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YORK , S A T U R ~ A I ,

PRIL 9,

1960

VOLUME

190

No

5

frikaner Dementia

.

Qnly+theAfrikaners and their leaders will be surprised

at the dramatlc turn

f

events si,nce he March21 blood-

ing at Sharpevdle. S a few short days; they-have

succeeded in precipitatmg-

a

debaclewhich llas been

pcedictable orageneration. 'De men ted o he point

no t

recognize tha t Hitler's racist poli-

tics hxd ended in disaster, they elected to ,rise to

power

through the same demagoguery. Once n power, they

gerrymandered onstituencies, undercut onstitutional

guarantees,. obbed -both he Africans .and the Cape

Colored of even token representation,and hereby in-

ested themselves with a permanent rnonopaly of sta te

author ity . The effect was to sever eve ry'avenue of for-

mal

communication

ll-ot merely withnative ' opinion,

ut with hose white critics who' sought

t o

talk sense.

Then the regime proceeded to organize African and

Colored unrest by enacting,, and en.forcing, interrelated

phases

of

the crazy apartheid program. Previouqly, the

fricans particularly had been weak, demoralized, with-

out organization, irtualIy leaderless. But of recent

years, as many as 1,250,000 Africans ,have been tried

each earorrivial offenses against th e apartheid

rogram,' including 500,000 for so-called "pass law" of-

enses alone.

No

finer tonic for organization could have

been invented. Not content with this folly, the regime

then set the stage for revolutionary demonstrations b y

nactment of

a

"subversive control act" which made

it

ssible for the Africans' unr est o find egitimate

ought to "thih out" the native leadership by

inass

ar-

pment of a "hard core," tough, mil itant leadership

At

the same time the regime, by appealing

to

l fears and hatreds, has made "white" South Africa

eavilyrmed civilian population in the

d; the whites a re armed to he ee thwith rifles,

and idearms which could, of course, be

en from them on some blood-red morning. To com-

the madness ircuit, the regime has ought to

ate itself. This year, some time after Ma y 3 1 when

a celebrates it s golden (b loody?) jubilee,

-

the electorate will be asked in, a , referendumwhether

they *ant the country to step out of tlie British~Com

monwealthand become a republic.

Then, o cap

all,

this complicated madness, panic-

ridden police, without provocation, opened fire. with

Sten guns and

.303

rifles on a;laughiiIg, ,unarmed crowd

of

2,000 (not 20,000, as eported] detnonstrators, in-

cluding.women" and children; many

o

the victims were

shot in the back, fleeing.

N6

enemy 'of th e Afrikaners,

livihgordead, could haveplotted hedestruction

of

their diot regime withmore scientific precision th an

they ,themsel+eshave done. "Whom, tlie 'Go-ds

-would

destroy.

.

: was never more applicable:

Unfortuna tely, there is no wiit which car issue

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Soviets are any more sincere in wanting an agreement?

A.

Well . I cant presume to describe withany

accuracy what are the motives of somebody else [ bu t]

all the signs are tha t the Soviets do want a degree of

disarmament, ndheywant to topesting., That

looks to me more or less proved. . hey want to nego-

tiate urther; noquestion in my mind.

Although the President ncorporated some reserva-

tions in his reply, the New Yorlc Herald Tr zbme head-

lined Margueri te Higgins report: Eisenhower Calls

Soviets Sincere in Desire for Nuclear Test Ban.

What a sad headline for a dedicated cold warrior t o

see

o n

the first page of a newspaper which surely can-

not be accused of lack of zeal in tha t self-same cold war

Ye t it is not a bad dream, bu t reality.

A

change has

occurred, not so much n themannersand mores of

statesmen hey still

do

a good deal of playing t o

the gallery and delight in their own small triumphs

but inwhat hey wrangle bout. Before Mr. Khru-

shchevs visit to the United State s, each side was tir e-

lessly engaged in pouring abuse on the other, and the ir

ceaseless reFriminations were such that agreement could

never be reached. Dirty capitalists,theistic Com-

munists, greedy colonial exploiters, bloody murderers of

Hungarians,and so on uchwas the language of

diplomacy. Nowboth sides pay somewhatgrudging

tri but e o each others bona f ides . They still hake

their heads, but no longer their fists.

And what is the gravamen of the cur rent complaints?

Merely thathe other side is no t as zealous in dis-

armament, in test-banning, nyearning orpeace and

constructive endeavor, as our side is. And that we have

a better plan for attaining these laudablebjectives than

they have. The fact that the t one

s

less strident, every-

one hasobserved; bu t th e fa ct that the plane of con-

tention is infinitely more moral and rational is hardly

commented on, although no one can fail to be struck by

it if he mereIy lays

a

copy of a metropolitan journal of

April, 1959, alongside one of April, 1960.

Wave

of

the Future

Congressmen are gett ing more mail on H. R. 4700

the Fotand bill to provide a measure of medical care for

the aged han on any other issue. This is not sur-

prising. Medicalcostsaresoaringwhile the supply of

doctors relative to t he increase in population is declin-

ing. Yet across the ditch, in Britain, medical care has

improved, the supply of doctors has gone up, and the

vehement protests of the profession to socialized medi-

cine have abated. Word of all this has gotten around

morewidely tha n onemight imagine. Opinion polls

taken in 1956 and

1957 b y

the University of Michigan

SurveyResearch Centerndicatehatmost people

favorgovernmenthelp nproviding low-cost medical

and hospital care. Socialized medicine is still a dirty

306

phrase with American doctors, but free medical care

is the wave of the future.Legislators who fear th e

retaliatorypower

of

the

A.M.A.

should takenote of

certarn acts.Asagainst the 11,000,000 oldsters who

could benefit byhe Forand bill, thererebout

200,000 doctors.Evenounting the doctors wives,

sisters, cousins and aunts, they constitute only a small

voting force nationally.

Medical care for he aged toucheseveryfamily, re-

gardless of par ty affiliation, Th e appeal

is

not sectional,

narrow or remote; it is nearly universal. Small wonder

that it hasbecome the op bread and but ter issue of

1960 And the opposition is largely restricted t o a singIe

lobby which, although rich and noisy, is by no means

all-powerful. Belatedly,certainRepublican eaders

specifically, Senators Cooper, Javits ndScott,who

belong

i o

th e modern or bright wing of t he par ty

have decided no t to acquiesce in the Administrations

opposition t o medical care for the aged and are draft -

ing legislation similar to the Forand bill, though more

restricted in coverage. Probably

the

Forand

bill

could

be pried out

of

committee only by a discharge petition.

Bu t even the liberal Democrats who favor the bill

and there are many of them re reluctant t o sign a

petition which they feel is unlikely to muster the req-

uisite 219 signatures. Bu t he bills supportersought

t o make an issue of it even if there

is

little or no chance

for passage a t this session. The re may be risks in such

a course, but he bark of th e A.M.A. is a great deal

worse than tsbite, Medical care or the aged

is

an

issue with which th e Democrats could badger t he Re-

publicans from coast to coast, in metropolitan areas and

in rural districts. T he aged are everywhere, and most of

them need help.

Honest

Curtis

LeMay

In hedays when Governor Rockefeller hadPresi-

dential ambitions, his heart bled for the citizen of t he

Republic who, in theaftermath of anuclear attack,

mightabsorba ew housand oentgens rom allout

dustand so perish withoutascratchon his hide. He

conceived th e idea of compelling this citizen, forhis

own good, t o knock together a shelter of concrete blocks

in which he would spend a

few

weeks in the company

of his loved ones, waiting for the fallout t o abate, and

thenstrollout nto he sunshine to rebuild his com-

munity. Only 3 per cent of his intended beneficiaries

approved the Governors planand it was knocked in

the head b y his own Republican egislature.

If

there

were any politics in the Governors proposal, the answer

isnow athand: shelters dont garnervotes.

But the issue, though pr et ty sick, is no t dead. Rep-

resentative Chet Holifield

of

California ha$

a

heart, too,

and it aIso bleeds. He complains t ha t th e nations civil-

defense program is in ccdepIorabley ondition and

he

is

The NATION

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ng his influence, such as i t is, back of a gigantic,

program which is to cost 5 billlon

a

year for

nex t four years, while th e Russians obligingly wait.

nobody builds hem,everyonebe-

shelters - veryone but GeneralCurtis Le-

ToughLeMay ridiculed theplans of the gent le

so vigorous that the complitteechair-

was startled.,Maginot-linehinking, LeMay

d it. You cant fightawarwith shelters. He

more tqissiles ndmoreairplanes, oo; th e

ter may be obsolete, bu t after all he was weaned on

If his heart bleeds, tha t is wh at itbleeds for. The

zens he leaves to the politicians.

Uses of Barbarism

Time i s runningout on capitalpunishment n he

George Gallup finds that

ecently as 1953, 68 percent of the generalpublic

capitalpunishment. In he ate st Gal lup poll,

i s , 51 per cent sharp drop, in the space

years, for such an ntractab le social issue. I n

at 51 percent, down rom

per cent m 1953. In bo th countries,

7

per cent: are

But the trend is clear, and in this coun try it

be accelerated by ast weeks barbarous execu-

of James W. Rodgers, a forIorn but rather gallant

m miner, in Utahs state prison. Rodgers, exercis-

a privilegewhich th e compassionate sta te extends

who have been given the death sentence, opted

die by he firing quad ather hanby hanging.

ed by he warde n if he had any ast requests, he

Warden, I done oId you I want abulletproof

Fiveanonymous riflemen ired four bullets nto

he sat in Utahs nfamous wooden chair. They

a slit inaburlapcurtain,The rifleman

the blank bullet may feel th at he is innocent, but

as guilty as the rest of us; he, too, is

a

killer. The

of a night watchman n North Carolina summed

up neatl y whenshesaid: I dont believe n tak ing

t you cant give ife.

the

Past ,

The worldpolitical unrest hat was ouched off by

Aswan dam on the Nile

shadowed untd very l ate in t he day the realiza-

of what his mmense rrigationproject hreatens

one of .thegreatestart repositorieson earth.The

from he Third Cataract n he Sudan o Aswan

Egypt is lined bymonumentsunrivaled n

and historic importance.Theyare huge, im-

and awe-inspiring.

As

things ow

nd, hey will disappearwithin ouror iveyears

flood waters and theywill never be seen again.

Most, if not all, of them can be saved. Some can be

9

196

moved, stone by stone, t o new safe sites; some can

be

preserved by dykes nd ampart s many, of course,

havenotye t even been discovered; bu tmuch could

be done in three or four years of intensive archaeological

digging). All that

-is

required is money-in this case

anestimated $30 million.

bility. Th e governments of Egypt and

the

Sudan, ago-

nized by he choice etween thematerialneeds

of

present and future generations and the heritage of noble

monuments rom heirgreat pasts, have offered th e

nations of th e world rich enticements to par tic ipa te

in

the rescue work. Half of all future finds in the threat-

ened area may be claimed by the part ies that unco ver

them, xcavationswillbe uthorized in othe r areas,

certain emplesmaybe removed rom Nubia, andan

import ant collection of ancient obj.ects will be given

upby heEgyptian government.

The amo unt of money needed is not large if divided

among some eighty-one nations; -the time is short, but

not oo hort if, let ussay,one-tenth of theenergy

now being dedicate.d to moon shotswerediverted to

th e rescue of the priceless relics of the Nile. Space ad-

ventureand he peacefuldevelopment

of

theatom

areboth problematicalenterprisesandboth canawait

our convenience.Meanwhile, we know thatweneed

the great witnesses to our spiritual past, and

w

know

tha t those now guarding the banks of the Nile will not

await our pleasure.

UNESCO hasmade hisproject tsurgent responsi- .

Symbolic ction

In ordering reductionnhe cruisingpeed of

Electra urbo-prop airliners, after wo ecent crashes,

from he normal 400 miles per hour first o 316, and

later to 295, miles per hour, the Federa1,Aviation Agency

may th ink that it has eassured the flying public.

It

has

not. If the FAA had reason t o believe th at he planes

were angerous, i t should ave roundedhemm-

mediately; his is what Australias Civil AviationDe-

partment did on th e bases of preliminary reports from

the FAA. In any case, the public was, and is, entitled

to an exp lan ation of FAA procedures.

If

there are, in

fact, structural defects n he Electra, it would

follow

a) tha t the FAA did not set up proper standards for

certification of the planes n he first nstance; or b )

that heai r lines weregiven pecialdispensation to

operate heplanesdespite heir ailure to meet hese

specihcations. Th e public s also entitled to kno w why

the FAA feels th at th e issuance of an order t o reduce

cruising speed is appropriate adminis trative action in a

matte r of this gravity . The explanation may be entire ly

adequate, but on its face the FAAs order strikes us as

anotherattempt o ubstitute publicity or th e yp e

of vigorousction th at buildsubliconfidencen

regulatory agencies.

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