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NEW

YORH, SATURDAY, JUNE 16 1956

VOLUME 182 NUMBER 24

’

T h e Shape

o f ,

Things

’

m st

in

T h e

Nutioh’s

pre-convention Presidential

p

erenceballot printed

on

the back cover of his iss

As indicated , ballots must be mailed before uly 3

be counted. If the ballot is somewhat long, it

is

nev

theless easy to

mark

and the results

should

m w

be

The

Pause

That Refreshes

Along with everycine eke,

we

were in tensely r e l i e d

to learn hat he President’scondition has been pro-

-nounced “most satisfactory’’ and tha t lie will soon

be

able to leave the hospital. Wi th the rest

of

the world,

we join in wishing him an early a nd complete recovery.

All the same, the general reaction to the news of his

m a t recent illness provides another striking evidence

of the potency

of

“the cult of Ike‘” (see page

504)

and

of’

he ruthlessness of those who fbster thecult he

better to exploit it. In remarkable contrast to the way

in which the press handled the

news

of his heart attack

last September, this 1atest.blow o his health was almost

instantly ransformed in toan assurance o good

for-

tune and long life. Almost before the public knew that

the President had undergone surgery, unofficial Wh ite

.House spokesmen were Ieeding he press “private bu t

firm” assurances thathewould ru n again.And the

sponges had hard ly been removed before his medical

‘advisors were telling

us

that he could stand lor reelec-

tionand hat his hfe expectancy ha d actually been

enhanced:

1)

because the operation corrected a condi-

tion thatmight haveendangered his healt h;and

(2)

because it “proved th at his heart is healed and strong.”

This remarkable transformationof the “bad news” of

the ape rati on into the “good news” that all the Presi-

de nt needed to be as fit as a fiddle was to spend two

hours on the operating table was made possible hy the

ardent cooperatlon ol press, ,radio and television. With

each illness of thePresident, Mr.Hagerty becomes,

more skilied in the art

of

reassuring the public. Tru e,

the

press

did quote Dr. Burrill

Crolln

to the effect that

the disease

oi

ileitis recurs in abou t

30

to

35 per

cent

of

the cases, but this statement somehow got lost in the

jolly news that the market had rallied. T h e resohrceful

Mr.

Nagerty “competentandclear”)withan assist

from MaJor e n e r a 1 Leonard Heaton (“cool and clear”)

managed to get the working press

so

absorbed in the

detads

of

the operation-always a fascinating subject-

that the larger Issue of the President’s fitness was for-

gotten.Like the

-good

Dr. White of Boston,

Major

General Heaton is

a

clever man at a press conference;

he ,even managed to soun d less professional in his com-

ments than the reporters did

with

their questions. The

press seemed more interested in ten inches of th6 Pres-

ident’s ntestine han

in

the future of the Presidency.

The events of the

last weekend

‘should

stimulate iu

I

special intet-est.

T h e Awful TrwtL

The troublewithPresiden t Eisenhower’s statem

-at the Natio nal Citizens for Eisenhower rally in Wa

ington-that American prestige

since

the last world

w

”has never been as high as it is this dag,” is not t

i t is false but thatj unfortunately, it is probably tru

W ha t a commentary this

is

on American leadership

view of the low esteem in which we are currently re

garded nearly everywhere in the world. If Americ

prestige is higher today thanat any time since 19

i t

is only because we hale,

to

a degree, ceased rattl

bombs and, half-heartedly, s’tarted to wave the ol

branch, If this is’the ex planation, it shou ld beelativ

easy for us to rise from even our present exalted

po

rion were

we

to

launch

a

dram atic peace offensive.

The Renunciation of Infallibility

T h e reaction

af

the American press to Khrushche

speech has been uniformly banal‘andunimaginative

T h e points most frequently made are these: (1) Khru

ev and his colleagues are using Stalin’s ghost a

scapegoat for their own crimes and misdemeanors;

T h e speech, a typical piece of Soviet trickely design

to throw

u s

off-guard, is not ,to be taken seriously;

AllpatrioticAmericanorganizationsshouldcontinue

to blackball the bounder Khrushchev who has not co

clean and told us why he faded to assassinate Stalin

i f hedid, why he waited

s o

long;

4)

T h e spee

Yproves” that the Soviet regime is

a

brutal dictatorsh

(surprise ) and that poIice torture will often produc

false confessions (surprise ); (5) I n any case, Khru

chev’s indlctme nt of Stalm should no t give rise to ev

an inference that the Soviet regime

has

changed

or th

anything worth noting has happene d there.

T h e Soviet leaders may be blackguards and rasca

bu t they are not fools. They know that there is a lo

in words. They know,

too

that the indictment canno

be rescinded any more than those

who

read it can

told to forget it. T he sweep and vigor

of

the attack c

hard ly fail to shake the convictions of “hard core”

wthodox Communists the world over. Therefore

m w t have k n zmnded.asa piece of major ideologi

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mrgery:

nothing l ss would justify the risks involved.

Wha t the Soviets have renounced is the principle

of

Soviet infallibility in Soviet-satellite relationships an d

in the relationships between the Soviet bloc and Social-

ist states. T h e renunciation wasnecessary no t merely

to pave the way for better, stronger, more durable rela-

tions with he satellite and Socialist nations bu t to

rationalizea policy of coexistence. I t is a dangerous

policy from the Soviet leaders’ p i n t

of

view, because i t

implies some relaxation

of

domestic controls. The ulti-

mate heresy that he leaders

of

any orthodoxy an

commit is

to

renounce, even in a limited fashion and

or a special purpose, the principle of infallibility. But

in this case the gamble is worthwhile, and the conse-

quences,

in

the long run, couldprove tobe revolu-

tionary.

By acting as thoughhe only meaning of

Khrushchev’s speech was that the State Department had

finaIly managed to score apropagandacoup on the

Soviets b y releasing it, we are in danger once again of

bein g left alone at the station as kenin’s locomotive of

iswry

goes

racing toward the future.

On

Shaking

Hands

Now that

the

grotesquely over-billed Floridaand

California primaries are at a n end, the year’s one pre-

convention political debate may be assessed. T h e only

issue o n which the debaters did n ot see eye to eye was

civil rights an d on this issue their differences were more

a matter of rhetoric and emphasis than of-princ iple.

A real clash on civil rights between rival candidates for

the Democratic nomination might, this year, have car-

riedat least an echo of agreathistoricdebate. But

Kefauver-Stevenson, 1956, will hardly rank in the his-

tory texts with Lincoln-Douglas, 1858. T h e only way to

have debated the civil-rights issue would have been for

one of the debaters to take the position that the Dixie-

crats should be ousted from the Democratic Party.

But

since neither was prepared o take this position, the

debates failed to conceal the rivals’ basic agreement on

even the one

issue

that mattered. T h e debate thus be-

came

a

personality contest or, moTe accurately, a grim

contest o see which candidate could shake the most

hands

End

of

a

Dream

Wh en Formosa an d heUnited States wrecked an

eighteen-naticm

U.

N. package-membership deal last

December, providing the

USSR

with an opportunity to

stage a pectacular “rescue ope ratio n” hatbrought

sixteen new nations into the organization, T h e Nutmn

(December 24, 1955) warned th at the Chinese Nation-

alists had endangered their own membership. The in-

flexibility displayed by Taipeiand Washington on

every questionrelated to Chinaand Formosa is now

beginning to bear bitter ruit.

Egypt

has recognized

Peking, and a Cairo paper reports that the Afro-Asian

bloc plans to take

up the m tter of China’s

U.

N. r e p

502

resentation

promptly after the General ssembly meets

in November.

Twenty-six states have now recognized Peking

and Egypt’s action seems to foreshadow recognition

by

other members of th e Arab bloc. T h e world

is

becom-

ing increasingly disaffected

wich

theUS.-Formosa

policy of unqualifiedhostility toward China .Other

thanWash ingtan, only South Korea - continues to

pander to Chiang Rai-shek‘s fading dream of empire.

India and Canada have criticized American si’ege tactics

against China (a iege which i n additionobeing

wrong in principle, is proving ineffective in practice).

London has informed Washington that it was proceed

ing o n its’ow n esponsibility to make exceptions to the

existing restrictions on shipment of strategic goods to

China.

Now Austra lian Prime Ministe r Nlenzies announces

that China and Formosa will be a major topic at the

Commonwealth prime ministers’ conference in Lo nd o

nextmonth. In thebackground

is

the act that he

Afro-Asian nations that me t at Ban dung in Apr il, 195

”with

Indi a and Ceylon

of

the Commonwealth playing

imp ortant roles-unanimously prono unced themselve

in favor

of unzversal

U. N. membership.

T h e indications are that the sands are running out

for the Nationalists in the

U.

N.-and for this country’s

Formosa policy.

Herman Wouk Under Glass

A hearty welcome to Herman Wouk, a distinguished

recruit o he dwindling ranks of non-conformists. I n

presenting his originalmanuscripts,ncluding The

Came

utzny

and

Marlone

Mornzngstar

to he Co

lumbia University Libraries, Mr. Wouk observed tha

the ntellectual n heUnited States

has

always been

the kind of person who goes about “challenging, argu

ing, asking questions, breaking familiar molds,” as i n

the case of Hen ry David Thorea u who “went to live in

the

woods for thirty cents a day, sustaining his life wit

his two bare hands, to make a protest against the

com

placency he saw.” As with Thoreau, so with Wouk. For

as he sees it, Mr. Wouk has been “questioning the un

spoken complacencies” by exhibiting

a

serious concern

with“familiar religious concepts.” It is a bit odd o

think

of

the uph olde rs of religious values and insti tu-

tions as non-conformists in the Thore au tradition

but

the hgg estio n, perhaps, falls under the headin gof wha

Mr. Wouk has elsewhere referred to as “the twist” on

the stereotype. Although it is “still not quite intellectu

ally respectable even to consider

a

relig-lous position ,”

Mr.

Wou k finds that he could “in honesty make his

report” to the late Irwin Edman, who taught him phi

losophy at Columbia, were he alive today:

“I

have tried

to remain unblinded, Irwin, y the fashionable

formula

of the clever ones. I have tried to see life as candidly a

I could.

I

have not conformed so far as I know in my

writing, in my thinking,

or

in

my

living, to the pat

terns o f the hour.”

h NATIQ

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Babies nd International Relations

The mass

of

small new facts published e+ery day

tends to

bury

the few great, key facts on which events

really wheel. One

such,

which France successfully for-

got

for

twenty years, was the exhaustion

of

the Gmnde

A,rm e’sreserves i n 1917 and the fact that no mat ter

who was to

win

the first World

War,

France had lost

it. It finally lost i t officially in 1940. A similar fact about

Russia has now come half-way to the surface: the price

for Stalin’s managemen t i n

1939-45

is given in he

coming classes of sixteen-year-old Russian boys. They

will shortly drop from three and a half million a year

EO under a million in

1960”an

item which may g o

long way towards explaining Russia’s reduction of mil-

itary

personnel.

In this situation, Russia

must

lmk for near and

effective friends, not easily found overnight. Russia has

to remember that

a

strong China, for example, could

become very bad news indeed. Wha t Moscow wants in

t+e Western Pacific

is

a strong navy, not ’ trong land

force; the United States wants just the opposite, and

has

got

it-thanks

to

Rheeand Chiang. Considering

the eat complementary situation, it k perhaps

a

good

time

to reflect tha history has produced greater

ironies than a Russia

suing for

the friendship

of

e

United States.

Federal

~

esponsibility

n

Education

B y

Horace

M.

KaIlen

T H E FREE, tax-supported sp.stem Df public education,

reaching from kindergarten to university and beyond,

is today as absolute

a

part of the American way of life

as our system of government and our elections. No true

and sincere believer in American democracy now doub ts

that

its

growth and improvement depend on the con-

tinuouseducatio n of the American people. T h e

edu-

cation

of

the adult is of kven~ reater importance tha n

the education of youth. In the new atomic age which

we have entered,adequateeducation is the first and

last insurance

of our

continuing m live and

to

grow

as a

free society. More than ever before in history,

knowledge is power while the greatest danger to the

peace a nd freedom of, the world is the monopoly of

this power

by

a privileged few.

This

i s

why there has been, over the years, a steady

if littlenoticed increase of federalcooperationwith

the states in meeting their educational responsibilities.

Th is began with the land-grant colleges. I n 1590 it was

extended b y separate grants:in-aid for the improvement

HORACE M . KALLEN

no t e

educator is author of

T h e Education of Free Men

and

o t hm boc k on OUT

schools.

of

tcder-traininng.

In

914

trainhg

n i t @ c ~ b

home economics were added. In 1917 Congress ma

vocational educa tion a federal concern and, of cou

various departments

of

the government and the Of

of

Education regularly provided information

and

ot

services. Whenhereat depression came, fede

agencies, PWA, WPA.,

NYA,

saved educational a

lishments in various states

from

complete collapse

bui lding nd epairing schools, employing teach

making

possible

the

part-time employment

of

nea

500 000 students of all ranks a nd conditions and e

cating nearly 2,000,800 more American youth throu

the Civilian Conservation Corps.

T he coming of World War I1 further extended

diversified the ederal, share in education. Selec

service found hat 1,000,000 of our youthhad ne

been to school and millions more had never finis

ekmentary

school.

T h e armed farces found functio

illiteracy a nd physical defects that no young Americ

should have suffered from, given proper aid by th

local communities

or

states.

WHY

DID

Ehese communities

fail

their youth? Th

were communitieswith he largest families and

smallest incomes, located in the agricultural Southe

which still by comparison has ittle ndustry and

cities. But

th

wealth

of

the nation concentrates in

cities, and the popu lation goes with hewealth.Our

manufacturing Northeastholds twenty-one times

wealth o t h e Southeast but rears

only

two times

children; an d is rearing proportionateIy fewer child

each year. Our Northeast spends three or four times

much per child for schools and teachers as Qur Sou

yet proportionately the South has spent a higher sha

of

its

income and

gets

far less

for

its money. It han

caps itself, of course, by its un-American raciali

which givesso much houg ht and energy to keep

the Negro down that ittle is left

for

lifting anyb

up . In fact, the whites cannot anywhere grow in wea

and freedom unless the Negroes do.

Other parts of the country also suffer in health a

education because of the centrahzing t r e r

of

the

tional economy. This trend is a condition of ou r p

perity, -bu t has dangerous consequences

for

democra

It

creates differences in educational opportunity wh

penalize health and educatien

in

areas where child

are most numerous. As the record i n the Sou th es

lishes,

t

thereby

turns

free public education

into

force that supports scarcity, caste and privilege.

I n order to safeguard democratic ideals and to k

the democratic process secure, the federal governme

must

willy-nilly either cooperate more and more w

states and ‘localitiesin providing equal educational

portunities an equal terms for. all the children of

the people, or else must replace them. Just as the nat

purportedIy undertakes to treat all our youth equa

in preparing them for war,

so

it must in fact treat

youth equally in preparing them for peace. Only

federalgovernment is in a position to establish

e q u a k y

w h - e t does

not obtain.

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