SPAN: February 1964

FEBRUARY FIFTY NAYE

1964

PAISE

SPAN OF EVENTS

article begins on page 22.

An interesting example of current By her great humanism and chamIndian-American co-operation in the culpionship of popular world causes, the tural field is the recent presentation of late Anna Eleanor Roosevelt won the the Children's Art Carnival to India by affectionate title of First Lady of the the Asia Society and the Museum of World. Among her versatile activities, Modern Art, New York. As was noted perhaps the most important was her by the Carnival's designer Mr. Victor role in drawing up the United Nations D'Amico at its inauguration in New Charter of Human Rights. V. S. Nanda's Delhi, this is the first time two nations article beginning on page 41 discusses are co-operating to develop the creative Mrs. Roosevelt's career with special respirit in the child. Press comments on this laudable venture have been enthuference to her work at the United Nations. siastic. India's Vice President Dr. Zakir Husain described it as "a significant gift of the USA to the children of India."

See page 4.

From creative art. education for children to college instruction is hardly a far cry. A major article in this issue, by Dr. James Bryant Conant, educator and diplomat, concerns what he describes as Abraham Lincoln has been called the a "quarrel" among American educators. best known figure of American history.

Reduced to its essentials this "quarrel" Around the world his birthday is comcentres round the argument whether a memorated on February 12 each year. course in education is an essential preBut Americans also honour the birthday requisite for teachers and, if so, what the of another figure from their past during course should comprise. Dr. Conant _ the month of February-George Washmakes pertinent observations and recomington, the nation's first President, the Two CHAMBER SYRINGE, developed in U.S., leader of its army during the Revolumendations which have a general releimmunizes children against polio. tetanus, vance to education everywhere. The tionary War, the presiding officer of the diphtheria, whooping cough with one shot.

Convention which wrote the American Constitution. Many respected historians have described Washington as the greatest American and his achievements in the struggle for independence and later in framing a Constitution acceptable to all thirteen Colonies give credit to that claim . .He was born of English parents in Virginia on February 22, 1732. As a young man he surveyed much of the western areas of the Colonies and later served with British armies in the wars against the French. He won a reputation as a highly competent leader and, when independence was declared, he was made commander of the American army. For fOUfyears he led a "ragtag and bobtail" assortment of farmers, shopkeepers and millhands against well-equipped, profesEXPERIMENTAL PLANE with "breathing wings," undergoing tests in California, promises sional British troops, suffered many deto extend range and endurance of future aircraft without increasing weight. Paper-thin feats but gained enough victories against slots in plane's wing (inset) suck air inside, greatly reduce friction and air turbulence.

awarded posthumously to President John F. Kennedy, is received by his brother, Robert Kennedy.

MEDAL

OF

FREEDOM,

Washington's Birth Anniversary

impressive odds to win the support and aid of France. Finally, on October 19, 1781, the British army surrendered.

Victory had been won, independence recognized and Washington stood alone as the leading figure of the struggle.

But there were more struggles ahead.

Washington was elected chairman of the Convention of 1787 and Constitutional set about to produce a Constitution that would be ratified by the thirteen Colonies, each with divergent opinions on the form of government to be established.

He favoured a federal form of government and again enjoyed success when the Constitution was ratified and he was unanimously elected the first President of the new republic. He took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, in New York City, and served two terms-eight yearsas President.

Washington retired from public life in 1797 and returned to his beloved estate, Mount Vernon, in Virginia. When he died at the age of sixty-seven in 1799 he was mourned at home and abroad as one of the great men of his time. He was, as every American schoolboy learns, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

•

WILLIAM H. WEATHERSBY Publisher DEAN BROWN Editor V. S. NANDA Managing Editor LOKENATHBHATTACHARYA Senior Staff Editor V. S. MANIAM Feature Editor B. Roy CHOUDHURY Senior Artist NAND K. KATYAL Design Artist AVINASH PASRICHA Photo Editor AWTAR S. MARWAHA Production Manager

HANS HOFMANN

by Lokenath

Bhattacharya

A QUARREL AMONG EDUCATORS

by James Bryant Conant

SHRINE TO LINCOLN'S MEMORY A PILGRIM'S FAITH

by Dr. Amiya Chakravarty

NIRMAL KUMAR SHARMA Copy Manager A. K. MITRA Circulation Manager Published at UNITED STATESINFORMATION SERVICE, Bahawalpur House, Sikandra Road, New Delhi-I, on behalf of The American Embassy, New Delhi.

Printed by ISAAC N. ISAAC at Vakil & Sons Private Ltd., Narandas Building, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-1.

RADIOTELESCOPE in Puerto Rico mountains, commissioned recently by the U.S. for space research, is the largest of its kind.

WORLD OF ENCHANTMENT FOR CHILDREN EVERYWHERE

NEW HOME FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

by V. S. Maniam

CRUSADER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

by V. S: Nanda

THE COVER This collage by 13-year-old Chander Prabha of Queen Mary's School, Delhi, was done at the Children's Art Carnival. Story on page 4.

Photo by Avinash Pasricha.

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The Children's Art Carnival:

A NEW

Mrs. Kennedy's presentation of the Art Carnival, during her 1962 India visit, is received by Mrs. Indira Gandhi on behalf of Indian children.

WORLD OF ENCHANTMENT CHILDREN

HE CHILDREN'SArt Carnival, a gift to the children of India announced by Mrs. John F. Kennedy during her Indian visit last year, is a unique play and art centre -a world of fantasy created for the child alone. It is a place where he can play, paint and experiment with art materials in complete freedom; it needs no language and speaks directly to the child's senses and impulses. The adult's place is outside this enchanted world, from where he watches, often with fascination and surprise, as the child's creative instinct unfolds.

The Carnival serves also as a training centre for art teachers.

It provides a demonstration of creative art teaching, offers new ideas and methods, displays new and varied materials for art teaching. This indeed is its main objective.

Housed in a prefabricated, demountable aluminium structure comprising two linked octagons, the Carnival was inaugurated in New Delhi in October last by India's Vice President Dr. Zakir Hussain. The Carnival is now in Madras and will be there until February 12. From there, it will go to Bangalore, February 18 to 25; then to Bombay, March 4 to 18; and Ahmedabad, March 25 to April 5. From Ahmedabad, the

T

Excited by the wealth of material available and freedom from irksome supervision, boy at collage table, opposite, in the Children's Art Carnival, exudes wonder and joyous expectancy.

FOR

EVERYWHERE

Carnival will return to New Delhi to become a permanent feature of the National Children's Museum. . The Carnival is the creation of Mr. Victor D'Amico, Director of the Department of Education in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and was born of his experience in the Museum's year-round art school for young children. The materials that are provided and the toys that have been developed are designed with a view to developing each child's individual creative imagination. Since 1942, when it was first organized, the Carnival has been an annual feature in the Museum around Christmastime. It has also been exhibited in Belgium, Italy and Spain.

Over 55,000 children have so far visited the Carnival in the U.S. and abroad and some 10,000 teachers have seen it in operation.

The idea of bringing a duplicate of the Carnival to India originated in 1958 when Mrs. Indira Gandhi happened to see it at the World's Fair in Brussels. The moving spirit behind child welfare activities in India, Mrs. Gandhi was struck immediately by the Carnival's potential value in the field of art education for Indian children. She later visited New York to discuss with Mr. D'Amico the possibility of designing one exclusively for India. The present Children's Art Carnival is the outcome of those discussions. It has been made possible by a grant from the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art and several special donations from individual members of the Asia Society.

The Carnival In

Operation

Lightweight aluminium structure, which can be easily erected, was specially designed for Carnival in India.

of art teaching is to develop each individual's sensitivity to the fundamentals of art and thus to increase his creative power and his awareness of the vast heritage of contemporary art and that of the past. What is meant by fundamentals? Not, as most people believe, such criteria as skill or good draughtsmanship, technical knowledge of colour harmonies and rules of perspective, or factual data on the history of art.

These are not fundamentals, but, at best, only means to a particular expression or achievement. They are incidental to actual fundamentals more vital and dynamic: develop. ment of individuality and sensitivity to aesthetic values in works of art, in human relations, and in one's environment.

Jane Bland, an instructor at the Museum of Modern Art, describes thus the fundamentals of art teaching, in her book Art of the Young Child: "Giving a child opportunity and time to explore and encouraging him to do so is fundamental. ... It is fundamental to provide young children with the opportunity and encouragement to express freely....

Acceptance and respect of what the child creates is fundamental.

It is fundamental to learn techniques as they are needed " This educational philosophy is not merely theory: it is a result of practical experience over an extended period of time.

The Children's Art Carnival is a dramatic demonstration of this new philosophy, and has proved that children can be developed creatively the world over. This experiment in creative teaching has tapped the imagination of thousands of children and fired the interest of millions of the lay public who watched it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the past seventeen years. By the simple means of showing how children respond to art experiences under ideal teaching in a stimulating environment, it has overcome the need of verbal exposition and lengthy argument.

Two important factors emerge from the various experiments of the Children's Carnival. First, that children can be developed creatively regardless of their previous background. Second, that ethnic or national background has no bearing on the child's creativity.

T

HE PRJJ\:CIPAL

, ti

Dr. Zakir Hussain, Vice President of India, who inaugurated the Children's Art Carnival in New Delhi, admires a child's handiwork. At centre is Mr. Victor D'Amico, creator of the Carnival.

AIM

(Continued on page 8)

Scenes of total engrossment like this are common in Carnival's Studio-Workshop, where children are left completely to themselves.

SPAN

February

1964 7

Contour Gate is tactful reminder that only those between 4 and J 2 are admitted.

Furry Cat, which arches its back when a child strokes it, is designed to stimulate the child's tactile sense.

The first step: Introducing the child to form) line) colour) rhythm.

the Art Carnival is the Contour Gate, A a white metal rodto curved in the shape of two children, a T THE ENTRANCE

four-year-old and a twelve-year-old, the age limits of those admitted. This has become the famous symbol of the Carnival and is used wherever it goes. It is a tactful reminder that the Carnival is only for children, that only those who can fit through the gate without crouching may enter.

Adults are not admitted into the Carnival for three reasons. First, psychologically, it is designed as a child's world; this is pleasing to children and stimulates independent activity. Second, it removes the child from parental interference or domination. Parents often tend to hover over their children's work, making suggestions or criticisms.

Third, the presence of too many adults is confusing to the child and is not conducive to concentration.

Once through the Contour Gate, the child finds himself in the inspirational area, the first of the two areas or galleries of the Carnival. This is a semi-darkened room with toys either in pools of light or lighted from within, giving a jewel-like effect. The mood intended is one of magic and fantasy, of a friendly forest, cool and quiet, with delightful surprises beckoning the child from every direction. The cheerful mood is emphasized by a continuous background of soft musical recordings.

The inspirational area provides a new approach to art teaching, for here the child is stimulated to think creatively and is oriented to the fundamentals of design without words or dogma of any kind. Unique toys or devices originated by outstanding designers involve the child in aesthetic concepts of colour, texture, and rhythm. The Colour Player. an instrument constructed like a piano with keys and pedals, permits the child to project continuous moving patterns on a screen in front of him. Another toy, the Feeling Cat, stimulates the child's tactile sense. Here a wide steel band, made in the shape of a cat and covered with fur, arches its back when a child strokes it. The Magnetic Picture Maker is a magnetized panel set in a frame, on which the child can freely arrange designs with geometric and free-form shapes and bird and animal contours. Designs can be improvised spontaneously without the worry of making mistakes or erasing because they can be moved about or replaced instantly.

After being motivated or inspired by the different toys and games in the inspirational area and perhaps relieved of some of the cliches and stereotypes with which his mind is often burdened, the child enters the participation area, called Studio-Workshop, where he has the freedom to be creative.

Infinite Mirror Reflector, left, allows child to arrange her construction on pole revolving in front of mirrors, producing infinite reflections.

Colour Player, below, involving "painting with light," has keys and pedals, enables child to project continuous moving patterns in a variety of colours on screen infront.

AsWorkshop,

go into the brilliantly lighted Studiothey emerge into a different atmosphere.

Here are cantilevered easels in contrasting colours set at qifferent heights or adjustable to the convenient working position of any child. In the centre of the gallery are two round white collage tables with lazy-susans or turntables having pie-shaped divisions filled with stimulating materials such as coloured feathers, pipe cleaners, sequins, coloured and patterned papers, and cloth. Above each table is suspended a hoop, or some other device, from which the children hang mobiles as they make them. Mobiles by artists are hung in both galleries to give the Carnival a festive air.

Here the child is invited to make a painting, a collage or a construction, or all three if he wishes.

A child spends from an hour to an hour and a half in the Carnival, depending on his interest span and the convenience of the schedule. About one-third of the time is spent in the inspirational area and two-thirds in the Studio- Workshop. A child may make two or three paintings and a collage or a construction, or both. The things he makes are his property and he takes them away with him.

Children are left to work independently. A child is assisted by a teacher only when he does not know how to operate a toy, how to get started on a collage or construction, or when he does not seem to be deriving all the satisfaction possible from a given experience.

Actually, while an individual may at times achieve high creative standards on his own, most children need the guidance of experienced and sensitive teachers.

The art teacher is vital to the education of the individual: his selection and preparation are, therefore, of greatest importance. • THE CHILDREN

In the Studio-Workshop the child's own imagination and urge for expression

The X-14 A, gently descending on a vertical landing, hovers like a butterfly.

Since the historic flight of the Wright Brothers aviation has made revolutionary progress: the all-metal transport in 1925, the two-engine airliner zn 1933, the turboprop airliner in 1955, the 6oo-mile-per-hour jet in 1958. But all required high speed for their take-off and landing.

Now there is promise of even greater safety with

VEE--STOL OLD bullock-cart driver was recently at New Delhi's Palam airport, watching a jet airliner take off. As he gazed at the great screaming hulk rushing along the runway at some 150 miles an hour, he was heard to remark in Hindi: "This isn't exactly like a bird! It must run like a mad dog in order to fly."

In fact, what worried this simple Indian villager has long been agitating aeronautical engineers around the world. There is no denying that within the brief span of sixty years-since Kitty Hawk's miracle in 1903-the aviation industry has made spectacular strides. But while today's conventional airplanes, especially the jets, are superb in the air, they have one great handicap. They seem to be awkward on or near the ground. Just to lift its eighty-ton

A

N

bulk of airplane and passengers into the air, a jet airliner, for instance, must require a mile or two of runway for the take-off run. And landing, Jike take-off, is just as demanding of space. While approaching its destination, a jet must alight on the ground at an angle of one or two degrees and at the same terrifying speed before coming to rest.

Apart from the hazards involved in such exercises-it is common knowledge that most air accidents occur at the time of take-off or landing-there is the tremendous problem of space. Even the most modern and largest airports of today-including New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at Idlewild whose 14,752-foot 13 R Runway is the longest in the world-are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the

air traffic. Most of these airports are already becoming obsolete, sub-standard.

In the existing pattern of things, ever faster airplanes can only depend on ever growing runways.

Today's near-sonic jets must touch down at 150 miles per hour to maintain a landing angle of one or two degrees, then brake quickly to avoid over-shooting the runway. To reduce the landing speed, the wings of the plane would have to be at nearly right angles, but this would reduce its maximum air speed.

A solution to this jet-age problem lies, therefore, in the invention of an aircraft which will be able to take off and land vertically. Thanks to ceaseless experiments by scientists of many nations, this objective may soon be achieved. Already Continued on next page

"The

most straightforward-or

there are some very significant results obtained-results which experts think are "far more than a novelty or an incidental offshoot of the orderly progress of aviation." They involve a revolutionary departure in aircraft design.

The first of these successful experiments is the British Hawker P-ll27 plane, a forerunner of the V/STOL aircraft. The V/STOL-abbreviation of Vertical/Short Take-Off and Landing-planes will bring aviation to the end of its runway. For landing or take-off, they will require at most a cleared area not larger than a football field. For a plane like the P-1127, for instance, even this amount of space is not necessary and will be required only when it is loaded beyond its vertical lift capacity. In that case, it will need a forward run of only two to three hundred feet before launching itself straight skyward.

An observer recently reported on a take-off of the P-ll27: " ... the black, flexible edges of its intakes inflate to draw in more hurricanes of air, and the violent howl of its engine builds to a higher pitch still. Then, eerily, the Hawker P-ll27 slowly rises straight up on an inferno of downblasting jet exhaust, tucking its barely used landing gear into its

more appropriately) straightupward-way

belly as it teeters slightly in the air.

Gradually, almost hesitantly, it begins to move forward through the air like a normal airplane, and finally streaks away faster and faster out of sight at a top speed of over 600 miles an hour."

The P-ll27 has a system called "vectored thrust." Its extra-powerful jet engine, capable of generating 13,500 pounds of thrust, fires its stupendous push into nozzles which rotate downward for vertical take-off and landing. As fast as any existing jet airliner, this plane, once in the air, has a top speed of more than 600 miles an hour.

What comes closest, in point of development, to the P-ll27 is the American Curtiss-Wright X-19, recently unveiled at Caldwell-Wright airport in New Jersey.

This plane accomplishes the transition from vertical to horizontal flight by tilting its four propellers forward to the conventional position. It had its first intensive test flying last October. .

The X-19 has two huge, broad-bladed propellers which look like the propellers of an ocean liner. They are mounted at the tips of the forward wing, and at the ends of a rear tail that is almost wing size. Powered by two 2,250-horsepower

possible.))

turbo-prop engines within the fuselage, all four propellers can also operate one engine in case of emergency, giving less lift and speed but keeping the airplane in controllable flight. To raise the plane from the ground, the propellers point straight up, similar to the rotors of a helicopter. Once aloft the propellers swing down to the normal position for horizontal flight, the small wings supplying lift. It is predicted that the X-19 will fly at a top speed of 460 miles an hour at 20,000 feet altitude. Experimental models now carry a crew of two and from six to eight passengers.

Among other notable American ventures in this direction are planes known as X-14 A and X-22 A transport V/STOL. The Bell X-14 A experimen tal aircraft has its exhaust section in the exact centre of the plane and is now primarily used at Arms Research Centre in California to train astronauts for the moon landing.

As it gently descends to earth, vertically and without using the ordinary controls on the wings and tail, the X-14 A looks like a hovering butterfly.

The Bell X-22 A transport plane has also the same ability to ascend or descend vertically. Its four sets of fan-like blades tilt forward for horizontal flight and upward for vertical take-off and landing.

Still in the experimental stage, the V/STOL aircraft for the moment are being tried exclusively as formidable military equipment. When the V/STOL becomes a perfected reality, it is bound to revolutionize present concepts of both ground and sea warfare. But its effectiveness as a civilian'transport vehicle, whether for air-passenger or cargo operations, promises to be equally great.

All these planes in the V/STOL category have very impressive airspeeds.

Before the V/STOL can be successfully used in civilian service, it must get rid of its two nuisance factors: noise and downwash. These factors being relatively less disturbing to the military, it is the military which will have its first full use. Within five to ten years the V/STOL is expected to be a widely accepted military reality.

Its use in civilian service, however, will naturally take a considerably longer time to be effective. But runways are certainly nearing their end. The V/STOL, airplane of the future, has come and is bound to stay. •

Hans Hofmann: "1 am a mystery ... l am not two days the same man."

ANS HOFMANN I PLEASE KNOCK STRONG. These words, written in a lyrical script on Hofmann's studio door, have a symbolic meaning. Hofmann himself has "knocked strong" and persistently at the door of a new world of art, of which he stands today as one of the universally acknowledged architects.

Hans Hofmann, dean of abstract expressionism in America, will be eighty-four next month. But he still has the verve and vitality of a twenty-year-old. He seems to laugh at his age. And he seems to laugh too, through his paintings-a robust laugh breeding power and assurance rare at this moment when, some say, most art looks like X-ray plates of an essentially sick age.

"I am," says Hofmann, "an optimist-multiplicated one thousand times." It is not surprising, therefore, that he entered his most original period of creativity only about a decade agoand has stayed ever since. At the moment, he is at a peak of production many younger painters could envy.

This optimist, called by some critics "the grand young old man of American art," was the subject of special veneration recently, when New York's Museum of Modern Art gathered a collection of his latest paintings for an international tour.

The exhibition, which was seen by thousands in its New York opening, contains forty major canvases, underscoring the artist's personal achievement in recent years. This is not a retrospective exhibition, meant to demonstrate the artist's development.

Hofmann's art has evolved through many techniques, many significant phases, of which but one, his latest, is presented in his current show. But these exhibits have one thing in common with the artist's earlier works: inescapable beauty, profundity and monumentality.

Indeed, there is in the structure of Hofmann's lifeand work an element of monumentality which, above all else, this exhibition emphasizes. Hofmann's pursuit of the modern tradition and his widespread influence on abstract expressionism are now part of history. He has lived and worked wherever the twentieth-century avant-garde art has built its citadels-Paris, Munich, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he has lived since 1934.

When hardly eighteen, he had been initiated into impressionism. Soon after, in Paris, he came in intimate contact with the aesthetic theories of the fauvist and cubist schools of painting.

Still later, he became a fervent admirer of Kandinsky and his philosophy of art. Among other contemporaries he developed a liking for were Mondrian, Arp and Miro. But what needs to be stressed here is that Hofmann has never been a follower, even of himself or his past techniques. "I am," he once said, "a mystery. People say Hofmann has different styles. I have not.

I have different moods. I am not two days the same man."

So it is that despite the many influences on him of several contemporary pioneers-influences, especially, of Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky and Miro-he has managed to remain, according to his own estimation and that of others, "mostly Hans Hofmann."

Hofmann's abstractionist pursuits are never devoid of a deeply human content. He uses his art as "a means of probing nature, reality and human experience." Nature, which for Hofmann includes the human reality, is always the origin of his creative impulses. "Creation," he says, "is dominated by three absolutely different factors: first, nature, which affects us by its laws; second, the artist who creates a spiritual contact with nature and with his materials; and third, the medium of expresText continued on page 21

H

A radical innovator) he has become the builder of an art tradition. sion through which the artist translates his inner world."

This "translation," in Hofmann's abstract art, takes place in a very special way. Though attentive to physical bodies of all categories, Hofmann sees them in simplified and essentialized forms. They are, in his paintings, reduced to "the square, the cube, the cylinder, the sphere." And, most important of all, "the whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of colour," Hofmann explains. He is primarily a colourist, colour being to him a supreme expression by itself. "Colour is the greatest plastic means," he once remarked, "every colour makes a new form." Most of his paintings are enormous areas of colour, some as large as seven feet by five feet. Irrespective of many different techniques through which his art has evolved, his work, in bulk, has always been a dazzling sight, full of "brilliant colour, such assertive paint texture ... a world of magical reality."

Thus, Hofmann's most abstract paintings, like the accompanying illustrations, become "a dialogue between stripped 'objects'-often rectangles of colour-and volumes which, though 'negative,' are nevertheless energized and illuminated, and thus filled." Such works may not apparently represent nature, but they follow and are bound by its principles.

Still, painting is only one aspect of the genius that is Hans Hofmann. There is, broadly speaking, not one Hofmann, but two. He is perhaps equally well-known as the most successful art teacher of the century. Though he retired from his teaching career in 1958, any critical appraisal of him must take into account not only Hofmann the artist, but also Hofmann the teacher. As a teacher he has not merely built an art tradition of which he himself is a part, but he has been a radical innovator as well. He has never ceased to spread the gospel of individualism, mainly through teaching. Even as early as the 1920's, as one painter remembers today, Hofmann's students were "pinning little spots of colour onto the canvas. There were so many bits of paper that the reverse side resembled the flattened-out hide of a porcupine."

A teacher of great magnetism-he was teaching as early as 1915-Hofmann knows the limits of art teaching. To those coming to ask him about the secret of the stunning impact he has always had on his students, he produces a broad grin as sweet as a baby's smile and says that art cannot really be taught.

"All you can do," he adds, "is try to bring out in the individual whatever you think can be brought out." How far he has been able to awaken that "individual" in his students is borne out by the fact that many of his former pupils are today some of the best known names in contemporary American art. Most are individualists par excellence, with styles ranging from stark realism to pure abstraction-a tribute to the flexibility of their master's approach. Says one student, "Hofmann made me see what's in nature." "He broke," says another, "through my academic thinking." Yet another, who is now a reputed abstractexpressionist himself, recalls that he joinedl'Iofmann in 1934 to absorb his "resplendent spirit."

Hans Hofmann, who became an American citizen in 1941, was born in Weissenburg, in Central Bavaria, on March 21, 1880. His father, a stolid government official, had hopes that the boy would become it scientist. Not that young Hofmann was without the aptitude. He revealed, while still a boy, a talent for mathematics and science, and even invented, when scarcely out of school, an electromagnetic comptometer.

But Hofmann had already begun to paint and was feeling an inner urge to devote himself full-time to art. This decision was soon to take him, after a few years of training at a Munich art school, to Paris where he spent ten years learning at first hand the lessons of fauvism and cubism. The influence of the Fauves and their use of dazzling colours have a lot to do with the brilliant blaze of light in Hofmann's later work. In Paris

he met Matisse, and became a close friend of another painter, Robert Delaunay. Matisse, especially, with his bold and imaginative use of colour left a lasting impression. Talking about his Paris days much later, Hofmann readily admitted his tremendous debts to the French school but said, "It was really a terrible time for a young artist. There were too many things going on at the same time. It tore you to pieces."

To put those pieces together became his sole ambition.

At about the time the World War I broke out, Hofmann left for Munich where, in 1915, he opened his first school of painting.

The school's prospectus, a remarkable document, declared, inter alia: "Imitation of objective reality is . . . not creation but dilettantism .... " For years he had painted from nature, but now he felt that "it's too difficult to go outdoors loaded like a mule." So he started painting, and instructed his students to paint, no longer "under nature" but rather "above it." Figurative art, he thought, restricted the artist's freedom: "it is as if your hands are bound together."

Apart from the school, which gradually attracted hundreds of students from all over Europe, Germany inspired him in many other ways. Shortly before his arrival at Munich, in 1912, Kandinsky had published his On the Spiritual in Art, propounding a theory that art was a spiritual expression of ideas and emotions inspired by nature, not merely an imitation of it.

This Hofmann took as the essence of his teaching and painting.

He invented a new method and coined a new word, empathy, by which his students learnt "to sense qualities of formal and spatial relations or tensions, and to discover the plastic and psychological quality of form and colour."

Hofmann seeks the feeling of tension in his paintings, as explains his famous "push and pull" theory. His study of physics had long fascinated him with the notion of a universe made up solely of energy and manifesting a constant process of "push answering pull and pull answering push." "Only from the varied counterplay of push and pull," says Hofmann, "and from its variation in intensities, will plastic creation result." His work attempts to record invisible energy beating behind and beneath all surfaces. An empty space to him, thus, is not really empty but filled with a force having its own form and volume. Colour, which to Hofmann is the idea itself, is a dynamic thing in his painting, one colour automatically diluting or enhancing another neighbouring colour.

In recent years Hofmann has moved more and more in the direction of complete abstraction, his recent paintings resembling "stonehenges made of no paint." But whether in his earlier or later works, his canvas has always seemed to breathe, trying to capture the movement and tensions inherent in the physical world of nature.

It was in 1930 that he first came to the United States, as an art teacher for two years at the University of California, and in the autumn of 1932, opened the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York. Two years later, he moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and there set up a summer art school, which soon became headquarters for a new approach to art.

Since then his reputation as a teacher has never ceased to grow.

And it is in America too that his art has reached its most characteristic, decisive expression.

"I started all my existences in the worst times," Hofmann says recalling his World War I days in Germany and his arrival in the U.S. at the depths of the 1930's depression. But he considers himself the most fortunate of men and says, "life has been nice to me." He has been able to make a living moment out of past, present and future. His latest exhibition is once again a proof of the validity of this principle he has incessantly fought to keep alive: "The deeper sense of all art is obviously to hold the human spirit in a state of rejuvenescence." •

A QUARREL

A battle royalls on among professorswith parents) alumni and legislators joining the fray.

NIVERSITIES HAVE EXISTED for nearly a thousand years. Their periods of vitality have been marked by passionate debates among professors. A clash of opinion has often been the prelude to a fruitful development of new ideas. Bitter theological disputes in the middle ages, as well as the violent controversy over Darwin's theory a century ago, might be cited as examples of quarrels among educators. But the quarrel I have in mind is of an entirely different kind. Neither factual evidence nor theoretical speculation.s provide the battleground. Rather, this quarrel might be described as a power struggle among professors, which has come to involve parents, alumni, legislators, and trustees.

At the turn of the century, American high schools and their equivalentsthe private academies and preparatory schools-were essentially concerned with a group of young people who were study-

U

THE ROLEOF THETEACHER was never so challenging or so demanding as at the present time. To meet the expanding needs of Government administration and industry in modern, technology-based economies, young people with sound educational background and specialized skills are needed in increasing numbers. Their training at the elementary, secondary or high school level is the responsibility of the school teacher who himself must be adequately qualified and trained to shoulder the task.

What are the problems of teacher training today? How can teacher education be improved and the improvement reflected in higher national education standards?

What is the utility of training colleges for teachers and their role in promoting teacher efficiency? How can inept teachers be kept out of schools and what should be done to attract more talent to the profession?

To find the answers to these and allied questions, Dr. James B. Conant,.a former President of Harvard University, recently completed a comprehensive two-year study financed by Carnegie Foundation. In the course of this study, Dr. Conant visited seventy-seven educational institutions in twenty-two American States and had discussions with some 400 small groups of teachers. The results of his investigation have been reported in a book entitled The Education of American Teachers (published by McGraw-Hill) from which we reproduce here a significant chapter, together with a summary of Dr. Conant's recommendations.

Dr. Conant, who was recently awarded the Freedom Medal of special distinction

by President Johnson, is not only an eminent scholar and educationist, but also a diplomat and statesman. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Federal Republic oj Germany from 1955 to 1957. His breadth of experience lends additional weight to his report. While admittedly based on a study of the American educational and teacher-training system, his observations and recommendations have a general application and should be of interest to Indian readers.

ing languages and mathematics, science and history. What we now call an oldfashioned curriculum enabled the graduates of those schools of the last century to enter college well prepared for further work in languages, in mathematics, and in the sciences. Those who could take it found the formal instruction excellent; those who couldn't or wouldn't dropped by the wayside as a matter of course.

From the point of view of those on the receiving end-the professors in the colleges-this was a highly satisfactory situation. What sort of education the rest of the fourteen-to-eighteen-year-olds received was none of their affair!

Professors of education had been pointing out for several decades that the faculties of arts and sciences had shown little interest in school problems. In the nineteenth century they had been quite ready to leave to the normal schools the task of preparing teachers for the ele-

mentary grades. When social changes in this century transformed the nature of the high school, the typical college professor himself was viewing with disgust and dismay what was happening in the schools. (I am reporting on personal observation of fifty years.) With few exceptions, college professors turned their backs on the problem of mass secondary education and eyed with envy Britain and the Continent, where such problems did not exist.

The quarrel intensified in the 1950's because laymen entered the fray in increasing numbers and with increasing vehemence. Schools have always been subject to criticism by parents, but after the close of World War II, the criticism became more general and more bitter.

The Russian success with Sputnik triggered a veritable barrage of denunciation of those in charge of public education.

These attacks served to embitter the pro-

James B. Conant, educator. His article is reprinted with permission from Saturday Review. Š 1963 James Bryant Conant.

fessors of education, who considered that the work of their former students--elassroom teachers, principals, and superintendents-was being unfairly appraised.

Since practically all public school administrators have studied at one time or another in teacher-training institutions or a school or department of education, they are bound by history and sympathy to the faculties of education. The same is true of a substantial proportion of classroom teachers. Mutual loyalty between professors and former students has led to the formation of something approaching a guild of professors of education and their erstwhile students. An attack on public education is therefore automatically an attack on schools and faculties of education. As a matter of fact, the connection is not always so indirect.

Many a violent critic of our public schools has specifically attacked the professors of education.

arguments know far too little about education courses. And unfortunately, what some professors of education have written about education can be labelled anti-intellectual. But what particularly irritates the academic professors is what professors of education say about teaching. After all, those who are engaged in college teaching usually pride themselves on their skill as teachers. And here are those who call themselves "professional educators" claiming that they and only they know what is good teaching! They imply, and sometimes openly state, that if all professors had taken their courses they would be better teachers! To make matters worse, in more than one state no one is permitted to teach in a junior college unless he has taken courses in education. If this is justified, the opponents ironically demand, why not require all teachers of freshmen and sophomores in four-year colleges to study under professors of education? To this question, prQfessors of education often answer, "Such a requirement ought to be on the books."

And here we come to the issue about which emotions are most easily aroused -the issue of state requirements. Time was, not long ago, when in some states a school board could hire a teacher, and give him a permanent position, even if he had never even seen a professor of education. But those days are past. As a consequence, a graduate who has majored in an academic field must by hook or by crook meet the state requirements in education. The fact that schools of education are beneficiaries of a high protective tariff wall is the single aspect of the present-day education of teachers that is most maddening to the academic professors.

In most states private schools can legally hire those they want. There is in these schools a 'free choice between teachers trained without benefit of courses in education and those trained as the state requires. Why shouldn't there be the same free choice in our public schools?

The question is implicit in many of the attacks on schools of education. It is at the base of much of the hostility of lay critics, many of whom can cite examples of high-standing college graduates who are forced by state requirements to devote a certain number of hours to courses given by professors of education. It is hard to overestimate the bitterness of those who attack schools of education with such cases in their minds.

In modern form the traditional patterns of certification are all at present in contention. What is essentially new is the deter-

mination of academic professors, and their allies in the larger community, to minimize the influence that professors of education, State Department personnel, and other public school forces have traditionally held over the certification process.

I have perhaps stated the issue too simply. Yet it remains true that certification requirements rank high <:'l1ong the sources of hostility between professors of education and their colleagues in academic faculties. This should not be surprising, for the importance of these requirements on campuses throughout the country is enormous.

One would like to look at the education of future teachers in terms of a free market of ideas, and this I endeavoured to do in my visits to teacher-training institutions during this study. But I came to the conclusion that such an inquiry lacks reality. The idea of state certification is so thoroughly accepted that I have found it

The subject of teacher education is controversialand complicated. hard to get a serious discussion of the question "What would you recommend if there were no state requirements?"

As for the attitude of the students taking state-required courses, I must report that I have heard time and time again complaints about their quality.

To be sure, by no means all students I interviewed were critical; so many were, however, that I could not ignore their repeated comments that most of the educational offerings were "Mickey Mouse" courses. There can be no doubt that at least in some institutions the courses given by professors of education have a bad name among undergraduates, particularly those intending to be high school teachers. To some extent, perhaps, this is simply because the courses are required.

I am well aware, from my years of experience as a teacher of a subject required for admission to a medical school, that any required course has two strikes against it in the student's mind. I am also aware that in some institutions the critical

attitude of the students towards the education faculty is fed by the devastating comments they hear from certain academic professors.

The subject of teacher education is not only highly controversial, but also exceedingly complicated. The complexities are hardly ever acknowledged by those who are prone to talk in such slogans as "those terrible teachers colleges" or "those reactionary liberal arts professors." These slogans invariably represent a point of view so oversimplified as to be fundamentally invalid. This is not to say that either academic or education professors cannot be criticized.

In the course of my investigations, I have found much to criticize strongly on both sides of the fence that separates faculties of education from those of arts and sciences.

Teachers for our public schools are employed by local boards of education on the recommendation of the superintendent. Local boards are composed of laymen; therefore, these citizens are intimately concerned with the training of the teachers whom the boards employ.

Freedom of the school board is limited by state requirements, which directly or indirectly are determined by laymen-the members of the legislature in each state.

Unless one considers the relation of the state authorities to the school boards on the one hand, and the teacher-training institutions on the other, one is apt to miss what I consider a fundamental element in any plan for improving teacher education. The essential questions are: What role should the state play in the supervision of teacher education? And to what extent should universities and colleges be left free to experiment with new and different programmes for educating teachers? My own answers to these questions appear in the form of recommendations summarized at the end of this article.

I am well aware that many educators resent the idea that laymen should have anything to do with education except to provide the funds. I do not agree with this point of view. What goes on in schools and colleges is far too important to be left entirely to the educators. The layman as a responsible member of a school board, a board of trustees, a legislature, or any public body has a vital part to play. The layman as a citizen who votes and pays taxes has every reason to make his voice heard; as a parent and as an alumnus he should have concern with teacher education.

What he says, however, should be based on an informed opinion.

RECOMMENDATIONS

REQUIRING

ACTION

BY A

CHIEF STATE SCHOOL OFFICER, A STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION OR A LEGISLATURE.

Teacher certification requirements For certification purposes the state should require only (a) that a candidate hold a baccalaureate degree from a legitimate college or university, (b) that he submit evidence of having successfully performed as a student teacher under the direction of college and public school personnel in whom the state Department has confidence, and in a practice-teaching situation of which the state Department approves, and (c) that he hold a specially endorsed teaching certificate from a college or university which, in issuing the official document, attests that the institution as a whole considers the person adequately prepared to teach in a designated field and grade level.

Programmes of practice teaching The state should approve programmes of practice teaching. It should, working co-operatively with the college and public school authorities, regulate the conditions under which practice teaching is done and the nature of the methods instruction that accompanies it. The state should require that the colleges and public school systems involved submit evidence concerning the competence of those appointed as co-operating teachers and clinical professors.

State information service State Departments of Education should develop and make available to local

school boards and colleges and universities data relevant to the preparation and employment of teachers. Such data may include information about the types of the teacher-education programmes of colleges or universities throughout the state and information concerning supply and demand of teachers at various grade levels and in various fields.

Assignment of teachers by local boards The state education authorities should give top priority to the development of regulations insuring that a teacher will be assigned only to those teaching duties for which he is specifically pre-

pared, and should enforce these regulations vigorously.

Certification reciprocity among states Whenever a teacher has been certified by one state under the provisions of the recommendations made herein, his certificate should be accepted as valid in any other state.

RECOMMENDATIONS INVOLVING APPROPRIATIONS BY STATE LEGISLATURES. State financial responsibility for practice teaching The state should provide financial assistance to local boards to insure highquality practice teaching as part of the preparation of teachers enrolled in either private or public institutions.

Loan policy for future teachers Each state should develop a loan policy for future teachers aimed \ at recruiting into the profession the most able students; the requirements for admission to the teacher-training institutions within the state should be left to the institution, but the state should set a standard for the recipients in terms of scholastic aptitude; the amount of the loan should be sufficient to cover expenses, and the loan should be cancelled after four or five years of teaching in the public schools of the state.

RECOMMENDATIONS REQUIRING ACTION BY LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD, ACTING ALONE OR IN CONJUNCTION WITH STATE ACTION. Co-operating teachers in practice teaching Public school systems that enter contracts with a college or university for practice teaching should designate, as classroom teachers working with practice teaching, only those persons in whose competence as teachers, leaders, and evaluators they have the highest confidence, and should give such persons encouragement by reducing their work loads and rising their salaries.

Initial probationary period of employment During the initial probationary period, local school boards shall take specific steps to provide the new teacher with every possible help in the form of: (a) limited teaching responsibility; (b) aid in gathering instructional materials; (c) advice of experienced teachers whose own load is reduced so that they can work with the new teacher in his own classroom; (d) shifting to more experienced teachers those pupils who create problems beyond the ability of the novice to handle effectively; and (e) specialized instruction concerning the characteristics of the community, the neighbourhood, and the students he is likely to encounter.

Revisionof salary schedule by local boards School boards should drastically revise their salary schedules. There should be a largejump in salary when a teacher moves from the probationary status to tenure.

Any salary increments based on advanced studies should not be tied to course credits earned (semester hours), but only to the earning of a master's degree, based normally on full-time residence or four summer sessions in which the programme is directed towards the development of the competence of the teacher as a teacher. Such a salary increment should be made mandatory by state law.

Financial assistance to teachers for study in summer schools School boards or the state should provide financial assistance so that teachers may attend summer school after enrolling in a graduate school for the purpose of completing a programme of the type described below.

Leaves of absence for further education of teachers School boards should provide leaves of absence with salary for a full-time semester residence at a university to enable teachers to study towards a master's programme, provided this programme is designed to increase the competence of the teacher; state funds should be available for this purpose.

In-service education of teachers To insure that the teachers are up to

date, particularly in a period of rapid change (as in mathematics and physics), a school board should contract with an educational institution to provide shortterm seminars (often called workshops) during the school year so that all the teachers, without cost to them, may benefit from the instruction. Such seminars or workshops might also study the particular educational problems of a given school or school district. (No credit towards salary increases would be given.)

RECOMMENDATIONS REQUIRING ACTION BY THE FACULTIES, ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS AND TRUSTEES OF AN INSTITUTION ENGAGED IN EDUCATING TEACHERS FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Collegiate or university responsibility Each college or university should be permitted to develop in detail whatever programme of teacher education it considers most desirable, subject only to two conditions: first, the president of the institution in behalf of the entire faculty involved-academic as well as professional-certifies that the candidate is adequately prepared to teach on a specific level or in specific fields, and second, the institution establishes in conjunction with a public school system a stateapproved practice-teaching arrangement.

The all-university approach to teacher training If the institution is engaged in educating teachers, the lay board trustees should ask the faculty or faculties whether in fact there is a continuing and effective all-university (or inter-departmental) approach to the education of teachers; and if not, why not?

Requirements for collegiate or university certification The board of trustees should ask the faculty to justify the present requirements for a bachelor's degree for future teachers with particular reference to the breadth of the requirements and to spell out what in fact are the total educational exposures (school and college) demanded now in the fields of (a) mathematics, (b) physical science, (c) biological science,

Dr. Conant says the teacher must be fully qualified and trained for his task. (d) social science, (e) English literature, ([) English composition, (g) history, (h) philosophy.

Foreign language preparation If courses are required in a foreign language, evidence of the degree of mastery obtained by fulfilling the minimum requirement for a degree should be presented to the board of trustees.

The establishment of "clinical professors" The professor from the college or university who is to supervise and assess the practice teaching should have had much practical experience. His status should be analogous to that of a clinical professor in certain medical schools.

an introduction to the remaining elementary school subjects.

Practice teaching for elementary teachers All future elementary teachers should engage in practice teaching for a period of at least eight weeks, spending a minimum of three hours a day in the classroom; the period must include at least three weeks of full responsibility for the classroom under the direction of a cooperating teacher and the supervision of a clinical professor.

Basic preparation of elementary teachers (a) The programme for teachers of kindergarten and grades 1, 2, and 3 should prepare them in the content and methodology of all subjects taught in these early school years. Depth in a single subject or cluster is not necessary.

Adequate staffing of small colleges training elementary teachers Those responsible for financing and administering small colleges should consider whether they can afford to maintain an adequate staff for the preparation of elementary school teachers. Unless they are able to employ the equivalent of three or four professors devoting their time to elementary education, they should cease attempting to prepare teachers for the elementary schools.

(b) The programme for teachers of grades 4, 5, and 6 should provide depth of content and methods of teaching in a specific subject or cluster of subjects normally taught in these grades with only

Single field diploma for secondary school teachers An institution should award a teaching certificate for teachers in grades 7 to 12 in one field only.

Clinical professors in institutions educating secondary teachers Every institution awarding a special teaching certificate for secondary school teachers should have on the staff a clinical professor for each field or combination of closely related fields.

An institutional certification in art, music and physical education An institution offering programmes in art or music or physical education should be prepared to award a teaching diploma in each of these fields without grade designation; the institution should not attempt to develop competency in more than one field in a four-year programme.

Master's degree programmes The graduate schools of education or their equivalent (in universities organized without such separate degree granting schools) should devise a programme for increasing the competence of teachers as teachers with the following characteristics: (I) It should be open to any graduate of the same institution in the same field of endeavour (e.g., elementary education, secondary school social studies, etc.).

(2) Courses should be allowed for credit towards the 30 semester hours whether or not the courses are of an elementary nature, provided they are clearly courses needed to increase the competence of the teacher.

(3) No credit towards the degree should be given for extension courses or courses taken on campus while the teacher is engaged on a full-time teaching job.

(4) Passing of a comprehensive examination should be required for the master's degree, as is now the case in some institutions.

(5) The summer-school sessions should be arranged so that four summer residences will complete the degree requirements, or two summers plus one full-time seme~ter residence.

(6) If the offering in the arts and sciences is not wide enough in the summer session (as it would not be in some state colleges), arrangements should be made for the transfer of credit from a university summer school with a good offering of courses in subject-matter fields.

(7) For elementary teachers, the degree should be master of education in elementary education; for secondary teachers, master of education in English (or science, or social science or modern languages or mathematics). â&#x20AC;˘

SHRINE TO

A million and a half persons from all over the world visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington

LINCOLN'S

MEMORY

every year to pay

homage to the Great Emancipator.

To mark Lincoln's birth anniversary this month we present views of the

Memorial on the following pageยง.

Let

us have faith that right

makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Water lilies dot Rainbow Pool in front of majestic Memorial and 200 jets shoot water upward, often creating colourful rainbows.

It

is not merely for today, but for all

time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives.

~e

dogmas of the inadequate

to the stormy present.

'The occasion is piled high with difficulty,

... No personal significance,

or insignificance,

can spare one or another of us.

MEMORIAL TO Abraham Lincoln was first suggested in 1867, two years after his death. But the project became embroiled in political controversy and it was not until 1911 that action was taken to enshrine the memory of the Great Emancipator when former President William Howard Taft headed a commission that selected a site and engaged architect Henry Bacon to design an appropriate structure. The cornerstone was laid on the 106th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, February 12, 1911, and the Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922.

It still has its critics. Some think a cold Greek temple an incongruous monument to a man of Lincoln's warmth and human kindness. Others find the realistic statue of Lincoln out of character with the ethereal structure which houses it.

But most Americans ignore the criticism and keep making their pilgrimage to the Memorial. For them the form is not important; it is the substance of Abraham Lincoln that holds meaning. â&#x20AC;˘

A

A Pilgrim's Faith

IS A star-lit evening in Assisi.

A tiny railroad station; in front of me was the town set on a hill, sanctified by a blessed name. Coming by a late train, during a student vacation from Oxford, I did not worry though the few cabs had gone, but sat on my baggage and looked at the steep path winding towards the lights. A milk-cart came along, and after a friendly sign conversation, the Italian driver took me up the hill and set me down in a cobbled market square. From there soon another person carried one of my bags and we stopped in front of a big gray building with a tower. After knocking at the heavy door, my strange guide then disappeared, and I looked with amazement at the window opening above; a nun, holding a candle in her hand, queried me in Italian. I had come to a convent.

Seeing that the midnight traveller did not understand her words and was leaving in confusion, the Sister held up her hand in reassurance. Another Sister came to the window and spoke a few words in English. "May we help you?"

"I am very sorry that I have made a mistake, this is a convent."

"Where is your home?"

"India."

"India!"

She stopped for a moment and after consultations told me, "You must not leave. This is a convent, but you will find a lighted room in the annex; there will be a jug of water, a candle, and a bed.

But you must promise to leave at dawn."

T

HIS

Continued on next page

((Sometimes an experience come by itself. ... "

Not much time was left in that cold late night for any kind of sleep. Valley and hill lay outside in a pale silver shadow, the white wall of the convent shone, centuries of holiness seemed to touch the air as it faintly brightened towards the morning. Even as a boy in distant India, belonging as I do to a different religious background, I had heard the call of St. Francis. Here in this Italian village, in transfigured light, he had preached his sermon to the birds and squirrels, in the overflow of pure love.

He who had learned the fearless, gentle courage of utmost faith and sacrifice from his redeemer, passed on his torch to countless lives in Italy and the world over. In my heart I felt I had arrived at the right place-the bell, book, and candle situation-to know a pure testimony at this gold-break hour in the horizon. One had come far away to greet nearness within and Assisi opened its festive morning for me.

The day was rich with the frescoes of Giotto, views from the Carceri; church spires with the sound of bells mingled in the market place where fine lace and handicraft were being sold. There was lunch, with fresh cheese brought from the village below; the blue sky arched on the stone ledge of the balcony where I sat.

The grace and power of the Catholic tradition became real to an "alien." But one never feels separated in any area of faith which is warm with a human vision, with kindliness, with prayer, with meditation. Not only the beatitudes in the different religions, but aspiring columns, and terraces, the lofty dome, the wealth of carving or calligraphy, or the bare walls, the hymns and silences, modified the mind and lifted it into clear light. This is where man finds his language of communication. Wherever we go, temples, cathedrals, and mosques stand tip-toe, as it were, for a glimpse of the greater-thanman, or one might say, of that which is in all men, waiting to be further revealed.

A house of prayer can be a simple home with a light at the centre, with old steps or new, a garden or a few trees around.

The author of this article, Dr. Amiya Chakravarty, is a member of the faculty of Boston University, Massachusetts, U.S., where he lectures on Comparative Oriental Religions and Literature. At one time literary secretary to Rabindranath Tagore, he published during the poet's centenary year a volume containing new translations of some of Tagore's works with notes and a critical appreciation.

Dr. Chakravarty was recently on leave in India and took up the temporary appointment of Tagore Professor of Humanities at the University of Madras.

After reading "Judith Hollister's Wondelful Obsession" by Robert Wallace in the September issue of SPAN, Dr. Chakravarty excerpted the following account of his travels from his published works. It is presented here as one reader's response to Mrs ..

Hollister's efforts for greater understanding.

One enters the heart of humanity in a teeming city and learns the religion of divine neighbourhood.

Not long after World War II, I found myself in Japan on my way back home.

War's mixed origins, its dire mutual results, had hurt and confused my mind.

An emotional overcast, which I could not easily shed, hindered my true sight of Japan as the plane dipped towards the exquisite islands. I dreaded landing on a scene of actual or engraved sufferings.

Japanese militarism, I must confess, had partly separated me from a great civilization and its people; this, strangely enough, because I evaded the guilt for which not one, but many nations were responsible. We have 'a tangled past.

Suddenly a million lights twinkling in fishermen's huts below burst into view, and soon beyond the cloud rim was Tokyo. A wave of feeling came over my heart, a new recognition, a warning that I knew nothing about the people and their faith. It was just the little that one gathers in books on Buddhism, Zen, and Shinto, some glimpses of art through reproductions; we had. heard of the rituals of gracious hospitality. Within a short time of my arrival in Tokyo, I decided to move into the unburned cities of culture, especially Kyoto and Nara where beauty and faith met and still meet in a way that is rare and unique.

Nara. Climbing up the steps,.! reached the grounds of a monastery which seemed to be deserted. Nobody was there on the brow of that hill. Yet, as I looked around, there was evidence of the human hand, a great consecration and spiritual vigilance. Every leaf of the tree in that courtyard seemed to have been dusted by a pocket handkerchief; it was so clean, immaculately beautiful. I looked at the little bridge in the slope which cast its chequered shadow on a little stream.

I looked at the cherry branches trained to blossom near the monastery window.

I saw the brass door knobs, shining like gold. All of it the work of the human spirit. Great perseverance, great traditional beauty, and behind it the simple

prayer that flowered in a many-petalied purity. It was mid-morning.

As I knocked at the door, a man came.

He was a priest. I did not have to ask him a question. His forehead carried something of the halo which one associates with the hall of meditation. There was perfect joy in his face. Quite frankly, he could have resented the intrusion of an outsider. I had no introduction, neither did he want one. Such was the perfect trust in that community on Ten-Ri. I saw people praying or sitting silent on their cushions in that hall. There was an expectation, as it were, that I would, if I wished, join the group in prayer.

But I felt that wouldn't be quite real.

I moved on and they were very happy to let that happen.

We entered a garden in the inner court, a combinati9n of flowers and rocks placed in subtle gray-green perspectives; there were some lotuses in a little stretch of water almost hidden by large lotus leaves. The people who gaze at this creative beauty, who hold up a flower in the light as the Buddha did in a silent testimony of faith, have roots in some immemorial and continuing relationshil) with divine reality. The language of personality is different, or hidden away, but there is a strong affirmation-of what?-of communion, of kinship, of unchanging tenderness. There is a visionary light which belongs to all mankind.

Never inquiring as to my faith or profession-I could have been a travelling salesman, or an income tax collector, or a member of some secret agency-they accepted me completely. We had a short tea ceremony. When it was time to goand I suppose they realized between things spoken or left unspoken that I came from the land blessed by the birth of their Master, and by the sanctities of many religions-they asked whether I would receive a question. A monk who spoke some English asked, "Do you, in your religious life today, go to the prayer hall with a prayer or a vision in your mind, or do you free your consciousness of all thought and let the

prayer take place?"

Not trying to dodge the question, I said, "Doesn't it happen both ways?

Sometimes we do carry an idea which we want to meditate upon in the stillness and beauty of a prayer hall or elsewhere; sometimes an experience or vision seems to come by itself in the prayerful heart."

Often have I thought how we are surprised by an inspiration arising out of the incense; itmight be the stained glass; it might be the incantation. There is the lighted book, the eager faces, the sky outside-all of these together or separately. The authentic religious experience could be the effect of the mass in Latin, the litanies heard, the Gregorian chants offered in a Bavarian church or in Notre Dame. It could arise in the setting of Vedic hymns, of the reading of the Gita in a temple on a hill, perhaps in the high Himalayas. In Mount Carmel the vision of humanity was revealed; in Haifa or Safed, in a Judaic mystical order today, we can be challenged by a new and yet ancient vision of man and his place in the universe. One is reminded of many holy texts, secular or religious, in many different faiths. The Christian faith carries

the Revelation which Jesus brought not to anyone community, but to the community of man.

We know that quite unexpectedly the vision of eternal humanity brings knowledge to the heart; that we strike upon the universal concrete in a simple experience. Religious experiences are profoundly linked with great and different cultures, but also they reach deep below the topsoil of different cultures into the ground of human reality. But I would have no theories on the matter. Through such experiences, we shall agree, humanity knows itself and its relationship with the world.

From the temple of Nara I go to an earlier memory in Bodh Gaya, which is in my own country. There one evening, and it was full moonlight, I was deeply moved to see. a very poor villager who had, I was told, come from a distant part of Asia; distant, that is, from India. Not only the family, but the village to which he belonged had saved' their yens together for many years and made it possible for him to do the crossing. Modestly he sat under the Bodhi tree with one small candle lighted and placed on a

raised pedestal. Praying and meditating, he spent the night with the lighted candle until its flame was spent. In the morning, he was gone.

In the Islamic world I have often been aroused by the muezzin call to prayer.

One could understand how scattered tribes came across the muffled sands in the early dawn before the stars had waned in the skies, how the call of the faithful became a consecration and a congregation. You feel this unitive power in the precincts of the great mosques in Iran.

The almost unbelievable beauty of the blue mosques, the domes, literally melts into the glory of the morning air.

There in the shadow of the turrets, on the terrace where the people meet to pray in a mosque, people share a vision of a revelation of faith which is their religion.

There is no question any more as to whether a man has dismounted from a camel or has come by car or by foot. But there under the monotheistic sky, every man is held together by the call to prayer to the One above all, the Lord of all. At that level, the Middle East can find a sustaining vision of man and of his true humanity on earth.

Now this in the textbooks, along with the five pillars of Islam with which we are so well acquainted, would speak to our intellectual mind. We have already referred to the authentic vision of man in the earlier historical religions, but it is necessary to realize this personally and through one's own living experience.

For many of us, these truths which spring from a root of faith and are common to man may branch out in many temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches; we may choose one or the other, and also accept some unifying element in all true visions and revelations. And, of course, for many others, the deep core of religion lies in one perfect revelation, treasured in a unique and eternal faith. We must also make room for the type of illumined vision which can take place when a man is crossing a river; we hear of saints and minstrels among the fishermen and boatmen in India. Whether it is officially Continued on next page

"Man's relationship with divine reality, and then, zf needed, horizontally with institutional forms, has been with us."

Tagore with Moscow's Kremlin in the background. religious or not, a devotional song composed by an untutored fisherman is filled with the light that we have described. We call these people Bauls. These simple, pure-hearted mystics of our own day are so knowledgeable in the affairs of the inner heart, of the deepest tides of joy and sorrow in the life of the villages, that their faces themselves become scrolls of wisdom. You can witness in them the forebearance, the goodness of a neighbour, the patience of a bread-earner. All these traditions were sanctified and made into that living reality of Indian vision which Mahatma Gandhi represented.

In his own person, looking like thousands of elderly peopfe in India, Mahatma Gandhi was known at once as a man of character and as one who witnessed the power of God. In his case, as in the case of similar persons in different religions, the consecration and the devotion, the devotion and the service had become one.

It is to me important that a country with which we shall surely become better acquainted as time goes on-the country of Africa-was the proving ground of faith for two of the greatest men of our age. I refer to Mahatma Gandhi and to Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Their lives bear witness to a transcending vision of the human divine. They have revealed man's power to relate himself to the universe of man in a life of service.

His African experience gave Gandhi the knowledge and the training for the great practice of Ahimsa which actually, according to Indian Vedic texts, is a quality of Divine Humanity and not attributable only to the man of peace and the man of non-violence.

This is a highly individualized version of Gandhi's Hinduism, but to Gandhi, the value of religion lay in its power to be "individualized," and to transform one life, and through one, many lives. Simple in definition, such a concept gave Gandhi an inclusive view of religion and he saw

no difficulty in belonging to Hinduism, which he knew best, while also sharing in the deepest and most dedicated way, as he believed, the divine truths of all great religions. Naturally, such a vision of religion would be like that of a sky-line where separate and harmonious temples, synagogues, minarets, and church spires rose in the city of man. This is not a synthetic or syncretistic vision but its opposite; nor is it only beauty in the order of aesthetic experience. Somehow Gandhi believed that religions could sustain, each in its own way, and together, the structure of man's spiritual understanding. He believed in this approach, and worked for a large measure of mutual respect and tolerance in the immediate future.

Thus Gandhi's vision of universal humanity made him a tireless server of peace, not in the cause of one nation, India, but of many nations and peoples.

His criticism was levelled at discrimination practised by his own people as well as by others. How could he speak against the violation of freedom in the colonial areas without opposing, at the same time, the lack of freedom enforced by caste or race prejudices? It was a battle not at one front but at many points. He won many victories but he had to do so at the cost of his own life; he was killed while he fought the evils committed against humanity.

The unity ofreligious vision and aspiration has been diversely explored. Tagore, the great Indian poet, did not formulate a philosophy, but he had a poetry of faith which has flourished and will continue to flourish in many spiritual cultures. The urge to feel and follow the Religion of Man, a vertical approach that establishes an immediacy of man's relationship with divine reality, and then, if needed, horizontally with institutional forms, has been with us. Tagore expressed this faith in evocative verse, through the logic of experiential reality. He saw the great community of man and the unfolding

single adventure of humanity on this planet, and he looked into the horizon for a new emergence of spirit. Commemorative passages from the Vedas and the Upanishads, the mystical affirmations of great thinkers, and, basically, the voice of all great religions, made it imperative for him to declare a freedom of faith which no historical forces can impede.

Indeed, history itself is the emergence of man into a fuller knowledge of himself and the world.

Tagore's Religion of Man inspired him to be a messenger of humanity, to oppose fetters imposed on society or individuals under ancient and new compulsions. I remember how he once gave a talk in the U.S.S.R. in 1930, and at a banquet given in his honour warned the friendly hosts against the banishment of the free spirit.

"No power on earth can mould the mind of man," hesaid.1f any state tries to do so, the power of the human spirit will crack those moulds and a new birth of mankind will take place. This was for him the affirmation of man's vision of universal humanity. He endorsed the great hopes that he saw in the educational life of the land to which he was then a visitor, and assured his friends that the power thus released could not be put back. This was well-taken, coming as it did from a prophet who had brought goodwill and well-meaning criticism from people of an ancient but dawning power, an Asian land where spiritual realities had been treasured in culture and religion.

So we end, not with an attempt to enunciate anyone religion or any particular view or vision of man, but with a submission. While we are engaged in the wonderful pursuits of our own religious commitment, let us, from time to time, look beyond our monastery walls, out of the windows of our homes, and beyond our prayer halls and fields of work, and see the great horizon of human fellowship. â&#x20AC;˘

NEW YORK CITY'S LINCOLN CENTRE TAKES SHAPE AS

NEW HOME FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS HELINCOLNCENTREfor the Performing Arts in New York, has been described as a great cultural vision and as America's potential cultural capital. In the words of its president, William Schumann, it is "an idea giving bold expression to the enduring values of art as a true measure of civjlization." This idea, he says, is rooted in the belief that "the role of the arts is to give more than pleasure; that music, drama and dance provide enrichment beyond understandingencounters with qualities of perfection, nobility and splendor which engage the heart, the spirit, the intellect; a belief that to the extent this enrichment is provided, we create more civilized communities .... " Less abstractly, Lincoln Centre is New York's new home for the performing arts, bringing together music, opera, drama and dance in one location. Some of America's outstanding creative and performing talent will be housed in the Centre.

Physically, the Centre is a complex of six great buildings, each designed by a leading architect, now rising on New York's west side. One of some seventy cultural and art centres being built across the United States, it is the largest and most inclusive, and, when completed around 1967, will be one of the world's foremost centres for the performing arts.

Lincoln Centre is organized as a group of six institutions, each collaborating with the others while retaining its artistic and fiscal autonomy: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra; the Metropolitan Opera Society; the Lincoln Repertory Theatre; the Juilliard School of Music; the New York State Theatre; and the Library-Museum of the Performing Arts. Of these, the "Met" and the Philharmonic are venerable and of world renown in their respective fields. The Juilliard School too is an old institution and is among the nation's ranking music schools. The Lincoln Repertory Theatre is, however, an entirely new creation-the first permanent repertory company to be organized in the United States. The New York State Theatre, designed for the use of dance and operetta companies, may house the renowned New York City Centre. The Library-Museum of the Performing Arts will house the music, drama and dance archives of the New York Public Library, and will also function as a museum.

Regular programmes by the constituents will form the primary activity of the Centre. There will be programmes, too, (Text continued on page 40)

T

Opening night gathering at New York's new Philharmonic Hall, first structure to be completed in the Lincoln Centre complex.

ew or Is mco n Centre, as it will look when it is completed in 1967.

Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

Low structure between Met and Beaumont Theatre is Library-Museum of the Performing Arts.

The Lincoln Centre promzses to challenge many established vzews. by visiting organizations and individual artists. Also, special projects will be sponsored by a fund created as part of the Centre's activities. Called the Lincoln Centre Fund for Education and Creative Advancement, and described as the "creative heart" of the Centre, it will eventually amount to S 10 million.

Lincoln Centre had its genesis in 1955 in a set of three coincidences. There was, first, the decision of the Metropolitan Opera Association, after years of discussion, to move from its "beloved but inadequate" home to a more spacious one. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra faced a similar situation when Carnegie Hall, its home for many years, was marked for demolition. This was the second coincidence. The third was that about the same time, a vast area of slums on New York's west side was marked for clearance. The site offered an ideal location for a new home for both organizations, with adequate land available at a reasonable price.

In September 1955, Charles M. Spofford, a past president and active member of the Metropolitan, happened to meet the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, at a conference on foreign affairs. They talked about the state of the arts in America, and the pressing need for new quarters for the Metropolitan and the Philharmonic. That meeting bore fruit shortly afterwards in the formation of an influential committee to explore the idea of a building for the two institutions in the new urban renewal area. At an early stage of its discussion, the committee expanded the project from one of building homes for just these two institutions, to the creation of a composite centre for all the performing arts. Because of its contiguity to Lincoln Square, it was decided to call it the Lincoln Centre.

Translation of this great vision into reality was, as with similar projects, beset by enormous difficulties. Land was available in the redevelopment area, but only on condition that satisfactory new housing was found for the families evicted by the

clearance. Funds had to be raised, first estimated at $75 million; the figure today is more than $160 million (Rs. 800 million).

There were, again, problems connected with design. The objective was to provide for each of the arts "a place of performance as close to the ideal as economics would permit"-a distinctive building that would supply the most practical and efficient facilities for carrying on the specialized programmes, and one that would be aesthetically pleasing.

That goal is now being reached. One unit of the Centre, the 2,600-seat Philharmonic Hall, the permanent home of the New York Philharmonic, opened in September, 1962. The New York State Theatre, with accommodation for some 2,200, will open this April. The Metropolitan Opera House, costliest structure in the Centre and scheduled to open in the autumn of 1966, is taking shape. It will have a seating capacity of 3,800 with ample workshops, rehearsal halls and a large backstage. The VivianBeaumont Theatre, which will house the Lincoln Centre Repertory, will be ready in 1965. The Repertory Company is meanwhile producing plays in temporary quarters.

Of other structures in the complex, the Library-Museum will be completed by this autumn; the Damrosch Park and bandshell in the summer of 1965; and the Juilliard Music School early in 1967.

During the first 30-week season of the Philharmonic, the concerts were completely sold out, unlike at Carnegie Hall.

This meant that in addition to the regular concert goers, new audiences had been discovered. And, the Philharmonic's courageous step in extending serious concerts well beyond May in violation of the traditional practice was greeted with overwhelming acceptance. The view that summer was no time for heavy fare was proved to be a fallacy.

This is but a beginning. Many more traditions will doubtless be challenged when the Centre starts functioning in its entirety. â&#x20AC;˘

CRUSADER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS "A U.S. phenomenon comparable to the Niagara Falls!" was how the late Sir Benegal Rau described Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.

The versatile activities of this remarkable woman covered an amazing range of domestic and international issues and culminated in her pioneering work for human rights in the United Nations.

T

HE HISTORY of man's struggle for freedom and basic human rights is many centuries old. Almost every country in the world has, at some time or the other, waged a battle for political freedom, and the chronicles of nations record many deeds of individual bravery or sacrifice to assert the right to liberty of person or conscience. But it is only in our own times that such rights as those to minimum economic security, good living standards and equality of opportunity, regardless of race, colour or national origin, have found expression and won recognition.

As Ambassador Adlai Stevenson pointed out in a recent address to the United Nations, our concept of human rights has steadily broadened and acquired new dimensions over the last two hundred years. He referred

Her work at the U.N. was but part of her versatile public activity. to America's three revolutions of freedom, each involving and illustrating a phase in the evolution of human rights.

The first revolution brought America freedom from colonial dependence-the right to be a sovereign nation. The second, led by Abraham Lincoln, resulted in the abolition of slavery. The third and current revolution, essentially peaceful, continues the effort to ensure civil freedoms for all citizens regardless of race or colour. The process of building civil freedoms into the basic law of the landguaranteeing the equal protection of law to all citizens, prohibiting discrimination in voting on grounds of race, extending the right of vote to women, ensuring equality of educational opportunity for everyone-has spread over many decades and is a continuing expression of the urge for freedom. This urge transcended national boundaries when, during the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the righ t of people everywhere to freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

To this evolution of an ever-widening concept of human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt made a most significant contribution. Appointed by President Truman at the end of 1945 as a member of the first U.S. delegation to the United Nations, she served for six years as Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, an 18-member body established by the Economic and Social Council of the U.N. In this capacity she played a pioneering role which she later described as "one of the wonderful and worthwhile experiences" of her life.

Although Mrs. Roosevelt had little previous experience as a diplomat, it was not long before she made her mark in her new assignment and astonished everyone by her grasp of world affairs, her outspoken, straightforward opinions, her energetic drive and her poise and serenity in the midst of often acrimonious debate. When a critic charged her with being too idealistic, she answered, "Remember that every step forward is the product of someone who dreamed dreams." She soon familiarized herself with the procedural

rules of the United Nations and was quite capable of quoting them from memory. Anxious to cut down delays and lengthy speeches, she had a simple but effective technique for checking prolific speakers. "Have you ever noticed," she would remark to a verbose speaker, "about when it is that people begin to remove their headphones? It takes about ten minutes of any speaker's time." But this zeal for efficient and speedy despatch of business did not affect her attitude as a chairman, which was one of generous encouragement. One delegate said: "I felt as if she had been waiting all day for me to speak."

Commenting on the manner in which she guided the discussions leading to the adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights by the U.N. General Assembly, a columnist wrote: "For three years she mediated between the Russians and the Moslems, between the Canadians and the Chinese, between the Indians and the English, using all her tact and diplomacy in the attempt to produce a meaningful document on the civil, political, economic and social rights of mankind." It was indeed no small achievement for the Commission to reconcile the conflicting concepts and interpretations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the spokesmen of different countries and ideologies and to draft a declaration in terms which all could accept and understand.

The Declaration of Human Rights, to quote the words of the preamble, states that "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." Its thirty articles not only sum up the civil, political and religious liberties for which people everywhere have struggled for centuries, but also embody new social and economic rights which have been recognized in comparatively recent times. The adoption of this declaration by the United Nations marked the setting up of a new international standard. For the first time in the history of mankind, representatives of most governments in the world agreed that certain basic rights of man belong not to anyone nation or group but to every human being irrespective of race, colour, sex, language, religion, status, political belief or other distinction. Speaking shortly after the adoption of the Declaration, Mrs. Roosevelt said: "A great satisfaction should permeate the thoughts of all men, for the great documents declaring man's inherent rights and freedoms, which in the past have been written nationally, are now merged in an international, universal declaration."

The day on which this international Bill of Rights was adopted-December 10, 1948-was proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations as Human Rights Day and is celebrated every year in many countries including India. As Mr. Stevenson remarked, however, at the General Assembly meeting held in observance of the 15th anniversary of the Declaration: "Human rights still remain

the great unfinished business of all men ....

Only when every man in every land can truly say he has attained every right that is his due, only then will we have the right to truly celebrate." Last year, by a Presidential proclamation, the United States observed December 10-17 as Human Rights Week. Within this week December 15 marked the l72nd anniversary of the adoption of the first ten amendments to Constitution of the United States, which are collectively known as the Bill of Rights. Exhorting his countrymen to live up to the ideals of the Constitution, President Johnson said in his proclamation: "Let us rededicate ourselves to the humanitarian precepts enumerated in these documents and let us resolve to devote our full energy to the task of assuring that each human being-regardless of his race, sex, creed, color or place of national origin-shall be afforded a meaningful opportunity to enjoy fully the rights and benefits embodied in these instruments of liberty and to enjoy fully our heritage of justice under law."

Mrs. Roosevelt's role in the United Nations proved to be vital in its far-reaching implications for mankind.

Several provisions of the Declaration of Human Rights have since been embodied in the constitutions of about a dozen countries including India. Since the adoption of the Declaration, the U.N. has devoted much time and attention to the drafting of legal conventions embodying those specific human rights on which there is widespread agreement, and it is hoped that most countries of the world will ratify these conventions. It is obvious that world-wide progress in this direction will also be progress towards peace and a stable world order for, in the words of the late President Kennedy, "Is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights ... ?"

While Eleanor Roosevelt's work for universal human rights may be considered as the crowning achievement of a life rich in accomplishment, it was of course only a small part of her many-sided activities. It has been said of her that she could do twenty things at a time and do them all extremely well. Political campaigning, public health, education, housing, labour welfare, maternal and child welfare, help for the handicapped, promotion of arts and crafts, international relations-she tackled them all with amazing energy and thoroughness. Year after year she toured, lectured, wrote voluminously, and combined this versatile public activity with her domestic duties as a wife and the mother of six children. No wonder that her extraordinary vigour and wide range of activities, which suffered little diminution even in her later years, won her many tributes.

The late Sir Benegal Rau, India's former chief delegate to U.N. and Judge of International Court of Justice, once spoke of her as a U.S. phenomenon comparable to Niagara Falls!

Unlike some other American First Ladies who have shone in the reflected glory of the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt's public activities earned her a title to leadership

in her own right even during her husband's lifetime. Her interest in politics began when Roosevelt became a State Senator in 1910. With his progress-from state senatorship to Assistant Secretaryship of the Navy in Woodrow Wilson's administration, thence after an interval to governorship, and finally to the Presidency-her interests con-

tinued to expand and multiply. When paralysis struck Franklin Roosevelt in his fortieth year, it was her devotion and loving care which nursed him through the agonizing ordeal of the protracted illness. It was also largely her encouragement and firm resolution which brought him back to active politics. As has been justly remarked, after her husband's illness, she became not only his legs but also his eyes and ears.

Mrs. Roosevelt visited India in 1952 at the invitation of Prime Minister Nehru. She spent four weeks travelling in the Indian cities and countryside and studying development projects. Everywhere she took the opportunity of meeting various groups of people-politicians, officials, women, students-and tried to picture for them the United States, its aims, hopes and ideals. A leading Indian paper described her as an "admirable representative of the United States and the American way of life." Addressing a press conference at the conclusion of the tour she said: "The problems of India are great, but the courage with which the Indian people and their government face these problems is extraordinary."

Her death in New York, on November 7, 1962, at the age of seventy-eight, caused widespread gr-ief. President Kennedy commented: "Her memory and spirit will endure among those who labor for great causes around the world." Shortly after her death, he sponsored the formation of the Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation to carryon her unfinished work, especially in the sphere of human rights.

In India Prime Minister Nehru recalled that she was a friend of this country, and he felt that the warmth of her personality and the largeness of her heart would always remain with the Indian people. On the occasion of the last Human Rights Day in 1963, the Government ofIndia issued a special postage stamp, with a portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt, to commemorate her work for human rights and association with this day. Earlier her own country also honoured her similarly by issuing an Eleanor Roosevelt postage stamp on October I I, 1963, the 79th anniversary of her birth.

The writings of Eleanor Roosevelt reflect her many and varied interests. Her syndicated column "My Day" was started in 1936 and continued to appear regularly for many years in some seventy-five newspapers. For over twenty years she was also conducting a monthly question-andanswer feature for women's magazines. In addition she found time to write a large number of magazine articles and several books. One of these, India and the Awakening East, was written after her visit to India and other countries in 1952. Her last book Tomorrow is Now (see next column) was published after her death.

During her lifetime Mrs. Roosevelt received many distinctions and even after her death honours continue to be conferred on her in the United States and abroad.

But perhaps one of the most fitting tributes paid to this "unofficial ambassadress to the world" was during her Indian visit when a Bombay millhand spread a hundred yards of silk in her path as she walked thr'ough an industrial tenement district. â&#x20AC;˘

Excerpts from Eleanor Roosevelt's last book Tomorrow Is Now.

THE MACHINERY FOR PEACE

T

ODAY, EVERY human being in the world stands in constant peril from irresponsible use of nuclear power. But today, also, we have created the only machinery for peace that has ever functioned. That, of course, is the United Nations. The only real hope we can have of the survival of the human race lies in showing this new generation coming along how to improve that machinery to prevent our self-destruction.

If we go back in history we can find plenty of instances of civilizations that grew, flourished, and died. They died because human beings did not have the breadth of vision to understand the needs for human survival.

Because it is the work of men and women, of fallible human beings, the United Nations is not a perfect instrument. But it is all we have. If we are conscious of its imperfections then it is up to us, to everyone of us, to try to find workable ways of improving it. I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention. There was, perhaps, not a single man there who approved wholeheartedly of that great document. But it was all they had. And Franklin begged any man who did not like some of its features to doubt his own infallibility a little and accept it. ...

At present the chief stumbling block in widespread backing of the United Nations is the fear each nation has that it will have to give up a little. Tn the case of our thirteen American colonies, years passed before the increased strength and benefits for all became truly evident and counteracted jealousy of individual rights and suspicions of group rights. It will doubtless take longer for us to lose our fear and distrust of other nations, other ways of life; to overcome our fear of losing some small part of our sovereignty for the common good, which means, as well, our own good and our own survival.

Suppose that the United States were to withdraw completely from world affairs.

What then? Would we have assured our own independence and sovereignty and safety? Certainly not. Instead we would lose the only machinery for peace that exists, while the Communist tide would rise unchecked and the Bomb would still be there.

Any step, however small, that leads to international peace, to universal understanding, to strengthening the machinery of the United Nations is a good step.

(The way to strengthen the United Nations Organization is to live up to its ideals.)

In fact, it seems to me that before we can ever hope to achieve universal disarmament we must create a climate of psychological disarmament. The people must want peace and they must put their weight behind achieving it. It is not alone the few warmongers who create the danger; it is, to a much greater extent, the apathetic.

"There have always been wars," say the cliche-minded. The implication is that wars must always occur in the future. But it would be equally sensible to say, "There have always been plagues and pestilence, smallpox and diphtheria, typhoid fever and other diseases." Yet we know that these are not inevitable and inescapable scourges. We have put our intelligence to work on known facts and consequently rid ourselves of these death dealers. When they occur now it is because of neglect and ignorance. But they do not need to occur at all.

It is curious to look back, from the standpoint of history and its teaching, at the wars that have engaged the Western world during the past two hundred years.

As a result of those wars-and war always seems to me a temporary breakdown of civilized values-millions upon millions of human beings have died. And the more "advanced" we have become the more horribly many of them have died.

In each of these wars everyone, on each side, was persuaded that his was the cause of righteousness, that he was wielding a flaming sword against the forces of darkness. And the man against whom he fought stood for all the forces of evil.

But a war ends and there is a shuffle in the cards of pO,wer politics. The man who was our enemy is now our friend; the friend at whose side we fought so gladly and so proudly has now become the enemy. From a long-range viewpoint all this appears to be nothing but criminal stupidity.

I am aware that if we commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the strengthening of the United Nations . . . there will be outcries from people complaining, "That is a risk."

Of course it is.

"How do we know," these people ask, "that the nations of the world will act wisely, that they will not all follow one ideology or another?"

Of course we don't know.

But there is no better course than to put our collective trust in a group of

trained people such as one finds in the majority of cases in the United Nations.

In this public forum, whose actions and opinions are heard in every corner of the world, we can put before the world the alternatives and the choices that must be made. We can appeal always to the enormous strength and pressure of public opinion. And this, it seems obvious, is the best risk we could take.

In many respects, we still, in this nuclear age, live and think in terms of the past when it comes to international affairs. We are still trying to make the old balance of power work. And yet, under that system, there has not been a day in recorded history when at least a small war was not going on somewhere in the world. In other words, the old system does not work for peace and it is peace we want.

Since the United Nations was set up it has been possible to prevent the outbreak of World War Ill. In his report to-the Fourth General Assembly, Secretary-General Trygve Lie said: "United Nations action in other parts of the world has also contributed to the progress made toward a more peaceful world by either preventing or ending wars involving 500,000,000 people."

The effect of collective security was shown by United Nations resistance to aggression at the 38th parallel in Korea.

What might easily have turned into a chain of aggressions involving the whole East was prevented.

Now just as changing conditions brought about the need for amendments to our Constitution, so changing conditions altered many of the calculations on which the Charter of the United Nations was based, some of them almost before the ink was dry.

Chief of these, of course, was the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which altered tbe original concept of security. A new and incalculable factor had entered the picture.

Little by little, however, the United Nations has proved its capacity for flexibility in coping not only with world conditions but with the recalcitrance of some of its own members, with the deliberate efforts to defeat its objectives, with the changes that have come in its own structure.

This flexibility of the United Nations Charter represents the same kind of strength and capacity for growth that

our American Constitution has revealed in the face of change .. ,.

Clark M. Eichelberger summed up succinctly the situation as it existed in 1956: "The final break-up of the 5-power system in the United Nations occurred in 1956 when the United Kingdom and France vetoed a resolution in the Security Council over Suez, and the Soviet Union vetoed a resolution urging it to desist from armed intervention in Hungary.

These vetoes led to two extraordinary and simultaneous sessions of the General Assembly in which the United States was the only great power willing to assume its Security Council obligations under the Charter in all circumstances."

Now the main point is this. Discouraging as all these circumstances were, did they render the United Nations impotent?

Not at all. If the Security Council has declined in authority, the General Assembly has gained in power and influence.

When the Security Council is unable to keep the peace because of a veto, the Uniting for Peace Resolution enables the General Assembly to take over ....

In 1961, Benjamin V. Cohen delivered a series of lectures on the United Nations at Harvard University. He summed up the situation in a telling way: "The effectiveness of the United Nations, however, depends not only on the lettered provisions of the Charter, but more importantly on the will and determination of the nations of the world to make it work, and upon the wisdom, imagination, and resourcefulness that their statesmen bring to that task."

Main sources of conflict in the United Nations obviously have been the admisText continued on page 48

Mrs. Roosevelt could do twenty things at a time-and

do them, well.

She had an extraordinary feeling of kinship with people everywhere.

At U.N., she presents gavel to Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, President of Eighth General Assembly.

"Her spirit will long endure among all who labour for great causes."

I want to be out in the sun and the fresh sion of new nations and the disarmament air. I want everyone to be out there. problem as it has been complicated by The only way we can free ourselves the development of atomic power. from the fear of the Bomb is to remove Let's take the difficulties presented by atomic fission first. The unpalatable fact it as an instrument of war completely, and that can be done only by placing full with which we must start is this: If we control of all nuclear force and intelliwant to save ourselves-and that means gence in the hands of an international all the world, for fallout is no respecter power, the United Nations .... of nations or of treaties-we must be The United Nations is responsible to the willing to accept the restraints that would world as a whole and I take it that the apply to all nations which have nuclear world as a whole will be consistently power. A taboo for one must be a taboo opposed to taking the risk of any kind for all.... of nuclear destruction.

Indeed, we have only two major choices But we must learn to swallow the at this time. One is to continue to make bitter fact that if you want the threat of bombs, to build nuclear strength for nuclear war to be controlled, you have military purposes. Already enough bombs to accept the risks of control. ... exist to destroy the whole world. We It was Bernard Baruch who first preknow that this multiplication of weapons sented the plan of the United States for of death solves nothing whatever. the regulation and control of atomic The other choice is the complete end weapons. This was to be an International of the use of nuclear power for warfare.

Atomic Development Authority, which That means that the United States as would have a monopoly of the world's well as the Soviets would have to stop production of atomic energy. It would building power for themselves. have the sole authority to engage in There is, of course, a third alternative, atomic research. No other nation at any but this seems to me incredible and untime has ever made so broad a proposal acceptable. It is the suggestion that we for a world system of control. merely build bomb shelters and prepare The Soviets rejected the plan as to retire underground. Somehow, I can't :'tboroughly vicious and unacceptable." see the American people crawling underToday, however, when no single power ground like moles looking for safety. Š 1963by the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

can control the activities of the United Nations, it might be wise to press once more for lhis form of control, which would take atomic power forever out of the hands of belligerent nations interested primarily in their own increase of power and influence ....

People constantly ask how we can help to strengthen the United Nations.

The way to do this is to strengthen our support here at home and to show by example that we are trying to live up to the ideals established by the organization. Our Bill of Rights is really the basis for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, as we know, we have not yet succeeded here at home in proving ourselves staunch advocates of civil liberties and equal rights for all human beings throughout the country. We must correct this situation if we are going to have something better than pure materialism to offer the world, something the Soviets can never offer because it is contrary to their whole system.

We have to work with the people as they are in this country, with all their shortcomings. But if we walk with heads erect and fight for the things we believe in, example will somehow affect every other nation as well as our own future and that of our children. â&#x20AC;˘

acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, Whereas it is essential to promote the development' of friendly relations between nations, Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion

of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Whereas recogmtlOn of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous

Now, therefore,

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. â&#x20AC;˘

The next issue of SPAN will contain exclusive articles and photographs of the late President John F. Kennedy and America's new President Lyndon B. Johnson. Prize-winning historians Allan Nevins and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., will describe the American Presidencyand consider Mr. Kennedy's place in history. Journalist William S. White will review Mr. Johnson's career from a small farm in Texas to the highest office in the land. The issue will be illustrated

with pictures

by many

iWleadingphotographers.

On the occasion of the I55th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln on February I2, I 8°9, the following excerpt from the Gettysburg Address is especially appropriat~ and meaningful thzs year to both Indza and America. It is reproduced in Lincoln's handwriting .

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