In his over 30 years of public service, Ralph Bunche was at home' wherever he went. Below, with Mr. Nehru in New Delhi; with fellow Americans at a Civil Rights rally, centre; and in the Congo with newsmen, right.
SPAN F The Heritage of the Model T
1904-1971 12
The Story of American Conservation by Michael Frome
IN THE DEATH of Ralph Johnson Bunche the world
has lost a great diplomat, the United Nations its most successful negotiator and America an illustrious son. A gentle, learned man but a militant champion of human equality, he rose beyond nationality in the noblest service to which a man could be committed-the service of peace. He achieved much in the long years of service to peace. Whether it was the Middle East, the Congo, Yemen or Cyprus, Dr. Bunche was the U.N.'s key man in ending hostilities. His achievement in working out an armistice between Israel and her Arab neighbours in 1949 earned him the ultimate internat.ional honour a year later, the Nobel Prize. "He was one of the greatest architects of peace of our time," said President Nixon. His death, added U Thant, "is a great loss to the United Nations, to his country, to all of his many friends the world over." But though Dr. Bunche is no more, he has left behind a legacy of hope that peace in the world can be achieved with conciliation, rapprochement and the promotion of understanding.
f~
American Folk Art
RALPH J. BUNCHE 18
Fighting Aquatic Weeds by Dr. D.P. Gupta
22 24
'
(
'It Was Not Always So'- r, 'Rooted to the Soil' by M. Reyazuddin
30
Steps Toward Arms Control and Disarmament by Philip J. Farley
33
The Accelerated Generation Moves into Management by Judson Gooding
37
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I
Robert Penn Warren} ,j by Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
p
40 42
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? \ by Cynthia Riggs Stoertz
. Front cover: The forbidding expanse of Antarctica is no place for man or beast, yet a woman and a dog seem to like it there. See page 42. Back cover: The automobile has come a long way since the days of Henry Ford's Model T as shown in the feature story on pages 8-11.
Editorial Staff: Carmen Kagal, M. Reyazuddin, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal Sharma, Krishan Gabrani. Art Staff: B. Roy Chowdhury, Nand Katyal, Kanti Roy, Kuldip S. Jus, Gopi Gajwani, Gopal Mehra. Production Staff: AwtarS. Marwaha, Mammen Philip. Photographic Services: USIS Photo Lab. Published by the United States Information Service, Bahawalpur House, Sikandra Road, New Delhi, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed by Arun K. Mehta at Vakil & Sons Private Limited, Vakils House, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-I. Photographs: 2-GeorgÂŤ. C. Hight. 8-courtesy Standard Oil, Calif. IO-Avinash Pasricha. 12,Dale Stierman. 15-courtesy Brown Brothers. 18-21-courtesy Dr. O.P. Gupta. 37-Arthur Ellis, The Washington Post. 44-Cynthia Stoertz, Robert Madden (2), Cynthia Stoertz. 47Cynthia Stoertz. Inside back cover-Cynthia Stoertz, U.S. Navy (2). Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission, write to the Editor. Subscription: One year, rupees five: single copy, fifty paise. No new subscriptions can be accepted at this time. For change of address, send old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to the Circulation Manager, USIS, New Delhi. Allow six weeks for change of address to beco.me effective. Erratum: The Editor regrets the wrong captioning of the photo of an animal carcass on page 3 of the December 1971 issue. It should have been identified as that of a sambhar (cervus Imic%r).
merican Folk
rt
In the complex industrial society of the United States, folk art still ,flourishes much as in earlier times. In recent years, in fact, there has been a sharp revival of interest in and appreciation of folk arts and crafts of all kinds. Some examples of American folk art are shown here. '/V~
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A Navajo woman and child weaving rugs, below Jeft. Religious carvings of Spanish-Americans, left. Toy made by Pennsylvania-Dutch artisan, below.. Quilt sewn by mountain folk in Appalachian region, bottom.
The American Indian was particularly skilful in creating in harmony with nature.
ALL OVERTHE WORLD,the elements of folk art are the same: a direct and honest approach, a lack of pretension and sophistication. Fashioned by simple people to meet simple needs, the objects of folk art place functionalism above appearance. Yet they. are also designed to satisfy¡ man's deepseated instinct for beauty. Strikingly original in conception and bold in execution, they have a charm totally absent from the more formal works of "fine art." Out of the American experience has come a folk art of great vigour and diversity. This diversity is a reflection of many ethnic groups, which include: the earliest inhabitants, the American Indians, and their cousins the Eskimos of Alaska; the Spanish settlers of the Southwest; the descendants of the Scotch-Irish in the Southern Appalachians; and the islanders of Hawaii. Over the centuries artisans Modern version of totem poles, carved by Indians in Kalama, Washington.
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from these groups have transformed the utilitarian into the unusual and beautiful. Few have equalled the ability of the American Indian to create in harmony with nature. He has resisted outside influences primarily because of his basic relationship with the land, his wish to mesh with nature's cycles, rather than to control or subdue them. In a sense, then, Indian art is the only true native art in North America, and it has been preserved in its pristine form. The heritage of more than 500 different American Indian tribes is manifested in pottery, basketry, weaving, silver work, the making of masks and numerous ceremonial items. Some of these products represent aeons-old traditions of skilled craftsmanship and ancient Indian lore. And all of them mirror the amazing Indian eye for intricate design and vibrant colour. Although American Indian methods of pottery-making have not altered much in 1,500 years, the vivid decorations continue to change and evolve. Unique local forms and decorative styles identify the pots and bowls with specific villages and regions. Thu~ it is easy to recognize the work of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, where much of the pottery is made. The art of weaving is of more recent origin; yet here, too, the American Indian heritage is rich. The skill of the Navajos, for example, is world-renowned and their rugs prized everywhere for their beauty and bold design. No two Navajo rugs are alike-each weaver works without a pattern, creating the forms and selecting the colours as she sits before her loom. The rug is the sole preserve of the Navajo woman; she not only weaves it but also performs all the preliminary functions: shearing, carding, spinning and dyeing. The Navajos are also skilled in the art of silversmithing, first taught to them in the 1850s by an itinerant Mexican. The craft spread among the Hopi and Zuni tribes, and since then it has been raised to a high degree of artistry. Turquoise was introduced into the silver setting, and much of the work today contains this favourite south-western gem. While the Navajos prefer massive silver forms, the Hopi designs follow the patterns found on ancient pottery. Zuni workmanship as a rule is more delicate, often with hundreds of tiny bits of continued
Top right: American Indian art-Navajo rug, drum and beater, totem pole, dance rattle, war bonnet, Kachi.na doll, jewellery. Right: .Alaskan artefacts-masks, fur,doll, ivory bird, baskets.
turquoise on a semi-filigree base of silver. For hundreds of years, the American Indians have been weaving baskets-made of such materials as hemp, bear grass, split willow, sweet grass, yucca, and a pod called devil's claw. The Hopis and the Papagos of Southern Arizona are among the chief bearers of this unbroken basketry tradition. The range of American Indian art is too wide to be adequately covered here. But it would include, to cite a few examples-the war bonnets. and beaded moccasins of the Sioux; the tepees of the Blackfoot tribe; the dolls of the Soshonis and the Iroquois; the wood sculpture of the Cherokees; and the patchwork of the Seminoles. The American Indians who lived in Alaska made their contribution to the folk art of the region. They are most often associated with the totem pole, an elaborately-carved length of wood which was a sign of the family or clan. Later the Indians migrated southward. The Eskimo's hunting and fishing culture is shaped by life in the bleak Arctic tundra, though not all live that far north today. He has a special interest in natural form, and will shape the ivory, whalebone or stone according to what the "spirit" tells Left: Feather war bonnet of the Sioux Indians. Below: Wall hanging of tapa or awaiian bark cloth.
him. His expressive sense of humour is revealed in masks, known for their imagination and characterization. They are made from materials as different as wolverine hide and ossified whalebone. In the summer Eskimo women pick the¡ grasses that grow along the Bering Sea. Later these are woven into baskets during the long, harsh winter. They also make fur and skin clothing, while the men carve walrus ivory and make toys for the children. Contrasting with the bitter cold of¡ Eskimo-land. the sunny climate of Hawaii is reflected in bright-coloured work in shell and stone, wood, tooth and bone. From the brilliant plumage of tropical birds, Hawaiian craftsmen assemble pieces of superb featherwork. Music, of course, is ever-present in these islands; and many artefacts are connected with music-making and with hula dancing. The people of each geographical region in America have their own distinctive folk art heritage, often reflecting their European ancestry. Take the traditional Spanish crafts found in New Mexico. These included textiles, wood and tin work, but the most important was religious carving. "Santos," representations of holy or saintly figures, wereJirst carved during the 1770s. Structured by untutored craftsmen into an expression of piety, these are still made today in such towns as Cordova. Like the Spanish settlers, the early immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains made everything by handcabins, furniture, baskets, clothing and farm tools. Extras like toys and musical instruments came later. Today descendants still live in this area, the largest region in America where crafts are found as in earlier times. Some contemporary adaptations have been made, but for the most part the toys and crafts of Appalachia are excellent examples of early folk art. Throughout the world there is a renaissance of ~olk art-a movement that runs startlingly counter to the drift of our times. Why does this naive and artless art have so wide an attraction nowadays? Perhaps it is because we sense that folk art is bound to die. When a village craftsman turns out objects not for the pleasure of his people but to be sold to passing strangers, the reason for making them becomes debased and so does the quality. In an age surfeited with technical excellence perhaps we find the simplicity of folk art reassuring. Or perhaps we are being stifled by the regimentation and mass-production around us. For the folk art object, above all else, is an affirmation of individuality. END
Left: Spanish-American "santos" or religious carvings-St. Peter, donkey, bird, St ..Jude, St. Joseph. Below: Navajo silver bracelets with stamped and embossed design. Bottom: Hopi polychrome jar inspired by a 15th-cen y model. / - -/2
The Heritage of the
.
<Model T
( ;;~ -/0 Henry Ford's Model T has not been an unmixed blessing. While sparking a big social and industrial revolution, it also was the harbinger of a host of problems. AT TWOO'CLOCK in the morning, June 4, 1896, Henry Ford was ready to drive the first car he ever built. Little more than a buggy on bicycle wheels, the '''quadricycle,'' as he called it, turned out to be too big to pass through the door of his workshop. Standing on the threshold of a new age, Henry did not hesitate. He seized an axe, and knocked down a wall of bricks. It was raining in Detroit, Michigan. His wife, crouching under an umbrella, came out to see him off. While a friend stood by on a bicycle to ride ahead and shout warnings to the drivers of any horse-drawn carriages that might be encountered, Henry put the clutch lever in neutral, and spun the flywheel. The car trembled with life as the motor took hold. He leapt up onto the seat, gripped the steering rod, put the car in low gear, and bounced over the shiny wet cobblestones of an alley into the empty city street. Actually, this was not the first car in the world. Ten years earlier Gottlieb Daimler had demonstrated a crude gasoline motor-car on the streets of Paris. France was the world's first automotive centre. In the United States a number of other motor-cars had already been driven by the Duryeas, Elwood Haynes, Hiram Percy Maxim apd Charles B. King. Nor was there anything notably different about this auto, except that it was light. Ford's first car had two cylinders, fitted into sections of a steam engine's exhaust pipe. Its power was transmitted by a belt from the motor to the rear wheels. It had no reverse, no steering wheel, and no brakes.
60
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What was so remarkable about it? To Henry Ford it foreshadowed one of the most powerful forces of the future. In retrospect, it was the humble beginnings of a social revolution. Ford's first venture into the automobile business, in 1899, was a failure. It was not until he founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, at the age of 40, that he sold his first car. By 1907 Ford was finally ready to realize his dream of producing a single standardized car of simple and sturdy design. "The way to make automobiles is to make one automobile like another automobile," said Ford. "Like one pin is like another pin when it comes from the pin factory." The principles of mass production were already understood by American manufacturers. Ford did not invent them either. His achievement was to place them at the service of "the great multitude." Common-sense, however, showed this was quite impossible. For even if he should succeedln producing a great multitude of automobiles, who in the world would buy them? The young industrial nation was enjoying a period of phenomenal growth. But not the nation as a whole. Moreover, there were few in America, or anywhere else, who were ready to accept the notion that mass production might one day bring prosperity to all. "The true industrial idea is not to make money," Ford said. "The industrial idea is to express a serviceable idea, to duplicate a useful idea, by as many thousands as there are people who need it." If in 1908 there were few in America ready to accept continued
/
The multi-lane expressway is a far cry from the dusty, muddy roads of the Model T days. There are //0 million vehicles on U.S. roads today.
Affectionately known as the 'Tin Lizzie,' the Model T was like its creator-plain, erect, sturdy, stubborn, and at times erratic.
such an outlandish idea, there were more than might have been supposed who were ready for the Model T! Plain, erect, sturdy, stubborn, and at times erratic, in an odd sort of way it resembled its creator. Farmerswho until now had regarded the automobile as a natural enemy-were quick to discover it was just what they wanted. Not only could it withstand the shocks of country roads, giving them an undreamed of mobility; its four-cylinder engine could also be used to power saws, grind fodder, and even churn butter. Weekdays it was often used to pull the plough in the fields. And on Sundays it took them to church. In 1909 Ford's company produced 12,292 cars for $950 apiece. In 1911 it produced 40,402 cars for $690. In 1913 it produced 182,809 cars for $550. As prices fell, more customers were found. It was not until 1914, however, that the personal philosophy of Henry Ford became recognizable as a source of social revolution. Ford's now famous offer to reduce the working day to eight hours, and simultaneously to more than double the average daily wage to $5 a working day, was like a shot heard round the world. Henry Ford, it was felt, was tinkering with a law of nature, and indeed he was-the so-called "iron law of wages" first postulated by David Ricardo, an English economist of the early 19th century, endorsed by the classical economists, and given an added aura of inevitability by the denunciations of Karl Marx. While critics continued to fume about this possible threat, Ford found that his workers produced more efficiently under this new policy for less money per unit of work perforined. As prices continued to plummet, his company produced 355,267 cars in 1915, 577,036 cars in 1916, and 802,771 cars in 1917. By then it was apparent to most Americans that it was Ford, not Marx, who had found an Archimedes lever to move the world. In those days the auto was noisy, unpredictable, and often cantankerous. Each car had a toolbox on the running board. One had to crank the engine by hand-a feat difficult and daring. An engine backfire could break an arm. Rbads were normally either dusty or muddy. Drivers wore goggles and dusters. And panic-stricken horses were still a hazard. But by the 1920s the face of the nation was¡ changing fast. Tractor production had already reached 200,000 per year, and the ploughing and planting of the virgin grasslands was under way. More than 30,000 miles of concrete roads had been constructed by 1924. The purchase of cars on ereditalmost unknown before the First World War-won such rapid approval that by 1926 three-fourths of all cars were being purchased witQonly;a small down payment. Incidentally, a Model T touring car that year sold for $310, and the lighter Runabout for only $290. Ironically, it was the very principles of Henry Ford that were to render the "Model T" obsolete. The more you produce, the less.each unit costs; and the better off the people become, the more they are able to buy. By 1927 the "Tin
. f./ C f
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Lizzie," as it ~s known with affection, had fallen behind the times, after a grand total of 15 million produced at a rate of more than one and a half per minute! The public demanded more: the closed car that was rattle-free, weatherproof, lockable and parkable. In the 1930s cars were enclosed in all-steel bodies. As the radius of daily life lengthened, demand came for additional "horsepower." Brakes were improved. And new suspension systems introduc~d the surprising possibility of comfort. Power brakes, power steering and automatic transmissions followed in the 1940s and 1950s. The average American today is not only able to own a motor-car, as Henry Ford predicted; he is unable to do without one. The luxury of yesteryear for a nation on wheels has long since become a necessity. Nowadays it is a matter of routine for a person living in the country to drive 20 miles to do the weekly shopping, 40 miles to see a friend or listen to a concert, or 80 miles for an annual dentist's check-up. Half of America's villages and towns depend to this day entirely on the mobility of motor transportation. Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that the heritage of Henry Ford is not an unmixed blessing. Four out of five families have found it necessary to own a car. One out of three families now finds that one car is no longer enough. As a result there is now a grand total of 110 million motor vehicles in operation on U.S. highways. Urban life already is noisy and there is increasing congestion, compounded by problems of parking. Rush-hour traffic often comes to a standstill. There are more ominous signs in the sky. Swift as is the pursuit of happiness, there is, too, death on the highways. Over 50,000 deaths a year! Who could have foreseen that this "peaceful revolution" would take such a dreadful toll? The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the begintiings of
For the average American the automobile is a must, for it gives him mobility to go where he wants. Here, a family has a picnic lunch at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. safety research, which today is a science in itself. Highspeed accidents can now be simulated so that every little movement may be reconstructed. Sophisticated sensing devices, hooked into magnetic tape pickups, record the severity as well as speed of a collision, while high-speed photography enables safety experts to witness what happens .in slow motion. On the basis of this new science, records of real highway accidents can be analyzed with accuracy, coded, and kept in a computer bank. The computer can then be asked to pinpoint accident patterns and even prophesy the future of drawingboard modifications. Safety research and development by the automobile industry r~sulted in an impressive array of improvements, such as padded dashboards, back-up lights, sun-visors, outside rearview mirrors, high penetration resistant windshield glass, headrests and better locks, lights and tyres. As a result of these improvements, the death toll on U.S. highways in 1970 showed its first significant drop since 1958. Although Americans drove five per cent more miles in 1970 than in 1969, there were three per cent fewer highway fatalities. Today's cars are capable of drastically reducing fatality and injury rates, safety experts agree, if seat-belts are worn by everyone. Statistics reveal that they are actually used by only 30 per cent of U.S. drivers. Late in 1970 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ruled that after July 1, 1973, all new cars sold in the United States must be equipped with "passive restraints," protecting front-seat occupants from frontal barrier collisions up to 30 miles an hour. A passive restraint is one that requires no forethought,
no decision, or instinctive response on the part of an accident victim. The drastic ruling is said to be based on a study of simulated accidents using a device known as the "air bag." Folded in place behind the dashboard, the air bag is designed to respond to the impact of a collision in that fraction of an instant before it can cause any harm. Like a genie out of a bottle, it blows up with a bang to three times the size of a bedroom pillow. Science has demonstrated that it will adequately protect the life of the driver, if it does not frighten him to death. A number of other startling devices have been proposed to replace the controversial air bag: A nylon blanket that springs up before one's eyes. A net that drops from the ceiling. A seat with plastic armrests that enfold one like a child in its mother's lap. An automobile that refuses to start until all seat-belts are properly in place and locked. The U.S. Federal Government has recently issued another challenge that will soon be a law of the land. The automobile industry is charged with the responsibility ¡of preserving a quality environment. In recent years emission controls have been installed in all new cars. As a result five 1970 model cars generate less air pollution than a single 1960 model. But the progress of the past decade is not good enough according to current government regulations. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 set emission standards twice as stringent as those previously proposed. The auto makers must reduce hydrocarbon emissions by 98 per cent, and carbon monoxide emissions by 97 per cent by 1975. To produce an essentially pollution-free car within the next four years, emission control research is pursuing a number of new approaches: the use of lead-free gasoline, thermal reactors or "afterburners," exhaust gas re-circulation, together with catalytic converters to change what emissions might be left into harmless water vapour and carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, long-range research continues to study the possibilities of gas turbines, steam engines and electric cars. It is now estimated that there will be 140 million motor vehicles in operation by 1980. To provide for them the nation's new 42,500-mile Interstate National Highway System was 70 per cent completed by the beginning of the new decade. Soon it will be possible to drive from coast to coast with only a modest delay on expressways four to eight lanes wide. The problem is not only to provide for motor-cars. How does an industrial nation dispose of seven million wrecked or worn-out cars a year? One answer lies in an entirely new technology to crush cars, rip them apart, shred and eventually re-cycle the usable scrap for steel mills and foundries. Even if the nation succeeds in meeting the challenge of the 1970s with a car that is safe, clean and ultimately disposable, the dream of Henry Ford could turn out'to be a nightmare if long-range plans are not laid now for the transportation system as a whole. If 75 years after the birth of the American automobile industry, its problems seem overwhelming, if the future seems fantastic or forbidding, it is heartening to think of Henry Ford, American folk hero. Who would have thought his dream would lead so soon to that four-wheeled Rover exploring open spaces on the moon? END
-Saving the environment is not a new American interest but, as the author points out, "had its beginnings in the dim past."
or environmentalism or ecological responsibility-or whatever you choose to call it-had its beginnings in the dim past. The concept was fundamentally the same as that which today's environmental movement is striving to achievea way of life based on careful husbandry of natural resources, elimination of waste and over-consumption, and respect for natural systems above the man-made. Consider the ancient Cherokee. They' . believed huIi-tan personality and the web of life must be tended with passion and reverence, based on a heritage derived from the earth itself. Their idea was to "celebrate life," as our modern young activists say. Now we call it the pathetic fallacy, but every animal, stone and tree was believed to have its own spirits and particular reasons for being. Ceremonials were devoted to fulfilment of Man's role in the grand design of the universe. According to the accepted script, white pioneers were too preoccupied with growth to consider saving resources for the future. But this is not exactly so; a review of American history reveals alternatives and warnings presented continually along the way. The Bartrams, father. and son, figure CONSERVATION
Reprinted from Smithsonian magazine. Copyright Š 1971. Smithsonian National Associates.
prominently among the early non-Indian environmentalists. The elder, John, born in 1699 on a farm outside Philadelphia, was the first great native botanist of the New World. Instead of destroying, he conserved .by collecting seeds and plants in the far wildernesses of Canada, the Great Lakes and Florida. He was a leading intellectual, whose Botanical Garden was frequented by writers, artists and scientists eager to follow his course in natural history .
of the American Indian through the transcendentalism of Thoreau and Emerson to the ecology of Aldo Leopold, Glaus Murie, Rachel Carson and others. William Bartram avoided involvement, preferring the sanctuary of the gardens left by his father. ,He declined appointment as botanist on the Lewis and Clark expedition. But men sought him out. He took in a young Scottish poet and school-teacher, Alexander Wilson, whom he taught to observe, study and paint, setting him on the road to becoming "father of Amer. ican ornithology." Antipathy for exploitation was often expressed by artists and writers of the early Te p,incip.1 beneficiary nf 19th century. "The most distinctive, and John's teaching was his son William, who perhaps the most impressive, charactersometimes accompanied him on his ex- istic of American scenery is its wildness," plorations. William, in turn, conducted his wrote Thomas Cole, leader of the Hudson own four-year probe of the southern wilderRiver school of painting, in 1836. ness, which resulted in his classic book now But how to save hills and hunting known as The Travels of William Bartram. grounds from despoliation? The first call He perceived and described the interdefor specific action apparently came from pendence of living things: the spider preyGeorge Catlin. When this explorer and arting on the bumblebee, which had lit to ist steamed up the Missouri River into the feed on the leaf of a plant; a coachwhip Mandan country of the Dakotas in 1832, snake wreathing itself around the body of prairie dogs barked from the tops of their a grounded hawk; the battle between craymounds and buffalo ran in fright: However, fish and goldfish; the swarming alligators he observed a large number of American feeding upon a bank of fish. It was the Indians camped near Fort Pierre slaughtersame theme repeated from the primiti~ism ing buffalo to trade for whiskey, and realcontinued
This world "is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired than used."
ized the extinction of Indian and buffalo were imminent-"before the deadly axe and desolating hands of cultivating man." Catlin furnished invaluable depictions of the Indians in the fullness of their bloom with his heroic portraits of Osceola and Keokuk, of the Sioux, Comanche, Kickapoo, Chippewa and the remnants of the Six Nations in northern New York. The human resource was part gf his dream that large sections of the Plains be preserved "in their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park, where the world could see, for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping his wild horses amid the fleeting herds of elk and buffalo." Although Catlin's pleas were not heard, William Cullen Bryant's proved more successful. In 1836, he began promoting the idea of a city park on a tremendous scale for New York. It took a considerable effort to achieve, but with the support of two noted landscape architects, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, Central Park finally was established in 1857-and is probably the. most valuable parcel of open space in the world today. During the midcentury a mood and movement swept over the country, in reaction to unrestrained expansionism. In California, the sequoia groves catapulted into world attention as a result of the stripping of one giant tree in Calaveras Grove. Public interest led Congress to enact a law withdrawing Y osemite Valley and Mariposa Grove from the public domain and granting them to California as a state park.
Te
movementto defend the
natural environment had eloquent spokesmen in the sages of New England. In his renowned essay, Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson defined the true ethic as a concept of spiritual morality and integrity. "This curious wofld which we inhabit," insisted Emerson's friend,. Thoreau, "is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used." Thoreau has been mocked as a hermit for those "impractical" excursions to Walden, Monadnock and Cape Cod, and for plunging into the wilds of Maine and
Canada, but his implicit practicality becomes more apparent with the years. He foresaw unchecked exploitation headed on a course that ultimately would devour all wild nature on the continent-perhaps on the entire globe-and warned that some wilderness must be preserved. He had no quarrel with civilization, but defined wilderness as a necessary component. If it were not recognized as such, man would destroy himself in destroying nature. "In Wildness is the preservation of the World"-this quotation from Thoreau is often used as the motto of the Wilderness Society. Though he published only two books during his lifetime (A Week on the Concord andM errimack Rivers and Walden), his collected works, including his journal, or "daybook," run to 20 volumes, a mine of discoveries and observations. He warned against having "every part of man cultivated," for to subject everything in man to rational and conscious control would be to warp, diminish and barbarize him. So, too, the reduction of all nature to use for profit would end in the dehumanization of Man. As an antidote, he proposed a network of national preserves "for inspiration and our own true recreation," plus a natural area within each community. Thoreau spoke is defence of the environment, but functioned essentially alone. Following the Civil War, this would no longer do. The railroads opened the Western Empire and were rewarded with immense gifts of land from the public domain. The cowman, sheepman, buffalo hunter, miner and logger marched across the continent and left destruction in their paths. The buffalo, which had numbered 60 million or more in great herds, almost vanished from the face of America. The chaotic, devastating grazing upheaval, known as the "beef bonanza," left in a single generation scars and damages on the land that may never be erased. Millions of acres designated to aid settlers passed into the hands of mining and lumber syndicates and speculators. It was an era of unbridled rape of nature. A few voices were raised against the tide. Carl Schurz, German-born Secretary of the Interior of the mid-1870s, understood the values of conservation from memories of his native land. He called for a reversal of public opinion, "looking with indifference on this wanton, barbarous,
disgraceful vandalism; a spendthrift people ~ recklessly wasting its heritage; a Government careless of its future." . Enter Major John Wesley Powell, scientist and intrepid explorer of the Green and Colorado Rivers. He urged preserving the country's natural wealth against exploitation and monopoly control. The western livestock grower, according to Powell's invective, was "a trespasser on the public domain, an obstacle to settlement, and at best a crude forerunner of civilization."
Ell
wasprimarilya scientist,
who served as director of the u.S. Geological Survey. He served also, from 1879 to his death in 1902, as director of the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution¡. He recognized that many Indian conflicts could have been avoided, except for the white man's ignorance and lust for profit. Though Powell and his trained investigators failed to conserve the habitat of the native people (as Catlin had hoped to do), they. recorded Indian arts, industries, music, drama, ceremonies. The idea of saving something from the public domain for the nation's future was advanced considerably in 1870, when a group of explorers-called the WashburnLangford-Doane party-spent almost four weeks investigating the Yellowstone country. One evening around a campfire, they decided that, instead of claiming this frontier wonderland for themselves, they would share it as a "public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." It was a revolutionary idea, but two years later the first national parkfirst in the world-came into being. Meanwhile, John Muir was leading the fight to preserve the giant sequoias of Yosemite from the timber barons and the fragile slopes above them from the sheep growers. Muir was a long-bearded, longlegged, uncommon champion of nature and of his fellowman, who wrote, "There is a lover of wild Nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties." The mountains, he observed, are like fountains, not only of rivers and fertil~ soil, but also of men-and going
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In California. the giant sequoia trees catapulted into world attention as a result of the felling of a single tree.
cation called forest reserves. Two of his predecessors, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland, had withdrawn a combined total of 34 million acres. But Roosevelt, during his nearly eight years in office, despite fervent, sometimes violent opposition, set aside by executive order 148 million acres. It was very likely his most important and enduring contribution to the nation. Roosevelt could move boldly because he was surrounded by strong men. One of his closest associates was George Bird Grinnell, naturalist, Indian scholar and editor of Forest and Stream magazine. Grinnell founded the New York Audubon â&#x20AC;˘ ';:::> ~ j.ff..4 ~ Soci~ty,the first such organization in Amerto the mountains is like going ho e.' Forests war.;,organized in 1901. ica, fought the land grabbers of the West Muir ranged over the West, induding These events were parts of a great surge and led the movement to establish Glacier Alaska and across the Bering Sea, but his of activism, which reached its peak during Natiol1al Park in Montana. Though perspecial kingdom was Yosemite. He was the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. The sonally modest, he was a two-fisted pubin great demand as a writer, for he describ- most influential spirit in the movement was lisher, prominent in virtuaUy every major ed mountain scenery in terms combining provided by Roosevelt himself. He was a conservation crusade of his time. science and poetry. skilled observer, who debunked the school Although "T.R." knew and admired In collaboration with his friend and of pseudo-naturalists known properly as John Muir and had camped with him in editor at Century magazine, Robert Under- "nature fakers"; they peddled old wives' Yosemite, he was most influenced by Gifwood Johnson, Muir crusaded for a na- tales attributing human qualities to wild ford Pinchot, an apostle of use rather than tional park in Yosemite. Congress respond- animals (anthropomorphism). In 1887, at protection, or as PinEhot would say, "of ed in 1890 by reserving 1,500 square miles age 29, he and a handful of others organiz- preservation through use." He had returnsurrounding Yosemite State Park as a ed the Boone and Crockett Club, an in- ed from forestry studies in France in 1890 national park (and 15 years later accepted fluential cadre of "American hunting rifle- as the first native-born American to comreturn of the valley from California). men" determined to spearhead an assault plete graduate training in this profession. Then Muir and others proceeded to pro- on problems facing our dwindling big Ip. his first ~ssignment, the development of mote conservation through the Sierra Club. game, public lands and forest resources. a forest plan for the Biltmore Estate of The founders originally had in mind enIn one case, the fraternity of hunters George Washington Vanderbilt in western couraging wise use and protection of the blocked a railroad through Yellowstone, North Carolina, he introduced selective Sierras and other ~estern mountains, but even in the face of imminent Congressional logging, planned reproduction and tresthe club has since grown into a leading approval. In another, they tackled the prof- pass contrpl. Although a single-minded, . spokesman for wild areas throughout the iteers known as market hunters (also as often uncompromising idealist, his manner nation and the world. Muir himself fought "butchers," "hide hunters" and "game inspired others. He emerged as a giant resource exploitation, whether by grazing, hogs"), who preyed upon passenger pi- figure in conservation history. logging, water development or tourist-. geons, cranes, plovers, other birds and Pinchot, who became the first chief of booming. Still, he knew the national parks mammals. Joining with various Audubon the U.S. Forest Service, was of the age of were not designed to keep people out; he societies and the American Ornithologists' social reformers, of Jane Addams, Lincoln objected to roads but not to use, for "Good Union, ,which had been fighting to con- Steffens, Ida Tarbell and the trust~busters. walkers can go anywhere. ; .. " trol plume hunters, they made it a federal He saw forestry as part of the crusade The impact of the conservation move- offence to ship interstate game killed in "against control of government by big ment was widely felt. In New York, the violation of state law. business." The Roosevelt-Pinchot policies falls of the Niagara River were rescued opposed useless waste and fought special from private exploitation with authorizaprivilege on a wide front. For example, tion of a state reservation in 1885. That the Inland Waterways Commission of same year the legislature established the 1907 warned against monopoly control Adirondack Forest Preserve, then later over forests, waters, lands and minerals, reinforced its sanctity with a constitutional hen Roosevelt was charging that an excessive share of natural amendment guaranteeing that the entire thrust'into the Presidency he was ready to resources had already been "diverted to the wooded area would be " .â&#x20AC;˘. kept forever as act. Congress had authorized the President enrichment of the few rather than preserv- . wild forest lands." In New England, the So- to make withdrawals from the public ed for the. equitable benefit of the many." ciety for the Protection of New Hampshire domain for a new entity of land classifi- Then followed the historic 1908 White
"No generation can be allowed to needlessly damage ... the future general wealth ... by the way it uses or misuses any natural resource."
House Conference of Governors, which, Pinchot described as "the first national meeting in any' country to set forth the idea that the protection, preservation, and wise use of the natural resources is not a series of separate and independent tasks,' but one single problem." Although the emphasis placed by Pinchot was on use (resulting in a major falling out with Muir over invasion of Yosemite for the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in 1913), the Forest Service under his leadership safeguarded millions of acres of wilderness. "To the broad vision of Pinchot we owe much in the development of attitudes that noW make possible the preservation of natural areas, at a time when the need is so deeply realized," wrote Howard Zahniser, the then executive director of the Wilderness Society, soon before passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. A forester trained under Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, brought the philosophy expressed by Muir and Thoreau full cycle back to that of Bartram and the Indians. As early as 1924 he was instrumental in establishing a designated wilderness area and in advancing the wilderness protection principle . .In A Sand County Almanac and Ro.und River) he rekindled the ancient "land ethic" and "ecological conscience," based on responsibility of man to the rest of the earth and the interdependence of living things. "The outstanding scientific discovery of the 20th century," he wrote in 1947, a year before his death, "is not television or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of a plant or animal, 'What good is it?' If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part of it is good, whether we understand it or not." During the Depression years, attention had focused on devastation of all kinds. Franklin D. Roosevelt treasured nature and the outdoors, and his New Deal provided a massive thrust to restore both land and people, through such programmes l\S the youth-oriented Civilian Conservation Corps. Forestry and. parks expanded at all levels of government. Game protection, soil conservation, fisheries, archaeology and other programmes came into their own. Since World War II the history of conservation has been a race against time. The
destruction of natural resources has proceeded much more rapidly than protection or restoration. There have been significant Congressional actions, such as passage of the Wilderness Act, making the United States the first country to recognize through legislation wilderness as part of its culture and legacy to the future, Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, Endangered Species Conservation Act, National Trails System Act, National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Air and Water Quality Acts and National Environmental Policy Act. But these came during the 1960s, otherwise known as "the age of poisons" and of urbanization, when an affluent society used endless quantities of "disposable" products with little thought of .where they came from or where they must go, and with scant inclination to save, or repair, anything older than yesterday. We are too close to the happenings of our time to interpret them as history. Yet if one event stands out at the beginning of the new decade, it is the Environmental Teach-In of April 22, 1970, when young people asserted their "earthright" to life on a habitable planet. Their demands are just. The ultimate effect of both ilncontrolled population and expanding technology are fearful to anticipate.
Yng
people have forced thei< elders to realize that without a more firmly established conservation ethic, the nation is not equipped to face its future. Mechanically and technically, perhaps, we have the skills to explore the lunar surface and exploi t the treasures of the sea, but intellectual and ethical values still lag behind. We now have the power to effect changes in the total environment of Man. But it is also possible that before we learn the full extent of this power, our blunders may injure the entire human race. "No generation can be allowed needlessly to damage or reduce the future general wealth and welfare," warned Gifford Pinchot in 1910, "by the way it uses or misuses any natural resource." And it¡ is on this basis that the environmental record must be written. END
'Man to be
thankful for' When asked after his retirement which of his achievements he considered most important to the national welfare, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, unhesitatingly named his conservation policies. Theodore Roosevelt loved America with impassioned devotion and served her greatly when, inspired by Pinchot (see accompanying article} and James R. Garfield, he converted 148 million acres of public land into national forests. In 1908 Roosevelt called a White House Conference on conservation that focused public attention on the subject. And soon after the National Conservation Commission was created to make a systematic study of the nation's resources. Perhap~ none of Roosevelt's actions encountered sharper criticism or enjoyed more widespread popularity than his efforts to preserve a portion of the national wealth for posterity. But Roosevelt's claim to fame is not only because of his efforts to save the environment. His name is associated with far-reaching adjustments in the relations of government and industry, with the building of the Panama Canal, and with peace that ended the RussianJapanese war and won him the Nobel Prize in 1906. A man of rich gifts in many fields, Roosevelt was at home in the world of books, the world of politics, and in the wild waste spaces where adventure called. He was also, as Life magazine said: "A man to be thankful for."
Scientists in the United States have successfully experimented with exotic insects, new herbicides and laser rays to combat the menace of aquatic weeds.
"THE RICHEST SOIL,if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds," said Plutarch in Lives: Coriolanus. In modern times, however, whether the field is cultivated or fallow, weeds are the bane of every farmer. These persistent, unwanted, often prolific plants compete for all the growth requirements-water, minerals, nutrients, light and space. It is estimated that weeds cause about $2,500 million worth of loss annually in crop yields and quality in the United States alone. American farmers have to spend another $2,500 million each year to control them. In recent years, however, the menace of aquatic weeds-weeds found in streams and rivers, canals and waterways, lakes and ponds-is causing great concern the world over. Because of their unhindered growth, they are already choking the flow of rivers and canals, making fishing difficult and at times impossible. Excessive algal blooms supersaturate the water with oxygen causing large-scale death of fish. The fight against weeds is a long, continuous battle, and man's survival and his 'standard of living depend directly upon the efficiency and safety with which he changes his environment and adjusts to it. When man creates ideal conditions for the multiplication of weeds and other pests, he must also create efficient means of controlling them. Weed control operations in the United States almost defy imagination. They include cultural, ecological, mechanical, chemical and non-chemical and now biological methods. Recently American entomologists have had some very promising successes in the biological control of weeds. Scientists have found that use of insects imported into the United ~tates from Asia, Africa and Latin America offers new and exciting prospects in the control of some 540 of the 600 weeds found in America. continued Left. a thick mat of alligator weed covers this canal in New Orleans. A floating perennial, the weed causes navigational, irrigation and other problems. One way to destroy it is to spray herbicides, below.
In India, too, work is being done at various research centres to develop ways of fighting weeds.
Since many of the weeds in the United States are common to India and other countries, the work being done by American scientists will have global implications. The biological control of weeds is being put to ever greater use for, in the words of Dr. Lloyd A. Anders of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service (ARS), "an effective weed-eating insect reduces the pest plant's aggressive growth, thus producing a more favourable ecological balance within the plant community. These insects harvest the energy of the weedy plant, leaving other plants intact. As the population density of the natural enemy multiplies, greater damage is inflicted on the host weed." The success of the biological method of weed control has prompted American entomologists to adapt it to the control of aquatic weeds. The first attempt in this direction was made in the southern states of America where most of the aquatic weed problems occur. One of the most common weeds, the alligator-weed, an emergent or floating perennial, infested almost 40,000 hectares in eight American states in 1963. The weed caused navigational, flood control, irrigation, public health and water quality problems. To cope with the alligator-weed menace American entomologists travelled to Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina to seek insects having potential growth capability. More than 40 insects were found to attack alligator-weed in those countries. Three beetles were finally selected and introduced in Florida for the first time. Since then they have proved highly effective in combating alligator-weed. Also in Florida, a snail (marisa sp.) has been found to be a voracious eater of submersed aquatic weeds. Presently work is being done for the rapid breeding of these snails. However, snails have one drawback, they are also fond of paddy. Scientists believe that the manatee or sea cow can be useful for weed control. Currently research is being done on the protection and multiplication of this rapidly diminishing species. Another promising agent for water vegetation control is the Chinese grass carp which eats a variety of floating and submersed The common snail, right. can help eradicate aquatic weeds. Unlike its pace, the snail is a fast and voracious eater of submersed plants. Another useful insect, the flea beetle, at far right, eats the leaves and then bores holes in stems of alligator weeds.
weeds. Its food consumption is enormous, equal to its body weight -and an adult carp can weigh several pounds. In India the white amur (a type of Chinese grass carp) has been successfully used against a submersed weed called hydrilla. Scientists from Alabama are experimenting with carbon dioxide laser rays for the control of, water hyacinths, a major menace to boating and fishing facilities. Results with the laser rays so far have been very promising and researchers are now working on an inexpensive and portable unit which can be used from small boats. Laser rays have the advantage over traditional methods of weed control in that they leave behind no harmful residues. Among the traditional ways of controlling water plants and weeds is the development of "slow release" herbicides. Copper sulphate can now be applied in capsules having microspores to allow their controlled release. In cold water lakes and ponds one application of copper sulphate capsule can give season-long algae control. Mechanical removing of weeds is still the chief mode of clearing waters in the United States. But even mechanical methods have undergone many changes and improvement. Work is also being done to use some of the weeds removed from water as animal feed. The design of canals has been changed, for straight canal walls are preferred in those areas where mechanical cutters are used for weed removal. Just as in the United States, aquatic weeds also pose serious problems in India. The water hyacinth is India's most common aquatic weed, and many a lake and pond has been abandoned because of their infestation. Realizing the importance of the control of aquatic weeds, the United States Government, through the Agricultural Research Service, has made available P.L.-480 rupees for the study and control of aquatic weeds here. A Rs. 447,880 ARS grant to the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control in Bangalore is helping to evaluate the natural enemies of witchweed, nutsedge and several aquatic weeds in India. Two grants'totalling Rs. 644,440 to the University of Udaipur will help in the study of algae and the physiology of weeds. The research being done in India and the United States coupled with the gigantic programme of weed control points to the day when the world may be freed of a menace that has plagued man for centuries.
Weed-shield succumbs to 'dichlobenil' herbicide. Note the mat has sunk from central portion of the canal above. Far left, Chinese grass carp (white amur) can eat in one day water plants equal to its body weight, which is several pounds. Scientists are growing water weeds, like the coontail at left, in laboratories to find methods of destroying them.
~SNOT Abraham Lincoln, who was born 163 years ago this month and who was the 16th President of the United States, has been acclaimed as one of the world's great men-by heads of state, Prime Ministers, writers, scholars, and just plain people. As Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said, ÂŤ What are we to say and what words are we to usefor a person who is something far above the common run of people whom we call eminent? It is difficult to find words, because the truly great moved us and have moved mankind, not only intellectually but emotionally .... Abraham Lincoln was obviously one of these very select great men .... Lincoln was not merely a great leader of America; he belongs to the world." It was not always so. Looking back at the year 1860.... IT WAS the first visit of the Illinois prairie lawyer to New York City. Lincoln's speech at the "Cooper Institute," as the , Cooper Union was then known, was of the utmost importance to him, for he was invited to the big city largely to have his "availability" for the Presidency examined by the political "bigwigs" of the East, who were incoherently opposed to the candidacy of William H. Seward. The momentous test for Lincoln was staged for the evening of February 27, 1860. It snowed that night when the selfconscious Lincoln addressed that New York audience. Some 1,500 people paid 25 cents each to hear him. From the proceeds of the sale of tickets, Lincoln received a fee of $200.00, plus his limited travelling expenses. Among those on the platform at the meeting, besides Chairman William
Abraham Lincoln is remembered today as a great statesman and orator. But his eloquence was not so readily acknowledged by newspapers of his day.
weird, rough and uncultivated. "The long, ungainly figure upon which hung clothes that, while new for this trip, were evidently the work of an unskilful tailor; the large feet, the clumsy hands of which, at the outset, at least, the orator seemed unduly conscious; the long, gaunt head capped by a shock of hair that seemed not to have been thoroughly brushed out, made a picture which did not fit in with New York's conception of a finished statesman." David C. Mearns, chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, recently presented a moving and dramatic description of the crucial event in the Cooper Institute. It is fascinating to contemplate how Lincoln met the challenge of the situation. "Lincoln was presented by William Cullen Bryant," said distinguished historian Mearns. "There was Lincoln, reading in low tones from the carefully prepared manuscript. At first his listeners were unresponsive; some sophisticates were shocked or amused by that uncultivated voice; others were dismayed or diverted by his extraordinary appearance and strange attire. But gradually and, at last, completely, his logic and its eloquence captured their earnest attention, and when he had reached his now familiar climax and conclusion there was unrestrained applause; loud cheering broke out; the gentlemen on the platform surrounded him, uttering congratulations and expressing warm apHonouring his great predecessor, President Nixon lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial. pro val; the White House somehow did not seem quite so far away." Cullen Bryant, was Horace Greeley, ediLincoln spoke for an hour and a half tor of the New York Tribune and George analysing the Constitutional position of Palmer Putnam, editor and magazine slavery in the territories. publisher. Putnam's son, then 16 years How was the speech received? old, later described Abraham Lincoln The Tribune said: "Mr. Lincoln is in these words: "The first impression of one of nature's orators, using his rare the man from the West did nothing to powers solely and effectively to elucicontradict the expectation of something date and convince, though their ipevit-
able effect is to delight and electrify as welL" The Times reported the cheering and enthusiasm, but characterized Lincoln as "that noted political exhorter and prairie orator, Abe Lincoln." The Herald, Democratic, was deceived. "A fourth rate lecturer. .. in return for the most unmitigated tra.sh interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes, he filled his empty pockets with dollars coined out of Republican fanaticism." Lincoln's opponents made as adverse and vile comments on his speeches before his inauguration as after he took office. In 1860 after his nomination, he made a number of political speeches. Some of these rank among the best he made. But to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the significant speech Mr. Lincoln delivered there "contained nothing that is calculated to make any man wiser, or more learned; to make him a better citizen or a better man; to give him any insight into the character of the Government or into his duty as a part of the governing power. It is, in single expressive word, trash-trash from beginning to end; trash without one solitary oasis to relieve the dreary waste that begins with its nearest, and ends with its furthest, bOl:ll1dary.Among public addresses from the stump, the speech of Mr. Lincoln belongs to the lowest order. It is not the speech of a statesman; it is not the speech of a politician; it is not even the speech of a fair partisan. It is .the speech of a pettifogging demagogue .... " On August 2, 1860, the New York Herald, supporting the rival Breckenridge ticket for the Presidency, editorialized: "The only danger of the Union which we have to fear will be the danger which will follow Lincoln's election. The defeat of Lincoln, whether by the Electoral Colleges or by Congress, will be equivalent to a new lease of security to the Union." END
TEXT BY M. REYAZUDDlN PHOTOS BY AVINASH
By finding imaginative but practical solutions to Mysore's farm problems, the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bangalore has significantly advanced agricultural prosperity in the state. One development has transformed the lowly ragi, right, into a high-yielding hybrid variety. A graduate farmer, below, tends his paddy plot. Below left, firstyear students in the field.
PASRICHA
FOR THE Mysore farmer, who for centuries had gone from harvest to harvest with hardly anything to show for his labours, there is now new hope and the promise of bountiful crops. His future is brighter because scientists of Mysore's University of Agricultural Sciences have catapulted ragi or finger millet from a lowly crop to a hybrid variety with never-dreamed-of yields. The breakthrough in the cross-breeding of ragi has great implications for Mysore, for it is grown on two million acres, and is the main food and fodder crop of the state's red-soil tract. Ragi is also grown in other parts of India, South Asia and Africa, and its cross-fertilization and hybridization will have far-reaching impact. continued
T
he University's scope transcends the conventional concept of agriculture in such activities as the Bakers Training School, below, conducted in co-operation with the Wheat Associates, U.S.A.
Though breeding work on ragi was started as early as 1913,this predominantly self-pollinated crop with a complicated floral mechanism would not respond to the usual methods of hybridization. Interest in ragi flagged till the late 'fifties when breeding work was again started. Mter considerable effort the "contact method" of cross-fertilization was used with great success. Though this method is cumbersome, it proved very efficient and breeders were able to evolve several new and promising strains. The advent of the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) at Bangalore in 1964 gave agriculture in general and ragi breeding in particular the necessary impetus. The most significant achievement in the past few years in ragi cultivation has been the profitable exploitation of the African germ plasma of ragi, made available to the University by the Rockefeller Foundation. Scientists have been able to evolve three outstanding varieties which show greater hardiness to both drought and disease, and with yields that are 25 per cent higher than the improved strains. "Another notable feature of these Indo-African crosses is their dormant character," said C.H. Lakshmanaiah, a ragi breeder. "Almost all ragi varieties are non-dormant, which is a great defect as the seed germinates on the ear-head itself if harvest is delayed, result-
ing in losses of both quality and quantity of grains." Work on ragi is just one example of how UAS in eight years has become a force in the improvement of agriculture in Mysore. It stands wItness to what can be achieved with a pragmatic and integrated programme of instruction, research and extension. The search for new knowledge and its application to the changing needs of Mysore has been the sheet-anchor of this young and dynamic University and has made it, in the words of George Harrar, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, "one of India's outstanding agricultural institutions. " Several factors have been responsible for the University's enviable position. Its dedicated and outstanding faculty gives the institution top-flight intellectual talent. Some 90 members have been trained in various American universities under the U.S. Agency for International Development's Participant Programme. The emphasis on research is yet another noteworthy feature, for as Carroll P. Streeter, former editor of Farm Journal, noted: "In some of the new universities, including the one at Mysore, teachers are required to spend 30 per cent of their time on research, and researchers to devote equal time to teaching-a degree of integration seldom found in the much older landgrant universities of the United States." UAS, one of the eight 'Indian agricultural universities aided by the United States, has been very fortunate in having one of India's leading scientist-aqrninistrators as its Vice Chancellor. Dr. K.C. Naik, who brings to his job over 40 years of farm experience, believes,that if a university is to retain its value as an institution, it must find imaginative but practical ways to deal with this country's problems. The University began well when in 1965 it inherited from the state government 34 research centres to emerge overnight as one of the largest institutions of its kind in India. The research centres were regrouped under five regional stations in each of the state's agro-climatic areas so that no crop would be neglected. At the Bangalore station, the problems of dry-land farming and the cultivation of maize and ragi are tackled. In Mandya, the main effort is on rice, ragi, sugarcane; at Mudigere, the plantation crops--eardamom, coffee, citrus; in Dharwar, cotton and sorghum; while at Raichur it is on cotton, oilseeds and groundnuts.
The concept of regional stations with their satellite research outposts is typical of the American land-grant colleges on whose model the Mysore institution was established with the co-operation of the University of Tennessee. "It is one of the virtues of the American land-grant colleges," Mrs. Indira Gandhi said in 1966, "that they want their institutions to be rooted to the soil." Nothing could be more true for UAS than that it is rooted to the soil of Mysore. The type of research work being done by the University can be seen at the Mandya and Mudigere stations. Much of the ragi breeding work in Mysore was done at Mandya, which is one of the older research stations in Mysore, having been established in 1931 by a Canadian, Dr. Leslie C. Coleman. At first the station was primarily concerned with the propagation of sugarcane. With the advent of the University, however, the centre took on the added responsibility of extensive and intensive research on paddy, ragi and sugarcane, and of making the results of its research available to the farmers of Mysore. Here also can be seen the innovative effort of the University to produce the type of farmer who is not only educated in the best tradition of a farm university, but is also rooted to the soil. Called the postgraduate diploma course in crop production, the scheme provides for on-the-spot training of agricultural graduates. Under this programme each student is 'given three acres of irrigated land and two of dry for 12 months at an annual rental of Rs. 50 per acre. From then on the student is on his own, raising the crops he deems best and making whatever profit he can. The University loans him the money to buy the inputs and he can seek its advice from faculty members. The first batch of three students who completed the course at Mandya last September made net profits ranging from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000. Mudigere, a picturesque station located on the leeward side of the Western Ghats at an elevation of 945 metres, is the University of Agricultural Sciences' research centre for cardamom, coffee, citrus and banana. The main work, however, is on cardamom. Dr. R.S. Deshpande heads a team of young and dedicated scientists who are making a concerted effort to curb a virus known as the mosaic of the cardamom or katte. Dr. Deshpande points out that katte "is prevalent in all of the cardamom-growing tracts of the south and is mainly reI
Above, an ambulatory clinic for sick animals, run with two USAID-donated vans, is part of the University's extension programme. The cardamom plant, left, is . a major target of U AS research. sponsible for the low yields and deteriorating conditions of cardamom plantations." . Though India is the home of the cardamom and has been grown in the south for some 5,000 years, the first real work on the spice and the katte disease was done for a few years beginning in 1945. Ten years later, in 1958, research was begun in earnest, this time at Mudigere under the auspices of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The research done at Mudigere has
proved so far that while katte cannot be completely eradicated it can be effectively controlled by selective destruction of the diseased plants. And the success of any eradication programme, Dr. Deshpande pointed out, "depends largely on the efficiency with which the affected plants are destroyed. " The research on katte is important for the country because India produces on an average about 75 per cent of all the cardamom grown in the world-between 2,000 fo 2,500 tonnes a year. Small quantities are also grown in Guatemala, Ceylon, Tanzania, EI Salvador, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Cardamom, a herbaceous perennial, cannot grow in direct sunlight and needs the protection of other foliage to thrive. Mudigere scientists, in an effort to curb katte, are experimenting with specially-woven coir continued
matting cover to provide the necessary protection. Trial nurseries show promise. Research on cardamom and ragi, paddy and maize, are an integral part of an agricultural university, but the University of Agricultural Sciences has made a pointed departure from the traditional which is yet well within the purview of its charter to increasefood production in the country. Realizing the great potential of fish as a cheap and nutritive source of food and its tremendous worth in the industrial prosperity of the country, UAS in 1969 started the Fisheries College in Mangalore, the firstof its kind in India. The need for the college was evident. As UAS Dean Dr. G. Rangaswami pointed out, India has in addition to nearly 5,000 kilometres of coastline, a continental shelf of 250,000 square kilometres; 300,000 hectares of mangrove swamps, creeks, bays, lagoons and estuaries; about 10,000 kilometresof perennial rivers; 5,000 kilometres of larger irrigation channels; ~nd thousands of large and small tanks covering an area of about a million hectares~-all a source of fish. In spite of India's immense natural resources, said Dr. Rangaswami, "adequate attention has not been paid to the development of fisheries in the country. The total fishcatch in India is about 1,500,000tonnes a year, which is only 2.5 per cent of the world catch." The Fisheries College at Mangalore hopes to provide the professionally competent personnel that this country needs for the better utilization of its fish resources. How popular the College is can be judged by the fact that over 300 students applied this year for the 30 seats available for the one-year diploma course in fish processing technology. The Mangalore College, besides providing teaching facilities in fisheries science and technology, has also undertaken wideranging studies in marine biology and oceanography. Concentrating on the area around Mangalore, the College has already been able to establish that over 50 different fish, prawns and molluscs are found in the region and that the trawl fishing grounds are also the
L
eft, the sun filters through special coir matting, designed to protect the delicate cardamom plant and to curb the disease "katte."
Eager young students of the Fisheries College in Mangalore, above, learn the uses of various kinds of fishing nets. The College, which was started in 1969, is the first of its kind in India. nursery areas of several commercially important species. "A study on how the environment affects the fish population," said Dr. P.S.B.R. James, the fisheries officer, "has revealed so far that in the pre-monsoon period the trawl catch usually is of marine varieties. After the monsoon, the catch consists of fish which can withstand a variation in salinity." Dr. James and his colleagues are also conducting studies on the Indian sand whiting, popularly known in Mangalore as "lady fish." A much sought-after delicacy, the sand whiting is known to breed in river mouths during the monsoon. UAS scientists are trying to induce it to breed in artificial conditions so that more of this highly prized fish can be made available. In another significant study, fishing engineers are making a detailed study of the Mysore coast and of the existing harbours to see where new fishing harbours can be established so that the fish potential of the Arabian Sea can be better exploited. "We can have all the knowledge in the world, but unless it is applied to the needs of a nation, it is of no value," declared Gist Welling, chief of the University of Tennessee team and adviser on extension work at the University.
The importance of extension work in 'lhe over-all prugramme of an. agricultural university cannot be exaggerated, says Dr. Welling. The University of Agricultural Sciences working with the University of Tennessee began a pilot extension project in Bangalore district in 1967, when almost the entire area was turned into a laboratory for the popularization of hybrid and high-yielding crop varieties, especially maize. So successful was the project that in the first year the area under hybrid maize alone shot up from a few hundred hectares to 5,500 hectares. The success of the pilot programme was partly due to the innovative service of providing one extension guide in each of the district's 11 taluks. The extension guide was a graduate who was provided with a illqtor cycle by the University to give him greater mobility. The Bangalore district programme demonstrated the fact that extension work is an effective medium for the rapid transformation from traditional to a technologybased modern agriculture. As Dr. Welling said: "We hope in the future to have at least one extension guide in each of the 172 taluks of the state." "Bridging the gulf between the farmer and the University is our primary goal," Dr. Welling pointed out, "for then only can this university become a truly effective instrument in promoting rural development in Mysore." The progress made by the University in the first eight years augurs .well for the agricultural prosperity of Mysore. As Vice Chancellor Naik said: "It seems possible to face the challenges of the future with a measure of confidence." END
NEED TO LIMIT armaments as a step towards eventual world-wide disarmament is almost too self-evident to state. The course on which mankind has embarked from the beginning of time and which continued through the middle of this century could spell disaster for us all if it is not checked. Faced for the first time in history with the ability to wipe out mankind, we must bring our technology under control lest it destroy us. Hardly any country does not favour arms control in principle, although there are wide divergences about the means of bringing this about. Although our achievements to date in the arms control and disarmament field may seem disappoInting, especially when measured against the scope of the tasks still facing us, it is worthwhile to consider how far we have already travelled in bringing modern weapons under control and to take heart from the progress that has been achieved. The United States, as one of the nuclear powers, has felt especially keenly its responsibility to contribute to world peace and security by working actively to bring about arms control agreements. In the era of nuclear weapons we have come to realize fully that security cannot be sought merely by piling one weapons system on another. As President Nixon pointed out in transmitting to the Congress the 1970 report of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "through negotiations we can move towards the control of armaments in a manner that will bring a greater measure of security than we can obtain from arms alone." The philosophy underlying our efforts in the arms control field recognizes that modern technology allows any strategic balance to be only temporary and encourages the development of new, ever more complex and expensive systems which in the end do not pay for themselves in terms of increasing the national security. We are increasingly concerned about the drain of armaments on our human and material resources, which could and should be utilized more effectively for pressing domestic needs. For many people the word "disarmament" recalls the optimistic outlook that prevailed at the time the United Nations was established in 1945. When the U.N. Charter was drafted, it was widely hoped there would be early progress towards an established world order, under law, with an active United Nations role in settling disputes and in peacekeeping; and that the result would be quick progress towards essentially a disarmed world. For example, in the hopeful early years of the United Nations, the United States proposed the so-called Baruch Plan, which would have placed all nuclear fissionable material and facilities, world-wide, under international control. Unfortunately, this is not the way things worked out for many reasons including, of course, the Cold War. As recently as 1962 there was still a tendency to think in terms of rather grandiose plans-plans which, in effect, would have necessitated profound changes in the way the world is organized in order to be realizable. It was in that year that both the Soviet Union and the United States, at the Geneva disarmament conference, presented outline plans for "General
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and Complete Disarmament." I think that the U.S. proposal was considerably more realistic than the Soviet one-including its name. Our plan was called "Outline of Basic Provisions of a Treaty on General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World." I would emphasize "in a Peaceful World." In other words, it was realized even then that world conditions would have to be greatly different before such a sweeping disarmament plan could be brought into effect. Discussions about arms control invariably still have references to "general and complete disarmament." But, while these comprehensive outlines may be useful for long-range planning purposes, it is generally recognized that they bear little realistic relationship to the world as it is today-a world characterized by ideological battle lines, armed alliances, and national rivalries. - General and complete disarmament would require at least enough international political consensus to establish a universal policing system, and we are a long way from that. In other words, while one still hears many references to "general and complete disarmament," it has now come to be widely recognized as improbable, at least within the foreseeable future, that we shall be able to legislate world peace through a single, sweeping agreement. On the whole, there has been a trend towards a more pragmatic, case-by-case approach to specific issues. The word "pragmatic" is certainly a fair one to use in describing the American approach, which is one of trying to find feasible and manageable measures or steps which are ripe for negotiation and implementation. And it is this more limited approach, of course, which has resulted in the actual achievements in arms control to date, such as the treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere and underwater, the Nuclear Non-ProliferationTreaty, and the recently negotiated Seabed Arms Control Treaty, as well as a draft treaty prohibiting production and stockpiling of biological weapons which is currently being negotiated. The most ambitious undertaking in this regard is the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) which were initiated two years ago. y the eariy 1960s the concept of seeking pragmatically for partial measures was well established; and it must be said that the measures which we have actually succeeded in negotiating have come about because the nations concerned have approached the problem and negotiated pragmatically or, stated differently, with a sound appreciation of political realities. The pragmatic approach of the 1960s was actually ushered in
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by the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which demilitarized the area and ruled it off-limits for the stationing of nuclear weapons. To many at the time it doubtless seemed that this was a rather facile undertaking-that no one was really interested in placing nuclear weapons there anyway. Subsequent advances in technology, of course, have made us appreciate that it was a far-sighted move. Moreover, the Antarctic Treaty established a valuable precedent: authorization of international Inspections-which have actually been carried out. The Antarctic Treaty was noteworthy also because, being the first agreement of its kind of our era, it demonstrated that such agreements, adequately verified, were possible. For all of these reasons, it can be said that the Antarctic pact paved the way for two other more or less analogous agreements: the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and the treaty to prohibit the emplacement of nuclear weapons on the seabed, which was opened for signature on February 11, 1971. The early 1960s also witnessed two other arms control developments: the establishment of the Washington-Moscow "Hot Line," and the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 which was not only an arms control measure but also represented perhaps the first world-wide environmental effort designed to cope with the fallout problem. uring the latter part of the 1960s, the most important arms control undertaking was the negotiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This treaty arose out of the recognition that before it would be feasible to reverse the arms race, it was essential to halt the trends that threatened to throw it completely out of-control. One of the best means available was to prohibit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, since it was understood that establishment of control over these weapons would become increasingly difficult the more nations possessed them. By imposing an obligatory international safeguards system which is designed to prevent the diversion of fissionable materials from peaceful purposes to weapons manufacture, the NPT also has the effect of achieving an unprecedented step in international co-operation. In order to help bring this treaty about, the United States voluntarily agreed to place its peaceful nuclear facilities under international safeguards procedures. The U.K. did likewise and we still hope that the U.S.S.R. will some day also follow suit. While we cannot yet discern clearly the ultimate benefits the NPT may bring in terms of political stability, it is clear that the treaty has already served as a bridge to the SALT
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talks. One of the articles in the NPT specifically calls for the pursuit of "negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race .... " President Nixon has characterized the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks now being carried on by the United States and Soviet Union as among the most important negotiations ever undertaken by our countries. Since both sides agree that progress can best be facilitated by an atmosphere of confidence, details of the talks have not been made public. I would, however, like to emphasize the importance of the fact that both nations, long at odds with each other since World War II, are now willing to discuss something as vital to their national security as strategic arms. Although many differences remain between us and agreement will not come easily, I remain hopeful that the present strategic balance between our two countries will be a positive factor in our efforts to reach an agreement, which could create further confidence and affect other outstanding issues between us. There have been six SALT sessions to date, three at Helsinki and three in Vienna. The fifth session ended in September and the sixth started in November 1971 in Vienna. I am not discouraged by the pace of the talks. Given the complexity of the issues involved it is not surprising that an agreement has not been achieved. Both sides, of course, were cautious in the initial stages in presenting their views, but as a result of this eRhaustive intercourse, both the United States and Soviet Union have a better understanding of each other's position and strategic concerns. The talks have been marked by an absence of polemic and a calm and reasoned atmosphere conducive to producing businesslike exchanges of views. Wide differences necessarily influenced by differing perspectives remain between us, but this is not to say that progress has eluded us. We have made progress on many issues and will continue to do so. breakthrough in the SALT negotiations was simultaneously announced in Washington and Moscow on May 20th, 1971. President Nixon said that the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to concentrate, for the remainder of the year, on working out an agreement for the limitation of the deployment of anti-ballistic systems, ABMs; and that together with concluding an agreement to limit ABMs, the two countries will agree on certain measures with respect to the limitation of offensive strategic weapons. Though intensive negotiations will now be required to translate this understanding into concrete agreements, it is generally felt that the commitments of the American and Soviet governments at the highest levels to create more favourable conditions for further negotiations to limit all strategic arms is a step of great significance. "If we succeed," President Nixon said, this agreement "may well be remembered as the beginning of a new¡era, in which all nations will devote more of their energies and their resources, not to the weapons of war but to the works of peace." At the conclusion of the fifth session, the U.S.-U.S.S.R. delegates announced jointly that "certain areas of common ground" with respect to the limitation of strategic arms "have been devel-
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oped during this phase of the negotiations." In addition, it was announced by the two governments that agreements were reached on steps to reduce the likelihood of accidental outbreak of nuclear war, and to modernize the direct communications system ("Hot Line") between Washington and Moscow, taking advantage of development in satellite communications. The U.S.-U.S.S.R. governments also agreed to provide advance notification of certain planned missile launches. Our experience with efforts to achieve arms control agreements over the course of more than a decade seems to have demonstrated the emergence of a pattern. There has come to be general expectation that one arms control achievement should lead the way towards another.
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ne of the key arms control issues on which we have frequently been at odds with the Soviet Union has been that of . verification. In our view, arms control agreements, if they are to contribute to a growth of confidence among nations, must be adequately verifiable. .--------------------------,
Parties to the agreement must be confident that the provisions are fully lived up to. Here, America and other democratic countries are at a disadvantage compared with the closed societies of authoritarian states. In the democ-
racies, the free media and the
'The best hope for maintaining peace and security 1路路 k路 t d les In ma lng s ea y progress in controlling arms.'
freedom of the individual citizen can help insure that a solemn international undertaking is not , violated. By way of contrast, governments of closed societies are路 able to act with much greater impunity were they inclined to violate an arms agreement, confident that its own citizens have far less opportunity to bring the violation to general notice. Moreover, while foreigners are free to travel with little or no restrictions within the democracies, this of course is not the case in totalitarian countries. For these reasons the United States has had to be especially careful that international arms control commitments can be adequately verified. In such areas as a ban on chemical w~apons and a ban on underground nuclear tests, we therefore continue to believe that international inspections on the soil of the treaty parties are necessary. However, technological advances have improved our national capability to verify agreements, and we are hopeful that additional progress can be made in this respect. It should be pointed out, however, that rapid progress in arms control would be feasible if the major countries would agree to permit international inspections on their territory in the interest of maintaining world peace.
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prompts new efforts at ever higher levels of complexity. -Such an arms race absorbs resources, talents, and energies. -The more intense the competition, the greater the uncertainty about the other side's intentions. -The higher the level of armaments, the greater the violence and devastation should deterrence fail. For these reasons I decided early in the Administration that we should seek to maintain our security whenever possible through co-operative efforts with other nations at the lowest possible level of uncertainty, cost, and potential violence. This general approach is relevant not only to SALT, but to other arms control activities as well, and I think it illustrates the direct interrelationship between national security planning and arms control planning in the United States. In addition, arms control negotiations can and often do have political objectives such as improving the international political climate. In trying to achieve the results
hile I have referred to our approach as essentially pragmatic, there is, as I mentioned briefly earlier, an important underlying philosophy which guides our actions. The most succinct and relevant statement in this field is the rationale given in the President's report "U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s": The traditional course of seeking security primarily through military strength raises several problems in a world of multiplying strategic weapons. -Modern technology makes any balance precarious and
that are sought under this philosophy, the most important means is formal arms control negotiations. However, to enter into such negotiations it is essential to have a negotiating partner willing to negotiate, and little if
any practical good can come out of just negotiating unless the negotiators can find solid areas ....! of agreement. In this connection, one should not overlook the importance of unilateral steps that the United States or other countries can take. The President stated, in the same foreign policy report: We are prepared to take any unilateral arms control action that will not compromise our security and will minimize the danger certain weapons will ever be developed or used by any nation. He was referring in particular to his decision, announced in November 1969, to cease production and stock-piling of biological weapons and agents and to destroy existing stocks, but we have also taken other unilateral steps. Another example is our offer to accept international inspection of our peaceful nuclear activities.
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imilarly, decisions by arms supplier states to refuse arms sales to third countries or to scale down what is actually delivered can also have a very useful effect, decided unilaterally, on preventing the escalation of the level of armaments in a region. And in some cases unilateral steps of this kind can open up possibilities for tacit or reciprocal arms control action which might be difficult to negotiate if one had to work out a formal agreement. World-wide understanding is growing that the best hope for maintaining peace and security lies in making steady progress in controlling arms, particularly weapons of mass destruction. While some years ago arms control negotiations tended to occupy the back pages of the newspapers, today they are widely and prominently reported in the press. This, of course, also reflects the fact that arms control negotiations are increasingly grappling with the more vital aspects of effecting real controls. END
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The accelerated generation moves into management The new generation of youthful managers emerging in America sees itself as rebels and reformersdetermined to give a new meaning and substance to business.
7/-/013 by JUDSON GOODING YOUNG AMERICANS now understudying principal role~ in b~siness management are ImpatIent at being kept in the wings. They want to get out there on centre stage; to be heard. They are already moving at a higher velocity than their predecessors, getting promotions faster and responsibility earlier, and they are pressing for more of the same. Theirs has been called the accelerated generation, and the description fits. A decided purpose underlies their drive. These junior managers, unlike previous recruits to executive ranks, see themselves not as comfortable successors to power but as rebels and reformers who will carry out , important changes in both the substance and the style of managing corporations. They are making a double set of demands on the companies they have enlisted to serve. On one level, they want more personal participation in and¡ fulfilment from
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their work, just as do their contemporaries in blue-collar and white-collar jobs. In addition, they come with high hopes acquired at college for improvement of the environment and of society, and they insist that their companies work actively towards such goals. These young managers are plainly something new in the business world. They reflect the passionate concerns of youth in the 1970s-for individuality, openness, humanism, concern, and change -and they are determined to be heard. The term "junior manager" covers a broad category of young Americans in a wide variety of corporate jobs. More precisely defined, the subjects of this article are college graduates in their twenties who are earning between $10,000 and $20,000 in managerial jobs that should or could lead to full-fledged executive status. There are about 2,700,000 men and women in this group. Conversations with a nation-wide sampling reveal a considerable similarity among them in personal style and aspira-
tions and in the goals they set for business. While they are perfectly pleasant, and warmer and more open than their elders, the junior managers are often extremely intense, giving the impression that they are being driven by inner forces. They can be aggravating, even infuriating, to their supervisors, because they tend to be sanctimonious, with an air of knowing all the ultimate, unknowable truths denied to older generations. Their impatience makes some of them seem arrogant-which some of them are. They have a high degree of competence and its corollary, a high degree of self-confidence. With the fury of youth they tend to overstate and overdo and, with their lack of experience, they make mistakes in judgment. Little interested in the past, some of them have thought only in the most cursory way about the potential and the limitations of business, and naively expect more of it than it can possibly deliver. Some of the most radical of this group of junior managers, an uncounted but apcontinued
parently increasing number, have decided to renounce corporate life, often abandoning high salaries along with goals that appear to them defective. Among those who have elected to stay, not all feel the same high degree of searing impatience. Just as is true in campus groups, many hang back and follow the crowd. But the forerunners, those who are making the demands and intend to shake the system until it changes, include many of the most able candidates for leadership positions. Their idealistic expectations and insistenc_e on rapid progress are bringing a new effervescence to business. Some corporations are actively encouraging them to make the fullest contributions possible, and are benefiting handsomely from the new ideas they generate. But the companies are finding that almost everything has to be explained and defended, including that most basic of business principles, the profit motive. Under the broad heading of the corporation's responsibility to society, the young managers are making two different sets of demands on their companies. On the one hand, they want to work on personal projects they believe to be socially important, such as teaching in a street academy, counselling minority operators of small businesses, or carrying out ecology studies and cleanup campaigns. Many feel that such projects rate paid time off from work, but others simply want company sanction-a feeling that the project will count as a plus rather than a minus on their employment record. The second kind of demand is that the corporation reappraise its own policies and objectives. At Stanford Graduate School . of Business, a group called the Committee for Corporate Responsibility (CCR) has enlisted 20 per cent of the school's student body in its campaign to encourage business to take positive measures in attacking social problems. The committee has written or visited top executives of 600 major corporations asking what the companies are doing about pollution control, resource conservation, and minority training and employment-conveying the message that many of today's young managerial candidates are reluctant, if not unwilling, to work for those business companies which show no concern in these areas. The CCR position is that "profitability must be maintained, but not necessarily maximized," and that "business can sustain its longer-run profitability by defraying all costs which it incurs, and by this we
mean social as well as economic costs." While there is no doubt that the CCR position would be endorsed by most young people entering business today, it raises at least as many questions as it answers. It can be argued that, within the boundaries set by law and social custom, business should indeed maximize profits if it is to operate efficiently and truly serve society well. If social costs such as pollution control are imposed on all companies equall}' by-law, they can be met. But if a company assumed such costs voluntarily, while a competitor did not, it could very well go broke. Some portion of profits may be devoted to worthy causes, as the young managers demand, but stockholders have a right to press their claims too. The impatient young managers sometimes don't seem to recognize these complexities. The young managers' demands for greater personal fulfilment on the job may be somewhat easier to satisfy .. The young themselves have plenty of ideas about what needs changing and are spelling out what they want to their superiors with
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thirst for risk and challenge goes with the junior manager's hunger for responsibility.
increasing frankness., The demands centre around personal and psychological values, not material ones. The junior managers expect a good salary as a matter of course -from $10,000 to $15,000 when they come out of college~and rarely show much concern about fringe benefits. This is partly because they know they'll probably move before pension time, partly because such long-range defensive thinking is foreign to them and their conception of themselves. A fundamental requirement set by the junior managers is early, if not immediate, responsibility. They want enough responsibility so that they can make real mistakes, because they believe that's the only real way to learn. They 110te.that medical and law students, even while in training, deal with real patients and real court cases. They want the equivalent in their jobs, even beginning jobs. Charles Wood, 27, is pleased with his experience in Pacific Telephone's management-achievement programme. "They give you responsibility right away-you learn as you go. I had responsibility in the military service, with 75 people under me, and I wanted a job that was important to the company." Wood was assigned to determine whether a proposed new tape drive for data-processing equipment would pose any operational problems. He held a IO-week trial, made a favourable recommendation, and after further evaluations over $3 million worth of tape drives were bought.
Typical of the new band of junior executives in the U.S., Michael Ghelardi (third from right) served for more than a year on a social action group to get Pennsylvania State University more deeply committed to the community around it.
Karen Hardy, 27, assistant advertising officerof the Citizens & Southern National Bank in Atlanta, praised the bank's approach to junior managers: "You move fast in this bank-you either move up or you move out." She has responsibility for the advertising programmes for 10 of the bank's corporate departments, co-ordinates their ads with the bank's over-all marketing strategy, and supervises the budgets. "Around here they give you all the responsibility you can handle and all the rope you need to hang yourself. It's veryexciting." A thirst for risk and challenge goes with the junior managers' hunger for responsibility,as Miss Hardy's remark makes clear. William P. Moore, 28, went through a special General Electric Company programme for high-potential recruits. and now handles the requirements for a major client of General Electric's informationservicedivision. He approves of the pressure~"It gives you more opportunity," he says. "It's not a safe job. And you can't just put in eight hours a day." He is left on his own with no specific instructions except to increase General Electric's business with his client company: the means are left up to him. "I prefer a job with highrisk," he says, "and the possibility of rapid advancement." Many of the personal concerns expressed by young managers centre around the extent to which they are treated as individuals. Harry Levinson, the author and psychologist, who was formerly on the staff of the Menninger Foundation and is now a visiting professor at the Harvard BusinessSchool, puts emphasis on the need for personal recognition .."People need attachments for growth," he says, "and they attach themselves to people, to objects, to ideas, and to organizations. They want to latch on to companies, if they can be effective, do a good job of work, solve problems, and look good to themselves." The fundamental point, he says, is that "all successful industrial organizations are re-creations of the family." Levi Strauss, a clothing manufacturer, is one company that projects the family image. "I noticed it when I came here," saysThomas Kasten, a 28-year-old product manager. "Every once in a while I run into the president, Walter Haas Jr., in the hall, and he says hello to me by my first name. Levis Strauss is very people-oriented." Kasten means by this that, among other things, the organization is wide open to
suggestions. "If you have an idea outside your area, you are free to walk in to see the manager of another department. If it's a good idea he's going to listen to you."
its commitments overseas, "you get total responsibility. You have to be given the opportunity to fail in order to grow." In a broad sense, what the young managers crave is a freewheeling, unstructured setting, analogous to what they clamoured for-and largely obtained-a few years ago on their campuses. Within this setting, they insist on having a voice in determining the organization's goals, something not many would have considered demanding as recently as five years ago. Arjay Miller, former president of Ford Motor Company and now dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says, "The young executive will insist on being party to the decision-making process. This is part of the new life style. It is the kind of change organizations of the future must make in order to operate in the new environment, in this new participatory democracy." Lawrence R. Knowles, 32, general manager of the business-products division at Memorex, says business-school graduates now are "noticeably different even from 7/fJ tl those of my generation. They are better Ghelardi in his office at Lever Brothers. informed; they've developed a more quesHe is now helping fight the drug menace tioning attitude. They won't accept the and improve housing and education in the Yorkville district of New York City. status quo and they won't accept irrational behaviour on the part of management. any of the junior managers They have a concern for the long-range have come to conclude that implications of company policies, beyond a small company, or a small the traditional attention to quarter-bydivision of a large corporaquarter results. If they don't have a SaYin tion, offers the best oppor- setting goals, and don't agree they are tunity for gaining the responsibility and correct, there is less commitment." individuality they seek. Groups of students Just as they accept the concept of profit at both the Harvard and Stanford business -with reservations-the junior managers schools have raised funds to advertise, by also accept hard work. In fact, they weldirect mail and in business publications, come it, although with the condition that their preference for working for small com- the work not be sterile, pointless, repetipanies. They believe small firms not only tious. "I don't mind coming early or stayoffer more responsibility earlier, but allow ing late," a 24-year-old advertising man the individual more control over his life. said of his job at a New York agency, "but Cummins Engine Co., of Columbus, I won't stay late just to write status reports Indiana, has sales of $411 million, but its no one reads. I don't like going through executives are aware of the advantages of' the layers and layers of bureaucracy. I smallness and make studied efforts to pre- don't like the unnecessary paper work they serve a human scale. In designing a new . cause. And I'm not afraid to tell my superplant that is now being built, they deter- visor I don't have time to do something." mined to make the factory seem a collecAs these comments make clear, the tion of small u'nits, rather than one vast junior managers are outspoken and eloimpersonal building. This feeling for scale quent on the subject of what they dislike is appreciated by Cummins' junior execu- about their jobs, past and present. This tives. John Laemmer, 31, international urge to sound off about grievances rather financial planning manager, praises the than bury them is, in fact, a key quality "small-company atmosphere" in which distinguishing these young executives from staffs are kept as lean as possible. As a re- those of the past. They have a special, sult, and because the international opera- burning dislike for hypocrisy, whether it is tions are expanding as Cummins increases detected in their parents, their schools,
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their politicians, or their employers. Accordingly, many of the things they resent most about their jobs can be catalogued under this general heading. They start off by disliking misleading hiring practices-grandiose descriptions of jobs that turn out to be mere clerks hips, or of "stimulating" training programmes that are in fact dull rituals leading nowhere. They also dislike conspicuous display of the trappings of power-the sixbutton telephones, pompous titles, and thick carpets-if these ar.e only empty tokens. They are sorely irritated by rules covering dress, hair, or beards, and the enforcement of rigid hours where a looser schedule would work as well. They are roused to anger at any attempt to impose an arbitrary pattern on their lives. This includes not only the ritual transfer to a distant city, but also the feeling they encounter in many companies that the new junior manager has to "put in his time," or "pay his dues," before any authority can be allowed him. When the company makes a commitment to the young executive, he is quick to give loyalty in return. One of the more intriguing insights into his character is the fact that he is apparently less inclined than he once was towards job hopping. During the mid-'sixties many major companies reported losing more than half their newly hired college graduates within the first five years; that costly turnover rate has now begun to slow. There has been no recent nation-wide study of junior managers' job mobility, but MBA Enterprises, Inc., has figures on turnover rates among holders of graduate degrees in businessadministration. These figures can reasonably be taken as indicative of over-all trends. They show that while 28 per cent of the class of 1966 changed jobs within the first 30 months after graduation, only 25 per cent of the class of 1968 changed jobs during the comparable 30-month period in their careers. The decline is due in part to the tighter job market, concedes John De Pasquale, research-division president of MBA Enterprises, but it also appears that more junior managers are showing a commendable willingness to stay and work for the goals they seek rather than hopping off to look someplace else. From the corporate point of view, the junior manager's exacting sets of do's and don't's, likes and dislikes, will pose increasingly difficult problems. Top executives will have to creat~ job movement to
facilitate rapid promotions. And unless the promotions.are accomplished with surpassing finesse, they are likely to irritate older employees who see the young being moved up over them. Such promotions, combined with a steady rise in salaries at the entry level during the 1960s, also cause severe salary compression. The man with three, four, or five years on the job often sees a new, inexperienced employee getting a salary that nearly matches his, and he is bound to be dismayed. There is also the inevitable slowdown as the junior manager moves up to levels where promotions are less frequent. He feels that he is losing momentum, and so becomes worried and frustrated. James A. Henderson, 36, operations vice president of Cummins Engine Co., says, "The old way of bringing people in at the bottom and hoping the cream will rise doesn't work. You have to handcraft jobs for them, put them under a good manager, and watch carefully so the older people don't kill them off by demanding years of experience before letting them tackle a meaningful job."
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t: insists on being party to the decisionmaking process. This is part of his n~w life style.
There are bound to be a few rough transitions as these exceptionally competent, rather cocksure young managers are absorbed into executive ranks. Possessed of a deep faith in social change, the junior manager is quite willing to debate his sUPfriors on matters of basic ideology. While such debate may be good for the corporate soul, it can also become abrasive .. Senior executives may expect to be questioned about values previously unquestioned, such as "profits" and "increased production." Clyde Claus of Marine Midland says that companies will have to be satisfied with something less than total allegiance. As he puts it, the junior managers feel they have a foot in both camps-an obligation towards both their business and the community at large. They do not have the old attitude, still found among some businessmen, of "we" in the company and "they," the outsiders. On the other hand,
the young managers are bound to be tempered by exposure to the realities of the business world. Many of them have never seriously questioned the expansive idealism of their college days, and when theS fire those hard questions about profits, the answers may prove to be illuminating. The gap between the junior managers and their elders may be closed a bit from both sides, if only gradually. It becomes clear, in examining companies that are making positive changes, that the impetus to action almost invariably comes from top management. Only when the highest executives endorse job improvements and social involvement do their subordinates feel able, or willing, to act. A company such as Cummins Engine pioneers in job enrichment because its chief executive, Chairman J. Irwin Miller, is both a local and a national leader in efforts to improve jobs and society. Industry, he believes, has until now paid more attention to its machines than to its people. "We have been late accommodating people," says Miller. "We have to pay serious, dignified attention to individuals. We will stand or fall on how we handle this." As for the specific needs of younger employe~s, he says', "The ethic of the young is to contribute. The best way to keep the ablest of the young people is to load them up a little beyond their capacity. That capacity then tU'rns out to be very high." , Many ajunior manager would find Miller's appraisal of corporate responsibility fully as demanding as his own. "Every business," he says, "is the beneficiary of services such as schools and government, and of enriching elements such as art and religion, which it did not pay for and without which it could not exist. The only way the businessman can pay for them is to work to make sure the community will continue." Not every junior manager can go to work for Irwin Miller. But most of them can and will insist that their own corporations make some response to their needs for personal fulfilment on the job-as well as pay some attention to the larger problems of the society in which corporations live and hope to prosper.' American companies that fail to make these minimal commitments in the 1970s are, at the very least, going to have great difficulty in recruiting the men and women they will need to survive the period of change that lies ahead. END
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In his search for the meaning of experience, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author lays bare the conflict between human ideals and human behaviour. to go all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe to find another American writer as versatile as Robert Penn Warren. For just as it would be difficult to say whether Poe's greatest importance was as poet, short story writer or literary theorist, so Robert Penn Warren's talents cannot be confined to any single literary form. In 1970 he received the National Medal for Literature, awarded by the National Book Committee to living American writers, not for any particular works, but for their total contribution to the world of letters. In Warren's case, that contribution is protean. ONE WOULD HAVE
A novelist of the first rank, Warren is known throughout the world for All ihe King's Men, which brought him the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. An active poet since his student days at Vanderbilt University in the early 1920s, he has also broken precedent by winning a Pulitzer Prize for poetry as well. He has been highly influential as a literary critic, and the textbooks he has edited with his friend Cleanth Brooks have been instrumental in effecting a nearrevolution in the way that poetry is taught in American colleges and universities. Nor do the accomplishments stop there.
Warren's abiding interest in the problems of American society has resulted in several important books of non-fiction which analyze and interpret his country's past and present experience. He has written a verse narrative, several verse plays, a biography and some children's books about American history. From 1935 to 1942, .he was co-editor of The Southern Review, which many have said was the most important literary magazine of its time. And finally, he is a devoted teacher, who has taught in universities throughout almost all of his adult life. (continued)
It is impossible, then, to fit "Red" Warren (called thus because of his abundance of red hair, and the reddish freckles /on his generally reddish face) into any single, neat category. And this is so not only because of his excellence in so many literary forms, but because of his openness to experience, his lack of critical dogmatism and his willingness to perceive merit in many different kinds of literary expression. As a British critic has said, "Though commonly associated with 'formalists' and 'classicists' in criticism, he is close to the type of romantic genius: robust, fluent, versatile, at his worst clever and clumsy, at his best brilliant and profound." And the critic Eric Bentley immediately adds: "On the other hand, he is remarkable for self-discipline." arren's literary taste is eclectic and far-ranging. No one has written more perceptively than he about the great moral dramas of the American South written by his fellow Southern novelist William Faulkner, one of the most remarkable of literary stylists to have written in English during the 20th century. Yet Warren is also author of a highly influential essay in appreciation of another American novelist, Theodore Dreiser, who is usually considered anything but a brilliant stylist of language. Similarly, much of Warren's poetry is notable for its highly allusive, intellectually demanding language; yet the idiom he chose for narrating his bestknown novel, All the King's Men, is deliberately slangy and tough, even coarse. And although no American writer of our century has wrestled more powerfully with the meaning of ideas than Warren, or been more concerned with problems of knowledge, aesthetics and ethics, the subject matter of his fiction and his poetry has usually been drawn from matters that are aired on the front pages of daily newspapers-the political career and assassination of a public reformer and demagogue, the brutal murder of a slave in 19th-century Kentucky, the violent campaign of an association of tobacco growers against an oppressive business trust, the checkered career of a business tycoon, the ordeal of a man trapped underground in a cave and its impact on a small town nearby. The relationship between intellectual formulations and theories and the crude actualities of everyday life is not for Warren a mere happenstance: it holds a place at the centre of his art. As novelist, poet, critic and essayist, he has undertaken the exploration, on many planes, of the impact and interaction of idea and event, the dynamism of theory and the recalcitrance
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of fact. In one of his most quoted critical observations, Warren once defined the art of novelist Joseph Conrad in terms that can equally be applied to himself: The philosophical novelist, or poet, is one . . . for whom the urgency of experience, no matter how vividly and strongly experience may enchant,.js the urgency to know the meaning of experience. Warren's first published novel, Night Rider (1939), explores the situation of a young lawyer, Percy Munn, who allies himself with an association of tobacco farmers in opposition to the tobacco trusts that were attempting to fix the prices paid for dark leaf tobacco in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee shortly after the turn of the present century. Deftly Warren charts the complexity of motives that lead his character to give up the quietness of his lawyer's study and become deeply and fatally involved in the tumult and violence of the tobacco war. Mixed in with Percy Munn's idealism is the craving for power, the wish to find definition and meaning for his life in the arena of public conflict. The progressive corruption of Munn's personal integrity by the opportunities for public recognition and power makes him finally into a murderer, who is in turn murdered.
In "All the King's Men," Warren examines the myth of the "strong man" in politics, the nature of man as wielder-and abuser-of power.
The situation of Night Rider was no manufactured subject for Warren; he was born and grew up in the town of Guthrie, Kentucky, located in the very centre of the Black Patch Tobacco War of the early 1900s. Warren has repeatedly chosen the settings for his writing out of the history and life of the American South, the region into which he was born and where he lived for most of the first 35 years of his life. The city of Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended Vanderbilt University, provided the locale for his second novel, At Heaven's Gate (1943), a study of a financier, Bogan Murdock, and his effort to create, through the exertion of power and control over others, the meaning for his life which he cannot find within himself. was at Vanderbilt University that ItWarren became part of a remarkable group of young poets, the "Southern Fugitives." At least three of the Fugitives-
Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate-are among the most respected of 20th-century American poets. Later Warren studied at the University of California and Yale University, then went to England for several years of additional study at Oxford University. It was while there that he began writing fiction. After his return to the United States he taught at Southwestern College and at Vanderbilt, until in 1934 he went to join his friend Cleanth Brooks on the faculty of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. he state of Louisiana was dominated at that time by the personality of Huey Pierce Long, called "the King Fish," who first as governor and then as a U.S. Senator ruled Louisiana with an iron hand. Flamboyant, skilled at crowd-stirring oratory, Long won and held power as spokesman for the rural and urban masses against the traditional power structure and its alliance with big business interests. As virtual dictator of Louisiana, he rode roughshod over the established procedures of constitutional government; if laws blocked him from doing what he wished, he ignored and flouted them, and he forced the legislature and the courts to do his bidding. Pledged to build highways, schools and hospitals and to force business interests to pay their proper share of state taxation, Long delivered on many of his promises-and his enthusiastic supporters were willing to overlook the graft, corruption, waste and disregard for law that went along with his achievements. By the time Warren came to Baton Rouge in the middle 1930s, Long's influence had expanded beyond Louisiana and was threatening to become nationwide in scope. Then on September 8, 1936, in the foyer of the 32-storey State Capitol building he had built in Baton Rouge, Huey Long was shot and fatally wounded by an assassin. The political machine that he had created soon disintegrated, once the magic of Long's personality was no longer present to hold it together. When All the King's Men was published in 1946, the memory of Huey Long was still fresh, and Warren's novel was widely discussed as a fictional account of Long's career-:--so much so that the author felt obliged to insist that not only was his character Willie Stark not based on Long, but that "even if I had wanted to make Stark a projection of Long, I should not have known how to go about it." What he meant was that while clearly the general outlines of Willie Stark's career were suggested by the events of Huey Long's life, he had not written fictionalized biography, but had used the career of a man like Long
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for a story which was an exploration of the nature of personal political power and the uses and dangers of demagogic appeal to masses of the electorate in a democracy. To tell his story, Warren introduced a firstperson narrator, Jack Burden, through whose meditations upon the meaning of Willie Stark's life for himself and others, Warren is able to examine the myth of the "strong man" in politics and the nature of man as wielder-and abuser-of political power. Willie Stark is a man of the plain people who sets out to overthrow the domination of the entrenched political machine that has controlled the state and governed it largely in the interests of a privileged elite. He is a man with ideals, but also a supreme political realist who understands that he must appeal to the self-interest of his political supporters in order to hold and extend power. To achieve his goals he is willing to use any available means; in his eyes bribery, blackmail, intimidation are justifiable in pursuit of his objectives. Inevitably the lustfor power corrupts Willie Stark's desire to serve the people. Only when personal tragedy comes as the direct result of his arrogance and ambition does Willie realize how he has compromised his objectives. Then, to restore his wavering belief in his own good intentions, he resolves to build a free hospital to serve the people of the state, and to let no considerations of political gain or personal advantage tarnish its coming into being. But in so resolving and so insisting he has forgotten the extent to which all that he. has accomplished has been based upon just such recognition and acceptance of self-interest and mixed human motives, and his refusal to allow the hospital building contract to be allocated for political and financial advantage brings about the events that resurt in his assassination and the collapse of his empire. Jack Burden, who tells the story, is a tough-talking, cynical young aristocrat who has gone to /work for Willie Stark because only in Willie can he find the opportunity for meaningful involvement in the real world of money and power. As Willie's aide, Jack has done his bidding, identified himself with his objectives and accepted Willie's use of questionable means in order to accomplish laudable goals. It is Jack who, at Willie's behest, undertakes the investigation that ultimately makes possible the events leading to Willie's death -and to the death of Jack's own father, as well as his cherished boyhood friend, the man who becomes Willie Stark's assassin. And it is Jack who through grief and suffering comes to realize that there can be no substitute for personal moral and ethical .
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responsibility, and that the willingness to follow a Willie Stark and what he represents in order to escape the responsibility for one's own actions can only result in tragedy for all concerned. hus in All the King's Men Warren conducted a searching examination of the claims of public leadership and individual moral responsibility in a democratic society. His fable of a strong man who was willing to condone evil means in order to achieve noble ends, and whose career demonstrated that, in the words of the English historian Lord Acton, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, has retained its interest and appeal for a quarter-century following its first publication.
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The subjects of Warren's fiction and poetry have usually been drawn from matters that are aired on the front pages of daily newspapers.
Warren has since written five more novels, a remarkable verse narrative, five volumes of lyric poetry, numerous critical essays and three books of non-fiction. Though none of his novels has equalled the popularity of All the King's Men, several of them are among his best work. In particular, World Enough and Time (1950), a novel based on an actual occurrence in 19thcentury American history, has enjoyed much attention. Using the framework of a celebrated murder case which took place in Kentucky in 1825, it examines the public and private motives of a young man who, after being protected and sponsored by an older friend, falls;.inJove with his friend's one-time mistress, and schemes with her to murder him. Upon being sentenced to death for the killing, he seeks in vain to evade his moral responsibility and guilt by fleeing westward to an island in the Mississippi River, only to be murdered in his turn while returning home to give himself up. Here again we find Warren using the events of his country's past to explore the nature of human guilt and moral choice. As might be expected of a Kentuckian whose grandfathers both fought on the side of the Southern Confederacy in the American Civil War of 1861-1865,Warren has devoted much attention to the place of the black man in American society, both as slave and as would-be citizen. Early in his career he contributed an essay to an
Agrarian symposium, I'll Take My Stand (1930), in which he defended racial segregation in the South. In counselling the Southern black man to accept his separate role in a "separate but equal" society, however, Warren bore down so hard on the importance of the separate arrangements being made fully equal that several of his fellow contributors wanted his essay left out of the book. It was not long before Warren changed his mind entirely about the question 'of racial segregation, and in 1955, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation by race in public education, Warren penned a powerful plea for full equality for black Americans in a book entitled Segregation: The Inner Conflict. A decade later, he produced Who Speaks for the Negro? a searching scrutiny of the black man's place in American society and what must be done to remove all vestiges of racial discrimination. As always, it is the human problem of definition involved in the conflict between the American ideal of equality and the actuality of racial injustice that engages Warren's attention. Today, at the age of 66, Warren lives with his wife, the novelist Eleanor Clark, and their two teen-aged children in a suburban town in Connecticut, located near enough to Yale University for him to discharge his teaching responsibilities there. Meanwhile he writes steadily and regularly, usually managing to put in several hours a day at the typewriter even when travelling or on vacations in the nearby White Mountains or in Italy. "Red has the marvellous ability," a friend has said, "whether he's at home or in a motel or wherever he finds himself, to close the doors, screen out all the noise of the world and concentrate on his writing." is
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most recently published
book,
Audubon: A Vision (1969), is a poetic
sequence suggested by the travels of the ornithologist John James Audubon in the South and West of early 19th-century America. Once again it is the moral confrontation that intrigues Warren, and the meaning it holds for American life: the pristine beauty of the wild, untouched continent, and the endless potentiality for good and evil in the human beings who would both contemplate and make use of it. For the past several years he has been working on a new novel. No American writer, living or dead, has been more faithful in his concern to image the ethical dimensions of his country's experience than Robert Penn Warren. And no figure on the American literary scene today enjoys more respect and admiration for uncompromising integrity as artist and thinker. END
Thirty years of ORN in the throes of World War II, the Voice of America can look back on 30 years of responsible broadcasting, and of providing millions of listeners around the globe with objective newscasts, facts about U.S. policy, and information concerning the life and culture of the American people. President Kennedy said in 1962, "It tries to, as Oliver Cromwell said about his portrait, 'paint us with all our blemishes and warts, all the things about us that may not be so immediately attractive.' " The VOA commitment to truth is both formal and self-imposed. A Presidential directive requires it to be "accurate, objective and comprehensive." And in its very first broadcast on February 24, 1942, VOA gave this pledge to its listeners: "The Voice of America speaks. Today America has been at war for 79 days.... We shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth." Still committed to the policy of truth, in other respects the service has changed greatly over the years. In the beginning, the U.S. Government initiated regularly-scheduled radio programmes to Europe in four languages: English, German, French and Italian. Today, from its 23 studios in Washington, D.C., it broadcasts in 35 languages, including Bengali, Polish, Estonian, Swahili, Arabic, Hindi and Portuguese. The heart of the operation is the newsroom where men and women rewrite for radio the endless stream of stories that come in over a battery of teletype machines from the various news services. The language elements meanwhile are translating the news, writing and editing scripts on many subjects of interest to their particular areas, selecting the music to be used, and planning future programmes. The Master Control, with its row of clocks indicating the time in Calcutta, Bangkok, Tokyo, Honolulu, New York, London and Moscow, is a fascinating place. This control console is capable of selecting material from 100 sources and of handling 26 programmes simultaneollsly. These are fed through special telephone
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circuits and by microwave to shortwave transmitters in the United States, from which they are broadcast to anyone of the high-power relay stations overseas. These in turn boost the level of the signals received from the "feeder" transmitters, and relay the programmes directly to the listeners on either short or medium wave bands, whichever are more popular for broadcasting in the receiving area. In addition, Voice of America programmes. are picked up and rebroadcast by hundreds of local stations overseas. Over the years, the VOA's transmitter strength has grown steadily, from a few transmitters in the United States to a global network of over 100. The largest domestic site is located near Greenville, North Carolina. Its output of nearly five million watts makes up one-third of the VOA's entire broadcasting strength. Construction of new facilities and the modernization of existing equipment are constantly being carried out by Voice of America engineers to provide better reception. The network of transmitting and receiving equipment is a giant enterprise today, using more electricity than all the commercial radio stations in the United States. But power, important as it is in broadcasting, is not the only factor that determines the success of the Voice of America. Equally important is the recognition of the intimacy of radio broadcasting and of the fact that basically the Voice of America exists mainly to allow one American to communicate with one citizen of another country. Although some people listen to the Voice of America in cafes and markets, by far the greater part of the broadcasting involves only one or two listeners at a time. This intimacy means that the broadcasts must be rational, reasonable, credible and frank and that the broadcasters speak in a manner that establishes a feeling of kinship with their listeners. Distance fades as they speak, and they are no longer in Washington but in a farmhouse, tent, apartment, caravan, office or car in another part of the world, talking with someone eager to know more about life in the United States
and about American views. News is the mainstay of the Voice of America. Each day the VOA newsroom provides 80,000 words in English for some 250 newscasts. It gets the news out as speedily as possible, but its first concern is accuracy. All stories of an unofficial or doubtful nature are verified before they are released by checking with a completely. independent source. Half a million words flow into the newsroom daily from wire services. Voiced reports come in from some 50 VOA correspondents based at news centres around the world. n a newscast the facts are left more or less to speak for themselves. The day's developments are handled in depth through detailed reports from correspondents on the scene, analyses and a number of feature formats. The main political events of the day as seen from Washington are interpreted by a staff of analysts in the nation's capital. It is primarily their function, in the words of the Presidential directive, "to present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively." But they and other writers also present views that are not official. In the forging of national decisions that result in government policy, there is almost always the tug of different interests. Sometimes the air rings with controversy. It is the job of the VOA analyst to take notice of all responsible opinion. The ongoing revolution in race relations in the U.S. is just one instance where the VOA tells it as it is, chronicling the progress and also the protests of those dissatisfied with the rate of that progress. VOA tries to be a special window on America. Along with its political coverage, its specialists cQntinually survey what is new in America in science, the arts, social patterns. Whenever possible microphones are taken directly to the people on the crest of what is happening. And of course VOA also tries to be a special window on the world, covering the United Nations, the struggle to preserve peace in the world, the birth of new nations, the gro¡wth of industrialization and technology and of their wonder-child-space exploration. Music-ranging from the spright-
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ly"YankeeDoodJe,"thethemesong oft he English-language programmes, to serious compositions by contemporary American composers-is inclUded in almost every programme. The most popular single series is undoubtedly "Music U.S.A." which recognizes the world-wide interest in American jazz and popular music. Broadcast for 18 years, it has acquired one of the largest audiences in international broadcasting. A special effort is made to communicate with the more than 1,000 million persons in the world who speak English as a second or third language. This is done through the World-Wide English Service on which many of the programmes are read more slowly and distinctly than is customary in programmes of American commercial stations. Since 1959 daily news and features in "Special English"-which uses a simplified vocabulary-have been broadcast to all parts of the world for those who are just learning English. Developed by language experts and government officials, it uses a simplified vocabulary-the word list is available abroad in . book form-and is spoken at a much slower pace than the regular English-language programmes. One of the later developments in the Voice of America is the "new sound" which was inaugurated in November 1966 over the English Service and is being extended to the other languages. A swift-moving informal blend ofwot'ld news,features, music, weather reports (obtained from America's orbiting weather satellites) and comedy, each block of programming aims to be, in the words of John Chancellor, former director of the Voice of America, "vigorous, amusing, avant-garde, the first with the latest." As the "new sound" continues its lively way, ushering in the 31st year of the VOA, the "transistor revolution"-the increasing production and sale of lowcost transistor radios throughout the world-continues to shape a new chapter in communications. The Voice of America, for its part, intends to continue providing this information and through its programmes to foster better relations among the nations of the world. END
"This is the Voice of America" .â&#x20AC;˘. objective news reporting ... music,features, in 35 languages.
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Tall, lissome Cynthia Riggs Stoertz is one of the handful of women who have visited Antarctica, that vast, silent continent whose rigours are such that until a short time ago it was reservedfor only the hardiest male explorers and scientists. In this article, she tells what it is like to make a modern-day pilgrimage to the earth's most remote, lonely, and inhospitable frontier. Mrs. Stoertz is the editor of the Marine ResourcesDigest and is a frequent contributor to other journals; popular as well as scientific. Holding a B.A. degree in geology, Mrs. Stoertz has done graduate work in oceanography and marine geology. She has been Managing Editor of the Marine TechnologySocietyJournal and, as a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, participated in a two-month scientific cruise aboard the Eltanin, a U.S. National Science Foundation research ship which plies the frigid waters off the Antarctic. 011 that voyage she was able to view Antarctica itself only from afar. Her latest trip touk her not only onto but under the ice of that bleak land.
SEE that you get home before dark, won't we?" The Belgian geologist turned to his two companions, a Norwegian and a Swiss, and winked. For sunset was five months away. I was a comparative rarity in Antarctica -the only female member of a group of journalists invited by the U.S. National Science Foundation to report on research in the Antarctic. I had been chosen because as editor of an oceanographic magazine I was interested in the scientific research carried out in the waters surrounding the continent. Surprisingly, much of the scientific work done at the American and Russian stations inland, each 800 miles or more from the water, has a great deal in common with oceanographic research. For example, men isolated at the South Pole must measure things they will never see; the same is true of scientists on ships at sea.
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The polar researcher maps the shape of land that is pressed under a heavy, mileand-a-half-thick cover of white ice, while the ocean scientist maps mountains, valleys and trenches hidden beneath miles of black water. Five years earlier, I had spent two months as a scientist aboard an oceanographic research ship in Antarctic waters. The wild beauty of the desolate far south haunts any individual who has been there once-and I had wanted very much to return, this time to see the continent. Scientists and visitors to the Antarctic leave from Christchurch, New Zealand, which is also the staging area for the United States Antarctic Research Programme. We, 60 men and I, had flown from Washington, D.C., in a cramped cargo plane. Home in Washington, I had almost decided to wear -----
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Rather like a scene from some distant planet is this eerie landscape in Antarctica. Scientists have converted its inhospitable wasteland into an enormous laboratory.
Geologists struggle against a bone-chilling wind, above, to unload their motorized toboggan.
111' fl.. :Y'l
At Scott Base, right, men feed blocks of sea ice into a melter to convert them into drinking water. A Belgian and an American scientist, at left, study snow layers dated by year.
a dress aboard the plane. After clambering up and down steel ladders, lugging my cameras, tape recorder, notebooks, and other decidedly unfeminine gear, I was glad I'd worn pants instead. I was accepted as "one of the boys" right away. Aboard the aircraft were two lavatories, one marked "Ladies." I soon found out that "Ladies" included any of the 60 scientists, visitors, journalists or Navy men who noticed that I wasn't using the "facility"! In Christchurch, we were outfitted with survival gear. from thermal underwear to insulated whit~ rubber "Bunny Boots" and fur-lined parkas. I lined up with the men in my press group, and the man who handed out the clothing estimated my sizes-perfectly-with a blush. We were briefed on how to use the gear if the plane crashed, a not too remote pqssibility. Our plane was to fly for ten hOlirs over the great southern ocean that separates New Zealand from the Antarctic. The uncertain weather can change without warning, and once past the PSR, or point of safe return, the plane must continue to McMurdo Station, the only landing strip for thousands of miles. We were assured that when the previous plane out had crashed the month before, all 80 passengers had escaped almost unscathed. The same pilots were flying our plane, a twin to the one that had crashed. had long before learned to make a Ipolite but firm dash for a seat next to one of the six small windows whenever we boarded our plane. Although I was the only woman aboard, it was far more dependable to rely on my long legs than on my companions' good manners. At each fuel stop aCrOSSthe wide Pacific OceanSan Francisco, Hawaii, Samoa, and finally New Zealand-all of us edged up to the airport gate like long-distance runners waiting for a signal to start, as our plane taxied up to take us aboard. Travellers to the Antarctic wear most of their survival gear when airborne. The few garments I was not wearing when we left Christchurch were stuffed sausage-like into a pair of trousers which in turn were stuffed into the space I wanted to put those long legs. But the U.S. Navy Admiral who briefed our group in Christchurch had emphasized that in the Antarctic there is seldom a secon.qchance. If our plane were to crash, our only chance for survival would be our warm clothing;'
Our press team had eight members. The seven men stayed at the "Ross Hilton," a shared my window seat with my well-pad- ,metal Quonset-type hut with temporary ded fellow passengers who wanted to photo- dividers separating the sleeping quarters. I graph the ice which had been such a formi- stayed at the visiting scientists' quarters, a dable barrier to the early explorers. The comfortable, homey building part-way up distance we travelled in ten hours had taken 800-foot-high Observation Hill, a peak the pioneering men many miserable months overlooking McMurdo. From the large window in the scientists' by ship. The ice surrounding the Antarctic forms a continuous belt 900 to 1,000 quarters I could see the constantly changmiles wide in winter. In summer, it recedes, ing panorama of McMurdo Sound and the Royal Society Range, some 65 miles away. leaving open water between the continent and the pack ice. Before 1960, every As the sun circled the sky 24 hours a day, expedition to Antarctica went by ship, and the mountains and ice were tinged with had to run the gattnt1et of the westerly gales varying shades of pink, lavender, mauve that blow unhindered by any land masses. and violet. When the sun reached the westAs we approaclled McMurdo Station facing window after midnight, the ice in McMurdo Sound became a glistening, goldon the edge of McMurdo Sound, Mount Erebus, one of the two known active vol- en sheet. The experienced Antarctic sciencanoes in Antarctica, dominated the bril- tists, who were accustomed to the spectacliant white, blue and black landscape with ular view, drew the curtains against the its almost perfect white cone and plume of light. I could have watched the changing steam. McMurdo is a scraggly settlement colours and scenery all night. of huts, telephone wires and sewage pipes The air was so clear that the Royal Solaid on top of black volcanic rock; still, as ciety Range seemed only a scant ten miles the largest of the U.S. bases, it is the metrop- away, and Mount Erebus even closer. olis of the Antarctic, with a population of Jokingly, I suggested that I might try hik1,500 scientific and Navy personnel during ing to the top of the volcano. "Don't try!" the "good"-or summer-months, and was the warning of a stern-visaged scien200 during the awesome winters. Our craft, tist, who said that the volcano was 23 miles a Super Constellation, touched down al- away and 12,000 feet high. . But then, apparently deciding that he most imperceptibly on the runway formed of annual ice. IQr~mothermonth, I was told, had¡ been a bit abrupt, the scientist broke the eight-foot-thf"2icannual ice would break into a smile and asked: "What's a nice up and drift north, and planes would have girl like you doing in a place like this?" to land on the rougher permanent 150-foot- That, I was to discover, was the standard male-to-female greeting in the Antarctic. thick Ross Ice Shelf. My plane-mates and I, grateful now for Each man who uttered it, of course, thought our warm clothing, were shuttled in a bril- he was saying something quite original. liantly visible red vehicle along a road of lthough McMurdo is a U.S. base, I ice marked with red flags onto the lava and met scientists and observers from cinder rock of Ross Island. McMurdo is situated in a protected cove near the site many other nati6ns there-from Argentina, of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott's Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Gyrwell-preserved hut, which I was quick to many, Great Britain, Japan, New Zealand, visit. Scott had hoped to be the first man to Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, reach the South Pole, 860 miles inland, but and Switzerland. For the bottom of the he and his men had arrived there early in world is an international community with 1912, after many weeks of terrible priva- a common language-science. Five and tion, only to find that the Norwegian ex- a half million miles square, or roughly the plorer, Roald Amundsen, had already been size of Europe ~hd Australia combined, there-had come and gone a short time the continen.t has been designated a scienbefore. Tragically, Scott and his men per- tific preserv~ by international treaty. The Antarctic Treaty, now a dozen years ished on their way back to the coast. Standing in his hut, which he had first used on old, is one of the most remarkable agreean earlier exp~dition in 1902, I felt pre- ments ~ver made. Although the 16 nations sumptuous ind~"i I who had grumbled which have signed or acceded to it have inwardly because my legs were cramped widely varying political philosophies, they agree on one major point: the Antarctic during a ten-hour flight! the first sight of floating ice until Ftherom novelty wore off hours later, I
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Despite widely varying political philosophies, Antarctic Treaty nations agree on one point: that peace must prevail on the frozen continent.
must be preserved as a continent of peace. And while the United States and the Soviet Union are the only countries to maintain research stations inland, seven othersArgentina, Australia, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdomhave bases at various coastal points, as have the Americans and Russians. The spirit of international friendship was apparent everywhere I went in Antarctica. So was danger. a bone-jolting ride in the back of a After truck over the volcanic-rock road which connects McMurdo Station with Scott Base, the New Zealand scientific station on the other side of Ross Island, we received the warmest possible greeting. But the New Zealanders warned us to be careful. The previous day, a visiting dignitary from Norway had stepped back to get a better photograph of the magnificent husky dogs used by the New Zealanders and had promptly disappeared from sight into a crevasse. He was fortunate. He fell about 15 feet down and wedged himself in place with his elbows. The crevasse, like many others, opened as it extended downward, and he might have fallen into the subfreezing water below. A man can survive for only a few minutes in such water. The New Zealanders and the British, I learned, are the only ones who still use husky dogs occasionally in the Antarcticthe same breed of dogs that stand the
Eskimos in such good stead in the Arctic on the top of the world. At one time, huskydrawn sledges were the only means of transportation in Antarctica. Now, modern tracked vehicles have replaced the dogs, supplemented by planes and helicopters. The New Zealanders like to tell the Americans, "You can't eat a tractor when it breaks down," to which the Americans reply, "You don't have to feed a tractor when it's not working." The dogs live outdoors no matter what the weather, chained together on a long line staked into the ice at either end, the animals far enough apart so they can't indulge in their favourite pastime-fighting. When the wind blows, they curl up, noses tucked into their fur. They eat frozen seal meat and chew ice for water. Rather than clean the huskies' "living quarters," the New Zealanders move the dogs to a clean patch of ice when the occasion seems to warrant. "We moved them yesterday," one New Zealander told me. "We hitched a tractor to one end of the dog line, pulled up the stakes at the other end, and the dogs took off across the ice, pulling the tractor behind them." I started to pat one of the dogs, and Tunnel entrance to Byrd Station. above right, was marked with Dante's quotation: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Below, flags of Antarctic Treaty nations provide co.lourful setting as the author (centre of back row) poses with other visitors to the South Pole.
ended up patting all 21. By the time I reached the last one, I was sorry I'd started. The enormous dogs get jealous if one receives more attention than the rest, and each leaped up on me in turn, licking my face and wagging his tail like an overgrown puppy. Life on the continent is sparse. By contrast, the sea teems with marine life. Other than a few lichens, mosses and insects found in the interior, life on the land is concentrated on the coast and consists of seals, penguins, and gull-like skuas, all of them dependent on the sea for food. The birds and animals h~ve not yet learned to fear man. I visited the Adelie penguin rookery at Cape Royds where British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton lived from 1907 to 1909. His hut, like Scott's, was preserved exactly as he had left itstockings hanging on a line to dry, a boot on the window sill, a pan on the stove with grease stil1 in it. Shackleton and his men left the hut in a hurry when their ship arrived to take them home after their unsuccessful attempt to reach the South Pole. Adelie penguins, such as those Shackleton must have watched from his hut, were sitting on their eggs when I saw them, the eggs protected from chilling by three-inchhigh nests of pebbles. Inching along on my stomach on the evil-smelling ground, I could get close enough to take photographs
of the birds. Once in a while one would to grunt at me, and he followed obediently leavehis nest (there was no way I could tell after her, looking over his shoulder at me males from females, as they take turns as he humped across the ice. sitting on their eggs), waddle comically to fthe ice that covers most of Antarctica a neighbouring nest, pick out a choice were to melt, the water that would be pebble with his bill, add it to his own nest, and settle back on his egg. Meanwhile a added to the oceans would drown most of neighbour would steal a pebble from his the world's major cities. Yet the scientists nest. The pebble exchange went on all over living on the continent's mile-thick ice cap the rookery. have a continual problem: obtaining water. Seals are as unafraid of humans as are Every drop they drink, cook with or wash the penguins-and their rookery on the ice with must be melted. So scientists and smells worse. The Weddell seals, grunting helpers alike must shovel their quota of and bellowing like sick cows, lay haphaz- snow into melters. ardly on the ice like sacks of grain. The ice Not all of the scientists are adept at was covered with patches of blood, most snow shovelling. But even fewer are gourof it from the birth of pups. Sometimes an met cooks. Dr. Irene Peden, a professor of anxious seal waiting at a breathing hole in electrical engineering at the University of the ice will nip at the rear of the seal ahead. Washington in Seattle, made a bargain When the breathing holes freeze over, the with the men at her station far from Mcseals chew them open again. Scientists be- Murdo. If they would shovel her snow, she lieve the Weddell seals in this area have said, she would cook all their meals. The a shorter life span than others because they snow practically flew into the melter. wear down their teeth, and by the time Irene was in charge of a study which they are about 15 years old they can no .involved an unusual transmitting radio longer chew open the breathing holes or antenna. Instead of rising vertically many feet in the air her antenna was laid horicatch food. The seal pups watched me with interest zontally on the ice where it extended for 21 while I took their photographs. I came miles. The thick ice beneath the antenna closer and closer until my camera was only insulated it from the radio noises emanata foot or so from the furry, bewhiskered ing naturally from the earth. The name of nose and big brown eyes of one pup. her station was Longwire. She was in"That's close enough," his mother seemed terested in studies of the upper atmosphere.
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It is difficult to picture Irene as a professor of electrical engineering. She is blonde, diminutive and very feminine. I can imagine her descending the 15-foot ladder which led to the buried living quarters at Longwire, the men below looking up expectantly! A scientist who visited her laughed when he told me that Irene had offered him a warm cocktail-with 15 feet of ice above her, 5,000 feet of ice beneath her¡ and thousands of miles of ice on all sides, she couldn't find enough ready ice to chill the drink! The worst terror of the Antarctic is fire. It is feared more than the cold. Once a fire starts in the desert-dry air, it is almost impossible to extinguish it. Water, even if there is plenty, is practically useless oecause it freezes rapidly. If fire destroys liying quarters and supplies, it means extreme hardship for all. Because of the constant threat of fire, the inland stations have separate emergency caches of food and fuel and separate emergency quarters. Despite the enormous amount of water piled up on the continent in the form of ice and snow, Antarctica is one of the world's driest deserts. Precipitation at the South Pole, one of the coldest places in the world, is about the same as precipitation in the Sahara Desert, one of the hottest places in the world. Each gets about two inches of precipitation a year. The Antarctic bliz-
zards described by early explorers were actually blowing snow moving from place to place across the surface. The swirling snow drifts over any obstruction. It mounds up on top of buildings, eventually crushing them. ur press group flew from McMurdo Station, on the coast, 945 miles inland to the soon-to-be-abandoned Byrd Station, named for the American explorer, Admiral Richard E. Byrd. After the plane landed gently on skis, I backed out carefully to avoid the whirling propellers which had to be kept running in the inten~e cold. Had the pilots stopped the engines, they might not have been able to start them again. Safely away from the plane, I looked around. Where was the research station? I soon found out. Like Longwire, Byrd was built within the ice. Leaving the world above us, we walked down a long snow ramp into an eerie black tunnel which reeked of diesel smoke and pulsed with unseen engines. At this point, the sign at the entrance to the tunnel seemed quite appropriate. It read: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." The Americans at Byrd Station told me of an eager scientist who passed the physical and psychological examinations required, survived the 53-hour flight from the United States to McMurdo, reached Byrd, read the sign quoting from Dante's Inferno at the entrance to the tunnel, and took the next plane out. The station did indeed resemble a frozen hell. Vehicles parked inside the entrance ran 24 hours a day and the ice walls were soot-blackened and greasy. Narrow passageways, wide enough for only one person at a time, separated the buildings within the ice from the ice walls. I didn't blame the scientist for leaving. The narrow passageways closed in, quite literally. Ice, a fluid, moved relentlessly like thick syrup, crushing against the fragile buildings within the tunnel. Every day the scientists used chairi saws to cut chunks of ice out of the tunnel walls to slow the advance. But their work was to prove futile. The ice has since won over man, and Byrd has been abandoned. It was, perhaps, inevitable. An earlier Byrd Station had collapsed under the weight of the ice. Scientific research will, of course, continue at the other American bases inland-particularly at Siple Station, 1,300 miles from McMurdo and at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station-as well as at Vostok,
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the Russian inland station. (Unlike the been honoured. Military activity is proAmerican outposts, which are supplied hibited. So is nuclear waste disposal. (Speregularly during the austral summer by cially-equipped planes ferry waste from the four-engined Hercules cargo planes, Vostok U.S. nuclear power plant at McMurdo to gets most of its provisions and equipment the United States for disposal. The plant via a tractor train which makes its way generates electricity for McMurdo and once a year into the interior from Russia's distils seawater into fresh water.) Territorial claims, some overlapping, of seven Mirnyy Station on Queen Mary Coast.) Antarctica is not only the coldest region nations are set aside for a 30-year period. in the world and one of the driest, it is also While the commercial exploitation of Anthe highest of the seven continents. Later, tarctic resources does not seem imminent, as I flew from McMurdo to the South Pole . the treaty makes no mention of how reaboard a Hercules, I could imagine Scott sources are to be managed. This was and his men struggling through the rugged omitted deliberately when the treaty was mountains below. I could see the immense drafted. When the need arises, problems Beardmore Glacier with its feathery pat- are discussed and resolved. All nations are tern of crevasses. Those delicate lacy lines welcome to observe scientific activities of I saw from 30,000 feet were great gashes in other nations-and to make sure the agreethe glacier, anyone of which could swallow ment is not violated. This has resulted in a our plane without a trace, our pilot told remarkable 'scientist exchange programme. A Soviet geologist, B.G. Lopatin, deme. Scott had been forced to detour around hundreds of those gashes before he reached scribed the continuous friendly attitude of all the foreign colleagues with whom he the ice cap on his way to the Pole. worked at McMurdo. "The exchange proThree hours after leaving McMurdo, scarcely time enough to drink a cup of gramme in Antarctica," he wrote, "is very coffee, eat a sweet roll, and become ac- important for establishing close personal customed to the wax ear plugs which pro- contacts and better understanding among tected our ears from the shriek of the nations." In 1970 two American exchange scienengines, we landed at the Amundsen-Scott tists were awarded a Soviet medal usually South Pole Station. presented to Russian scientists who have cores of courageous explorers have made outstanding contributions to Antdreamed of reaching the South Pole. I arctic research. One of the scientists, stood there humbly and gazed at an un- Dr. Victor P. Hesslet, has carried out a cobroken snow plain that extends for thou- operative research programme in atmossands of miles, a monotonous, glittering pheric physics at Vostok for several years. Periodically representative.i.of the signawhite disc without a trace of a hill. I was more than 9,000 feet above sea level. In the tory nations meet to discuss problems that thin air my heart beat rapidly, as if I had affect the Antarctic. At a recent conference been running. It was no wonder that Scott in Japan, they discussed the effect of tourwrote in the diary h~ kept until he died, ism on scientific programmes, for the con"Great God! this is an awful place!" I tinent is becoming a tourist attraction. A wondered what he would think if he saw Norwegian cruise ship brings groups of the South Pole's physician, bringing an sightseers who have paid thousands of oxygen tank and mask when he met the dollars to visit Antarctica. The consultative plane, prepared for visitors who had not group also discussed the effects of man's become acclimated to the high altitude. activities on the Antarctic environment to Moisture from my breath froze on my determine what, if any, restrictions should parka fur, and frost sparkled in the men's be imposed. Conservation guidelines have beards. We'd brought spring weather with already been established to protect the us, the polar scientists told us. The tem- fragile Antarctic from man. The Antarctic is an incredible place. perature was a balmy _30oP. The South Pole is marked with an eight- With its beauty, its hostility, and its monotfoot-tall orange and black striped pole onous yet ever-changing weather, the coldwith a mirrored globe on top. The flags of est place in the world seems to foster the the 16 Antarctic Treaty signatory nations warmest relations in the world. Perhaps, as fly at the South Pole, colourful against the the scientist-diplomats believe, the success of the international Antarctic research prodark blue sky and dazzling snow. Although there is no mechanism for enforcing the gramme will foster better understanding END treaty's agreements, the treaty has always among all nations.
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Adilie penguins sit on their eggs, steal pebbles from their neighbours' nests, and preen their feathers unconcernedly as scientists stroll around at Cape Royds. Icicles enhance the wild beauty of Hallett Station, right, where a research study is being conducted to learn how penguin chicks recognize their parents. Rich marine life on the bottom of McMurdo Sound, below, contrasts with the continent's sparse vegetation.