SPAN: November 1962

NOVEMBER

1962 CC Carillon" from the dance mite cc Totem" by Alwin Nikolais. See page ten.

FOUR and a half centuries AFTER of oblivion, Cape Canaveral, Florida, which was discovered by a Spanish eXplorer in 1512 has suddenly sprung into prominence as America's gateway to outer space.

During the past four years hundreds of missiles and rockets have soared into the skies from the Cape. Scores of satellites have been hurled aloft and men have been launched on their unprecedented adventure of flights into space. Pictured on the opposite page is an Atlas rocket lifting from its pad at Cape Canaveral, atop which is a Mercury capsule like that in which astronaut Walter Schirra was rocketed into space on October 3, 1962, to become the third American to make an orbital flight around the earth. Before the present decade is over, Canaveral is expected to be the scene of more epoch-making launchings culminating in a flight around the moon.

This cradle of the space age is topographically monotonous and uninteresting. It is a flat treeless terrain where scrubgrass, mangrove and palmettos grow in tropical wilderness. This drab natural setting is now altered by complex man-made devices-towering, brightly coloured gantries or servicing cranes, radar and radio installations and a variety of miscellaneous equipment and supporting facilities.

Thousands of Canaveral scientists, engineers and technicians work around the clock, readying missiles and spacecraft on concrete. pads and inside large hangers. Many thousands more civilian and military personnel are busy operating aircraft, ships, molor vehicles and supporting installations throughout the day and night. During night operations powetful arc lamps can fl'ood the area with light as bright as day.

Inside the air-conditioned,' soundproof control rooms are instrument. panels, boards, switches, buttons, flashing and pulsing red and green lights, which check out the readiness of each rocket vehicle and control its launch.

Through periscopes protruding from . the roof and numerous closed-circuit television screens, each launching is also monitored visuallv from different angles. ' An average of two to five launches are made every week. The eyes and the ears of the world are now often turned towards Cape Canaveral and through its magic portals into the new, unexplored vastness of space .•

4

MUSIC IN AMERICA

by Zehra Rehmatulla

10 TOTEM - T Photographs by David S. Berlin

12 THE MUSICAL COMEDY - I

by Lokenath Bhattacharya

18 MAHALIA JACKSON

by Q. D. Penman

21 (ALAN) HOVHANESS

by Sohindar-S. R'ana

22 X-ISby Arvindar Singh

,

24 SOME PERSPECTIVESON ECONOMIC AID -

t

by John Kenneth Galbraith

26

PATTERNS OF POWER

by N. V. Sagar

32

THE DEMOCRATIC WAGER

by Charles Frankel

34 ~ JOHN) MARSHALL! ~()t-{

~

by Virginius.Dabney

40 THE SUPREME COURT

by Clinton Rossiter

45

HUGO LAFAYETTE BLACK

by V. S. Nanda

48

PICK A UNIVERSE

by Robert C. Cowen

50 THE SECRETARY OF STATE AT HOME

r..

GeL'

I

I

EDITOR Edward

MANAGING EDITOR

SENIOR STAFF EDITOR Lokenath

William

PRODUCTION MANAGER Awtar

V. S. Nanda

Bhattacharya

Post

ART DIRECTOR

S. Marwaha

Zehra

COpy MANAGER Nirmal

PHOTO EDITOR

Kumar Sharma

Avinash

H. Weathersby.

Director.

United States Information

Rehmatulla

United

States

C. Pasricha

Information

Service.

Sikandra Road. New Delhi. on behalf of The American Embassy. New Delhi.

Service.

Isaac N. Isaac

at Vakil & Sons Private Ltd .• Narandas Building. Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-I.

M S of the people,

I ONE

for the people

I

EVENING last winter, an avid music fan entered a taxi in New York City and gave the address of theJuilliqrd School of Music. The address had an uncommon effect on the taxi driver. He brightened up and struck up a conversation with the rider. They talked about different types of music. Finally the cab-driver handed the rider a small transistorized tape recorder. "I always carry this with me so that even when I can't attend the New York Philharmonic I can at least listen to some good taped music," he said.

Not that all American taxi drivers attend music concerts or possess transistorized tape recorders, but today in America one isjust as likely to find a member of a concert audience driving a taxi as riding in one.

Even a hundred years ago the average American had little time and no instrument in his home to provide seriolts music. The most of music he knew, or cared to know, were folk songs, ballads and hymns. For the major portion of the people that was not only all but enough. Life was still rugged and difficult for many: the ordinary citizen was busy conquering a raw, new country-pushing out west by dusty wagon trails, clearing lands, building cities, laying railroad tracks and constructing factories.

There was no place in his life-and little leisure-for symphonies and string quartets.

These came much later. When the broad land was finally settled, the homes built, the industries established, and the businesses booming, then the American man found leisure and an appetite for more sophisticated music and only then did the creative arts lose the strangely feminine connotation they had acquired. But the criterion of musical excellence in those fir,styears was terribly confused. Whatever secondand third-rate talent was sent out by the mass-booking agencies and billed as "the finest," "the greatest," had to be accepted by the public. There was no other to choose. Musical knowledge and discernment was the "property" of the privileged few-a small group of persons of wealth, education and family prestige,

for the most part. The common American had had neither the education in music nor the active listening experience to distinguish good from bad.

As the country matured, public schools and colleges offered musical education and young people from throughout the nation began to emerge as fine performers, conductors and composers. Ultimately there came a great surge of musical awareness at the local level. Symphony orchestras, opera and chamber music groups, local oratorio and community choruses sprang into being, first by the dozens, then by the hundreds. They were comprised of every conceivable combination of amateur and professional performers and were operated at vastly different artistic and financial levels. Local citizens, the men, women and children of the country, attended the concerts and performances for many reasons: civic pride, social and cultural prestige, or some personal interest in the performer. These performers and musicians were far removed from those of the earlier days who were sent out already artistically labelled and tagged, with the result that, now the listeners had to become their own critics. And so, slowly, the audience members began transforming themselves from mere onlookers to participating listeners.. All this, plus some real interest in music for its own sake, promoted the growth of the first serious music audience throughout America.

The real boom in musical interest

d<ttesback about forty years when the whole pattern of musical production underwent a radical change. Instead of waiting for the music to come to them, Americans began to launch serious efforts to create sources of good music in their own cities. The experiment has paid off handsomely.

Music in America is not subsidized by the government. Except to finance tours abroad for a few representative musical companies or orchestras and to help a handful of musical groups in a couple of states, the United States Government does not give any financial support to musical organizations.

It is the people themselves who finance and maintain their musical life-the people who own the industries and the people who work for hourly wages in those industries, the people who buy yachts and those who work for a number of years to complete payments on a modestly priced home, the members of the professions, the clerks in stores and offices, students, housewives and taxi drivers.

The widespread and active musical life of America is entirely supported by sale of concert tickets and voluntary contributions, by private funds given by individuals, by foundations and by business firms. Donations might be a dollar sent in by a humble but grateful radio listener or a grant of $ I ,500,000 for various musical projects from an organization like the Ford Foundation. A few years ago, the Rockefeller Foundation gave half-a-million dollars to the Louisville, Kentucky, Sym-

phony Orchestra for a five-year programme of commissioning, performing and recording new compositions. It also gave large funds to Columbia and Princeton Universities to establish a centre devoted to composition and research in electronic music. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as another example, receives voluntary contributions from thousands of individual persons each year, thus enabling the orchestra to meet its operating costs. In a typical U.S. city of about 100,000 population, it is usual for three or four thousand persons and organizations to maintain the city's symphony orchestra by annual contributions. In all an estimated total of well over $15 million is voluntarily contributed by the people for the maintenance of symphony orchestras alone in the United States. All this is in addition to money spent every year by the people for purchasing tickets to hear concerts by those same orchestras.

This interest of the people in improving the quality and the quantity of good music has produced results.

Compared to ten symphony orchestras in the whole of the United States in 1900, there were 100 in 1920 and today there are about I,Soo-nearly ninety per cent of the world's total of 2,000 symphony orchestras. Of these, thirty are major orchestras, the smallest of which has an annual budget of $125,000 and the largest, a budget of about $3 million. The smaller orchestras are scattered in more than a thousand towns and cities.

The city of Battle Creek in Michigan has a population of roughly 70,000 people. Unlike most other small cities, Battle Creek has a long history of interest in music. Sixty years ago it established an amateur symphony orchestra of its own, the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra plays nine or ten concerts during a year, as well as two annual concerts for the city's school children. Both the musicians and the conductor contribute their time and talents. The city takes great pride in its orchestra and its recitals. On its 60th anniversary, the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra gave a special recital which was attended by citizens from all walks of life, bankers and day labourers alike. Two days earlier approximately the same audience had attended a performance by one of the nation's leading professional orchestras, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, in the same auditorium.

Two days later the s,me audience trekked 25 miles to the nearby city of Kalamazoo through snow and fog to listen to Renata Tebaldi, one of the best operatic sopranos of our day.

A hundred miles to the south of Battle Creek is the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, which has a population of 140,000 people and a thriving semiprofessional orchestra, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. This orchestra's entire season of concerts is alwavs sold out in advance to two thou~and ticket purchasers. Only thirty years back more than half the listeners in Fort

Wayne had never heard a live symphonic concert. Today they have not only their own symphony orchestra but they have acquired a serious interest in music and a high measure of aesthetic discernment. The Fort Wavne Philharmonic was one of the first' orchestras in the country to introduce and play new works by contemporary American composers.

The contemporary composer owes much to the Louisville Orchestra too. Located in Louisville, Kentucky, which has a population of 400,000, this orchestra of 55 musicians and its conductor launched an extensive programme of commissioning ,cores by composers of many natiom. The Rockefeller Foundation helped finance the project and the scores have received premiere performances by the Louisville Orchestra.

This programme has not ouly provided financial support to contemporary composers, but also has greatly enhanced the prestige and renown of the Louisville Orchestra. In addition, it has stimulated interest in and promot~d understanding of contemporary musIC. In the State of Tennessee, the city of Nashville has a population of nearly 200,000 persons. A couple of years ago the Nashville Symphony Orchestra decided to give each concert twice, in order to accommodate its growing audience. It usually played to full houses in its 2,000-seat auditorium.

With the repetition of each concert, a brand new audience of another 1,800

sprang up, consisting mainly of young people. Now a total of 3,800 people are buying season tickets f01' the orchestra's entire winter series. This overnight growth of audience might be attributed to the fact that for ten years the orchestra has presented special concerts for the children of Nashville, many of whom have now grown up into young men and women.

In Oklahoma City, with a population of about 285,000, citizens finance and support their own professional symphony orchestra. There are numerous other cities with experiences similar to those of Battle Creek, Fort Wayne, Louisville, ! ashville and Oklahoma City.

Americans everywhere are developing a taste for and demanding more and more music by contemporary American composers. Alan Hovhaness (see page 21) is one composer who has felt the impact of this demand. The world premiere of his "Magnificat" was performed by a university choir and the Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra, a semi-professional orchestra in the city of Wichita Falls, Texas, with a population of less than 100,000.

The largest audience in the history of the orchestra attended the concert.

In the audience were workers from the oil fields and owners of oil wells, workers from ranches and ranch owners-men who a few years ago would not have set foot in a concert hall. On the night of the premiere these same men stood up and applauded the composition thunderously.

Span

Novemher Ig62

7

Highlight of a recent pre-season tour by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra was an evening concert in Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The lights of Denver, Colorado, glitter on the horizon twelve miles away. The famous theatre, set in the midst of a forest, is carved from the side of a limestone mountain and has a seating capacity of ten thousand persons.

There are, thus, generous sources of live music throughout the country.

The major source of good music, however, is actually high fidelity recorded music. It was the electronic phonograph and the tape recorder which really triggered the tremendous interest in music in the United States.

Ever since the end of World War II, this medium of music in the home has been rising in popularity in a sharp crescendo. Here are some statistics that are interesting to note. Even five years ago more than $ I 66 million were spent in the United States on phonograph and tape equipment and about $200 million on phonograph records and tapes. About $50 million were spent by Americans that same year for tickets to concerts and operas.

More money is spent each year for records of serious music alone, than Americans pay for admission to baseball games, although baseball, as is well known, is the favourite national sport of the United States.

Sales of musical instruments, accessories and sheet music have also increased more than 500 per cent in the last two decades, amounting to more than $500 million annually.

Annual sales of phonograph records of all kinds, popular and classical, multiplied ten times in twenty years, from $50 million in 1939 to about $500 million in 1960. Radio and television have been instrumental in winning popular favour for serious music.

In 1961 an average of 13,759 hours per week of concert music was being programmed by 1,250 radio stations in the United States.

Perhaps even more amazing and telling than this evidence of the present-day appreciation of concert music in America, is the rise in popularity of opera. From an art genre performed in only three or four cities and not widely appreciated elsewhere, opera has, during the past thirty years, come to be one of the most popular musical genres. Apart from such wellknown leading opera companies as the Metropolitan in New York, the San Francisco, the Chicago Lyric, and the New York City Opera Company, there are 750 large and small groups in the United States which present operas regularly.

Non-professional groups, particularly university workshops and municipal groups, form the backbone of this new enthusiasm for operatic music. The new musical comedy form has enjoyed the same popularity in performances throughout the country by travelling companies as well as by local theatre groups (see The Musical Comedy, page 12). A significant sidelight, indicative of the opera's rising popularity, is the latest trend to present scenes and arias from operas as a mode of entertainment

in U.S. restaurants. So far, only certain restaurants in New York City, Chicago, Denver and San Francisco offer this alternative to cabaret or dance bands.

Ballet and the dance theatre have also shared in the mushrooming demand for music that has spread across America. Ballet, introduced into America by Russian and other European travelling companies, has gradually evolved into a form of dance generally known today as American Dance. A blending of Negro, Spanish, Hindu, American Indian, Hebrew and traditional American folk dance, American dance theatre is presented today, side by side with the classical ballet, by more than ISO established professional and amateur groups all over the United States.

All of this musical interest is obviously not just listening and watching. Young Americans are being given every opportunity to become future composers and performers. Instrumental and vocal music, as well as theory and composition, are taught privately, in conservatories, in public schools, and in colleges and universities. Many colleges and universities have their own music workshops where the students compose, produce and perform opera, ballet, symphonic and chamber music.

Summer music camps play a great part in training young musicians and composers. Each summer thousands of students, along with semi-professional and professional musicians, flock to some twenty-five leading summer music camps to improve their talents under expert guidance. Courses usually include instrumental music, voice, composition, harmony and theory. Several of these camps have attained international reputations and are affiliated with major music festivals. One of the oldest, and perhaps the largest, of these camps is the National Music Camp near Interlochen, Michigan, a gigantic project offering excellent training to some 1,200 talented young men and women each summer.

The story of popular music in the United States would be similar in dimensions to that of the surging interest in serious music. But, whether the average American is enjoying popular music or serious music, one thing is certain: he is playing, listening to and e~oying more music today than ever before. His broad interest in good music has doubtless sprung from greater leisure, improved economic conditions, national musical maturity, and new and better listening equipment. All have combined to provide enhanced opportunities to satisfy the innate human need for music .â&#x20AC;˘

TOTEM

FROM ITS home base-the small Henry Street Playhouse on the Lower East Side-the reputation of an avant-garde dance company has been steadily spreading.

It is the company of Alwin Nikolais, dedicated to a "new theatre of motion." Choreographer Nikolais arranges human figures, bizarre props, lights, spaces, colours and sounds in patterns that are generally abstract-and almost always striking. The audience is stirred not by any obvious story-telling but by Nikolais' ingenious new world. The scenes on these two pages are from Nikolais' "Totem," which the company presented last summer at the Spoleto Festival in Italy .â&#x20AC;˘

New Designs

in Dance

THE MUSICAL

COMEDY

ALMOST A century has passed since The Black Crook had its premiere at Niblo's Garden, Broadway, on September 12, 1866. A splashy combination of French romantic ballet and German romantic melodrama, The Black Crook was not, contrary to what has been frequently claimed, the "first musical comedy" to be staged in the United States. But its opening performance was an event of considerable importance for popular musical entertainment in America. Qn that evening, for the first time in history, a genuinely metropolitan audience turned up to applaud a costly spectacle entirely homespun and designed to appeal to sophisticated tastes. With The Black Crook, Broadway had its first significant triumph over the monopoly of Europe in the field of light musical theatre.

Another memorable date for the American musical comedy is July 7 this year. On that day My Fair Lady, a musical adaptation of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, closed its Broadway run after more than six years of continued performance. No other musical comedy has been such a great popular hit.

The intervening century has witnessed a striking metamorphosis of the very concept of musical comedy.

No longer a wayward girl of the theatre and a creature of spangles, shrillness and leers, today's musical comedy is a refined art form.

The term "musical comedy," in its original loose usage, was applicable to any stage piece of a comic nature into which music could be integrated or onto which music could be appended. Hence, an opera buffa such as Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro could be called a musical comedy, while, at the other extreme of the artistic gamut, the interpolated songs and ballads of the popular American farces written and staged by Charles Hoyt in the late nineteenth century were also known as musical comedies.

The Musical Comedy All this has changed now. The present-day musical comedies are musical plays, possessing much that is of the essence of serious drama. Indeed, at their best, their technique of presentation and the quality of aesthetic experience they provide are in no way inferior to what can be expected in any brilliant straight play.

ONE

WAY to describe this new, emerging art form is to describe what it is not. For example, it is not opera, not operetta, not traditional drama, though elements of all three can be found in it. An apt description would be that it is a musical play, with song and dance integrated into a dramatic or comic narrative. Its dialogue, music and dance are so harmoniously synthesized in a continuous forward movement of the plot that, like any serious drama, it carries the audience along in an integrated theatrical experience, without suspending the progression of its plot for interpolated songs or dances.

This conception of the musical as an integrated experience, however, is of comparatively recent origin, though all the varied musical entertainments of the past have contributed their share to this developing art form. 'line era of musical comedy as a distinct genre is often dated from 1943, when librettist Oscar Hammerstein II and composer Richard Rodgers adapted for the musical stage an earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs. Riggs' play had a western frontier setting and was the story of a pair of shy, irresolute lovers.

Unlike most musical comedies preceding it, Oklahoma! turned out to be a people's opera, unpretentious and modern in taste. It caught the flavour of American music and tradition and was popular not only with New York audiences but throughout the U.S., and, in fact, the world.

With Oklahoma!, the "musical" ceased to be a localized kind offun and became a representative form of entertainment for American people as a whole. This play's longevity and sustained popular appeal-Oklahoma!'s run broke all previous musical-comedy records on Broadway-were due to the fact that it transcended the customary form of Broadway musical comedy without violating the essential spirit and ingredients to which the musical-comedy public was accustomed at that time. Moreover, what made Oklahoma! look quite different from previous musical shows were its strong story line and believable setting, combined with the emotional power of superior music and dance.

In the same vein and close upon the heels of Oklahoma!, came the next Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration in 1945, the musical Carousel, based on Liliom, a drama by Ferenc Molnar. The scene, this time, shifted to a New England locale, although Molnar's was Hungarian.

For a time, this musical seemed to challenge the earlier popularity of Oklahoma!.

With the possible exception of Oklahoma!, the most famous of all Rodgers-Hammerstein productions-and there are quite a few of them-is South Pacific, which opened in 1949. South Pacific, inspired by excerpts from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, is a story of a believable romance between a French island planter and a spirited young U.S. Army nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas. The play, which proved to be the most successful musical entertainment of the immediate post-war period, demonstrated the exceptional extent to which songs and dances could develop spontaneously within the action, instead of being thrust upon it. Rodgers' musical score,

comparable to his most memorable compositions in Oklahoma!, was so expertly calculated that even the set pieces and obvious hit tunes became part of the play and did not disturb the forward movement of the plot. But it was with Oklahoma! that the new era beg<hn,present experiments being in more ways than one a continuation of the tradition established in that musical by Richard Rodgers and Hammerstein.

The American musical comedy evolved through a fusion of elements from earlier types of entertainment: extravaganza, variety, burlesque, farce-comedy and European comic opera. After the French romantic ballet faded as a popular theatrical genre, the term "extravaganza"which was often identified with the French ballet-was used to describe almost any spectacular piece employing elaborate machinery for the production of illusions and tricks. In its original usage, the term described a higWy imaginative spectacle leaning upon the devices of ballet.

The Black Crook, produced in the United States in 1866, was a celebrated example of this kind of musical show.

Variety shows, or vaudeville, used to provide entertainment through a conglomeration of songs and dance routines. Burlesque contributed to ea.rly musical comedy fare its distinguishing characteristics of girls in tights and male comedians with baggy pants. Taken to the United States in 1868 by Lydia Thompson of London, it had its first American expression in Evangeline, a musical show produced in 1874 by Edward E. Rite.'

Farce-comedy, a mixture of variety specialties and a slender thread of plot, was devised in the middle 1870S by the Vokes family of England and Salsbury's Troubadours, an American troupe. Finally, there was comic opera, English, French and Viennese, which at best constituted an aristocratic genre in the light musical field.

All are now relics of a relatively distant past. Even about thirty years ago, the musical entertainment picture in America had changed radically and was marked by three well-defined types of show. First, there was the operetta, which specialized in shrill sopranos, virile tenors and a great deal oflilting music. Under this category fall some of the most famous musicals ever produced in the United States, such as The Student Prince, Blossom Time, Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie, The New Moon and The Vagabond King, Victor Herbert was the king of this school.

Musicals of this category are now virtually extinct and, being short on humour and awash with sentimentality, they seem old-fashioned without being charming. .

Secondly, there was the "gag-and-girl" show, once a great popular attraction of every Broadway season.

Musicals of this kind were called "follies" and sometimes employed a fragmentary plot. Comic roles were played by reputed comedians, and many of the songs are as pleasing today as when they were written. But the conception underlying the show now seems outmoded. Especially, the "girls," or chorus line, an essential ingredient of the follies, would seem vulgar and overdone to a contemporaryaudience.

Lastly, there was the topical show, the salient feature of which was satire. These "revues," as they were called, poked fun-good humouredly or eSaM4gely-at the passing scene, in both song and dance. .

The gradual extinction of these types of show is due to changing American attitudes over the last few decades.

Already in the topical show were present some of the broad characteristics of modern musical comedy. Shows of this kind differed from comic opera and operetta in adhering to a more vernacular style in music, dances, lyrics and

The Musical Comedy dialogue. It differed from vaudeville in its possession of the semblance of a plot and in the elaborateness of its investiture and mode of presentation. But broad satire, the principal note of the topical show, has largely vanished from today's musical stage. Being in emotional rapport with a more sophisticated public, the new musicals are generally dramatic in character.

An example of the dramatic tone which has arrived in the musical comedy is Lady in the Dark, produced in 1940. The story was about a fashion-magazine editor's search for happiness through psychoanalysis, and the conflict between the fears of her real life and the glories of her dream life. At last, the neurotic heroine found the key to her problem in a hidden memory of childhood. Perhaps with the solitary exception of Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude, the discQv.:eriesof Freud had so far been presented on the American stage mainly in a humorous light; but in this specific case, it was a serious treatment of a serious subject, adding a new dimension of depth to characterization in musicals. Not only a dramatically superior work, Lady in the Dark was also rich in the usual elements of a successful musical.

Even from the point of view of craftsmanship a modern musical is a challenging piece of work. Through the past few years its artistic level has risen considerably, and more and more it has come to be conceived of as a coherent lyric-theatre form, embodying cooperative contributions of music, dance, book, lyrics, action, costumes, stage settings and lighting. Choreography, a comparatively recent addition, has contributed greatly to the animation of the musical stage. George Balanchine, one of the world's leading choreographers, and Agnes de Mille, whom many consider the first choreographer-director of the American dance theatre, have won for the dance a serious artistic participation that it had not previously enjoyed in musical comedies.

T HE THEATRICAL

synthesis now expected of a musical comedy, is, thus, of a complex nature. Many disparate elements must be brought within the framework of the composite whole. There must also be a careful elimination of any aesthetic distance between the technique of presentation and the quality of the material to be sung or spoken. No such underlying 'unity characterized the old school musicals where it often seemed that cooks of widely varied abilities had been doctoring the dinner. In the modern musical play, which is no longer a mere popular entertainment but an art form, the presence of a single presiding genius must be felt.

Such has been the success, both artistic and financial, of musical comedy that, in a brief span of fifteen years or so, it has electrified not only Broadway but the whole of the United States. The importance of musicals in the entertainment picture is already so great that some New York critics are even alarmed by what they call the increasing "musicalization of the theatre." And starting with OJ Thee I Sing in 1932, a number of musical comedies have been recipients of the coveted Pulitzer Prize for drama.

All this evidently shows the popularity of this refreshing art form and its surprising new vitality. Today, there is hardly any metropolitan centre in the United States which does not support, during the course of a year, at least one modern musical play, produced by travelling or local companies. But this success has not been possible

without certain penalties. One of them is that, though many musical plays still continue to be comic, their fun is in no way comparable to the side-splitting laughter evoked in the old days by great comic performers. The old school comedians had such strong and unique personalities that their very presence in a modern integrated show would be enough to completely shatter its unity.

Composers and lyric writers, to a certain extent, have also been handicapped. Keeping constantly in view the inviolable unity of the show, they must now tailor their creations to the needs of character and situation, and reject ruthlessly all extraneous elements, however entertaining in themselves. On the other hand, this discipline has given them a new challenge to create popular music with greater aesthetic depth.

One characteristic of the modern musical has kept it somewhat antiquated in mood: that is its subject matter.

In most of the successful musicals the prevailing atmosphere is one of past times. With a few recent exceptions such as West Side Story, Bye-Bye Birdie and South Pacific, they are either "period" shows or adapted from existing literarv works of reputation. There is little in their matter that is' pronouncedly contemporary. But if producers are reluctant to rely on original works, it is because that they do not want to risk their fortune on unknown and untried stories. The production of a musical costs a minimum of $200,000 (Rs. 10 lakhs), a sum recoverable only if the show has a triumphant run for six months to a year. The adaptation of a previously successful book or play, thus, has an important commercial value to the producer. A playgoer, for instance, might not be attracted by New Girl in Town, a title that rings no special bell for him, unless he knows that it is based on O'Neill's famous play Anna Christie.

This tendency to make his show acceptable to the public often forces the producer to do violence to the original. My Fair Lady is a case in point. In Shaw's Pygmalion, of which this musical is an adaptation, Eliza, the independent-minded heroine, does not marry her irascible phonetics professor Higgins. But in the musical she not only marries him but does so after he comes crawling to her, the obvious inference being that Higgins will prove himself a model husband hereafter.

Because of some of these tendencies, which are still very much present, it may seem that musical comedy, for all its merit and popularity, has not yet reached its zenith and that it continues to remain a developing art form of immense potentiality. It has yet to interpret in terms of its own era the classic human emotions. But even in that direction a few bold and unconventional attempts have been made. One was West Side Story, already referred to, which opened in 1957. A story of a juvenile gang war in contemporary New York, it violated many of the rule~ of so-called "entertainment." Yet, it proved to be a tremendous commercial success. It was composed, incidentaUy, bv Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philhirmonic Symphony Orchestra and one of the world's foremost interpreters of classical Western music.

Such healthy experiments as West Side Story have shown that a Broadway audience will accept and appreciate something beyond the prevalent compromise which seeks to keep a constant eye on the box office without abandoning the pursuit of technical and aesthetic perfection. The indications are that such ventures will continue and in increasing numbers, and that musical comedy, from the point of view of both form and content, might emerge as a genuinely new and original dramatic form .â&#x20AC;˘

MAHALIA JACKSON

has a big and beautiful voice. She cannot read a note of music-has never had a music lesson in her life-but, for forty years she has held her audiences by the heartstrings as she sings her "gospel" songs.

She has sung for Presidents and Kings-the same spiritual and religious messages that she sings for the congregation of her Baptist church in Chicago where she is helping to build a new church and school with the concert money she has earned.

"It will be a symbol of religious and civic education," Mahalia explained.

"One of the requirements for students will be the ability to read music, something I don't know how to do. That's important but I believe you're born with singing in you. Everything is right when singing comes from the soul."

Miss Jackson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a dock worker who was a preacher on Sundays. She sang in her father's church choir as a child.

Mahalia¡teaches two young visitors how to shape their lips for a round true note, how to clap their hands for rhythm, and the joy of putting both together in a song.

MAHAUAJA(~SON "Even then," she says, "I had such a great big voice you could hear it up and down the river front. When I was sixteen we moved to Chicago where I joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church. I sang in their choir and for years traveled to religious conventions around the country for my church. I made my first recordings in the 1930's.

My recording of 'Silent Night' was for some time the topselling record in Denmark.

"Spiritual and gospel songs are called Negro because the Negro was the first to sing them. But anybody can sing them that feels them. You can be white or colored-so long as you have that feeling in your spirit!"

Miss Jackson does not like to have her gospel music confused with jazz, folksongs or the blues. When she sang at the famous Newport Jazz Festival, she requested that she appear on stage at the end of the concert and that all signs advertising "jazz" be covered during her performance.

She feels that jazz is music expressing a seeking after something that hasn't been found; whereas gospel music is the rewarding story of people who have found love and peace in their knowledge of God. "A blues starts sad and ends sad.

A gospel song may start sad but when you're finished you're refueled with hope. The bounce in my music simply means stepping up the tempo and putting joy in the voice-sort of making a joyful noise unto the Lord. I don't care what He is, a man has to have something to look up to."

Miss Jackson explained that there are three kinds of Negro religious music: anthems, spirituals and gospels.

"The spiritual is the highest folk art of the Negro people, but the gospel is universal, drawing from both Negro and white sources. Spirituals usually deal with religious themes and in form and melody are closer to European music. Gospels, on the other hand, are enriched by African rhythms."

MahaliaJ ackson recently completed her second European concert tour and hopes to visit Africa next for a series of concerts .â&#x20AC;˘ "When you sing a gospel song. you should make a joyful noise to the Lord."

ALAN

HOVHANESS

INcanRECENT YEARS manv Americomposers have bec~me fas-

Hovhaness discusses the score of his Arjuna Symphony with Handel Manuel who conducted the world premiere of the work.

cinated with Eastern and specially with Indian musical forms. But no one has utilized these materials more successfully and blended them so well with Western music as has Alan Hovhaness, an American composer of rare talent and startling originality.

Hovhaness's study of Oriental musical theory and techniques has resulted in an unusual style of music.

With Hovhaness a musical mode of his ancestral Armenian sources might be applied to a rhythmic structure from Indian sources for working within a classical Western canonic form.

The result is a moving, long-breathed music which possesses unique lyrical beauty and an intense personal expressiveness.

Many of Hovhaness's works have won acclaim and he is fast becoming one of America's better known composers of serious music. He has been described as "one of the most individual and exotically expressive American composers of the rising generation."

Born of Armenian and Scottish descent, Hovhaness commenced the study of music at the age of four. No sooner had he learned the rudiments of music than he started composing. His musical education progressed through the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, through piano lessons with Heinrich Gebhard and through his first instruction in composition from Frederick Converse.

Soon Hovhaness discovered that his Armenian heritage exercised the stronger pull. It was not until he was thirty that he turned to the land of his paternal ancestors and concerned himself with modal melody of the Armenian folklore.

This new interest in traditional melodies brought about a great crisis in Hovhaness's career. He came to have an intense dislike for all his earlier works and searched for an idiom more worthy of his tradition than he had discovered. At this point in his career, Hovhaness ruthlessly burned the whole mass of his compositions up to that time. He became interested in Oriental philosophy which gave a new dimension to his music.

Years of travelling, listening and

studying stimulated the young composer to write music in a style that linked the old with the new. Using Armenian music as a focal point, Hovhaness delved into the traditional music of the Arabs, Syrians, Greeks, Turko- Tatars, Persians, Indians, Chinese and Japanese as well.

His musical pursuits brought him to India in 1959 with an opportunity to hear Indian music at first hand and to study with Indian masters. Here Hovhaness presented works of his own to Indian audiences, heard and studied Indian classical music. He actually wrote music for Indian musicians and performed it with them. His Symphony No.8, "Arjuna," was composed in the raga Nata Bhairavi and its premiere performance was in Madras.

Even before his tour of India, Hovhaness had experimented with the modal scale designs of Indian classical music and the results are evident in such works as "Khalis" and "Upon Enchanted Ground."

One of the best works of Hovhaness's in Eastern idiom is "Concerto for Viola and Strings." Other outstanding compositions of his include "Mysterious Mountain," "Magnificat," "Easter Cantata," and "Anahid."

Summing up Hovhaness's musical achievements, one critic has stated: "Among all our American contributions to musical art, which are many, it is one of the most curious and original, without leaning on any point of ignorance, idiosyncrasy, or personalized charm."

Physically, Hovhaness is tall, excessively thin and essentially a shy person. He is by nature ascetic and is a vegetarian. His friends often remark that, like his music, he himself is a blend of saintly EI Greco-like mysticism, Oriental resignation and Western dynamism.

Hovhaness himself believes that his recent musical works represent a union of "two forces in my style-the East and the West . . . . Before they were like two separate streams. I could not unite them." And it was very appropriate that, when the University of Rochester awarded an honorary doctorate degree to Hovhaness, the citation stated: "The despair of Kipling is the glory of Hovhaness.".

J

UST A LITTLE less than sixty years ago the inventive genius of the Wright Brothers enabled them to fly the world's first powered heavierthan-air craft for twelve seconds to an altitude often feet above the ground, at a speed of about seven miles an hour. Today American aeronautical engineers are successfully testing a piloted aircraft which is expected to fly at an altitude of a hundred miles and at a speed of 4,800 miles per hour.

These extensions of winged flight are being accomplished in the rocket ship X-I5, the world's fastest and highest flying aircraft. The most recent X-I5 flight was made onJuly '27this year when U.S. Air Force Major Robert White, opposite page, piloted the rocket plane to an altitude of 59 .6 miles and attained the speed of 3,784 miles per hour. The altitude reached by Major White is the highest man has ever flown in an airplane and flying beyond the earth's atmosphere qualified him as the first winged astronaut.

In an earlier flight this year, test pilot Joseph Walker flew the X-I5 to a world speed record of 4,159 miles per hour and in another flight Major White sped up to 4,093 miles an hour and flew at an altitude of 47.3 miles.

Such speed and altitude performances of the rocket ship surpass any other records of winged flight.

More important than the setting of new records is the fact that these experiments are yielding much valuable technical data on the control of winged spacecraft and on the functioning of man in the space environment.

The present series of record-breaking flights is part of a programme begun fifteen years ago at Edwards Air Force Base, California, when X-I, the first U.S. research rocket aircraft, penetrated the "sound barrier."

There are actually three interchangeable X-I5 planes used during different flights in the same research programme. Construction of the first X-IS began in 1957 as a co-operative effort of the Air Force, the Navy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The First Space-plane The X-15 is a combination airplane and rocket ship that is equally at home in the atmosphere and in the almost airless edge of outer space. It is a small plane, fifty feet long and thirteen feet high. Its needle nose, stubby wings and wedge-shaped tail give it a sleek speedy appearance even when standing on the ground.

All external surfaces of the rocket ship are made of Inconel-X, a nickelsteel alloy developed expressly to withstand aerodynamic heating that raises its skin temperature to 1,200 degree Fahrenheit.

Its interior construction is of titanium and stainless steel which meets the heat soaking through the external "armour." Where high heat and heavy loads are not a problem, the interior metal is aluminium. To protect the pilot from sudden changes of atmospheric conditions which occur in such high-speed flight, every possible safety device has been installed in the plane.

The pilot wears a space suit with a built-in pressurizing system and oxygen supply, which operate independently of space-plane's pressure system.

The pilot's cockpit is in the nose of the craft. Behind him is a package of 13,000 pounds of research instruments for measuring and recording altitude, speed, temperature and other data regarding man's reaction to fringe-ofspace travel. The craft is fitted with a XLR-gg rocket engine designed to provide a thrust of 57,000 pounds, or nearly half a million horsepower-more than twice the power needed to propel a ship the size of the Queen Mary.

The X-15 does not take off from the ground but is carried aloft by a "mother plane," a B-52jet bomber, as shown in the picture at left. The actual flight of spacecraft begins at an altitude of 45,000 feet when the X-15 is dropped clear of the B-52 (photo at lower right). The pilot then accelerates his rocket motor and establishes a steep climb. In a dozen seconds the craft attains supersonic speed. The X-15 pilot adjusts his wings to the desired angle and coasts up to maximum altitude for the mission. At that point he shuts down his rocket engine and opens the speed brakes. He remains at peak altitude for about a minute, in order to reduce momentum and then startsre-entry into the atmosphere. He hurtles down towards earth with the forward part of his craft glowing red-hot.

In the final minutes of its flight, the rocket ship glides down without power (photo at lower left) for a high-speed dead-stick landing. Steel skids are used at the rear, instead of wheels, to help stop the craft on the earthen runway of a dry lake bed. The landing speed of the craft is too great for any conventional runway to handle. Mter touchdown, the X-15 travels for about a mile before coming to a stop.

NASA has planned about thirty-five more flights for the original X-15 programme, which is now about half completed. Even higher altitudes will be attempted in the continuing programme to study aerodynamic heating, control of the craft and effects on the pilots.

Next step beyond the X-15 is the X-21, or Project Dyna-Soar, which is expected to offer man his first opportunity to achieve controlled, manoeuvrable flight at speeds approaching 18,000 miles per hour. Dyna-Soar is also expected to develop a limited capability to reside in earth orbit at space altitudes for short periods of time .â&#x20AC;˘

Some Perspectives

on

Economic Aid

by John Kenneth

Galbraith

Ambassador Galbraith has made extensive tours of India and last month he visited a number of places where development projects, supported by American financial or technical assistance, are in progress. This article is excerpted from an address delivered by Ambassador Galbraith bifore the Constitution Club in New Delhi on August 8, I962.

NDIA AND the United States are mature political Icommunities each bent on working out its own course in the world. It is now clear, I am sure, that the United States is not concerned with enticing India into any alliance or other entanglement of any kind. I am content to believe that India has no similar designs on the United States.

Americans do have a natural interest in the success of Indian democracy. That is not because we think the danger of communism, or other forms of extremism, is very great. Nor do we think that India's non-alignment is a perilous affair sustained only by constant if countervailing efforts by the Soviets and ourselves.

I notice often in the press references to our scoring against the Soviet Union in this industry or that by providing aid here or there. It is suggested that we are anxious to do something in steel, atomic energy or poultry husbandry to pull ahead of the USSR in India. I do not know how the Soviets see these matters. But I can tell you that we do not regard ourselves as participants in such a competition.

Nor would we regard such a competition as reflecting favourably either our own motives or the stability and integrity of the Indian Union.

India's domestic course and her foreign policy-will, of course, be decided in India and not in or by the United States. And the consequences will affect India far more than any other country. There is a vision of the United States hovering over the world like a protective angel saving everyone from the Reds. It is a vision that rather overdoes both our intentions and our capacity.

None of this means that the United States is any the less interested in Indian ecoilOmic and social progress.

We are very sensitive to the strains and hardships for those countries that have come late to development. We continue to believe that internal democracy is made more secure and that world order is strengthened if nations are helped through this difficult period. And we are not, I think, without a measure of compassion in the matter.

The provision of economic assistance by one country to another on a very large scale is a comparatively new enterprise. It would be surprising if it had not produced

problems. And since this is an enterprise that is still very new in time, it would be even more surprising if all these problems had been solved. Of course they have not been solved.

I shall pass over complaints, such as one prominently featured in the newspapers recently, that aid is often provided with insufficient grace. For the first two years of the Third Plan the United States made its offer of help before we were asked and in an amount which, I believe, was above expectations. I don't think we know how to be more graceful than this. If, as I suspect, the complaint was against other countries and not the United States, it is still worth remembering that no government is without more claim~ from its own people than it can ever hope to satisfy.

There is another problem which gets more discussion than it deserves. That is the vastly publicized question of strings. India has now been receiving assistance from the United States on an increasingly massive scale for eleven years. During that time there has not been a serious charge that we have used this aid to sway or influence Indian internal or foreign policy. We have no intention of so employing our assistance in the future. If our aid were extended. with strings, we would surely by now have learned to pull them. And you surely would have noticed the pull. The record being what it is, and our intentions being what they are, I would hope this problem might be dismissed from mind.

In so relegating this question, I would add as a footnote that the temptation to use aid to influence the national policy of a responsible democracy is not very great.

Nationalism and national pride are influences of considerable power in our time. To threaten to withdraw aid to oppose some policy runs the very great risk of forcing the affirmation of that very policy as a matter of national pride. A country which is extending aid would be singularly blind if it had not sensed this danger.

However, there are problems connected with aid which will continue to give us difficulties and which in the interest of clarity we should recognize. The first concerns

the appropriations process in the United States. The overall Indian aid bill last year was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $800 million. This is more than is spent, after searching examination by the United States Congress, by several of the regular departments of our Government-the Department of Justice, Department of State for regular operations, or the Labour Department. The United States Congress in the last decade has not been ungenerous in its appropriations for eCQncrmicde.velopment abroad. But it is an independent and equal branch of the United States Government. It originates the money bills and has the final voice thereon. It is jealous of this power. It also shares with the legislatures of all successful democracies a profound and in the longer view a profoundly healthy, distrust of all who spend public money.

In this instance the money is used by the Indian Government and by the States or the private sector. In the course of the legislative process there is bound to be a discussion of those who do the spending. Nor, in the parliamentary tradition, will it all be complimentary. Legislatures are never famous for their verbal restraint. Ungracious words in Washington will, in turn, bring equal and opposite response in New Delhi. We must expect every Spring that there will be a period of discussion, criticism and recrimination. We should be braced for it. It is part of the price of doing business with a democratic and representative government. But I am sure Americans and Indians are agreed that such government also has compensating advantages, as compared with the ordered silence of the closed systems. What happens in Washington and New Delhi occurs in the sight of all. I venture to suggest that visibility has virtues even above politeness.

ANOTHER PROBLEM related to the question of strings is how the American legislative process, including the problem of passing aid legislation, should be interpreted here in India. In my clear view the Indian Government

should be kept immediately informed. Moreover the effect of your policies on American public and political opinion should, in my view, be assessed and discussed candidly with your government. Any other course would be inconsistent with the routine obligation of diplomacy which is to be a channel of information and communication. If a line of policy makes the common task either easier or more difficult, it is my feeling that your government should know. The full and final decision lies, of course, with the Indian Government.

The view of the Indian Government vis-a-vis the United States is, I believe, similar. On matters ranging from Cuban policy to sugar quotas it does not hesitate to make clear its view of the effect of our action on Indian public opinion and of action that may be forced on the Indian Government in consequence and we are glad that it does so inform us. I have heard it said that such communication in such context is an impairment of sovereignty. This, I would think, is an extreme view of sovereignty-one that implies an absolute exclusion of concern for outside opinion, even as it affects matters of common interest. I think we may all hope that the world has moved beyond such a view.

A final and less widely discussed problem associated with economic aid is the occasional feeling in some recipient countries-I do not think it is often influential-tha.t inevitably this aid, even though no strings are attached, induces a measure of dependence. It buys economic gain but at political cost. Or, there is the feeling that outside aid in some manner distorts the pattern of economic development. These views are not often forthrightly expressed. More often, perhaps, they take the form of a passive resistance to the idea of aid or to those who provide it-a resistance that may, in the case of U.S. assistance, be not unmixed with a certain feeling of hostility to all things American. I, for one, would welcome frank and open avowal of these views by those who hold them, in order that the air may be cleared and the objectives of economic development may be pursued without the hindrance of secret doubts .â&#x20AC;˘

Patte rns of Powe r

by N. V. Sagar

FOR COUNTLESS generations India's agriculture has largely been a gamble on the rain. According to the whim of the monsoons, rains have arrived too early, too late or not at all, affecting the harvest and the livelihood of the millions who depend on agriculture. Periods of plenty have often been followed by periods of scarcity and even famine. And, with the population at the four hundred and forty million mark-and still increasing at an alarming rate-one of India's most vital and most urgent problems continues to be that of producing adequate food for the people.

From the earliest days India's rulers have been alive to the need for safeguards against the vagaries of the Rain God. But it is only in comparatively recent times that a country-wide system of irrigation canals has been gradually built up to supplement traditional methods of watering fields by wells and storage tanks. Since the advent of independence national leaders have realized that in any programme of planned development, expansion and modernization of agriculture must have a high priority.

From this realization and out of the need for building up adequate power resources for the country's existing and

Patterns

of Power

projected industries, has arisen the gigantic effort to build India's great river valley projects.

These colossal multi-purpose projects-Bhakra-Nangal, Damodar Valley, Chambal, Rihand Dam, Tungabhadra, Nagarjunasagar-aim at a rapid transformation of the country's economy and hold the promise of plenty and prosperity for the land. Not only will they provide millions of gallons of water from storage in huge man-made lakes to vast tracts of new farmland, but also plentiful, inexpensive hydro-electric power to light thousands of homes and to drive machinery in small workshops and big factories. They will also enable flood-control and their huge reservoirs, when stocked with fish, will supply valuable protein-rich food.

In a developing economy such as that of India, cheap electric power is a primary need. As most Indian rivers flow through hilly terrain for long distances punctuated by waterfalls, they have a vast hydro-electric power potential which is authoritatively assessed at 41 million kilowatts. Although installed electricity generating capacity in India has increased considerably during the past decade, it is still far short of demand. The river valley projects, supplemented by new thermal power stations, are expected to step up the supply of power at a satisfactory rate and accelerate the pace of industrialization, with attendant benefits to large masses of people throughout the country.

Of the many multi-purpose projects which have already been completed or are nearing completion, perhaps the most spectacular is Bhakra-Nangal in the Punjab.

A 74o-foot dam-the highest straight gravity dam in the world-across the Sutlej at Bhakra catches the swift, swollen river in a fifty-by-three-mile lake as it plunges

Patterns

of Power westward from the Himalayas. A chain of powerhouses, with an eventual installed capacity of 1,204,000 kilowatts, about half of which is already operative, generates electricity sufficient to supply a large urban and rural area in Northern India. The water then flows into a three-thousand-mile canal system which at present irrigates some two million acres of land in Punjab and Rajasthan and will ultimately irrigate an area three times as large. This colossal project, in which a number of American engineers led by the late H. M. Slocum have collaborated, is scheduled to be completed by the end of 1962.

In the final stage of completion is also the Rihand Dam Project in south-eastern Uttar Pradesh, which is helping to stimulate economic development of that area.

The dam harnesses the River Rihand near Pipri in Mirzapur district forming a huge lake which can store over eight million acre-feet of water. Power from the project is not only supplying the needs of a number of large and small industrial enterprises which have already sprung up in the region, but will also be used for water-pumping schemes and provide the benefits of irrigation to an area of about two million acres of arid land in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Preliminary technical investigation of this project was carried out by Dr. J. L. Savage, an American authority on dam construction, and another U.S. engineer, H. A. Taylor, was later associated with it as Construction Adviser. More than sixty per cent of the total cost has been met by U.S. financial assistance which includes a grant of six million dollars (Rs. 285 lakhs) for procurement of heavy equipment.

Other major projects include the Chambal Project in Madhya Pradesh, Nagarjunasagar in Andhra Pradesh and Sharavathi Valley in Mysore State, in which U.S. economic assistance is participating.

The first phase of the Chambal Project has recently been completed, and the Gandhi Sagar power station has added 80,000 kilowatts to the country's power resources.

This figure will be more than doubled when the second powerhouse, below the Ram Pratap Sagar Dam, is ready.

The Nagarjunasagar Project, another big job which is expected to be completed in 1968, is the first of its kind to be planned and supervised entirely by Indian engineers and technicians. It will comprise a 404-foot-high gravitytype dam, eight electric generators with a total capacity of 400,000 kilowatts and two irrigation canals. The canal system will assure adequate water supply to a large acreage of forest and pasture-land, thus laying the foundation for a flourishing timber industry and grazing areas in many villages.

The Sharavathi Hydro-electric Project is of special significance to Mysore State, since it will increase the state's existing installed capacity by 500 per cent. Estimated to cost about Rs. 70 crores, more than half of which is being financed by American economic aid, the power station will produce well over a million kilowatts of electricity. It will be one of the biggest in India and it is expected that the cost of power generation will be the lowest in the country.

The planning and satisfactory progress of these important projects is a tribute both to the foresight and practical wisdom of India's nation-builders and to the efficiency and zeal of the technical personnel engaged in executing the schemes. Resulting from this development, total power generating capacity in India, which was only 2.3 million kilowatts at the beginning of the First FiveYear Plan, has already increased to about two and a half times that figure. The rate of increase is expected to be much higher during the following years, and it is estimated that by 1975-76 the country will be producing a total of some 35 million kilowatts.

The spirit of new India is aptly symbolized by these mighty projects and the tremendous efforts behind them .â&#x20AC;˘

The Democratic

Wager

DEMOCRATIC IDEALS, like any other ideals, do not exist in a void. They rest on assumptions and express a faith. There is an ultimate conviction and a supreme act of faith behind the ideals of democracy. The conviction is that the value of all human arrangements must be measured by what they do to enhance the life of the individual-to help him to grow in knowledge, sensitivity, and the mastery of himself and his destiny. The faith is that the individual has the capacity to meet this challenge.

The faith must be stated carefully, for it is complex and subtle. Restraints that democracies place on the men who govern them are based on a tough and realistic conception of the actual character of human beings. Constitutional government is a conscious effort to place checks on the power of all individuals; it foresees no time when men can afford to assume that any among them are free from imperfection.

Democracy does not expect men to be angels; but it does not propose to treat them, therefore, as sheep. The great wager on which it stakes its destiny is that the imperfectible individual is improvable. And it believes that the best way to improve him is to let him improve himself, to give him a&..much responsibility as possible for his own destiny and for the destiny of the community to which he belongs. Democratic governments have been prepared to take positive steps to free the individual from avoidable handicaps so that he can run the race on fair terms with others. They are committed today to providing all individuals with the basic forms of economic security that are essential to a decent life. But their objective is not to produce tame, well-tended men and women who are easy to harness to a master plan. Their objective is to release the powers of individuals and to turn loose the flow of human initiative.

There is, therefore, a kind of inner tension that is perennially present in the democratic way of life. A democracy must balance its faith in the potentialities of the individual against its realistic appraisal of his capacities for judgment and responsible behaviour. It cannot simply give him room to live his own life; it must also place restrictions upon him. Each generation must make new decisions on this issue, and there is no easy formula by which the questions it raises can be settled. In large measure men must deal with them by deciding what they wish human life to be and placing their faith and effort on that side of the scales. Democracy, if it must err, chooses to err by trusting the ordinary individual.

This faith and purpose give dynamism to democratic principles. A democracy's commitment to the continuing criticism of itself is not due to an inner malaise or lack of confidence. It expresses the belief that nothing deserves a higher loyalty from men than the truth and that the only way in which fallible men can find the truth is to keep the process of inquiry open. Democracy bets that men can bear the rigours of this process and learn to love it. And it bets that it will be a stronger social system as a result. For it is the one form of society which has institutionalized the process of reform.

A democracy, therefore, will measure its success in a distinctive way. In the last analysis it will judge itself by the character of the men and women who make it up and the quality of the lives they lead. A democratic society cannot be indifferent to the condition of its economy, the development of its technology, or the material possessions in the hands of its people. It is dangerous sentimentality to think that such issues are unimportant either practically or morally.

But a democratic society that has kept its balance and sense of direction will recognize that they are means not ends. The end is the individual-his self-awareness, his personal powers, the richness of his life. Democracy aims at the individual who can live responsibly with his fellows while he follows standards he has set for himself.â&#x20AC;˘

A TALL,

UNGAINLY, sloppily dressed man loitered on the fringes of Richmond's market one day in the early 1800'S, when a stranger approached with a newly bought turkey. The stranger offered him a small coin to carry the bird home. The unkempt character thereupon took the turkey and walked behind the stranger to the latter's abode. Upon arrival, he collected the coin and left.

But our seedy-looking friend was no ignorant yokel.

He was John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, who was having his little joke-as he often did. Richmond, capital of the State of Virginia, almost split its sides over the episode.

Jovial, approachable, absent-minded John Marshall was, in fact, two different people. He was the "life of the party" at social gatherings, a connoisseur of Madeira, an expert at quoits, a quipster who could toss off a rhyme on the spur of the moment, and who always dressed badly and hated stiffness and formality in his private relationships. Yet he was a person of immense dignity when sitting on the nation's highest tribunal, garbed in his robes of office, his black eyes flashing, his voice intoning one of his epochal judicial decisions. Had it not been for these deci.sions, the infant republic might not have survived its early stresses and strains.

John Marshall and his cousin, Thomas Jefferson, were both descended from William Randolph, of "Turkey Island," and his wife, Mary Isham, perhaps the most notable couple in American history, since their descendants also included "Light Horse Harry" Lee, John Randolph of Roanoke and Robert E. Lee. But although Marshall and Jefferson were blood relations, they became aligned in opposing political camps, representing contrasting theories of government. Marshall, the Federalist, believed in a strong central authority. Jefferson, the Republican-as the Democrats then termed themselves -was the new government's foremost advocate of State

Facade of the United States Supreme Court with the figure of justice in the foreground. sketched by SPAN artist B. Roy Choudhury.

-"""':.'-

He Made the Court

---::'

~-~

Supreme

...

"

rights, individual liberty and the freedom of the human mind. Each made a priceless contribution to the building of the nation.

Marshall's convictions as to the need for a strong national government stemmed from his experiences in the American Revolution. He fought bravely at Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth, and was at Valley Forge during the terrible winter of 1777-78. He was angered by the manner in which the thirteen bickering colonies refused to furnish badly needed men and supplies to the Continental Army, except when they found it convenient.

This situation was borne in upon him with redoubled force as he struggled beside the starving, freezing soldiers at Valley Forge. Captain-Lieutenant Marshall's invincible spirit rose above the horrors and privations of that icy winter in the snow-covered hills of Pennsylvania, and his sunny disposition did much to lift the morale of his men. Diaries of his companions in arms tell of his good humour in the midst of death, disease and want. He took part in the games which were improvised to while away the hours, and was the best athlete in his regiment.

John Marshall was born a little more than 200 years ago on September 24, 1755, in a log cabin on the Virginia frontier. He was the eldest of fifteen children. While Red Indians were not a threat in the immediate neighbourhood, the primeval forest was filled with bears and other game. Throughout his youth, his parents found it practically impossible to buy goods in stores, and the family generally wore homespun. Marshall's talented mother used thorns instead of pins. His father, Thomas Marshall, a man of great ability and force, had no formal education.

He served several terms in the Virginia House of Burgesses and held other important offices.

John Marshall and his father both enlisted in the Culpeper Minute Men at the outbreak of the Revolution, Thomas being given the rank of major and his nineteen-

year-old son that of lieutenant. As a member of the Virginia Convention of 1775, the elder Marshall had heard Patrick Henry's flaming appeal for "liberty or death." Those fateful words were worked into the hunting shirts of the Culpeper Minute Men. Both Marshalls soon joined the Continental Army and served under General Washington for four years.

John'Marshall was sent home at the end of 1779 because enlistments in the regiments in which he had commanded expired, and too many officers were therefore available. He waited in vain for a new command.

While waiting he went to Williamsburg (colonial capital of Virginia) to be with his father, who had become a state councillor. There the young captain met Mary Ambler, then only fourteen, and the two fell in love at first sight. Mary lost her heart to him, although he was universally regarded by the ladies as awkward and ill at ease, and his dress was as slovenly as it remained throughout his life.

George Wythe, the celebrated law professor, was lecturing at the College of William and Mary, and Marshall enrolled in his course. The young law student remained only six weeks. His notebook shows the name of Mary Ambler scrawled in many different places, indicating that his mind was on things other than his studies.

Yet this six weeks' course was all the formal education, legal or otherwise, that John Marshall ever had. He had been tutored for two years by clergymen and the rest of the time by his parents. , When he left William and Mary and began the practice of law in Fauquier County, clients were slow in coming.

He seized the opportunity to have himself vaccinated for smallpox, then a serious scourge. In order to do so, he had to go to Philadelphia, and since he had no other means of locomotion, he walked, averaging thirty-five miles a day. On his arrival he looked so disreputable that

the tavern to which he applied refused to admit him.

He finally obtained lodgings elsewhere, was vaccinatedand walked back to Virginia.

Finding, on his return to Fauquier, that clients were still scarce, Marshall decided to offer for the state assembly. His campaign was successful. Mary Ambler's father had moved to Richmond as state treasurer, so Marshall was able to redouble the ardour of his suit when he arrived in the new capital to take his seat. He and Mary were married early in 1783.

Thus began one of the most beautiful love stories in American history. Mary Marshall-whose nickname was Polly-contracted a nervous affliction early in her married life, but this merely increased her husband's devotion. His idolatry was truly touching. Polly practically never wrote to him, because of her malady, hut he wrote her regularly whenever he was away from home, and in the most endearing terms. Ten children were born to them.

From the outset they lived in Richmond, and it was as a legislator representing that town that Marshall rendered his principal service in the Virginia Assembly.

From the beginning he was a marked man. In 1782, when he was barely twenty-seven and serving his first term, he was chosen by his legislative colleagues as one of the eight members of the Council of State, the governor's cabinet.

After several terms in the lawmaking body, Marshall's conspicuous ability was recognized by all. His good humour and conviviality made him widely popular, and his grasp of public questions, especially legal ones, gave his views particular weight. When the Virginia Conven tion of 1788 met to consider ra tification of the new Federal Constitution, Marshall was elected a delegate.

Many of the great Virginians of that era were members of the convention. In that glittering assemblage, thirty-three-year-old John Marshall stood out as one of the most effective advocates of the Constitution. Virginia finally ratified by a vote of 89 to 79.

Once the Constitution became the law of the land, Marshall felt that a long step forward had been taken towards strengthening the Union, but he was alarmed by certain prevailing tendencies. The rumblings of the French Revolution were growing louder, and Washington, Marshall and the other Federalists became more and more disturbed by the outspoken sympathy shown in the United States for the revolutionaries.

By the time George Washington became the first President of the infant republic, John Marshall was recognized as one of the ablest Federalists in the United States. Washington tried in 1795 to persuade him to accept the post of Attorney General, but Marshall had a large and growing family, and he felt it necessary to decline.

The salary of the Attorney General was only $ I ,500.

Marshall had become the undisputed leader of the Richmond bar. He and his adored Polly were anxious to own a home which would be commensurate with his standing in the community. So in 1789 he had bought an entire tree-shaded block in an excellent residential section, and built thereon the comfortable brick dwelling which was to be his abode until his death forty-six years later. The house stands today just as it was when he lived there, although the outbuildings and grounds have long since disappeared. As Chief Justice, Marshall wrote some of his most famous opinions under the trees.

In the spacious dining room of his new Richmond residence he began giving his famous "lawyer dinners," to which the members of the bench and bar were invited.

He was the liveliest person at these affairs, as he was on most other social occasions, and he filled the air with quips and jests.

A short time after he built his house in Richmond, Marshall joined with others in contracting to buy what

Portrait of John Marshall by Nand K. Katyal, with the unfinished U.S. Capitol in the background as it appeared around 1830.

was left of the vast Virginia estate of Lord Fairfax, embracing approximately 160,000 acres. Robert Morris, the Philadelphia capitalist, was to advance the money.

But Morris went bankrupt, and the financial burden on Marshall became almost intolerable. Hence, when PresidentJohn Adams offered him a remunerative appointment in 1797 as one of three special envoys to France, he accepted. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, and Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, were the two others.

The mission was to seek adjustment of serious difficulties which had arisen between the United States and France. The latter country felt that America had broken its agreements, and was much too friendly with Great Britain. .

The blood and terror of the French Revolution were things of the past, and Napoleon Bonaparte was beginning to set himself astride the continent of Europe. France was "feeling her oats," and was actually encouraging French privateers to seize American ships on the high seas. Several hundred American vessels had been taken in this piratical fashion.

When the three American envoys arrived in Paris, they found that they had to deal with an individual named Talleyrand, an unfrocked priest who had spent two and a half years in exile in the United States. Talleyrand was then almost unknown, but he was soon to become France's foreign minister and the ablest diplomat in Europe.

The negotiations consisted mainly of efforts on the part of Talleyrand to squeeze a $250,000 bribe out of the Americans. Although Marshall had gone to Paris the least known and most inexperienced of the three envoys, he soon emerged as the strong man of the delegation. The bullying tactics of the French, who declared that Napoleon was about to invade England, and that America would be next, did not frighten him. Nor did threats of personal violence. As spokesman for the mission, he upheld American interests with dignity, courage and honour.

THIS "XYZ AFFAIR"-as it was called by virtue of the code used in connection with it by the U.S. Government-was a great triumph for Marshall, and a crucial turning point in his career. Although he and his associates were unable to obtain an agreement in Paris, he returned a hero. He was accorded a magnificent welcome in Philadelphia, then the national capital-the greatest such welcome any American, except Washington, had ever received. It included a banquet at which the climactic toast was the famous "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"

Marshall cleared approximately $15,000 on his eleven-month mission to France, since he was paid nearly $20,000 and his expenses were not more than $5,000.

Although this was applied to his personal indebtedness on the Fairfax estate, he still found himself badly strapped -so strapped, in fact, that he could not affor~ to accept appointment to the Supreme Court when It was .first tendered by President John Adams in 1798.

A personal appeal from George Washington, however did cause him to run for Congress. Although the Richmond district contained many more Republicans than Federalists, Marshall's great prestige and popularity won for him.

When he got to Congress he showed exceptional independence and integrity by voting contrary to his party's programme on two major issues. He cast. the deciding ballot in favour of repeal of the obnoXIous section of the Sedition Law-a law favoured by the Federalists which went to extreme lengths in attempting to prevent criticism of the national government, then in Federalist hands. He also ignored party discipline

when he insisted on taking the teeth out of the Disputed Elections Bill, under the original terms of which the Federalists could have stolen the approaching presidential election.

Despite Marshall's unwillingness to bend under the party lash, President Adams tried to make him Secretary of War. He declined. Then, in the spring of r800, Adams persuaded him to accept the portfolio of Secretary of State.

No sooner had Marshall been sworn in than Adams left for Massachusetts to be with his ill wife. This left Marshall virtually in charge of the national government. Adams remained away until the fall, and Marshall had to sweat it out in Washington, the new capital. This metropolis was a town of some 3,000 persons, alternately muddy and dusty, surrounded by forests, swamps and bogs, and plagued by vast swarms of mosquitoes.

When his party lost the election of r800, President Adams decided to appoint as many Federalist judges as possible before he went out of office. He offered' the post of Chief Justice to Marshall, and the latter accepted. John Jay, the first incumbent, had declined reappointment on the ground that the position did not carry sufficient power and prestige. Marshall soon gave it both, by the force of his character and intellect.

Under the systeIl). then prevailing, Supreme Court justices had to ride the district court circuit, in addition to sitting in Washington. Mr. Justice Marshall had the grievous misfortune on one occasion to arrive in Raleigh, North Carolina, minus his trousers. With his usual absent-mindedness, he had neglected to bring them with him. He wrote his wife that he was without a pair of breeches for several days after his arrival, until he could find a "taylor," but did not explain what he had worn on the journey from Richmond. Presumably his judicial robes concealed his predicament while he was on the bench in Raleigh.

This piquant episode occurred in r803, shortly before Marshall was to render the first of his series of precedent-making judicial opinions-that of Marbury vs. Madison. The litigation grew out of Marshall's own negligence in forgetting to deliver a commission as justice of the peace to a man named William Marbury-a "midnight appointment" of President Adams in the last hours of his administration-and the subsequent determination of Secretary of State James Madison not to name Marbury to the post. Marshall seized upon this seemingly trivial case to assert the right of the Supreme Court to invalidate acts of Congress which conflict with the Federal Constitution. AlbertJ. Beveridge says, in his monumental biography of Marshall, that "this principle is wholly and exclusively American," and "America's original contribution to the science of law."

Marbury had applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus under Section r3 of the Judiciary Act of r 789, to compel Secretary of State Madison to issue him his commission. The section empowered the court to issue such writs "in cases warranted by the principles and usages of law." But the Chief Justice took the position that the Federal Constitution, in defining the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, did not include the issuance of writs to executive officers. He held, therefore, that it devolved upon the court to determine whether an Act of Congress or the Constitution is paramount.

Marshall ruled that "a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law."

This pronouncement enraged Jefferson and his party; for while they had won a minor victory, in that Marbury was denied his writ, they were infuriated when Marshall's decision sharply criticized Secretary of State Madison for withholding the commission, and termed Madison's action "a plain violation." They accordingly threatened the Chief Justice with impeachment, and actually set in

motion impeachment proceedings against several federal judges, notably Associate Justice Samuel Chase, of the Supreme Court. Chase, however, was finally acquitted, and this gave Marshall a feeling of greater security.

Already the great weight of Marshall's personality and intellect was bringing prestige and dignity to the nation's highest tribunal. Immediately upon his appointment in r80r, he had become almost the sole mouthpiece of the court, and for the next eleven years he wrote practically all the opinions. There were scarcely any dissents, despite the fact that most of the other justices were members of the opposition party, and interparty feeling was running high. After r8r2, Marshall continued to write the opinions in practically all cases involving constitutional questions, but several hundred opinions involving other issues were written by his fellow justices. Yet it was not only on constitutional questions that he was able to carry the other judges 'along with him despite their Republican affiliation; during the entire thirty-four years of his service as Chief Justice, he dissented only eight times. So remarkable an example of the domination of an able bench by the intellectual power and persuasive charm of one man would be hard to find.

F

OR NEARLY three more decades Marshall sat on the Supreme Court. During those years he made his greatest contributions to the development of the American system of constitutional law and to the building of the bone and sinew of the struggling republic.

An idea of the atmosphere in which the United States Supreme Court was operating can be found in the reaction of the Virginia Supreme Court in 1815 to the ruling of the highest court in Martin vs. Hunter's Lessee.

The state court unanimously refused to obey the order of the ranking court in the land. Yet the Federal tribunal managed to-get on the record a vital opinion which fixed the pattern for the future relationship between national and state courts in the United States.

Marshall's famous opinion a few years later in McCulloch vs. Maryland upheld the supremacy of the national government against domination by the state governments.

Other notable opinions rendered by Marshall during this period include those in Cohens vs. Virginia and Gibbons vs. Ogden.

In Cohens vs. Virginia he held that Congress could lawfully pass an act permitting a citizen convicted in a state court to appeal to the United States Supreme Court, if he claimed that the state statute under which he was found guilty conflicted with the Federal Constitution or an act of Congress. This case, together with Marbury vs. Madison, established the Supreme Court as the final interpreter of the Constitution.

In Gibbons vs. Ogden, Marshall greatly expanded the meaning of the term "commerce," as used in the nation's organic law. He ruled that the power of Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce included not only the exchange of commodities but the means by which interstate and foreign trade was carried on. He drew the conclusion that Congress had the right to license vessels to carry goods and passengers between states. Thus Marshall outlined the course which Congress was to follow in regulating interstate commerce.

These and other opinions by the Chief Justice protected the Federal Government from sabotage by the states, upheld the sanctity of contracts, safeguarded the material prosperity of the country and ruled that business which was national in scope should be under national jurisdiction. .

The dedicated State-righters, led by Thomas Jefferson, were sincerely alarmed by these decisions, for they believed Marshall to be imbued with "monarchical" and "aristocratical" ideas, and they feared the states would be virtually wiped out if the trend he represented continued.

Despite the brilliance with which they themselves had contributed many essential concepts to the building of the republic, the Jeffersonians failed to grasp the absolute necessity for judicial action which would keep the weak and struggling nation from breaking apart. Consequently, they not only threatened to impeach the Chief Justice but they also tried to abolish the Supreme Court or to reduce its power.

None of these attempts came to anything, and John Marshall continued on his course. But as his fame grew, he never lost his sense of humour. On one occasion a young

attorney sought to flatter him by saying to him that he had reached "the acme of judicial distinction."

"Let me tell you what that means, young man," said the Chief Justice. "The acme ofjudicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says."

At one period, the Supreme Court adopted a rule that its members would take wine at meals only in wet weather.

However, Justice Joseph Story wrote his wife: What I say about the wine gives you our rule; but it does sometimes happen that the Chief Justice will say to me, when the cloth is removed, "Brother Story, step to the window and see if it does not look like rain." And if I tell him that the sun is shining brightly, Judge Marshall will sometimes reply, "All the better, for ourjurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chancesmakes it certain that it must be raining somewhere."

Although John Marshall gave the Supreme Court immensely more prestige and authority than it had previously enjoyed, he approached the end of his life profoundly depressed over the trend of events. One reason was that the court was successfully defied by the State of Georgia in 1832, after the nation's top tribunal ordered the decision of the Georgia Supreme Court reversed in a case involving the Cherokee Indians. Georgia had brutally seized the lands of the Cherokees and annulled all their "laws, usages and customs." The finding of the United States Supreme Court that these acts were illegal infuriated not only the Georgians but President Andrew Jackson. The latter reportedly challenged the Chief Justice with the words: "John Marshall has made his decisionnow let him enforce it!" No enforcement was possible, and the mandate of the court was ignored.

This greatly disturbed Marshall, as did the fact that a majority of the court was tending by then to stray from the Federalist principles he had championed. The first rumblings of the secession movement in South Carolina and the mounting controversy over slavery also alarmed him. He feared for the permanence of the Union.

At about this time, too, his wife died, and his few remaining years were clouded with grief. "I have lost her, and with her have lost the solace of my life," he wrote in despair.

His own health began to fail, and he had to have an operation and painful medical treatments. He was heartened for a time by the ringing Nullification Proclamation, which, surprisingly, was issued by his old enemy, Andrew Jackson, informing the fiery South Carolinians that defiance of the national laws would be put down by force of arms. But nothing could permanently relieve his despondency, although he continued to do his work on the court almost until the very end. In the summer of 1835 his health declined further, and he went to Philadelphia for treatment. He died there on July sixth, aged seventy-nine.

Two days before his death he had written the inscription for his tombstone, which merely gave the names of his parents, his wife and himself, with the customary dates. He did not mention any of the exalted positions he had held.

The death of John Marshall brought an almost unprecedented outpouring of nationwide grief. Throughout the land there was mourning for the tall soldier of the Revolution and builder of the nation whose human traits caused him to be so widely loved, and whose flashing genius and incorruptible integrity marked him as one of the supreme jurists in world history.

Fittingly enough, the Liberty Bell was tolled from the tower of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The famed crack in that relic of 1776 opened, according to legend, when its solemn tones signalled the passing of Chief Justice Marshall, a great judge and an even greater man .â&#x20AC;˘ @ by The Curtis Publishing Company. The Saturday Evening Post.

by Clinton

Rossiter

THE CONSTITUTION

of the United States of America establishes the third . great branch of the American system of government in these words: "The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

Most Americans are keenly aware of the importance of this branch, especially of the importance of the Supreme Court in Washington. As children they learn that some of the Supreme Court's decisions have been as decisive in the course of American history as the battles of the Civil War and World War II. As students they visit Washington and gaze in awe upon the marble temple in which the Court does its solemn business. And as mature citizens they read in their newspapers of decisions through which the Court continues to have a profound influence on their lives and pursuits.

Three examples will suffice to prove the continuing importance of the Supreme Court in the American system of government. In 1937 the Court upheld the Wagner Act which established the National Labour Relations Board and has been called the Magna Carta of organized labour in the United States. In this historic decision the Court established on a firm footing the previously unsure power of Congress to regulate labour-management relations in major industries. In 1952 it denied President Truman's claim to authority to seize and operate the privatelyowned steel mills in a state of national emergency. And in 1954 it called for an end to the practice of the Southern States in placing white and Negro pupils in separate schools. Each of these decisions was greeted by an outpouring of public opinion ranging from delighted acclaim to bitter condemnation. Whatever the merits of , these decisions, they made clear that the Supreme Court occupies a loftier place in the public affairs of the United States than does any other court in any other country in the world.

The structure of the national judiciary is fairly simple. There are three levels of courts in the system: (I) eighty-eight District Courts situated throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, in which almost all federal cases begin and in which most are settled; (2) eleven Courts of Appeals, most of whose work involves review of decisions of the District Courts; and (3) the Supreme Court in Washing"ton, which renders final and binding judgment in only the most important cases.

In addition, there are several special courts designed to settle cases in certain technical areas, for example, the Customs Court to hear appeals against the rulings of customs collectors and the Court of Claims to consider suits against the government for damages. The Supreme Court retains power, which is used sparingly, to review decisions of all these courts.

The nationaljudiciary, however, is only a small part of a vast and complicated pattern of courts that sprawls all over the United States. Each of the fifty States has its own judicial system, just as each of the fifty States has its own laws, and for all normal purposes each of these systems is a self-contained unit whose highest court can render judgments from which there is no appeal. On the other hand, there are many types of cases in which jurisdiction can be shared, many in which litigation of a local controversy raises a national question. As a result, it takes an experienced observer to unravel the relation of each State's judicial system to the national courts. Suffice it to say that time, custom, and the laws of Congress have eliminated much of the confusion and overlapping in these relations, and that the national courts now have the final word in cases involving national laws, rights, and issues. Although the State courts are not subject directly to the continuing oversight of the Supreme Court, they are expected to enforce the laws passed by the United States Congress as the Court interprets them. .

Let us fix our attention on this highest court of all, for an understanding of¡ its structure, procedures, and functions is the beginning of wisdom about the American system of government.

The Court consists ofa Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices, all of whom are appointed by the President with the consent ofa majority of the Senate to hold office "during good behavior." This phrase, of course, is another way of saying that the Justices hold office as long as they live and are able to meet their responsibilities.

They may be removed from office for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and

misdemeanors" on impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by a two-thirds majority of the Senate, but in fact they have no reason to fear removal.

Only one Justice has been impeached in the entire history of the Court, and he escaped conviction by a substantial margin. Although a Justice may retire on full pay at the age of seventy, he may also, like several notable figures who have sat on the Court, continue to serve until well past eighty. Relieved of any fear of removal and of any concern over re-appointment or re-election, the Justices of the Supreme Court enjoy a measure of independence that raises them far above the ambitions and passions and worries of other men in public life.

The Supreme Court carries on its business in a manner that befits its detached and elevated position. Its public sessions, in which it hears arguments and delivers opinions, are notable for their dignity and decorum. As a famous columnist once put it, "No one ever raises his voice in the presence of the Supreme Court." The black-gowned J ustices listen attentively to the oral arguments in each case, putting sharp questions from time to time, but they pay even more careful attention to the scholarly written briefs submitted by the parties. Its private sessions, in which it discusses the cases and makes decisions, are entirely secret.

We know that the Chief Justice presides over these sessions, that the opinions of each Justice are heard in order of seniority, that votes are cast in the opposite order, and that the ChiefJ ustice exercises considerable discretion in assigning the task of writing the Court's opinion; but all else that takes place is of a highly confidential character.

Like all American courts, except those of the State of Louisiana which has civil or code law, the Supreme Court practises common law on the British model. That is to say law based not upon code or statute but upon legal precedents enunciated over the years by judges in their decisions in similar cases. In recent years, particularly in criminal and commercial law, statutes and codes have superseded some common law. But even so, judges follow common law practice in interpreting such codes and statutes.

In the course of the judicial year, which lasts from October to June, the Supreme Court hears and decides about one hundred cases. In some of these the Court reaches a unanimous decision, in some there is a lone dissenter or perhaps two dissenters, and in some, especially in those of great importance, the Justices may divide six-three or even five-four. Every Justice has a traditional right to state his own opinion, whether he concurs in or dissents 42

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from the decision of the majority, and some of the Court's so-called "dissenting opinions" have attained fame and influence. Not only are the Justices independent of Congress, the President, and public opinion; they are quite independent of each other!

What specific functions does the Supreme Court perform in the American system of government? What kinds of activity are covered by the simple phrase "judicial power"? The serious student of American government would answer this double-barrelled question with this list of functions: First, the Court does exactly what courts do all over the world: I t adjudicates, that is to say, it acts as the deciding third force in legal controversies of every description and between all kinds of parties. In the course of any year, to be sure, the Court decides only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of cases that arise and are settled in a complicated civilization like the United States. Yet those it does decide are carefully studied and generally followed by all other courts in the national system and by many State courts as well. The knowledge that almost any case, no matter how small the sum of money contested or minor the crime prosecuted, may end up eventually in the Supreme Court is a healthy tonic for the whole American judicial system.

Next, the Court enforces: It stands ready, when summoned through proper channels and for legitimate purposes, to offer support in the form of orders or penalties to all officers charged with executing the laws. The Court exercises its own independent judgment in deciding whether the officer who seeks aid really needs it or deserves it, and many an officer has gone to the Court for help and has been denied it on the ground that he was acting illegally or even unconstitutionally. More than once in history the Court has r.e[used flatly to aid the President himself.

Usually, of course, the officers who seek its aid are acting well within their authority, and the Court lends them great moral as well as practical support.

In deciding cases that involve specific parties, the Court is more likely than not to announce a broad and governing principle. If the principle is then applied consistently in other cases throughout the judicial system, it hardens into a form oflaw-judge-made law, but law none the less. In other words, the Court legislates: I t proclaims and then follows general rules that are thereafter binding on all other courts in the national system and, in some instances, in the State systems as well. Although the Court,

like Congress, can and does reverse itself from time to time by declaring one of its established rules or interpretations obsolete, it operates generally on the old common principle of stare decisis-that is, it does its best to follow its own decisions and thus to give its own body of law a genuine measure of stability.

The courts of many countries adjudicate, enforce, and legislate, but the Supreme Court has several other functions that are peculiarly American in origin and nature.

Fulfilling a fourth great purpose, which was foreseen by the founding fathers of 1787, the Court interprets and ddends the Constitution of the United States. In this capacity it is the ultimate judge of whether any law passed by Congress or the States or, indeed, virtually any act of government, violates the Constitution.

As the court of last appeal in Constitutional matters, it has been the Court's responsibility to define for the American people the meaning of their Constitution as the country has grown from a wilderness with civilized fringes to a modern industrial nation. It is due in large part to the wisdom of the Court's decisions over the years that the Constitution has retained its enormous power as a living document, neither becoming obsolescent nor unduly restricting the profound changes which have occurred in American society and its economy.

THE LIr ES that separate President, Congress, and Supreme Court are not the only ones in the American system that must be policed with vigilance and restraint. The Supreme Court has the even more solemn and difficult duty to maintain the balanceoffederalism-to protect national authority and agencies and rights against the encroachments of the States, and to protect the same interests of each of the fifty States against the national government.

In performing this essential service as the balance-wheel of federalism, the Court makes heavy use of two famous clauses in the Constitution: Article VI, section 2, the socalled "supremacy clause," which establishes the supremacy of national over State law in clear cases of conflict; and Amendment X, which reserves to the States all those powers not forbidden to them nor delegated to the national government in the Constitution.

In the past quarter-century the Supreme Court has emerged as a bulwark of personal freedom against the

encroachments, whether well-intentioned or ill-tempered, of officers and agencies of government. Thanks to several bold decisions in the 1920'S and 1930's, in which the Court gave new meaning to certain guaranties in the Constitution, it now dqends civil liberties against invasions of all kinds -executive, legislative, and judicial-and at all levelsnational, State, and local. The Court does not act arpitrarily or whimsically to frustrate the efforts of legislatures to pass laws or of officers to execute them in the interest of peace and good order, but it does stand Teady to hear pleas and grant relief in cases of flagrant assault upon the established rights of Americans. Time and again in recent years the Court has intervened to protect some obscure person against a miscarriage ofjustice, and it is important to know that such cases have then been given wide and favourable publicity in newspapers all over the country.

Finally, the Court acts as a symbol of the American ideal ofliberty under law. The President and Congress also serve symbolic functions, the one as chief of state and the other as mirror of the nation, but there are special qualities about the Court-independence, gravity, detachment, venerability-that make it in particular the living embodiment of the great Constitution to which all Americans pledge their faith. When men are angered by decisions of the Court, they are careful to turn their anger upon the Justices who made them rather than upon the Court itself. As an institution it continues to have a unique hold on the imagination and devotion of the American people.

The one fact that should stand forth clearly from this review of the Supreme Court's functions in the American system of government is this: The Court is something more than just a court; the "judicial power of the United States" is something more than simply judicial. The truth is, although many Americans are reluctant to face it, that in the process of performing its many functions the Court makes policies in the form of decisions no less important for the life of the nation than those made by Congress in the form of laws, and by the President in executing them.

The Court, to be sure, does not seek or relish the role of policy-maker. It never goes in search of cases; it refuses to hear cases that cannot be settled judicially; it restrains itself rigorously from giving judgments on questions for which the other great branches have a particular responsibility, for example, questions involving foreign policy.

Yet it is repeatedly presented with cases in which its interpretation of the Constitution and laws may redirect the whole course of American life in such areas as educa-

tion, labour, business, and agriculture. The decision of 1954 outlawing segregated schools is one of the latest and most far-reaching of a long series of cases through which the Supreme Court has worked a profound influence on American history. Other independent centres of power in the American system-Congress, President, State legislatures, local school-boards-must also participate in making this judicial decision a social reality, and the Court's action has already precipitated bitter opposition on the State and local levels of government. While this opposition to the general movement towards racial integration is disquieting and has created ugly incidents, it has a further significance. It reminds us that democracy has never valued tranquillity above progress and, at the same time, has vividly demonstrated the tremendous force a Supreme Court decision can exert. . The unique tool with which the Court helps to mould the policies of nation and States is the so-called "power of judicial review." Judicial review may be briefly ~~fined.as the authority 9f the Court to assess any admmlstratlve action or statute at issue in a case before it and, if it conflicts with a provision ofthe Constitution, to refuse to apply and enforce it. An action or law judged unenforceable on constitutional grounds becomes "unconstitutional" -and therefore null and void. The power of judicial review extends to all statutes and most administrative actions of national, State, and local governments. It is not automatic, for the Court can exercise judicial review only in cases brought before it at the initiative of others and through proper channels. It is not final and definitive, for laws can often be rewritten with enough additional care to satisfy the standards of the Court. And it is not wielded aimlessly or arrogantly, for the Court usually goes out of its way to give the benefit of the doubt to the acts of other agencies in the government, especially to the laws of Congress. In the entire history of the United States under the Constitution only about seventy-five national laws or parts of laws have been struck down by judicial review. The number of State laws voided would run into the hundreds. Like all great powers, the power of judicial review does not always have to be exerted to be felt throughout the land. Congress and the State legislatures have often refrained from passing laws because they anticipated that the Court would eventuallyfind them unconstitutional. .

The power ofjudicial review is not mentioned specifically in the Constitution of 1737, and it was n~t until 1303 in the memorable case of Marbury versus Madzson that the

Court made explicit what the framers of the Constitution had left implicit: its power, indeed duty to refuse to enforce a law that was plainly in conflict with a provision of the Constitution. The man who was largely responsible for this notable decision was John Marshall of Virginia, who served as Chief Justice from 1801 to 1335. Marshall is now unanimously acclaimed as the most influential man ever to have sat on the Court, for his Constitutional decisions have had a lasting effect on the structure and powers of the American system and a lasting appeal to jurists ,all over the world.

The history of the Court is, indeed, one of men rather than cases, and the men, on the whole, have been a superior breed. Of the ninety-thre.e men who have served on the Court, at least six were giants to be compared with Presidents like George Washington and Woodrow Wilson or with Senators like Daniel Webster and Henry Clay: Marshall, himself, who ranks with the great jurists and law-givers of all times; Joseph Story of Massachusetts (1811-1845), whose erudition made him a worthy lieutenant for Marshall; Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland (18361864), who succeeded Marshall as Chief Justice and consolidated and modified some of his more advanced positions; John M. Harlan of Kentucky (1877-191 I), whose lone dissent in a racial segregation case in 1833 was made the law of the land in 1954; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of Massachusetts (1902-1932), whose brilliant dissenting opinions became famous in American law and history; and Louis D. Brandeis of Massachusetts (1916-1939), whose principles and methods were decisive in converting the Court into a dynamic instrument of modern democratic government. At least a dozen other names might be added to this list to prove the point that the Supreme Court has been an arena in which great men have performed great deeds.

Character and achievement continue to mark the Justices of the Court, just as independence, dignity, and power continue to mark its status as an instrument of democratic government. The Court may appear to be the weakest ofthe three branches in the American system; for, in the words of one of the framers of the Constitution, it "has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either ofthe strength or ofthe wealth of society."

Yet the Court has a strength of its own, the strength that belongs to those who purvey evenhanded justice to a free people. It has the strength ofthe law, which is keener than the sword and richer than the purse .â&#x20AC;˘

JUSTICE HUGO L. Black has served longer on the l!.S. Suprem~ C~urt !han any ot~er living member. Only sIxteen other JustIces In the Court s hIstory have served as long. H.e was appointed to the Supreme Couri by President Frankltn D. Roosevelt on August I2, I937, and took his seat on October 4 of that year. In June I962, Justice Black completed twenty-jive full terms of service on the Court. It was Justice Black's order on behalf if the Supreme Court which removed the last legal impediment to the. recent admission of the Negro student, James MeredIth, to the University of Mississippi.

HUGO LAFAYEllE

BLACK

,(0

UR CONSTITUTIONALfreedoms must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish." These are the words ofJustice Hugo LaFayette Black of the United States Supreme Court, a veteran champion of the Constitutional rights of the individual. The occasion for the comment was the court's hearing, in June 1961, of the U.S. Communist Party's appeal against compulsory registration under the Subversive Activities Control Act, which the court rejected by a majority decision of five to four. One of the dissenting judgments was written by Justice Black.

Democratic societies are continuously faced with the problem of reconciling civil liberties with the general welfare of the state. Certain curbs on individual freedom are necessary to preserve a larger, national purpose. On the other hand, individual freedom is the essence of democracy and substantive encroachments on it strike at the very roots of democratic institutions. Justice Black has argued, resolutely and even passionately, that the Bill of Rights embodied in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution comprises absolutes and must not be restricted except for the most compelling reasons in a grave emergency.

A concern for the individual and his rights appears uppermost in Justice Black's philosophy and has often brought him into conflict with those of his colleagues who are inclined to give precedence to the needs of government, even in normal times. The crucial difference is in regard to interpretation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which reads: ÂŤCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion) or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble) and to petition the governmentfor a redress of grievances." Justice Black holds that the freedoms of speech, religion, press and peaceful assembly are sacrosanct and any laws which have the effect of interfering with these freedoms, even when the exercise thereof is in conflict with governmental prerogatives, must be declared invalid.

He has similar views on the inviolability of other rights of citizenship conferred by the Constitution.

ÂŤThe framers (of the Bill of Rights) ... knew that free speech might be the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny . . . .

They believed that the ultimate happiness and security of a nation lies in its ability to explore) to change) to grow anej ceaselessly to adapt itself to new knowledge born of inquiry free from any kind of governmental control over the mind and spirit of man."-

HUGO

LAFAYETTE BLACK to extract confessions from Negroes. He was associated with the Supreme Court's historic and unanimous decision in May 1954 which ruled that racial segregation in public schools is illegal and established the principle of genuine equality in education. His consistent opposition to racial discrimination has, in fact, brought upon him the wrath of race-conscious groups in his home state of Alabama and other Southern States. On the -other hand, it has won for him the deep gratitude of Negro Americans, as evidenced by the inclusion of his name in the Honour Roll of Race Relations by the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature in the New York Public Library in 1941, and the respect of the great majority of all American citizens.

A RECENT As a twenty-year-old senior at the University of Alabama.

Six-year-old Hugo Black is fourth from the left in this family photograph taken in 1892.

In 1958 the Supreme Court was called upon to review a statute which gave Congress the power to deprive a native-born American of citizenship for voting in a foreign election. The majority judgment, delivered by Justice Frankfurter, justified the measure on the grounds that there was a "rational nexus" between the statute and the Go,vernment's foreign policy power since voting by Americans abroad might embarrass U.S. foreign relations.

Dissenting, Justice Black wrote: ÂŤThe notion that citizenship can be snatched away whenever such deprivation bears some 'rational nexus' to the implementation of a power granted Congress by the Constitution is a dangerous and frightening proposition. By this standard a citizen could be transformed into a state! ess outcast for evading his taxes .... " Apropos of the freedom of the press, one of Justice Black's most important decisions, supported by a majority in the court, upset a sentence for contempt imposed on The Los Angeles Times. The paper had published an article which demanded severe penalties in a case still before the courts.

On racial issues Justice Black's stand has been firm and unequivocal. In one of his opinions he wrote a scathing condemnation of methods employed in the State of Florida 46

SEan

November

I962

CASE which aroused a good deal of interest and controversy and found two former U.S. Presidents disagreeing with the Supreme Court's decision-written

by Justice Black and endorsed by four other judgesconcerned the holding of prayers in public schools. The New York State Board of Regents, a governmental agency with broad supervisory powers over the state's public school system, evolved a short prayer for use in the schools within its jurisdiction. The prayer read: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country." The Board considered this form of prayer nondenominational and generally acceptable. In keeping, however, with former court decisions, the school authorities were told that no student was to be compelled to recite the prayer and any child who wanted to leave the room while it was being recited, should be permitted to do so. Shortly after the adoption of the prayer, the parents of ten pupils brought an action in a New York state court challenging the constitutionality of the state law and contending that it violated the First Amendment which forbids Congress from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion." Out of this action arose the ultimate appeal to the Supreme Court and yet a,nother histcric pronouncement on individual rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

In giving the majority decision in this case, Justice Black remarked that there could be no doubt that the programme of daily classroom invocation of God's blessings was a religious activity. In the court's opinion, by using the public school system to encourage recitation of the Regents' prayer, the State of New York had adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the establishment-ofreligion clause in the Constitution. Justice Black went on to comment: "To those who may subscribe to the view that because the Regents' official prayer is so brief and general there can be no danger to religious freedom in its governmental establishment, it may be appropriate to say in the words of James Madison, the author of the First Amendment, 'It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.' " The highest judicial body in the United States thus reaffirmed the secular character ofthe state and the separation between government and religion or religious practice, the latter being, in the words of the court, "a matter of personal conscience." It was appropriate that the court's spokesman on this vital issue should be one who has been associated with the Supreme Court longer than any other living judge and who has established his reputation as leader of the court's liberal bloc.

But it is interesting to recall, and incidentally an ironic commentary on the fallibility of public opinion, that when President Roosevelt appointed Hugo Black to the Supreme Court in 1937, the appointment was assailed on the grounds that his presence on the bench would be "a

living symbol of the fact that here the cause of liberalism was unwittingly betrayed." His accusers based their opposition mainly on the discovery, made by an enterprising newspaper reporter, that for a period of less than two years in 1923-25 he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Black admitted his temporary membership in the Klan, explained that he had joined it to further his political career in Alabama. He affirmed that he had no sympathy for the organization or its objectives.

The real reasons for the outcry against his appointment probably lay deeper and may be traced to his opponents' dislike of his economic views which were thought at the time to be radical. As a member of the Senate, to which he was elected in 1926 and again in 1932, he was an ardent supporter of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal Programme and voted for each of the twenty-four major legislative measures of this programme. He led the fight for the Wage-Hour Bill and the Public Utility Holding Company Act. As a Senate investigator, he headed a committee which investigated corrupt practices in the payment and use of merchant marine subsidies and made some startling disclosures. Illustrative of the thoroughness of his methods was his direction to telegraph companies to comb their files for telegrams smacking of high pressure lobbying methods, so that their origins could be checked.

As a result, as many as five million telegrams were piled up!

BEFORE HE sought election to the Senate, Hugo Black was virtually unknown, but his vigorous statewide campaign resulted in the defeat of four rivals. Not the least element in his success was his simplicity and informality of manner. Dressed in a wrinkled suit, he toured the countryside in a model T Ford car, and often slept at farmers' homes.

His simplicity and kindness, his sympathy for the underdog and his impatience with vested interests and arbitrary power have doubtless their roots in his early experiences and training. He was born in 1886 to poor parents in Harlan, Clay County, Alabama, a backward rural area, and his first five years were spent on his father's small farm. The family then shifted to Ashland, the county metropolis, where his father opened a general store. Hugo Black had his early schooling at Ashland College, described as "a primitive sort of academy" and then spent two years at a medical school before switching over to law. He qualified for a law degree with honours from the University of Alabama in 1906 and opened his office over a grocery store in Ashland, later shifting to Birmingham when the store was destroyed in a fire. Early in his practice he established connections with trade unions and represented the miners' union in the first Alabama strike. The First World War, during which he served as a Captain in the Artillery, interrupted his career as a lawyer but after the war he settled down in Birmingham and continued his legal practice, the income from which he steadily built up to $50,000 a year before giving it up to run for the Senate.

During the quarter century for which Justice Hugo Black has been on the Supreme Court, he has frequently been in dissent but this does not detract from his great impact on the court or his influence on the development of constitutional law in the United States. One commentator on Justice Black's role declared: "When we recall that all the great movements in constitutional law in the last seventy-five years have been initiated by dissenting opinions, we recognize that such opinions are not to be trifled with."

Justice Black expresses his opinions simply and vigorously, and in his judgments there is "no verbal display of priest craft, no strutting of the higher pyrotechnics." He

"Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are nonconforming victims of prejudice and public excitement."

- Justice Hugo Black

In a 1937 photograph. John Garner. then U.S. Vice President, congratulates Senator Black on his appointment to the Supreme Court.

is always willing to concede that the other side has a point of view, although he may not agree with it, and the fact that he shows no malice towards those with whom he disagrees is an important factor in his relationships with his colleagues.

Now in his 77th year, Justice Black is a voracious reader and especially interested in works of history and philosophy. He is no pedant, however, and can enjoy small talk with the same zest he has for a game of tennis or of bridge. Entirely free from social inhibitions, he often takes his meals in the court's public cafetaria, chatting and joking with the waitresses. He married for the second time after the death of his first wife ten years ago. He has two sons who practise law-one of them is a State Senator in New Mexico-and a daughter who is married to a doctor.

To mark Justice Black's completion of twenty-five full terms of service in the Supreme Court, a brief ceremony was held recently and tributes were paid by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Solicitor General Archibald Cox to his "unflagging devotion to the Constitution of the United States." The American Constitution has certainly no more zealous devotee than this unusually courageous and eminent jurist .â&#x20AC;˘

Pick a Universe

DAY MANKIND may reSOME ceive the electronic equivalent of a note in a bottle from an unknown civilization on a planet circling a distant star. Some day we may pick up a radio message beamed to us from outer space.

If this epochal interception ever is made, it will be the crowning achievement of radio astronomy. Although it is only three decades since its inception, this young science already is beginning to give astronomers an incisive new view of the universe.

Now some of its practitioners are soberly considering the possibility that it may also open a communication channel with one or more of the other inhabited planets believed to exist by the million within our own galaxy.

These expanding horizons of radio astronomy were succinctly outlined by a small group of experts in a recent briefing seminar sponsored by the American Institute of Physics and the National Association of Science Writers, with National Science Foundation support.

Dr. Fred T. Haddock of the University of Michigan, who led the seminar, summed up the radio astronomer's enthusiasm when he noted

that "not often in the lifetime of an individual will he participate in the birth of a science and carry it through to the point of being a major contributor to our knowledge of the universe."

Yet that has been possible in radio astronomy.

Thirty years ago astronomers had only light waves with which to study the universe. Much has been glimpsed through this optical window, but it still represents a very limited cosmic view. Then, in I932, Karl G. Jansky of the Bell Telephone Laboratories detected radio waves from the Milky Way and astronomers had a new window thrown open for them upon the universe.

"Pick a wave length and you pick a universe," observed Princeton University's Dr. George B. Field. He added that "our present optical view of the universe is limited and may not be the right one. Is the radiation coming in on these longer radio wave lengths going to tell us something ... not found optically? The answer so far is yes."

Some of the strongest radio emitters in the sky, for example, are galaxies seen faintly or not at all by ordinary telescopes. In every case where they

can be photographed, they are unusual in some striking way. One has a great jet shooting out of it. Another looks as if it were being torn apart.

Still another appears to be two galaxies face to face. Astronomers once thought the latter pair were in violent collision. But now it looks as though there isn't enough energy in such a collision process to account for the tremendous outpouring of radio noise. Its generation continues to be an enigma.

Closer to home, radio astronomers have traced the visually obscured spiral arms of our galaxy which looks much like a pinwheel seen broadside.

They also have found a great invisible halo of very thin gas surrounding the whole of the galaxy and have located magnetic forces and cosmic ray particles throughout its volume.

Dr. V. Radhakrishnan of the California Institute of Technology noted that radio astronomers are able to study clouds of hydrogen that not only give out no light but are very weak radio "broadcasters" as well.

He said it may be possible to find them by the way they absorb radio waves passing through them when they obscure other more intense radio sources that lie behind them.

In this way radio astronomers are extending their study of the invisible structure of our galaxy.

Even closer to home, radio noises from sun, moon, and planets are beginning to yield clues to some of the surface and near surface features of these solar-system bodies.

PLANETS AND the moon emit radio waves in a thermal process, just like a hot fireplace brick throwing out heat. These and other types of radio noises from pI'anets are hard to interpret. But astronomers are beginning to be able to "read" them to determine such things as the temperature of cloud-covered Venus. It has turned out in early studies to be a sizzling 300°C. Yet striking as the new radio vista is to astronomers, its most challenging aspect for the rest of us is the small but real possibility that the noises at the antenna may some day be an intelligible message from another world.

Even though they believe such an event to be theoretically possible, some scientists shy at discussing it publicly. It comes close to science fiction. But Dr. Philip Morrison of Cornell University brushed aside any

sense of diffidence by noting he "had the courage to fqllow up a ,quite general topic of dinner conversation."

There are, he said, two general questions. How many inhabited planets may. there be? What kinds of communications channels are likely, and how can we find them?

The first question is answered by analogy. "We look around at the envir~nment and say whatever is going on here may be going on elsewhere," he explained. On this basis, he said one could estimate there are millions of inhabited planets in our galaxy.

"With life on only one planet, I may have a miracle on my hands.

But with two inhabited planets, r have statistics," he observed.

But one shouldn't think of space travel to communicate with them.

Dr. Morrison pointed out that interstellar travel calls for such a fantastic expenditure of energy that no one seriously believes in it for even the remote future. If there is communication among the planets of other stars, as may be quite likely, it is, he said, probably carried out by radio or other electromagnetic means. This is why radio astronomers think it may he worthwhile trying to pick up a 'message from distant galaxies.

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A first attempt at this was made a few years ago at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. But nothing was heard.

This, Dr. Morrison said, is not surprising. It may take IO to 50 years and more of patient listening before a signal is detected. What is needed is some means to encourage persistence in such tedious research to have it carried out faithfully over such a long time.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morrison said that serious research is needed to answer his second question. Experts should carefully consider all possibilities to try to pin down a few most probable radio frequencies for which to search.

I t also would help greatly to try to find stars that seem to have associated planets. Dr. Morrison said that analysis of slight irregularities in the motions of stars may indicate the presence ot planets. Research of this kind and along any other line that would help pinpoint likely inhabited sites should be encouraged.

This kind of research plus long patient listening is what is needed if we are ever to contact another world, Dr. Morrison concluded. "If we do get a signal," he added, "then we start a really big project.".

The Secretary of State

AT HOME T

HE YOUNG lady tossing an armload of hay is 13-year-old Peggy Rusk, daughter of Secretary of State and Mrs. Dean Rusk. Peggy spends a large part of each weekend riding. At the right, the Secretary of State, under the watchful eye of Mrs. Rusk, works in the tulip gardens which surround their home in Spring Valley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington. As a change from formal dinners, Mrs. Rusk, below, enjoys presiding over the pots and pans in her own kitchen and serving an informal family dinner. Seated with the Secretary are, on his left, 16-year-old Richard Rusk and two of Richard's weekend house guests .â&#x20AC;˘