was no longer able to relax in the presence of his parents and found it difficult to keep up a conversation with his mother or father, no matter the subject.
As for The Book of the Dead, it along with his other books on religion had been incarcerated in a furnace in the basement of the building in which he had lived in New York.
He had dusted each of the books carefully and carried them all to the basement and, trembling at having to open the big furnace, given them up to the flames.
Then he sped from the dark basement and returned to his room and cried.
Richard left America with his clothes, his biwa and his image of Acala and, on the freighter which took him to Japan, he plucked at the biwa, trying to make the sounds he wrought resemble an ancient Japanese tune he had once heard.
During his second week at sea he brought the curious melody out of the instrument and suddenly wanted to force the biwa to remain at just that moment in its history when it had given him pleasure.
He stole from his cabin late that night and crept out into a gusty North Pacific wind and dropped the biwa into the water.
It was so dark that he didn't see it hit the water and the noisy rush of the ocean kept him from hearing it.
It was as though the biwa had been eaten up by the wind.
In Tokyo Richard took up a life similar to that which he had lived in New York, except that he had replaced his biwa with a friend.
An American student named Charlotte Adams had refused to take notice of his evident aversion to people and had at last succeeded in getting him to talk to her.
He had nothing much to say to her but that he said anything seemed to please her and he accompanied her on some of her unusually searching tours of Tokyo.
In Charlotte, Richard saw a frankness and a zest for doing things which, after a fashion, he envied.
In time, he grew to depend upon her occasional company and she at length was able to encourage him to participate in more social activity.
She convinced him that he ought to be a member of some of the small tea-drinking parties she held at her rooms and in the end he complied with her wishes, although it was only rarely that he added anything to the random conversations.
At one such gathering Charlotte announced, I was at Ryusenji today.
Have you ever been to Ryusenji?
No one had.
Well, it's at Fudomae and there was a tan young man, quite naked, taking a shower in the pool.
I was thoroughly startled.
Three of the four persons present, all foreign students in Tokyo, had been playing a game of judging popular Japanese foods by the In and Out system, an equation in which Zen philosophy was used as the modifier.
Soba, udon and tea were In because they could be taken noisily.
Sushi was Out because it was pretentious.
Sashimi was In, Samuel Burns had suggested, because it was too far Out to stay Out, even if it was a little pretentious.
Richard had kept his eyes down throughout the game, the very sound of the chatter nearly painful to his ears.
He wasn't the least bit disturbed by my watching him, said Charlotte.
Did you watch him?
Asked a red-haired girl named Ceecee Witter.
I shouldn't have been able to do that.
Well I was able to do it, Charlotte said with no sign of irritation.
For a minute, anyhow.
I'm surprised no one has been there.
I've been there a number of times.
Sam, I thought you knew everything about Tokyo.
You've never been to Ryusenji?
I've heard about it, Samuel Burns said.
There's a little place there called Lovers Mound dedicated to Gompachi and Komurasaki.
Yes, a little parkish place, Charlotte said, and concluded, Anyhow, it's all very nice.
And the man who brought sweet potatoes into Kanto is buried there, next to a beautiful seated statue of Fudo.
Oh, that's what I meant to tell you.
This is the interesting part, Richard, she had a bothersome habit of trying to pull him into the talking.
There was that fellow out there in the bitter cold --
My God, it was cold today, said Samuel Burns.
Twenty-two or twenty-three.
And the water would be still colder, Ceecee seemed to shiver at the thought of it.
And your golden god, said Samuel Burns, probably went right home and poured himself into a boiling bath.
It would kill one of us.
But the point is, Charlotte said, there he was, freezing, naked in a little stream of water at Ryusenji, all in worship of Fudo, the god of fire.
Richard's dark eyes came up and seemed for the tiniest moment to reflect sharp light.
It was true;
Fudo, the god of wisdom, was also thought of as the Japanese version of Acala.
The conversation went on but Richard stopped listening.
He found himself trying to remember something, but he couldn't decide even the nature of what it was he worked to recall.
He had almost given up when he realized that the dropping of his biwa into the icy jowls of the black Pacific was the memory for which he had been searching.
Perhaps he sensed some connection between the incident on the freighter and the ascetic at Ryusenji, he was unable to put it together.
That night, after leaving Charlotte's apartment, Richard walked about for a time before returning to his room.
When he at last did go to his room, he couldn't sleep and instead paced up and down before his little image of Acala, thinking first of Charlotte's tale of the man at Ryusenji, then of his biwa and the invisible Pacific waters.
And the next morning, not sure of why he went, he took the train to Fudomae and walked to Ryusenji.
He was surprised by the sharp sensation he experienced as he approached the pool which Charlotte had mentioned.
He went through a gate to stand at the edge of the water and gazed at the two thin falls which dropped from large spigots high at the back of the pool.
On the hillside above was caged what might have been an incarnation of Fudo, or perhaps a demon.
The strange creature, housed in wire, made him shudder.
He left the pool and climbed the steep stone stairs to the temple, and the sense of familiarity with the place would not leave him.
Into a little well before the temple he dropped a hundred-yen coin and then he had an urge to sound the bell before the temple, to take hold of the rope and crash it against the circle of bronze;
but the spirit he wished to call out would not, he knew, come in the person of the temple priest.
Instead, he walked around the temple and mounted still another flight of stairs and stood before the seated Fudo at their head.
Then the flames were gone, the stillness fell upon the severe black face and Richard began to tremble violently.
Suddenly he emptied his pockets of all his coins and dropped them into the box before the seated Fudo and hurried back down both stairways and away from the temple, never looking back.
He walked all the miles back to his room.
He seemed to have picked up a virus that day, because the next morning he had a small cough and felt a bit hot.
He stayed home, reading and refusing to think about his frightening experience at Ryusenji.
But the process of refusing to think about it was an active reminder in itself and he couldn't rid himself of a consciousness of it throughout the day.
All of the elements of the experience were impossible and yet the reality of them was heavy upon him and he resolved never again to visit the temple at Fudomae.
I was thinking of the heat and of water that morning when I was plowing the stubble field far across the hill from the farm buildings.
It had grown hot early that day, and I hoped that the boy, my brother's son, would soon come across the broad black area of plowed ground, carrying the jar of cool water.
The boy usually was sent out at about that time with the water, and he always dragged an old snow-fence lath or a stick along, to play with.
He pretended that the lath was a tractor and he would drag it through the dirt and make buzzing, tractor sounds with his lips.
I almost ran over the snake before I could stop the tractor in time.
I had turned at the corner of the field and I had to look back to raise the plow and then to drop it again into the earth, and I was thinking of the boy and the water anyway, and when I looked again down the furrow, the snake was there.
It lay half in the furrow and half out, and the front wheels had rolled nearly up to it when I put in the clutch.
The tractor was heavily loaded with the weight of the plow turning the earth, and the tractor stopped instantly.
The snake slid slowly and with great care from the new ridge the plow had made, into the furrow and did not go any further.
I had never liked snakes much, I still had that kind of quick panic that I'd had as a child whenever I saw one, but this snake was clean and bright and very beautiful.
He was multi-colored and graceful and he lay in the furrow and moved his arched and tapered head only so slightly.
Go out of the furrow, snake, I said, but it did not move at all.
I pulled the throttle of the tractor in and out, hoping to frighten him with the noise, but the snake only flicked its black, forked tongue and faced the huge tractor wheel, without fright or concern.
I let the engine idle then, and I got down and went around the wheel and stood beside it.
My movement did frighten the snake and it raised its head and trailed delicately a couple of feet and stopped again, and its tongue was working very rapidly.
The colors were astonishing, clear and bright, and it was as if the body held a fire of its own, and the colors came through that transparent flesh and skin, vivid and alive and warm.
The eyes were clear and black and the slender body was arched slightly.
His flat and gracefully tapered head lifted as I looked at him and the black tongue slipped in and out of that solemn mouth.
You beauty, I said, I couldn't kill you.
You are much too beautiful.
I had killed snakes before, when I was younger, but there had been no animal like this one, and I knew it was unthinkable that an animal such as that should die.
The body caressed through my hands like cool satin, and my hands, usually tanned and dark, were pale beside it, and I asked it where the fire colors could come from the coolness of that body.
I lowered him so he would not fall and his body slid out onto the cool, newly-plowed earth, from between my pale hands.
The snake worked away very slowly and delicately and with a gorgeous kind of dignity and beauty, and he carried his head a little above the rolled clods.
The sharp, burning colors of his body stood brilliant and plain against the black soil, like a target.
I felt good and satisfied, looking at the snake.
It shone in its bright diamond color against the sun-burned stubble and the crumbled black clods of soil and against the paleness of myself.
The color and beauty of it were strange and wonderful and somehow alien, too, in that dry and dusty and uncolored field.
I got on the tractor again and I had to watch the plow closely because the field was drawn across the long hillside and even in that good soil there was a danger of rocks.
I had my back to the corner of the triangular field that pointed towards the house.
I saw it all at a glance.
The boy was there at the lower corner of the field, and he was in the plowed earth, stamping with ferocity and a kind of frenzied impatience.
Even at that distance, with no sound but the sound of the tractor, I could tell the fierce mark of brutality on the boy.
I could see the hunched-up shoulders, the savage determination, the dance of his feet as he ground the snake with his heels, and the pirouette of his arms as he whipped at it with the stick.
Stop it, I shouted, but the lumbering and mighty tractor roared on, above anything I could say.
I stopped the tractor and I shouted down to the boy, and I knew he could hear me, for the morning was clear and still, but he did not even hesitate in that brutal, murdering dance.
It was no use.
I drove the tractor on, not looking down there;
I was afraid to look for fear the evil might still be going on.
My head began to ache, and the fumes of the tractor began to bother my eyes, and I hated the job suddenly, and I thought, there are only moments when one sees beautiful things, and these are soon crushed, or they vanish.
I felt the anger mount within me.
The boy waited at the corner, with the jar of water held up to me in his hands, and the water had grown bubbly in the heat of the morning.
I knew the boy well.
He was eleven and we had done many things together.
He was a beautiful boy, really, with finely-spun blonde hair and a smooth and still effeminate face, and his eyelashes were long and dark and brushlike, and his eyes were blue.
He waited there and he smiled as the tractor came up, as he would smile on any other day.
He was my nephew, my brother's son, handsome and warm and newly-scrubbed, with happiness upon his face and his face resembled my brother's and mine as well.
I saw then, too, the stake driven straight and hard into the plowed soil, through something there where I had been not long before.
I stopped the tractor and climbed down and the boy came eagerly up to me.
Can I ride around with you?
He asked, as he often did, and I had as often let him be on the tractor beside me.
I looked closely at his eyes, and he was already innocent;
the killing was already forgotten in that clear mind of his.
No, you cannot, I said, pushing aside the water jar he offered to me.
I pointed to the splintered, upright stake.
Did you do that?
I asked.
Yes, he said, eagerly, beginning a kind of dance of excitement.
I killed a snake;
it was a big one.
He tried to take my hand to show me.
Why did you kill it?
Snakes are ugly and bad.
This snake was very beautiful.
Didn't you see how beautiful it was?
Snakes are ugly, he said again.
You saw the colors of it, didn't you?
Have you ever seen anything like it around here?
Snakes are ugly and bad, and it might have bitten somebody, and they would have died.
You know there are no poisonous snakes in this area.
This snake could not harm anything.
They eat chickens sometimes, the boy said.
They are ugly and they eat chickens and I hate snakes.
You are talking foolishly, I said.
You killed it because you wanted to kill it, for no other reason.
They're ugly and I hate them, the boy insisted.
Nobody likes snakes.
It was beautiful, I said, half to myself.
The boy skipped along beside me, and he was contented with what he had done.
The fire of the colors was gone;
there was a contorted ugliness now;
the colors of its back were dull and gray-looking, torn and smashed in, and dirty from the boy's shoes.
The beautifully-tapered head, so delicate and so cool, had been flattened as if in a vise, and the forked tongue splayed out of the twisted, torn mouth.
The snake was hideous, and I remembered, even then, the cool, bright fire of it only a little while before, and I thought perhaps the boy had always seen it dead and hideous like that, and had not even stopped to see the beauty of it in its life.
I wrenched the stake out, that the boy had driven through it in the thickest part of its body, between the colored diamond crystals.
I touched it and the coolness, the ice-feeling, was gone, and even then it moved a little, perhaps a tiny spasm of the dead muscles, and I hoped that it was truly dead, so that I would not have to kill it.
And then it moved a little more, and I knew the snake was dying, and I would have to kill it there.
The boy stood off a few feet and he had the stake again and he was racing innocently in circles, making the buzzing tractor sound with his lips.
I'm sorry, I thought to the snake, for you were beautiful.
I took the broken length of it around the tractor and I took one of the wrenches from the tool-kit and I struck its head, not looking at it, to kill it at last, for it could never live.
The boy came around behind me, dragging the stake.
It's a big snake, isn't it?
He said.
I'm going to tell everybody how big a snake I killed.
Don't you see what you have done?
I said.
Don't you see the difference now?
It's an ugly, terrible snake, he said.
He came up and was going to push at it with his heavy shoes.
I could see the happiness in the boy's eyes, the gleeful brutality.
Don't, I said.
I could have slapped the boy.
He looked up at me, puzzled, and he swayed his head from side to side.
I thought, you little brute, you nasty, selfish, little beast, with brutality already developed within that brain and in those eyes.
I wanted to slap his face, to wipe forever the insolence and brutal glee from his mouth, and I decided then, very suddenly, what I would do.
Cady didn't come unglued easily, but this had not been a day of glad tidings.
Tax worries, production worries, personnel worries, and the letter from Hanford College, his own alma mater, a real snapper.
Hanford realized he had enrolled his son four years ago.
Yes, the boy's credentials were in order--scholastic transcript, character references, picture, health record, successful college boards.
But due to the many applicants on file, would he co-operate and write a personal letter giving them his son's motivation, interests and his qualifications for leadership?
Cady Partlow lit his pipe with no comfort.
This was it.
This was the letter which would or would not enroll his son, David, in Hanford.
His son who had never held an office in any organization in the eighteen years of his life.
His son who did not know whether he wanted to be doctor, lawyer, merchant or chief.
He wondered if he had played it wrong.
Maybe he should have kept in touch.
Gone back for reunions.
But he had been busy building a business, being a big man in his own town just as he had been a big man at Hanford, Class of 1935.
Besides, Cady Partlow knew he wasn't the old-grad-type.
It wouldn't help anyway.
Look at Pete Alcorn, who hadn't missed a Hanford ball game in fifteen years.
Pete's son was rejected.
Hanford College, Little Ivy League, had no room for football players with low grades.
Cady looked at his own son's scholastic record with pride.
Good solid B average with a sprinkling of A's in math and science.
Imagine his son being that good in science!
Mr. Partlow could still feel a cold sweat on his slightly gray temples as he remembered what a near thing chemistry had been for him at Hanford.
But then, he hadn't studied very hard.
Getting elected president of the student body took a lot of time and politicking.
He put down his pipe and started to type.
In response to your letter, I can in good conscience recommend my son, David, in the field of leadership.
He stopped and looked at the picture of his son, the picture on his desk which had changed with the years from a laughing baby to a candidate for Hanford College.
He didn't have to be told his son looked like him.
David had the same gray eyes, high cheekbones, dark hair and a certain rugged ugliness.
Height, 6'.
Weight, 160.
Health, excellent.
He turned back to the typewriter with a little more confidence.
His interests range from astronomy and geology to electronics, tennis and swimming.
His chief motivation for enrolling at Hanford is the desire to --
Mr. Partlow banged his fist on the keyboard, ruining the letter.
He paced to the window and looked at the city he had helped to build.
How do you tell a college president that your son doesn't know what he wants to do?
That you have refused to drive him into the family business or push him into a profession so you can say at the club, Of course David has known since he was twelve he wanted to be an engineer--or a lawyer, or an editor?
How do you tell a college like Hanford that your son has a vast potential, that he will find himself?
Just give him time, give him a chance.
Cady snapped the Venetian blind shut and slammed himself down before the typewriter, rolled in a fresh sheet, and gave his letter the same savage attention he bestowed on a salesman who needed to have the bucket taken off his thick head.
What a production to make of a letter commending your own son!
His eyebrow went up in amusement at his soul-searching panic.
He told Hanford his son wanted to go into the field of electronics.
He told Hanford his son had participated in numerous high-school activities.
He belonged to a social club, a civic group, little theater, swimming team, and had been president of the student forum as well as treasurer of the science club.
He finished with a flurry of good wishes to Hanford College and signed the letter.
There, that did it.
Then he met the grave eyes of his wife, Anne, from the photograph next to David's.
He shoved the unsealed letter into his coat pocket.
Better show it to Anne and see if he had omitted anything.
After all, his wife had written most of his letters for him in those first lean days of Partlow Products.
Anne had a way with words.
Half of it was natural, half was Smith College.
Yet the whole of Anne was something she had never learned in any college.
A woman had it or she didn't.
Anne had it.
She said what she meant and let it be.
She never got on his back.
He could take the advice or leave it.
He whistled as he locked the office and grinned as he got on the elevator.
You look like you just heard a real gasser, Mr. Partlow.
Cady looked at Tom, who had taken him up and down for fifteen years.
I was just thinking how things have changed.
When I went to college they begged you to come.
Be our guest!
It's our pleasure!
Now you have to be well rounded, firm in motivation and pre-packed with knowledge!
Tom slid open the door to the lobby.
That's a fact, Mr. Partlow.
My John applied to six colleges before he got in.
Going to State?
No.
He's president of the rocket club here, you know.
Always messing around with science stuff.
Real bright along those lines, you might say.
He got a science scholarship to Yale.
Oh, said Mr. Partlow, that's fine, Tom.
Just fine.
As he drove home through the thinning traffic, Cady felt the unease growing.
He hadn't told anyone, but he, too, had applied to five colleges for David.
They had all turned down his son.
Weakness in leadership.
So sorry.
Limited interests.
So sorry.
No clear motivation.
So sorry.
He suddenly realized when he walked into his own pretty darned expensive house that he needed the Martini Anne had waiting for him.
But tonight his drink tasted like branch water and even his favorite meal of steak and tossed salad gave no surcease from the growing weight of the letter in his pocket.
Nor did looking at Anne ease the tension as it usually did.
He liked looking at Anne.
Most people did.
He liked her blond hair and the sprinkle of freckles across her nose.
From those navy-blue eyes she saw things as clearly and honestly as David did.
She always could sense the shag end of a woolly day.
Board meeting tonight, Cady?
No, I begged off.
Work to do.
Can I have the car, Dad?
Why not let him take it, Cady?
I know it is midweek, but it's only eight days before commencement.
Let's forget the rules.
Cady, deep in thought, neither heard nor answered.
David grinned.
Carefully he put down his steak knife and said loudly, Mr. Chairman!
Cady Partlow's head came up like that of the proverbial fire horse.
I'm sorry, Dave.
The car?
Of course you can have it.
Dave ate two pieces of pie as he did everything else, slowly, methodically and with interest.
Hear anything from Hanford yet, Dad?
Cady begged the question.
Don't worry about it, Dave.
Your acceptance will come through.
Dave shrugged on his sports coat and picked up the car keys.
Don't be too sure, Dad.
Charles Burke got turned down by Dartmouth and he is a straight-A student.
Anne said it wasn't surprising because Charles was antisocial, a lone wolf, and completely one-sided.
I can hardly say the same about you, Dave!
Dave kissed her lightly.
Girls, my dear parent, are here to stay!
Get my old man to bed early.
He looks a little bit frayed.
Anne waited until the door had slammed and picked up the coffeepot.
Let's go into the library.
You do seem somewhat tattered.
Cady trailed her with the coffee cups and settled into his favorite chair in the comfortable book-lined room.
I didn't know I looked so dilapidated!
Wrong word, darling.
Your fur has been rubbed the wrong way and you show it.
Need any help?
In a way, yes.
Hanford College hasn't decided on Dave's application yet.
They want a letter from me on his motives, interests and leadership.
Here's what I wrote.
Cady handed her the letter, drank his coffee and waited with what he suddenly realized was belligerence.
Already he could feel Anne's questioning eyes.
I know you wrote this in a hurry, but, Cady, Dave was only acting president of the student forum for a few days.
That was when half the school was down with flu.
But he was president.
And he wasn't really elected treasurer of the science club.
He just took over the week Bill Daley was in the state basketball play-off.
Cady stuck his jaw out.
The fact remains he was treasurer.
And the swimming team.
No, Cady, he made second team.
Just missed the first.
A team is a team, insisted Cady.
Anything else?
Yes, she said quietly.
I don't think you've been quite honest, Cady.
It isn't like you.
David's interests.
Astronomy.
He was mad about stars at the age of nine.
Geology, You and Dave used his rock collection for the bottom of the fishpond six years ago!
Those aren't his interests now.
What do you suggest?
Just say he likes swimming, tennis, chess and music.
Music!
He hasn't been to a symphony concert all season.
Anne smiled.
But he plays bass with Chief Crazy Horse and his Five Colts!
You mean that rock-and-roll combo?
Even in that he never solos like Jack on guitar or Rich on sax.
He's--he's just there, that's all.
Yes, he's just there.
He keeps the beat going.
He likes to play bass because he doesn't have to solo.
He doesn't like to rise and shine.
Don't worry, Cady, he'll be back in the Beethoven fold by next year.
Cady appeared slightly mollified.
All right.
But I refuse to be brutally honest and mention Chief Crazy Horse and his Five Colts.
Anne laughed and Cady felt the tension loosen its grip on the back of his neck.
Maybe I am padding it a bit, Anne, he said.
But you know how hard it is to get a boy into a good college.
He has to have leadership as well as grades.
Anne folded the worrisome document.
Did you know he is advertising his ham-radio equipment for sale this weekend?
He hasn't used it now for several years.
Can you really say his motivation for college is electronics?
Cady felt the jolt as though he had stepped off the curb on his heel.
And what would you say he wants to do?
Just what?
It's Dave who is applying to Hanford College.
Why don't you ask him?
For once Cady Partlow wished Anne would yell at him so he could yell back.
I have talked to him, but you know I've never tried to push him into any profession.
I won't be guilty of trying to run his life.
Anne picked up the towel she was hemming for the hospital guild.
Just because your father tried to make a banker out of you, you've leaned over backward to keep your hands off.
But subconsciously you've wanted him to conform to your mold.
You want him to be a leader of men, like you.
Cady put the well-worn chip back on his shoulder.
Dave has qualities of leadership.
He just hasn't developed them yet.
Give him time.
He never will, Cady.
Not the kind of leadership you mean, working with lots of people.
All your wishful thinking won't change that.
Remember what you used to say in the Army?
You can't run a war with ninety-nine generals and one private!
Cady walked the block to the mailbox, almost ashamed of himself for arguing with Anne.
Martin felt it was incredible that the situation had come to exist at all.
And once begun, had grown to such monstrous proportions.
The pair of white cotton shorts ruled his life.
Lying awake at night, he could see them, laid out on the floor of his mind.
When he rose in the morning, the image was still there.
He had always been a messy and negligent man.
In his bachelor days, his bedroom had been strewn with clothes which his mother, or later the hotel maid, generally saw fit to put in order.
No doubt Dolores resented following in their footsteps.
But it was fun those first days, kidding about the trail of garments he left littered across the rug.
There was an assertive maleness in his grinning refusal to pick them up.
Half slyly he enjoyed seeing her stoop to lift the things.
He remembered the first time he saw her, standing across the room at a party.
The smooth curve of her neck, very white against hair which curled against it like petals.
So he sought her out, and spoke to her, and thought of his hand in her hair.
Or against her back, pressed on the column of vertebrae, which held her so magnificently straight and unyielding, until the segments of bone made tiny sharp cracking noises, like the snapped stem of a tulip.
But, to put it bluntly, nothing snapped.
Yet that had not seriously troubled him, not then.
They married.
More he could take at leisure.
All Martin thought he needed was time: to what better use could time be put?
He saw later that they had made their marriage too quickly.
There was too little occasion beforehand for resistance, the brave strong delights of emotional clash and meeting.
They had left themselves too much to discover.
But, at the start, his new life felt invigorating.
Good.
It was on the tenth day after the wedding (how could it have been so soon?
) that he dropped the shorts on the floor.
Now, I'm not going to pick up those shorts!
Martin gave her a teasing pat.
I think you'll get tired of them there.
In the morning the shorts were where he had left them.
He smiled to himself, and decided not to mention them till Dolores did.
It was almost too easy.
For he had just remembered: tonight they were having their first guests.
The shorts would not be on the floor when he came home that evening.
He was wrong.
The rest of the bedroom had been groomed to a superhuman neatness, but in the middle of the carpet lay the disheveled shorts.
They gave the room a strange note of incongruity, like a mole on a beautiful face.
He saw that Dolores intended to wait until the last minute, thinking he would get nervous.
Quietly he determined to foil her.
I can be as stubborn as she can, he thought;
my nerves are as strong.
She'll rush to the bedroom when the doorbell rings.
It rang.
Ten minutes early.
Martin was standing a few feet from the front door.
He swung around, eyes toward the bedroom, some fifteen feet away.
Dolores stood motionless in the doorway.
He could not cross the living room, brush past her, and bend down to retrieve the shorts.
Martin turned his back.
He strode to answer the bell.
Bill's hat was deposited in the hall closet.
With the most casual and relaxed manner in the world, Dolores led Anthea to the bedroom.
Martin strained his ears.
At first he could not be sure.
Then he caught just enough to know that the shorts were still there.
A glissade of giggles slid over their voices.
All evening Anthea favored him with odd, coy looks.
Clearly she had been instructed not to say a word.
For some reason, this ellipsis in the conversation spread until it swallowed up every other topic.
At last there was a void no one could fill.
The Brainards went home early.
Martin realized, later on, that he should have had it out with Dolores that night.
As violently as possible.
But he was so taken aback, he could not believe any rage of his would make her give in.
On the contrary, it would only weaken his position if he fumed, while she stayed calm and adamant.
And if he surrendered after raving at her.
He shivered.
Suppose he ran up the white flag altogether?
At once.
He considered the sober possibility.
In his head was the echo of those titters with Anthea.
There was something about private feminine whisperings which always made him feel scabrous and unclean.
He remembered his mother gossiping with her neighborhood women friends, lowering her voice to a penetrating hoarseness which might be trusted to carry to the head of the stairs, where he crouched listening.
He could even recall the last time he sat there.
She was talking about him that time, because he had done some bad thing, something she disliked, but Afterwards Martin said he was sorry.
He apologized so sweetly, I couldn't keep being annoyed with him.
It wasn't even true that he'd said he was sorry that time;
he had in fact said simply that he wished the thing hadn't happened, which was as honest as he could put it.
But his mother told the story over and over, till her Martin said he was sorry was as much a part of her as the shape of her thin, pallid ears.
The battle had to be fought.
Let the best sex win.
But his resolution hardly seemed to help.
If the situation had been bad, it now got worse.
About this time people began dropping in, considering that the newly married had been left alone long enough.
Angrily Martin wished they had delayed the wedding and gone on a trip--preferably one that lasted months--instead of deciding not to postpone the date until he could get away.
Here they were at the mercy of anyone who chose to come by.
These stray people nearly always insisted on Dolores showing them around the apartment.
Of course, the tours of inspection included the ever-present shorts.
It was curious how the different visitors took this.
Some tried to ignore the blot on the bedroom's countenance.
Others asked.
Quite a few laughed.
To them all Dolores told a lighthearted and witty tale.
It's a little contest Martin and I have, she would begin gaily, carrying the anecdote through a frothy and deceptive course.
While he waited in the living room.
Once Martin went along.
They entered the bedroom, and Dolores said nothing.
Then one of the guests showed his merriment.
You were in a hurry, weren't you?
Martin would have liked to break the man's neck.
Dolores smiled;
she let the interpretation stand.
Now Martin heard himself give a snort of mock good nature.
With her eyes Dolores dared him for the truth, ready to begin: It's a little contest --
Never again did he enter into the ritual of showing the apartment.
They kept up a rigid pretense of speaking relations.
But Martin seldom felt the impulse to talk about anything.
What to talk about?
Dolores kept picking up any of his clothes (except the fatal shorts) which he left about, but he had been robbed of pleasure in scattering his possessions.
He fell into the habit of putting his clothes in drawers and closets, so his life might impinge as little as possible on hers.
The shorts alone remained.
In his moments of worst agony, Martin imagined what his friends were saying.
The sound of their amazement.
Bizarre: He could hear the word.
The most bizarre situation.
We were up to visit them and
He had thought her exactly what he wanted.
Six weeks of marriage and I'm using the past tense, he told himself furiously.
Pursuing his idea, he saw that it would be impossible to leave her now.
Everyone would know why;
he would cut a supremely ridiculous figure.
He was trapped.
Day and night Martin could not drag his mind from the dilemma he had made for himself.
His mind scurried frantically, seeking an exit.
Alternately he had periods of hostile defeatism in which he determined sullenly, morosely, to live out his life in this fashion.
Nothing would change, nothing would ever change.
When the solution finally came to him, one night while he was in bed, he was so shaken by its simplicity that he could only wonder why it had not occurred to him before.
In a frenzy of excitement, he considered his plan.
Beside his shorts, he would place something of hers.
Instantaneously he would have won an immeasurable moral victory, for if she picked up, say, a pair of her panties, she might just as well lift his shorts lying alongside--the expenditure of energy was almost the same.
He felt that it would be a particular humiliation to Dolores to pick up her own underwear which he had laid on the floor.
Furthermore, he could go on repeating the maneuver endlessly: every time he went in the bedroom, he could drop a slip or a brassiere, or maybe a girdle, next to his shorts.
Sooner or later, Dolores would crack.
On the other hand, if she didn't remove her own things, it would be difficult to explain to the parade of guests which traversed the apartment.
Martin guessed that Dolores would not be so eager to tell the next installment of her story.
The tale, he thought, would become less gay.
She had used his rumpled shorts as the very image of his childishness, his lack of control, his general male looseness, while she remained cool, airy, and untouched, the charming teacher who disciplined an unruly body.
To have her underclothes linked with his on the floor would draw her visibly into a struggle both bitter and absurd.
Something in the back of his mind was aware that the magnificence of the plan lay in his faith, that the idea would work because he believed in it, since his courage and virility were involved, because it was truly his.
The knowledge kept him from analyzing his scheme to death, and took him through the last hours of that night in a peace of exalted fanaticism.
The next morning, while Dolores was out of the room, he went to her bureau drawer, took out a pair of nylon lace pants, and tenderly dropped them next to his shorts.
He sat down on the bed.
In a surprisingly short time, Dolores appeared.
To his delight, her eyes focused at once upon the two garments.
Slowly and deliberately she reached down and touched the lace with her fingers, then hesitated for about a second.
Ah, he thought, she's going through the chain of reasoning which says she might really just as well pick up my shorts too.
He saw that in a moment she had grasped all the implications of a plot which had been weeks in occurring to him.
Extending her fingers another inch, she caught up the shorts, and swiftly left the room.
She did not look at him, but he noticed that her face was flushed and her eyes unsteady.
They breakfasted together, but Martin did not refer to his triumph, and Dolores found a great deal to do in the kitchen, bobbing up and down from the table so that talk was impossible.
Well, Martin thought, That'll save.
He left for work in high spirits.
As he relaxed that day, Martin realized how tense he had been these past weeks.
He found that he no longer hated Dolores (he knew how much he had hated her), and he was surprised at a resurgence of an affectionate feeling.
Good old A-Z, Cap said.
You know, I've got one of your cars at home.
As a prominent industrialist, you ought to be interested in his nibs' support group.
Isn't his racket down your alley?
Once it was, William thought.
But not any more.
A rush of memory swept him back, and he forgot Cap.
How did he start on such a ride to brief glory?
Simply enough, through the inadvertent agency of his brother-in-law.
General Hershey's draft and Doc Eddyman and Cap were responsible for his first eminence, but Fearless Freddy Bryan could take credit, if he cared to (and he did), for the second time.
Freddy needed a job, having been detached from a rather dangerous career in real estate and skyscraper financing by Gerry, and it was up to Arthur Willis to provide him with one.
Shortly after, Freddy had his usual proliferation of bold ideas.
Willis listened patiently, and once in a while William was exposed to them at a family gathering;
he generally heard Freddy's suggestions without interest, being absorbed by his own prospering concerns.
Probably Mr. Willis was influenced toward deeper involvement by familial loyalty and a concern for his grandchildren.
Gerry began to aid Freddy with her father, prodded, no doubt, by Joan's open contempt for Freddy and William's irritating competency.
Another factor must have been the eventual disposal of Willis' fortune;
she unquestionably assumed that the more he was entwined with Freddy, the more likely he was to reward Freddy richly upon his death.
Whatever the reasons, Willis and Bryan started expanding Zenith.
They acquired another electronics factory, a specialized ceramics company, an organization that built--very experimentally--high-speed research calculators.
Since they were hunting for national defense contracts, Adam Herberet, a man of surprising resources, entered the combination as a silent partner because of his political connections.
Feeling his power, Freddy looked for additional worlds to conquer.
Heavy industry, slanted toward inexhaustible government coffers, attracted him.
The Allstates Auto Company, a medium-sized firm which manufactured four-wheel-drive vehicles and other off-road equipment, had recently constructed an over-large, modern plant in a burst of misguided optimism.
Cursed with a shaky management and dissatisfied stockholders, it was ripe for amalgamation, and Freddy's instinct was to keep growing by stock mergers and small expenditure of cash, and never mind inevitable consequences.
With Herberet's blessing, he was convinced that Allstates' Wisconsin folly would be ideal for conversion to airplane sub-assembly, tanks, missiles or ordnance of some kind.
At that point William came into the picture.
Although not much desiring the account, he had been appointed advertising head of Zenith.
Freed of routine by having his own firm and a complaisant partner, his work in New York had given him a broader overall knowledge of business administration and corporate structure;
and if he wasn't entirely committed to what he did, he was at least fascinated by the chance of wider opportunities.
Mr. Willis, eager to have him allied with the family, wanted advice beyond the confines of his field, and William set out on a serious study of the situation, including trips to Wisconsin and Washington.
In the end, he said: I'm not enchanted by the proposition, sir.
I know a guy named Jack Hamrick, a very bright young engineer who was with Chrysler, and I took him with me to Allstates.
It's his expert opinion that the plant isn't well suited to what you have in mind.
The conversion will cost a fortune.
Besides that, I'm acquainted more or less with the defense hardware situation through my contacts in the Air Force.
I think Adam Herberet is guilty of being too hopeful and better informed on defense financing than on the technical side.
Missiles have thrown everything up for grabs, and nobody seems to be sure where we go from here.
The future of manned aircraft is in doubt, which affects government procurement, and jet transports have revolutionized the airline trade--one jet can take the place of three compound-engine planes.
This means the aircraft companies are going to tear into the government market, looking for anything they can get and making the competition tough.
Here are a few facts and figures I've assembled.
Can't you stay with what you have and wait till the dust settles?
Willis glanced at the bound pages given him and shrugged.
Well, he said, there is Freddy, you know.
And Gerry.
Freddy is deeply committed to our plans already.
He assures me he has people to handle the money raising, and Ham Richert, my lawyer, says the legal aspects of the wedding of Zenith and Allstates are no problem.
I don't like to exhibit the deadly dampening effect of an elderly man's caution.
Yes, I appreciate that.
I wish you wouldn't tell Freddy I'm lukewarm;
I've caused him trouble before, and he's beginning to resent me.
If we don't take care, the sisters will be entering the fray on opposite sides, brandishing their cudgels.
Which is a frightful prospect, Bill.
Willis laughed.
One shouldn't mix commercial affairs with patriarchy, but in this case I have no choice.
Let me think about it.
I'm most grateful to you, so grateful I wish you were my principal aide instead of Freddy.
Not to William's surprise, Freddy, Adam and Hamilton Richert prevailed;
allied to them was Gerry, devoting much time to swaying her father, and Joan dismissed all thought of the project and William was unwilling to interfere further.
Zenith absorbed Allstates, stock transfers were arranged, and Freddy became president of the hyphenated combination.
Through Jack Hamrick, William fell into the world of automobile promotion and got several accounts for Shoals and Clay.
He forgot about A-Z till, unhappily, he and Hamrick were proved correct.
Freddy's backing dropped away from him and Mr. Willis was forced to make up the deficit.
Adam, beset by changing defense conditions and the open secret that he was part of the new corporation, couldn't deliver from his end.
The Wisconsin plant turned out to be a white elephant.
Stock Willis held in abundance fell sharply in value.
Confronted by a grim future, Freddy lost his nerve and plumped for a drastic liquidation.
Once more Willis summoned William.
You were right, he said--you and your engineer--and I'm in something of a bind.
Freddy's solution doesn't appeal to me.
In addition to other defects, I'm a stubborn man and hate to admit to the common garden variety of bad judgment.
Will you see if you can help me?
William spent a long week end closeted with Hamrick.
Initially, Hamrick's reaction to A-Z going into the passenger car market was discouraging.
He thought the financing, the advertising, the production of new models, the founding of a nationwide chain of dealerships was simply too difficult.
Then he caught fire.
If A-Z could buy Ticonderoga cheaply and use their presses and dies and other equipment, if William could hit precisely the right promotion note, if the money hurdle was not insurmountable.
They took nearly a month to investigate, marshal statistics, and put their arguments down in black and white.
Taking Hamrick with him, William went to Mr. Willis.
He was surprised and dubious, but impressed by the engineer and the report.
Your alternative is breathtaking, he said, and, I'm frank in saying, a bit mad.
I wish I was younger and less timid.
Well, I can't resolve this myself.
I'll have to call in the brain trust.
Are you willing to run the gantlet?
I can't guarantee you a sympathetic audience.
We'll be in there swinging, William said, but in a way, sir, you've got to decide it yourself.
You have the controlling interest and the principal expenditure is yours--and, besides, nobody else is going to have the courage.
If they follow anyone, it'll have to be you.
He paused.
I should explain: there's more here for me than advocating my little dream, there's you.
You mustn't take a fall, or publicly back away.
I hate that.
You're--you're Arthur Willis.
Forgive the hearts and flowers theme.
I rather like the music, Willis replied quietly.
Thank you.
At the meeting, attended by Freddy, Richert, Herberet and the A-Z executive staff, with Mr. Willis presiding, William and Hamrick did indeed run the gantlet.
From shock and incredulity, most of the listeners went on to open resistance and animosity.
Oh, my God, Ham Richert said, a little child shall lead them.
Move over, General Motors.
It's absurd, Bill, Freddy said, from a pale face.
You're leading Dad down the garden path.
Your garden, God damn it!
William said.
I don't enjoy family quarrels, Adam said.
Nor crazy relatives.
We're here to transact business.
Can't we put an end to this, Arthur?
Hear me out, please, William begged.
I'm an advertising hustler, I admit, but I have to get hot once in a larger sphere.
Sure, Ticonderoga went broke in the low-priced market bucking the Big Three.
Their cars weren't small enough, they didn't have the power, they were old-fashioned.
They tried to sell 'em on economy and simple merit.
We've arrived at an age for romance and snobbery.
We've all been rich and spoiled long enough to hate the machine age.
Look what those little European jobs are doing.
We'll woo the consumer with a product, not bludgeon him with chromed excess length and weight.
Let's make it moonlight and the call of far places and a seduction, at reasonable rates.
Ticonderoga folded a few minutes too soon, before the tide changed, still honest and stupid--and the network of dealers the company had is around waiting to be signed up again--waiting for us, ready-made.
We've got rid of the steam yachts and Georgian houses, and the bloated, too-expensive automobile is next.
Why not come down smartly in the world, in a chic fashion, with an Allstates-Zenith?
He swayed them somewhat, but the debate raged on.
Financing emerged as the main obstacle.
Mr. Willis made it evident that he had contributed his maximum.
Nobody will underwrite it, I'm telling you, Freddy said.
I know what I'm talking about in that department.
There's plenty of risk money, Ham Richert added, but not for anything this risky.
All right, William said.
We'll try to swing the deal on that basis.
If we can't raise the capital, we're through.
Nothing has been lost.
You're up against it anyhow.
Why won't you give me a chance?
A silence fell.
Heads instinctively turned in Willis' direction.
He smiled at William and slowly rubbed his hands together.
I feel I must answer the question, he said, since the onus later, if any, should fall on me--I don't relish recriminations spread broadcast outside my family.
I'm not giving you a chance, Bill, but availing myself of your generous offer of assistance.
Good luck to you.
All the in-laws have got to have their day, Adam said, and glared at William and Freddy in turn.
Sweat started out on William's forehead, whether from relief or disquietude he could not tell.
Across the table, Hamrick saluted him jubilantly with an encircled thumb and forefinger.
Nobody else showed pleasure.
Spike-haired, burly, red-faced, decked with horn-rimmed glasses and an Ivy League suit, Jack Hamrick awaited William at the officers' club.
Hello, boss, he said, and grinned.
I suppose I can never expect to call you'General'after that Washington episode.
I'm afraid not.
It was among these that Hinkle identified a photograph of Barco!
For it seems that Barco, fancying himself a ladies' man (and why not, after seven marriages?
), had listed himself for Mormon Beard roles at the instigation of his fourth murder victim who had said: With your beard, dear, you ought to be in movies!
Mills secured Barco's photograph from the gentleman in charge, rushed to the Hollywood police station to report the theft, and less than five minutes later, detectives with his picture in hand were on the trail of Cal Barco.
On their way, they stopped at every gas station along the main boulevards to question the attendants.
Finally, at Ye Olde Gasse Filling Station on Avocado Avenue, they learned that their man, having paused to get oil for his car, had asked about the route to San Diego.
They headed in that direction and, at San Juan Capistrano By-the-Sea came upon Barco sitting in the quaint old Spanish Mission Drive-in, eating a hot tamale.
At the moment, Barco's back was to the road so he didn't see the detectives close in on his convertible which, in their quest for the stolen lap rug, they proceeded to search.
The robe, however, was missing, for by that time Barco had disposed of it at a pawnshop in Glendale.
The detectives placed Barco under arrest and, without informing him of the nature of the charge, took him back to Hollywood for questioning.
Thus it was that Barco, apprehended for mere larceny, now began to suspect that one or another of his murders had been uncovered.
During the return trip, Barco kept muttering to himself in meaningless phrases, such as: They're under sand dunes They're better off, I tell you I saved their souls.
The detective, commenting on Barco's behavior, felt that he merely belonged among the myriad citizens of our community who are mentally unhinged--that he was a more or less harmless nut!
However while in his cell awaiting trial for theft, Barco, in a fit of apprehension, made an attempt to take his own life.
The attempt had failed because, when endeavoring to cut his wrists, this murderer of seven women had fainted at the sight of blood.
The jail authorities--attaching no particular significance to the episode--offered Barco whisky to revive him;
but the old fellow, a lifelong teetotaler, refused it, and no more was thought of the matter.
Then it was that District Attorney Welch entered the case.
A man of vaulting ambition, with one eye on the mayorship of Los Angeles, nothing ever escaped him which might possibly lead to personal publicity.
It was reported to Welch's office that a thief in the city jail had attempted suicide.
Welch wanted to know why.
No one knew.
Now Welch had a pet theory that everyone is guilty of breaking more laws than he ever gets caught at.
The suicide attempt looked to him like an opportunity to put his theory to the test.
So he paid a call on Barco in his cell and began their chat by stating bluntly:
Barco, we've got the goods on you!
It'll be a lot better if you come clean.
At first Barco was evasive and shifty.
But with Welch's relentless pursuit of the subject, Barco finally broke and started confessing to one murder after another.
By the time Barco reached the count of three, the situation seemed to Welch almost too good to be true.
But if true, it was the case of which he had dreamed, the case which would throw him into headlines all over America as the hero of a great murder trial.
Welch summoned jail officials to Barco's cell.
But to Welch's chagrin, the police captain pooh-poohed Welch's credulity in Barco's confession.
Barco was clearly a nut.
It required strength, bravado, daring to commit murder.
That worm a murderer?
Ridiculous!
Then, for the first time since his arrest, a glint of spirit lit Barco's eyes.
His manhood had been attacked.
He stiffened and rose to his feet.
He'd show them!
Is that so?
He queried.
Well, for ten years I've been murdering women.
I can lead you to every one of the bodies, and there ain't four, nor five, nor six of 'em--there's seven!
The next day the police captain, in derision, organized what he termed Welch's Wild Goose Chase.
For indeed it seemed incredible that anyone could go on committing murder for ten years and not get caught at it, even in Hollywood.
The searching party consisted of the police captain, Welch, Barco, policemen with shovels, newspaper reporters, and cameramen.
Barco, his state of apprehension gone, never to return, had assumed a matter-of-factness which remained his principal attitude from that time on.
He directed the cortege of autos to the sand dunes near Santa Monica.
Stopping the cars at a fork in the road, he got out, paced off a certain distance to a spot between two shrub-covered sand hills, and indicated a location.
Orders were given to dig.
Nothing was found.
Welch was worried.
The police captain chortled.
The newspaper boys cracked jokes and again Barco's pride was aroused.
With greater precision he again paced off a location, this time a little more to the left.
With quibs and gibes, the policemen again started digging.
Welch was on edge.
The captain was remarking that it was a nice day for a picnic when finally one of the shovels struck an object.
There's something here!
Said the digger.
Joking stopped and everyone gathered around.
The digger, thrusting about with his shovel, now raised into view a package crudely wrapped in one of the murderer's Hollywood sport shirts.
Although it was a mere fragment of the victim's remains, it was enough.
Welch was wild with delight.
His elation grew as Barco's seven disclosures brought to light one reward after another.
Now did Welch truly become the man of the hour, and everything that followed in the procedure of Justice was a new triumph for him.
It went to his head, and his ambition increased.
It was apparent that Welch was in cahoots with Marshall and would use his power as D.A. to drag every possible sensation into the case.
Every new scandal which would provide more copy for Marshall's pen would thus mean more publicity for Welch.
I knew that both these cynics were waiting with impatience for the dramatic moment when Viola was called to the stand.
Once there, the D.A. with devilish cleverness would provide Marshall with headlines: Viola's Multiple Romances Viola Lake an Addict Downfall of Another Film Idol!
It would be fine publicity for the man who was willing to walk to the mayor's throne over the broken reputation of a helpless girl!
I studied Welch closely as the trial progressed for any hint which might give me a lead as to how he might be thwarted.
It wasn't long before I sensed that there was something deeper than overvaulting ambition back of his desire for Viola's destruction.
He was bitter and resentful toward her, personally resentful.
A dreadful fear entered my consciousness that perhaps he had entertained aspirations toward Viola's favors--or, even more serious perhaps, that he had attained a share of them and had then been superseded by some luckier chap.
I did not rest until I had tracked the mystery down.
Well, here it is.
One day over a year before, there had been a cocktail party in an apartment of a downtown hotel.
Viola had been urged to attend, by telephone, and not knowing the host or the character of the party, she had gone.
She arrived late and as she entered the party, noted that gentlemen seemed to be in the majority;
the air was thick with smoke, empty bottles were in evidence, and several of the guests were somewhat the worse for liquor.
Naturally, Viola had no wish to remain, but she felt she couldn't leave so soon after her arrival, in all politeness to her host.
And it so happened that adjacent to a couch on which she had taken refuge was a small table on which she noted a vase of red rosebuds;
while projecting from beneath the couch were a pair of feet which, as Fate would have it, belonged to District Attorney Welch.
As Viola sat there, a playful impulse overcame her to remove the shoes and socks from the unidentified feet and, as a prank, insert rosebuds between the toes.
He made his way to his host's bedroom where he carefully brushed himself off, neatly arranged his hair, and painstakingly selected his hat from the many on the bed.
Then, noting neither the absence of his footwear nor the presence of the rosebuds, he made his way to the Byzantine room and, with his usual dignity, mounted the rostrum.
The effect on the intellectuals among his audience may well be imagined.
The incident, aside from reflecting on Welch's political career, had all but wrecked his home life.
He never rested until he discovered who the culprit was, and when he did, he vowed vengeance on Viola Lake if ever the chance came his way.
And here it was!
By such innocent actions are human tragedies sometimes set in motion.
During these first days of the trial I didn't have as much time to commiserate with Viola as I should have liked.
In the first place, it was difficult for us to meet.
We couldn't be seen together, for the tongue of Scandal was ever ready to link our names, and the tongue of Scandal finds but one thing to say of the association of a man with a girl, no matter how innocent.
I couldn't invite Viola to our house, for Mother snobbishly refused to receive her.
Now the Czarship had not affected my own sense of social values, but Mother had attained a reflected glory through it, which had opened the doors of Los Angeles-Pasadena Society to her.
There, Mother was received by the scions of aristocratic lines which are dominated by the Budweisers (of beer derivation), the Chalmers (of underwear origin), and the Heinzes (whose forbears founded a nationally famous trade in pickles).
I hated being dragged into the salons of these aristocrats.
But Mother insisted, for it is seldom indeed that anyone remotely connected with the cinema is ever received in their exclusive midsts.
In fact, it was not until the King of Spain had visited at Pickfair that Mary and Doug were beckoned to cross the sacred barriers which separate Los Angeles and Pasadena from the hoi-polloi.
Mother even went so far as to trump up for me matrimonial opportunities with Pasadena debs who had been educated abroad, and with those of the more lenient Los Angeles area where a debutante was a girl who had been to high school.
But at long last came a time when I broke away from Mother and her society chi-chi in order to spend a cosy evening with Viola and her chaperon at her home.
However, such a hotbed of gossip had grown up during the trial, that every precaution had to be taken to keep my visit from being whispered to the world, Society, and even, alas, to my own mother.
When I arrived at Viola's I was shown, to my surprise, into the kitchen.
Viola greeted me, in checked apron, ladle in hand, and explained it was the cook's night out and that she herself was preparing dinner.
I sat and watched proceedings.
There was to be roast chicken with dressing, giblet gravy, asparagus, new peas with a sprig of mint, creamed onions, and mashed potatoes--all chosen, prepared, and cooked by Viola herself.
I realized that Hamlet was faced with an entirely different problem, but his agony could have been no greater.
The most that was accomplished was adding Mrs. Beige's tray to the dish pile, and by means of repeated threats, on an ascending scale, seeing that the girls dressed themselves, after a fashion.
I was saved from making the decision as the phone rang, and the girls were upon me instantly.
Here's a household hint: if you can't find your children, and get tired of calling them, pick up the phone.
No matter if your children are at the movies, in school, visiting their grandmother, or on a field trip in some distant city, they will be upon you magically within seconds after you pick up the phone.
Jennie and Miranda twined themselves around me, murmuring endearments.
Louise climbed onto a stool and clutched the hand with which I was trying to hold the phone, claiming my immediate attention on grounds of extreme emergency.
Somehow managing to get out a cool, poised, Won't you hold on a second, please, I covered up the mouthpiece, and with more warmth and less poise, gave a quick lecture on crime and punishment, mostly the latter, including Devil's Island and the remoter reaches of Siberia.
I promised to illustrate the lecture, if they so much as breathed till after the call was completed.
Speaking into the phone again and recognizing the caller, I resumed my everyday voice.
Soon we were deep in a conversation that was interrupted many times by little things like Jennie's holding her breath and pretending to black out, Miranda's dumping the contents of the sugar bowl on the table, and various screeches, thuds, and giggles.
Under the circumstances, I had difficulty keeping up with the conversation on the phone, but when I hung up I was reasonably certain that Francesca had wanted to remind me of our town meeting the next evening, and how important it was that Hank and I be there.
I discovered that the girls had shrewdly vacated the kitchen, and were playing quietly in the living room.
It seemed that I would be the gainer if I accepted the peace and quiet, instead of carrying out my threats.
Resolving to get something done, I started in on the dishes.
No.
I'm not saying it right.
What I meant to say was that I started to start in on the dishes by gathering them all together in the kitchen sink.
They looked so formidable, however, so demanding, that I found myself staring at them in dismay and starting to woolgather again, this time about Francesca and her husband.
How about them, I thought.
Francesca and Herbert were among the few people we knew in Catatonia.
We didn't even know them till about a month after we moved--at that time, they had called on us, after I met Fran at a PTA meeting, and had taken us in hand socially.
They had been kind to us and we were indebted to them for one or two pleasant dinners, and for information as to where to shop, which dentist, doctor, plumber, and sitter to call (not that there was much of a choice, since Catatonia was just a village;
the yellow pages of the telephone book were amazingly thin).
They were personalities.
Herb, an expert on narrow ties, thin lapels, and swatches, was men's fashion editor of Parvenu, the weekly magazine with the tremendous circulation.
Fran and he had met about two years after she had arrived in Manhattan from Nebraska, or was it Wyoming?
She was the daughter and sole heiress of either a cattle baron or an oil millionaire and, having arrived in New York with a big bank roll, became a dabbler in various fields.
She patronized Greenwich Village artists for awhile, then put some money into a Broadway show which was successful (terrible, but successful).
It was during her writing period that she and Herb met and decided that they were in love.
They were married at a lavish ceremony which was duly recorded in Parvenu and all other magazines and newspapers, and then they honeymooned in Bermuda.
No, not Bermuda.
Bermuda was not in style that year.
They had honeymooned in Rome;
everyone was very high on Rome that year.
They had bought their house in Catatonia after investigating all the regions of suburbia surrounding New York;
they had chosen Catatonia because of its reputation for excellent schools, beaches, and abundance of names.
You are bound to get involved with people when you have children, Fran had told me at our first meeting, so it is good to know that those with whom you get involved are not just dreary little housewives and dull husbands, but People Who Do Things.
I admired their easy way of doing things but I couldn't escape an uneasiness at their way of always doing the right things.
Their house was a centuries-old Colonial which they had had restored (guided by an eminent architect) and updated, and added on to.
It had a gourmet's corner (instead of a kitchen), a breakfast room, a luncheon room, a dining room, a sitting room, a room for standing up, a party room, dressing rooms for everybody, even a room for mud.
It was all set up so there would be no dust anywhere and so that their children would color in the coloring room, paint in the painting room, play with blocks in the block house, and do all the other things in the proper rooms at exactly the right time.
Their two boys were well adjusted and, like their parents, always did the right thing at the right time and damn the consequences.
Francesca and Herbert considered themselves violently nonconformist and showed the world they were by filling their Colonial house with contemporary furniture and paintings and other art objects (expensive, but not necessarily valuable, contemporary things).
Fran flaunted her independence by rebelling against the Catatonia uniform of Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks by wearing Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks in colors;
bright pinks and plaids and vivid stripes.
Sometimes she even wore the uniform in solid, unrelieved black, and with her blonde hair cut so closely, wearing this uniform, she strongly resembled a member of the SS..
No one could dislike them, I thought.
Sometimes, though, they did not seem quite human.
It seemed, indeed, that their house was not so much a home, but rather a perfect stage set, and that they were actors who had been handed fat roles in a successful play, and had talent enough to fill the roles competently, with nice understatement.
Practically the only enthusiasm they showed was when they were discussing names;
even brand names.
You should hear the reverence in Fran's voice when she said Baccarat or Steuben or Madame Alexander.
She always let it be known that there was wine in the pot roast or that the chicken had been marinated in brandy, and that Koussevitzky's second cousin was an intimate of theirs.
I wouldn't have wasted time puzzling over this couple were it not for my fear that all the other inhabitants of Catatonia were equally unreal.
I couldn't feel at home among them.
Besides Francesca, there was Blanche.
Francesca was pleasant and charming, but Blanche was sweet.
Yes, Blanche was very, very sweet--being in her company was like being drowned in warm, melted marshmallows.
I had once been a witness when Blanche had smiled and said with only minimum ruefulness, Oh, my souffle has collapsed.
Anyone knows how a real, red-blooded woman would react to such a catastrophe!
If Blanche had been honest, she would have yelled, slammed at least a couple of doors, and thrown a few little, valueless things.
But dear me, no;
not Blanche.
After five minutes with Blanche, one might welcome the astringency of Grazie, who was a sort of Gwen Cafritz to Francesca's Perle Mesta.
Francesca and Grazie were habitual committee chairmen and they usually managed to be elected co-chairmen, equal bosses, of whatever PTA or civic project was being launched.
They were inseparable, not because they were fond of each other, but because they wanted to keep an eye on each other, as they were keen rivals for social leadership.
Grazie was mean: quietly mean, and bitterly, unfunnily sarcastic.
She it was who had looked to see if I was wearing shoes upon learning that I couldn't drive.
Grazie had a small, slick head and her hair and skin were the color of golden toast.
She lived in an ultra-modern house whose decoration, appointments, paint, and even pets were chosen to complement her coloring;
the pets were a couple of Siamese cats.
Her uniform was of rich, raw silk, in a shade which matched her hair, skin, housepaint, and cats, and since she was so thin as to be almost shapeless, she rather resembled a frozen fish stick.
The husbands of these women and others I had met in Catatonia were distinguished only in that they were, to me at least, indistinguishable.
I couldn't tell one from the other.
Like Herbert, they were all in communications: radio, television, magazines, and advertising.
One or two were writers of books;
all were fellows of finite charm.
Each had developed a hair-trigger chuckle and the habit of saying zounds!
In deference to country-squirehood.
I never thought I'd live to hear people chuckle and say zounds!
In real life.
I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
They were sincere--men of the too-hearty handclasp and the urgent smile.
These boys acknowledged an introduction to anybody by gently pressing one of his hands in both of theirs, while they gazed, misty-eyed with care, into the eyes of the person they were meeting.
Could such unadulterated love, for a total stranger, be credited?
They were always leaping to light cigarettes, open car doors, fill plates or glasses, and I mistrusted the whole lot of them to the same degree that I mistrusted bake shops that called themselves Sanitary Bake Shops.
Pioneers!
I thought, and wondered what kind of homesteads such odd pioneers would establish in this suburban frontier;
pioneers who looked like off-duty gardeners even at parent-teacher conferences and who never called the school principal Mister.
I sighed, thinking that among other things, people here seemed to be those who would have to cut down if they earned less than $85,000 yearly;
people who would give their teeth for a chance to get on Person to Person;
people who thought it was nice to be important, but not important to be nice;
who were more ingratiating than gracious, more personalities than persons.
In my estimation, they were people who read Daphne du Maurier, and discussed Kafka;
well, not discussed him exactly, but said, Kafka!
Reverently and raised their eyes, as if they were at a loss to describe how they felt about Kafka, which they were, because they had no opinions about Kafka, not having read Kafka.
They were, I felt, people invariably trying to prove not who, but what they were, and trying to determine what, not who, others were.
Becoming aware that it was nearly lunchtime, I brought myself back to the tasks at hand.
I made plans for the afternoon--doing the breakfast and luncheon dishes all at once, making the beds, and then maybe painting the kitchen.
Then, I remembered that the girls had had a banana for dessert every day for the last week.
Bananas!
Jennie had shouted each time.
They're not dessert!
They're not even food.
They're just something you're supposed to put on cereal for breakfast.
I dug around and found a mix, and was able to surprise them with a devil's-food cake with chocolate icing.
(Sometimes I think you need only one rule for cooking: if you can't put garlic in it, put chocolate in it.
The cake was received in a stunned silence that was evidence in itself of the dearth of taste thrills Mama had been providing.
Then Jennie closed her eyes, stretched forth her arms, and said: Take my hand, Louise;
I'm a stranger in paradise.
Needless to say, I was furious at this unparalleled intrusion upon free enterprise.
How dared they demand to snoop in private financial records, disbursements, confidential contracts and agreements?
My impassioned plea for civil rights created a landslide of correspondence and one sponsor even asked me to consider replacing the Eddie Cantor comedy hour on a permanent basis.
But what quarter could a poor defenseless woman expect from a dictator who would even make so bold as to close all of the banks in our great nation?
The savage barbarian hordes of red Russian Communism descended on the Athens that was mighty Metronome, sacking and despoiling with their Bolshevistic battle cry of Soak the rich '!
I was also publicly reprimanded, dragged through the mud by the radical press and made a figure of fun by such leftist publications as The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time and The Christian Science Monitor.
It was then that I availed myself of the rights of a citizen and declared the income tax unconstitutional.
The litigation was costly and seemingly endless.
I fought like a tigress but by the time I appealed my case to the Supreme Court (1937), Mr. Roosevelt and his henchmen had done their dirty work all too well, even going so far as to attempt to pack the highest tribunal in the land in order to defeat little me.
Presidential coercion had succeeded not only in poisoning the courtiers, toadies and sycophants of the bench against me, but it had been so far-reaching as to discourage any lawyer in the nation from representing me!
I was ready, like Portia, to present my own brief.
But the Supreme Court wouldn't even hear my case!
My plea was unanimously voted down and thrown out.
Again, my name was on all the front pages.
I was, it seemed, persona non grata in every quarter, but not entirely without a staunch following of noted political thinkers and students of jurisprudence.
As Charles Evans Hughes said, Miss Poitrine's limitations as an actress are exceeded only by her logic as a litigant.
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying: The workings of the woman's mind amaze me.
Henry Ford spoke of me as utterly astounding.
Heywood Broun wrote: Belle Poitrine is the most original thinker since Caligula, and even F.D.R. had to concede that if the rest of this nation showed the foresight and patriotism of Miss Poitrine, America would rapidly resemble ancient Babylon and Nineveh.
Not only were the court costs prohibitive, but I was subjected to crippling fines, in addition to usurious interest on the unpaid debts which the government claimed that Metronome and I owed--a severe financial blow.
Nor, as Manny said, had the notoriety done my career any good.
My enemies were only too anxious to level against me such charges as reactionary, robber baroness, and even traitor!
Traitor indeed!
Needless to say, my art suffered drastically during this turbulent period.
Could it do otherwise?
Even though I have always had a genius for throwing myself into every role and playing it for all it's worth, no actress can be expected to do her best work when her fortune, her reputation, her livelihood, her home and her nation itself are all imperilled.
Such sweeping distractions are hardly conducive to Oscar winning performances.
I tried my hardest, with little help, may I say, from my husband and leading man, but somehow the outside pressures were too severe.
Having (through my unflagging effort and devotion) achieved stardom, a fortune and a world-renowned wife at an age when most young men are casting their first vote, Letch proceeded to neglect them all.
As for his finances, I was never privileged to know exactly how much money Letch had salted away.
It was I who paid for our little home, the food, the liquor, the servants--even Letch's bills at his tailor and the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
Never once did he buy me a single gift and for our third anniversary he gave me a dislocated jaw.
(But that is another story.
) As for his private monies, they were rapidly dissipated in drinking, gaming and carousing.
And at three different times during our turbulent marriage strange girls, with the commonest of accents, telephoned to announce to me that Letch had sired their unborn children!
Having the deepest of maternal instincts, my heart fairly bled when I thought of the darling pink and white bundles from heaven I would have proudly given my husband.
Ah, you're too old, was invariably his ungallant and untrue retort whenever I suggested starting a family.
Letch had made it abundantly clear that he did not care for the company of my own precious daughter.
I now felt it wiser to keep Baby-dear in school and--during the summers--at a camp run by the Society of Friends all year around.
Her presence only made Letch more distant and irritable and, in the hurry of buying Chateau Belletch, I had neglected to consider a room for Baby-dear, so there was no place to put her, anyhow.
(I sometimes feel that God, in His infinite wisdom, wants us to have these inexplicable little lapses of memory.
It almost always works out for the best.
Yet I adored this man, Letch Feeley, why, I cannot say.
With faint heart and a brave smile, I endured his long absences from Chateau Belletch, his coldness, his indifference, his slights and his abuse.
The times I can recall when I was publicly humiliated by him--lovely dinner parties in our Trianon Suite where the collation was postponed and postponed and postponed, only to be served dry and overcooked at a table where the host's chair was vacant;
a splash party at the new pool, which I had built in the hope of keeping Letch away from public beaches, when Letch and a certain Aquacutie stayed underwater together for the better part of an hour;
a lovely Epiphany party at Errol Flynn's, on which sacred occasion Letch stole away with an unknown starlet, leaving me high and dry to get home as best I could.
These are but a sampling of the insults I endured.
As Letch's antisocial conduct increased, our invitations decreased and my heart was in my mouth whenever I played hostess at a fashionable screenland gathering.
Between 1935 and 1939 Letch and I made ten films together, each less successful, both artistically and commercially, than the one before it.
Our last joint venture, Sainted Lady, a deeply religious film based on the life of Mother Cabrini, and timed so that its release date would coincide with the beatification of America's first saint in November, 1938, was a fiasco from start to finish.
As I was playing Mother Cabrini, the picture was actually all mine, with nearly every scene built around me.
But in order to keep Letch in the public eye and out of trouble, I wrote in a part especially for him--that of a dashing ruffian who sees the light and is saved by the inspiring example of Mother Cabrini.
And did he appreciate my efforts on his behalf?
Did he trouble to memorize the very small part which I had tailor-made to his specifications, a role eventually cut down to three short speeches?
Did he show the rest of the cast--numbering four thousand--the consideration of arriving at the studio punctually--or even at all?
He did not!
The shooting went on for eight months!
Most of our working days were spent on the telephone calling bookies, illegal gambling dens, a certain residential club for young actresses, more than a hundred different bars or the steam room of the athletic club.
Whenever he deigned to appear at the studio he was hung over, uncooperative, rude and insulting.
He made many tasteless, irreverent and unfunny remarks, not only about me in the title role, but about religion in general.
By the time the film was released we were three million dollars over-spent, war was imminent and the public apparently had forgotten all about Mother Cabrini.
Thanks to Letch Feeley and the terrible strain he imposed on me, the notices were few and unfavorable.
Only George Santayana seemed to understand and appreciate the film when he wrote: Miss Poitrine has perpetrated the most eloquent argument for the Protestant faith yet unleashed by Hollywood.
But it was small consolation.
In a rare fit of anger and spite, I farmed out my own husband to a small and most undistinguished studio to make one picture as a form of punishment.
(An actor must have discipline.
) The film was called The Diet of Worms, which I felt was just what Letch deserved.
It turned out to be a life of Martin Luther, of all things!
It was a disaster!
In clothes, Letch simply did not project.
He was laughed off the screen.
It was a potboiler made on a shoestring and not the sort of film I like, as all I had to do was look blank and scream a great deal.
My heart was not in it, but, oddly enough, it remains the most financially successful picture of my career.
(I watched it on television late one night last week and it stands up remarkably well, even twenty years later.
Letch had returned from his debacle unrepentant and more badly behaved than before.
I really loved that boy, and, in a feverish attempt to preserve our marriage and to try to revive the wonderful, wonderful person Letch had once been, I took my troubles to Momma, hoping that her earthy advice would help me.
If I could only think of something at the studio, near me, to absorb his boundless energy, I said.
What is Letch interested in?
Bookies, booze and babes, Momma said bluntly.
Her reply stung me, but this was too important to let my hurt make any difference.
I can't turn the studio into a gambling hell or a saloon, I said.
Up to date, however, his garden was still more or less of a mess, he hadn't even started his workshop and if there was a meadow pond in the neighborhood he hadn't found it.
It wasn't his fault that these things were so.
The difficulty was that each day seemed to produce its quota of details which must be cleaned up immediately.
As a result, life had become a kind of continuous make-ready.
Once he disposed of these items which screamed so harshly for attention, he could undertake the things which really counted.
Then, at last, his day would fall into an ordered pattern and he would be free to read, or garden or just wander through the woods in the late afternoon, accompanied by his dogs.
His dogs?
He had almost forgotten them, although they had played such an important part in his early dreams.
Then they had always been romping around him on these walks, yelping with delight, dashing off into the bushes on fruitless hunting expeditions, returning to jump up on him triumphantly with muddy paws.
Dogs did something to one's ego.
They were constantly assuring you that you were one of the world's great guys.
Regardless of how much of a slob you knew yourself to be, you could be certain they would never find out--and even if they did it would make no difference.
Now it became increasingly apparent that there were to be no dogs in the picture.
What in the world were you going to do with a lot of dogs when you left for town on Monday afternoons?
You certainly couldn't take them into the little apartment and if you tried to farm them out for two or three days every week they would become so confused that they would have nervous breakdowns.
Why in the world couldn't he live in one place the way everyone else seemed to?
It worried him, this inability to get the simplest things done in the course of a day.
He would wake up in the middle of the night and fret about it.
How in the world had he formerly found time to build up a business, raise a family, be on half a dozen boards, work actively on committees and either go out in the evening or plow through the contents of a bulging brief case?
Was it possible that as people grow older the nature of time changed?
Could it be that it speeded up for the aged in some mysterious way, as if a bored universe were skipping through the end of the chapter just to get it over with?
Or was the answer less metaphysical?
Did older people work more slowly?
Did it take a man of sixty-five longer to write a letter, shave, clean out a barn, read a newspaper, than a man of thirty?
Did men become perfectionists as they grew older, polishing, polishing, reluctant to let go?
It might be that certain people were born with a compulsion to complicate their lives, while others could live blissfully motionless almost indefinitely, like lizards in the sun, too indolent to blink their eyes.
Perhaps it was his misfortune, or good fortune, whichever way one looked at it, to belong to the former group, and he was struggling unconsciously to build up pressure in a world which demanded none, which was positively antagonistic to it.
And then again perhaps the reason why he couldn't find time to do any of the things he had planned to do after retirement: reading, roaming, gardening, lying on his back and watching the clouds go by, was because he didn't want to do them.
There was no compulsion behind them.
They could be done or left undone and nobody really gave a damn.
During all his busy life he had only done things which had to be done.
This habit had become so fixed over the years that it seemed futile to do anything for which no one was waiting.
He looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch.
It was five minutes after four.
On some distant farm a rooster crowed and, far down the valley, an associate answered.
He turned over impatiently and pulled the sheet over his head against the treacherous encroachment of the dawn.
At least he could buy the equipment for his workshop.
Thus committed, action might follow.
He went down to Mills and Bradley's Hardware Store and bought a full set of carpenter's tools, including a rotary power saw and several other pieces of power machinery that Mr. Mills said were essential for babbiting and doweling, whatever they were.
He also bought a huge square of pegboard for hanging up his tools, and lumber for his workbench, sandpaper and glue and assorted nails, levels and T squares and plumb lines and several gadgets that he had no idea how to use or what they were for.
There, said Mr. Mills.
That'll get you started.
Best not to get everything at once.
Add things as you find you need 'em.
He didn't even ask the cost of this collection.
After all, if you were going to set up a workshop you had to have the proper equipment and that was that.
When he returned home, the station wagon loaded with tools, Jinny had gone with a friend to some meeting in the village, using the recently purchased second car.
He was glad.
It gave him a chance to unload the stuff and get it down to the cellar without a barrage of acid comments.
He had made such a fuss about buying that second car that he knew he was vulnerable.
He piled everything neatly in a corner of the cellar and turned to stare at the blank stone wall.
That was where the pegboard would go on which he would hang his hand tools.
In front of it would be his workbench.
The old nightmare which had caused him so many wakeful hours came charging in on him once more, only this time he couldn't pacify it with a sleeping pill and send it away.
How in the world did one attach a pegboard to a stone wall?
How did one attach anything to a stone wall, for that matter?
After the pegboard there would be the paneling.
He sat down on an old box and focused on the problem.
Perhaps one bored holes in the stone with some kind of an electric gadget.
But then, when you stuck things into the holes, why didn't they come right out again?
It all seemed rather hopeless.
He turned his attention to the workbench.
Perhaps that was the first thing to do.
A workbench had a heavy top and sturdy legs, but how did you attach sturdy legs to a heavy top so that the whole thing didn't wobble like a newborn calf and ultimately collapse when you leaned on it?
Mr. Mills had done some figuring on a scrap of paper and given him the various kinds of boards and two-by-fours which, properly handled, would, he had assured him, turn into a workbench.
They lay on the cellar floor in a disorderly pile.
Mr. Crombie poked at it gingerly with his foot.
How could anyone know what to do with an assortment like that?
Perhaps he had better have someone help him put up the pegboard and build the workbench--someone who knew what he was about.
Then at least he would have a place to hang his tools and something to work on.
After that everything should be simpler.
He went upstairs to phone Crumb.
To his amazement he reached him.
Mr. Crumb was laid up with a bad cold.
He didn't seem to think that attaching a pegboard to a stone wall was much of a problem and he tossed off the building of the worktable equally lightly.
The only trouble was that he himself was tied up on the school job.
That was why he hadn't been able to finish the porch.
No, he didn't know of any handyman-carpenter.
There wasn't any such thing any more.
Carpenters all wanted steady work and at the moment every mother's son for twenty miles around that could hammer nails for twenty-five dollars a day was working on the school job.
There was a fellow named Blatz over Smithtown way.
Nobody liked to hire him because you never could tell when he was going to be taken drunk.
Mr. Crumb would probably see him at Lodge Meeting the next night.
If he was sober, which was doubtful, he'd have him get in touch with Mr. Crombie.
He said he was the lonely type and working in a cellar you saw funny things coming out of the cracks in the wall if they wasn't nobody with you.
So Mr. Crombie sat on a wooden box and talked in order to keep Mr. Blatz's mind from funny things.
At the same time he watched carefully to see how one attached pegboards to stone walls, but Mr. Blatz was usually standing in his line of vision and it all seemed so simple that he didn't like to disclose his ignorance.
While Mr. Blatz was putting up the pegboards and starting the workbench, Mr. Crombie told him of this idea about paneling the whole end of the cellar.
Mr. Blatz agreed that this would be pretty.
Without further discussion he appeared the next morning with a pile of boards sticking over the end of his light truck and proceeded with the paneling, which he then stained and waxed according to his taste.
Now, he said, we got to put in some outlets for them power tools;
then a couple of fluorescent lamps over the workbench an' I guess we're about through down here.
It all did look very efficient and shipshape.
There was no question of that.
By the way, said Mr. Blatz, packing his tools into a battered carrier, them power tools needs extra voltage.
I guess you know about that.
Before you use 'em the light company's got to run in a heavy line and you'll need a new fuse box for the extra circuits.
That ain't too bad 'ceptin' the light company's so busy you can't ever get 'em to do nothin'.
Instead of being depressed by this news, Mr. Crombie was actually relieved.
At least the moment was postponed when he had to face the mystery of the power tools.
He followed Mr. Blatz up the cellar stairs.
As usual, Mrs. Crombie was standing in the midst of a confusion of cooking utensils.
Mr. Blatz sat down in the only unoccupied kitchen chair.
Well, he said, got your man fixed up nice down there.
He oughta be able to build a new house with all them contraptions.
Mr. Crombie watched his wife with an anxious expression.
I was just sayin' to him that I'm all ready now for anything else you want done.
Mr. Crombie couldn't remember his saying any such thing.
Oh, that's wonderful, cried Mrs. Crombie.
I have a thousand things for you to do.
Doors that won't open, and doors that won't close and shelves and broken--''
But those are the things I built the workshop for, protested Mr. Crombie.
Those are the things I can do, now that I'm set up.
I've been waiting to get these things done for months, she said.
We won't live long enough if I wait for you, besides which you don't need to worry--there'll be plenty more.
But the discussion was academic.
Mr. Blatz was already taking measurements for a shelf above the kitchen sink.
Ambiguity
Nothing in English has been ridiculed as much as the ambiguous use of words, unless it be the ambiguous use of sentences.
Ben Franklin said, Clearly spoken, Mr. Fogg.
You explain English by Greek.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan said, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two.
And a witty American journalist remarked over a century ago what is even more true today, Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning.
There are many types of ambiguity and many of them have been described by rhetoricians under such names as amphibology, parisology, and other ologies.
In common parlance they would be described as misses--misinterpreters, misunderstanders, misdirectors and kindred misdeeds.
One species of ambiguity tries to baffle by interweaving repetition.
Did you or did you not say what I said you said, because Jane said you never said what I said?
Another woman, addressing Christmas cards, said to her husband: We sent them one last year but they didn't send us one, so they probably won't send us one this year because they'll think we won't send them one because they didn't last year, don't you think, or shall we?
Such ambiguous exercises compound confusion by making it worse compounded, and they are sometimes expanded until the cream of the jest sours.
Ambiguity of a non-repetitious kind describes the dilemma one girl found herself in.
I'm terribly upset, she told a girl-friend.
I wrote Bill in my last letter to forget that I had told him that I didn't mean to reconsider my decision not to change my mind--and he seems to have misunderstood me.
Evidently Bill was another of those men who simply don't understand women.
Another case involves a newspaper reporter who tripped up a politician.
Mr. Jones, you may recall that we printed last week your denial of having retracted the contradiction of your original statement.
Now would you care to have us say that you were misquoted in regard to it?
Questions like this, framed in verbal fog, are perhaps the only kind that have ever stumped an experienced politician.
They recall Byron's classic comment: I wish he would explain his explanation.
Similarly, when a reporter once questioned Lincoln in cryptic fashion, Lincoln refused to make any further statement.
I fear explanations explanatory of things explained, he said, leaving the biter bit--and bitter.
The obscurity of politicians may not always be as innocent as it looks.
Senator, said an interviewer, your constituents can't understand from your speech last night just how you stand on the question.
Good!
Replied the Senator.
It took me five hours to write it that way.
The misplaced modifier is another species more honored in the observance of obscurity than in the breach.
This creates an amusing effect because its position in a sentence seems to make it apply to the wrong word.
A verse familiar to all grammarians is the quatrain: I saw a man once beat his wife When on a drunken spree.
Now can you tell me who was drunk--The man, his wife, or me?
The wooden-leg gag of vaudeville, another standby of this sort, had endless variations.
There's a man outside with a wooden leg named Smith.
What's the name of his other leg?
Another stock vaudeville gag ran: Mother is home sick in bed with the doctor.
When radio came in, it continued the misplaced modifier in its routines as a standard device.
Do you see that pretty girl standing next to the car with slacks on?
I see the girl but I don't see the car with slacks on.
In recent years gagwriters have discovered this brand of blunder and thus the misplaced modifier has acquired a new habitat in the gagline.
In one cartoon a family is shown outside a theater with the head of the family addressing the doorman: Excuse me, but when we came out we found that we had left my daughter's handbag and my wife's behind.
Journalism supplies us with an endless run of such slips.
Not long ago a newspaper advised those taking part in a contest that snapshots must be of a person not larger than Af inches.
Classified ads are also chockfull of misrelated constructions.
Readers of the Reader's Digest are familiar with such items which often appear in its lists of verbal slips, like the ad in a California paper that advertised House for rent.
View takes in five counties, two bedrooms.
Since brevity is the soul of ambiguity as well as wit, newspaper headlines continually provide us with amusing samples.
Officials Meet on rubbish.
Many Shapes in bathtubs.
Son and Daughter of Local Couple Married.
Apart from misplaced modifiers and headlinese, journalism contributes a wide variety of comic ambiguities in both editorial and advertising matter.
A weekly newspaper reported a local romance: and the couple were married last Saturday, thus ending a friendship which began in their schooldays.
An item in the letters column of a newspaper renewed a subscription, adding: I personally enjoy your newspaper as much as my husband.
Then there was the caterer's ad which read: are you getting married or having an affair?
We have complete facilities to accommodate 200 people.
The newspaper too is the favorite habitat of the anatomical.
This slip is so-called because its semi-ambiguous English always seems to refer to a person's anatomy but never quite means what it seems to say.
Samples: He walked in upon her invitation.
She kissed him passionately upon his reappearance.
He kissed her back.
Not without good reason has the anatomical been called jocular journalese.
In news items a man is less often shot in the body or head than in the suburbs.
While Henry Morgan was escorting Miss Vera Green from the church social last Saturday night, a savage dog attacked them and bit Mr. Morgan on the public square.
Such items recall the California journalist who reported an accident involving a movie star: The area in which Miss N--was injured is spectacularly scenic.
The double meaning in the anatomical made it a familiar vaudeville device, as in the gags of Weber and Fields.
When a witness at court was asked if he had been kicked in the ensuing rumpus, he replied, No, it was in the stomach.
Strangely enough, this always brought the house down.
Apart from journalese and vaudeville gags, the anatomical is also found in jocular literature.
A conscientious girl became the secretary of a doctor.
Her first day at work she was puzzled by an entry in the doctor's notes on an emergency case.
It read: Shot in the lumbar region.
After a moment of thought, her mind cleared and, in the interest of clarity, she typed into the record: Shot in the woods.
There are many grammatical misconstructions other than dangling modifiers and anatomicals which permit two different interpretations.
At the home of a gourmet the new maid was instructed in the fine points of serving.
I want the fish served whole, with head and tail, the epicure explained, and serve it with lemon in mouth.
The maid demurred.
That's silly--lemon in mouth, she said.
But since the gourmet insisted that it is done that way at the most fashionable dinners, the girl reluctantly agreed.
So she brought the fish in whole, and she carried a lemon in her mouth.
Another specimen of such double-entendre is illustrated by a woman in a department store.
She said to the saleslady, I want a dress to put on around the house.
The puzzled saleslady inquired, How large is your house, Madam?
This saleslady was a failure in the dress department and was transferred to the shoe department.
When a customer asked for alligator shoes, she said, What size is your alligator?
The comic indefinite comprises an extensive class of comedy.
One species is restricted to statements which are neither explicit nor precise regarding a particular person, place, time or thing.
A woman met a famous author at a literary tea.
Oh, I'm so delighted to meet you, she gushed.
It was only the other day that I saw something of yours, about something or other, in some magazine.
This baffling lack of distinct details recalls the secretary whose employer was leaving the office and told her what to answer if anyone called in his absence.
I may be back, he explained, and then again, I may not.
The girl nodded understandingly.
Yes, sir, she said, is that definite?
An old-fashioned mother said to her modern daughter, You must have gotten in quite late last night, dear.
Where were you?
The daughter replied, Oh, I had dinner with--well, you don't know him but he's awfully nice--and we went to a couple of places--I don't suppose you've heard of them--and we finished up at a cute little night club--I forget the name of it.
Why, it's all right, isn't it, Mother?
Her woolly-minded parent agreed.
Of course, dear, she said.
It's only that I like to know where you go.
No less ambiguous was the indefinity of a certain clergyman's sermon.
Dearly beloved, he preached, unless you repent of your sins in a measure, and become converted to a degree, you will, I regret to say, be damned to a more or less extent.
This clergyman should have referred to Shakespeare's dictum: So-so is a good, very good, very excellent maxim.
And yet it is not.
It is but so-so.
Indefinite reference also carries double-meaning where an allusion to one person or thing seems to refer to another.
A news item described the launching of a ship: Completing the ceremony, the beautiful movie star smashed a bottle of champagne over her stern as she slid gracefully down the ways into the sea.
This is not unlike the order received by the sergeant of an army motor pool: Four trucks to Fort Mason gym, 7:30 tonight, for hauling girls to dance.
The bodies must be cleaned and seats wiped off.
A politician was approached by a man seeking the office of a minor public official who had just died.
What are my chances for taking Joe's place?
He asked.
If you can fix it up with the undertaker, returned the politician, it's all right with me.
The manager of a movie theater received a telephone call from a woman who was equally indefinite.
What have you got on today?
She inquired.
A blue suit, he answered.
Who's in it?
She continued.
I am, he said.
There was a short pause for reflection.
Oh, said the woman, I've seen that picture already.
Another brand of indefinite reference arises out of the use of the double verb.
When a question contains two verbs, the response does not make clear which of them is being answered.
The moonlit night was made for romance, and he had been looking at her soulfully for some time.
Finally he asked, Do you object to petting?
That's one thing I've never done, she said promptly.
He thought a moment, then inquired, You mean petted?
No, she smiled, objected.
Replies to requests for character reference are notorious for their evasive double-entendre.
It would be hard to find anything more equivocal than: I cannot recommend him too highly.
Another less ambiguous case read as follows: The bearer of this letter has served me for two years to his complete satisfaction.
If you are thinking of giving him a berth, be sure to make it a wide one.
In the comedy of indefinite reference, it-wit occupies a prominent place because of its frequent occurrence.
Ambiguity arises when the pronoun it carries a twofold reference.
Two friends were talking.
One said, When I get a cold I buy a bottle of whiskey for it, and within a few hours it's gone.
The speaker referred to the whiskey but his friend thought he meant the cold.
It-wit is a misnomer because it covers slips as well as wit.
An excited woman was making an emergency call over the phone: Doctor, please come over right away.
My husband is in great pain.
My unscientific friend does not believe that human stature is measurable in terms of speed, momentum, weightlessness, or distance from earth, but is a matter of the development of the human mind.
After Gagarin became the Greatest Man in the World, for a nation that does not believe in the cult of personality or in careerism, Moreland wrote me a letter in which he said: I am not interested in how long a bee can live in a vacuum, or how far it can fly.
A bee's place is in the hive.
I have come to talk with you about the future of humor and comedy, I told him, at which he started slightly, and then made us each a stiff drink, with a trembling hand.
I seem to remember, he said, that in an interview ten years ago you gave humor and comedy five years to live.
Did you go to their funeral?
I was wrong, I admitted.
Comedy didn't die, it just went crazy.
It has identified itself with the very tension and terror it once did so much to alleviate.
We now have not only what has been called over here the comedy of menace but we also have horror jokes, magazines known as Horror Comics, and sick comedians.
There are even publications called Sick and Mad.
The Zeitgeist is not crazy as a loon or mad as a March hare;
it is manic as a man.
I woke up this morning, Moreland said, paraphrasing Lewis Carroll.
Do you want to hear the paraphrase?
Can I bear it?
I asked, taking a final gulp of my drink, and handing him the empty glass.
Just barely, he said, and repeated his paraphrase: The time has come, the walrus said, To speak of manic things, Of shots and shouts, and sealing dooms Of commoners and kings.
Moreland fixed us each another drink, and said, For God's sake, tell me something truly amusing.
I'll try, I said, and sat for a moment thinking.
Oh yes, the other day I reread some of Emerson's English Traits, and there was an anecdote about a group of English and Americans visiting Germany, more than a hundred years ago.
In the railway station at Berlin, a uniformed attendant was chanting,'Foreigners this way!
Foreigners this way '!
One woman--she could have been either English or American--went up to him and said,'But you are the foreigners'''.
I took a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of my drink, and said, I admit that going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson for humor is like going to a modern musical comedy for music and comedy.
What's the matter with the music?
Moreland asked.
It doesn't drown out the dialogue, I explained.
Let's talk about books, Moreland said.
I am told that in America you have non-books by non-writers, brought out by non-publishers for non-readers.
Is it all non-fiction?
There is non-fiction and non non-fiction, I said.
Speaking of nonism: the other day, in a story about a sit-down demonstration, the Paris Herald Tribune wrote,'The non-violence became noisier.
And then Eichmann was quoted as saying, in non-English, that Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews was nonsense.
If we cannot tell evil, horror, and insanity from nonsense, what is the future of humor and comedy?
Moreland asked, grimly.
Cryptic, I said.
They require, for existence, a brave spirit and a high heart, and where do you find these?
In our present era of Science and Angst, the heart has been downgraded, to use one of our popular retrogressive verbs.
I know what you mean, Moreland sighed.
Last year your Tennessee Williams told our Dilys Powell, in a television program, that it is the task of the playwright to throw light into the dark corners of the human heart.
Like almost everybody else, he confused the heart, both as organ and as symbol, with the disturbed psyche, the deranged glands, and the jumpy central nervous system.
I'm not pleading for the heart that leaps up when it beholds a rainbow in the sky, or for the heart that with rapture fills and dances with the daffodils.
The sentimental pure heart of Galahad is gone with the knightly years, but I still believe in the heart of the George Meredith character that was not made of the stuff that breaks.
We no longer have Tom Moore's and Longfellow's'heart for any fate ', either, I said.
Moore and Longfellow didn't have the fate that faces us, Moreland said.
One day our species promises co-existence, and the next day it threatens co-extinction.
We sat for a while drinking in silence.
The heart, I said finally, is now either in the throat or the mouth or the stomach or the shoes.
When it was worn in the breast, or even on the sleeve, we at least knew where it was.
There was a long silence.
You have visited England five times in the past quarter-century, I believe, my host said.
What has impressed you most on your present visit?
I would say depressed, not impressed, I told him.
I should say it is the turning of courts of law into veritable theatres for sex dramas, involving clergymen and parishioners, psychiatrists and patients.
It is becoming harder and harder to tell law courts and political arenas from the modern theatre.
Do you think we need a new Henry James to re-explore the Anglo-American scene?
He asked.
Or perhaps a new Noel Coward?
But you must have heard it said that the drawing-room disappeared forever with the somnolent years of James and the antic heyday of Coward.
I myself hear it said constantly--in drawing-rooms.
In them, there is usually a group of Anglo-Americans with tragicomic problems, worthy of being explored either in the novel or in the play or in comedy and satire.
I stood up and began pacing.
If you are trying to get us out of the brothel, the dustbin, the kitchen sink, and the tawdry living-room, you are probably wasting your time, Moreland told me.
Too many of our writers seem to be interested only in creatures that crawl out of the woodwork or from under the rock.
Furiouser and furiouser, I said.
I am worried about the current meanings of the word funny.
It now means ominous, as when one speaks of a funny sound in the motor;
disturbing, as when one says that a friend is acting funny;
and frightening, as when a wife tells the police that it is funny, but her husband hasn't been home for two days and nights.
Moreland sat brooding for a full minute, during which I made each of us a new drink.
He took his glass, clinked it against mine, and said, Toujours gai, what the hell!
Borrowing a line from Don Marquis' Mehitabel.
Be careful of the word'gay ', for it, too, has undergone a change.
It now means, in my country, homosexual, I said.
Oh, I forgot to say that if one is taken to the funny house in the funny wagon, he is removed to a mental institution in an ambulance.
Recently, by the way, I received a questionnaire in which I was asked whether or not I was non-institutionalized.
My host went over and stared out the window at his peacocks;
then he turned to me.
Is it true that you believe the other animals are saner than the human species?
Oh, that is demonstrable, I told him.
Do you remember the woman in the French Alps who was all alone with her sheep one day when the sun darkened ominously?
She told the sheep,'The world is coming to an end '!
And the sheep said--all in unison, I have no doubt--ba-a-a!
The sound mockery of sheep is like the salubrious horse laugh.
That is only partly non-nonsense, he began.
If you saw the drama called Rhinoceros, I said, think of the effect it would have on an audience of rhinos when the actor on stage suddenly begins turning into a rhinoceros.
The rhinos would panic, screaming help!
-- if that can be screamed in their language.
You think the Russians are getting ahead of us in comedy?
Moreland demanded.
Non-God, no, I said.
The political and intellectual Left began fighting humor and comedy years ago, because they fear things they do not understand and cannot manage, such as satire and irony, such as humor and comedy.
Nevertheless, like any other human being upon whom the spotlight of the world plays continually, Khrushchev, the anti-personality cultist, has become a comic actor, or thinks he has.
In his famous meeting with Nixon a couple of years ago he seemed to believe that he was as funny as Ed Wynn.
But, like Caesar, he has only one joke, so far as I can find out.
It consists in saying,'That would be sending the goat to look after the cabbage.
Why in the name of his non-God doesn't he vary it a bit?
Such as?
Moreland asked.
Such as'sending the cat to guard the mice ', or'the falcon to protect the dove ', or most terribly sharp of all,'the human being to save humanity'''.
You and I have fallen out of literature into politics, Moreland observed.
What a nasty fall was there!
I said.
Moreland went over to stare at his peacocks again, and then came back and sat down, restively.
The world that was once foot-loose and fancy-free, he said, has now become screw-loose and frenzy-free.
In our age of Science and Angst it seems to me more brave to stay on Earth and explore inner man than to fly far from the sphere of our sorrow and explore outer space.
The human ego being what it is, I put in, science fiction has always assumed that the creatures on the planets of a thousand larger solar systems than ours must look like gigantic tube-nosed fruit bats.
It seems to me that the first human being to reach one of these planets may well learn what it is to be a truly great and noble species.
Now we are leaving humor and comedy behind again, Moreland protested.
Not in the largest sense of the words, I said.
The other day Arnold Toynbee spoke against the inveterate tendency of our species to believe in the uniqueness of its religions, its ideologies, and its virtually everything else.
Why do we not realize that no ideology believes so much in itself as it disbelieves in something else?
Forty years ago an English writer, W. L. George, dealt with this subject in Eddies of the Day, and said, as an example, that'Saint George for Merry England'would not start a spirit half so quickly as'Strike frog-eating Frenchmen dead'''!
There was also Gott strafe Angleterre, Moreland reminded me, and Carthago delenda est, or if you will, Deus strafe Carthage.
It isn't what the ideologist believes in, but what he hates, that puts the world in jeopardy.
This is the force, in our time and in every other time, that urges the paranoiac and the manic-depressive to become head of a state.
Complete power not only corrupts but it also attracts the mad.
There is a bitter satire for a future writer in that.
Great satire has always been clearly written and readily understandable, I said.
But we now find writers obsessed by the nooks and crannies of their ivory towers, and curiously devoted to the growing obscurity and complexity of poetry and non-poetry.
I wrote a few years ago that one of the cardinal rules of writing is that the reader should be able to get some idea of what the story is about.
One day, the children had wanted to get up onto General Burnside's horse.
They wanted to see what his back felt like--the General's.
He looked so comfortable being straight.
They wanted to touch the mystery.
Arlene was boosting them up when the policeman came by.
He was very rude.
Arlene had a hard voice, too, this time.
The policeman's eyes rather popped for a second;
but then Arlene got another tone in a hurry, and she said, If it wasn't for these dear children --.
The policeman got a confused, funny look on his face, and he had answered kind of politely, Now, look here, lady: I know you got to entertain these kids and all.
But this is a public park and it's a city ordinance that the statues cannot be crawled on.
Arlene was so ashamed that she hung her head when she said, Yes, sir.
The policeman walked on, but he looked back once.
That had happened on the day when two other unusual things had occurred.
Arlene had taught them a new way to have fun in their little private area;
and they had told their mother about the tumbles.
In matters of exact information, that kept her one step behind developments;
and so they were consistently true to their principles.
Never mind, Arlene had said, after the policeman had left, having pursued the usual unco-operative course of grownups.
Never mind.
I know something that is much more fun that we can do on our little lawn.
What is it?
Asked the children, whose reflexes and replies were invariably so admirably normal and predictable.
Maybe that was why they were cordial and loyal towards the unpredictability of Arlene.
Just you wait, advised Arlene, echoing the dialogue in a recent British movie.
And when they had got to their little lawn, they had had a most twirlingly magnificent time.
First, Arlene had put them through some rapid somersaults.
They had protested that that wasn't any surprise.
Just you wait, said Arlene again, as though she were discovering the pleasantly tingling insinuations of that handy little sturdy statement.
This is a warm-up.
Is it anything like cooked-over oatmeal?
Asked one of the children.
Not the least bit, Arlene snapped.
One of the many things that was so nice about her was that she always took your questions seriously, particularly your very, very serious questions.
Those were especially the ones that all other grownups laughed at loudest.
She would sometimes even get a little hard on you, she took you so seriously.
But not hard for very long.
Just long enough to make you feel important.
Now, said Arlene, eventually, making them both sit in formation on a big root of a live oak, the sort of root that divided itself and made their bottoms sag down and feel comfortable.
Now, we're going to be like what General Burnside and his horse make us think of.
The children looked at each other and sagged their bottoms down even more comfortably than ever.
Their curiosity went happily out of bounds.
Then, Arlene threw herself backwards and wiggled in a way that was just wonderful.
She held herself that way and turned her head towards them and laughed and winked.
Imagine being able to laugh and wink when you're like the top part of that picture frame at home, one of them said.
They both laughed and winked back.
I'm General Burnside's horse, upside down, Arlene said, sort of gaspingly, for her: even she had to breathe kind of funny when she was in that position.
She made General Burnside's horse's belly do so funny when it was upside down.
Then, she was back on her feet, winking and smiling that enormous smile (she had lots of wonderful big teeth that you never would have suspected she had when she was not smiling).
And she would wink and throw kisses.
They both tried to keep smiling and winking for a long time, but it made their lips and eyelids tremble.
But they kept on clapping for a long, long time.
This time, Arlene said, and she even kept on wiggling a little bit while she was just talking, you're going to tell me what I am and what I'm doing.
It all has something to do with General Burnside and his horse.
This time, it was so grand;
they could tell exactly what it was.
It was General Burnside's horse running in a circle.
His legs shook, and the shaking went right on up his body through his hips to his shoulders.
That's the General's horse, one of them cried out.
The other remarked, in a happy laughter, That's a funny old horse.
The first one said, He sure does shake.
He's old.
Then there was the General kissing his wife.
They had to be told that one.
But it was even funnier after they had been told.
Their father, when he came back from those many business trips, just bumped their mother on the forehead with his lips and asked if anybody had thought to mix the martinis and put them in the electric icebox.
But not General Burnside.
He was the funniest man.
He never could keep still, even when he didn't move his feet.
Then, they had to get up and be General Burnside.
Or his horse.
All they could think of was to run around in circles, kicking their legs out.
It wasn't very funny.
Then, they said General Burnside was going to jump over his horse's head;
and they did some somersaults.
But that wasn't very funny, either.
You ought to shake, Arlene advised them.
And Arlene showed them how to begin.
She also taught them to sing I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate.
That helped a lot.
They were clumsy, but they were beginning to catch on.
They also caught on a little bit on how to smile a lot without your lips trembling.
Imagine you won't get your allowance if you're caught not smiling--or smiling with your lips trembling too much, Arlene suggested.
That helped a great deal.
They were a little late in getting home.
I'm sorry, Mrs. Minks, Arlene said in a tone so low you could hardly hear it.
My mother constituted herself the voice of all of us.
It's perfectly understandable, Arlene, my mother said in a friendly way.
I suppose you all were playing and forgot?
Yes, ma'am, the children chorused heartily.
We couldn't help laughing.
The children rushed off to get rid of their sweaters;
and Arlene began tapping the kitchen door open.
Arlene's a good girl, my uncle remarked to us;
but he said it too soon, for it came out just before the tap to which the door responded.
That tap had a slight bangish quality.
She really is a dear little thing, my mother agreed.
Her upper lip lifted slightly.
She was biting into a small red radish;
and that action always caused her to lift her lip from the sting of the thing.
Also, she lived in continual fear of finding a white worm curled up in a neat, mean little heap at the white center of the radish.
She would try to see over the bulge of her cheeks and somewhat under her teeth to the place where she was biting.
It never worked, naturally;
but it made her look unusual.
Also, when she had bitten off half of the small radish, she found the suspense unbearable;
and she would snatch the finger-held half of the radish out to where she could inspect it.
One could hear a very faint, ladylike sigh of relief.
Actually, it was inaudible to anyone not expecting it.
But the warm joy of her brown eyes was open to the general public.
Later on, the children told her further about somersaulting.
It must be awfully good for them.
And awfully kind of Arlene, she told us later.
But do you know something curious?
She added.
I reached into that funny little pocket that is high up on my dress.
I have no notion why I reached.
And I found a radish.
Was it an omen?
I thought for a second.
But I would not pamper myself in that silly way.
I opened the window and threw the radish out.
Then, my mother blushed at this small lie;
for she knew and we knew that it was cowardice that had made one more radish that night just too impossible a strain.
Arlene became indispensable;
nobody could have told why.
But she was.
It was in the air.
A friend of my father's came to dinner.
He was passing through town and phoned to say hello.
As a result, he was persuaded out to dinner.
As a matter of fact, this happened every four or five months.
Sometimes, he coincided with my father's being at home.
Sometimes, as at this juncture, he did not.
But he was always persuaded out.
He liked children, in a loathsome kind of way;
the two youngest in our family always had to be brought in and put through tricks for his entertainment.
When he had left, I could never remember whether he had poked them in their middles, laughingly, with a thick index finger or whether he was merely so much the sort of person who did this that one assumed the action, not bothering to look.
The children loathed him, too.
This evening, they were pushed in from the breakfast room, with odds and ends of dessert distributed over them.
There had been some coconut in it, for I remember my mother's taking a quick glance at a stringy bit of this nut on the cheek of one of them and then putting down her radish with a shiver.
They were pushed gently into the room by Arlene--whose only part appearing were hands that crept quickly back around to the kitchen side of the door.
We had just sat down.
Tell Mr. Gorboduc what you're doing these days, my mother advised the children, ceremonially.
There was an air of revolt about the children--even irreverence for their own principles.
This could be told chiefly from a sort of head-tossing and prancing, a horselike balkiness of demeanor.
Possibly, the coconut-containing dessert had brought up bitter problems of administration.
But, at the beginning, this stayed just in the air.
We go to the park with this nice lady, one of them said.
We have good times.
This happy bulletin convulsed Mr. Gorboduc.
You do?
He asked, between wheezes of laughter.
He was forced to wipe his eyes.
You don't step on the flowers, do you?
Eh?
One of the children maneuvered out of range of the poking index finger.
No, he said.
We don't.
Mr. Gorboduc took a swig of his sherry.
He was so long thinking that my mother had time to inspect her sherry for dregs.
Usually, this was done when attention was diverted by someone else's long, boring story.
But this time she was nervous: she was open.
Mr. Gorboduc was finally in command of his mind again.
Tell me--what do you do at the park?
He asked.
This was delivered in a forthright way, without coyness and over-pretended interest--an admirable way with children.
Only, unfortunately, he could not remove from his voice a nagging insinuation of the direct command.
This nettled the children into the revelation of exact truth, a sacrifice of their secret superiority over grown people, but a victory in the wide fields of perpetration and illegitimate accomplishment.
We bump, one said;
and the other went on to development of the idea.
We grind, too, he said.
My mother was beside herself with curiosity.
Say that again, she pleaded.
She laughed a little and tossed the dregs rakishly around in her glass.
You what?
She could see that Mr. Gorboduc was intrigued;
the hostess in her took over.
She was rollickingly happy.
You what?
My uncle looked at Mr. Gorboduc.
He read Henry James and used to pretend profundity through eye-beamings at people.
Mr. Gorboduc looked down.
He would not look up.
He was very funny about the whole thing.
Pueri aquam de silvas ad agricolas portant, a delightful vignette set in the unforgettable epoch of pre-Punic War Rome.
Marcellus, the hero, is beset from all sides by the problems of approaching manhood.
The story opens on the eve of his fifty-third birthday, as he prepares for the two weeks of festivities that are to follow.
Suddenly, a messenger arrives and, just before collapsing dead at his feet, informs him that the Saracens have invaded Silesia, the home province of his affianced.
He at once cancels the celebrations and, buckling on his scimitar, stumbles blindly from the house, where he is hit and killed by a passing oxcart.
The Albany Civic Opera's presentation of Spumoni's immortal Il Sevigli del Spegititgninino, with guest contralto Hattie Sforzt.
An unusual, if not extraordinary, rendering of the classic myth that involves the rescue of Prometheus from the rock by the U.S. Cavalry was given last week in the warehouse of the Albany Leather Conduit Company amid cheers of Hubba hubba and Yalagaloo pip pip!
After a busy overture, the curtain rises on a farm scene--the Ranavan Valley in northern Maine.
A dead armadillo, the sole occupant of the stage, symbolizes the crisis and destruction of the Old Order.
According to the myth, Old Order then vanishes at stage left and reappears at extreme stage right, but Director Shuz skillfully sidesteps the rather gooshey problem of stage effects by simply having Miss Arapacis walk across the stage.
The night he saw it, a rather unpleasant situation arose when the soloist refused to approach the armadillo, complaining--in ad-lib--that it smelled.
We caught the early train to New York.
The Dharma Dictionary, a list of highly unusual terms used in connection with Eurasian proto-senility cults.
It's somewhat off the beaten track, to be sure, but therein lies its variety and charm.
For example, probably very few people know that the word visrhanik that is bantered about so much today stems from the verb bouanahsha: to salivate.
The terms are fairly safe to use on this side of the ocean, but before you start spouting them to your date, it might be best to find out if he was a member of Major Pockmanster's Delhi Regiment, since resentment toward the natives was reportedly very high in that outfit.
The breeze and chancellor Neitzbohr, a movie melodrama that concerns the attempts of a West German politician to woo a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvedere.
As you have doubtless guessed already, the plot is plastered with Freudian, Jungian, and Meinckian theory.
For the remainder of the movie, Chancellor Neitzbohr proceeds to lash the piano stool with a slat from a Venetian blind that used to hang in the pre-war Reichstag.
In this manner, he seeks to expunge from his own soul the guilt pangs caused by his personal assaults against the English at Dunkirk.
As we find out at the end, it is not the stool (symbolizing Doris, therefore the English) that he is punishing but the piece of Venetian blind.
And, when the slat finally shatters, we see him count the fragments, all the while muttering, He loves me, he loves me not.
After a few tortuous moments of wondering who he is, the camera pans across the room to the plaster statue, and we realize that Neitzbohr is trying to redeem himself in the eyes of a mute piece of sculpture.
The effect, needless to say, is almost terrifying, and though at times a bit obscure, the film is certainly a much-needed catharsis for the repressed movie-goer.
The music of Bini SalFininistas, capital LP Ab63711-r, one of the rare recordings of this titanic, yet unsung, composer.
Those persons who were lucky enough to see and hear the performance of his work at the Brest-Silevniov Festival in August, 1916, will certainly welcome his return to public notice;
and it is not unlikely that, even as the great Bach lay dormant for so many years, so has the erudite, ingenious SalFininistas passed through his purgatory of neglect.
But now, under the guidance of the contemporary composer Marc Schlek, Jr., a major revival is under way.
As he leads the Neurenschatz Skolkau Orchestra, Schlek gives a tremendously inspired performance of both the Baslot and Rattzhenfuut concertos, including the controversial Tschilwyk cadenza, which was included at the conductor's insistence.
A major portion of the credit should also go to flautist Haumd for his rendering of the almost impossible Indianapolis movement in the Baslot.
Not only was Haumd's intonation and phrasing without flaw, but he seemed to take every tonal eccentricity in stride.
We would have preferred, however, to have had the rest of the orchestra refrain from laughing at this and other spots on the recording, since it mars an otherwise sober, if not lofty, performance.
As Broadway itself becomes increasingly weighted down by trite, heavy-handed, commercially successful musicals and inspirational problem dramas, the American theatre is going through an inexorable renaissance in that nebulous area known as off-Broadway.
For the last two years, this frontier of the arts has produced a number of so-called non-dramas which have left indelible, bittersweet impressions on the psyche of this veteran theatregoer.
The latest and, significantly, greatest fruit of this theatrical vine is The, an adaptation of Basho's classic frog-haiku by Roger Entwhistle, a former University of Maryland chemistry instructor.
Although the play does show a certain structural amateurishness (there are eleven acts varying in length from twenty-five seconds to an hour and a half), the statement it makes concerning the ceaseless yearning and searching of youth is profound and worthy of our attention.
The action centers about a group of outspoken and offbeat students sitting around a table in a cafeteria and their collective and ultimately fruitless search for a cup of hot coffee.
They are relentlessly rebuffed on all sides by a waitress, the police, and an intruding government tutor.
The innocence that they tried to conceal at the beginning is clearly destroyed forever when one of them, asking for a piece of lemon-meringue pie, gets a plate of English muffins instead.
A biting, pithy parable of the all-pervading hollowness of modern life, the piece has been set by Mlle Lagoon to a sumptuous score (a single motif played over and over by four thousand French horns) by existentialist hot-shot Jean-Paul Sartre.
Petite, lovely Yvette Chadroe plays the nymphomaniac engagingly.
Ever since Bambi, and, more recently, Born Free, there have been a lot of books about animals, but few compare with Max Fink's wry, understated, charming, and immensely readable My Friend, the Quizzical Salamander.
Done in the modern style of a confession, Fink tells in exquisite detail how he came to know, and, more important, love his mother's pet salamander, Alicia.
It is not an entirely happy book, as Mrs. Fink soon becomes jealous of Alicia and, in retaliation, refuses to continue to scrape the algae off her glass.
Max, in a fit of despair, takes Alicia and runs off for two marvelous weeks in Burbank (Fink calls it the most wonderful and lovely fourteen days in my whole life), at the end of which Alicia tragically contracts Parkinson's disease and dies.
This brief resume hardly does the book justice, but I heartily recommend it to all those who are engages with the major problems of our time.
Opera in the Grand Tradition, along with mah-jongg, seems to be staging a well-deserved comeback.
In this country, the two guiding lights are, without doubt, Felix Fing and Anna Pulova.
Miss Pulova has a voice that Maria Callas once described as like chipping teeth with a screw driver, and her round, opalescent face becomes fascinatingly reflective of the emotions demanded by the role of Rosalie.
The Champs Elysees is literally littered this summer with the prostrate bodies of France's beat-up beatnik jeunes filles.
Cause of all this commotion: squat, pug-nosed, balding, hopelessly ugly Jean-Pierre Bravado, a Bogartian figure, who plays a sadistic, amoral, philosophic Tasti-Freeze salesman in old New-Waver Fredrico de Mille Rossilini's endlessly provocative film, A Sour Sponge.
Bravado has been alternately described as a symbol of the new grandeur of France and myself (De Gaulle) and a decadent, disgusting slob!
(Norman Mailer), but no one can deny that the screen crackles with electricity whenever he is on it.
Soaring to stardom along with him, Margo Felicity Brighetti, a luscious and curvaceously beguiling Italian starlet, turns in a creditable performance as an airplane mechanic.
We have heard that after seeing Mr. Quasimodo's work it will be virtually impossible to deny the artistic validity and importance of the whole abstract movement.
And it is thought by many who think about such things that Quasimodo is the logical culmination of a school that started with Monet, progressed through Kandinsky and the cubist Picasso, and blossomed just recently in Pollock and De Kooning.
Quasimodo defines his own art as the search for what is not there.
I paint the nothing, he said once to Franz Kline and myself, the nothing that is behind the something, the inexpressible, unpaintable'tick'in the unconscious, the'spirit'of the moment resting forever, suspended like a huge balloon, in non-time.
It is his relentlessness and unwaivering adherence to this revolutionary artistic philosophy that has enabled him to paint such pictures as The Invasion of Cuba.
In this work, his use of non-color is startling and skillful.
The sweep of space, the delicate counterbalance of the white masses, the over-all completeness and unity, the originality and imagination, all entitle it to be called an authentic masterpiece.
I asked Quasimodo recently how he accomplished this, and he replied that he had painted his model a beautiful shade of red and then had her breathe on the canvas, which was his typical tongue-in-cheek way of chiding me for my lack of sensitivity.
Dear Sirs: Let me begin by clearing up any possible misconception in your minds, wherever you are.
The collective by which I address you in the title above is neither patronizing nor jocose but an exact industrial term in use among professional thieves.
It is, I am reliably given to understand, the technical argot for those who engage in your particular branch of the boost;
i.e., burglars who rob while the tenants are absent, in contrast to hot-slough prowlers, those who work while the occupants are home.
Since the latter obviously require an audacity you do not possess, you may perhaps suppose that I am taunting you as socially inferior.
Far from it;
I merely draw an etymological distinction, hoping that specialists and busy people like you will welcome such precision in a layman.
Above all, disabuse yourselves of any thought that I propose to vent moral indignation at your rifling my residence, to whimper over the loss of a few objets d'art, or to shame you into rectitude.
My object, rather, is to alert you to an aspect or two of the affair that could have the gravest implications for you, far beyond the legal sanctions society might inflict.
You have unwittingly set in motion forces so malign, so vindictive, that it would be downright inhumane of me not to warn you about them.
Quite candidly, fellows, I wouldn't be in your shoes for all the rice in China.
As you've doubtless forgotten the circumstances in the press of more recent depredations, permit me to recapitulate them briefly.
Sometime on Saturday evening, August 22nd, while my family and I were dining at the Hostaria dell' Orso, in Rome, you jimmied a window of our home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and let yourselves into the premises.
Hastening to the attic, the temperature of which was easily hotter than the Gold Coast, you proceeded to mask the windows with a fancy wool coverlet, some khaki pants, and the like, and to ransack the innumerable boxes and barrels stored there.
What you were looking for (unless you make a hobby of collecting old tennis rackets and fly screens) eludes me, but to judge from phonograph records scattered about a fumed-oak Victrola.
You danced two tangos and a paso doble, which must have been fairly enervating in that milieu.
You then descended one story, glommed a television set from the music room--the only constructive feature of your visit, by the way--and, returning to the ground floor, entered the master bedroom.
From the curio cabinet on its south wall and the bureaus beneath, you abstracted seventeen ivory, metal, wood, and stone sculptures of Oriental and African origin, two snuffboxes, and a jade-handled magnifying glass.
Rummaging through a stack of drawers nearby, you unearthed an antique French chess set in ivory and sandalwood, which, along with two box Kodaks, you added to your haul.
Then, having wrapped the lot in an afghan my dog customarily slept on, you lammed out the front door, considerately leaving it open for neighbors to discover.
So much for the tiresome facts, as familiar to you, I'm sure, as to the constables and state troopers who followed in your wake.
The foregoing, aided by several clues I'll withhold to keep you on your toes, will pursue you with a tenacity worthy of Inspector Javert, but before they close in, gird yourselves, I repeat, for a vengeance infinitely more pitiless.
Fourteen of the sculptures you took possess properties of a most curious and terrifying nature, as you will observe when your limbs begin to wither and your hair falls out in patches.
In time, these minor manifestations will multiply and effloresce, riddling you with frambesia, the king's evil, sheep rot, and clonic spasm, until your very existence becomes a burden and you cry out for release.
All this, though, is simply a prelude, a curtain-raiser, for what ensues, and I doubt whether any Occidental could accurately forecast it.
If, however, it would help to intensify your anguish, I can delimit the powers of a few of the divinities you've affronted and describe the punishment they meted out in one analogous instance.
Hold on tight.
First of all, the six figures of the Buddha you heisted--four Siamese heads, a black obsidian statuette in the earth-touching position, and a large brass figure of the Dying Buddha on a teakwood base.
Now, you probably share the widespread Western belief that the Lord Buddha is the most compassionate of the gods, much more so than Jehovah and Allah and the rest.
'fess up--don't you?
Well, ordinarily he is, except (as the Wheel of the Law specifies) toward impious folk who steal, disturb, or maltreat the Presence.
Very peculiar retribution indeed seems to overtake such jokers.
Eight or ten years ago, a couple of French hoods stole a priceless Khmer head from the Musee Guimet, in Paris, and a week later crawled into the Salpetriere with unmistakable symptoms of leprosy.
Hell's own amount of chaulmoogra oil did nothing to alleviate their torment;
they expired amid indescribable fantods, imploring the Blessed One to forgive their desecration.
Any reputable French interne can supply you with a dozen similar instances, and I'll presently recount a case out of my own personal experience, but, for the moment, let's resume our catalogue.
Whether the pair of Sudanese ivory carvings you lifted really possess the juju to turn your livers to lead, as a dealer in Khartoum assured me, I am not competent to say.
Likewise the ivory Chinese female figure known as a doctor lady (provenance Honan);
a friend of mine removing her from the curio cabinet for inspection was felled as if by a hammer, but he had previously drunk a quantity of applejack.
The three Indian brass deities, though--Ganessa, Siva, and Krishna--are an altogether different cup of tea.
They hail from Travancore, a state in the subcontinent where Kali, the goddess of death, is worshiped.
Have you ever heard of Thuggee?
Nuf sed.
But it is the wooden sculpture from Bali, the one representing two men with their heads bent backward and their bodies interlaced by a fish, that I particularly call to your attention.
Oddly enough, this is an amulet against housebreakers, presented to the mem and me by a local rajah in 1949.
Inscribed around its base is a charm in Balinese, a dialect I take it you don't comprehend.
Neither do I, but the Tjokorda Agoeng was good enough to translate, and I'll do as much for you.
Whosoever violates our rooftree, the legend states, can expect maximal sorrow.
The teeth will rain from his mouth like pebbles, his wife will make him cocu with fishmongers, and a trolley car will grow in his stomach.
Furthermore--and this, to me, strikes an especially warming note--it shall avail the vandals naught to throw away or dispose of their loot.
The cycle of disaster starts the moment they touch any belonging of ours, and dogs them unto the forty-fifth generation.
Sort of remorseless, isn't it?
Still, there it is.
Now, you no doubt regard the preceding as pap;
you're tooling around full of gage in your hot rods, gorging yourselves on pizza and playing pinball in the taverns and generally behaving like Ubermenschen.
In that case, listen to what befell another wisenheimer who tangled with our joss.
A couple of years back, I occupied a Village apartment whose outer staircase contained the type of niche called a coffin turn.
In it was a stone Tibetan Buddha I had picked up in Bombay, and occasionally, to make merit, my wife and I garlanded it with flowers or laid a few pennies in its lap.
After a while, we became aware that the money was disappearing as fast as we replenished it.
Our suspicions eventually centered, by the process of elimination, on a grocer's boy, a thoroughly bad hat, who delivered cartons to the people overhead.
The more I probed into this young man's activities and character, the less savory I found him.
I learned, for example, that he made a practice of yapping at dogs he encountered and, in winter, of sprinkling salt on the icy pavement to scarify their feet.
His energy was prodigious;
sometimes he would be up before dawn, clad as a garbage collector and hurling pails into areaways to exasperate us, and thereafter would hurry to the Bronx Zoo to grimace at the lions and press cigar butts against their paws.
Evenings, he was frequently to be seen at restaurants like Enrico & Paglieri's or Peter's Backyard drunkenly donning ladies' hats and singing O Sole Mio.
In short, and to borrow an arboreal phrase, slash timber.
Well, the odious little toad went along chivying animals and humans who couldn't retaliate, and in due course, as was inevitable, overreached himself.
One morning, we discovered not only that the pennies were missing from the idol but that a cigarette had been stubbed out in its lap.
Now he's bought it, said my wife contentedly.
No divinity will hold still for that.
He's really asking for it.
And how right she was.
The next time we saw him, he was a changed person;
he had aged thirty years, and his face, the color of tallow, was crisscrossed with wrinkles, as though it had been wrapped in chicken wire.
Some sort of nemesis was haunting his footsteps, he told us in a quavering voice--either an ape specter or Abe Spector, a process-server, we couldn't determine which.
His eyes had the same dreadful rigid stare as Dr. Grimesby Roylott's when he was found before his open safe wearing the speckled band.
The grocery the youth worked for soon tired of his depressing effect on customers, most of whom were sufficiently neurotic without the threat of incubi, and let him go.
The beautiful, the satisfying part of his disintegration, however, was the masterly way the Buddha polished him off.
Reduced to beggary, he at last got a job as office boy to a television producer.
His hubris, deficiency of taste, and sadism carried him straightaway to the top.
He evolved programs that plumbed new depths of bathos and besmirched whole networks, and quickly superseded his boss.
Not long ago, I rode down with him in an elevator in Radio City;
he was talking to himself thirteen to the dozen and smoking two cigars at once, clearly a man in extremis.
See that guy?
The operator asked pityingly.
I wouldn't be in his shoes for all the rice in China.
There's some kind of a nemesis haunting his footsteps.
However one looks at it, therefore, I'd say that your horoscope for this autumn is the reverse of rosy.
The inventory you acquired from me isn't going to be easy to move;
you can't very well sidle up to people on the street and ask if they want to buy a hot Bodhisattva.
Additionally, since you're going to be hors de combat pretty soon with sprue, yaws, Delhi boil, the Granville wilt, liver fluke, bilharziasis, and a host of other complications of the hex you've aroused, you mustn't expect to be lionized socially.
My advice, if you live long enough to continue your vocation, is that the next time you're attracted by the exotic, pass it up--it's nothing but a headache.
As you can count on me to do the same.
Compassionately yours,
S. J. Perelman
revulsion in the desert
the doors of the D train slid shut, and as I dropped into a seat and, exhaling, looked up across the aisle, the whole aviary in my head burst into song.
She was a living doll and no mistake--the blue-black bang, the wide cheekbones, olive-flushed, that betrayed the Cherokee strain in her Midwestern lineage, and the mouth whose only fault, in the novelist's carping phrase, was that the lower lip was a trifle too voluptuous.
From what I was able to gauge in a swift, greedy glance, the figure inside the coral-colored boucle dress was stupefying.
