SPAN: August 1966

SPAN A Cordial Reception by American Magazines Expo 67: "Man and His World" Storm Centre for Freedom

2

6

8

"Fish production in Viet-Nam," President Johnson said, "has been more than doubled in the past five years."

by V. S. Nanda

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

16

by James Thurber

'He Mourned His Times with Laughter'

19

by Laxmi Narail1

Colossal Exhibit of American Heritage

21

by Charles L. Mer!, Jr.

The Case of the Busy Bookwright

29

by Robert Kirsch

The Potential and the Promise

34

by D. P. Khanna and Willard Yarbrough

Brave New World of Business

38

by Vimla PaUl

They're Not Tourists

42

Front Cover Watching over her young charges at Patiala's Rajendra Deva orphanage is Margaret Franck, Peace Corps Voluilteer. For other Peace Corps activities in India, see pages 44-48.

Photograph by Avinash Pasricha.

Back Cover The towers of the old Smithsonian Building look like some elaborate mediaeval castle in this photo by Arnold Newman. A feature on th.: Smithsonian's extensive collection of exhibits appears on pages 21-28.

\Y. D. Miller, Publisher; Dean Brown, Editor; V. S. Nanda, Mg. Editor.

Editorial Staff: Carmen Kagal, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal K. Sharma, K. G. Gabrani. Art Staff: B. Roy Choudhury. Nand K. Katyal. Production Staff: Awtar S. Marwaba, Mammen Philip. Photographic Services: USIS Photo Lab. Published by the United States Information Service.

Bahawalpur House, Sikandra Road, New Delhi-I. on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed by Arun K. Mehta at Vakil & Sons Pvt. Ltd., Narandas Building, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-I.

..

-

Manuscripts and photographs sent for publication must be accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelope for return. SPAN is not responsible for any loss in transit. Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged except when they are copyrighted. For details, write to the Editor." Subscription: One year, rupees five; single copy, fifty paise.

For change of address, send old address to A. K. Mitra, Circulation Manager. Allow six weeks for change of address to become effl:ctive.•

"Almost 13,000 village health stations have been established and stocked with medicine."

"Our assistance has added some 600,000 acres of land to the agricultural production of Viet-Nam." '.'Primary and secondary school enrolment has increased five times. In 1968, 13,000 new village classrooms will have been built to provide for over three-quarters of a million school children."

"More than 10,000 Vietnamese are now receiving vocational training as a result of recent programmes."

SPAN

OF EVENTS The United States, it has been remarked, is engaged in two wars in South Viet-Nam-the fighting war and the "quiet war" to achieve a better life for the people of that country. This other war, President Johnson said recently, is "as crucial to the future of South Viet-Nam and Southeast Asia as the military struggle."

The basic problems of illiteracy, poverty and disease are being attacked with vigour.

Some 1,200 American specialists of all kinds have been labouring at vital works of peace.

Agriculture is being steadily developed by adoption of modern techniques, extension of irrigation facilities and land tenure reforms. Jn 1965-66 alone eight new industrial plants were opened and im. provements effected in fifty-one others with American assistance. About 9,000 schools have been built or improved, some eight million textbooks supplied, and 1,300 rural health stations established.

In the midst of war the work of nation-building is proceeding apace. The quotations accompanying the pictures are from President Johnson's recent press conference.

A CORDIAL RECEPTION BY AMERICAN MAGAZINES

(At last my daughters will have a heroine who is brave as well as beautiful, and dedicated to something more than the pursuit of self,' an American mother said....

"All who know her agree that power becomes Indira Gandhi. 'She is more generous, more articulate, more open and much more beautiful than she was years ago when she only hovered on the fringes of importance,' recalled an American correspondent....

"Lyndon Johnson was captured at once by her eloquence, her intellect, her luminous honesty-and her charm.... " -from an article by Natalie Gittelson in Harper's Bazaar ÂŤ

THE ELECTION of a new Indian Prime Minister always arouses interest in the United States and this is reflected in a number of articles in the American press. But when Mrs. Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister in January 1966, American magazine editors showed even greater interest in the event than usual. For a woman had suddenly emerged as the leader of the world's largest democracy.

While women in the U.S. play prominent roles in public life-many have been governors of States, members of State legislatures, and have served in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and in the Cabinet-no woman has ever received serious consideration for America's highest political office, the Presidency. Many observers believe it will be several generations before a lady President occupies the White House. For a woman to become the leader of the world's second most populous nation was therefore unusual news in the United States.

Although Mrs. Gandhi is "plainly irritated" when emphasis is placed on her feminity, American magazine editors in many cases could not resist the temptation to highlight the fact that India's new leader is a woman. In particular women's magazines, which do not normally publish profiles of political personalities, were quick to order special articles about Mrs. Gandhi.

Ladies' Home Journal, which has a monthly circulation of more than 6.5 million copies, sent Betty Friedan to Delhi

where this popular author of the best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique, interviewed scores of persons who have been ~.ssociated with Mrs. Gandhi throughout her career.

"Finally," Miss Friedan wrote, "I had the opportunity to get to know Indira Gandhi personally, travelling with her by plane, helicopter and jeep 2,330 miles across India on her first trip among the people as Prime Minister ...

(She) talked to me, alone and at length, about her life, her marriage, her rise to political power, her feelings about womanhood and her country."

Miss Friedan, who has urged greater participation and acceptance of American women in public affairs, was especially interested in the role of women in Indian life and Mrs. Gandhi recounted the important role women played in the Indian freedom movement. "Women rose to it and they did things they had never believed they could do," Miss Friedan reported the Prime Minister as saying. " 'Why do you object to the fuss about a woman Prime Minister?' I asked. " 'As Prime Minister I am not a woman. I am a human being,' Mrs. Gandhi replied."

The most widely circulated women's magazine, McCalls, (monthly circulation: 8,500,000) also alluded to the feminine angle. In an editorial comment, the editors stated: "McCalls is pleased to salute this woman on the other side of the world who is proving that a skirt, or a sari, is increasingly acceptable at the summit of public life."

Following an attractive, large photograph of Mrs. Gandhi standing in front of her ancestral home in Allahabad, McCalls published a 5,800-word interview with Mrs. Gandhi by Arnold Michaelis, an "aural historian," who first met Mrs. Gandhi in 1958. "Indira Gandhi," Michaelis says, "has an air of fragility and feminity. Her wit is quick and sometimes subtle-her laughter hearty like her father's.

Above all, she has tremendous drive-and utter dedication."

All of the major weekly news magazines gave prominent attention to Mrs. Gandhi's election as Prime Minister, with Time and Newsweek both featuring Mrs. Gandhi on their covers.

Inside, Time's- four-page report described the background of Mrs. Gandhi's election and provided a graphic sketch of the new Prime Minister for its three million readers. It recounted her childhood participation in the freedom movement, her close association with her father, and her own rise in India's political life. "Probably no woman in history has ever assumed such responsibility as now rests on Indira Gandhi," Time stated. "Yet the idea of a woman Prime Minister strikes outsiders as more curious than it does most Indians."

In concluding its article, Time reported a statement Mrs. Gandhi made during a press conference: " 'I don't see the world as divided into right and left. I think most of us are in the centre. In acountry like India, where the basic problem is one of poverty and of trying to convince the average man that you are on his side, you have to be more or less in the centre and try and keep as many people with you as possible.' "

"Not a startling philosophy," Time commented, "but not a bad one for a contemporary political leader who wants to make some progress."

Under Raghubir Singh's appealing photograph of Mrs. Gandhi standing in front of a portrait of her father, Newsweek also outlined Mrs. Gandhi's career and described some of the major problems which face the Prime Minister and her country. "She has shown every sign of being equal" to the demands of her high office, stated the magazine. (Nearly two million Americans read Newsweek every week.)

Life, a popular weekly picture magazine which goes into 7.5 million American homes, offered a four-page spread of colour pictures of Mrs. Gandhi under the heading, "The Lady Who Leads 480 million." In a text article which followed the picture presentation, reporter Hugh Moffet had this to say about Mrs. Gandhi: "There has never been a Prime Minister like this one-a Prime Minister who can crinkle the eyes, toss the sari-draped coiffure and smile away, momentarily at least, the unbelievable cares and woes of the past and present."

The Life article, based on first-hand observation, contains considerable personal detail which few other writers have included in their articles. Moffet described Mrs. Gandhi's residence at I Safdarjang Road in New Delhi, her Chevrolet Impala, her servants, her dogs, the routine of her day. The reader learns that India's Prime Minister rises at six each morning, after which she reads the newspapers and takes breakfast. And there is a long account of her morning meeting with the people-darshan-when "shortly after nine Mrs. Gandhi comes out to greet the crowd."

Moffet concludes the Life article with a look to the future: "It is possible that action plus her secret weaponbeing a woman-are just right for India now. And with a flick of her sari, Mrs. Gandhi is off to give her country what it needs."

Perhaps the most comprehensive and searching article about the new Prime Minister appeared in The New York Times Magazine. Written by the Times senior correspondent in India, J. Anthony Lucas, the article develops the theme of its title: "She Stands Remarkably Alone."

"The first thing one must say about this complex and subtle woman who is very little understood even in her own country, is that she is a profoundly lonely person. Her large dark eyes, set in a long, fine-boned face, are often melancholy and even in her liveliest moods there is a faint air of sadness just behind her smile."

The 6,000-word article, which appeared on the day Mrs. Gandhi arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia, during her recent visit to the U.S., also discusses the subject of a woman as Prime Minister. "The fact that she is a woman has far less importance than is generally imagined abroad. Americans and Europeans are fascinated by the image of Mrs. Gandhi as the second woman to lead a modern nation after Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon. Writers for women's magazines and books on women ... have flocked here to examine the phenomenon. However, most Indians take Mrs. Gandhi's feminity for granted."

"She is plainly irritated whenever the question of her being India's first woman Prime Minister is raised," Lucas reports, "and usually dismisses it with a brusque '1 am just an Indian citizen.' " Author Lucas quotes Mrs. Gandhi on her views about the word "socialism," a word which is not popular with most Americans: "I suppose you could call me a Socialist, but you have to understand what we mean by that term.

Socialism, like democracy, has such a wide range. It covers what is happening in Sweden, the Soviet Union and China.

We used the word because it came closest to what we wanted to do here-which is to eradicate poverty. But we always meant an Indian product, suited to Indian conditions."

The Lucas article reports the views of Mrs. Gandhi on a wide range of subjects. She deplores the misuse of such words as socialism and pragmatism, and the occasional comparisons of her with President Kennedy, which she thinks are misleading. Other topics discussed are her views on youth and her reading habits. The writer states: "The authors represented on the shelves (of her library) range from Albert Camus and Erich Fromm to Kingsley Amis and Isak Dinesen."

A week earlier, Mrs. Gandhi, in a message introducing a special supplement, "India: Today and Tomorrow," which also appeared in The New York Times, made an eloquent plea for greater understanding by Americans. "In the pursuit of our objectives," she wrote, "we welcome help. But what we need above all is that larger sympathy and understanding which recognizes that it is possible to approach the same ends through different means; for we have a future to share." The supplement, containing articles about future Indo-American relations, the food and population problems, business and education, was sponsored by Birla Group of Industries to inform American readers of India's development, problems and attitudes on questions facing both the U.S. and India today.

The New Republic, one of America's oldest liberal journals on current affairs, described Mrs. Gandhi as "first and foremost, a seasoned professional politician."

In addition to magazine and newspaper articles about Mrs. Gandhi which have appeared in the U.S. since she became India's Prime Minister, other mass communication media have introduced her to the American people. During her visit to the U.S. in March, she appeared on television programmes seen in some forty million homes and she has been heard on many radio news reports.

The impression of Mrs. Gandhi which emerges from this press coverage is altogether friendly and sympathetic.

One student of press reporting on world leaders believes that Mrs. Gandhi has already established a healthy and useful rapport between her country and the government and people of the United States. "Americans have a greater awareness of India and its problems because of Indira Gandhi, and they can easily 'identify' with this gracious lady. Her press coverage has been remarkably balanced and sympathetic. A strong thread of hope for her success seems to run through everything that has been written."

END

II II

'Man and his world' ARCHITECTS and planners in some seventy countries are now designing pavilions for the Canadian World Exhibition-Expo 67which opens in Montreal on April 28, 1967.

The fair will centre round the theme "Man and His World."

The setting for the exhibition is a group of islands, largely man-made, in the St. Lawrence River. On these islands, an extraordinary world city is rising. Bridges, harbours, underground and elevated transportation systems are already being built, and work on some of the pavilions has also begun.

Among the participants are India and the United States. Designers in both countries are now selecting and assembling various exhibits for their presentations.

Indian architect Mansinh M. Rana has prepared the design for the Indian Pavilion,

above left. In front, the pavilion will feature geometric patterns of Mughal sunken gardens and a sun-dial observatory. Perforated white marble screens and red stone will decorate the whole edifice to create the atmosphere and feeling of "being in India."

The exhibits selected for the Indian Pavilion will give a glimpse of India through the ages and show examples of progress achieved since independence.

The pavilion will also highlight research in the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Richard Buckminster Fuller, the American architect-inventor-philosopher, has designed a heat-proof, temperature-conditioned and transparent pavilion in the shape of a partial sphere to house the U.S. exhibits. The theme "Creative America" will focus attention on achievements in the arts, technology

and space. Space scientists and engllleers are busy giving final touches to a visualization of the 1970 U.S. Apollo flight to the moon.

Promoters of Expo 67 expect it to be "a scientific, technological, cultural and industrial wonderland."

The exhibits will encompass man's progress in a myriadfieJds, his aspirations and his vision of the future. One theme exhibit, called Habitat 67, will show a community that has solved one of man's most pressing problems: increasing numbers and dwindling land resources.

For six months, Expo 67 will present an unending array of the world's best opera, ballet, drama, symphony and films. More than ten million persons are expected to visit the fair, and the sponsors say, "You'll END never want to go home."

STORM CENTRE FOR FREEDOM The visit to India this month of Associate Justice Potter Stewart focuses attention on the United States Supreme Court and its vital role in the life of the nation. Undeterred by criticism and controversy, the Court proceeds with its task of administering "equal justice under law," ever widening the horizons of freedom.

"OYEZ! OYEZ! OYEZ!" The Marshal of the United States Supreme Court sounds his traditional chant to announce that the Court is in session, and lawyers, litigants and visitors await the proceedings of the day which may well bring some momentous decision affecting the lives of 190 million Americans.

In any democratic system of government, the decisions and judgments of those in authority are almost invariably subjected to heated debate and controversy.

While in the United States it is the President who is usually the target of public criticism of the Government's policies, the Supreme Court receives a share of such criticism. When it hands down a decision which is unpopular with a section of the citizenry, pickets may appear in front of the Court's gleaming, Greek-templelike building in Washington. They may even carry signs urging the impeachment of the Chief Justice while, in another part of the capital, their irate representatives in continued

EARL WARREN, Chief Justice of the U.S., enjoyed a distinguished career as Governor of California and was Republican vice presidential candidate in 1948 before being named to his present position in 1953. The Chief Justice, 75, shown in front of the Supreme Court Building, Washington, usually votes on the liberal side of most issues.

Dissenting opinions have often influenced and formed the basis of later decisions.

POTTER STEW ART, 51, will discuss basic concepts of the American judicial system while in India. He expects to meet jurists and lawyers in Madras, Calcutta, Bombay and Delhi during his visit, and has also been invited to attend sessions of the Bombay High Court. The son of an Ohio jurist, Justice Stewart was a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Ohio before he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower in 1958.

Congress propose legislation to curb the Court's power or circumvent its decision.

But for nearly two hundred years the Supreme Court has been the watchdog of the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land. In hindsight, the Court has not always been right but it has almost invariably corrected its mistakes. Altogether it has reversed its judgments in more than 150 cases since it first convened on February 2, 1790.

To both the foreign observer and the average American citizen the most interesting and important cases which the U.S. Supreme Court has decided over the years are those which have dealt with individual rights as embodied in the American Constitution. Cumulatively the Supreme Court's review of these cases has led to a steady expansion of the horizons of freedom. From all indications, this process is likely to continue indefinitely.

Like most human institutions the Court has had to pass through periods of trouble and crisis, and its present immense prestige and authority took time to build up. The process began with a decision written in 1802by Chief Justice John Marshall who declared: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.... A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law.... The Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature."

As is well known, the nine Justices often have divergent views on a case. After studying the written briefs and listening to arguments at the public hearing, they hold weekly meetings behind closed doors when each case is fully debated and voted upon. While the majority of course makes the Court decision, dissent has played a vital role in American legal history, and dissenting opinions have often influenced and formed the basis of later decisions. Oliver Wendell Holmes, an Associate Justice of the Court from 1902 to 1932, became famous as "the great dissenter." His attitude towards law was objective and he was a great believer in the adaptation oflegislation to changing social needs. In one important case when the Court declared invalid a State law setting minimum hours for bakers, he wrote a masterly dissent in the course of which he commented: " ... a Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory ... .It is made for people of fundamentally differing views."

Perhaps the subject of race relations has produced the most volatile series of cases considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years. In 1857 the Court rejected the claim of Dred Scott, a Negro slave in Missouri, to be set free on the grounds of a recent sojourn on free soil in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory. This judgment, which stated that no Negro could be a citizen

WILLIAM JOSEPH BRENNAN, 60, had seven years' experience as a judge in New Jersey when he was appointed Associate Justice in 1956. Justice Brennan is regarded as a dependable member of the Court's "liberal" group. He graduated in 1928 from the University of Pennsylvania and studied law at Harvard University. He often talks to legal associations about the Supreme Court's relationship with the States.

with constitutional rights to bring suit, aroused strong resentment in the North. Labelled an "atrocious decision," it injured the Court's reputation and prestige and remained a blot on its record for many years.

Although slavery was abolished and the Fourteenth Amendment to the u.s. Constitution, ratified after the American Civil War, guaranteed the Negro full citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, actual progress towards implementation of these assurances, especiallyin some of the Southern States, was slow. Segregation in schools, public transport, housing and other areas continued-and with legal sanction-for many years. In 1896 the Supreme Court gave its ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, a case concerning a Negro who had been sent to jail because'he refused to move from a railway coach reserved for white people. The Court then ruled that segregated facilities did not "necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other" and that the requirements of the law were satisfied by provision of equal facilities for both races.

But it is characteristic of the Supreme Court that its approach to such questions is pragmatic: it takes note of changing conditions and does not hesitate to reverse a previous ruling when necessary. On May 17, 1954, in a unanimous judgment, read by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court found that segregation of children

in public schools solely on the basis of race deprived the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities "even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal." Referring to the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the Court stressed that it could not turn the clock back and notwithstanding previous judgments, decided that public schools must integrate and "with all deliberate speed."

The verdicts of the Supreme Court on school desegregation had far-reaching effects. They stimulated integration in other spheres-employment, public transport, housing, recreational facilities-and gave powerful support to the civil rights movement. The comprehensive Civil Rights Act of 1964reflected the new mood of the nation, and the Court delivered several key decisions which have further strengthened the cause of civil rights. It has upheld the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the constitutionality of the law suspending literacy tests which often disqualified Negroes from voting. It has also struck down poll taxes in several Southern States. These decisions have facilitated massive increases in registration of Negro voters.

Freedom of the individual is the essence of all civil rights. One of the foremost champions of individual freedom and the Bill of Rights, is Justice Hugo Lafayette Black. His philosophy is well expressed in a comment he continued

The Court is interested in only vital legal issues, accepts only some 100 cases a year.

TOM C. CLARK, 67, was U.S. Attorney General when President Truman appointed him to the Court in 1949. Educated at the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Texas, Justice Clark has the reputation of being conservative, but joined other Justices in 1954 when the Court unanimously declared school segregation to be unconstitutional. His soft-spoken manner and calm demeanour conceal considerable inherent shrewdness.

made in one of his dissenting judgments in 1961 on the U.S. Communist Party's appeal against compulsory registration. He remarked: "Our Constitutional freedoms must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish."

It is mostly in interpretation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that there have been crucial differences among the judges. The Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercisethereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The provision about establishment of religion has been invoked in a number of cases. In 1962 parents of ten pupils in New York public schools objected to the recitation by their children of a short prayer written by the State Board of Regents. When the case caine to the Court, it decided by a majority that the daily classroom invocation of God's blessings was a religious activity and thus violated the First Amendment. Justice Black read the majority judgment and commented: "To those who may subscribe to the view that because the Regent's official prayer is so brief and general there can be no danger to religious freedom in its governmental establishment, it may be appropriate to say in the words of

James Madison, author of the First Amendment, 'It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.' " A year later the Court dealt with two similar cases and, with a single dissent, ruled that any kind of devotional exercises in public schools were unconstitutional.

Delivering the Court's judgment, Justice Tom Clark remarked that it was not relevant to say that this was a minor breach of the First Amendment. "The breach that is today a trickling stream may all too soon become a raging torrent," he commented.

But perhaps the most far-reaching decisions of the Court made since 1962 have been the "due process" decisions (5th and 14th Amendments). To this category belongs the case of Clarence Earl Gideon, which was heard by the Court in 1963. It is regarded as a landmark in U.S. constitutional and legal history.

Accused of robbing the Bay Harbour Pool-room in Panama City, Florida, Gideon was tried by a State court in August 1961 and sentenced to a prison term of five years. His request for counsel to defend him at the trial was refused. The Judge held that under the State law the only time the court could appoint counsel to represent a defendant too poor to hire counsel was in a case where he was charged with a capital offence.

In the Florida State Prison, Gideon ruminated over

HUGO BLACK has served on the Court for nearly 30 years and at 80 is the senior Associate Justice in length of service and age. A southerner, Justice Black has been one of the Court's strongest advocates of civil rights, gives a liberal interpretation to the Constitution. A U.S. Senator for 10 years, he joined the Court in 1937.

his case and determined to do something about it.

After studying legal books in the prison library, he drafted and mailed a petition for review of his case to the Supreme Court of Florida. When this petition was rejected, Gideon addressed the Supreme Court of the United States, making the plea that in refusing him the aid of counsel, the trying court had failed to carry out "due process of law."

The Supreme Court is of course interested in only vital legal issues and it accepts only about a hundred cases each year from some 2,500 referred to it out of the more than ten million cases tried by American courts.

But Gideon's unusual and rather crudely written petition was deemed worthy of consideration. The Court appointed one of Washington's most successful lawyers, Abe Fortas (who has since been appointed an Associate Justice of the Court) to represent Gideon.

In a previous case Betts v. Brady, the Court had ruled in 1942that counsel for the indigent need only be pTovidedin 'special circumstances.' But now it unanimously decided to reverse the Betts judgment and remanded Gideon's case to the Florida court for further suitable action. The opinion was written by Justice Black, who said: "The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trial in some countries, but it is in ours."

ABE FORTAS, the newest member of the Court, was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson last year. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, the fifty-six-year-old Justice Fortas brings to his office wide experience as teacher, lawyer and government official. He was adviser to the first United States delegation to the United Nations.

At his retrial by the circuit court of Bay County, Florida, Gideon was represented by a counsel of his own choice. The evidence of the only alleged eye-witness of his crime was shown in cross-examination by counsel to be unreliable. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of "Not guilty," which the Judge endorsed, and Clarence Gideon was again a free man.

Thus ended a historic case which had attracted nation-wide attention. It brought about a fundamental change in the country's administration of criminal law and established new norms of freedom. The success of Gideon's appeal to the Supreme Court proved that even the poorest citizen with no friends and resources cannot only obtain legal redress but set in motion forces which may bring about profound social changes. Following the Court's judgment, Florida and other States quickly revised their rules about provision of counsel for indigent accused in criminal cases. Moreover, since the decision had retrospective effect, in Florida State alone it resulted in the release by the end of 1965of over a thousand convicts who had been tried without lawyers to defend them.

Individual rights, as is obvious from the Gideon case, constantly grow in the fertile soil of democracy.

Also, changing ideas and ideals necessitate ceaseless review of legislative curbs on individual freedom aimed continued

Only rarely does the Court interest itself in political issues or election methods.

JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN is the second bearer of the name to join the Court. His grandfather, who served from 1877 to 1911, earned a reputation with Oliver Wendell Holmes as the "great dissenter" of the period. Justice Harlan, appointed in 1954, has become the leading conservative member of the Court since the retirement of Felix Frankfurter in 1962. He was previously a Federal judge, is seen here at a stairwell in Court Building.

at the general well-being of the community. What is deemed good for one generation may well be anachronistic, irksome, undesirable for succeeding generations.

An apt illustration of this is provided by a case which the Supreme Court decided in June 1965. A Connecticut State law passed in 1879 banned the use of contraceptive devices. Although this legislation became almost a dead letter with the passage of time, it remained on the statute book and when one Mrs. Estelle Griswold, supported by a doctor from Yale University's Medical School, opened a family planning clinic in New Haven, they were prosecuted, fined and the clinic closed.

They appealed against their conviction and the Supreme Court ruled that the Connecticut statute was unconstitutional and should be scrapped. Delivering the majority opinion, Justice William Douglas remarked: "Various guarantees (in the Bill of Rights) create zones of privacy .... Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? ... We deal with a right older than the Bill of Rights."

In administering criminal law, a democratic government is continually faced with the problem of balancing the safety of society against the rights of the individual.

This problem, in some form or the other, has figured in several cases reviewed by the Supreme Court and was

highlighted in Escobedo v. Illinois, decided in 1964. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stipulates that "no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." While this constitutional right has, however, protected the accused person against self-incrimination in a court, it has given him scant protection in the police station.

Danny Escobedo, who was charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of twenty years, was set free by the Supreme Court which voided his confession of the crime on the grounds that it was made after the police had refused to let him see his lawyer.

In a decision this year the Court has further ruled that, unless the defendant has been informed of his right to silence when questioned by the police, his confession may not be used at a trial.

These decisions of the Supreme Court may appear to favour the criminal and to add to the difficulties of police investigation. They have also been criticized on the ground that it will be difficult to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary confessions-to determine the "focus point" at which simple police enquiry turns into accusatory and the accused becomes entitled to a lawyer. Whatever the merits of this criticism, the Court's decisions constitute another victory for human rights.

No limits can, of course, be set to human rights,

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS was appointed to the Court in 1939 when he was serving as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Prior to that he was a member of the law faculty of Yale University. Now 67, he is known as a mountain climber and has travelled widely.

He has published many books on law and on his travels.

BYRON R. WHITE was U.S. Deputy Attorney General when appointed to the Court by President Kennedy in 1962. While a student at the University of Colorado, he was a champion football player, later took his law degree at Yale and studied at Oxford, England, as a Rhodes Scholar. At 49 he is the youngest member of the Court.

which are being constantly added to in the light of experience. A somewhat peculiar case which the Supreme Court reviewed recently concerned the right of an accused person to have a trial free from prejudicial publicity. While freedom of the press is provided for in the U.S. Constitution and is an accepted principle, it was shown in the case of Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard, accused of murdering his wife, that an exceptional glare of publicity pervaded the court-room and the police officials acted irresponsibly. The prosecutor "repeatedly made evidence available to the news media which was never offered in the trial." Taking note of these circumstances, the Supreme Court ruled that Dr. Sheppard had not had a fair trial and remanded the case to the district court for a fresh trial.

Finally, reference might be made to the Supreme Court's venture into what one of the Justices described as "the political thicket."

The Court does not normally interest itself in political issues such as elections to Congress or methods of conducting the elections. But when a series of cases brought to light glaring anomalies in the apportionment of seats in Congress and State legislatures, it felt impelled to take action. The original delimitation of districts or constituencies had taken place many years ago, in some cases when a State was still a colony or territory.

Over the years urban areas had grown considerably in population but the number of representatives they could send to the legislature remained unchanged. As an example, the city of Hartford, Connecticut, with a population of 162,000 had only two representatives in the State House of Representatives, and the small town of Union, with 400 residents, also had two.

Conscious of the fact that it was confronted with an unprecedented issue of national importance, which might have far-reaching political consequences, the Court proceeded cautiously, ruling first that a Federal Court could grant relief in a malapportionment case and later laying down the principle of "One person, one vote."

The Court said: "All who participate in an election are to have an equal vote-whatever their race, whatever their sex, whatever their occupation, whatever their income, and wherever their home may be in the geographical unit."

Chief sentinel of civic liberties and guardian of the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court has travelled a long way since its origins and struggling existence at the end of the eighteenth century. Today it is a virile, widely-respected institution which exerts profound influence on American society, demonstrating its ability to impart new, broader meanings to the ancient concepts of freedom and justice.

END

One of James Thurber's best - known creations, the day-dreamer Walter Mitty is an ageless character. The author's humour and skill in the delineation of character are well brought out in this absorbing medley of prosaic fact and romantic fancy.

WE'RE GOING THROUGH!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye.

"We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me."

"I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander.

"Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased; ta-pocketapocketa -pocketa -pocket a-pock eta.

The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted.

"Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No.3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No.3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get uS through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of Hell!" ...

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"

Reprillled with permission from the book My World-And Welcome To ll, published by Harcourt. Brace and World. inc .. NY. Š /942 by James Thurber.

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty.

He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.

"You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on towards Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind.

"You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done.

"Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag.

"We've been all through that," she said, getting out of the car.

"You're not a young man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pullt:~don his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot. . . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly.

"Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are. two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. "Hel-

low, Mitty," he said. "We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty."

"I've read your book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketapocketa-pocketa. "The new anaesthetizer is giving way!" shouted an interne. "There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa -pocketa -queep -pocketaqueep. He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials.

"Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes," he said.

"Get on with the operation." A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously .

"If you would take over, Mitty?"

Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists.

"If you wish," he said. They slipped a white gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining ....

"Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong continued

Trying to recall the things his wife asked him to buy from the market, Mitty's thoughts wander to a murder trial where he figures as the crack pistol shot and hero.

lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty.

He began cautiously¡ to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only."

"Leave her sit there," said the attendant "I'll put her away."

Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent' skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wo'und around the axles.

A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garage man.

Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the .chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a

way he hated these weekly trips to town-he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades?

No. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it.

"Where's the what's-its-name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgQt the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial. ... "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?" Walter Mitty took th.e gun and examined it expertly: "This is my WebleyVickers 50.80," he said calmly.

An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled.

"With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand."

Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Waiter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" ...

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed.

"He said 'Puppy biscuit,''' she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on¡.

He went into an A & P, not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at: the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel first; she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. "Can Germany Conquer the World through the Air?" Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets. ... "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others.

I'll fly alone." "But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously.

"It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get the ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered an'd whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. "The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant.

"We only live once, sergeant," said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy and tossed it off.

"I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the

sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge WebleyVickers automatic. "It's forty kilometres through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketapocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Apres de Ma Blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. 'Theerio!" he said ....

Something struck his shoulder.

"I've been looking all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty.

"Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said WaIter Mitty vaguely. ~'What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get the what's-its-name?

The puppy biscuit? What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty.

"Couldn't you have put themonin the store?" "I was thinking," said WaIter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot sO,mething. r won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. WaIter Mitty lightea a cigarette. It began to" rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking.. .. He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said WaIter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

END

A prolific writer of humorous stories, anecdotes and satires, who also drew thousands of comic sketches, James Thurber has left behind a rich literary legacy. His humour is rooted in universal verities and rises above

'He mourne' d his times with laughter' ,

the contemporary events or moodsportrayed in his writings and drawings.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE, the moon may not figure as a romantic symbol of love and lovers and "starry-eyed" may no longer describe "a pretty girl, aglow with love, hope, and wonder, but an ophthalmological ailment similar to glaucoma."

So ruminated James Thurber, one of America's greatest humorists since Mark Twain.

To Thurber it seemed certain that after a lunar landing is made, the meaning and application of many expressions and cliches would change. He feared the common phrase, "the world is too much with us," would not be quite so easy to explain to a foreigner striving to learn and make sense out of the New English. The same would be true, he thought, of "down to earth," "well-grounded," "stands his ground," and "it suits me down to the ground."

James Thurber worried about things like that and all of the other little erosions he saw taking place as progress and change invaded his world. During his lifetime, Thurber added more than one man's share to the world's small store of humour and wisdom. He wrote hilarious memoirs, stories, satires, complaints and reports, and drew thousands of funny drawings: A New Yorker colleague of Thurber's, E.B. White, wrote of him that most writers would be glad to settle for anyone of Thurber's accomplishments.

But it was Malcolm Muggeridge, editor of Punch, who provided what is probably the truest evaluation of this gifted humorist: "Thurber is great because he tells the truth."

Thurber's family was a rich source of anecdotes and humour for him. Writing about his mother, he said, it alarmed her, rather than reassured her, when he explained to her that the wind-up phonograph was run "neither by gasoline nor by electricity. She could only suppose that it was propelled by some newfangled and untested apparatus which was likely to let go at any minute, making us all the victims and martyrs of the wild-eyed Edison's dangerous experiments."

During one Christmas holiday season Thurber was riding in a car with one of his father's aunts and discovered, to his horror, that "she thought the red and green.. lights on the traffic signals had been put up by the municipality as a gay and expensive manifestation of the Yuletide spirit."

Thurber's work is rich in such incidents, anecdotes, and titbits. A commentator has noted that "from the humdrum of life, he extracted the absurdities and ironies, pathos and wisdom," which he expressed remarkably and subtly, in his short stories, cartoons and autobiographical articles.

He was "an aphorist of sad truths who mourned his times with laughter." He was paradoxically both a pessimist and a humorist: he saw troubles and pitfalls everywhere.

"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else," he said. And, "it is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be." The world is "so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings," he quoted at the end of one of his fables. Being Thurber, and wary, he added, "and you know how happy kings are." Thurber's philosophy behind the comments on the foibles of human beings and the state of the world was to shake us, instruct us, and keep us going.

Unlike other humorists, Thurber's wit is rooted more in universal verities than contemporary moods or current events. It, therefore, promises to endure far longer than that of most humorists. Walter Mitty, the valorous day-dreamer of Thurber's well-known story reprinted on the preceding pages, might just as easily live in 1966 as 1930, or even 1984.

By now the description "a Walter Mitty type" is popular, and even the eminent British medical journal, The Lancet, has referred to the "Walter Mitty Syndrome."

Seekers after the origins of Thurber's humour have traced its foundations to his family and his early life in Columbus, Ohio, where he was born on December 8,1894, the second of three Thurber children. The nervous excitement with which James"endowed his brothers made them the high priests of confusion" in such early Thurber articles as "The Night' the Bed Fell." This story begins: "It happened,

then, that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be away where he could think."

The Thurber family at the turn of the century had "an unquenchable determination to remain acceptable eccentrics while being good Americans."

It was a time of strong, matriarchal women. Baseball was beginning.

There were many dogs around-all of them loved, or at least better understood. The Civil War was stiII much talked about. It has been claimed that the foundations of Thurber's wit lay in what was funny to him against this background.

Complimenting his friend and colleague E. B. White on his ability as writer, Thurber commented: "He made me realize a writer turns on his mind, not a faucet."

Thurber entered Ohio State University at Columbus in 1913. He was remembered there as a tall young man with a squint and a great shock of hair that, as one contemporary put it, "gave him the air of an emaciated sheepdog."

He skipped graduation to serve as acode clerk in Paris during World War I. On his return to Columbus in 1922 he worked as a reporter on The Columbus Dispatch, and European editions of the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Evening Post.

Thurber emerged as a major humorist in 1927 when he joined the staff of the fledgling New Yorker magazine. There he met E.B. White from whom he learned stylistic discipline. "The precision and clarity of White's writing," he said, "slowed me down from the dogtrot of newspaper tempo and made me realize a writer turns on his mind, not a faucet." For eight years, both of them turned out a weekly collection of odd incidents and comments for the "Talk of the Town" column of the magazine.

The column was fresh, humorous, and crisp. Many observers regarded it as being responsible for the early success of the New Yorker and it helped give the magazine its personality. The only man who shaped the magazine more than White and Thurber was Harold Ross, th~ editor, whom Thurber portrayed affectionately in The Years With Ross, published in 1959, and which soon became a best-seller.

In the book, Thurber viewed Ross as a man of restless force, but Thurber himsel fhad the same makeup. "There were at least two, probably six Thurbers," said his friend Elliot Nugent, actor and producer. "His thoughts,"

wrote White, "have always been a tangle of baseball scores, Civil War tactical problems, Henry James, personal maladjustments, terrier puppies, literary rip tides, ancient myths, and modern apprehensions."

Besides writing for the New Yorker, Thurber drew pictures-mostly podgy dogs and lopsided little men. But Ross took no notice.

And it was not until the book publishing firm of Harper & Brothers had paid good money for Thurber's drawings that Ross also began paying good money-grudgingly-for Thurber's drawings, and even defended them when a cartoonist criticized him for keeping on his staff "a fifth-rate artist." Ross was characteristically abrupt in his reply. "Third-rate," he corrected.

When the first of Thurber's drawings appeared in the New Yorker they were an immediate success because they had "an other-world quality about them that was like nothing else."

Thurber left the editorial staff of the New Yorker in 1933 but continued as a contributor for many years. During the years that followed he published many essays and sketches, and more than twenty books (among them The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, The Beast in Me and Other Animals, Alarms and Diversions, My Life and Hard Times, Lanterns and Lances). He was also coauthor with Nugent ofa successful play, "The Male Animal," ,and even appeared briefly as an actor on Broadway in the stage version of A Thurber Carnival.

His productiveness was surprising when one considers his meticulous approach to the writing art. He re-wrote some of his work as many as twenty times before submitting it for publication. Writing grew all the more difficult as the sight in his one good eye failed. J:fe had lost his left eye at the age of six when one of his brothers accidentally shot him with an arrow. The other eye began to fail him in 1940 and gradually he became totally blind. But he found little cause for self-pity. His minimal vision, he said, "happily obscures sad, and ungainly sights, leaving only the vivid and radiant, some of whom are my friends and neighbours."

Making a mild joke about his sight, he said that he planned to entitle his memoirs "Long Time No See." When the tall, white-haired man died of pneumonia at the age of sixty-six in 1961, he left behind a literary legacy that T.S. Eliot once described as "humour which is also a way of saying something serious." For at bottom, Thurber's writings, cartoons, and sketches are reflections of their time-sometimes the reflections of a fun-house mirror, END but likenesses nonetheless.

COLOSSAL EXHIBIT OF AMERICA'S HERITAGE World-famous as a museum, the 120-year-old Smithsonian Institution in Washington has inspired inventors, spurred scientific research, and left a lasting impression on American history. It is the world's largest museum complex containing much tangible evidence of the country's development. It displays millions of items which include the huge African elephant (above) in the Museum of Natural History, standing thirteen feet and two inches at the shoulder. On the following pages SPAN gives a sampling of the vast scope of the Institution. Text is written by Charles L. Mee, Jr.

Relics of the nineteenth century displayed at the Institution include Samuel Morse's first telegraph, and one of Bell's early telephones.

in 1829. One of the world's first, it was shaped like a horseshoe, weighed just seventy pounds and could lift a ton.

Other relics of this period at the Smith sonian are Samuel Morse's first telegraph and one of Alexander Graham Bell's early tele phones. By 1844 Morse was able to send tele graphic messages between Washington and Baltimore-a distance of forty miles-using broken bottle tops as insulators. Before he died in 1872, telegraphic wires not only criss crossed America; they linked America with Europe as well. Bell's telephone-called the "talking box" when first exhibited in 1876was built with Henry's encouragement. Bel had complained to Henry that he lacked enough knowledge of electricity to perfect his ideas. "Get it," Henry said. Bell took the advice to heart, and by the turn of the century more than 1,500,000 telephones were serving America. Today there are 82,000,000.

Ultimately these experiments in electricity led to Thomas Edison's first incandescent light bulb, invented in 1879, and his early phonographs, several versions of which are preserved at the Smithsonian.

As the country grew from an immi, grant population of 5,308,000 to a nation of 76,094,134 during the nineteenth century, so the Smithsonian grew. New buildings began to cluster around the old red stone headquar-ters on the Mall, and today the Smithsonian has one of the largest museum complexes in the world, visited annually by more than twelve million people.

To accommodate the growing results of nineteenth century technology, the Smithsonian built an "Art and Industries" building.

Here the "John Bull"-America's oldest locomotive-is the centre of a splendid transportation collection. The burly little John, Bull ran on an eastern line which, in 1832, was granted America's first railway charter.

The Smithsonian's transportation collection also includes a gleaming brass patent model of inventor George Selden's 1879 automobile-the first "horseless carriage" powered by an internal combustion engine. Nearby is the 1903 Winton, first car driven across America, and a little further on is Henry Ford's Model T automobile. The Model T Ford looked at any moment as though it continued Assembled under a whale skeleton, specimenS at left-huge gorilla, baboon, exotic plants, sculptured human heads, a human skeleton and skull, colourful sea creatures and birdsrepresent some of the disciplines pursued by the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum.

PHOTO BY ARNOLD

NEWMAN

The Smithsonian's international role continues to grow. It has already sponsored more than two thousand expeditions around the world. would explode-or simply shake itself apartbut it was a sturdy little car, one of the few early models that can still be driven with confidence today.

Henry Ford was not the first to manufacture on an assembly line or use interchangeable parts for his products, but he was the first to use this combination to bring automobile ownership within the reach of the common man. While others made cars for the aristocratic few, Ford sold his first Model T in 1909 for $950, turned out his millionth car by 1913, and reduced his selling price to a mere $290 in 1926.

As America entered a boisterous period of industrial development a century ago, it also sought to finish charting its vast western lands. Geological survey teams were sent out by the Federal Government to map the west, and with them went rugged naturalist-explorers from the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian has sent over 2,000 expeditions around the world. Its international role continues to grow. Partly in recognition of this, some 2,000 foreign scientists and curators visited Washington last September to help the Institution celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founder's birth.

As its world-wide scientist-sleuths began sending back their specimens, the Smithsonian once again had to add a new building -the Museum of Natural History. It is a monumental structure, completed in 191I. filled with dinosaurs. prehistoric birds, more than 300,000 animal skins, some 3.000,000 plants, and 16,000,000 insects.

The Museum's Department of Mineral Sciences contains 90,000 specimens, including pieces of smithsonite (a mineral named after James Smithson), the 44.5 carat "Hope" Diamond, and one of the first gold nuggets found in California in 1848.

Late in the nineteenth century, America began turning its attention to a phenomenon which then seemed almost frivolous: the attempt at flight. A walk through the Smithsonian's Air and Space collections shows how this frivolity became respectable. There are several of Samuel Pierpont Langley's early unmanned airplanes, for example. Langley was the Smithsonian's third Secretary and one of the first nineteenth century scientists to attack the problem of heavier-than-air flight.

President Theodore Roosevelt showed continued

Moments of America's history are highlighted with a map of seventeenth-century New England, Colt Revolver, George Washington's compass (above revolver). The map is surrounded by carpenter's plane, a patent model of the Baldwin locomotive, silver coffeepot, PHOTO

BY ARNOLD

NEWMAN

Many. objects associated with American Presidents have been painstakingly collected, preserved in the Museum of History and Technology. great interest in Langley's new device and urged him to build a craft that could carry a man. Langley tried, and failed. Taunted by the press Langley stopped his work after a final humiliating failure in 1903.

By 1899, however, the Smithsonian had learned that two other inventors-Drville and Wilbur Wright-were working on problems of aeronautics. Just nine days after Langley endured his last failure, the Wright brothers rolled their plane out onto the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Astonishingly, their craft took off in the first powered, man-carrying, heavier-than-air flight in history.

The Wright plane is now exhibited at the Smithsonian-centrepiece of a collection that includes The Spirit of St. Louis, flown by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 on the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean (see SPAN Oct., 1965), and the Bell X-I, the first plane to break the sound barrier.

In 1916, the Smithsonian received a letter from a physicist in Massachusetts named Robert Goddard. He had a plan, he said, to build a rocket capable of going to the moon.

Though many scientists of the day dismissed Goddard's idea, the Smithsonian financed his work, and today the result of its faith can be viewed in the museum. Displayed near the giant missiles of 1965 is the pioneering tenfoot rocket built and launched by Goddard in 1926.

Recognition was slow to come to Goddard in America, yet the Smithsonian went on backing his work-and adding to its collections: Goddard's rockets of the 'thirties, one of which reached a height of 9,000 feet at a speed of 700 miles an hour; the space capsule that took America's first astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space on May 24, 1962; the space suit of John Glenn, first American astronaut to orbit the earth; and the Gemini space capsule that carried the first American two-man team-Virgil Grissom and John Young-on three orbits around the earth in four hours and fifty-four minutes on March 23, 1965.

The time that separates Virgil Grissom and John Young from the pioneers of the American West is brief indeed. Yet, if the pace of these years seems dizzying, and if the Smithsonian seems a young institution still, there is a new museum on the Mall whose artefacts show American history in all its tradition and depth.

Opened in 1964, the Museum of History and Technology preserves such items as the battered field kit and tent used by General George Washington during the American Revolution. There is a cannon ball fired from

Lindbergh flew this tiny single-engine plane non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.

National Zoo, managed by Institution, has a rich bird collection including flamingoes.

Thousands saw the Nehru Exhibit when it was shown in Smithsonian's special exhibit room.

A life-size replica of a 135-ton blue whale is displayed in the Natural History building.

Fort Sumter, South Carolina, where the Civil War between the northern and southern States began; there is, too, the tall beaver hat that Abraham Lincoln wore to the theatre on the night he was slain.

There are other devices at the museum with a President in their past. One such object is Thomas Jefferson's plough. The first American to make a scientific study of the plough, Jefferson arrived at a principle-the cutting edge must be a straight line-that set the standards for ploughs on American farms.

The first pioneers had simply used sharp sticks to turn the soil, then found that a V-shaped pairing of boards was more effective. Still, it took as many as twelve oxen to pull one of these primitive ploughs through the ground. With Jefferson's innovation, U.S. agriculture flourished.

The Smithsonian has, too, a model of Eli Whitney's 1793 cotton gin which neatly removed the seeds from cotton, and a model of the famous McCormick Reaper. With a scythe a man could harvest an acre of grain a day, if he kept busy. In 1831, when Cyrus McCormick demonstrated his first horse"drawn reaper, the machine cut six acres of oats in one day. Twenty-five years later McCormick was producing 4,000 machines a year, each of which could cut an acre of grain in an hour.

American agriculture had taken a giant mechanical jump, and farm production rose.

The Smithsonian's model of Robert Fulton's Clermont recalls a different story. One hundred-fifty feet long, powered by a big steam engine Fulton's Folly, as the boat was called, introduced the age of steamboat travel in 1807. For a nation covered by impassable forests, water transportation was essential; yet it took Fulton years to convince other men that his steamboat could answer the need.

After his historic trial run up the Hudson River, Fulton wrote, "It was then doubted if it could be done again, or if done, it was doubted if it could be of any great value."

Nonetheless, steam vessels were plying most of America's major rivers in the East and Midwest by 1828. They were invaluable in opening up the western territories to commerce.

One specially cherished object in the new museum is the writing desk on which Thomas , Jefferson wrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Jefferson worked seventeen days on the Declaration in 1776-"to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

Jefferson's desk may indeed have little value in itself, but like the millions of other artefacts at the Smithsonian it bears priceless testimony to grand events. To the scientists who work at the Institution, the study collections, the archives and the research laboratories are of paramount interest. But for the millions of visitors, the "relics" of history and invention are the things that capture attention. They recall treasured moments from the past-and, perhaps, help to keep them alive still.

END

has turned out to be a life sentence. "But that's all right," he says. "If! had stayed a lawyer, I'd be dead by now."

He has an old-fashioned dedication to the idea of work that enables him to justify all recreations and avocations as part of his job. "I pay my own way in everything I do," he says. "But everything I do works out for my writing. Readers want a glamorous personality behind their books."

By glamour, Gardner means the kind of activities that have made him a folk hero to millions. These include his investigations on behalf of men convicted of capital crimes on circumstantial or incomplete evidence. The Court of Last Resort (which he founded in 1948, but which is no longer active) cleared a number of innocent victims. Like Perry Mason, Gardner has a reputation of being for the underdog.

He has reported some of the notorious police cases of the last twenty years; testified against capital punishment, for the protection of wilderness areas, against pornography and for local control of water rights. He has also made a reputation as an explorer of primitive areas of the American West and the all but inaccessible parts of Baja California. Lately, he has started a new career as a photographer and an amateur archaeologist.

Gardner was born in Malden, Massachesetts, on July 17, 1889, and while still a youngster was brought West by his father, a mining engineer. An indifferent student, he finished high school in Palo Alto, drifted to Oroville, near Sacramento, and became a boxer. At the time, fight promotion was illegal, but he put up so impressive an argument to the deputy district attorney who was trying to stop the promo-

As in Gardner's "Perry Mason" books, the hour-long television shows usually end with a dramatic courtroom victory for the resourceful defence lawyer and his client.

Some of the new episodes in the series are broadcast in full colour.

tion that he was recruited as a law clerk at $20 a month.

Admitted to the California bar at the age of twenty-one, Gardner began practising in Oxnard and Ventura, two farming communities north of Los Angeles, in 1912. He started writing in 1921, but it was not until 1938 that he tried his last case and devoted full time to his typewriter.

The centre of Gardner's network of production is the thousand-acre Rancho del Paisano in the semi-arid southern corner of Riverside County, an area of rolling foothills and rangeland. The 96,.o00-acrePal a Indian Reservation borders his spread. Gardner thinks the region is becoming crowded, now that retirement communities such as Sun City and Sierra Dawn are within a half-hour drive of the ranch.

In his desire for privacy, he keeps the ranch unmarked.

He- is there only to oversee his staff of seven gray-haired secretaries, who are kept busy transcribing his dictation, filing his notes and royalty statements, and keeping up with his prolific output. He also has a number of "hideouts," which he maintains in various parts of the State for writing purposes. There may be others but since their whole purpose is to give Gardner isolation, this information is classified.

Each hideout is equipped with a skeleton library, an office complete with dictaphone, a small resident staff (secretaries are flown or trucked in as needed) and means of communication. There is also a fleet of camper trucks. While an advocate of the rough life and the pioneer virtues, Gardner follows every advance in transportation and communication with lively interest.

All this activity combines to make Gardner the pace-

setter of the mystery-writing industry. When one reviewer, a few years ago, suggested there were ghosts writing at Rancho del Paisano, his publishers promptly offered $100,000to anyone who could prove that ErIe Stanley Gardner was not the author of every single word appearing under his name or pseudonyms. There were no takers.

For his publishers, it would easily have been worth $100,000 to find another Gardner. The cumulative sales of his titles to 1965is 158,000,000; a total of sixty-six titles have sold over a million each; twenty over two million. This covers only English-language editions. No one has attempted to reckon up world-wide sales.

Gardner has long since lost count of the money he has earned: "Eighty per cent of it goes to the government anyway," he says. But his sales are very much a matter of concern. Through sales, he evaluates his record as one of the most popular fiction writers, if not the most, of the twentieth century. He has purposely built up the image (with the sardonic endorsement of a number of critics) that he is "a businessman and not a writer."

Even so, some highly regarded mystery writersDorothy Hughes and George Harmon Coxe, among others -have acknowledged Gardner's influence. In his pine-panelled, fluorescent-lighted office, his secretaries are packing arid shipping the first of his notes and manuscripts to the University of Texas Library, which ultimately will be the repository of all his papers. These, he says, will include his trade secrets of plotting, which for the moment he will not reveal to the "competition."

And he is as aware of the competition as any other businessman. At the moment, his pet irritation is sex in detective stories. This, he says, is a "crutch" for writers too lazy to provide suspense, action and plot. "If Spillane [who for a brief time challenged Gardner's sales figures] had had good plotting," he says, "God knows what would have happened." He is allergic to the so-called school of "stark realism," which to him is about as realistic as a fairy tale.

His own experiences as a boxer, law clerk and attorney brought him close to the realities of law, crime and punishment. He looks, in fact, like a retired small-town California judge: gray-haired, somewhat on the burly side, and given to Western hats and clothes. He has the practised eloquence, the pragmatic idealism, the air of confidence and the skill of what he calls an "old defence attorney who would probably be disbarred today." He is more familiar with tactics ("the secret of Perry Mason is preparation, study, technique and theatrics") than with the abstractions of law.

His reputation as a practising lawyer in Ventura and Oxnard was excellent. His specialities were obscure points in the law, sharp cross-examination and shrewd courtroom strategy. He once freed a group of Chinese gamblers by bringing dozens of Chinese to the courtroom and challenging the prosecutor to connect the names on the indictment with the faces of the defendants. In another case, a psychiatrist withdrew as an expert witness after coming under a barrage of Gardner's devastating questions.

As for strategy, he once quickly made use of a fortuitous earthquake that shook the courtroom. The plaintiff, a young continued

o

..

(

.

-

woman seeking S250,000 damages for slanqer on the ground that she had suffered a nervous breakdown, lost the case when Gardner pointed out that since she was the only one in court who had remained calm she must have nerves of steel.

For nine years Gardner combined law practice with writing, but during that time it became .evident that Gardner the author was outstripping Gardner the attorney. He wrote first for the old Black Mask magazine, but he studied the market, decided readers wanted longer stories, and contracted to do 100,000 words a month.

In the beginning he typed his stories with a vigour that made his fingers bloody. Then he hired Jean Bethell, who is now his executive secretary, and began to dictate his stories.

Miss Bethell, like his other full-time secretaries (two of whom are her sisters), suggests Della Street, Perry Mason's secretary. They are loyal, fiercely protective of him, and call him "Uncle Erle."

The respect that remains after twenty-five years of working with him suggests that his reputation as a good and kind man has plenty of foundation. A series of newspaper articles on Gardner, six years ago, which he thought friendly and well-written (he has an aversion to being interviewed because "they try to get too much into a couple of hundred words"), brought bags full ofletters complaining that the reporter had concentrated on Gardner's business and not enough on his humanitarianism.

Gardner himself tends to speak of his accomplishments in simple, practical terms. In acknowledging that he has helped to remedy injustices, for example, he makes no claim

Gardner was adviser for the series of television programmes based on his "Perry Mason" mysteries.

One of the most popular shows on the air, it has been seen in millions of homes every week since 1957.

to being an Emile Zola, and he sees his audience as composed largely of common men.

"I'm the product of the paperback revolution," he says.

"Ordinary readers see in me somebody they can identify with. I'm for the underdog. Justice is done in my books. The average man is always in a state of supreme suspense because life is all complications with no conclusion. In my books, he sees people in trouble get out of trouble.

"People are concerned with justice. They may not say it just that way. But when you realize that since prohibition, since rationing in World War II, since the income tax, the average man goes around with a vague sense of uneasiness, he wants to be reassured that there is an advocate who will defend him and get him off. Perry Mason is that kind of a lawyer, a combination of three or four I've known, maybe a little bit of me. He is idealized and a lot more modern. I keep up with the law and with modern criminology. And I beat my brains out getting new plots."

He bristles when asked whether he has been influenced

by Dashiell Hammett or any other writer. "No writer ever influenced me, because I did not know enough to study any writer," he says. "I was a lawyer and a pretty good one.

That was my stock in trade. But I did not use it until I had l~arned how to tell a story. Most writers write themselves out using their best material. That's bad business."

Does he fear writing himself out?

Gardner smiles. "As long as I keep in circulation, every one I meet gives me a character, a situation, a story. I've got END more stuff than I can ever use."

buru mine in Orissa. Rails, bridge girders and construction equipment for the 139 miles of new railway lines built to connect Kiriburu with the rail I have just received a copy of the May 1966 issue network serving Visakhapatnam accounted for the of your magazine, SPAN, containing a four- : remaining $5.7 million. page article on the Visakhapatnam Iron Ore By the time the Visakhapatnam plant was deHandling Plant. dicated on July 6,1966, by Mr. N. Sanjiva Reddy, I am especially interested in this article as Union Minister of Transport, it had already unI have been closely associated with this project loaded twenty thousand wagons of ore and loaded one million tons of iron ore on to ships. for the past four years. I have followed this work from its conception to its completion.

Aside from all the problems that have been encountered, I find it highly gratifying to see an article on our work so well presented and I want Dear Sir: It is well known that during the early to personally thank you for your efforts. years of this century Ananda Kentish CoomaraOne thing which puzzles me, however, is that swamy-whose ninetieth birth anniversary falls nowhere in the article is there any mention of this month -collected invaluable specimens of the fact that this is American equipment, engi- Indian paintings, sculptures and crafts. neered and supplied by an American firm and This remarkable collection was acquired by the financed by the U.S. Agency for International Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which appointed Development (U.S.A.I.D.). I would, therefore, Coomaraswamy as Fellow for Research in Indian, like to know whether this was an oversight which Persian and Mohammedan Art in 1917, and in prevented you from giving credit where credit course of time made him the Keeper of the Indian is due.

Section of the Museum.

Dear Sir:

I

I

R. W. Barton

In a corner of the Boston Museum, Coomaraswamy sat down for his study and research and began his great work of interpreting the philosophy and technique of Indian art to the Western world, particularly to Americans. He was really the father of critical Indology, and his interpretation of Indian art and culture drew world-wide attention to India's cultural heritage.

Coomaraswamy was born on August 22,1877, in Colombo, Ceylon. To commemorate his birth anniversary fittingly, a band of young Indian and American scholars have recently formed an ad hoc Memorial Committee. The Committee has decided to publish a commemoration volume for which contributions have been invited from prominent Indian, American and European scholars. It is also proposed that a memorial lecture should be delivered annually by a distinguished scholar on some aspect of Indian art and culture.

Further, it is planned to establish a Society of Indologists at New Delhi under his name with the object of establishing closer contacts between resident Indian and visiting foreign scholars.

There can be no better and appropriate tribute to this great savant than establishing a society in India in his name and to train a band of young scholars to carry further his work and objectives.

Vice President Stephens-Adamson Mfg. Co. Aurora, lllinois.

Editor's Note: The complete plant was designed, supplied and erected by the Stephens-Adamson Mfg. Co., Aurora, Illinois, including wagon dumpers, A.MSCO feeders, conveyors, travelling stacker, storage reclaiming hoppers, surge bin and sampling equipment, and travelling shiploading towers, as well as all structural components on the job.

Major subcontractors were the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, U.S.A., who furnished motors, drives and controls; the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company, U.S.A. and India, whofurnished conveyor belting; the firm of CKG. Pithawalla Pvt. Ltd., Bombay, who erected and commissioned the complete plant under the supervision of StephensAdamson Mfg. Co. engineers.

The civil work was done by numerous Indian firms under the control of the Visakhapatnam Port Trust, which also contracted separately for the auxiliary equipment. This includes shunting locomotives by General Electric; reclaim shovels by Harnischfeger, and bulldozers by the EIMCO Corporation, all from U.S. sources.

The United States extended a loan of $18.4 million (Rs. 13.8 crores) to the Orissa Iron Ore Project, of which the Visakhapatnam Iron Ore Handling Plant is an important part. In addition, India haspurchased mining equipment worth $3.8 million (Rs. 2.9 crores) from a credit provided by the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

From the U.S. loan of $18.4 million, $5.7 million was used to purchase equipment for the Iron Ore Handling Plant and for the new wharves and related port development. The U.S. also provided twenty-five diesel locomotives worth $7 million to pull the trains bringing the iron ore from the Kiri-

Sudhansu Kumar Ray Junior Field Officer Crafts Museum New Delhi.

I

In' India, sCientists at the Atomic Energy Establishment have developed mutant varieties of rice and peanut higher yield potential. which have

a

by D. P. KHANNA BANANAS-IOO days old; chapatis-fifty days old; still in possession of their natural fla.vour, colour and nutritional values, and absolutely fit for. human consumption.

Sounds like¡a magician's trick-but it-.is not.

H is, rather, a remarkable achievement of a set of scientists at the Government of India's Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, in their efforts to find means to preserve cooked and processed foods and fruits and vegetables fof longer periods of time at normal room temperatures. .

Another group of scientists at the. Establishment, exploring methods to help raise agricultural output, have developed mutant varieties of rice and peanut which have a much higher yield potential and possess several other useful characteristics. The mutant peanut pod is much bigger in size and heavier in weight. The mutant r-ice flowers several weeks ahead of the normal time, making it

possible for the following crop to be raised immediately after the first. And this is just the beginning.

The key to success in both,these efforts is radiation. Controlled and judiciously applied, the same atomic r~diation which can be so deadly also serves humanity in a number of ways. The Atomic Energy Establishment has extensive programmes for developing peaceful uses of atomic energy and they are a part of India's national effort to attain self~sufficiency in food. It is under these programmes that the Establishment's Divisions of Biology, Biocherillstry and Food Technology have achieved such spectacular results.

The Indian scientists of the Biology Division have proved fairly conclusively that by using radiations from the Establishment's reactors, cobalt-60 gamma rays, and X-rays a~ well as special chemicals, changes or mutations useful for improvement can be induced in various .crop plants.

Experiments using radiations and chemicals, carried out over several years with a number of varieties of rice, have yielded a large number of mutations, some of which are of agricultural .value. Many of them, of course, have been found of little benefit in raising the crop yield.

However, two are definitely higher yielding than the untreated original varietie¡s. Known as Ptb 10 and Geb 24, they have been cultivated for eight generations. Ptb 10 has outyielded the parent by forty-five to sixty per cent over three consecutive years. But this is a coarse variety. It has another disadvantage in the Bombay area in that it takes two months longer to flower than the untreated original.

However, in Kerala, where the flowering occurs in about the same length of time as the original, the variety is popular. Now larger field trials are underway at several locations in Kerala to "establish" it. .

Geb 24 neutron-induced three-week-early mutant, which is a fine grain type, has been on trial for eight generations at the Experimental Field Station at Trombay, and over a period of three years has consistently shown a yield about nineteen per cent higher than that of the untreated parent. Large"scale field trials carried out at Trombay and elsewhere in Maharashtra, and Shahabad in Mysore State, have shown the mutant to be consistent in its high yielding ability. This year, trials spread over 400 acres in the Thana and Kolaba Districts are beinK)TIade by the State Government. In addition, larger scale mutant seed multiplication will be undertaken, also at Trombay.

THE POTENTIAL ,

.

AND THEPRlJMISE

Several types of mutant have been obtained with peanut. One, now in its fourth year of trial cultivation, has been termed "large pod" because of its large sized pods. While the average size of a pod of the untreated original was 2.80 X 1.26 centimetres, the mutant pod measures 4 x 1.80 centimetres.

Experiments to obtain more mutants are being carried out with wheat, jowar¡ and several vegetable and fruit crops at the Trombay Experimental Field Station.

Meanwhile, efforts by the scientists of the Division of Biochemistry and Food Technology to increase the shelf life of perishable foods like fruits, vegetables, potatoes ~nd other tubers, sea foods, meat products, and cooked foods like chapatis, by irradiating them, already have been eminently successful.

This success gains in economio significance in viewof the fact that these things are grown in scattered areas over the country, and only for colltillued

011page' 36

In the U.S., Agricultural Research Laboratory scientists use radioactive atoms to understand and explore the processes of animal arid plant life and thereby learn to control them for man's benefit.

by WILLARD YARBROUGH THE RADIOACTIVE ATOM is becoming a versatile servant of agriculture. Its usefulness is being studied and extended, in the United States at the Agricultural Research Laboratory CARL), an unusual laboratory-school in Oak Ridge. Tennessee.

ARL is operated by the University of Tennessee under contract with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Its principal function is to investigate the ways plants and animals grow, processes taken for granted by generations of farmers who have trucked fattened livestock and ripened grain to market without knowing how piglet metamorphosed into hog or seed into grain, or how to improve the process. ARL's job is to discover the how and why of the growing process.

The laboratory uses radioactive atoms either as tracers or directly as radiation per se. Work with both at ARL is divided into two categories: Animals and Plants.

A radioactive (racer enables the scientist to observe the path and speed offoods as they are absorbed in the animals.

ARL scientists nave discovered,for example, that adding a tiny amount oC radioactive iodine-13L to a calf's feed will aid in predicting whether she will be a good milk producer.

The iodine is traced inside the calf by a radiation-sensitive Geiger count~r. If the iodine settles in the thyroid gland, it indicates an active thyroid and a good milker.

Tracers are runthrough plants to determine how quickly fertilizer reaches into corn and wheat sprouts, and how many inches from roots it should be injected.

In experiments with radiation itself, results are neither predic,table 'J1oJ always' favourable. But some remarkable things' have been achieved. Fourteen radia~ion-improved crop strains are now grown throt!gIlout the world. They, include shade tobacco that can be grown in the sun; winter barley with increased hardiness and yield; a disease-resistat}t pea bean; barley tolerant of heavy nitrogen fertilization; a peanut with a t~ugh shell for safe shipment; and oats and barley'impervious to previously decimating diseases. ARL considers these results a small beginning.

Even in the esoteric world of atomic science, the Agricultural Research Laboratory is unusual. Nowhere else in continued

011page

37

and mould attack. Consequently, their shelf under treatment, the irradiation kills bacteria. life remains short. However, if these semi.Thus, both together help preserve the a relatively short period of time in a year. dried products are administered low dosage original characteristics and qualities and also Irradiation makes it possible for them to be prolong the shelf life of the product. This of gamma irradiation, their life is extended by process has proved especially effective for preserved for a longer period of time without several weeks. The Biochemistry Division has' mangoes, guavas and apples. In the extensive experimented with partially dehydrated Bomcold storage facilities, and to be transported with comparative ease and safety. Besides, experiments carried out by the scientists these bay duck, prawns and bananas, storing them the radiation process also has been used as a fruits lost neither their colour nor texture, nor for twelve to fourteen weeks without spoilage. quarantine measure against food-borne dis~ flavour nor their vitamin content.

The same treatment has been tried with The same process has been significantly eases, animal parasites and infections prochapatis, bread and 'nan.' Mould spoils these successful for radiation pasteurization of cooked victuals rapidly. Gamma irradiation, duced by fungi. • .Tubers like potatoes 'and onions can be prawns: Prawn fishery in India contributes however, controls mould very effectively, expreserved without cold storage facilities for nearly 17.5 per cent of the total catch, and tending their shelf life by ten to fifty days at has a good local as well as foreign market. some time. Later, sprouting sets in, resulting room temperature while maintaining their in a great deal of wastage. By administering Ordinarily, prawns get spoiled in three to four other properties in their natural form. gamma radiation in low doses, the Indian days even at ice temperature. Processed with Against the background of food shortage scientists have suc;:ceeded in arresting the low heat and low dose gamma irradiation, in the country, wastage of food grains by spoilage caused by sprouting. Irradiated potahowever, they endure for sixty-five days at ten insects, rodents and disease poses one of the toes and onions have been shown to have a to twelve'degrees and for ninety days at zero most urgent challenges to scientists. Disinfesto four degrees Centigrade temperatures. room temperature storage life of twenty-eight tatioq. by chemicals and pesticides is presently Bombay duck is another fish which needs a practised to avoid this wastage which amounts and twenty-four weeks as compared with fourteen and twelve weeks respectively of the great deal of care if it is to be preserved. To to eight to ten million tons a year. These say nothing of room temperature, it lasts oniy untreated ones. agents, however, have a limited effect. For three days when packed in ice. Neither heat One of the physiological effects of radiaexample, they have no effect on eggs of partion is manifested in delaying the ripening of treatment nor deep freezing, the conventional asitic pests and insects. Again, they also leave fruits. Studies carried out on mangoes have methods, have helped its preservation. First some toxic residue. The Trombay scientists success.in this'direction has been achieved by feel that radiation can prove an advantageous demonstrated an extension of two to four weeks in their storage life. Importance of this Indian scientists using radiation. Irradiated tool in this direction. They have undertaken studies of radiation effects on a variety development lies in the avoidance of wastage Bombay duck has been stored without any resulting from transport bottlenecks and in spoilage ,for three weeks at ten to twelve . of parasites which, in their view, should help large-scale and long-term programmes spreading the availability of seasonal fruits degrees and for six weeks at zero to four degrees. Effects of low dose irradiation on over a longer period of time. of disinfestation. . Conventional methods of preservation by . the shelf life of other tropical fish are now The ultimate goal of all this research is to under study.

Ganning require extensive heat treatment help conserve the country's food supplies.

Dehydration is a conventional method apwhich often leads to loss in colour and texEncouraged by the potential and pr~mise of ture, and also adds the pecul.iar flavour of plied to preserve fish and fruit, but has its the results so far obtained, the Indian sciendisadvantages in that flavour, colour and cooking to a product. The Establishment's tists currently are carrying out feasibility scientists have developed a combination proc- nutritive value are all lost in varying degrees. trials in large experiments, using the existiriK Reconstruction property also is unsatisfacess of administering low dose gamma radiaradiation facilities, for preservation of packtion with mild heat treatment to sterilize tory. Semi-dried products offset these dis- aged foods and cereals. And they are hopeful fruits for preservation. While the low heat advantages but because of their relatively high that following the trials it will be pos'sible to moisture content they are prone to bacterial inactivates the enzymes in the material apply these methcds on a commercial scale.

ENP

the U.S. is researlh with atoms and agriculture pursu~d on such a large scale (though many colleges of agriculture use the techniques to some extent). And nowhere else can persons with a scientific bent-from high (secondary) school student through professional researcher-come to observe or study man's use of his newest servant, atomic energy, in his most ancient occupation, husbandry.

Experiments with plants and grains lead to new and' improved varieties, the use of radiation as a preservative, and the effective control of p.ests, diseases and weeds.

Insects, especially, experience radioactive intrusions into their little worlds. One pest, the screwworm fly, has done battle with the mighty atoin and has been driven from the field in ignominy. The fly infests open wounds and inevitably kills the livestock it infests. ARL entomologists recently devised a scheme to exterminate it from all of Florida and sections of Georgia and Alabama. Male flies were sterilized by exposure to X-J:aÂĽs and gamma rays. Sferile males are fully competitive with normal males for mates, and females mate but once. Sterile eggs will not hatch. After tests on an island in the Caribbean, a fly-raising plant was established.

The flies were grown to the pupal (quiescent) state, irradiated, and air-dropped over Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

-Two thousand million sterilized insects smothered the area.

Millions of issueless unions ensued. In twelve months th~ screwworm fly was no more.

If work now underway at ARL is successful, childless futures await the boll weevil, corn borer, mosquito and tsetse fly. . Insects which attack stored grain, tobacco and wool may feel t~e atom's vengeance. Thomas S. Osborne, a thirty-nine-year-old University of Tennessee associate professor attached to ARL, believes doses of radiation can prevent insects from causing huge losses to stored U.S. field crops. ' "Pasteurizing" by means of radiation supplements heating and freezing for preservation of food'. This process, requires far less radiation than sterilization does, yet it kills most putrefying microbes in meat, fruit and vegetables. The treatment, which dbes not affect texture or flavour, prolongs

refrigerator life of many fresh foods.

At ARL, the people who are transforming agriculture from plant-it-and-see-what-happens into a precise science, do their work in a one-storey brick building. rt was an elementary school before the AEC took it over in the World War H crash programme in nuclear physics. Farm buildings stand nearby and 5,600 acres of hilly pasture. complete the scene.

A more convenient site could 110thave been selected: fissionable materials are abundant in Oak Ridge, the "atomic city," and instructors can commute in twenty minutes from the University of Tennessee's Agricultural College campus.

One of the experiments at ARL could have great significance for cotton growers-a cotton fibre study. The two major cotton varieties are the American (2.54 centimetre fibre length) and the Egyptian (3.81 centimetre fibre length).

For more than 100 years attempts have teen made to cross the two for the better qualities of each. ARL and the U.S. Department of Agriculture may soon be able to produce the hybrid.

One laboratory scientist is irradiating hybrid seed in an attempt to combine the best parental traits. Now, after four years of work, he believes he is near success. The Department of Agriculture will test fibres from these biological garden plants. if the mutated plants produce a stronger fibred cotton, the world may quickly adopt it.

J.L. Bowers of the University of Arkansas asked ARL to irradiate cucumber seed. Cucumbers grown from treated seed are remarkably different from standara plants: no barbs on the vines, more blooms per vine; and an upright plant similar to a tomato vine. Such a .mutation retains genetic characteristics by reproducing its own seed.

ARL has developed a strain of wheat resistant to septoria nodorum disease. Reports are in the hands of the University of Tennessee Experiment Station, which will test the theories in the field. A Texas plant breeder has reported a tomato resistant to southern blight; it was developed frorn seed irradiated at ARL. ,",;,;:-' "ARL's job is not to create plants but to furnish knowledge and teChniques to several thousand professional plant breeders in the United States. It searches for funda- . mental principles of crop production to replace guidelines formerly generalized from trial and error. "'One major problem has been whether to ,start with seed, pollen or plant. We worked with sixty species to find a common denominator.

The tolerance of each plant to radiation varies greatly. But at last we are beginning to understand why. And we have decided to concentrate on seeds. They are the easiest to coqtrol an~, s.ince they're in 'a state of suspended animation, .we can work on the same 'seeds this year and a year from now.

"We've irradiated for plant breeders at least 7,000 samples-fungus spores, sweet potato roots, peach trees in barrels, coffee beans from Puerto Rico and tulip bulbs from Holland. We get our rewards when someone succeeds after we experiment-like Dr. Bowers and his irradiated cucumber. " Genetic change from radiation can improve plants. But most effects are harmful; making the plants less suitable to their environment or disease-prone.

"Chances of improving a plant through radiation," Dr. Osborne says, "are about one in 10,000."

END

Brave new world of business Good management is a vital element in the successful operation of any business.

To meet the demand for well-trained executives for India's growing industries the Indian Institute of Management, set up in collaboration with the Ford Foundation, is training young men in the fundamentals and techniques of management.

A VISITOR to a classroom at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad may find the students thrashing out a problem of this nature: X is the president of a small company which manufactures electronic apparatus. He employs a first-rate production man as plant superintendent with three assistants.

Between them they buy raw materials, keep inventories, plan production, assign work, watch deliveries, and conduct method and time studies. The superintendent deals directly ith the workers, who number ninety. The company sells all its manufactures and makes a comfortable margin of profit. All in all, it is a pocket-size operation whose success has been impressive.

On the other hand, Y is one ofthe directors of a large company which has three plants employing 200 foremen. Each of the foremen has thirty men under him. The company's ratio of profits suffers by comparison with X's company. Y, hearing ofX's success, plans to experiment with a similar tight setup in one of the plants. Should he reduce the number of foremen? Should he make each foreman's shop a self-reliant unit to increase efficiency and promote a sense of achievement? Would decentralization be the best solution?

Vehement arguments fly back and forth, reflecting conflicting opinions on the case.

Each student shows his finest mettle in these discussions, for the tutor will assess his ability partly from his participation.

This particular teaching technique which forms the basis of instruction at the Institute is known as the "case method." This technique has been used for almost half a century at the Harvard Business School, and the Institute's own experience of teaching through this method for four years has proved that it has tremendous possibilities in India.

Under the 'case method,' points out Mrs. Kamla Chowdhry, the Institute's Programme Director, the participant is constantly and repeatedly being confronted with situations-each different from all the others.

Each case presents the participant with an opportunity to think for himself, to project himself into the situation and to choose a course of action based on all pertinent circumstances. Indeed, the Programme Director believes she knows of "no other equally effective method of giving a man the opportunity to meet new situations in which he must grapple with fresh combinations of facts, half-facts, conflicting opinions and values."

The one thousand such cases a student comes across in the two-year course are all written by experts who might very well have solved them and then written them in book form. But cases are not taken only from books at the Institute. Faculty members are also expected to make field studies, and ferret out problems in Indian industry to be written out as cases for study.

The Institute, jointly established in 1962

by the Government ofIndia, the government of Gujarat, private industry and the Ford Foundation, aims at providing opportunities for young men and women to acquire knowledge and to develop the correct mental attitudes for dealing with complex business situations. As Institute director Ravi Matthai says, "The whole objective of management science is to try to specify and decrease uncertainty in the decision-making process. This is an extremely important factor in any economyperhaps even more so in a planned economy like ours where management techniques, as they evolve, are applicable as much to government policy as to industry."

The Ahmedabad Institute is one of two organizations established by the Government ofIndia partly in collaboration with the Ford Foundation as a result of a study made by Dean George Robbins of the University of California at Los Angeles. The other institute is in Calcutta.

To achieve the goals it has set before itself, the Ahmedabad Institute has planned several programmes. Perhaps the one with the highest long-range impact on management training is the two-year postgraduate course which leads to the award of a certificate equivalent to an M.B.A. (Master's degree in Business Administration). The goal of this course is to qualify the graduate for initial employment and, at the same time, to provide him with a liberal business education.

The curriculum followed for the two years is by no means static. Because business is dynamic and constantly changing, the methods of instruction used and the content of the course are continuously updated to assure that they are relevant to contemporary business problems and methods. For, as Mrs. Chowdhry explains, "new teChnology requires new knowledge relating to production methods, new distribution and marketing methods, new concepts for organizing and planning, new methods of information control. A fund of factual knowledge of management subjects is indispensable if this is to be achieved."

Besides cases, a student is tutored in what are known as "core subjects," concerning the environment in which business operates, the organization and administration of business firms, and the tools used in business for measurement and control. He also learns how these govern the functional fields of finance, marketing, production, personnel administration and industrial relations. A typical working day for a student is strenuous: he attends three seventy-minute classes and each of these requires more than two and a half hours of preparation, plus in some cases up to six hours to write an analysis of the case study.

How far has the case method proved a stimulant to the development of management science in India? "The initial scepticism about it was resolved by the success of the men continued

Students are encouraged to develop a pragmatic approach to problem-solving and to cultivate important qualities ofleadership and decision-making. trained by this method," says Dr. Neil H. Borden,Professor of Marketing and Advertising at the Harvard Business School. "The 1,000cases which a candidate studies develop in him an attitude of mind of solving problems. He may not know all the techniques but he has a hard core of knowledge of interdepartmental relationships and the thinking behind decision-making." Dr. Borden has been associated with the Harvard School for more than forty years and has visited the Ahmedabad Institute thrice under the Ford Foundation's exchange of faculty programme.

Apart from specialists like Dr. Borden who participate in specific programmes of the Institute, the Ford Foundation also sponsors a team offour or five American experts from the Harvard Business School who spend two years at the Institute. Until now, there have been six American 'long-timers' here and almost everyone of the Institute's own faculty members has received a year's ad vanced train-

ing at Harvard. The Americans who come to the Institute under the Ford Foundation grant participate in assignments tailored to the needs of the Institute and are directly responsible to the director. The present team of Americans consists of Dr. John Reynolds, chief of the party, Rossal J. Johnson and Michael Halse of the Harvard Business School and Melvyn Copen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With the collaboration of the Ford Foundation, Harvard has also helped the Institute build up a library of some 20,000 books on management science and related subjects.

The use of real business problems as a means of instruction is not limited to case method teaching. Students, at the end of their first year in the course, are placed with business houses all over India during their summer vacation to acquire experience by actually working under the stresses and strains of day-to-day business. "The response of employers to our summer employment programme has been very encouraging," says Professor S.K. Bhattacharyya, chief of the placement programme, "and we like to think that this is because they feel that the professional managers who are being turned out would be able to fill a role in the industrial world and provide leadership qualities which were seldom available in the past." The placement programme also envisages the per-

manent placement of graduates in suitable jobs. The first group of forty-two graduates received their diplomas at the Institute's annual convocation April 10, 1966. The fact that leading firms have offered to absorb them at starting salaries of around Rs. 800 a month, Dr. Bhattacharyya feels, is a measure of the regard in which the Institute is held by Indian industry.

Besides the two-year postgraduate course, the Institute conducts three short term cour¡ ses: the three-tier programme for middle, senior and top management executives from companies and governmental agencies all over the country; the programme for young executives; and the university teachers' programme.

The philosophy of the three-tier concept, explains Mrs. Chowdhry, is that management development, to be effective, should be regarded as company-wide and undertaken in breadth and depth. There is an attempt to produce a common managerial culture in a company, a point of view, a frame of reference, an attitude towards problems and people. There is clearly a gain if an individual in an organization has had worthwhile training experience; but the gain from this experience is multiplied if it is shared with his superiors and his subordinates. Therefore, she continues, the three-tier programme is essentially a company rather than an individual

oriented programme and aims at providing supportive relationships in the development ofindividual executives within a company.

In keeping with this philosophy, companies are invited to use the programme at three organizational levels. Each year, the Institute brings together some 150 executives from fifty organizations and provides an intensive programme in general management-lasting one week for top management, two weeks for senior management and five weeks for middle management. The Institute has held three such programmes until now-one in J aipur in 1964 and in Agra in 1965 and 1966.

The second short-term course is the programme for young executives. Dr. Chowdhry observes that its "unique feature is the emphasis on the real issues facing young executives in their own organizational setting."

The participant is asked to select a project which is of current concern to him. With the consultative help of the faculty of the Institute, he formulates it, and determines what information he needs. On his return to the company, he works on the project for two to three months, prepares a report and returns to the Institute for a week's programme during which he discusses his project and answers criticism and questions. "Most training programmes," says Dr. Chowdhry, "are on situations 'out there' but the young executives' programme provides personal in-

volvement. The sense of achievement and success in the project encourages him to try out new ideas."

The last short-term programme of the Institute is for university teachers of management subjects. This course promotes an exchange of views among teachers of economics, commerce, social sciences and allied subjects and deals with current developments in teaching methods.

Apart from actual training of prospective managers or of those who are already in positions of responsibility, the Institute's activities include research in management subjects.

Faculty members are expected to spend approximately fifty per cent of their time on research and consultation so that they keep in touch with the problems of management in the real business world and extend the frontiers of knowledge by developing new concepts of administration. The Institute believes that constant inquiry and research by the faculty will contribute to excellence in teaching and, beyond the classroom, to more effective management.

Architecturally the Institute is already attractingcountry-wide attention for its campus, which may well turn out to be one of architectural landmarks of India. Designed by the National Design Institute in Ahmedabad, under the guidance offamed American architect Louis Kahn and India's Balkrishna Doshi,

the complex of dormitories, faculty houses and teaChing buildings sprawls over sixty-five acres of mango groves made available by the government of Gujarat.

"The buildings are oriented to the wind ....

The fullness of light, protected, and the fullness of air, so welcome, are always present as the basis of architectural shapes," Louis Kahn has said. In using this principle, Kahn drew his inspiration from the Akbar Palace at Lahore, where he felt that "nothing is more interesting than air." "It gives such joy to be the one to discover a beautiful way of life that belonged to another civilization," he 0 bserves.

Although the Institute is present y supported in several of its activities by the Ford Foundation, its aim is to be gradually independent of such assistance. This will, it is expected, take another five years. "Thereafter," says Mr. Matthai, "the collaboration with Harvard and other institutions outside India will be not one of dependence, but of mutual interest. It is the intention of the Institute to maintain its international character."

What function do such institutes perform in the academic pattern of the nation? Mr. Matthai answers: "They bridge institutional gaps which have hitherto existed between industry, agriculture, government and education in terms of their common interest in management.

Very few other organizations are in a position to play this role."

END

Raymond P. Alexander, judge of a Pennsylvania State court, is a prominent Negro and an articulate speaker on the American judiciary, civil rights, and race relations. During his recent visit to India, he discussed legal problems and civil rights with scores of lawyers, professors and judges, was impressed with the "air of dignity and respect in the Indian courts."

An authority on accreditation, and knowledgable in the field of American higher education, Dr. William K. Selden, vice president of the American Assembly, Columbia University, had informal meetings last year with the University Grants Commission and Education Commission, who are interested in the general theory and philosophy of accreditation in the United States.

Author of Nehru On World History, Dr. Saul K. Padover's interest in India dates back to the early 1950's when he visited the country.

During his second visit to India last year, he discllssed with academicians and officials the working of democracy, and returned to the U.S. with "fresh ideas and views." He has travelled and lectured in most of the Asian countries.

At twenty-seven, Ann Schein has been acclaimed as one of the most gifted and poetic American concert pianists. A young and attractive artist of exceptional accomplishment and a pianist of "fluent keyboard gifts," Miss Schein has performed in twenty-six countries including India. Broadcast by All India Radio, her recital in New Delhi was applauded as "brilliant" and "scintillating."

They're not tourists EACH YEAR, thousands of Americans visit India to see the fabled wonders of the Taj, the pink city of Jaipur or the temples of Varanasi. But there are scores of other Americans who come to India, and though many of them carry cameras-they're not tourists. They come to lecture and to learn, to teach young students or to work with their Indian counterparts. The people shown on these pages are distinguished American specialists who recently spent some time in this country. Some stayed only a few days, others for several weeks. But all went away with a broader perspective of problems in their field, enriched by the experience of seeing at first hand the kaleidoscopic pattern of life in India.

Belonging to the class of experts engaged in study of the "physiological and psychological science of man," Dr. Phil/eo Nash was until recently Commissioner for Red Indian Affairs.

An anthropologist by profession and education for the last thirty-seven years, Dr. Nash is "bouncy, apparently inexhaustible, incisive in his speech and a 'go-getter' in search of theory."

Harry Goldberg, who has represented the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) for fifteen years exclusively in the international field, is an authority on the labour problems pf many countries. To learn more about labour in India, he met scores of trade union leaders and officials of the Indian National Trade Union Congress.

At seventy-six, Dr. Allan Nevins bubbles with energy, wit and enthusiasm, is notedfor stimulating and provocative talks, and continues writing books and articles. Two-time Pulitzer prizewinner and recipient of more than twenty-nine honorary degrees, scores of awards, the distinguished historian speaks highly pf India's great tradition of religious philosophy and of Gandhi and Nehru.

Moving in new directions, an expanded Peace Corps programme in India is assisting this country's food production plans.

IN RECENT MONTHS young men and women from another land have come to many Indian villages saying they want to help. The villager is bewildered at first, perhaps even a trifle suspicious, but he gradually learns to respect the visitors when he finds that they are not afraid to work with their hands. To someone whose image of the foreigner has always been synonymous with the sarkar, this is something new.

And as time passes, and as the strangers dig compost pits, tend chickens, milk the cows and plough the soil, a bond of trust and friendship is established-the kind of bond that grows when two men bend over the earth together to dig a ditch.

In the weeks and months ahead, the Indian villager will be increasingly exposed to the Peace Corps presence, for the current total of some 700 Volunteers is expected to rise to around 1,600 by the end of the year.

NEW TASKS FOR TH E PEACE CORPS

Apart from the increase in numbers, there will be a change of emphasis in Peace Corps work in India-the result of a world-wide trend in the agency which now seeks to help in solving the most critical problems faced by host countries.

In India, of course, the major problem is food production and since at least eighty per cent of the population lives in villages, the need is clearly to increase village-level food production. More than three-quarters of the 1,600 Volunteers will therefore be engaged full-time in some aspect of food production, utilization or conservation, while most of the balance will be involved, at least in a part-time sense, in work related to food production.

The jobs will vary from village to village and from each individual Volunteer to the next. However, there will be many more workers in such fields as small flock poultry management, fisheries development, storage of

IN INDIA

food grains, goat dairying and kitchen vegetable gardening.

Guiding the Peace Corps' greatly-enlarged programme in India is its new director, David H. Elliott, a thirty-six-year-old Californian, who arrived in New Delhi in June. Mr. Elliott was formerly Peace Corps representative in Nigeria.

To meet the needs of the new programme, there will be a change in the usual training pattern. The normal three months of training for Volunteers will be reduced to six weeks for groups coming to India. For the next six weeks they will live in villages or at Gram Sevak Training Centres in the respective States, where they will establish contact with Block Development and Agricultural Extension Officers and learn about their work by participating.

Half of each day will be devoted to study of the language of the State for facility in the local language is given great

stress by the Peace Corps which seeks true communication across cultural differences.

The high priority accorded to agricultural projects will require reduced participation in some other spheres. In education, for example, it has been found that the language problem and the comparatively rigid syllabus in Indian schools inhibit Volunteers from functioning effectively. In many cases they gravitate to large urban schools where their efforts are at best marginal.

In recent months the Peace Corps in India has moved into several new development areas, among them small industries, healthnutrition education and rural community action. One group of about fifty Volunteers is presently working on an urban community development project in Bombay, assisting local service agencies to organize urgentlyneeded services in the city's depressed areas.

Another relatively new field is rural public health. In a remote Rajasthani village, one Peace Corpsman was unable to arouse much enthusiasm for his latrine-building project.

The village headman even asked scornfully, "Why don't you work with the sweepers?"

After several weeks, and with the help of one of the more forward-looking villagers, he completed the community's first pukka latrine.

Now there is a waiting list of twenty people who also want one built. In that village at least, the latrine has become a status symbol.

Even with the Peace Corps' latest buildup in India it would be unrealistic to overestimate its contribution to this country's progress. In the context of India's staggering economic problems, the contribution will of necessity be small.

The gains, however, will be more impressive in social rather than in economic terms.

And if one could measure the many instances where apathy has been eroded or a new spirit of self-reliance infused, it will be found that the Peace Corps has played a part in hastening India's social and economic revolution.

The Peace Corps programme in this country is already the largest in the world and by the end of this year the Indian contingent will represent almost a tenth of all Volunteers anywhere. In a sense this is fitting not only because India has one of the world's largest populations, but also because she has always had particularlyclose ties with the Peace Corps. continued Talking to women of Mandaur village in Punjab,

Volunteer Janet Gerardy explains the need for a balanced diet. A worker in the field of applied nutrition, Janet has successfully persuaded several villagers to maintain small poultry flocks to introduce much-needed protein into their diet.

"The young men and women of your Peace Corps are well known and well loved in our country.

Every effort to sustain and enlarge this people-to-people partnership ... is welcome. "-Indira Gandhi

India is the first country to participate in the exchange Peace Corps, under which five Indians spent a year in the United States training Volunteers and working in U.S. community action programmes.

Prime Minister Nehru was the first to invite former Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver for talks on the new body shortly after it was established in March 1961, and at a meeting held in New Delhi two months later he expressed "warm approval" of the idea. During her recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister Gandhi said, "The young men and women of your Peace Corps are well known and well loved in our country. Every effort to sustain and enlarge this people-to-people partnership is a good effort and is welcome."

Since December 1961, when the first group {)f twenty-six Volunteers arrived in India, the Peace Corps has almost come to be accepted as a small but permanent feature of this country's development effort.

Recognition of its value has come from the Planning Commission, through which requests for Volunteers from the various States are channelled. As M. Butt, the Commission's Joint Secretary, says, "It has been realized that Volunteers can make a handsome contribution in the efficient implementation of our food production and allied programmes."

Some specific Peace Corps achievements were set forth in a pamphlet published by the Planning Commission last year. Among the cases cited were that of a nurse in Chandigarh, who helped in commissioning an open-heart surgery unit (see SPAN April 1965); a Peace Corpsman near Roorkee, who organized a village volunteer force which successfully diverted flood waters threatening the village; and a small group of Volunteers in Bisauli, U.P., which established a very successful workshop to make farm implements.

In the villages around Bhopal, Volunteers have had considerable success in erecting windmills to obviate the back-breaking task of drawing water from the wells. A group of Volunteers, in conjunction with the Punjab Department of Extension Education, organized a youth leadership camp at Pa1ampur, where several hundred students and teachers have been trained.

In poultry development, perhaps the most successful single aspect of Peace Corps work continued

Trying to find a market for bags hand-woven in

Helping build a dormitory at the Kangra Youth-

Bhojraj, Judy Reidinger, above, went to New Delhi and discovered that they would sell with certain additions. B2ck in the village, Judy, who does extension work at the Punjab Agricultural University in Hissar, passes on the city's verdict.

work Centre is its director, Victor Baltrusaitus, below left, one of five Peace Corps Volunteers at the centre where school-teachers are trained in such fields as art, ceramics, wood-working and seasonal small industries like soap-making.

Assisted by a labourer, Volunteer Steve Power, above, makes a bamboo partition for the poultry house he started at the NaMa Public School in Punjab, a project now producing 500 eggs a day.

The Peace Corpsman also plans to keep sheep and has had two large tanks dug for breeding fish.

Bumper wheat crop grown at Gram Sevak Training Centre in Nabha is examined by trainee Premlata, left, and Janet Gerardy who lives at the centre but tours nearby villages. The house in background has been occupied by many Volunteers including one from the 1961 Peace Corps group.

"We have come from the tyranny of the enormous, awesome, discordant machine back to a realization that the beginning and end are man ... that it is man who is the object of all our efforts. "-Pablo Casals

in India, Volunteers have helped set up almost 1,000 units of commercial size with more than two lakhs of chickens. Poultry work has in turn stimulated action in other fields: feed, equipment, hatcheries, pharmaceuticals, transport and marketing.

With the eternal resourcefulness of youth many Volunteers have devised innovations to lighten labour or streamline operations. Two Volunteersworking with small irrigation projects in Krishnanagar District in West Bengal have introduced the use of plastic water pipes which can be moved easily, thereby facilitating irrigation demonstrations over a wide area. One Volunteer designed a wire-screen chicken coop which costs only twenty-three rupees, another is building a cow-dung gas generator, and yet another is working on a gear-changer for bicycles.

All these are modest achievements. But it must b~ remembered that the Peace Corps is a modestly-conceived programme with the modest aim of help where it is needed- Volunteers are assigned only in response to specific requests. They do not bring with them foreign tools, machines or money.

They come with basic skills, resourcefulness, energy and good will to help people make the best use of local resources and to encourage the adoption of modern techniques.

Sargent Shriver once said, "We do not want to send people abroad who think they are carrying the 'white man's burden' to civilize the rest of the world in their image.

We do not want to send people who seek to convert or propagandize others."

The Peace Corps has had remarkable successin remaining non-political. In the Dominican Republic a group of people were writing "Yankee Go Home" on a wall, while a Volunteer watched. When they had finished he said, "I guess that means I'll have to go home." At which they turned around and said, "No, we mean Yankees, not the Peace Corps."

This point was also made to a Peace Corps official by an engineer in Sarawak, who said of the Volunteers who were helping him cut a road through the jungle, "They're not your people any more; they're mine."

There would be little exaggeration in saying that the idea originally described as "Kennedy's Kiddie Korps" and as "ajuvenile experiment" has succeeded beyond its sponsors' wildest hopes. Much of this was due to the enthusiasm that the idea generated, which was shared by the then Vice President Lyndon

o

B. Johnson who headed the Peace Corps Advisory Council. Bill Moyers, Johnson's valued and youthful (37) aide, was also released to work in the Corps, ultimately to become its Deputy Director. The Corps is currently headed by Jack H. Vaughn, who took over as Director from Shriver in January this year.

Today, five years after it was established, the Peace Corps has almost 20,000 Volunteers of all ages working in forty-six countries, with a total population of one billion. More than 6,000 Volunteers have returned to the United States after two years of successful work, and 170,000 Americans in all have applied for service in the Corps. It seems pretty conclusive that the initial doubts have been laid to rest.

Much of the early scepticism centred round the ability of young Americans to accept harsh living conditions. Peace Corps Volunteers all over the world live in the manner of the host country-in India they receive an allowance of Rs. 260 a month-living in the same houses, eating the same food, and sharing in the same simple pleasures as their Indian friends and co-workers. Not all of them dwell in thatched huts, but living conditions are undeniably severe, shorn as they are of the many comforts to which Americans are accustomed.

What is it, then, that makes young Americans leave the security of home to spend two years working in a foreign country? Most Volunteers are apt to brush this question aside or to state, as one did, that "I wanted to be part of the situation for a change." Like young people everywhere, they are suspicious of high-sounding phrases, reluctant to put their cherished hopes into words.

But it is clear that, more than anything else, the Peace Corps is a testament to the idealism of young America. This is not to suggest that the United States has any monopoly on altruism. But it does show that there are thousands of young Americans interested in, and willing to work for, the ever-youthful dream of forging a better world.

The Peace Corps is not, however, a oneway street. From the very beginning it has been stressed that the rewards are two-fold.

"The benefits of the Peace Corps," said President Kennedy, "will not be limited to the countries in which it serves. Our own young men and women will be enriched by the experience of living and working in foreign lands."

There is no denying that, for the individual, service in the Corps contributes immeasurably to a deeper knowledge of the world, a broadening of personal horizons.

One thing is certain: for the young man who has spent two years abroad with the Peace Corps, life is never quite the same again.

This was eloquently expressed by a twentytwo-year-old Volunteer in one of the Latin American countries who wrote home: "Until you see a mother following the funeral of her child, or see a little girl searching through the trash for a pair of discarded shoes, all the words in the world put on paper by the best writer cannot describe the feeling I have developed for these people."

Considerable evidence suggests that most Volunteers find their stay abroad a deeply moving personal experience, so much so that a few of them have had difficulty readjusting to the relatively comfortable climate of American life. The extent of the so-called "re-entry crisis" has no doubt been exaggerated but it is true that for some sensitive youngsters their Peace Corps years will constitute the most meaningful period of their lives.

All this is a striking demonstration of the power of an idea-in fact, Thanat Khonam, Foreign Minister of Thailand, once called it "the most powerful idea of recent times."

And, like other great ideas of the past, this one is setting events into motion.

In October 1962 at a Peace Corps-sponsored meeting in Puerto Rico, an International Peace Corps Secretariat was set up and today more than thirty nations of the world have programmes modelled on the Peace Corps. Last December an Indian Peace Corps was launched in Bombay. Under this programme, named the Indian-American PartTime Volunteers Service Project, Indian youth work with their American counterparts and the Indian Conference of Social Work.

Perhaps no one has summed up the spirit of the Peace Corps as well as Pablo Casals, the great Spanish cellist now living in Puerto Rico. He said: "This is new and it is also very old. We have in a sense come full circle. We have come from the tyranny of the enormous, awesome, discordant machine back to a realization that the beginning and end are man, that it is man who is important, not the machine, that it is man who accounts for growth, not just dol1~rs or factories, and above all that it is man who is the object of all our efforts."

Cross-breeding Italian and Indian bees so as TO develop a disease-resistant strain is a project which engages the attention of Steve Guynn, holding frame, above. With him is Volunteer Bill Hardy of the Kangra Youthwork Centre.

Happy faces of children at the Rajendra Deva orphanage in

Patiala testify to the effectiveness of Margaret Franck's lVork: supervising the youngsters' diet, attending to their medical needs and providing recreational opportunities.

Chatting with a village housewife, Volunteer Steve Power, above right, gains some idea of the problems faced by India's rural millions. For many thousands, service in the Peace Corps contributes to a broadening of personal horizons.

Tbe Smithsonian Institution