SPAN: July 1961 by SPAN magazine

WOODSTOCK

TOWN

MEETING

by Manning Hawthorne

THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL by Eunice Towle

American dancer, Clifford Jones appears as Krishna and Rajan as Balablzadra in a recent Kathakali recital presented in Trivandrum. See page forty-five. Photo by Sivans Studio.

20TH CENTURY PIONEERS Photographs

by Bill Ray

WHERE THE GREAT CHANGE TOOK

PLACE

by Bruce Catton

THOMAS JEFFERSON AT THIRTY-THREE by V. S. Nanda

THE AMERICAN

ARMCHAIR

PURPOSE

PERSPECTIVE

by John T. Reid

REFLECTIONS AT MAHABALIPURAM by Edward Post

MARK TWAIN Photographed

TOURS AGAIN

by Robert Halmi

ROBERT

RISE UP LEARNING

WEAVER

by Harry Golden

MISS LIBERTY Photographs

by Kenneth Johnson

AMERICANS DANCE KATHAKALI by Varkey Cherian

ANCHORING Photographs

A SKYSCRAPER

by Robert M. Mottar

Articles appearing in SPAN may be reprinted without special permission and with credit 10 SPAN, ullless copyright or other reservation is indicated.

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Acting Director. United States Information Service. New Delhi. PUBLISHED

United

States Information

Service.

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EDITOR

Edward E. Post.

United States Information Service. ART

DIRECTOR

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at G. Claridge & Co. Ltd. (Caxton Works). Frere Roaq, Bombay.

this plan is outrageous and unreasonable and is just one more way to get money from us taxpayers. I'm against it!" And Mary Martin sits down to applause from both those who agree with her and those who do not. Although she has said nothing about the rising costs of living, nothing about the great increase in the number of school children in the village, her argument does have some effect. After an hour of discussion which sometimes rises to heights of sarcasm and wrath, the town votes a ten per cent raise of salaries for teachers, and the addition of one to the staff. The Board of Education, in spite of its partial defeat, seems quite pleased. As a matter of fact, the board knows the villagers too. It knew Mary Martin and others would object, no matter what proposals it made. It knew that never does the school board get all it asks. The teachers are fairly well paid, but to keep them on a par with other communities, the board needed a five per cent raise. One additional teacher was essential. So members of the board asked for a raise four times what they felt must be awarded, and for twice as many teachers as the school must have. They got more than the minimum raise, which meant none would be needed the following year. They got the teacher they needed. The town was pleased because it had exercised its right to cut the appropriation sought by the board. Everyone was happy, even Mary Martin. She knew

what the school board needed and what it would get. She hasn't been going to town meetings for half a century without learning all about them. She knows too, that the town loves to hear her argue and protest. She's been rapping youthful knuckles all her life, and they W'lnt her to continue. The town selectmen, in making out the warrant, wisely put the tax rate at the very end, aware that there will be time-consuming arguments over each item. In most towns, as the afternoon dwindles away and the evening comes, farmers want to get home, tend their livestock, milk their cows and get things settled for the night. Their wives must cook their suppers and prepare the children's clothes for school next day. In Woodstock, where the meetings are held at night, they often last beyond midnight. Everyone has to get up early the next morning. The farmer has his morning tasks. The worker must be at his factory job, some seven to fifteen miles away, at eight o'clock. So when the budget and tax rate items come up, they are usually passed with a minimum of argument or debate. Indeed, as the last show of hands is counted, people are putting on their wraps, heading for the door, or starting their reluctant cars in the frosty air outside. Only once did a Woodstock meeting last most of the night. And had it not been carefully planned and directed, it probably would have continued most of the next day. A special town meeting had been called to propose a new consolidated school which would mean putting the town several hundred thousand dollars in debt. The question was violently discussed for weeks before the meeting. Tempers ran high and for a time old friends on opposite sides barely spoke

to each other. The townspeople were evenly divided on the question. The party in favour of the new school, composed for the most part of the foreigners, laid their plans carefully. They wanted another moderator, since the usual moderator, a man of great influence, was on their side and they needed his arguments. So, one person was primed to nominate a moderator immediately, another to second him, a third to jump up and move that the nominations be closed, and a fourth one to second that. The new moderator so elected was known to be against the new school and as moderator he was thus silenced on the issue. It was a long and hard-fought battle that lasted into the morning hours. People spoke their minds quite plainly, sometimes harshly. After the final vote was taken and the school was voted, the:moderator, his sympathies with those defeated, got slowly to his feet. "Friends and neighbours" he said, "this has been an eventful evening in the history of our town. Some hard things have been said here tonight which perhaps some of you may find a bit hard to forgive. But I want to remind you of a couple of things. First, what we have done, we have done for our children. We have made a step forward. And we have done it in a democratic way. Everyone has had his say, and after due consideration we have voted. This is the American tradition. I hope all of us will go home the friends and neighbours we have always been. The majority have won and children will benefit." People began to grin at each other, relax and talk. Strain and anger left their faces. They picked up their wraps and started along the aisles toward the door and the sun rising over the hilltop .â&#x20AC;˘

The chairman of the boaiÂˇd of education, in the aisle, explains to the meeting the background of a school issue. At the end of open debate on the issue, the town moderator, as on every issue, calls for a vote. The town clerk, who sits on the platform with him, verijies the moderator's cOllnt.

The United States Capitol Its original

design

T HE United States Capitol, crowning a Washington hilltop in majestic dignity, has expanded gradually from the first modest building completed in 1800 to the impressive structure that was the scene of this year's Presidential inauguration. The present city of Washington, with its cherished landmarks, memorial parks and massive buildings, was a marshy wasteland in the 18th century when President George Washington envisioned it as the site for the

is at last fulfilled U.S. Capital. Previously, the seat of national government for the young country had been located first in New York City and then in Philadelphia. As first chief executive of the United States, Washington was firmly convinced that the country should have a centre of government that reflected the aspirations and ideals of the people. He dreamed of a new city where the emblems of democracy and freedom could be emblazoned in stone and metai as well as in the spirit of

Americans. So in 1791 he appointed Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French architect and Army officer who had served in the Revolutionary War, to layout the plan over a lO-mile-square area. The young Frenchman's choice of Jenkins Hill for the Capitol seemed so appropriate that even many of his critics agreed that this lofty site appeared as he had described-"a pedestal waiting for a monument." L'Enfant planned a canal through the heart of the city to transport sailing passengers to the foot of Capitol Hill as Jenkins Hill became known. Although it never reached the ambitious size that he had visualized, the canal remained until the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865). Old photographs dated 1860 show the canal's stone-lined banks. Since William Thornton won a cash prize for his architectural design in l792-a plan that President Washington praised for its "grandeur, simplicity and convenience" -the lines of the Capitol have been enlarged and frequently changed to meet the growing needs of the American people. Most recent of these changes is the thirty-two-foot extension of the central East Front. The exterior was rushed to completion for the inauguration, January 20, 1961, when John F. Kennedy was installed as 35th President. Authorized by Congress, the remodelling was started in 1958. The old sandstone walls of the original East Front will remain as part of the interior structure. The dome has also been repaired and painted and illumination has been improved throughout the entire structure. In addition to providing additional space for offices, committee and reception rooms, and restaurant accommodations, the extension was designed to add symmetry to the exterior in accordance with a design started before the Civil War. Before the recent addition, the dome overwhelmed and detracted from the elegance of the portico. First construction started in 1793 when Washington laid the cornerstone. It was built in five major sections.

The United States Capitol, above, as it appeared in 1800. When this first section of the structure was completed, the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress moved into it from their headquarters in Philadelphia. By 1827 the Capitol appeared as shown in the old engraving-below with the broad sweep of Pennsylvania Avenue in the foreground. The rotunda, completed in that year, was covered with a wooden canopy instead of today's cast-iron dome.

The first was the north wing occupied by Congress and the Supreme Court when they moved from Philadelphia in 1800. Members of the House of Representatives were so uncomfortable in their crowded quarters that they ordered a brick structure built within the unfinished walls of the south wing in 1801. Referred to as "The Oven" because of its high temperature, it was occupied by Representatives until 1804 when walls of the permanent building replaced the structure. They returned to their cramped north wing quarters until their own south wing was ready in 1807. During the War of 1812, the Capitol was left unguarded when American troops retreated to nearby Georgetown. Torch-bearing British forces destroyed its wood roof, the House wing interior, the west side of the Senate interior, and theusands of valuable documents, books and paintings. The structure was saved from complete destruction by a small group of determined patriots and a rainstorm that helped quench the flames. During the restoration, Congress met in a small hotel and later in a hastily constructed "brick Capitol" on the site of the present Supreme Court Building. After Congress returned to the Capitol in 1819, attention was turned to building a central structure for the north and south wings. The rotunda, completed in 1827, was covered by a wooden canopy instead of today's cast-iron dome. Neither the Senate nor the House had jurisdiction over the rotunda, so hucksters converted it into a marketplace to sell everything from ribbons to pianos under the guise of "exhibitions." In 1850 a congressional act authorized extensions for the Senate and House. When its addition was completed in 1857, the House left its old quarters that were designated as Statuary Hall in 1864. After the Senate occupied its new wing in 1859, Supreme Court justices moved from their basement room to the old Senate Chamber and remained there until their present building was ready for occupancy in 1935.

One of the dramatic incidents that occurred in the old basement court room was the flashing of the first telegraph message from there to Baltimore in 1844. Samuel F. B. Morse had received a congressional appropriation to enable him to build a telegraph line between the two cities. The inventor was surrounded by his friends from Congress and the Supreme Court when the message, "What hath God wrought?" was flashed to Maryland. In 1855 the brick-and-wooden rotunda was removed to make way for the dome that is there today. Walls had to be girded, trussed and bolted to support the immense superstructure estimated to weigh nine million pounds. Walls that support it are seven feet thick and the dome itself is composed of two shells, one within the other. Thirty-six columns surrounding the lower part of the dome's exterior represent states forming the Union at the time the structure was designed. Thirteen columns encircling the lantern above the tholus are commemorative of the thirteen original states. Work continued steadily and quietly during the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War leader whose determination was largely responsible for holding the Union together, was said to have commented: "If people see the Capitol going on, it will be a sign to them that we intend the Union shall go on." The Statue of Freedom topping the lantern of the dome was threatened many times before reaching the peak of the building. Sculptured by Thomas Crawford in Rome, the plaster model was sent here in 1858 on a storm-battered ship. Although much cargo had to be thrown overboard, the statue was saved. When the vessel was condemned in Bermuda, the statue was stored for a time on the island and after reaching the United States in 1859, its casting in bronze was delayed by the Civil War. This 19t-foot figure of a woman in flowing robes wearing a liberty helmet with stars, Indian feathers and the American eagle was finally erected on the Capitol in December 1863. By that time, the structure had attained its characteristic lines as they appear today .â&#x20AC;˘

In 1860, when this photograph was taken, an old canal stretched through the city of Washington to the foot of Capitol Hill. Preparations were being made to mount the cast-iron dome above the Capitol rotunda. The canal was closed and filled several years after the photograph was made.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

BILL RAY

On the eve of their departure for Alaska, Marino Sik, his wife Carol and their daughter Lindy Lou, who plays with her mother's purse, worship for the last time in their church in Redford Township, Michigan.

FREE farm to every man who will settle on it and improve it "-the lure which drew Nineteenth Century pioneers across the North American continent to civilize its virgin lands-today is drawing Twentieth Century pioneers to the new state of Alaska. A few thousand square miles of Alaskan land suitable for farming still remain in the public domain and homesteads of 160 acres are available to anyone who will cultivate the soil and build a dwelling on it. . Homesteading today is no easier than it was a hundred years ago. Many have tried and failed. Some

-like Marino and Carol Sik-have the tenacity to continue the struggle against the wilderness. Shortly after Alaska became the 49th State in the Union, the Siks decided to leave their home near Detroit, Michigan, and homestead. Marino, 32, was a repairman for a gas company and during his youth had spent eight years on a farm. Skilful with tools, he was accustomed to modern agricultural methods-quite different, he was later to find, from the methods most suitable for hacking a farm out of a forest. However, he has_the traits a man needs for coping with the unpredictable obstacles that span

July 1961

'11

The land Marino chose, although covered with trees, was potentially productive. Six months after their arrival in Alaska, the Siks had cleared the trees from one acre and had built a barn for their newly-acquired livestock. Carol helped Marino haul gravel for the barn floor.

Following the narrow road through the woods, he took his wife and daughter to the site he had selected. There he took the wheels off his trailer, set it on blocks and established their new home. Clearing the land was the first great chore. With a gasoline-powered chain saw and a bulldozer, Marino stripped the trees from one acre, but it was impossible to ready enough land to raise the food they needed. So he and his neighbours, working together, raised vegetables and oats on ten acres already cleared by Shorty Bradley, an earlier settler. "If it hadn't been for Shorty, I don't know what we would have done," said Marino. The harvest of cabbage, potatoes, beets, carrots and turnips was the mainstay of their diet. The oats fed their animals. Marino went back to Canada during the summer to buy a team of horses. He also acquired a cow which soon

Carol and Marino worked side by side, felling and stripping logs, to complete their lean-to before the coming of their first winter in Alaska.

Marino Sik had never handled horses before moving to Alaska, but he learned quickly. Homesteaders make their own fun, cetting together every Saturday night to visit, dance or play cards. Two neighbours, at left, dance to guitar music at a costume party. Lindy Lou, also adjusting happily to the makeshifts of pioneer living, takes her baths in the kitchen sink of the Siks' trailer home.

calved and a small flock of chickens. Until he can clear more land and raise saleable crops, he has no cash income and must raise everything they eat. Carol soon learned to butcher hens and to can vegetables and also meat from the bears and porcupines which Marino occasionally shot. During the summer she did all the cooking out of doors on a woodburning stove. As winter approached, Marino built a barn for the stock, then started to expand their living space by building a long leanto adjoining their trailer. He felled and trimmed the trees with his chain saw, and used his team to haul them from the woods. Carol helped peel off the bark. Marino notched the ends and together they raised the logs into place, chinking the cracks with peatmoss. Lindy Lou adjusted happily to life in the earthfloored leanto, but her parents' greatest worry was the possibility that she might get sick. With the nearest doctor 70 miles away on the other side of the river, medical care was a real problem to the homesteaders. They arranged to signal with dynamite in case of emergency; the blast brings a plane from the nearest town to transport the patient. Why are the Siks and their neighbours willing to work so hard, to suffer such privations and dangers? "Free land" is part of the answer, but only part. Like all pioneers, they are moved by an unquenchable faith that they can build a better future for themselves and by pride in what they can accomplish with their own hands. "We'll make it through this winter and the next one, too," said Sik. "In ten years, there'll be a bridge across the river and we'll have roads to take our crops to market and schools to educate our kids. We'll have a real flourishing community, with all the things we've planned." â&#x20AC;˘

Homesteaders must rely on their own resources of strength and ingenuity. Carol, who was accustomed to automatic laundry machines in Michigan, now washes the family's clothes in a tub with wooden plunger. She is also Marino's barber. Cooperation is another key to the homesteaders' lives. Neighbours help Marino sort his potatoes and store them in the Siks' root cellar, where they will be protected from freezing in the below-zero weather of the Alaskan winter.

Marshall-one of Jefferson's bitterest critics. It was not until several years later that Jefferson was himself married, at the age of twenty-eight, to Martha Wayles Skelton, a young widow of great charm and beauty and daughter of an English-born lawyer and farm-owner. In the case of Jefferson, the spell of youthful frivolities and fmlics seems to have been a brief one. He matured rapicdlyinto a serious-minded lawyer and student of human affairs who was to become before long a critic of societies and governments. In 1768 he wa~ elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, the colonial legislature, and this marked the beginning of a political eareer which was to extend over forty years. From J~ff~rson's Commonplace Book-which he started compiling as a youth and in which he made extensive notes from the writings of various ancient and modern authors, together with his own comments, on human rights and social and political structures-it is obvious that he drew his own id~as mainly from English sources. A study of the book also points to two other facts. First, his views on human societies crystallized at an ~arly stage in his life. Secondly, at that time he was not apparently in a particularly reb~llious mood against the British sov~reign, but was merely a young colonial lawyer making careful note of the political opinions and climate of the times and recording relevant precedents, laws and customs.

America." They attracted the attention of the great English statesman and orator, Edmund Burke, who was a friend of the colonists and used the pamphlet for one of his famous speeches. The British Government, however, read treason in it and listed Jefferson among His Majesty's most dangerous subjects. By the time the second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia there had been further violent incidents and in fact the war had already started. A battle had been fought at Lexington between British regulars and American farmers. Another fierce battle was fought at Bunker Hill in Massachusetts between British troops and some twelve thousand Americans called out by the local Committee of Safety. Lord North's government in England was, however, anxious to conciliate the colonists and sent certain proposals to each colony. The Congress considered these proposals and rejected them as misleading and insulting. Lngland still wished to retain the right to tax, to impose duties upon the colonies while refusing to let them trade with other countries. There were also other strong grievances. These developments were inexorably leading to consideration of the question of the colonies' independence. The success of Jefferson's labours, and of his associates, became apparent when in May 1776 the Virginia Convention instructed its delegates to the Congress to declare the united colonies free and independent states. When this decision was known, church bclls rang in Williamsburg, guns were fired and the British flag over the State House replaced by one with thirteen stripes.

But the pressure of events proved too compelling and the pace too fast io permit academic detachment or complacency. Agitation over the Stamp Act, British interference with American merchant shipping, the repeat~d dissolution of the House of Burgesses by the English Governor of Virginia whenever it passed a resolution asserting the colonists' rights, the Boston Tea Party, the closing by the British of Boston port to all trade and th~ boycott of British goods-all these were elements in an explosive situation which was soon to result in open rupture with Britain and lead to the Revolutionary War. When the' Governor dissolved the House of Burgesses on its passing a Bill which fixed a day of fasting and prayer in Virginia as a protest against British discriminatory laws, instead of going home, the members called for a Convention. The purpose of the Convention was to elect delegates who could meet with delegates from other colonies to form a Continental Congress.

Jefferson's most important work now lay in the Congress and he hastened to Philadelphia for the session. Although representatives of some colonies still hesitated to put into words what was in fact fast becoming a reality, the public clamour for a declaration of the colonies' rights to freedom was irresistible. Jefferson, who had by now established his reputation as a writer well-versed in legal niceties, was entrusted with the task of drawing up the Declaration.

The stage was thus set for concerted action by all the colonies who recognized that an attack on the rights or liberties of one of them was an attack on all. Jeff~rson drafted a set of resolutions for the Convention at Williamsburg but fell ill on the way and the drafts had to be sent on by express. His fellow delegates, although deeply impressed by Jefferson's views, considered his ideas too bold. In particular his assertions that all lands in the colonies be1Qngedto the colonists themselves and not to the English king and that they had the right to choose another government, were held-by some to be treasonable. The Convention contented itself with a tamer set of resolutions stressing their right, as Englishmen, not to be taxed without representation. These modified resolutions were passed on to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Working at a portable desk made to his own design, Jefferson concentrated for eighteen days on his historic assignment, writing, re-writing, amending, polishing. Meanwhile pillage and arson were rife in Virginia, endangering the safety of his family, and his wife was lying seriously ill at their hilltop home, Monticello-planned and designed by Jefferson himself. His mental state at the time doubtless coloured his writing and gave the Declaration its "passionate nobility."

But Jefferson's drafts found their way to through the American agent of the House of stationed in London, and were published in a with the title of "Summary View of the Rights 22

span

July 1961

England, Burgesses pamphlet of British

It is interesting to note that only seven years earlier Jefferson's efforts at writing had met with frowns and head-shakes when he drafted the House of Burgess' reply to the Governor's address. Yet he was to produce not only one of history's most famous documents but also to become one of the greatest writers of the eighteenth century.

Jefferson showed his original draft to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, two men whose opinion he specially valued, and made minor changes at their suggestion. The final draft in Jefferson's neat, fine handwriting, was then presented to the Congress who gave it three days of intensive study and debate. Throughout the discussion Jefferson, who dreaded public speaking

Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the riCh richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society. . . who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favours to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favours alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. MESSAGE ON THE VETO OF THE

BANK

ACT

July 10, 1832 The bust of Jackson, known as Old Hickory for his rugged pioneer spirit, is by

Hiram Powers. It stands in the shade of hickory trees which Jackson planted at his home near Nashville, Tennessee .

. the issue that will continue ... is the eternal struggle between these two principlesright and wrong-throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the "divine" right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labour, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle. . .. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS

DEBATES

October 15. 1858

The head of Lincoln was modelled by Leonard Wells Volk in 1860, the year of the great humanitarian's first election to the Presidency of the United States.

armchair

rspective

What Do We Have •In Common?

AFTER several years residence in this remarkable land called India, I am still naive enough to believe that I have reached some conclusions, however tentative, about the Indian character, especially in relation to the United States. Some people may contend that there is little or no relation between the Indian and American character, and that therefore even my theme is specious. It is obvious, of course, that the background of modern India and the history of the United "States appear to have little in common; that the Indian climate and the American have been differently disposed by the Divine Creator; that we worship that Creator in differing ways. These and other differences may strike the passing traveller as paramount and overriding. But for Indians and Americans who have had some intimate contact, who have worked together, walked together in the cool of the early"morning, or talked long over cups of tea or coffee-for these there are important similarities between the men of the two countries. These I would like to review briefly and with the natural warning which should accompany all generalizations. In the first place, most Americans and Indians enjoy in common a frankness and a lack of supercilious suspicion which makes communication relatively easy, in spite of often alilloying language difficulties. I have heard citizens of the two Republics discuss without rancour thorny and debatable subjects with an openness and straightforward honesty which might be unusual between Americans and many Europeans. I do not pretend to know why this is so; perhaps the Indian religious tradition has set a code of simplicity and honesty in talking to others who enjoy or suffer the human condition. Possibly the American frontier experience has given us an attitude of frank give-and-take. Another common factor is a general regard for religious tolerance. While India is predominantly Hindu and America largely Christian, both Hinduism and American Christianity have many diverse sects which live ordinarily in peace and fellowship. In neither country do other religions usually feel the whip-lash of persecution and scorn. In India, Muslims, Christians, Jews and others enjoy freedom of worship. In America, a large Jewish minority and congregations of many other religions find the full religi~us freedom which, indeed, the early English colonists sought so fervently in the New World. As for

reasons for these facts, probably the nature of Hinduism implies toleration· of many ways of worshipping God. In America, the dreams of the Founding Fathers and the experience of men of many beliefs in forging together a new nation offer an explanation. Rather closely allied to religious tolerance is the notable ability of both India and the United States to absorb people of vastly different cultures and ways of living. When one surveys the long history of India, one is astonished by the sureness with which the Aryans and other invaders from Central Asia, the waves of Moghul conquetors, and other lesser groups finally become Indians in an identifiable sense. America, in its shorter ." history, has become famous as "the melting pot," in which men of dozens of different nationalities and races have come together to make a relatively homogeneous nation. This is not to say that either country has taken its diverse human components and forced them into a rigid and artificial mould of uniformity. In India, thank God, there are within the basic unity of "Indianness," a fascinating variety of <;ultural patterns which can add richness and depth to the national character. Likewise in America, the cultural heritages of the Scandinavian immigrants, of the Hispanic component, of the Central European Jews, and of dozens of other ethnic groups have given vitality and strength to what we somewhat loosely term the American character. Turning to another area of similarity, it is at the same time abundantly apparent and yet difficult to explain simply that India and America cherish the democratic ideal. The fact is apparent, of course, because both nations have constitutions and systems of government which are cl€arly democratic. Both are pledged to pursue their national aims within the framework of representative government in which the welfare of all the people is the central aim. In the broader sense· of democratic social living, the two countries have evolved and are evolving their own particular forms of that difficult art of living together in a democratic way. The basic concepts of equality and mutual cooperation are doubtless developing in diverse ways in India and the United States, because of differing historical backgrounds and social institutions. The ultimate goal appears to be the same-a society where men can respect and help each other as brothers and equals .•

A man alive is indivisible, from the flux of creation, being an inseparable segment of all who are with him and before him and after, being an illusion in time and space of a singular aspect of immeasurable life which has no shape or confine in reality. Being only a transient concept in the senses of his species and his dog or horse, his 11'lOnkeyor his parrot, yet a man conceives himself unique among the anonymous generations of his kind and in pursuit of his delusion shapes an image for his name to stamp on legend. So he comes to peace with time and flesh, embracing in the inevitable sphere of paradox his precious and particular illusion of realityeroded by each day, each faithless dream, each surging Wave of hope and ebbing lovesand his secret knowledge of his private, slow, inexorable passage out of memory and beyond the final traces of identity.

We yeGl:nfor a name in the minds of those who supersede us o1Jthe layers of the land, in the layers of time, in the expanding convolutions of the brain, that soft, gray gem of intelligence and grief that flowers round a dark bud of ancient, brooding, lusting cunning. We yearn not to be forgotten, but knowing how our eyes and lips and fingertips will dust away on the winds of eternity, we strive to enlist the seeming permanence of stone and hue and sighing call of song, or the palpable imagery of lVords, to project the spirit in us which we swear is real, which each man wishes bore his name, which each rnan wishes could abide forever somewhere evident upon the planet where he lived. But who can call a name for the hairy hand that brushed the delicate bison on the wall of his proud and different cave? Who knows the sweating head which bent above the Nandi, granite and serene, that lies reflectively beside the advancing sea, the hand that chiselled in the sun an image of the beauty rising in his heart?

Now that the hand is fallen, the sun still chisels at the granite as before. The evidence of that man's spirit carved on the face of the earth will fade at last into the natural and patient design intended long before the design of man, a design incomprehensible to man and commissioned to the slow, sure blades of sun and tide and the polish of winds.

Photographs

at the Shore

Mahabalipuram.

Temple.

by the author.

We thrust up our shrines in many shapes toward God, in all lands, in numberless fashions and constructions, seeking to coax Him down to us, into certain rooms alone with us. We set up the passionate symbols of our mysterious hunger to be drawn into the flesh of God, and pray to the divine, eternal will by multitudes of names that we may mark specific places where He might descend to meet us. A swelling exaltation rises out of the small thundering breast of man, perceiving that God, a unity of all beyond the facade of countless names, devises the being of a measureless universe, without beginning, end, hours or millennia, but constantly and infinitely becoming. So man's exaltation mounts in tier on tier of beauty molded from his brimming, yearning urge to share and celebrate creation. Seduced by the wish for reality, striving to grasp the guarantee of an absolute, man seeks in his temples to instruct himself and God in perfection. in the form of a static moment which may be eternally the known, incontrovertible design of man immaculate and glorious, radiant in the faultless flesh, proportioned to the thought of God, immutable beauty. But the chisels of sun and snow, the burnishings of wind and tide, desist in God's tolerance only a little while and then return to the inscrutable design within each stone, known only in the imponderable will of the ultimate. So, in time, does the grandeur of the words with which we weave the songs of our fear and glory, of our greed for life and passion for death and the embrace of God, so do these mingle too at last with the wind and echo into a puzzling future with no more meaning than the cries and murmurs from the jungle.

Thus, the man familiar with reality accepts his own changing face, admits the illusion of his faceless name, the unstable dimensions of his niche in space and time, abandons the stupendous pride of identity separable from other men, confesses that his private and elusive soul is only his awareness of the pulse of God .â&#x20AC;˘

old man, wearing a white suit and a mischievous twinkle, ambles on stage. Even before he has paused in the general vicinity of a reading stand and leisurely greeted his audience, its members feel an unexpected surge of awe and affection. The American writer, Samuel Clemens, died in 1910. But his public image-the beloved Mark Twain-is taking possession of American and European lecture platforms today just as he did 70, 80, 90 years ago, delighting new hearers with the identical quips and stories. Today's Twain, however, is the fantastically authentic, shrewd and funny achievement of a 35-year-old actor named Hal Holbrook. Before Holbrook made his Broadway debut, in what was called "the greatest theatrical surprise of the year," "Then I went back to the raft, where Jim was waiting, and we shoved out. The stars was just beginning to show and they was awful pretty. We /i( up our pipes and didn't talk or say notfling till we was way below town. It was kind of solemn drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs, looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and il warn't often that we laughed-only a little kind of loll' chuckle. We said there just warn't no home like a raft .... " FROM

HUCKLEBERRY

FINN.

the modern public knew Mark Twain chiefly as the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But, stimulated by Holbrook, a wave of curiosity about Twain as a man and about his less familiar works washed over the United States, reached its crest there in the 50th year after Sam Clemens' death and has now spread to other shores. As a writer, Twain was called by Arnold Bennett "the divine amateur." He gave much more thought and preparation to the art of lecturing. Holbrook has dug up his many notes with their subtle analysis of platform technique-for instance, of the value and exact length of the pause. The actor puts Twain's legacy to marvellous use in such tricks as that of letting jokes explode in three or four bursts; like fire-crackers, and in the seemingly aimless, offhand delivery. He has also studied a recording believed to reproduce a Mark Twain reading, and a motion picture from which he garnered the old man's gestures and odd gait. He has talked to surviving relatives and acquaintances. In twelve years he has read everything he could find that Twain wrote, till he feels he knows the private as well as the public man. The role is a complex test of acting skill. To the clements of Twain's not uncaIculated appearance-

"Huckleberry Finn is a boy who lived a good many years ago in the Mississippi River Valley. He was ignorant, ulllvashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. And he was the only really independent person, boyar man, in the community, andfor This reason, I suppose, he was continually happy. We boys liked him. We admired him. We enjoyed his society; and since !lis society wasforbidden /IS by our parents, we enjoyed--it all the more."

"We lived in a small cabin on Jackass Hill and employed ourselves with what is called pocket mining. Here, the gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are very wide apart and hard to find; but when you do find one you reap a rich and sudden harvest. I have known one of these pocket miners to hunt patiently about the hillsides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make a snuff-boxhis grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time-and then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of his shovel. I have known him to pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night was gone. This is the most fascinating of all the different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of victims to the lunatic asylum."

"Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face but alacrity in his heart. And while Ben Rogers worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. By the time Ben was fagged Ollt, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played Ollt, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with."

shaggy hair, white suit, big black cigar-Holbrook had to add the physical septuagenarian. The drawl, for example, that always became slightly exaggerated as Twain shuffled on stage, is delivered by the young actor in the delightfully quavering rasp of this old man's voice. Years weight his step. From the critics his reward has been rhapsodic. These pictures show Holbrook's performance, photographed before some of the hundreds and hundreds of illustrations Twain has inspired since 1862. The quotations are Twain's by way of Holbrook, who has skimmed the cream of his wit, written, spoken or reported. Holbrook never quite knows what passages he will give anyone audience but he tries always to show the whole man, in every dimension. The Clemens whom Twain suppressed was the wry, sardonic, despondent observer of "the damned human race." The mass audience loved the frontier humourist and matchless story-teller. His most popular pose was that of a mild but unregene-

rate sinner, an old rascal whom Holbrook often quotes in the 70th birthday speech, parts of which go more or less like this: You can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life but they'd probably assassinate you. You have to make up your own rules and then stick to them .... There's bound to be somebody trying to reform you, trying to take all the pleasure right out of your life and replace it with dreariness. But don't let them! If you can't make seventy by a comfortable road, don't go! ... To tell the truth, I don't believe this reforming sticks very well, anyway. I've always clung to the theory that you can straighten a worm out but the crook is still in him, and only waiting. . . . Now it is time to depart, I came in in 1835, with Halley's Comet. It is coming again pretty soon and I ".expect to go out with it.

He did, too. But another blaze of glory has brought him vividly back. And this time it illumines two great talents .â&#x20AC;˘ "The life which I led on the farm with my cousins was full of charm, and so is the memory of it yet. I can call back the solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flowers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the snapshot glimpses of disturbed wild creatures scurrying through the grass-I can call it all back and make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed."

recreating Mark Twain, Hal Holbrook spends the same pel!ectiollist's care as in his twelve years of research and experiment with the role. He takes more time making up for Twain-three and a half hoursthan he spends in the actual performance. PaillStakingly, the features are reconstructed to conform to the familiar face of Mark Twain at seventy, the age at which the photograph below was taken. Holbrook collected pictures of the humorist. "I studied all the pictures I could find," he explains. "Certain characteristics were repeated: the forward jutting of his head and a habit of seeming to peer down at you, not lip; a solemn countenance lit by the mischievous glint in his eye .... All these qualities and mannerisms come through to me in his pictures, these, and a spirit of brooding sadnessdeep alld hidden-but still there. Sometimes it shows with eloquent c1arit)'." III

DR.

Robert C. Weaver, the sixth administrator of the United States Housing and Home Finance Agency, stands at upper right beside a composite picture of his predecessors. Dr. Weaver is the first Negro to hold the position, in which he is the chief advisor to the U.S. President on the nation's housing and urban planning development. Arriving at his office in downtown Washington, upper left, Dr. Weaver observes many changes in his hometown. Born in the U.S. capital fiftythree years ago, he received his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University and has had a distinguished career in public housing over the past quarter of a century. Prior to his appointment by President Kennedy, Dr. Weaver was a top official in New York City's public housing programme. He has also served as advisor on race relations to the Mayor of Chicago and has lectured at Northwestern University and Columbia University. From 1933 to 1940, he was a special assistant to the administrator of the agency which he now heads. Letters and telegrams of congratulations cluttered the desk of the new Housing Administrator, above left, during his first weeks in office. In his new post Dr. Weaver is responsible for the many housing and urban development programmes of the U.S. Government. His agency is also authorized to make loans to private non-profit corporations for housing such as the model of a unit especially designed for elderly persons being examined at left by Dr. Weaver and members of his staff. The Housing Agency has seven regional headquarters which employ 11,000persons. A staff of 2,000 operate the central oJPces in Washington .â&#x20AC;˘

••

• The sculptor's mother, Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi, is believed to have served as model for the head, at right, of the allegorical figure. Above the brows are twenty-five windows which afford a panoramic view of New York City. Youngsters, like the little girl below, want to sign the visitors' register to record that they, too, have called on Miss Liberty.

A fifteen-minute ferry trip from lower Manhattan takes visitors to Liberty Island in the Upper Bay of New York Harbour. A group of visiting school children, at left, hurries past the welcome sign. The Statue of Liberty, which towers more thall three hundred feet above them, was built to withstand gales up to 140 miles an hour.

the Exhibition open-air theatre in Trivandrum an audience of 3,000 watched intently as a troupe of dancers performed Kathakali-the traditional dance-drama form • of Kerala. The audience was knowledgeable and had seen many previous displays, by able exponents, of this graceful but difficult art. What invested this particular performance with special significance, however, was the fact that the troupe included an American couple. They were Clifford Jones, a Fulbright scholar from California, who was appearing for the third time with the Kerala Kalamandalam troupe-the premier Kathakali troupe in Kerala-and his wife Betty Jones who was making her Kathakali debut. The skill of these two Americans in mastering the intricate technique of Kathakali won the praise of discerning critics. Dr. K. C. K. E. Raja, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala, commented: "It surprised me that two persons with a wholly different background of culture than that of Kerala could have mastered so quickly and so fully Kathakali techniques of a complicated nature ...• " The Joneses have a background of many years' experience of Western forms of dance. Both started their dancing careers in ballet. Mr. Jones was a member of the San Francisco Ballet Company and Mrs. Jones was with the Ballet Soiree in Washington. Later Mr. Jones organized his own dance group, with his wife as a member, and toured extensively in the United States and Canada, giving a number of performances in theatres, supper clubs and on television. After seeing some well-known Indian dancersUday Shankar, Rukmini Devi, Shanta Rao and othersperform in the United States, they were attracted to Indian classical dances and proceeded to take lessons from competent Indian teachers in America. But their

AMERICANS DANCE

cherished ambition was to visit India for further study of indigenous dance forms. This ambition was fu1fi11ed when Mr. Jones was awarded a Fulbright grant and arrived in Madras in July 1959. His wife joined him later in the year. Mr. Jones enrolled in the Madras Music Academy and studied Bharat Natyam Nattuvangam (musical structure and choreography) for five months with K. Ganeshan, a member of the staff of T. Balasaraswathi's Classical Bharata Natyam School. From February 1960, for about a year, the Joneses were at the Kerala Kalamandalam to study Kathakali. For Clifford Jones, "Katbakali has a vitality, an earthy core of almost primitive vigour. But this has been refined, developed and refined again, by a succession of geniuses who devoted their lives to Kathakali and left " their imprint upon it." The American dancer felt challenged by the Kerala dance form, because "in Kathakali, a handful of actors -aided only by costumes and make-up, four musicians, the famous hand-held curtain and the huge· oil lamp lighting the scene-create before your eyes a whole other world. A world of demons, gods, kings, heroines, rakshasis-all the wonderful characters who people Indian epic literature." Clifford Jones expresses his own affinity with the Kathakali theatre with the assertion that "most other types of theatre pale by comparison." According to the traditional system of instruction, a Kathakali artist is expected to .devote about eight years to his training. But this did not discourage the Americans

span

Ju/y 1961 45

HEN the new headquarters of the Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, is finished in 1963, it will climax six years of sweat and strain for thousands of American workmen as well as engineers, architects, contractors, sub-contractors, suppliers and bank executives who teamed their talents to build the 81O-foot skyscraper. Biggest challenge was in laying the foundation. To anchor the building and its bank vault in bedrock, workmen had to dig down 90 feet below street level, hewing out the deepest excavation ever made for a building in New York City. In the back-breaking struggle against dirt and rock, structural workers heaved shoulder to shoulder with foundation workers. In all it took 22 months of dangerous and precise work on the part of some 900 workmen just to lay the foundation so that the rest of the crew could get on with the job of erecting the 60-storey tower.

a n c Photographs by Robert M. Mottar

o râ&#x20AC;˘

An architect's model shows how the completed building will look. Sheathed in aluminium and glass, the gleaming tower rises eight hundred and ten feet from its own plaza. It will provide air-conditioned office space for fifteen thousand persons.

n g

SKYSCRAPER

First the foundation men had to penetrate a layer of "bull's liver," a dark red clay, and then dig through hardpan and watery sand. Encountering the latter deep underground just above bedrock at one end of the site, the contractors, to avoid using pneumatic caissons, employed a special technique of solidifying the sand by means of chemicals pumped into it under high pressure, which permitted digging by conventional methods. And to compound the complications, it was necessary to lay bare ever so gently the walls of the rapid transit subway which runs under adjacent William and Nassau streets. Because of the presence of tall buildings all round the site, a three-tier network of stressed steel bracing had to be installed as the excavation work progressed to prevent any possibility of a cave-in. This bracing, in accordance with the original plan, remains part of the permanent structure of the building. Thus, the basement with its five working levels was literally built downward. The accompanying photographs taken by Robert M. Mottar show American workmen, members of the various building trades unions, engaged in the excavation work. RIGHT: A loader guides the placement of a battleship bucket being lowered by crane. More than two hundred and thirty thousand cubic yards of rubble were removed from the foundation by these buckets. BELO W: Blasters prepare to bore holes for dynamite. They work with skill and care for their job is a dangerous one. Team-work is essential. Strict safety regulations-such as that requiring protective headgear-keep on-the-job accidents to a minimum.