Twenty years ago this month the world was stunned by the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi, But the Mahatma continues to inspire people everywhere with the principles of peace and brotherhood he so eloquently propounded and actively pursued, In the United States, the Gandhian creed of non-violence became the backbone of the civil rights movement and brought a revolution in improved conditions for Negroes. On these pages are tributes of American leaders, expressed on that fateful January 30, 1948, when the incredible news was flashed to the world.
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Front cover With the use of improved seed and double cropping, the farmers of Tanjore district produced a record paddy harvest in '67. Plans are now being drawn up to produce even more this year. See page 2. W.D. Miller, Publisher;
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Back cover While traditional methods were used at most stages of the 1967 Tanjore harvest, thirty mechanical drying centres like this one at Tiruvalangadu were built to handle the district's bumper crop.
Dean Brown. Editor;
V.S. Nanda. Mg. Editor.
Editorial Staff: Carmen Kagal, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal K. Sharma, Krishan G. Gabrani, P.R. Gupta. Art Staff: B. Roy Choudhury, Nand K. Katyal, Kanti Roy, Kuldip Singh Jus, Gopi Gajwani. Production Staff: Awtar S. Marwaha, 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.
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SPAN OF EVENTS
This morning when I heard the tragic news of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi I sent a message ... expressing my condolences ... to the people of India. Gandhi was a great Indian nationalist, but at the same time was a leader of interational stature. His teachings and his actions ave left a deep impression on millions of people. He was and is rel'ered by the people of India nd his influence was felt not only in affairs of
overnment but also in the realm of the spirit. Unhappily he did not live to witness the full realizaon of those ideals for which he struggled. But his
fe and his work will be, through the years to come, he greatest monument to him. His selfless struggle or the betterment of his people will, I am sure, ndure as an example to India's leaders, many of wllOinare his disciples. I know, not only the people of India. but all eoples will be inspired by his sacrifice to work with ncreased vigour towards the brotherhood and peace which the Mahatma symbolized.
It is fitting that we should sit here charged with the grave responsibility of maintaining peace among nations and pay tribute to this great Indian leader, who, over the years, has done' so milch to bring home to his fellow countrymen the moral and spiritual lessons which arc essential for the achievement of world peace and brotherhood. It is indeed tragic that his death has come at a time of tension and crisis when these qualities of restraint and moderation which so characterized the man are desperately needed. Gandhi fell a martyr to the great cause of cooperation among all nations and communities, and although we shall, together with all peace-loving peoples. mourn his loss. we earnestly hope that his martyrdom will inspire the peoples of the United Nations to press forward with even greater determination to achieve those ideals for which he stood. I express to the distinguished representative of India and his government and his people the profound sympathy of the mission of the United States
It was with horror that I heard the news on Friday that Gandhi had been shot. Somehow, for this man of peace, who would never hurt anyone, to come to a violent death at the hand of one of his countrymen seemed almost impossible to believe. One realizes that the assassin was probably crazed. It is a hard blow to India, especially at the present time when she is beset by difficulties and trying to huild an independent nation a/ier so many years of subjection in which Gandhi played a great part to bring about her freedom in peaceful fashion. There is no doubt that Gandhi had great spiritual qualities, and one can only hope, even though he is no longer with his people, that his influence will grow and help them through the years. The same influence had much of value to give to the rest of the world, and one hopes that the very violence of his death will turn people away /rom violencewhich certainly brings none of us any good at the present tillle.
to the United Nations.
Harry S. Truman President of the United States, January 30, 1948
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in her newspaper column, February 2, 1948
Warren R. Austin U.S. Representative to the United Nations before the U.N. Security Council, January 30, 1948
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~ The United States has been shocked by the tragic news of the passing of Mahatma Gandhi, and shares with India a heavy burden of sorrow and loss. In his devotion to tolerance and the brotherhood of man, the Mahatma
was one of those fare spokesmen for the conscience of all mankind. The sense of bereavement felt in this country evidences the close ties between the United States and India.
George C. Marshall U.S. Secretary of State, January 30, 1948
LASTOCTOBER and November the farmers in Thanjavur District harvested the largest paddy crop in history-some 7.5 lakh tons. Long known as the rice bowl of Madras State, Thanjavur (Tanjore) District tripled its harvest in 1967 and for two months-at the beginning of the second monsoon-farmers and officials worked together to get the record-breaking crop to markets and godowns. Using a new Indian-produced strain, ADT-27, and double cropping, Tanjore farmers and officials proved that yields could be quickly and significantly increased. Traditional planting and harvesting methods were used (see pictures); only about ten-to-twelve per cent of the crop was mechanically dried although authorities expect the figure to rise to some thirty-five per cent this year. Cultivators responded to the new inputs and methods with
enthusiasm. Through demonstrations, they found that ADT-27 increased yields by about fifty per cent; that it has a short growing season (105 days versus 180 for traditional strains); high response to fertilizer and high resistance to "lodging"bending of stalks. ADT-27 also offers a high milling rate (seventy-to-seventy-two per cent in modern rice mills) and enjoys high consumer acceptance. Credits for seed, fertilizer and insecticides were available from co-op banks, and deliveries were made on schedule. But what about the problems? "Of course there were problems," a close observer of the programme told a reporter recently, "but they were to be expected with a new project of this vast nature involving so many people and organizations. The miracle is that there were so few problems." continued
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HARVESTING TANJORE~S BlJMPE
After farmers shake Ollt 95 per cent of paddy kernels by hand. bullocks stamp out the remainder. More than I,OOO bullock-carts per day hauled paddy to driers and mills during peak of harvest.
IN
MAY
last year, the prospect
of the greatest p~ddy crop in history created a new problem in Tanjore district. The crop would have to be harvested in the monsoon and while the new seedADT-27-offers
many advantages,
it has a major fault: it germinates within three to five days. Indian farmers have sun-dried paddy for centuries but the monsoon would greatly reduce the amount that could be dried by the traditional method. Drying some 700,000 tons offast germinating
paddy could,
officials believed, cause trouble. They consulted with Ford Foundation
advisers who had
been assisting the district's Intensive Agricultural
Programme
since 1960.
A rice milling expert from the U.S. was assigned by Ford Foundation
to
give technical assistance on a problem rarely faced before, and Each centre can dry 160 tons per day. Wet paddy is put into drier, above, moves through air heated to 180°F. Graduates of polytechnics were trained as operators by Ford Foundation adviser, below.
a decision was reached to build sixty mechanical driers in thirty locations throughout
the district.
Completely built in India with Indian materials, the drying centres (see back cover) proved India's ability to meet the challenge of increased food production.
)-/7--
DURINGTHE HARVEST, from 200 to 300 rail wagons per day moved paddy to mills and marketing centres. This impressive feat of organization and co-operation characterized seven years of intensive agricultural effort in Tanjore. Under the overall direction of District Collector e.G. Rangabashyam, LA.S., thousands of agricultural workers participated in the project. Among other key figures were: M. Mukundan, project officer for the Intensive Agricultural District Programme (lADP) in Tanjore, who focused his attention on the training and supervision of extension workers; and G.N. Das, Joint Registrar of Co-operative Societies, whose efforts helped farmers obtain credits for seed, fertilizer and insecticides. Established in 1960, IADP's objective was to demonstrate the possibility of increasing food production at a rapid rate. Ford Foundation consultants offered assistance when Indian experience did not provide solutions to the special problems of rapid growth. But perhaps the leading heroes in the Tanjore drama were the cultivatorsthe cast of thousands who worked so diligently and enthusiastically to produce the bumper crop. Now they are planning for an even bigger crop in 1968.
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Collector C. Rangabashyam, centre, attended loading of I,OOOth wagon at Kumbakonam. During harvest peak 300 wagons were moved per day; some 700 lorries also hauled paddy. Awaiting transplanting, bundles of young plants, below, will produce next crop.
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As soon as a field A/ter ploughing
is harvested,
and application
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crop. While Tanjore enjoys good rain/all,
a vast irrigation system
women transplants paddy using rope as guide. Fast growing ADT-27
is also used.
seed will mature in 105 days.
University audiences throughout the U.S. are a prime target for Indian diplomat P.K. Banerjee. Articulate and well-informed, Dr. Banerjee is a persuasive speaker who has frequently discussed in his lectures the theme of "an alliance of values" between India and the United States.
FEW FOREIGN VISITORs-or for that matter few Americans-have seen as much of the United States in the last three years as has Dr. Purnendu Kumar Banerjee, Minister of the Indian Embassy and one of the most sought-after speakers in the Washington diplomatic corps. The statistics are impressive: over J 00,000 miles of travel in some thirty States; commencement addresses at six colleges and universities; major addresses at over 100 other forums. Twelve of Dr. Banerjee's speeches have been printed in the United States Congressional Record at the request of American Senators and Congressmen. Four American educational institutions have awarded him honorary degrees and five States have conferred honorary citizenship
on the Indian scholar-diplomat. "Historically," Dr. Banerjee told a Bucknell University audience last year, "no two nations so wide apart geographically have been so intimately connected as our two countries. " In many ways, Dr. Banerjee is a product of that close association. Educated in both countries (he holds advanced degrees from the University of Calcutta and New York University and was a fellow in international law at Harvard University), the Indian diplomat has had frequent opportunity to explore what he describes as "an alliance of values" between India and the United States. He likes to recall the history of the gavel used by the Vice President
AN ALLIANCE OF V ALVES
of the United States when he presides over the U.S. Senate. Made of ivory, it was presented to the people of the United States in 1954, on behalf of the people of India, by former President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. At the time of the presentation, President Lyndon B. Johnson, then a Senator, expressed his hope that "we can march together in a spirit of friendship and mutual trust and confidence." To Dr. Banerjee the gavel symbolizes a common commitment to liberty of the individual, to the rule of law and to religious freedom shared by the world's two largest democracies. One of Dr. Banerjee's favourite stories on himself concerns President Johnson's home State of Texas. After speaking in the city of Dallas
the Indian Minister was presented with a typical Texan cowboy hat. Wearing the wide-brimmed hat, he arrived at his next stop in Austin, the State capital. The reception committee at the airport searched in vain for the visiting diplomatuntil Dr. Banerjee, looking for all the world like a Texas cowboy, walked up and identified himself. Travelling to American campuses from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, to gatherings of businessmen, foreign affairs councils and citizens' groups throughout the nation, Dr. Banerjee has spoken forcefully and forthrightly on the issues as he sees them. "American intellectual and spiritual interest in India is tremendous," he says. He has often been surprised at how much his American audiences know about India. A New Mexico group recently questioned him in such detail following his address that he had to refer to the statistics he always carries with him for such occasions. Americans, he believes, are most concerned about India's food problem. "Americans have a tremendous sense of sharing," he explains. "But they also want to know what we are doing for ourselves." In farm areas, for example, he is likely to be plied with technical questions about fertilizers and yields. Dr. Banerjee attributes the greatly increased American interest in India to several factors, among them India's importance on the international scene; the impact of mass media which "light up the people's awareness of other parts of the world;" and the vast Indian presence on American campuses. In 1947, the diplomat points out, there were about 150 Indian students in
the United States. Today there are United States." "In international relations," Dr. some 8,OOO-in addition to 1,000 Indians on American faculties. With Banerjee adds, "India and America wide representation from other have disagreed on the means but countries, the American university not on the necessity to attain a campus now reflects an "interna- peaceful world order which facilitional atmosphere," he observes. tates non-violent change." "There is a tremendous internaAmong the bonds that unite India and the United States, he cites tional emphasis in the curriculum," a climate of academic freedom he adds. In his travels throughout the nourishing the individual's striving United States, Dr. Banerjee dis- for a better life for himself and his cusses the issues of the day from the fellow men. For only when the vantage point of his own personal rights of the individual are zealously experience. His message has been guarded, as they are in a free society, one in which Indians can take pride Dr. Banerjee warns, can a people -and one to which growing num- achieve greatness. The future of bers of Americans are listening with civilization, like its past, he reminds us, rests on freedom of the mind. interest and concern. "The diplomat's principal aim," A man of wide interests and he believes, "is and must be the thoughtful concern, Dr. Banerjee is achievement of international stabi- as articulate as he is informed. A lity and co-operation." listing of the titles of some of his Dr. Banerjee speaks with pride recent speeches reveals the range of of India's long diplomatic history, his interests: "Where the Mind Is dating back to the third century Free," "The Individual and SocieB.C. Addressing the graduating ty," "The Role of the Diplomat," class at Kansas Wesleyan University "An Approach to Peace through last year, he delighted every young' Disarmament," "China and Southgirl in his audience when he told east Asia," "Education for Internahow the Emperor Ashoka sent his tional Understanding." Two more, daughter Sanghamitra as India's currently in the making, should ambassador to the court of the arouse considerable interest, for his King of Ceylon. topics are the so-called "brainAs a former educator himself (he drain" problem, and the gap beserved on the Faculties of Arts and tween the generations, symptomized Law at the University of Calcutta), by the restlessness of youth throughDr. Banerjee emphasizes the impor- out the world. When he is not involved in the tance of education as "the best tool yet available to us to pro- numerous duties of his profession, Dr. Banerjee indulges in his favourmote understanding." From his many assignments as ite sports: bowling, tennis and swimIndia's representative at over two ming. He is an amateur photodozen international conferences, this grapher and a music lover with a fine scholar-diplomat speaks with first- collection of over 500 hours of hand knowledge of the vital impor- taped music. Whatever his protance of international co-operation, gramme for the day, there is one a theme that finds frequent expres- invariable: an hour of yoga. Dr. Banerjee looks forward to a sion in his speeches. He calls for better world, to a future bright tolerance of diversity-"Essentially diversity demands democracy." he with hope. "With freedom of mind, At White House receptionfor will add. And he urges an emphasis with reason as our guide," he the Indian Prime Minister in on that which unites rather than that argues, "it is entirely possible for us to discover a common ideal. Human which divides people. 1966Jrom left to right are Good relations between coun- civilization can continue, in my Ambassador Chester Bowles, tries, as between two individuals, Dr. judgment, only with our appreciaMrs. Gandhi, U.S. Secretary Banerjee points out, are based on tion of the fact that our diversities of State Dean Rusk, President proper understanding of each other. are the very foundation of a workLyndon Johnson, Mrs. Rusk, "Honest differences of opinion can- able international order." Dr. Banerjee, Ambassador Dr. Banerjee's life work is dedinot detract from unity of purpose," B.K. Nehru, Vice President he emphasizes. "An agreement to cated to the achievement of that Humphrey, and Mrs. Johnson. disagree is the hallmark of co-exist- goal, to the time-in Tagore's faIn addition to his duties in ence. It is, therefore, inevitable that mous words-when "the world has Washington, Dr. Banerjee also there have been honest differences not been broken up into fragments END delivers many lectures. of opinion between India and the by narrow domestic walls."
To A COUNTRY at war, the maintenance of its transport system is an essential and vital part of the concerted effort towards victory. If transport and communications break down, not only are much-needed supplies to the battle-front interrupted but internal trade is dislocated, local shortages are aggravated, the daily routine of life is upset and there is a general lack of stability. But in spite of nearly 1,300 attacks on the Vietnam Railway System (VNRS) by Viet Cong saboteurs during the last three years alone, the railway-or a large part of it-continues to operate successfully. In the first five months of 1967 it hauled 425,000 metric tons offreight and 116,000 passengers; the freight tonnage is equal to any full year's operation since 1955. The heaviest traffic is on the section of main line from Saigon eighty-one kilometres east to Long Khanh. One of the most scenic rides is from Thap Cham along an eighty-four-kilometre spur to the mountain resort of Dalat, capital of Tuyen Duc province. Thousands of vegetable growers and other small farmers use the railway to get their produce to the airfields and markets along the coast, and to return home with rice, clothing and other essential commodities. While the full economic impact of the railway (in which the U.S. has invested more than twenty-five million dollars since 1955) will not be felt until the line is in operation from Saigon to the northernmost point of Dong Ha, even now with less than 500 kilometres of track in use, it is a vital transportation link. With the stepping up of military offensives and pacification programmes by the South Vietnamese and their allies, the security situation along the line has improved. As compared with 941 sabotage attacks by the Viet Cong in 1965, there were 276 in 1966 and only thirty-seven in the first half of 1967. Even so, the Viet Cong still stage harassing incidents such as shooting at passing trains. "Sometimes it's like riding the Santa Fe during the Red Indian wars of the old West in the United States," said one American passenger. But it is significant that no railway crew has ever refused an assignment to run a train. Railway security is the joint responsibility of the Vietnamese army, the U.S. Military Assistance Command and South Korean forces. Every regular train carries a detachment of soldiers and a radio which can be used to call for help in case of attack. When a train carries passengers, four empty hopper cars are coupled directly behind the locomotive to protect the passengers if the locomotive is derailed. With most trains small, four-wheeled diesel-powered armoured cars, with a machine gun in the turret, are used. If a particularly important cargo is being carried, a light observation plane provides cover. Railway construction first started in Vietnam in 1885 and the last stretch was completed in 1936. Since then, however, the railway has experienced many vicissitudes. French colonial Vietnam fell under Japanese occupation during the Pacific War. From 1942 onwards Allied air attacks destroyed tracks and installations. With the return of the French in 1945, the communist-led Viet Minh systematically applied a scorched-earth policy and over the next nine years caused even more damage than all the Allied attacks during the war. After the Geneva Agreement of 1954 partitioning Vietnam, the VNRS made a concentrated effort at reconstruction and in August 1959 a train ran from Saigon to Hue for the first time in fifteen years. But again the country was at war, and this time it was the Viet Cong who were out to stop the trains. By November 1964 operations had come to a halt over most of the system, and the position was aggravated by typhoons and floods which washed away large parts of the track. Gradually the South Vietnamese troops and their allies fought their way back into district after district and the VNRS reached its present stage of reconstruction. Regardless of the hazards involved, the task of reconstruction proceeds unabated. The railway is not only of inestimable value to the war effort but is associated in the minds of the Vietnamese with order and stability. Its continued operation is a strong indicator that in most parts of South Vietnam people are leading more or less normal lives. Like people in other southeast Asian countries, they are developing their economic resources; the railway is of vital assistance to this national effort. END
No railway crew has ever refused an assignment to run a train despite such hazards as derailment by a Viet Cong mine, above. Inside the armoured car in a train, below, Vietnamese soldiers guard against attack. Left, some passengers ride on roof-tops to escape congestion.
With the 1968
u.s. presidential
campaign
alread~ gaining momentum, the stage is set for one of the most interesting and colourful political phenomena of our time. Comparisons will be made with the previous campaign, much of the excitement of which is captured in the following condensation of Theodore H. White's best-seller "The Making of the President-1964."
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to foresee, as the calendar turned the pages of the new year, just how great would be the Republican disaster of November to come. But the forecasts were already dark. All through the three transition years of Kennedy's leadership, as the nation moved from thepost-war world into the unnamed present, the Republican scenery had been alive with the restless comings and goings of men stalking or seeking a Presidential candidate. But what was abnormal, even before the death of John F. Kennedy, was the chaos that kept surfacing among Republicans more and more often as 1963 wore its way to the
end. The bitterness was of a new order of intensity; and it had begun within weeks after the election of 1960 had closed the truce of the Eisenhower years. The election of 1960 could have been called by no man a Republican disaster. The tiny, almost invisible margin of Democratic victory had made it the closest run in American history. But the very narrowness of the defeat had brought on Richard M. Nixon the most violent abuse of both wings of his Party-if he had just made this speech, they chanted, or taken this position, they complained, or adjusted his stance that mite, said both his enemies and former friends, victory might have been his. One should touch, briefly, on the difference between America's two great parties. The Democrats believe in government-government as an instrument to do things. Thus they can promise all their client groups with complete sincerity that, when elected, a Democratic government will do something to help each of the groups. These promises are often contradictory; and when Democrats win, they find their promises all too frequently paralysed in a Congress of
feuding Democrats whose public contracts defy each other. Yet, nonetheless, the Democrats are the party that guarantees government will do things. The Republicans' impossible dilemma is that they have never sorted out properly what it is that government should do and should not do-and at what level. Perhaps no political party should be asked to make an orderly philosophical sorting out of governmental responsibilities. But the Republicans' largest client group, business, wants the government to do nothing-to leave it alone; other client groups, chiefly inspired by the old Protestant ethic of individual salvation, feel morally that the individual must be left master of his own destiny. They campaign, generally, against government; the Democrats campaign, generally, for government. By the autumn of 1963 bitterness within the Republican Party had reached a condition of morbid intensity, and battle lines were clearly drawn for struggle. One must set the stage carefully to see what was about to happen. Each of the two sides had ranged the other and had given the other a name of contempt: on the one side were "the primitives" and on the other "the Eastern Establishment." Both names are corruptions of reality. But they are convenient shorthand for describing a twenty-year period of politics, from 1940 to 1960,
of the Establishment, was beginning to grow larger and larger. It was changing, too, in the West, where new names of which they had never heard were rising. It was changing most dramatically with the echo of a man named Barry Goldwater, who gave them the deft proper, an outright challenge, a taunting enmity which never had they experienced before. Slowly, as they came into the autumn of 1963, they became aware that if Barry Goldwater meant what he said, and Nelson Rockefeller meant what he said, then the Party was on collision course.
during which the Eastern Establishment dominated the national machinery of the Republican Party and its major governorships, while the primitives dominated its Congressional machinery and set its national lawmaking posture. It is the dominant Republican element of the Establishment that concerns. us here-for, as the curtain rose on the events of 1964, it was these men who apparently held the power in their Party. For an unbroken twenty years the ~stablishment of the East Coast had dominated the conventions of the Republican Party; in any floor fight it had been able to prevail by finding beachheads of Midwestern Republican Governors about whom other Midwestern groups could be led to rally. The Establishment Republicans were content to let the primitive element write the record of the Party in Congress, if they co~ld choose the Executive candidate and thus set the image of the Party. In 1964 they were to find, too late, no single ,Midwestern progressive to join them and frustrate Goldwater. The Party was changing. It was changing at home in New York, where Nelson Rockefeller, never a favourite
world; he was one of the most stubborn men in the world; he was also one of the most high-principled. And he was rough. His enemies called him, quite simply, the most ruthless man in politics. But what in other men would be simple arrogance was in Rockefeller the direct and abrupt expression of motives which, since he knew them to be good, he expected all other men to accept as good also. Principle defined, politically, the type of candidate the Rockefeller men had to run-a hard-line foreignpolicy man, committed to stiffening America against Communism and increasing its military wallop. Yet, at the same time, a man who supported the Test Ban Treaty and the United Nations. He was for the most rigidly balanced Federal Budget and sound fiscal policy; yet he was for Medicare, and in his State budget, aid to education had doubled in his six years of office; State college scholarships had tripled. It was difficult to enclose Nelson Rockefeller in any neat political pigeonhole except that he yearned for the post of President, that he was supremely convinced that he could direct the problems of the United States, and that his talent,
The crew that Nelson Rockefeller took into battle was one of the most elaborate ever to enter political war in America in modern times. ' Tempered by the experience of its 1960 clash with Richard M. Nixon and beefed up with new talent, the Rockefeller staff of 1964 was a thing of splendour. Lavishly funded, high-minded, shrewdly deployed, enthusiastic and tough, this team had been put together over three years of effort. By the autumn of 1963 the planners had begun to grapple with their two major problems. The first was the nature of their hero. Their hero was one of the wealthiest men in the
continued
energy and experience made him obviously one of the rare men fully equal to the great task. His problem as he saw it was not how to manage the United States but how to get the Republicans to nominate him and let him try. Which brings us to the second problem of the Rockefeller campaign-his personal life. For one can no more discuss the Republican politics of 1964 without dealing with Nelson Rockefeller's divorce and remarriage than one can di.scuss English Constitutional development without touching on the stormy marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. It would be good if the private lives of public figures could be sealed off from their political records, and their leadership discussed as an abstract art in the use of men by other men. The politics of an open democracy, however, dictates otherwise. Men and women both vote, and they choose a leader by what they catch of his personality in the distortion of quick headlines. Yet the private lives of public figures are as three-dimensional, as complicated, as unyielding to interpretation by snap judgment as the lives of ordinary people. And the divorce and remarriage of Nelson Rockefeller offer a classic example of an immensely complicated tangle of personal tragedies distorted by quick summary into oversimplified scandal and blame. If Goldwater was later to be hung on the "bomb issue" and "Social Security," Rockefeller was to be hung first on the "morality issue." One was to hear more of "morality" in the campaign of 1964 than ever before in American life, but Rockefeller .was the first to suffer from a virtually uninformed public discussion of his life. At least two of his most intimate advisers-George Hinman and Emmet Hughes-pointed out to the New York Governor that if he married again he would be putting his chances of nomination at an extreme risk. To which Rockefeller replied-so be it. He would not give up the woman he loved, even for the Presidency. He would stand openly with her-and morality demanded that he make the matter public, as directly and as quickly as possible. It was a decision frankly faced, morally acceptedbut politically perilous. The frank and open acceptance of a new marriage was a breach with the general indulgence of the hypocrisy of politics, and in Rockefeller's case was particularly hazardous. As a politician, he appealed to the mind-not the emotions. No counter reserve of emotion was available to him as now the emotions of millions of women across America were engaged against him. With the news of the remarriage, the Rockefeller operation staggered. None of the conventional gambits of politics could now work. Rockefeller's power in the Republican Party had never rested on his liberal politics. It had rested on his sock at the polls, the fact that he
could get votes. There was, for Rockefeller, no other court of appeal but the people. That had been Kennedy's route in 1960-to appeal directly to people at the primaries, over the heads of politicians. This is why primaries are important. But to appeal to people he must be an open candidate. Thus, on November 7th, two weeks before the assassination, Rockefeller announced from his chambers in Albany that he was an open candidate for the Presidency-and flew off to New Hampshire to begin his primary campaign there. Two weeks later John F. Kennedy died. I saw Rockefeller about ten days after that, and he was in a reflective mood. He was as cold and analytical about his own candidacy as if he were examining a case exposed for surgery. The chances were slin\. No one, he
/
Rockefeller's divorce and remarriage "offer a classic example of an immensely complicated tangle of personal tragedies distorted. . . into oversimplified scandal and blame."
felt, would vote for him unless a national crisis forced them to do so. The new Mrs. Rockefeller did not want him to run for the Presidency; no one, in fact, wanted him to run except himself. If the people needed him, they would take him. The Kennedy assassination had shocked the country; Rockefeller felt it wanted leadership-strong, visible continuity of leadership. But did it want him? Was this public turning to him an ephemeral reaction or something deeper? And since it was obvious that the politicians did not want him, he must, as Kennedy had done, show them his muscle at the polls, in the primaries. This was the only way. There were three critical primary appeals to the people-in New Hampshire on March 10th, in Oregon on May 15th, in California on June 2nd. He must fight in all of these-so he was off to barnstorm New Hampshire. The Eastern leaders watched Rockefeller's headstrong course in consternation. They were convinced he could not win. But so long as he put himself forward as their champion against Goldwater's primitives, no one else would enter the lists; they insisted that this would split the Eastern forces. Many did not like Rockefeller -some disliked him personally for what they thought was his arrogance; others disliked him simply for his family name. But now, added to their dislike was the bone-sure feeling that he would lose-and, in losing, forfeit the nomination of their Party to Goldwater. Many who had not dared to oppose Rockefeller before now found, in his remarriage, a convenient pretext for open opposition.
Yet who else was there? The choices were few. The first name to come to mind was that of Richard M. Nixon. But Nixon's name brought a wrinkling of the nose in Manhattan. He was acceptable, yes. But his campaign of 1960 had left so many internal scars in the Party that it would be difficult to make him even a compromise choice-Rockefeller froze at mention of Nixon's name, and Goldwater had contempt for him. Besides, Nixon had run for Governor of California in 1962 and lost, thus adding to his odour of a loser. There was George W. Romney, Governor of Michigan. Romney had as yet shown no large appetite for the Presidency, and his first-year record as Governor of the unruly Michigan legislature had ensnared him. so it seemed. in provincial futilities. Then there was Henry Cabot Lodge. Henry Cabot Lodge has. to be sure, all the devotion to public service and the great name to make him a certified member of the Establishment-but with a New England twist. Lodge had the old New England disdain for the New York money men, plus a manner of aristocratic haughtiness that chilled even the oldest New Yorkers. There was no doubt that money could be raised for Lodge in downtown New York (as it was to be later), but not much enthusiasm. He was like medicine-good for you, but hard to take. Which left William Warren Scranton, -Governor of Pennsylvania. As he first appeared on the national stage, he was without doubt the most attractive new face on the Republican scene. Lean, handsome, young, polished, endowed with a magnificent wife and four handsome children, he had the quality of a Kennedy-whose friend, indeed, he had been. Moreover, in his first year as Governor of Pennsylvania, Scranton had written a startlingly effective record. Much more conservative than Rockefeller, Scranton was different from Goldwater too. He had served a year in the State Department and had a finesse in his conversation about foreign affairs that came not only from reading but from an understanding of reality. No breath of scandal touched him. His war record was outstanding. He was an absolute gentleman, but he had proven himself a major, gut-fighting campaigner. Barry Goldwater's announcement came as a surprise to no one. But who was Barry Goldwater? And what was the Goldwater movement? For three and a half years, from the tock of the gavel that closed the Republican convention of 1960, politicians and journalists had recognized the "Goldwater movement" as a new force in American politics. The term "Goldwater movement" was an annoying one. It would have been more convenient to call it a Goldwater campaign or a Goldwater draft. But "move-
ment" was the proper word. The wordless resentments, angers, frustrations, fears and hopes that were shaping this force were something new and had welled up long before Goldwater himself took his Presidential chances seriously. Always, to the very end of the campaign, two almost independent elements were involved: the movement-and the candidate himself. The movement was something deep, a change or a reflection of change in American life that qualified as more than politics-it was history. Goldwater's favburite style in politics is exhortation; he is a moralist, not an organizer. He preaches; he does not direct. He arouses emotion-he does not harness it. Organization was to be the work of other men, for it was almost three years before Goldwater was invited to claim leadership of the Goldwater movement. What these men could see and could sense was the response and emotional echo to Goldwater's words. They did not think of themselves as primitives. America is changing so rapidly that the principles Americans were taught in school twenty or thirty years ago are challenged at every turn of event or development. What is valid of the old morality and what is not? Across the country, from Maine to California, families and individuals, cherishing the old virtues and seeing them destroyed or ignored or flouted, were in ferment. This mood was there; but it could be tested only by organization. And though Goldwater himself was not yet willing to test by premature organization the emotions that his incantations aroused, others were. For these were authentic grass-roots American emotions, and by the summer of 1961 the map of politics was sprouting with self-winding ,political groups which attached their names to Barry Goldwater without any authority from him to do so. The early months of 1963 were difficult months in which to generalize on politics; Kennedy had lost three Congressmen, but gained four Senators; there was no national mandate of any kind, conservative or liberal; Rockefeller was still the leader in the polls for the Republican nomination . Yet, since nothing stands still, it became more and more obvious that the South was the region of the country in most violent disturbance; and the most impressive and remarkable event of the elections of 1962 was the phenomenal showing that the Republicans had made in the State of Alabama, coming within 6,800 votes of capturing a Senate seat. There was a Southern strategy to be shaped-if the Republican Party did indeed want to court the South. On February 17th, 1963, a committee of Goldwater supporters met and decided to go open and national: they would form the National Draft Goldwater Committee. Goldwater could not be indifferent to this; and, indeed. he was not. Not only was there quite evidently a I
â&#x20AC;˘
continued
powerful army of the faithful, marshalled and waiting for him to seize the baton, but events were changing the climate of politics too. The Negro revolution that had begun in Birmingham in the spring of 1963 was now spreading like wildfire all across the South. Moreover, Nelson Rockefeller's remarriage in May had erased his political lead-or so said, at least, all the public-opinion polls. Whether he wanted to be or not, Goldwater was by late summer and early autumn of 1963 the foremost candidate for the Republican nomination. He had not planned it this way.-But there it was. Earlier in 1963, when asked whether he was really running for President or not, he had replied, "I'm doing all right just pooping around." It is difficult for anyone, even Goldwater, to say when he decided to run. Essentially, Goldwater thought of himself, and still does, not as a man prepared to or even desiring to run and administer the government of the United States, but as leader of a cause. This cause is precious to him; his loyalty to it is sincere and unblemished. It is the cause of conservative revival and puritan virtues in the United States of America. Through 1962 Goldwater toured the country. He could sense the same support for him in the upper hierarchy of the Party in the West and Midwest that was being discovered at the grass roots. But the Presidency, as a job, still seemed as remote to him as the day he had discussed it with John F. Kennedy in 1961. Goldwater had gone to visit President Kennedy at the White House on the dismal day of the Cuban Bay of Pigs disaster. As Goldwater tells the story, the President's secretary urged him to enter the great Oval Office and wait for the President there. "He came in smoking that little cigar and he looked at me and he said, 'Do you want this job?' I said, 'No, not in my right mind.' So he said, 'I thought I had a good thing going up to this point'." It was in the July-August period of 1963, apparently, that decision began to firm in his mind-the Civil Rights Bill was now before Congress; the Negro unrest was growing; Rockefeller seemed out of the race. But Goldwater, as a candidate, proceeded cautiously. He had a sure seat in the Senate coming up for re-election again in 1964. Should he risk that in a long sho~ at the Presidency? By November of 1963 there was no doubt in the mind of Goldwater that he was going to run. For Goldwater, John F. Kennedy was history's perfect opponent-they would debate the issues up and down the country, they would draw the line between the conservative and liberal philosophies. Kennedy would probably win; but Goldwater felt certain of carrying both South and West. And then came the assassination. The assassination shocked Goldwater as it shocked every American by its brutality and senselessness. More than that-Goldwater
- had liked John F. Kennedy, a liking that was reciprocated. Now, after the assassination, he was faced with running against another man, a Southerner, of an entirely different sort. Goldwater is unsure himself exactly when he made the decision or how. He was in his den, he recalls, probably sitting at his desk when, according to his own account, he told himself, "You've got to do it." He told his wife first. "Honey," he recalls saying, "what do you think about my running for the Presidency?" And she replied, "Well, if that's what you want to do, you go ahead and do it. I don't particularly want you to, but I'm not going to stand in your way." On the morning of Friday, January 3rd, 1964, he walked outside and welcomed the nation to Be-Nun-IKin, which in Navajo means "House on the Hill," then said that he was openly seeking the Republican Presidential nomination "because of the principles in which I believe and because I'm convinced that millions of Americans share my beliefs in those principles." What those principles were he did not state at the moment. How many shared them remained to be determined. How he planned to translate them to the voters in the autumn of 1964 was obscure; and how his opponents, both Republican and Democratic, would define them in the heat of battle was unknown. But with this the contest was now formally joined.
Chapter The Primaries: Duel to the Death PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES are always savage. But the Presidential primaries of 1964 were to exceed in savagery and significance any other in modern politics. In 1960 a duel in the Democratic primaries had created two heart-catching national personalitiesKennedy and -Humphrey; but one remembers their 1960 duel as a matter of romance and, despite its bitterness, for the attitude of chivalrous respect the duelists showed towards each other. The primaries of 1964 were a Republican duel-and the arena of a far grander and more terrible clash. When the duel was over, the Republican Party was so desperately wounded that its leaders were fitter candidates for political hospitalization than for governmental responsibility. The map that spread before the duelists of 1964, Rockefeller and Goldwater, was much the same as that offered to Kennedy <l;ndHumphrey-sixteen States from coast to coast, plus the District of Columbia, which
invited them to enter the lists. Of these, three-New Hampshire, Oregon and California-were chosen for direct clash; and of these three, New Hampshire, with its date set at March 10th, was to be the curtain raiser in the Presidential drama. New Hampshire was an excellent place for a reporter to begin a study of the campaign and the Republicans. New Hampshire Republicans are as good a crosssection of the old-fashioned Republican faith as the nation offers anywhere. One could see foreshadowed all the agony of indecision of millions of Republicans whose conscience, or fear, later in the autumn of 1964, would cause them to abandon the party of their fathers. Good political research might have told out-ofstaters (as it did tell Nelson Rockefeller) other essentials of New Hampshire politics. It might have revealed, for example, that only three States of the Union (Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri) have a higher percentage of old folks than New Hampshire-and that this State, to which so many older people retire, was no State in which anyone should challenge the Social Security System. Good research might have reminded outsiders (as it did remind Nelson Rockefeller) that Hampshiremen are extremely proud of their attachment to the U.N.-in the spring of 1945, as the United States approached the decision to join the international body, the New Hampshire Legislature insisted that all citizens at their annual town meetings should vote on whether the United States ought to join such an organization or not; and New Hampshire voted twenty to one for the Unite<;iNations. Good research might, finally, have pointed out to both Goldwater and Rockefeller that New Hampshire Republicans are different from New Hampshire Democrats. The Republicans are overwhelmingly Protestant, while the Democrats are overwhelmingly Catholic. Rockefeller had first come to New Hampshire to open a new headquarters in Nashua. He arrived in his F27 Fairchild, a twin-engine turboprop, about two o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and the usual welcoming group was at the Manchester airport to greet him. His schedule that day called for a reception outside Manchester; a visit to the offices of the Nashua Telegraph (which later came out against him); a street tour; the opening of a new store-front headquarters in Nashua (one of ten in New Hampshire) with a speech followed by questions and answers; an address to the Nashua Chamber of Commerce, followed by more questions and answers; then home. What was more important than questions and answers, however, was the quality of conversation on the edges of a Rockefeller rally. The people who had come had come not because they loved Rockefeller; they were seeking an alternate to Goldwater. For in less than three weeks since he had first come to New Hampshire, Barry Goldwater had frightened the Hampshiremen, and they
were now examining Rockefeller as a way out of their puzzlement. One picked up the echo from a Concord industrialist who had begun the campaign as a Goldwater man, but: "If he doesn't mean what he says, then he's just trying to get votes; and if he does mean what he says-then the man is dangerous. So I quit." On this first trip to New Hampshire in January, only three weeks after the campaign had opened, one already had a sense of Goldwater's doom-but also an illusory sense of Rockefeller's progress. It was progress at tremendous cost and exertion, but, nonetheless, progress. Rockefeller had announced his entry into the New Hampshire primaries early in November at a time when his private polls were showing what the public polls also displayed: that in New Hampshire he could hope for only twenty per cent of Republican votes. Rockefeller was campaigning hard all around the country and governing New York at the same time. The sc~edule was to get worse. But he was allotting no less than twenty-eight days of campaigning to New Hampshire's approximately 100,000 registered Republicans, and he had been gaining. He was drawing ahead the way he wanted toby pinning Goldwater on issues, by forcing the antagonist to utter in public and in print those views and opinions which, for months thereafter, Goldwater was to waste his efforts in explaining away. The real story in New Hampshire, it was apparent after a short jaunt with Rockefeller, was the Goldwater story-for the man was being destroyed as much by his own candour as by his antagonist's counter-attack. And the New Hampshire episode of the Goldwater campaign deserves attention, for never thereafter was he to recover from it. For mismanagement, blundering and sheer naivete, Goldwater's New Hampshire campaign was unique in the campaigns I have seen. He had entered the conservative Granite State with the reputation of the nation's Number One Conservative. But by January he had shocked New Hampshiremen into realizing that there were several kinds of conservatives-and that he was not their kind. There is no mystery to the story. It all happened very naturally-but it was probably the most painful lesson ever learned publicly in national politics. No man runs for President of the United States but what, instantly on his announcement, he becomes a public personality on a scale and with an exposure for which no previous experience can prepare him. Goldwater is a man as dedicated as Rockefeller, and as forthright in his answers. But where Rockefeller errs in discussing a complicated world in all its complications, Goldwater errs in a more serious way; for each complication he has a direct and simple answer. His candour is the completely unrestrained candour of old men and little children. In New Hampshire, Goldwater would say exactly what he thought, as he had always thought it-then continued
shake with fury at its quotation in the newspapers, then at its analysis, its re-examination, its full-blown elaboration in the national columns and commentaries. He was offering New Hampshire the gospel of the true faith, hard money and individual rights. Here, if anywhere, it should get sympathetic hearing. And yet, day by day when he read of himself in the papers, it was another Goldwater he was reading about, a wild man seeking to abolish Social Security and go to war with Russia. It was Rockefeller, of course, who destroyed Goldwater-not out of malice but, at this stage, out of the need of his own campaign to score through on New Hampshire conservatives and win them to his own Presidential cause. If Rockefeller could expose Goldwater, he might bring them to his own standard. By the end of January he had, by every poll, succeeded. Yet by January every sampler of public opinion had become aware of the quaking instability of Repul]lican loyalties, that questing and groping for a Republican way out which was to continue through spring and into the autumn elections themselves. For Rockefeller was not only a New York liberal (and a New Hampshire liberal is several degrees to the right of a New York conservative) but a big spender; and, however much Rockefeller explained the huge New York State $2,830 million budget to Hampshiremen (who brook neither general sales tax nor income tax in their State), he could not explain away the fact that one hell of a lot of money was being spent in New York. Moreover, if Goldwater could not escape the burden of his candour, Nelson Rockefeller could not escape the burden of his own honour. As a woman at one of his rallies expressed herself, "Oh, he sounds all right-it's just his family life, if you know what I mean." It was, not the divorce so much as the remarriage. What would have happened had Henry Cabot Lodge's name not been entered in the New Hampshire race, no one can guess. It is this reporter's opinion that Nelson Rockefeller would have won by a flat majority, gone on to a larger majority in Oregon and then probably carried California to defeat Goldwater conclusively. One should have space to tell the Lodge campaign in full; for the Lodge campaign had little, if anything, to do with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in far-off Viet-Nam. The Lodge campaign as seen in the field was a madcap adventure, the gayest, the happiest, the most lighthearted enterprise of the entire year 1964. Its entrepreneurs were four of the most attractive amateurs ever to trigger a political upheaval. Their operations, even in retrospect, seem so simple and childlike that to compare them with the operations of genuine professionals is impossible. On Friday, January 10th, they drove to Concord, New Hampshire, to sample the atmosphere. Amafeurs all, they thought it would be "fun" just to try. They stopped that very after-
noon, hired an empty store for $400, put a deposit down for a telephone, borrowed some furniture and returned to Boston. The following Monday they hired a signpainter to paint a huge sign saying LODGE FOR PRESIDENT over their headquarters. And they were in business: Their first step was to take an old statewide list of registered Republicans and send out 96,000 letters inviting the recipients to write Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Saigon, c/o Concord Headquarters, pledging support. The response to the first direct-mail appeal was unbelievable-no less than 8,600 pledges of support bouncing back by return mail. Rockefeller had dislodged New Hampshire's conservatives from Goldwater; they had
"Was the Lodge boom real? Could a write-in candidate, 10,000 miles away, managed by amateurs, beat two highly organized campaigns so profoundly serious in meaning and intent?" paused briefly to consider the New York Governor; now, here was a new consideration. And as the four young people sensed the response, they began in February to build towards a climax. The first mail had brought names; names could be organized by town and county into volunteer groups; a second mailing ("Pick Up Two More Votes") brought an even greater response. Multiply the almost 9,000 original pledges by three-and one gets 26,000 votes. Out of an expected total vote of 100,000, this was it could be delivered. Lodge was not on enormous-if the ballot, and his name would have to be written in. Out went a third mailing that included a clear sample ballot with fine red markings showing exactly how to write in the name of a candidate on the ballot. Meanwhile, in an odd and completely unplanned syncopation, the Lodge campaign bounced about in the press. At each mailing, at each new mobilization of volunteers, there would be a burst of news stories by correspondents who.had already written themselves out on Goldwater and Rockefeller. Each new effort would be measured by the public-opinion analysts, who would, all through February, find a rising tide for Lodge. The story grew and grew, swelled and swelled. But was the Lodge boom real? Could a write-in candidate, 10,000 miles away, managed by amateurs, beat two such highly organized campaigns so profoundly serious in meaning and intent? On Tuesday, March 10th, New Hampshire enjoyed an old-fashioned New England blizzard. New Hampshire's polls closed at seven P.M. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the only town in the State that uses voting machines, is the first sizable centre to report. By 7: 18,
Walter Cronkite announced over the Columbia Broadcasting System's television network that Henry Cabot Lodge had won New Hampshire. Halfan hour later the predictions were precise, only a fraction off the final count: Henry Cabot Lodge, 33,000; Barry Goldwater, 20,700; Nelson Rockefeller, 19,500; Richard M. Nixon (also a write-in), 15,600. It was Lodge now who commanded the headlines. Nixon was silent. And the next move was up to Goldwater and Rockefeller. Goldwater had been as seriously wounded by the New Hampshire results as Rockefeller; he had started higher and fallen farther. Now, Goldwater decided that he would skip the next primary round-Oregon-entirely and concentrate all effort in the final round, California. Goldwater knew he must have one win at the open polls to prove to the Party that his support could reach beyond hard-core conservatives and zealots to ordinary people who would vote at the polls in November. Thus, for Goldwater, all effort was now to be concentrated on California-let Lodge have the victory in Oregon which seemed certain. For Rockefeller the decision was harder. Yet of all the qualities that Nelson Rockefeller possesses which earn him the respect, sometimes grudging, of other men, the chiefis courage. And it was Rockefeller courage that was to dominate the Oregon primary. For Rockefeller, the name of the game was now Impact. From New Hampshire on, there was no longer any realistic chance of his becoming the Republican nominee. But to veto the choice of Goldwater, he must prove before the convention assembled that Republican voters would not have Goldwater on any terms-West, no more than East. Rockefeller received the New Hampshire returns at his Fifth Avenue apartment-and at five o'clock the next morning was up, aching from defeat, and off at seven A.M. to the West Coast to show his Oregon and California troops that he was still fighting.
Perhaps it was the very hopelessness of the outlook that now. charged Rockefeller's effort with warmth. Only twice was he to stir emotion in his 1964 campaign -d uring the Oregon campaign and then in his climactic appearance at the San Francisco Convention. And Oregon is a small enough State to permit such direct contact-with only 1,826,000 people (1963 estimate), Oregon is far closer in texture to tiny New Hampshire (with 627,000) than to its giant neighbour, California (17,590,000). Now, at this juncture, he developed the term "mainstream" that was to irritate Goldwater so badly and later be borrowed by the Democrats to hammer the Arizonan. For if Rockefeller had been boxing in New Hampshire, now he was slugging. As for himself? A little girl in the sun at the Raleigh Hills Plaza in a Portland suburb asked him why he wanted to be President. And he replied, "That's a good question. I'll tell you. I decided to run for the Presidency because I really care about America, about freedom-I think every citizen has a responsibility to do his or her best if we are going to help keep a free society strong. If you really wanted to have a say in the future of this country, the only way to do it is to get into elective office because that's where the decisions are made, and I want to have a voice where decisions are made."One could sense the indecision as sharply in Oregop as one had felt it in New Hampshire. Only this time it worked the other way. From a forty-six-per cent lead in early April the Lodge margin began to fade. It is difficult to tell in a primary where a shift in voting patterns begins-for a primary involves no party loyalties, and there are no stones to anchor the voters' moorings. Oregon's polIs close at eight; but by 8 :03 early returns were already filtering through the National Broadcasting Company's calculators clearly enough for that network to announce that Nelson Rockefeller was the winner of the Oregon primary. It was on to California for the final phase of the duel in the sun.
It was as if the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass had planned the elections of 1964-all should win, all should have a prize. Lodge should have New Hampshire, Rockefeller should have Oregon, Goldwater should have California-and Lyndon Johnson should' have the country. Yet it was not quite that clear when Rockefeller arrived in Oregon to campaign as a hopeless loser. Lodge's picture was now on the magazine covers across the country; Lodge led every poll from coast to coast. In the aftermath of the New Hampshire victory, Oregon Republicans shifted as the nation's Republicans shifted, and in the first Harris samplings of Oregon showed thus: for Lodge, forty-six per cent; for Nixon, seventeen per cent; for Goldwater, fourteen per cent; for Rockefeller, thirteen per cent.
No State could have been selected for more dramatic effect to climax the Republican primary duel of 1964 than California-for the history of California Republicans had preceded or mirrored for three quarters of a century every stroke and counter-stroke of the civil war which rages in the Republican Party nationally. This makes for unstable politics. But this instability is further exaggerated by a unique and dominant local condition: California is a State of newcomers, the last stop of the westering impulse of American movement. In the single generation from 1930 to 1964, California has more than tripled its population. This growth has resulted in one of the most triumphant demonstrations of American democratic achievement-no other political community in the world has undergone so violent a population' explosion in so short a period of time and continued
simultaneously provided great schools for its children, great roads for its cars, good houses, shelter, hospitals and universities for all who need them while, throughout the upheaval, always preserving the dignities oflaw and order in freedom .. It is only natural that their new community should be racked by political fevers unknown elsewhere, for the emotions of these restless newcomers are rocked and tormented and confused by a questing for the certainties and safe moorings that they lost in their homelands. But not since Upton Sinclair's EPIC campaign of 1934 have these emotions played so great a role in the basic politics of the State as they did in the Republican primary of 1964 when Goldwater and Rockefeller squared off against each other. The Goldwater campaign was easier to describe than the Rockefeller campaign. At 4848 Wilshire Boulevard, an adobe building ornamented with blue-and-gold Goldwater banners hummed with activity. Less than a mile down Wilshire rose the Los Altos Apartments. And here, in the fourth-floor corner suite once occupied by film star Greta Garbo, the national command of the Goldwater team had arrived in force for strategy meetings. And, lastly, with no definable office anywhere"there was a third force with a purpose of its own. This was the force dominated by a pale, thin and tense young man named Robert Gaston, undisputed boss of the Young Republicans of California. Gaston, thirty-four, had made the Young Republicans of California into the most severely disciplined body of youngsters the State had ever seen. Intelligent, eloquent, purposeful, Gaston is without doubt the most engaging of the dedicated right-wingers in American politics. What volunteers can do has never been better demonstrated than by the combined Goldwater-Gaston forces. March 4th had been the opening of filing in California, and 13,000 signatures were needed to qualify a candidate for Statewide ballot. Thirty days were allowed for signature collection, and the first candidate to collect the required number would occupy first place on the ballot (estimated by some politicians to be worth five per cent of the vote alone). Goldwater volunteers had set up an "Operation Q" (for Quiet) for the March 4th opening. By early morning they were ringing doorbells all over California; by noon they had collected 36,000 signatures; within two days, 85,000. Rockefeller men, by contrast, had to pay for signature collecting and required weeks to get 44,000, of which twenty-two per cent were found invalid. (In Orange County, Robert Gaston's troops were so pleased by their quick success that when they found out that Rockefeller's organizers were paying their workers fifty cents per signature, they mobilized and collected 7,000 more signatures for Rockefeller-and turned the money over to the Goldwater campaign !) Text continued on page 29
The President's Home In each U.S. Presidential election, the candidates may subscribe to different political, economic and social faiths, but all of them have one thing in common: their sights are set unwaveringly on a white-pillared house in Washington, D.C. This is the goal, the prize fought for so bitterly, the seat of what is perhaps the most powerful political office in the world. But the White House, right, is many other things as well. It is, of course, the nerve centre of American Government. It is the home of the American President-a
home that he and his
family must share, in a sense, with the rest of the nation. It is a museum of national treasures which attracts more than two million tourists each year. It is America's official hospitality centre, where heads of state are entertained. The portfolio of pictures starting on the next eight pages shows the manyfaceted "life" of the White House.
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A museum of national treasures... an elegant setting for the arts.
History haunts the halls of the White House with a thousand and one memories of the men and women who lived there. Its walls display a remarkable collection of portraits of former Presidents and their wives, many of them in knee breeches and crinoline gowns. At left, schoolboys admire the paintings and early American furnishings of the Red Room.
The arts have been an integral part of White House life ever since a piano was installed in the mansion in 1800. The first White House Festival of the Arts in 1965 gathered together 400 composers, musicians, artists, actors and writers. Above, the Harkness Ballet of New York during a 1965 performance on a portable stage erected in the East Room.
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visited the White House. But not
chiefs visited President Coolidge;
White House south lawn lends pomp
all visitors are important political
President Hoover received aviatrix
and pageantry
figures. A giant and two midgets
Amelia Earhart; and Kennedy's gr
of welcome for a visiting head of
from the Ringling Brothers circus once
interest in the arts brought cellist
state. Over the years, world leaders
called on President Harding who also
Pablo Casals to the White House f
like lawaharlal
greeted the co-discoverer of radium,
the first time since 1904, when he
Madame Curie. A delegation of Sioux
had played for Theodore Roosevelt.
Guard of honour spread out on the to formal rites
Nehru, Winston
Churchill and Charles de Gaulle have
Social life flows on ... but the care
of the presidency never cease.
Entertainment
at the White House
goes on at many levels-state
dinners,
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glittering diplomatic receptions, informal coffee sessions and parties for under-privileged children. Left, in the sunny sitting-hall upstairs Mrs. Johnson meets newly-arrived ambassadors'
wives at tea. Despite
all the social life, however, the father of the family
is never
completely free of the burden of his high office, and cares pursue the President even to his pillow. Above, a file marked ÂŤNight Reading" and a bedside, push-button phone keep him in touch with pressing problems.
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From his desk, President Johnson
mans the controls of vital and r-flung activities. For it is at
his desk that the decision-making
rocess of government
has to end
with a ' Yes' or 'No' to a hundred
uestions. But before the decisions
re made, there are reports to be
ead, opinions to be heard,
ackground information
to be sifted.
Even within his home the President
s exposed to the full glare of
ublicity, for Americans have always
hown an intense proprietory
interest
n the man to whom they can offer
o higher honour, greater power or
ougher job. And their interest
n the man is accompanied by their
nterest in the White House. As
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "I
ever forget that I live in a house
wned by the American people."
he real estate value of the White
House is estimated to be more
han $60 million. But to the people
f America it is more than wood,
tone and steel-it
f national freedom
is the symbol' and liberty.
The view of the California campaign from the Rockefeller encampment was entirely different. California was to have eighty-six delegates and eighty-six alternates at the Republican Convention; and California Republicans would be offered, in the primary, a Goldwater slate and a Rockefeller slate, winner take all. The purpose of political campaigns is to gain attention first; then, with attention caught, win voters to identify with the candidate's personality or goals. And nothing attracts attention more than victory. Until the Oregon victory, despite all efforts, Rockefeller had lailed to score through on California's attention. But with his Oregon victory he overnight scored through on an audience that his unlimited resources had hitherto been unable to reach. And with the attention of California finally fixed on Rockefeller, there came again one of those giant emotional swings that marked the rending effect of the Republican civil war all through 1964. It was useless trying to measure the swing by talking to individual voters, for in the final stages of any campaign, voter polling gives only feedback of what the candidates and their propaganda machines have drummed out. As the blows of the two rivals grew more punishing, as the Republicans in California realized that in their State no other names on the ballot gave them an escape hatch from choice, they would shift almost day by day in their loyalties. Rockefeller had come into California from Oregon, flush and vibrant and buoyed by his Oregon victory. But now he was barnstorming the State from end to end, from Disneyland in the south to the High Sierra mountains in the north, shaking hands at receptions of as many as 7,000 or 8,000 people in a few hours, speaking from early-morning take-off to late-evening reception. Goldwater, too, had learned. He was no longer, as in New Hampshire, exposing himself in gatherings where scores of reporters could snatch a conversational hyperbole from a question-and-answer period and make a headline of it. Rarely available now to the press, he appeared on the platform at great gatherings, concentrating in Southern California, barnstorming not on issues but on fundamentals like patriotism, decency, liberty and law and order. Here in Southern California, where the demonology of the primitives reaches its crispest black and white, the Gold-
water volunteers were battling for the Lord against the twin evils of Eastern labour-union conspiracy and Eastern liberal money. If he could not prove in Southern California that conservatives were a majority of Republicans, he could not prove it anywhere. California Republicans voted on Tuesday., June 2nd, 1964. No electorate had had a clearer choice given it. V oting starts at seven in the morning in California and closes at seven in the south, at eight in the north. Within twenty minutes the computers had done their work. By 7 :20while voters of the Bay Area around San Francisco were still trudging to the polls-the Columbia Broadcasting System announced that Barry Goldwater would carry California Republicans by approximately fifty-three per cent. (Final count: 51.6 per cent or 1,120,403 to 1,052,053). Nelson Rockefeller was to carry Northern California, but the restless people of Southern California, seeking older and more stable attitudes, were to reverse this decisively. And with that, the Republican voters had been consulted on their choice for the last time. Power, in America, comes from voters -their quiet, non-violent expression of taste or conviction. Once the voters have voted, however, power has been gathered in a package that can be manipulated. Goldwater had won only one contested primary-and that by a scanty margin in a state unique in feel and longings. It was power, though. Could it be stopped? Could other power systems in the Republican Party frustrate this narrow statement of the minority party of California? The answers to all these questions are quite clear in retrospect. But they were not at all clear in early June of1964, for over the previous eight weeks, while the duelists fought in the open-primary arena, other Republican leaders had been feverishly active in the brokerage of hidden power that might control the nomination.
Chapter Convention in San Francisco: Coup at the Cow Palace THE CONVENTION of the Republicans in San continlled
Francisco was a pivot in history; like San Francisco itself, it meshed the oldest and the newest-the most complete electronic and technological political controls with the oldest of American ideas. The sound of its dominant voice bore the wisdom of the grandfathers, rising from the history of an older America; the method of its masters was entirely new and of tomorrow. No one can yet define accurately what happened to the Republican Party at San Francisco-whether the forces that seized it were ephemeral or were to become permanently a majority that would alter and perhaps end the Republican Party as known through a century of American history. This will become clear only as the years throw perspective. But it is certain that few, if any, of the 1,308 delegates and 5,400 reporters from all over the world who gathered in San Francisco from July 13th to July 16th ever correctly sensed what we were living through as we lived through it. Three days before the Convention opened, Senator Barry Goldwater appeared before the Platform Committee and spoke with that mixture of subdued wrath and moral fervour at which he reaches his best-and the Platform Committee roared with excitement and delight. Preceded into the room by the chanting of "We want Barry, we want Barry," followed out of the room by the same surge of sound, Goldwater might have read a page out of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue and received the same cheering of approval. The Platform Committee was his. Outside the St. Francis hotel all of the mammoth apparatus of television had been assembled to show, visually, the opening of war. Giant white cranes had been wheeled in from Los Angeles; technicians by the score manned the roof-high mobile cameras on the crane platforms and guarded the ropes, entanglements and cables that fed the eyes of the networks which waited to show the nation the struggle over its future. But the harvest of drama was slim: inside, the stolid gentlemen and ladies, selected in adva~ce from each State by the dominant Goldwater leaders and their allies to avoid drama, offered only a disciplined decorum. Since there was no real combat here, however much all of us tried to make it appear like combat, we proceeded by clanking cable car a few more blocks up Powell Street to Nob Hill, where two of the finest hotels in America face each other: the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins. The Fairmont is the Democratic hotel in Sail Francisco. As always, graciously elegant, the Fairmont was an island of tranquillity from which to observe
proceedings across the street at the Mark Hopkins, the Republican hotel. By some bizarre misjudgment months and months before the Convention, both Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona had unwittingly been assigned to the same hotel. Now, layer upon layer, like a club sandwich of ice cream and pickles, the Goldwater and the Scranton forces were interwoven. Goldwater and Scranton had once been good friends; Goldwater had been Scranton's senior officer in the Air Force Reserve unit on Capitol Hill; they corresponded normally, and with some warmth, by hand-written letters; they had gone overseas together on their Reserve duty in the NATO exercises of 1959. Even today Goldwater recollects in bitterness that Scranton had been his first choice for running mate as Vice President all through the spring of 1964. But now they were enemies. Here, if anywhere, there should be combat and clash. The fact that even here no real drama could be observed should have impressed on all Qf us the realization that the drama of this Convention lay not in episode but in perspectivein what had taken place long before the delegates had assembled in this Convention city, and what that portended. The short range perspective was more exciting than amusing. For the Mark Hopkins, if one could get inside its guarded 16th and 17th floors, was the stage for two separate exercises-one of futile gallantry on the part of William Warren Scranton, and the other of futile conquest on the part of Barry Morris Goldwater. The Scranton exercise was either folly-or absolute gallantry. One could understand it only by understanding the man. For Scranton, in a mute ¡and profound way, loves the Republican Party; it is as much a part of his breeding and spirit as the Christmas gatherings at his home or the flag of the United States. Where and when hope fades in a man is as difficult to make precise in date as when hope is born. Better schooled in practical politics than any of the young men on his staff, Scranton had known from the outset of his mad gallop that his chances of heading off disaster were less than one in ten. There was, thus, by the week-end no strategy for Scranton except the gallantry of hopelessness: to appeal to the delegates by going over their heads to the rank and file of the Republican Party.
The capping effort to reach the rank and file over the week-end was a simple suggestion by former National Chairman Meade Alcorn. Alcorn had suggested that Scranton challenge Goldwater to open debate before the Convention itself. Goldwater, of course, refused debate. But the week-end seeking of confrontation ground had done something important. It had made the Republican Convention the stage for the destruction of the leading Republican candidate. What Rockefeller had begun in spring, Scranton finished in June and at the Convention: the painting for the American people of a half-crazed leader indifferent to the needs of American society at home and eager to plunge the nation into war abroad. There was, from the Thursday before the Convention opened, no reality whatever to the Scranton hope of victory. There was only a historical perspective that required him to go down bloody on the floor, in defeat. History would have to record that the Republican Party had not submitted docilely to this new leadership, but had resisted to the end-so that from this resistance and defeat, others, later, might take heart and resume the battle. If one unreality wrapped itself about the Scranton leaders, a similar yet more important unreality enveloped the Goldwater camp. Where the Scranton leaders confused the applause and the press and the reading of the polls with the will of the Republican Party, the Goldwater leadership confused the applause and the praise' of the San Francisco Convention with the will of the nation. It was only on Monday afternoon, after the Convention opened, as one proceeded from the Mark Hopkins hotel to the fourth
"The drama of this Convention lay not in episode but in perspectivein what had taken place long before the delegates had assembled. . .. " and last of the stations on the symbolic peregrination of observation, that one could begin to understand how the Goldwater leaders could have been so swayed to misjudgment. The Cow Palace of San Francisco, built by the early New Deal in one of those social give-away programmes so odious to Barry Goldwater, sits on sixty-seven acres, a spacious but not overpowering arena, good in acoustics, an auditorium with complete visibility, generous of access and entry,
as it came up was "debated," then gavelled or perfect for conventions in all respects. And here, in the plaza before the great voted down. This Convention had been lockCow Palace, all the neat, well-barbered men ed up before it started; now, almost effortlessand prosperous women of the Goldwater ly, the machinery built up through the spring delegate army could see the face of the enemy. months was showing the true nature of First the demonstrating civil-rightsers. the Convention. They paraded in an endless circle, shouting, For this was a new thing in American conclapping their hands to the rhythm "Barry ventions-not a meeting, not a clash, but a Goldwater-clap clap-must go!" coup d' hat. What was evident was the sight Simultaneously, on another patch of the of demonstrators and the sound of galleries; fore plaza paraded the peace-niks. WOMEN FOR but the troops and their captains had been moved into place months before. PEACE read their placards, and NO MORE WAR. Through all these demonstrations the wellPolitics needs demonstrations. Demonstradressed and well-mannered Goldwater dele- tions vent emotions. They satisfy the citizens' gates made their way. All these were what desire to participate, to have a share in their they had mobilized to oppose. But they had been sternly admonished to good behaviour. "For a moment the thousands ... Discipline urged them to restraint. But on Tuesday they began to roar. It was in the Cow Palace held themselves Eisenhower who stirred them first. The Gen- in check. . . . And then, as Barry eral's speech-writers had written a concilia- Goldwater appeared, the surf burst." tory, statesmanlike address reviewing the entire history of the Republican Party. So far, so good. But with a personal desire to express own fate, to feel themselves part of something more human yearnings, the General had larger and greater than themselves. The next inserted a few touches of his own: "Let us day, Wednesday, as nominations were called, particularly scorn the divisive efforts of those the Goldwater delegates and demonstrators outside our family, including sensation-seek- were more classically managed. At 3 :25 P.M., ing columnists and commentators, because, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois nominated my friends, I assure you that these are people Barry Morris Goldwater for President of the who couldn't care less about the good of our United States. Down from the rafters casparty" -at which point the Convention ex- caded flakes of inch-square gold foil; up from ploded in applause, shouts, boos, catcalls, the ¡pit boomed the bass drum that beat in horns, klaxons and glory. Here at last was rhythm to "We want Barry;" from behInd the someone cutting a bit of raw flesh from the rostrum a band blared "When the Saints hitherto unnamed enemies, and the delegates Come Marching In." Onto the floor poured could vent emotion. The Convention howled. the demonstrators. It subsided for the ninety-minute reading Then, as suddenly as it had been called of the platform and then, Nelson Rocke- forth, the demonstration ended. With none feller was permitted to rise and defend the of the pandemonium and pleading exhortafirst of the three draft minority resolutions tion from the platform that normally acwhich the Easterners had prepared as a company uncontrolled demonstrations, the challenge to the text of the majority in the Goldwater delegates returned to their seats, Platform Committee. The slight ripple of and the demonstrators to their galleries. normal applause as he rose was almost imOne could savour the contrast best from mediately drowned by a wave of boos, and Goldwater's command post in a trailer truck then a billow of howling, and then by explo- just outside the convention hall, where this sion. "We want Barry! We want Barry!" the reporter proceeded shortly before the roll call galleries shouted. His five minutes were allot- on the nominees. ted to the topic of extremism-and as, with Along the wall were three booths separated absolute zest in the first minute, he swung by glass panels, and in each booth two men into his call, the audience exploded again. It monitored the communications that ran to the was as if Rockefeller were poking with a long floor captains of the regions they commanded. lance and prodding a den of hungry lionsSome, like John Grenier (South) and Wayne they roared back at him. As he taunted them, Hood (Midwest), had plotted this hour they raged. through years of secret meetings and planning. Rockefeller had his five minutes; so did Their eyes were on the television sets. What each of the other sponsors of minority resolu- had been planned three years ago was now tions; so did George Romney with a compro- to become apparent to the nation from the mise set of resolutions. And each resolution calling of names one hundred and fifty feet
away on the floor of the Cow Palace. As the TV carried the voice "Alabama?" somebody in the trailer yelled "Yea Barry!" and was instantly hushed. Tense and soundless, they watched: Alabama-twenty for Goldwater in the column next to the prediction which read, similarly, twenty. Alaska-a stutter; they had predicted nine for Scranton, and Scranton had eight. Down the line: Arizona-sixteen predicted, sixteen for Goldwater. Arkansas, on the nose. Through the Cs and Ds and on down the alphabet, each prediction true. The adding machine was clacking, and a Goldwater aide pressed a hot-line button to the Goldwater suite: '~Just for your information, on this projection you'll make it on South Carolina." One could not hear Goldwater's reply. A rebel yell yodelled in the trailer as the camera shifted to South Carolina's chairman, Drake Edens, and Edens' voice came off the floor: "Mr. Chairman, we are humbly grateful that we cando this for America. South Carolina casts sixteen votes for Senator Barry Goldwater." The TV screen flashed 663 votes for Goldwater, eight more than needed for the nomination-and the trailer command suddenly went soft. It was as if tension had been released by the turning of a valve. It was Thursday, the next day, that Barry Goldwater accepted his nomination at the Cow Palace. Richard M. Nixon introduced him in an excellent speech, himself looking now, at long last, nostalgically attractive. Nixon pointed to the flag-draped catwalk that led to the speaker's rostruin, "Down this corridor will walk a man into the pages of history." For a moment the thousands gathered in the Cow Palace held themselves in checklike a wave curling to surf. And then, as Barry Goldwater appeared, the surf burst. From the¡ rear pit the band blared the crusaders' song of American politics: "Glory, Glory Hallelujah." Down from the rafters tumbled red, white and blue balloons, cascading about the new candidate and his wife. "We want Barry, we want Barry," chanted the deeper voices, while as an overtone came the female voices moaning, "Ba-a-a-a-arry, Ba-a-a-a-a-a-arry." The gavel banged and banged, and slowly the crowds subsided to listen to the hoarse-voiced man. He began with a ceremonial salute to the dignitaries of the Party. He cleared his throat to accept his nomination with a "deep sen~e of humility," then swung into his text, and it was he and the Good Lord alone, co-pilots in a rescue mission to save America. (continued)
"Anyone who joins us in all sincerity we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case. "And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels .... " And then the final, unforgettable thrust at the Party moderates: ÂŤExtremism in the de-, fence of liberty is no vice! ... Moderation in thepursuit of justice is no virtue!" (The italics represent underlinings in the candidate's own text.) With this, the Republican Convention of 1964 was over.
Chapte~
Convention in Atlantic City: A Predictable Triumph
THE REPUBLICANS HAD claimed the major political reporting of the spring and summer months; the Negroes had claimed the attention of political thinkers. Politics had been a-simmer and a-boiling from February on. But at the White House a pious innocence ruled. President Johnson was too busy to pay attention to the sad and melancholy spectacle of those Republicans chasing around the country saying such awful things. A President is like a horse in a horse market-experts in political livestock examine him daily, poke him, pinch him, stare at him, prod him. Even a normal man entering the White House becomes abnormally sensitive under such attention, and Lyndon Johnson was certainly no exception to the rule. The public President did his best to adjust to the attention of the press, to court it and please it. The inner President was adjusting, si~ultaneously, to an enormous range of problems-to the whole pressure of the clangorous, disturbing outer world which took up more than half his time; to the crescent and swelling problems of civil rights; to the Congress, which remained the focus of his attention; to the daily administration and guidance of his executives. But it was the press that occupied the largest part of his time. Press Secretary George Reedy could explain best what was going on. For Reedy invited all who would listen to pay attention not to the personality but to the public President. And the public President was creating with
such broad strokes, with such heavy reiteration, such a picture of the President-in-action as to be incomparably more effective than any particular campaign tactic or strategy. For the second element of his Presidential strategy was to be visible. He was travellingnorth, south, east and west-at a rate and pace that not even John F. Kennedy had matched. And as he travelled, he trailed behind him a set of speeches and headlines that drummed over and over again on the public ear. To the press these travels were boring, the speeches repetitive. But, away from the President, as one studied the speeches day after day they gradually assumed a quality of grand simplicity. Lyndon Johnson was not, like John F. Kennedy or Richard M. Nixon, to find his themes in midcampaign, in the autumn, on the road. He had found his themes in the first few weeks of tragedy; and, long before Convention and campaign, day after day he pounded them at Americans in every walk of life. There were the two grand themes-Prosperity and Harmony. (Peace was to supersede these as a theme after Barry Goldwater was nominated.) Week after week, month after month, the President would open a press conference with the latest economic statistics; and in formal addresses he was to package the statistics into a perspective and picture of a nation living at the peak of an all-time boom -which indeed it was. From his November accession to the Presidency until late May, Johnson made only two "political" speeches. But the non-political Johnson, bearer of glad tidings, was never absent from the news for more than a few days. And within the theme of prosperity lay the subordinate theme of poverty. For the first of his own measures before the Congress was the anti-poverty crusade; and as he travelled through Appalachia, the Midwest, the South, his presence established that he was Commander-in-Chief of the War Against Poverty. The second theme was graver-for Harmony meant civil rights. In the spring months of 1964, the President preached harmony with a hard and stubborn core: he meant to pass the Civil Rights Act before Congress quit for the summer. Even the quaking globe seemed to settle down during spring and summer to permit Johnson to conduct his foreign affairs from what may be called an at-ease position. VietNam was the only crisis, slowly worsening from week to week-but the President arranged temporarily to sterilize that politically.
And yet at some time which can be made no more precise than the turning of March into April, Lyndon Johnson had begun to consider the mechanics of politics and the response he hoped to draw in the first partisan election he had ever directed. It is at this point that one must try to pick up the first strands of the national campaign as woven from the White House. Lyndon Johnson had never before in his life fought a partisan campaign. He had grown up in the Texas Democratic Party in the days when Texas, like all the rest of the South, was one-party country. He had never, until 1964,crossed swords with a Republican, and political talk-as party politics are talked about in the North-was alien to him. His Washington politics was the politics of the Senate, at which he was the acknowledged master; his one major effort to translate that kind of politics into national politics in 1960 had been such a hapless effort that the Kennedys had minced him to ground meat everywhere outside the South. A strand of the Johnsonian thinking could be traced in the gradual growth of his interest in polling from curiosity to fascination. Like any Southern political figure accustomed to a personality contest, Johnson during campaigning had most of all wanted to know "How'm I doing?" and polls in his earlier career had been useful only as measures of personal impact. But Lyndon Johnson learned from the polls, which became his favourite reading material by June, that he was completely free to choose as Vice President any running mate he fancied. No name suggested in any poll as Johnson's partner added to or diminished the President's winning margin more than two per cent. Theoretically free, as any President always is, to impose his own man as Vice President, he was politically free, too. It was to be Hubert Humphrey. But no one-not Hubert Humphrey nor Abe Fortas nor Clark Clifford-could tell exactly what was going on in the story of the Vice Presidency; for the choice is an entirely personal decision on the part of the man who stands for the Presidency. Only a President can choose a Vice President; like the Roman Emperors, he can best provide for stable succession by exercising his own choice. All political leaders in America acknowledge this necessary freedom. Yet, nonetheless, for all his freedom, a Presidential candidate has a tormenting choice: he can choose the man who will best help him win an election or the man who could best govern the
sibly it might boil over into an anarchy which would lead the American people to vote for the Prophet from Arizona. Thus, through August, as the people of the big cities where the Democrats are concentrated considered the violence of Negro communities, the President had to consider his approaching Convention, where the Negroes of Mississippi proposed to present a flat and open challenge to the custom of the community, Party and Convention. His choice of Humphrey had probably been ninety per cent firm at the end of July. The remaining ten per cent of indecision in the Presidential mind was a necessary margin for reconsideration; yet, as August wore on and the Negro riots came under control, as the measures of White House and Negro leaders began to take effect in the ghettos, the margin narrowed and narrowed again. The problem of stage management for the Democratic National Convention was at all times perplexing. The Convention offered two perspectives as it drew near. Either it would boil with authentic and violent drama as the Negroes of Mississippi presented their case to the nation-and if this happened, and if, further, the millions of black Americans who lived in the close-by ghettos of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York joined "Proceedings were so dull that for in the drama, it might be frightful. Or else, if this drama could be avoided, then it would three days the Convention paused to consider its only excitement (the Mis- be the dullest gathering of delegates since San Francisco in 1956 and a public tedium. sissippi Freedom Democratic Party)." In either case the stage was to be Atlantic City. Of Atlantic City it may be written: better could not be certain because the President of it shouldn't have happened. On a six-and-ahalf-mile boardwalk, once the most fashionthe United States was operating in the moving able resort of the Atlantic Coast, its old pressures of the life of America. hotels rear themselves like monuments of On the one hand, July had been a month another era. Time has overtaken it, and it of majestic achievement in law-making. One has now become one of those sad gray places by one, the bills Lyndon Johnson sought to which one can find across make into law were becoming Acts of the of entertainment America. Republic. On July 2nd, 1964, the Civil Rights Atlantic City is, of course, trying to reAct had become law of the land. Of the fiftytwo major proposals before the second ses- capture some of its lost glamour, and the 'Democratic National Convention of 1964 was sion of the Eighty-eighth Congress, Johnson could already look proudly forward to the to be a marker on the road back. The true drama of the Convention was final enactment of forty-five measures, or perhaps what was true in eighty-seven per cent-the highest score of short-lived-or the drama was prelude to other and future all the four years of the Kennedy-Johnson conventions. Administration. It was the Mississippi Freedom DemocraYet, on the other hand, this prodigious tic Party that provided the drama; for their ~chievement had been obscured in public delegation was the final triumph of Negro attention, first by the Goldwater Convention leaders in the State of Mississippi. They had and then by the detonation of Negro riots performed as conscience told them to perin the big cities. If the violence of the Negroes could not be contained-if it rose from crest form; they had created in Mississippi an entirely new organization of Negroes called to crest to the final validation of Goldwater's the Freedom Democratic Party; they had paid incantation about law and order-then poscountry if he himself should die. It is to Lyndon Johnson's credit that the choice of succession had been, from February 1964, on, considered so seriously. And thus, as through spring and early summer Lyndon Johnson floated the names of personalities under his consideration, one could see all the forces in American politics passing over the stage of the President's attention. The Goldwater nomination of July clarified matters; Lyndon Johnson would not now have to protect his Northeastern flank with a Northeasterner-no man could be weaker in the Northeast than Goldwater. If any Goldwater victory were possible-and highly unlikely it seemed-it would have to come by adding the Midwest to the South. Goldwater, who had advocated abolishing farm subsidies and the elimination of the REA, had a natural weakness all through the traditionally Republican agricultural Midwest. Slowly the same force of political gravitation that drew the nation's attention compelled the President also to examine the Midwestern Senator: Hubert Humphrey. Hubert Humphrey was the leading candidate for nomination as Vice President of the United States, yet it could not be certain-it
with sacrifice of life; they had now sent on to Atlantic City sixty-eight delegates and alternates (including four white civil-rights Mississippians) to demand seats as full delegates of the full Convention. It is difficult to compress the emotion that the Freedom Democratic Party aroused at Atlantic City into the narrow proportions of importance it holds in the story of the Convention. There was no moment when the Convention machinery might not have imposed a solution. But the intensity of the emotion was so deep, and all other proceedings were so dull, that for three days the Convention paused to consider its only excitement. There were two absurdities face to face before the Credentials Committee. One was the absurdity of the white Mississippi delegation-though the white delegation was legal, it was morally absurd; it had been elected under laws administered in sin. The other was the black Mississippi delegation-though its legal case was absurd (for it had been chosen outside any publicly administered law and now insisted on a legal delegate voice in a lawful assembly), its moral case was impeccable; these were citizens denied the founding rights of Americans. For three days the compromise committee wrestled with the problem as moral fervour swept delegations from the big-city States while counter-indignation roused Southerners who insisted on legality. The dialogue in itself was interesting, for it dealt with deep moral and political phenomena. What was worked out was, in all historical aspects, a true triumph. The compromise read that no Mississippi regular delegate could sit unless he pledged 'allegiance to the ticket; that two of the Freedom Party leaders would ,sit as delegates at large with full right of vote; and that at the Convention of 1968, and thereafter, no delegations would be seated from States where the Party process deprived citizens of the right to vote by reason of their race or colour. Much overnight pressure and persuasion was exerted on delegates both North and South. By 9.27 on Tuesday evening, when temporary Chairman John O. Pastore read the compromi~e to the Convention floor, a single bang of the gavel over contending voices from the floor caused the compromise to be accepted in thirty seconds, and a victory had been achieved. The episode marked the end of a chapter of politics. What the next chapter would read no one could tell. Drawing yet farther away from the turbuler:ce of the Credentials Committee, one could continued
see an even broader outline. Completely still in contact with leaders all around the whole country stands by for certain applause, overshadowed by the Mississippi episode was country, seeking their opinions. Lyndon Johnson was at his ease. His bedTuesday the President was, apparently, room door was flung open as he prepared for the work of the Platform Committee. Its theme was clear: One Nation-One busy at his work behind the screen of the his descent on his Convention, and reporters Party. All Lyndon Johnson's life and political White House lobby. By Tuesday night the could watch him as he prepared. art had been spent in trying to reconcile drama of Mississippi was over, the comproThen by helicopter from the lawn to the differences, to bind and hold them together mise settled, the stage cleared for the last act. field at Andrews Air Force Base. Then to and, out of them, to make law. This had been On Wednesday the President's euphoria Atlantic City. On the plane the jumping and the underlying theme of all his spring travels built steadily, at first slowly, then intensely to jittering television set managed to pick up the and spring speeches. Now, in the platform, a crest. Shortly after noon, the White House Convention scene as Alabama yielded to they were to become the campaign pro- correspondents, as befuddled as the nation by Texas for his nomination. The flickering gramme, the campaign theme. In this sense the President's secrecy, were invited out to the image of Governor John Connally of Texas the Convention was one of Johnson's greatest south lawn for another walk. nominating Lyndon Johnson for President of triumphs-a triumph largely ignored because The President was enjoying himself. No, the United States appeared next. the emotions of the Mississippi division hid he had not decided on a Vice President yet; Thence to the Pageant Motel; thence to the the great significance of the work of the Plat- he was still talking to people and discussing Convention floor; thence to the rostrum, form Committee under the skilful direction it. There was still the time until tomorrow where the President took the gavel from the of Congressman Carl Albert, a one-time morning to choose one. hands of Speaker John McCormack, pounded Rhodes scholar from Oklahoma. In the PlatIt was close to three o'clock when the the delegates to order, and suggested to the form Committee the great majority of white panting group trudged back with the exhila- Convention the name of Hubert Humphrey as Southern delegates had at last' freely accepted rated and untired President to the Oval Office. Vice President. Which the Convention accepta revolutionary civil-rights programme and ed. Whereafter tumult. And then, in complete platform that committed them, their State . In discussing any phase of Lyndon John- disregard of the tumult, the President came parties and their States to the forward move- son's behaviour, one must always be prepared down from his imperial box and made his way ment of the rest of America. for the most extreme swings between tender- through the overchoked floor, shaking hands, In the flow of history, this, certainly, was ness, dedication and cynicism, between come- while the terrified Secret Service and New the largest achievement of the Democratic dy and high purpose. Thus, in late afternoon Jersey State troopers did their best to protect National Convention of 1964. But in the two men sat down in the Oval Office of the the only living President they had. And the flicker of public attention it passed almost Presidency, the President in his rocking President enjoyed himself mightily. unnoticed; and when the real drama of the chair and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Of the last day of the Convention there reMississippi delegation had been settled on Minnesota on the sofa, for the highest and mains in this reporter's memory only a succesTuesday evening, there was little else to oc- most sombre conversation about the Presi- sion of scenes without any real connectioncupy public attention except the choice of the dency and the power of America. as if they were all patched together from fragVice President. To summon public attention The President discussed the intricate, deli- ments of a broken stained-glass window: back to his Convention, the President now cate relationship between a President and The first abashed bow of the convention to proceeded to direct a melodrama. a Vice President, and all the people who the memory of John F. Kennedy. Robert F. The melodrama of August 26th, 1964, would try to come between. Johnson had had Kennedy, standing before the gathering, trywas staged and produced entirely by Lyn- research done on the Vice Presidency during ing to speak, unable to speak, the applause his own incumbency; he could not remember building and building and building and going don Johnson. In its mixture of comedy, tension and teas- a single President who had gotten along with on for twenty-two minutes until finally Bobby ing, it was a work of art. It is difficult to see his Vice President. could deliver an evocation of his brother's it as any appropriate way for handing on Yes, sir, I know that, Mr. President, said memory which he climaxed with a passage succession to the mightiest office on earth; Humphrey. from Romeo and Juliet: but as excitement and a study of personality ... when he shall die The President said that he knew no two in power, it was unmatched. men who got along better than himself and Take him and cut him out in little stars, Lyndon Johnson had awakened well on Humphrey. This, too, was true. For if it had And he will make the face of heav'n so fine Wednesday morning, August 26th. For days been John F. Kennedy who had given Johnson That all the world will be in love with Night his sense of euphoria and goodwill had been his opening to power in 1960, it was Johnson And pay no worship to the garish Sun. building. Master of all he surveyed, stage who for years had opened the way to Hummanager of his own Convention, he faced the phrey's power in the Senate. Both of them, Then a film of memorial, showing not only appetizing prospect of a campaign against country boys discussing the government of the youth but the strength of the President who had been murdered, and closing on the Barry Goldwater, and only the Mississippi America, knew which one in this situationsound of song and the sense of the joy of life episode had disturbed him. and for years-had been the leader. Johnson made it clear: The man who and youth and the dead President teaching his On Monday the President had permitted himself an initial burst of exuberance as he would be Vice President must know that his baby boy how to tickle his chin with a butled the White House press corps around the duties and responsibilities were very much in . tercup. And we all wept. White House lawn nine times and then invited the hands of the President. Adlai Stevenson's eulogy to the memory of Eleanor Roosevelt. them to his office for further briefing. He had parried them: no, he had not made up his There were the stacked banners of the Serene, delighted, happy as only a Presimind about the Vice Presidency; no, he was dent of the United States can be when the civil-rights people who had finally ceased
from demonstration now that all was in the hands of Lyndon Johnson. There werethe acceptance speeches: Lyndon Johnson's speech, the poorest he made in the campaign, not half so good as the speeches he could and later did deliver of his own composition. Hubert Humphrey's speech was better, and one remembers the belting out of the theme that was to become so familiar during the campaign: " ... but not Senator Goldwater!"
Finally, it was all over but the dancing. One sat by the boardwalk in the evening as the ocean rolled in at its powerful leisure, and the sky was clear, the weather balmy. And it was all over except for the celebration. There remained only a mopping-up. And so we proceed to the mopping-up which was the election itself.
The
Issues~hapter
Civil Rights, War and Peace 1964 was that rare thing in American political history, a campaign based on issues. War and peace; the nature and role of government; the morality and mercy of society; the quality of life-all were discussed in a campaign that will leave its mark behind in American life for a generation. In retrospect, the clear and crushing m~rgin of November's decision was as distorted a reflection of the confusion in American thinking as the thin and ephemeral decision of 1960was a distortion of American response to John F. Kennedy's clear call. Up and down the nation, at prop stop and whistle stop, by dawn and dusk and at high noon, Barry Goldwater first challenged and then, as November approached, grieved: "What kind of country do we want to have?" -and to this challenge Lyndon Johnson replied in as masterful a campaign as the Democrats have ever conducted. A hundred million Americans were asked to hear the two leaders give their vision of America, as if they were citizens of a Greek Polis two thousand years before; and rarely, when questions were asked about the nature of fate and country, have citizens heard their leaders give answers so violently and unequivocallyopposed. THE
CAMPAIGN
OF
What exactly were the issues? What precisely were the choices offered in 1964? How valid were they? How did the craftsmen of politics convert these ideas technically and politically into the emotions which move American voters to vote? How ephemeral or how permanent will they prove in the future to be? There is no doubt in the mind of any candidate, any political observer or any man who trooped the long marches from coast to coast with both candidates that one primordial issue overshadowed all others: the problem of War and Peace, pegged on America's use of its arsenal of nuclear weapons. How, when, by whose authority, where should such weapons be used? Any such debate was bound to put Goldwater on the defensive-for he was, in effect, challenging not just a political antagonist but the whole United States Government and its energetic spokesmen. The more he attempted to explain the matter, the worse his predicament became. The issue was never, as Democrats tried to define it to their advantage, a choice between war and peace. But it was a choice, nonetheless-between peace and risk of war. Goldwater's second great issue was an equally complicated one, equally overlaid with subtleties that had to be violated with a crude yes or no vote: this was his crusade against the central government-against an all-dominating, all-entangling Federal bureaucracy of Washington. Whenever a political reporter journeys with a Republican candidate-right, left or centre-he knows the one sure-fire catch line is the attack on the government in Washington. All Republicans praise the flag-and denouncethegovernment. A shrewd candidate has, indeed, a very sound and forward-ringing issue in denunciation of this centralization-if he handles it skilfully. All Americans, generally and as a matter of principle, will denounce distant Federal paternalism-but will scream if any tampering threatens the benefits which they personally get out of it. These were the issues that translated best, however coarsely, into the campaign clash. But there were other issues, equally weighty, with which neither of the candidates could grapple because these issues were even more subtle, even more complicated. The issue of civil rights was as central to American concern in the campaign of 1964 as the issue of war and peace. Yet both candidates jointly decided to exclude from the
campaign dialogue as far as possible any implied appeal to racism-and, accepting this exclusion with high principle and great responsibility, Goldwater took the loss. Civil rights along with war and peace, was.a central issue of the campaign of 1964. Discussion of this issue probably obsessed American conversation in the summer and autumn of 1964 more than any other. There remained, finally, an area of contention and difference that is so new it still lacks an appropriate name. One can call it, perhaps, the issue of quality. Quality was what John F. Kennedy was all about, in its classic, Greek sense-how to live with grace and intelligence, with brave~y and mercy. Quality was what he sought in his brief three-year administration; but it had not been an¡issue in his campaign of 1960, except as his personality and eloquence gave an example of it. Yet in 1964 two men with far less of the sense of quality than John F. Kennedy succeeded, together, in making quality the fourth and last of the major issues of the campaign. Goldwater called it the "morality issue;" Johnson called it "the Great Society." During the campaign neither could define what he meant-but they were bringing into engagement what in another decade, if peace persists, may well be the central issue of American life: What is the end of man? What is his purpose on earth? How shall he conduct himself with grace and mercy and dignity? No other society in history has ever been rich enough to face such a problem or to discuss it in the political forum; quality has been something left to the church and the philosophers; all other societies have been too deeply involved with making, getting, existing, subsisting and defending themselves. Americans in the 1960s are faced for the first time with the problems of abundance-the purpose and style of life in a society whose great majority has been relieved from real want and thus freed to express itself. There was, of course, want enough in America in 1964--and to this the Democratic candidates, Johnson and Humphrey, constantly addressed themselves in their poverty speeches and programme. But this want, though real and all the more galling because of its contrast with surrounding affluence, was less than the giant fact of prosperity. There was no doubt that John F. Kennedy and his economists had brought about the first fundamental change in American economic policy since Franklin D. Rooseveltand the nation glowed with a boom that was one of the world's won~ers. The boom terrified Europeans, angered the underdeveloped continued
in the world, baffled the Russians. America in 1964 was a perplexing place indeed. There was no doubt that American genius was surpassing itself in all the old measures of progress. The Japanese might be abreast of America in electronics and ahead in ship-building; the Germans were abreast of America in steel technology, the British in motor design, the French in biologicals. But no other nation possessed such capacity over the entire range-in steel, in electronics, in Instrumentation, in plastics, in automation, in computer technique, in film direction, in chemicals, in medical innovation, in any exploration of man's mastery over matter. But did this make Americans happy? Here the evidence wa~ varied and could be read either way. Goldwater's response to this unsettling experience of America was to mourn. "What's happening to us? What's happening to our America?" he would ask wherever he marched. And here again the Democrats hanged him, not on fact but on attitude. For what was happening was not all bad. Newspaper headlines warned of the alarming rate of dropouts from schools and colleges. But when one read the texts beneath the headlines, the statistics told another story: of 1930s fifth-graders, less than half finished high school; of 1950s, almost three fifths; of those who were in fifth grade in 1954-55, 636 per thousand had graduated from high school by 1962. Thus, the dropout rate was fallingonly the need for education was growing faster than the effort to catch up. There was, indeed, a school crisis, but whereas twentyfive years earlier only one in three high school graduates went on to college, now more than half go to college; and their numbers had ~umped from 1.5 million in 1940 to some 5.2 million in 1965. Americans were spending more on hard liquor-but per capita consumption was not increasing. Americans were merely buying more expensive brands. Crime was up-yes. But not felonies. The shocking figures came in the shrinking big cities. with their tensions. Overall, however, the new America was much safer than thirty years before-with murder down from 8.9 per 100,000 in 1930 to 5.1 in 1962. The Democratic answer was most masterfully given by Lyndon Johnson himself. But what the two parties were debating in this issue was the very nature of American experience in this half century. Johnson and Humphrey, Goldwater and his Vice Presidential candidate William Miller, all believed that the purpose of
America was to enrich the individual life. Something, perhaps, was wrong with the condition of that life in 1964. But Goldwater and Miller saw what was wrong as the government; and Johnson and Humphrey saw the government as the chief means of dealing with the wrong. Perhaps both Democrats and Republicans were wrong, as they tried to explain America to Americans; perhaps the nature of life in the abundant society requires deeper thinking than can be done in a political campaign. Yet
"Kansas returns were showing the Johnson sweep of the farm beltand if Kansas had given its heart to Big Daddy, who else could resist?" if the approaches of both sides were unsettling to people and unsatisfying to thinkers, Goldwater managed to bring to his approach a particularly ~oyless quality. What the Democrats offered was offered with glee, gusto and the colours of the rosy-fingered dawn. Goldwater could offer-and this was his greatest contribution to American politicsonly a contagious concern which made people realize that indeed they must begin to think about such things. And this will be his great credit in historical terms: that finally he introduced the condition and quality of American morality and life as a subject of political debate. Goldwater caused nerve ends to twinge with his passion and indignation. Yet he had no handle to the problems, no programme, no solution-except backward to the Bible and the God of the desert. Fiercely proud of his sturdy grandfather who had struggled, fought, wandered and, by manliness, made civilization grow on the Old Frontier, he could not quite grasp the nature of the newer enemies on the new frontier of life. Proud of his handsome, clean-lined family, proud of his radiant children, proud of his family's war record and patriotism, he had in him neither the compassion nor the understanding to deal with the faceless newer enemies of the Digital Society. These, then, were the issues-profound, moving, deeply dividing. It was over before it began. The issue had been decided long beforeperhaps within minutes of the fatal shot at Dallas. Or it had been decided even before that under the leadership of John F. Kennedy: or
by the spring and summer boom; or by the spectacular performance of Lyndon B. Johnson during the transition; or by twenty years of growing awareness of what nuclear war could do. The decision had slowly deepened and strengthened as the nation watched the Republican proceedings in the snows of New Hampshire, along the marches of California in May, on th.e hills of San Francisco in July. What remained to be settled was only how large, how broad, how deep would be Lyndon Johnson's sweep, and for this the networks and news services had finally provided America with its first true national reporting service. All, however, were superfluous on November 3rd, 1964. The television studios in New York slowly crowded with sweating men preparing for air time, when the nation would be told what was happening. But the youngest college-graduate office boy, early in the afternoon, could forecast the result as easily as the most senior commentator later in the evening. Shortly after three the first meaningless fragments of returns were already stuttering on the dials of the counting boards to tell the story. By 5 :30, Kansas had choked out the first meaningful large total. Kansas was still Republican at heart, said the dials, voting for its Republican nominee for governor, William H. Avery. But already these first Kansas returns were showing the Johnson sweep of the farm belt-Johnson leading Goldwater by 65,000 to 62,000. And if Kansas had given its heart to Big Daddy, who else could resist? At six P.M., when the Network Election Service flashed its first public total with only one fifth of one per cent of the vote counted, Johnson was leading by 77,572 to 74,139, or 51.3 per cent to 48.7 per cent. By seven P.M., when 2 per cent of the national vote had been counted, the Democrats were checking in with their votes and the President led by 273,000 plurality, or 59.6 per cent of the total. By ten o'clock the Presidential plurality had reached 3,906,000 and his percentage sixty per cent. By then, of course, the impact of New York's predictable Democratic landslide was showing; but, more important, Indiana and Ohio had both fallen to Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater's Midwestern strategy was dead. By midnight, with 65.6 per cent of the national vote counted, Johnson's margin was 10,757,000 and his percentage of the total was 62. From there on, for the rest of the evenin~ as for months to come, there was nothing to do except stand in awe at the results and pick what meaning one could from the local returns until historians should later describe the true meaning of the elections. END
turies of additions and improvements. Thus the simple three-stringed "sehtar" gradually became the fascinating "sitar" as it passed down from generation to generation through the hands of a few brilliant exponents and experimentalists, each of whom added his own magic touch to it. The two chief styles of sitar "baj" today are the Masitkhani or Delhi style, and the Razakhani or Poorab style. The Masitkhani or slow "gat" which contains all the depth and expansive beauty of the raga or "mode," was the original contribution of Masitkhan (after whom it is named), son of Feroz Khan. It is said that until his time, only "gattodas" existed. The Masitkhani "gat" is always set in slow tempo, and starts from the twelfth out Dear Sir: Referring to the article on Ravi of the sixteen beats in "trital" (the time-measure). Shankar and his art in the November 1967 issue Each "gat" has its fixed technical words like: of SPAN, an account of the origins of the sitar "dir," "da," "ra." The "gat" is enlivened by long and its use by Indian musicians may be of interest flowing "glides" (glissendo), echoing vibrations, and other subtle embellishments which are posto your readers. In olden times, the veena, favourite musical sible only in slow tempo. The real propagators of the Masitkhani style instrument of Saraswati, goddess of music and learning, was considered to be the only stringed were Dulahkhan, Rahimsen, Amritsen and Nihalmusical instrument worth cultivating and listen- sen. They were all descendants of the great ing to. The vainiks (or veena maestros) of old Tansen, and their style is known as "seniya" style. Most of them flourished in Jaipur. Although used to look down on the sitar as something inferior. Today, in North India, the sitar and there may not be many direct descendants from sarod have nearly ousted the veena from its pop- this lineage today, we have no dearth of excellent ularity. The sitar is not only the most popular of sitarists who render the Masitkhani "gats': in all instruments in India, but it has become the latest their beauty. The Razakhani or Poorab style is said to have craze in the West, especially in the U.S. The general impression that the sitar was the been originated by Ghulam Raza Khan, also a daringly original innovation of Amir Khusru is descendant of Tansen. The Razakhani "gat" is not altogether correct. Musicologists are of the always in fast or "drut" tempo; it has its special opinion that the origin of sitar was from the "words" or "bols" and its fixed points for comthree-stringed veena "parivadini," referred to as mencement and culmination in the time-cycle. Being in quick tempo, slow embellishments like "tritantrika" in Sarangadeva's SangeetaRatnakar. Except for this reference, the instrument seems "glides," etc., are not possible but the artiste gets to have had no vogue. The credit for foreseeing full scope to show his mastery over speed and his its great potentialities goes to the versatile Amir dexterity in fast rhythmic patterns. Tansen's descendants pyarkhan, .Taffarkhan, Khusru, the great poet, philosopher, statesman, and Vasitkhan were really rabab artistes, but they and musician who lived in the time of Alauddin composed and contributed a large number of Khilji. He is really the renovator, not the inventor, of the sitar. He renamed it and popularized it as "gats" for sitar which have come down to this day. It is said that every Thursday there was a "sehtar" ("seh" meaning "three" in Persian); later on, "sehtar" was changed into "sitar." Iran competition in "gat" composition between the small four-stringed lute two brothers Pyarkhan and Jaffarkhan in the has still got "sehtar"-a which is used as an accompaniment by singers court of their patron-ruler. These "gats" were and poets. In Amir Khusru's time, the sitar had called "jugal bandis" or "pairs" as they were only three strings and fourteen frets, whereas very similar and yet couched in different "bols" today's sitar has seven strings and nineteen or (word-contents). The sitarists of old had considered it their duty more frets, and it has undergone many other improvements as well. Nearly all sitarists now to keep sitar-technique entirely different from and use "tarabdar" sitars-that is, sitars with a num- untouched by vocal styles. According to some ber of sympathetic or vibration-strings which are musicologists today, it was Imdad Khan who deadjusted and tuned according to the notes of the fied this orthodox view and evolved a colourful raga they are elaborating. This adds to t/1e sitar style by freely drawing from and blending with vocal styles. This new mixed style gained resonance and lingering vibration of each note. Apart from these physical changes, the entire such wide popularity that the old orthodox style style of playing on the sitar has been revolu- began to sound somewhat drab and colourless. tionized step by step by the great masters of each A great sitarist, Imdad Khan is reported to have generation. The original "baj" or style must have elaborated rag "Pooriya" for six hours contibeen a very rigid and restricted one. The rich nuously in the court of his patron maharaja. The styles that we hear now are the products of cen- late Inayat Khan was the son of this eminent
DearSir:
artiste and Inayat Khan's son is none other than Vilayat Khan-one of our topmost artistes today. Thus, beginning from Amir Khusru, the firmament of sitar has been illumined from time to time by a galaxy of great sitarists like Masitkhan, Razakhan, Rahimsen, Amritsen, Nihalsen, Imdad Khan, Inayat Khan and several others including our contemporaries Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan. Today, the sitar enjoys unique popularity all over India and also in distant continents, thanks chiefly to the brilliance of individual artistes like Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan who have touched new heights of perfection in their respective styles. Ravi Shankar's vast fan-following ranges from genuine music-lovers and connoisseurs to Beatniks, Beatles, hippies and the queer "flowerpeople." These foreign fans are simply fascinated by the spirituality of Indian classical music, the virtuousity of Ravi Shankar, and the scope of the sitar with its "wide variety of colours ranging from a metallic glitter to an almost vocal tone." As Ravi Shankar has correctly warned his new fans, "there is no easy way whether it is music or religion you are studying." Anyway, there can be no doubt about the vast popularity of the sitar in the twentieth century. Alan Danielou of the French Far Eastern School of Oriental Studies said about the sitar and other string instruments of India: "The great string instruments created over the centuries seem to have reached a peak of perfection which modern techniques will never probably succeed in surpassing." SUSHEELA MISRA "Luckhow
Dear Sir: My patients in the waiting room seem to be reading your November 1967 issue again and again. An aged patient has read it over thrice and when asked why he was so engrossed with SPAN, he brought the article "Mayor on the Move" to my notice. I too have read this article a number of times and have underlined every sentence with a red pencil. I wish our city fathers would also read it and try to follow the example and methods of the New York Mayor. DR. KALYAN SINGH Amritsar
Dear Sir: The article "Ravi Shankar and the Raga Rage" in the November SPAN is commendable for its elegance and precision. As a constant listener to his recitals, it is a thrilling experience to me to see the United States honouring our great musician. He subscribes to the view that there can be no fusion of Indian and Western music but points out that there is no reason why people should not hear and admire both kinds of music. As many of my pen pals in the United States hold, growing Indo-American friendship will be strengthened by this goodwill ambassador. D.C. JOHN Radhapuram
When one thinks of the peiforming arts in America, one tends to think first of the great symphony orchestras, the brilliance of the New York ballet, or the glitter of Broadway. Blft the pelforming arts encompass a host of other groups-smaller, less ]Vcll-known, and ill many ways more truly representative of American culture. Currently in India are three such groups appearing in a Festival of American Performing Arts in major cities throughout the country. They are: the Philadelphia String Quartet, below, in which the musical traditions inheritedfrom Europe are ji/sed with strains from the New World; the Beers Family, which presents American/olk music at its authentic best; and the Murray LO:lis Dance Company, that speaks in the uniquely American accents of modern dance.
ON STAGE IN INDIA
"TI'ebest thing that~shappened to folk music in America.~ To THE WORLD of American folk music, often strident with protest and the anguish of youth, the Beers Family introduces a note that is different. Their songs are beautiful, simple and quiet, reflecting the peace and serenity of early America. The music of Bob Beers, his wife Evelyne and their daughter Martha comes directly through six generations of the Beers family, and includes a wealth of old ballads, reels, ditties and jigs. It is played on old, half-forgotten folk instruments-the psaltery, fiddlesticks, dulcimer and limberjacks-and sung
[)-4/3~ The Beers Family, Bob, Evelyne and Martha, below" have been described as "the best thing that's happened to folk music in America." At left, Bob plays the fiddle with his famed "Tennessee bow"
while Martha strt!ms an early British "zither" banjo. Right, young visitor tries out whistle carved by Bob from a twig while singing to children.
with voices as fresh as a mountain stream. Since the Beers Family appeared on the concert scene almost ten years ago, they have performed in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, over the major radio and TV networks, and at hundreds of universities in the U.S. Commenting on their universal appeal, one critic said, "The Beers have the unstudied showmanship of people who love both their music and their audiences. Their performance, a homey recreation of rural America, is refreshing in its naturalness and honest warmth."
The ~~ Magnificent FourfJ
Philadelphia String Quartet members had an opportunity to examine Indian musical instruments during a recent visit to the University of Washington's music department.
IN ITS ALMOST twenty years of existence, the Philadelphia String Quartet has earned the reputation of being one of the finest and most highly respected chamber music groups in the U.S. Long an integral part of Philadelphia's cultural life, the ensemble moved to Seattle in 1966 where, as official String Quartet for the State of Washington, it gives a total of forty concerts in four cities each season. The Philadelphia Quartet has been described as "one of the most adventurous of all musical organizations." In addition to the standard chamber music repertoire-from Beethoven to Bartok, Schubert to Schoenberg-it has always pioneered in the performance of new works by unknown composers. Members of the "Magnificent Four" are Veda Reynolds, first violin; Irwin Eisenberg, second violin; Alan Iglitzin, viola; and Charles Brennand, cello.
The Murray Louis Dancers have a repertoire that is as varied as it is novel. At left, members of the troupe in "ll/ume." Far left, Murray Louis in "Chimera," a dance that explores the vulnerable area of self-doubt. Bottom, a sequence from "Junk Dances," a hilarious satire on the banality of modern living.
"A body
that is enormously
eloquent.~~ in the eightmember Murray Louis Dance Company's repertoire is "A Tribute," danced to the music of Ravi Shankar. This selection is a measure of Louis' eclecticism, his far-ranging search for more meaningful music to express the things he has to say. In recent years Murray Louis has come to be known as one of America's most brilliant young modern dancers and choreographers. His style is the result of training with Alwin Nikolais, himself a pupil of the wellknown Hanya Holm. His many critical accolades include this comment by the New York Times' John Martin, "Louis has a body that is enormously eloquent, moving in every joint and muscle with inborn musicality in response to every nuance of feeling. His gift for improvisation is rich and vital .... His is, in the best sense of the term, an essentially END lyric talent .... " ONE OF THE ITEMS
UNITY IN DIVERSITY -
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.~ 7-].. ~ 3 I';: ..j 1A Agriculture. illustrated by rich harvest of wheat, top left, ana panoramic view of c tour stripcropping in Wisconsin, opposite, is basic to economy of midwest region of u.s. Most States have diverse industries: top right, concentration of rail wagons in Chicago and, bottom, automobiles outside a Detroit plant. Bottom left, pastimes include ice-boating in winter on Wisconsin's lakes.
IN DIVERSITY," a catch-phrase used by politicians of many nations, can be applied with particular appropriateness to the United States. In a country of such vastness, stretching 2,800 miles from east to west and 1,600 miles from north to south, it is natural that there should be a great variety of topography and climate. It has been remarked that a tourist from almost any part of the world can find in the United States something to remind him of the landscape or climate of his native country. There are snow-covered mountains, lakes and dense forests, riverirrigated valleys and vast expanses of fertile "UNITY
plains or prairies, coastal lowlands and long, sandy beaches, arid sub-montane regions and deserts. This wide contrast in physical environment and scenery is matched by large variations in temperature and rainfall. The north central region experiences extremes of heat and cold, temperature on the coldest day of the year being possibly as low as minusforty degrees Fahrenheit and on the hottest as high as 110 degrees. On the other hand, all along the western coast the climate is comparatively mild and there is little change between summer and winter temperatures. Yet another kind of climate marks the south-
western corner of the country, which has a mild winter but in summer is hotter than places on the equator. Distribution of rainfall too is very uneven, a large part of western and south-western United States being dry, with less than ten inches of annual rainfall, while most of the eastern sector receives forty to sixty inches and some coastal areas over eighty inches. The same diversity characterizes the people, their occupations and interests. The original settlers in colonial days were mainly of English stock but they were followed by waves of immigrants from Ireland, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The first Negroes arrived as early as 1619, although large-scale importation of Negro slaves from Africa did not commence,tiU the early eighteenth century. In the latter half of the nineteenth century large numbers of immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe and also from Asia. Drawn from many ethnic groups and speaking many languages, they brought diverse cultures to the land of their adoption. With the lapse of time, and noi without resentment and oppositionfrom the earlier Americans, they were absorbed into the mainstream of national life and adopted a common language. But their racial and ethnic origins are still reflected in varying customs and cherished traditions. As elsewhere, it is geography that has largely determined the nature and distribution of occupations in the United States. Industrialization and the growth of technology have, however, led to a considerable diversification of occupations and even in regions which are primarily agricultural, industries afford employment to large numbers of people.
Modern methods of cultivation have resulted in large increases in yield and improvement in quality. Maize needs heat and sunshine, and the climate of most Midwest States-hot summers, cold winters and rainfall varying from eighteen to forty inches-is particularly suited to its cultivation. The Maize Belt runs through the centre of the Midwest region, and fields of tall maize stretch endlessly from east to west across the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Iowa, at the core of the Corn Belt, normally grows more maize than any other State in America. It has some 161,000 farms in operation, and the typical farm is a highly mechanized modern food factory. The average farmer and his family live in a comfortable house with all the amenities of modern living-electricity, telephone, automobile, television, running water, and often central heating. Unlike India, there are no farm villages in America and each family lives in a house on its own farm, travelling often to the nearest town for shopping, recreation or other needs. Besides maize, Iowa produces soybeans, oats, wheat and potatoes and ranks high in production of milk, eggs and butter. In the raising of cattle, other livestock and poultry, it has a leading position in the country. The pattern of agricultural activity in other Midwest States is similar, with some variations dictated by local conditions. Illinois and Indiana rank close to Iowa in production of maize. Illinois also grows large quantities of soybeans, oats, rye an.d apples, and is near the top in livestock. Indiana, besides maize, has a large crop of soybeans and an important fruit harvest. Michigan too has rich orchards near the shores of Lake Michigan and grows a variety of fruits, besides ranking high in dairy products. Kansas, North Dakota and are important wheat growing This diversification of economic activity is Oklahoma areas, which in recent years have exported best illustrated by the group of thirteen States wheat to India. Wisconsin, with its broad -Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, pastures and wealth of milch cattle, is aptly Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North and called "America's Dairyland." Eighty per South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconcent of its farms are dairy farms. sin-forming what is known as America's While agriculture is basic to the economy Midwest and spread over an area roughly two-thirds that of India. Containing much of of the Midwest States, the region has also the best farmland in the country, the region is - diverse, thriving industries ranging from food processing to steel and automobile manufacrich in agricultural produce, but in it are also ture. The enormous growth and multiplicasome of the nation's biggest and busiest mantion of industries in this and other parts of ufacturing and communication centres. In the United States during the past few decades fact, of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corhas been largely achieved through steady porations, as many as 184 or nearly thirtyadvances in technology and constantly rising seven per cent are in the Midwest. standards of living. According to a recent Corn or maize is the most important crop grown in the United States, exceeding both in survey, fifty-five per cent of the American peoquantity and value the country's crop of ple now earn their living in industries which did not exist at the beginning of the century. wheat, rice and other small grains combined.
Detroit with its environs, in Michigan, has the distinction of being the world's largest centre of automobile manufacture. Founded in 1701 by the French soldier of fortune, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac-after whom is named a well-known make of American automobiles-Detroit saw the first selfpropelled horseless carriages roll out of the factories onto the streets of the city in 1896. Because of the vision and organizing genius of Henry Ford and a small group of other entrepreneurs, the industry developed rapidly during the next twenty years. Ford's conviction that an automobile should be a necessity rather than a luxury, his development of the low-priced Model-T in 1908, introduction of the first assembly line six years later and a minimum wage of S5 a day, were major factors in the growth of the industry which now employs millions of people.
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Today, although the operations of the American automobile industry extend to the entire North American continent and several other countries, Detroit continues to be its hub and the headquarters of the Big ThreeFord, General Motors and Chrysler. It is here that constant research and planning go on to evolve new models and give the consumer an improved product year after year. The spectacular General Motors Technical Centre, north of the city, designed by the late Eero Saarinen, occupies an area of more than 400 acres. Apart from the big assembly plants in or near the city, there are hundreds of ancillary industries in the Detroit region which manufacture parts or accessories for the automobile industry. During World War II, Detroit played a vital role in the production of military equipment by converting its plants to the manufacture of tanks, armoured cars, aircraft engines and many miscellaneous continued
World's busiest air terminal is the O'Hare
InternationalAirport, Chicago, where about 30,000passengers arrive and depart every day.
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Much of the best farmland in the U.S. is in the
thirteen Midwest States shown in the map. In this region too are located some of nation's busiest industrial and transport centres.
STATE
CAPITAL
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tems. It continues to cater for the nation's defence needs by producing tanks, guided missiles and other weapons. Steel is, of course, an essential component of automobiles and most defence equipment. Detroit's steel industry dates back to the midnineteenth century, long before automobiles were made, and it has some of the largest steelmills, foundries and refining plants in the country. The number of people employed in the automobile and other manufacturing industries is estimated at 600,000. The city has a cosmopolitan character, with many foreigners including Ukranians, Russians, Poles and Chinese. Detroiters of Polish origin fonn the largest single group of foreign-born citizens and their heritage of Poland's culture is reflected in such ways as display ofbi-lingual shop signs in English and Polish, publication of Polish newspapers and a partiality for Polish dishes. The proportion of Negroes has been increasing and employment opportunities for them in this large industrial area have multiplied in recent years. Social change and growth are, however, not always achieved without conflict and a few months ago Detroit was the scene of racial violence and rioting. Steel, too, is a major industry in the State of Ohio which adjoins Michigan on the South. Cleveland, the largest city in the State, is an important centre for manufacture of steel, machine tools, electrical goods, automobiles and aircraft. Ford, General Motors and
Chrysler operate plants in the city. It has the distinction of being the birthplace, or rather the nursery, of the petroleum industry in the United States: here John D. Rockefeller and his partners started th~ Standard Oil Company. In south-west Ohio, Dayton, another manufacturing centre, has perhaps even greater claim to fame as the place where Orville and Wilbur Wright produced the first successful airplane, beginning the era of man's conquest of air. And yet another city in the State, Akron, figures prominently in American industrial history for being the pioneer in manufacture of rubber goods. Charles Goodyear, who invented the vulcanizing process on a kitchen stove, made the first rubber tyres in Akron in 1898. Headquarters of the Firestone Rubber Co. are also located in Akron. The neighbouring State of Illinois provides another excellent example of a balanced economy. Highly industrialized, it is also topranking in agriculture and is called by its citizens "The Prairie State." Illinoisans are proud of their State as the place where Abraham Lincoln grew up, practised law and served as a State legislator before he became President. Lincoln's house and tomb in Springfield attract thousands of visitors every year, and all Illinois automobile licence plates bear the inscription "Land of Lincoln." But perhaps the most famous place in the Midwest-indeed the leading symbol of the area-is not a State but a city: Chicago, Illi-
nois, the second largest city in the United States and for more than a century "the crossroads of the nation." This "stormy, husky. brawling city of the big shoulders," as Carl Sandburg described it, has earned both fame and notoriety. Figuring prominently in American folklore, it became notorious at one time as the city of gangsters. In the 1920s Al Capone came into the limelight as the leader of a criminal gang involved in illicit trade in liquor, gambling and other crimes. Chicago, "the windy city," is America's premier transport and industrial centre. With imports estimated at $1,000 million and exports of $2.000 million a year, it leads the country in volume of foreign trade and offers the largest concentration of transport facilities -rail, road and air-of any city in the U.S. It is also a major steel producer, food processor and grain-milling distributor. It is the bustle of people and goods on the move that gives Chicago its colour and character. Twenty trunk railway lines, more than five hundred road freight companies and twenty major airlines are part of the huge network of communications which links Chicago with other parts of the country and the rest of the world. Its railway sidings handle as many as 34,000 freight wagons a day, while the roadways operate 340 trucking terminals. It has fourteen commercial airports including O'Hare International Airport-the busiest in the world. An average of 30,000 passengers land at O'Hare and Midway Airports and c;ontinued
Visitors to Iowa State Fair, Building generators, below, in Des Moines, left, view display Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Manufacof garden produce. Fair is ture of electrical equipment State's biggest agricultural meta. is the State's leading industry.
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Giant tyre of bulldozer, at right,
is symbolic of Ohio's rubber industry. The first rubber tyres were produced in Akron in 1898.
about the same number depart every day. Sea traffic is brisk too, with some 800 ships arriving from foreign ports in a year. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, Chicago obtained direct access to the Atlantic, enhancing its importance as a seaport. Flanking lllinois on the east is the State of Indiana, and on the west Iowa and Missouri, while Wisconsin adjoins its northern borders. All of these four States enjoy agricultural abundance but industrial progress has been rapid and inc,ome from manufacturing industries exceeds, in some cases considerably, that from farm produce. Indiana has a huge concentration of heavy industry in the northwest, comprising several steel, cement and oil refining plants. Diverse other manufactures-electrical machinery including television and household appliances, automobile parts, aircraft and transportation equipment, chemicals-also make up the State's vast industrial complex. Food processing is the leading industry in Iowa, followed by a wide range of manufactures. Included in the list are electronic equipment, washing machines (a famous make is May tag), tyres, railway equipment, automobile accessories, chemicals and fertilizers, vending machines, office furniture and gypsum wallboard. There are substantial reserves of coal in the southern part of the State. To Iowa's agricultural and industrial preeminence, Americans of varied European stock have contributed their talents and skills. The first to arrive in the 1840s were the Irish and Scots, followed by Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians and Czechs. Norwegian pioneers established dairy farms in the northeastern corner of the State and established the town of Decorah. The State's capital, Des Moines, is the venue of the famous Iowa State Fair, which is a great festive occasion and attracts people from all over the area. Missouri, with its diversity of soil, climate and economic activity, has been called "the self-sufficient State." It grows almost any kind of crop and its industries manufacture "everything from airplanes to corncob pipes and baseball bats." Abont half of the State's population lives in the metropolitan area of St. Louis, the country's largest freight truck centre and noted for production of furs and footwear. Kansas City, another important urban area, is a leading wheat market and has a number of automobile assembly plants. The town of Independence, a current tourist attraction, is the home of former President Harry Truman and the Truman Library. It has historic importance as the
starting point for road wagon trains carrying emigrants to the west in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Wisconsin's largest city and chief industrial centre is Milwaukee. Situated on the shore of Lake Michigan and now on the way to becoming a major seaport, the city is known as "the machine shop of America." It leads in the manufacture of diesel and gasoline engines, electric motors, motor cycles and tractors, and is famous for its breweries. Further westward is a group of three States in the region-Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota-with an economy based largely on agriculture and mining. Minnesota, deriving its name from a Red Indian term meaning "land of the sky-blue waters," is for the most part a level or gently rolling plain with a large number of waterways. Apart from farming, lumbering was a leading industry for more than a century, and forests are still a major resource. Iron mines, in the northeast, produce the greater portion of America's high-grade iron ore. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are important industrial, communiCations and cultural centres. "") Once a land of prairie trails, shacks and small farms, rugged North Dakota is now mechanized and modernized. A leading wheat producing area; it is also endowed with mineral. wealth. Petroleum, natural gas, lignite, uranium and salt are important minerals. South Dakota's economic pattern is very similar to that of North Dakota, but its mineral resources also include gold and it leads the country in gold production. The State was at one time plagued by drought and dust storms but imaginative programmes of water and soil conservation and afforestation have provided effective safeguards. The remaining Midwest -States-Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma-are also predominantly agricultural. Kansas, with farms averaging in size more than 500 acres each, produces the bigg~st wheat crop in the United States, and Oklanoma ranks next. In these States, too, improved conservation methods have done much to mitigate the hazards of drought and dust storms and transformed a region once notorious as the "dust bowl," into fertile farm and pasture land. A number of growing industries give Kansas a balanced economy. Wichita, in the south, is a large aircraft manufacturing centre. Petroleum is the richest of Oklahoma's natural resources. Oklahoma City, the State capital, has many oil wells within the city limits and some even on the capitol grounds! The State was at one time known as "Indian
territory," and its population has a large" element of Red Indians. Nebraska's chief role through much of its history has been that of a roadway to the Pacific coast area: its Platte river valley was the funnel through which America spilled into the West.
What are the factors which make for unity in the midst of all this diversity of economic interests and which have increasingly brought rural and urban people, of many ethnic origins, close to one another in America? Foremost among the unifying factors is the strong consciousness of nationhood, the feeling that, whatever their origins, they are citizens of one country and can take pride in its institutions, traditions and ideals. This feeling of oneness has been fostered by develop- , ment of a common language (English) and the common democratic base of all institutions at the city, county, State or Federal level. Progress of education (the Midwest States alone have more than six hundred institutions of higher learning including several Land-" grant Colleges where agriculture is a major subject), assisted by the printing and book publishing industry and adoption of the same textbooks in many schools and colleges, has acc~lerated the process. The movies, the theatre, institutions of fine arts, libraries and museums, all provide a common forum of entertainment and enlightenment. Development of the nation-wide network of rail, road and air services, and in particular the phenomenal increase in the number of automobiles following the production of the "made-in-Michigan" Model-T Ford, have greatly facilitated communication between various parts of the country. The farmer, with his own motor car, is not isolated; he is a frequent visitor to the city and shares its social life. The automobile has brought national parks and other centres of recreation within easy access of most citizens. Radio and television have further annihilated distances and promoted contacts. The general increase in incomes, coupled with the ready availability of all kinds of consumer goods-often on easy credit terms-bas led to a rise in living standards everywhere and largely eliminated differences between the classes. , Inheritors of many cultures, pursuing many divergent interests and spread over a vast continent, Americans have the unity which transcends regional differences and welds a END people into a great nation. Impressive example of modern architecture is this Unitarian Church in Madison, designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.